Chapter XI: Act 3 (3)

"Gradually approaching him from the right, I hum loudly at his ear. Then, suddenly becoming quiet, I fly silently and quickly around to his neck. Just as he hits himself on the ear, I bite his neck and fly away. And, _voilà_, there you are!"

"How true that is!" said Mother Nature. "_Voilà_, there we are!... Come, children, let us go now, for we must be up bright and early to-morrow to learn how Lois Hen scratches up the beets and Swiss chard in the gentlemen's gardens."

XXXV

THE TARIFF UNMASKED

Let us get this tariff thing cleared up, once and for all. An explanation is due the American people, and obviously this is the place to make it.

Viewing the whole thing, schedule by schedule, we find it indefensible. In Schedule A alone the list of necessities on which the tax is to be raised includes Persian berries, extract of nutgalls and isinglass. Take isinglass alone. With prices shooting up in this market, what is to become of our picture post-cards? Where once for a nickel you could get a picture of the Woolworth Building ablaze with lights with the sun setting and the moon rising in the background, under the proposed tariff it will easily set you back fifteen cents. This is all very well for the rich who can get their picture post-cards at wholesale, but how are the poor to get their art?

The only justifiable increase in this schedule is on "blues, in pulp, dried, etc." If this will serve to reduce the amount of "Those Lonesome-Onesome-Wonesome Blues" and "I've Got the Left-All-Alone-in-The-Magazine-Reading-Room-of-the-Public-Library Blues" with which our popular song market has been flooded for the past five years, we could almost bring ourselves to vote for the entire tariff bill as it stands.

_Schedule B_

Here we find a tremendous increase in the tax on grindstones. Householders and travelers in general do not appreciate what this means. It means that, next year, when you are returning from Europe, you will have to pay a duty on those Dutch grindstones that you always bring back to the cousins, a duty which will make the importation of more than three prohibitive. This will lead to an orgy of grindstone smuggling, making it necessary for hitherto respectable people to become law-breakers by concealing grindstones about their clothing and in the trays of their trunks. Think this over.

_Schedule C_

Right at the start of this list we find charcoal bars being boosted. Have our children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without Hershey's charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride through the country-side than a band of gypsum encamped by the road with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff insists on raising the tax on gypsum?

_Schedule D_

A way to evade the injustice of this schedule is in the matter of marble slabs. "Marble slabs, rubbed" are going to cost more to import than "marble slabs, unrubbed." What we are planning to do in this office is to get in a quantity of unrubbed marble slabs and then rub them ourselves. A coarse, dry towel is very good for rubbing, they say.

Any further discussion of the details of this iniquitous tariff would only enrage us to a point of incoherence. Perhaps a short list of some of the things you will have to do without under the new arrangement will serve to enrage you also:

Senegal gum, buchu leaves, lava tips for burners, magic lantern strips, spiegeleisen nut washers, butchers' skewers and gun wads.

Now write to your congressman!

LITERARY DEPARTMENT

XXXVI

"TAKE ALONG A BOOK"

There seems to be a concerted effort, manifest in the "Take Along a Book" drive, to induce vacationists to slip at least one volume into the trunk before getting Daddy to jump on it.

This is a fine idea, for there is always a space between the end of the tennis-racquet and the box of soap in which the shoe-whitening is liable to tip over unless you jam a book in with it. Any book will do.

It is usually a book that you have been meaning to read all Spring, one that you have got so used to lying about to people who have asked you if you have read it that you have almost kidded yourself into believing that you really have read it. You picture yourself out in the hammock or down on the rocks, with a pillow under your head and pipe or a box of candy near at hand, just devouring page after page of it. The only thing that worries you is what you will read when you have finished that. "Oh, well," you think, "there will probably be some books in the town library. Maybe I can get Gibbon there. This summer will be a good time to read Gibbon through."

Your trunk doesn't reach the cottage until four days after you arrive, owing to the ferry-pilots' strike. You don't get it unpacked down as far as the layer in which the book is until you have been there a week.

Then the book is taken out and put on the table. In transit it has tried to eat its way through a pair of tramping-boots, with the result that one corner and the first twenty pages have become dog-eared, but that won't interfere with its being read.

Several other things do interfere, however. The nice weather, for instance. You start out from your room in the morning and somehow or other never get back to it except when you are in a hurry to get ready for meals or for bed. You try to read in bed one night, but you can't seem to fix your sun-burned shoulders in a comfortable position.

You take the book down to luncheon and leave it at the table. And you don't miss it for three days. When you find it again it has large blisters on page 35 where some water was dropped on it.

Then Mrs. Beatty, who lives in Montclair in the winter time (no matter where you go for the summer, you always meet some people who live in Montclair in the winter), borrows the book, as she has heard so much about it. Two weeks later she brings it back, and explains that Prince got hold of it one afternoon and chewed just a little of the back off, but says that she doesn't think it will be noticed when the book is in the bookcase.

Back to the table in the bedroom it goes and is used to keep unanswered post-cards in. It also is convenient as a backing for cards which you yourself are writing. And the flyleaf makes an excellent place for a bridge-score if there isn't any other paper handy.

When it comes time to pack up for home, you shake the sand from among the leaves and save out the book to be read on the train. And you leave it in the automobile that takes you to the station.

But for all that, "take along a book." It might rain all summer.

XXXVII

CONFESSIONS OF A CHESS CHAMPION

With the opening of the baseball season, the sporting urge stirs in one's blood and we turn to such books as "My Chess Career," by J.R. Capablanca. Mr. Capablanca, I gather from his text, plays chess very well. Wherein he unquestionably has something on me.

His book is a combination of autobiography and pictorial examples of difficult games he has participated in and won. I could understand the autobiographical part perfectly, but although I have seen chess diagrams in the evening papers for years, I never have been able to become nervous over one. It has always seemed to me that when you have seen one diagram of a chessboard you have seen them all. Therefore, I can give only a superficial review of the technical parts of Mr. Capablanca's book.

* * * * *

His personal reminiscences, however, are full of poignant episodes. For instance, let us take an incident which occurred in his early boyhood when he found out what sort of man his father really was--a sombre event in the life of any boy, much more so for the boy Capablanca.

"I was born in Havana, the capital of the Island of Cuba," he says, "the 19th of November, 1888. I was not yet five years old when by accident I came into my father's private office and found him playing with another gentleman. I had never seen a game of chess before; the pieces interested me and I went the next day to see them play again. The third day, as I looked on, my father, a very poor beginner, moved a Knight from a white square to another white square. His opponent, apparently not a better player, did not notice it. My father won, and I proceeded to call him a cheat and to laugh."

Imagine the feelings of a young boy entering his father's private office and seeing a man whom he had been brought up to love and to revere moving a Knight from one white square to another. It is a wonder that the boy had the courage to grow up at all with a start in life like that.

But he did grow up, and at the age of eight, in spite of the advice of doctors, he was a frequent visitor at the Havana Chess Club. As he says in describing this period of his career, "Soon Don Celso Golmayo, the strongest player there, was unable to give me a rook." So you can see how good he was. Don Celso couldn't give him a rook. And if Don Celso couldn't, who on earth could?

In his introduction, Mr. Capablanca (I wish that I could get it out of my head that Mr. Capablanca is possibly a relation of the Casablanca boy who did the right thing by the burning deck. They are, of course, two entirely different people)--in his introduction, Mr. Capablanca says:

"Conceit I consider a foolish thing; but more foolish still is that false modesty that vainly attempts to conceal that which all facts tend to prove."

It is this straining to overcome a foolish, false modesty which leads him to say, in connection with his matches with members of the Manhattan Chess Club. "As one by one I mowed them down without the loss of a single game, my superiority became apparent." Or, in speaking of his "endings" (a term we chess experts use to designate the last part of our game), to murmur modestly: "The endings I already played very well, and to my mind had attained the high standard for which they were in the future to be well known." Mr. Capablanca will have to watch that false modesty of his. It will get him into trouble some day.

Although this column makes no pretense of carrying sporting news, it seems only right to print a part of the running story of the big game between Capablanca and Dr. O.S. Bernstein in the San Sebastian tournament of 1911. Capablanca wore the white, while Dr. Bernstein upheld the honor of the black.

The tense moment of the game had been reached. Capablanca has the ball on Dr. Bernstein's 3-yard line on the second down, with a minute and a half to play. The stands are wild. Cries of "Hold 'em, Bernstein!" and "Touchdown, Capablanca!" ring out on the frosty November air.

Brave voices are singing the fighting song entitled "Capablanca's Day" which runs as follows:

"Oh, sweep, sweep across the board,
With your castles, queens, and pawns;
We are with you, all Havana's horde,
Till the sun of victory dawns;
Then it's fight, _fight_, FIGHT!
To your last white knight,
For the truth must win alway,
And our hearts beat true
Old "J.R." for you
On Capa-blanca's Day."

"Up to this point the game had proceeded along the lines generally recommended by the masters," writes Capablanca. "The last move, however, is a slight deviation from the regular course, which brings this Knight back to B in order to leave open the diagonal for the Q, and besides is more in accordance with the defensive nature of the game. Much more could be said as to the reasons that make Kt - B the preferred move of most masters.... Of course, lest there be some misapprehension, let me state that the move Kt - B is made in conjunction with K R - K, which comes first."

It is lucky that Mr. Casablanca made that explanation, for I was being seized with just that misapprehension which he feared. (Mr. _Capablanca_, I mean.)

Below is the box-score by innings:

1. P - K4. P - K4.
2. Kt - QB3. Kt - QB3.
3. P - B4. P x P.
4. Kt - B3. P - K Kt4.

(Game called on account of darkness.)

XXXVIII

"RIP VAN WINKLE"

After all, there is nothing like a good folk-opera for wholesome fun, and the boy who can turn out a rollicking folk-opera for old and young is Percy MacKaye. His latest is a riot from start to finish. You can buy it in book form, published by Knopf. Just ask for "Rip Van Winkle" and spend the evening falling out of your chair. (You wake up just as soon as you fall and are all ready again for a fresh start.)

Of course it is a little rough in spots, but you know what Percy MacKaye is when he gets loose on a folk-opera. It is good, clean Rabelaisian fun, such as was in "Washington, the Man Who Made Us." I always felt that it was very prudish of the police to stop that play just as it was commencing its run. Or maybe it wasn't the police that stopped it. Something did, I remember.

But "Rip Van Winkle" has much more zip to it than "Washington" had. In the first place, the lyrics are better. They have more of a lilt to them than the lines of the earlier work had. Here is the song hit of the first act, sung by the Goose Girl. Try this over on your piano:

_Kaaterskill, Kaaterskill,
Cloud on the Kaaterskill!
Will it be fair, or lower?
Silver rings
On my pond I see;
And my gander he
Shook both his white wings
Like a sunshine shower_.

I venture to say that Irving Berlin himself couldn't have done anything catchier than that by way of a lyric. Or this little snatch of a refrain sung by the old women of the town:

_Nay, nay, nay!
A sunshine shower
Won't last a half an hour_.

The trouble with most lyrics is that they are written by song-writers who have had no education. Mr. MacKaye's college training shows itself in every line of the opera. There is a subtlety of rhyme-scheme, a delicacy of meter, and, above all, an originality of thought and expression which promises much for the school of university-bred lyricists. Here, for instance, is a lyric which Joe McCarthy could never have written:

_Up spoke Nancy, spanking Nancy,
Says, "My feet are far too dancy, Dancy O!
So foot-on-the-grass,
Foot-on-the-grass,
Foot-on-the-grass is my fancy, O!_"

Of course this is a folk-opera. And you can get away with a great deal of that "dancy-o" stuff when you call it a folk-opera. You can throw it all back on the old folk at home and they can't say a word.

But even the local wits of Rip Van Winkle's time would have repudiated the comedy lines which Mr. MacKaye gives Rip to say in which "Katy-did" and "Katy-didn't" figure prominently as the nub, followed, before you have time to stop laughing, by one about "whip poor Will" (whippoorwill--get it?). If "Rip Van Winkle" is ever produced again, Ed Wynn should be cast as Rip. He would eat that line alive.

* * * * *

Ed Wynn, by the way, might do wonders by the opera if he could get the rights to produce it in his own way. Let Mr. MacKaye's name stay on the programme, but give Ed Wynn the white card to do as he might see fit with the book. For instance, one of Mr. MacKaye's characters is named "Dirck Spuytenduyvil." Let him stand as he is, but give him two cousins, "Mynheer Yonkers" and "Jan One Hundred and Eighty-third Street." The three of them could do a comedy tumbling act. There is practically no end to the features that could be introduced to tone the thing up.

The basic idea of "Rip Van Winkle" would lend itself admirably to Broadway treatment, for Mr. MacKaye has taken liberties, with the legend and introduced the topical idea of a Magic Flask, containing home-made hootch. Hendrick Hudson, the Captain of the Catskill Bowling Team, is the lucky possessor of the doctor's prescription and formula, and it is in order to take a trial spin with the brew that Rip first goes up to the mountain. Here are Hendrick's very words of invitation:

_You'll be right welcome. I will let you taste
A wonder drink we brew aboard the Half Moon.
Whoever drinks the Magic Flask thereof
Forgets all lapse of time
And wanders ever in the fairy season
Of youth and spring.
Come join me in the mountains
At mid of night
And there I promise you the Magic Flask_.

And so at mid of night Rip fell for the promise of wandering "in the fairy season," as so many have done at the invitation of a man who has "made a little something at home which you couldn't tell from the real stuff." Rip got out of it easily. He simply went to sleep for twenty years. You ought to see a man I know.

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading of "Rip Van Winkle" may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

XXXIX

LITERARY LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENT

With Scant Apology to the Book Section of the _New York Times_.

"OLD BLACK TILLIE"

H.G.L.--When I was a little girl, my nurse, used to recite a poem something like the following (as near as I can remember). I wonder if anyone can give me the missing lines?

"_Old Black Tillie lived in the dell,
Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!
Something, something, something like a lot of hell,
Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!
She wasn't very something and she wasn't very fat
But_--"

"VICTOR HUGO'S DEATH"

M.K.C.--Is it true that Victor Hugo did not die but is still living in a little shack in Colorado?

"I'M SORRY THAT I SPELT THE WORD"

J.R.A.--Can anyone help me out by furnishing the last three words to the following stanza which I learned in school and of which I have forgotten the last three words, thereby driving myself crazy?

"'_I'm sorry that I spelt the word,
I hate to go above you,
Because--' the brown eyes lower fell,
'Because, you see, ---- ---- ----.'_"

"GOD'S IN HIS HEAVEN"

J.A.E.--Where did Mark Twain write the following?

"_God's in his heaven:
All's right with the world._"

"SHE DWELT BESIDE"

N.K.Y.--Can someone locate this for me and tell the author?

"_She dwelt among untrodden ways,
Beside the springs of Dove,
To me she gave sweet Charity,
But greater far is Love._"

"THE GOLDEN WEDDING"

K.L.F.--Who wrote the following and what does it mean?

"_Oh, de golden wedding,
Oh, de golden wedding,
Oh, de golden wedding,
De golden, golden wedding_!"

ANSWERS

"WHEN GRANDMA WAS A GIRL"

LUTHER F. NEAM, Flushing, L.I.--The poem asked for by "E.J.K." was recited at a Free Soil riot in Ashburg, Kansas, in July, 1850. It was entitled, "And That's the Way They Did It When Grandma Was a Girl," and was written by Bishop Leander B. Rizzard. The last line runs:

"_And that's they way they did it, when Grandma was a girl_."

Others who answered this query were: Lillian W. East, of Albany; Martin B. Forsch, New York City, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Nahant.

"LET US THEN BE UP AND DOING"

Roger F. Nilkette, Presto, N.J.--Replying to the query in your last issue concerning the origin of the lines:

"_Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait_."

I remember hearing these lines read at a gathering in the Second Baptist Church of Presto, N.J., when I was a young man, by the Reverend Harley N. Ankle. It was said at the time among his parishioners that he himself wrote them and on being questioned on the matter he did not deny it, simply smiling and saying, "I'm glad if you liked them." They were henceforth known in Presto as "Dr. Ankle's verse" and were set to music and sung at his funeral.

"THE DECEMBER BRIDE, OR OLD ROBIN"

Charles B. Rennit, Boston, N.H.--The whole poem wanted by "H.J.O." is as follows, and appeared in _Hostetter's Annual_ in 1843.

1

"'_Twas in the bleak December that I took her for my bride;
How well do I remember how she fluttered by my side;
My Nellie dear, it was not long before you up and died,
And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning_.

2

"_Oh, do not tell me of the charms of maidens far and near,
Their charming ways and manners I do not care to hear,
For Lucy dear was to me so very, very dear,
And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning_.

3

"_Then it's merrily, merrily, merrily, whoa!
To the old gray church they come and go,
Some to be married and some to be buried,
And old Robin has gone for the mail_."

"THE OLD KING'S JOKE"

F.J. BRUFF, Hammick, Conn.--In a recent issue of your paper, Lillian F. Grothman asked for the remainder of a poem which began: "_The King of Sweden made a joke, ha, ha!_"

I can furnish all of this poem, having written it myself, for which I was expelled from St. Domino's School in 1895. If Miss Grothman will meet me in the green room at the Biltmore for tea on Wednesday next at 4:30, she will be supplied with the missing words.

XL

"DARKWATER"

We have so many, many problems in America. Books are constantly being written offering solutions for them, but still they persist.

There are volumes on auction bridge, family budgets and mind-training. A great many people have ideas on what should be done to relieve the country of certain undesirable persons who have displayed a lack of sympathy with American institutions. (As if American institutions needed sympathy!) And some of the more generous-minded among us are writing books showing our duty to the struggling young nationalities of Europe. It is bewildering to be confronted by all these problems, each demanding intelligent solution.

Little wonder, then, that we have no time for writing books on the one problem which is exclusively our own. With so many wrongs in the world to be righted, who can blame us for overlooking the one tragic wrong which lies at our door? With so many heathen to whom the word of God must be brought and so many wild revolutionists in whom must be instilled a respect for law and order, is it strange that we should ourselves sometimes lump the word of God and the principles of law and order together under the head of "sentimentality" and shrug our shoulders? Justice in the abstract is our aim--any American will tell you that--so why haggle over details and insist on justice for the negro?

But W.E.B. Du Bois does insist on justice for the negro, and in his book "Darkwater" (Harcourt, Brace & Co.) his voice rings out in a bitter warning through the complacent quiet which usually reigns around this problem of America. Mr. Du Bois seems to forget that we have the affairs of a great many people to attend to and persists in calling our attention to this affair of our own. And what is worse, in the minds of all well-bred persons he does not do it at all politely. He seems to be quite distressed about something.

Maybe it is because he finds himself, a man of superior mind and of sensitive spirit who is a graduate of Harvard, a professor and a sincere worker for the betterment of mankind, relegated to an inferior order by many men and women who are obviously his inferiors, simply because he happens to differ from them in the color of his skin. Maybe it is because he sees the people of his own race who have not had his advantages (if a negro may ever be said to have received an advantage) being crowded into an ignominious spiritual serfdom equally as bad as the physical serfdom from which they were so recently freed. Maybe it is because of these things that Mr. Du Bois seems overwrought.

Or perhaps it is because he reads each day of how jealous we are, as a Nation, of the sanctity of our Constitution, how we revere it and draw a flashing sword against its detractors, and then sees this very Constitution being flouted as a matter of course in those districts where the amendment giving the negroes a right to vote is popularly considered one of the five funniest jokes in the world.

Perhaps he hears candidates for office insisting on a reign of law or a plea for order above all things, by some sentimentalist or other, or public speakers advising those who have not respect for American institutions to go back whence they came, and then sees whole sections of the country violating every principle of law and order and mocking American institutions for the sake of teaching a "nigger" his place.

Perhaps during the war he heard of the bloody crimes of our enemies, and saw preachers and editors and statesmen stand aghast at the barbaric atrocities which won for the German the name of Hun, and then looked toward his own people and saw them being burned, disembowelled and tortured with a civic unanimity and tacit legal sanction which made the word Hun sound weak.

Perhaps he has heard it boasted that in America every man who is honest, industrious and intelligent has a good chance to win out, and has seen honest, industrious and intelligent men whose skins are black stopped short by a wall so high and so thick that all they can do, on having reached that far, is to bow their heads and go slowly back.

Any one of these reasons should have been sufficient for having written "Darkwater."

It is unfortunate that Mr. Du Bois should have raised this question of our own responsibility just at this time when we were showing off so nicely. It may remind some one that instead of taking over a protectorate of Armenia we might better take over a protectorate of the State of Georgia, which yearly leads the proud list of lynchers. But then, there will not be enough people who see Mr. Du Bois's book to cause any great national movement, so we are quite sure, for the time being, of being able to devote our energies to the solution of our other problems.

* * * * *

Don't forget, therefore, to write your Congressman about a universal daylight-saving bill, and give a little thought, if you can, to the question of the vehicular tunnel.

XLI

THE NEW TIME-TABLE

The new time-table of the New York Central Railroad (New York Central Railroad, Harlem Division. Form 113. Corrected to March 28, 1922) is an attractive folder, done in black and white, for the suburban trade. It slips neatly into the pocket, where it easily becomes lost among letters and bills, appearing again only when you have procured another.

So much for its physical features. Of the text matter it is difficult to write without passion. No more disheartening work has been put on the market this season.

In an attempt to evade the Daylight-Saving Law the New York Central has kept its clocks at what is called "Eastern Standard Time," meaning that it is standard on East 42d Street between Vanderbilt and Lexington Avenues. Practically everywhere else in New York the clocks are an hour ahead.

It is this "Eastern Standard Time" that gives the time-table its distinctive flavor. Each train has been demoted one hour, and then, for fear that it would be too easy to understand this, an extra three or four minutes have been thrown in or taken out, just, so that no mistake can help being made.

In order to read the new time-table understandingly the following procedure is now necessary:

Take a room in some quiet family hotel where the noise from the street is reduced to minimum. Place the time-table on the writing-desk and sit in front of it, holding a pencil in the right hand and a watch (Eastern Christian Time) in the left. Then decide on the time you think you would like to reach home. Let us say that you usually have dinner at 7. You would, if you could do just what you wanted, reach Valhalla at 6:30. Very well. It takes about an hour from the Grand Central Terminal to Valhalla. How about a train leaving around 5:30?

* * * * *

Look at the time-table for a train which leaves about 2:45 (Eastern Standard Time). Write down, "2:45" on a piece of paper. Add 150. Subtract the number of stations that Valhalla is above White Plains. Sharpen your pencil and bind up your cut finger and subtract the number you first thought of, and the result will show the number of Presidents of the United States who have been assassinated while in office. Then go over to the Grand Central Terminal and ask one of the information clerks what you want to know.

They will be glad to see you, for during the last three days they have been actually hungering for the sight of a human face. Sometimes it has seemed to them that the silence and loneliness there behind the information counter would drive them mad. If some one--any one--would only come and speak to them! That is why one of them is over in the corner chewing up time-tables into small balls and playing marbles with them. He has gone mad from loneliness. The other clerk, the one who is looking at the tip of his nose and mumbling Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, has only a few more minutes before he too succumbs.

* * * * *

And that low, rumbling sound, what is that? It comes from the crowd of commuters standing in front of the gate of what used to be the 5:56. Let us draw near and hear what they are discussing. Why, it is the new time-table, of all things!

"Listen, Ed. This is how it goes. This train that goes at 4:25 according to this time-table is really the old 5:20. See? What you do is add an hour"--

"Aw, what kind of talk is that? Add an hour to your grandmother! You subtract an hour from the time as given here. This is Eastern Standard Time. See, it says right here: 'The time shown in this folder is Eastern Standard Time, one hour slower than Daylight-Saving Time.' See? One hour slower. You subtract."

"Here, you guys are both way off. I just asked one of the trainmen. The 5:56 has gone. It went at 4:20. The next train that we get is the 6:20 which goes at 5:19. Look, see here. It says 5:19 on the time-table but that means that by your watch it is 6:19"--

"By my watch it is not 6:19. My watch I set by the clock in the station this morning when I came in"--

"Well, the clock in the station is wrong. That is, the clock in the station is an hour ahead of all the other clocks."

"An hour ahead? An hour behind, you mean."

"The clock in the station is an hour ahead. I know what I'm talking about."

"Now listen, Jo. Didn't you see in the paper Monday morning"--

"Yaas, I saw in the paper Monday morning, and it said that"--

"Look, Gus. By my watch--look, Gus--listen, Gus--by my watch"--

"Aw, you and your watch! What's that got to do with it?"

"Now looka here. On this time-table it says"--

"Lissen, Eddie"--

Whatever else its publishers may say about it, the new New York Central time-table bids fair to be the most-talked-of publication of the season.

XLII

MR. BOK'S AMERICANIZATION

If ever you should feel important enough to write an autobiography to give to the world, and dislike to say all the nice things about yourself that you feel really ought to be said, just write it in the third person. Edward Bok has done this in "The Americanization of Edward Bok" and the effect is quite touching in its modesty.

In "An Explanation" at the beginning of the book Mr. Bok disclaims any credit for the winning ways and remarkable success of his hero, Edward Bok. Edward Bok, the little Dutch boy who landed in America in 1870 and later became the editor of the greatest women's advertising medium in the country, is an entirely different person from the Edward Bok who is telling the story. You understand this to begin with. Otherwise you may misjudge the author.

"I have again and again found myself," writes Mr. Bok, "watching with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work.... His tastes, his outlook, his manner of looking at things were totally at variance with my own.... He has had and has been a personality apart from my private self."

The only connection between Edward Bok the editor and Edward Bok the autobiographer seems to be that Editor Bok allows Author Bok to have a checking account in his bank under their common name.

Thus completely detached from his hero, Mr. Bok proceeds and is able to narrate on page 3, in the manner of Horatio Alger, how young Edward, taunted by his Brooklyn schoolmates, gave a sound thrashing to the ringleader, after which he found himself "looking into the eyes of a crowd of very respectful boys and giggling girls, who readily made a passageway for his brother and himself when they indicated a desire to leave the school-yard and go home."

He can also, without seeming in the least conceited, tell how, through his clear-sighted firmness in refusing to write in the Spencerian manner prescribed in school, he succeeded in bringing the Principal and the whole Board of Education to their senses, resulting in a complete reversal of the public-school policy in the matter of handwriting instruction.

The Horatio Alger note is dominant throughout the story of young Edward's boyhood. His cheerfulness and business sagacity so impressed everyone with whom he came in contact that he was soon outdistancing all the other boys in the process of self-advancement. And no one is more smilingly tolerant of the irresistible progress of young Edward Bok in making friends and money than Edward Bok the impersonal author of the book. He just loves to see the young boy get ahead.

* * * * *

It will perhaps aid in getting an idea of the personality and confident presence of the Boy Bok to state that he was a feverish collector of autographs. Whenever any famous personage came to town the young man would find out at what hotel he was staying and would proceed to hound him until he had got him to write his name, with some appropriate sentiment, in a little book. In advertising the present volume the publishers give a list of names of historical characters who feature in Mr. Bok's reminiscences--Gens. Grant and Garfield, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, Emerson and dozens of others. And so they do figure in the book, but as victims of the young Dutch boy's passion for autographs. Still, perhaps, they did not mind, for the author gives us to understand that they were all so charmed with the prepossessing manner and intelligent bearing of the young autograph hound that they not only were continually asking him to dinner (he usually timed his visit so as to catch them just as they were entering the dining-room) but insisted on giving him letters of introduction to their friends.

Only Mrs. Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson neglected to register extreme pleasure at being approached by the smiling lad. Both Mrs. Lincoln and Emerson were failing in their minds at the time, however, which satisfactorily explains their coolness, at least for the author. In Mrs. Lincoln's case an attempt was made to interest her in an autographed photograph of Gen. Grant. But "Edward saw that the widow of the great Lincoln did not mentally respond to his pleasure in his possession." Could it have been possible that the widow of the great Lincoln was a trifle bored?

The account of the intrusion on Emerson in Concord borders on the sacrilegious. Here was the venerable philosopher, five months before his death, when his great mind had already gone on before him, being visited by a strange lad with a passion for autographs, who sat and watched for those lucid moments when then sun would break through the clouded brain, making it possible for Emerson to hold the pen and form the letters of his name. Then young Edward was off, with another trophy in his belt and another stride made in his progress toward Americanization. Lovers of Emerson could wish that the impersonal editor of these memoirs had omitted the account of this victory.

* * * * *

Americanization seems, from the present document, to consist of, first, making as many influential friends as possible who may be able to help you at some future time; second, making as much money as possible (young Edward used his position as stenographer to Jay Gould to glean tips on the market, thereby cleaning up for himself and his Sunday-school teacher at Plymouth Church), and third, keeping your eye open for the main chance.

In conclusion, nothing more fitting could be quoted than the touching caption under the picture of the author's grandmother, "who counselled each of her children to make the world a better and more beautiful place to live in--a counsel which is now being carried on by her grandchildren, one of whom is Edward Bok."

Could detachment of author and hero be more complete?

XLIII

ZANE GREY'S MOVIE

The hum of the moving-picture machine is the predominating note in "The Mysterious Rider," Zane Grey's latest contribution to the literature of unrealism. All that is necessary for a complete illusion is the insertion of three or four news photographs at the end, showing how they catch salmon in the Columbia River, the allegorical floats in the Los Angeles Carnival of Roses and the ice-covered fire ruins in the business section of Worcester, Mass.

In order that the change from book to film may be made as quickly as possible, the author has written his story in the language of the moving-picture subtitle. All that the continuity-writer in the studio will have to do will be to take every third sentence from the book and make a subtitle from it. We might save him the trouble and do it here, together with some suggestions for incidental decorations.

Remember, nothing will be quoted below which is not in the exact wording of Zane Grey's text. We first see Columbine Belllounds, adopted daughter of old Belllounds the rancher of Colorado. She is riding along the trail overlooking the valley.

"TODAY GIRLISH ORDEALS AND GRIEFS SEEMED BACK IN THE PAST: SHE WAS A WOMAN AT NINETEEN AND FACE TO FACE WITH THE FIRST GREAT PROBLEM IN HER LIFE." (Suggestion for title decoration: A pair of reluctant feet standing at the junction of a brook and a river.)

She stops to pick some columbines and soliloquizes. The author says: "She spoke aloud, as if the sound of her voice might convince her," but it is not clear from the text just what she expected to be convinced of. Here is her argument to herself:

"COLUMBINE!... SO THEY NAMED ME--THOSE MINERS WHO FOUND ME--A BABY--LOST IN THE WOODS--ASLEEP AMONG THE COLUMBINES." (Decorative nasturtiums.)

Having convinced herself in these reassuring words as she stands alone on the ridge in God's great outdoors, she explains that she has promised to marry Jack Belllounds, the worthless son of her foster-father, although any one can tell that she is in love with Wilson Moore, a cow-puncher on the ranch. You will understand what a sacrifice this was to be when the author says that "the lower part of Jack Belllounds's face was weak."

To the ranch comes "Hell-Bent" Wade, the mysterious man of the plains. He applies for a job, and not only that, but he gets it, which gives him a chance to let us know that:

"EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO HE HAD DRIVEN THE WOMAN HE LOVED AWAY FROM HIM, OUT INTO THE WORLD WITH HER BABY GIRL ... JEALOUS FOOL!... TOO LATE HAD HE DISCOVERED HIS FATAL BLUNDER.... THAT WAS BENT WADE'S SECRET." (Fancy sketch of a secret.)

And as we already know that Columbine is almost nineteen (I think she told herself this fact aloud once when she was out riding alone, just to convince herself), the shock is not so great as it might have been to hear Wade murmur aloud (doubtless to convince himself too), "Baby would have been--let's see--'most nineteen years old now--if she'd lived."

Any bets on who Columbine really is?

* * * * *

Let us digress from the scenario a minute to cite a scintillating passage, one of many in the book. Wade is speaking:

"'You can never tell what a dog is until you know him. Dogs are like men. Some of 'em look good, but they're really bad. An' that works the other way round.'"

Oscar Wilde stuff, that is. How often have you felt the truth of what Mr. Grey says here, and yet have never been able to put it into words! It is this ability to put thoughts into words that makes him one of our most popular authors today.

* * * * *

But enough of this. "Hell-Bent" Wade determines that his little gel shall not know him as her father, and, furthermore, that she shall not marry Jack Belllounds. So he goes to the cabin of Wils Moore and tells him that Columbine is unhappy at the thought of her approaching--you guessed it--nuptials.

"PARD! SHE LOVES ME--STILL?"

"WILS, HERS IS THE KIND THAT GROWS STRONGER WITH TIME, I KNOW." (Heart and an hour-glass intertwined.)

* * * * *

Let it be said right here, however, that Jack Belllounds, rough and villainous as he is, is the kind of cow-puncher who says to his father: "I still love you, dad, despite the cruel thing you did to me." No cow-puncher who says "despite" can be entirely bad. Neither can he be a cow-puncher.

It is later, after a thrilling series of physical encounters, that Columbine tells Jack Belllounds in so many words that she loves Wils Moore. "Then Wade saw the glory of her--saw her mother again in that proud, fierce uplift of face that flamed red and then blazed white--saw hate and passion and love in all their primal nakedness.

"LOVE HIM! LOVE WILSON MOORE? YES, YOU FOOL! I LOVE HIM! YES! YES! YES!" (Decorative heart, in which a little door slowly opens, showing the face of Columbine.)

* * * * *

But time is short and there is a Semon comedy to follow immediately after this. So all that we can divulge is that Jack has Wils Moore wrongly accused of cattle-rustling, bringing down on his own head the following chatty bit from his affianced bride:

"SO THAT'S YOUR REVENGE.... BUT YOU'RE TO RECKON WITH ME, JACK BELLLOUNDS! YOU VILLAIN! YOU DEVIL! YOU"--

It would be unfair to the millions of readers who will struggle for possession of the circulating-library copies of "The Mysterious Rider" to tell just what happens after this. But need we hesitate to divulge that the final subtitle will be:

"'I HAVE FAITH AND HOPE AND LOVE, FOR I AM HIS DAUGHTER.' A FAINT, COOL BREEZE STRAYED THROUGH THE ASPENS, RUSTLING THE LEAVES WHISPERINGLY, AND THE SLENDER COLUMBINES, GLEAMING PALE IN THE TWILIGHT LIFTED THEIR SWEET FACES." (Decorative bull.)

XLIV

SUPPRESSING "JURGEN"

Of course it was silly to suppress "Jurgen." That goes without saying. But it seems equally silly, because of its being suppressed, to hail it as high art. It is simply Mr. James Branch Cabell's quaint way of telling a raw story and it isn't particularly his own way, either. Personally, I like the modern method much better.

"Jurgen" is a frank imitation of the old-time pornographers and although it is a very good imitation, it need not rank Mr. Cabell any higher than the maker of a plaster-of-paris copy of some Boeotian sculptural oddity.

The author, in defense of his fortunate book, lifts his eyebrows and says, "Honi soit." He claims, and quite rightly, that everything he has written has at least one decent meaning, and that anyone who reads anything indecent into it automatically convicts himself of being in a pathological condition. The question is, if Mr. Cabell had been convinced beforehand that nowhere in all this broad land would there be anyone who would read another meaning into his lily-white words, would he ever have bothered to write the book at all?

Mr. Cabell is admittedly a genealogist. He is an earnest student of the literature of past centuries. He has become so steeped in the phrases and literary mannerisms of the middle and upper-middle ages that, even in his book of modern essays "Beyond Life," he is constantly emitting strange words which were last used by the correspondents who covered the crusades. No man has to be as artificially obsolete as Mr. Cabell is. He likes to be.

In "Jurgen" he has simply let himself go. There is no pretense of writing like a modern. There is no pretense of writing in the style of even James Branch Cabell. It is frankly "in the manner of" those ancient authors whose works are sold surreptitiously to college students by gentlemen who whisper their selling-talk behind a line of red sample bindings. And it is not in the manner of Rabelais, although Rabelais's name has been frequently used in describing "Jurgen." Rabelais seldom hid his thought behind two meanings. There was only one meaning, and you could take it or leave it. And Rabelais would never have said "Honi soit" by way of defense.

The general effect is one of Fielding or Sterne telling the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with their own embellishments, to the boys at the club.

* * * * *

If all that is necessary to produce a work of art is to take a drummer's story and tell it in dusty English, we might try our luck with the modern smoking-car yarn about the traveling-man who came to the country hotel late at night, and see how far we can get with it in the manner of James Branch Cabell imitating Fielding imitating someone else.

* * * * *

It is a tale which they narrate in Nouveau Rochelle, saying: In the old days there came one night a traveling man to an inn, and the night was late, and he was sore beset, what with rag-tag-and-bob-tail. Eftsoons he made known his wants to the churl behind the desk, who was named Gogyrvan. And thus he spake:

"Any rooms?"

"Indeed, sir, no," was Gogyrvan's glose.

"Now but this is an deplorable thing, God wot," says the traveling man. "Fie, brother, but you think awry. Come, don smart your thinking-cap and answer me again. An' you have forgot my query; it was: 'Any rooms, bo?'"

Whereat the churl behind the desk gat him down from his stool and closed one eye in a wink.

"There is one room," he says, and places his forefinger along the side of his nose, in the manner of a man who places his forefinger along the side of his nose.

But at this point I am stopped short by the warning passage through the room of a cold, damp current of air as from the grave, and I know that it is one of Mr. Sumner's vice deputies flitting by on his rounds in defense of the public morals. So I can go no further, for public morals must be defended even at the cost of public morality (a statement which means nothing but which sounds rather well, I think. I shall try to work it in again some time).

But perhaps enough has been said to show that it is perfectly easy to write something that will sound classic if you can only remember enough old words. When Mr. Cabell has learned the language, he ought to write a good book in modern English. There are lots of people who read it and they speak very highly of it as a means of expression.

But there are certain things that you cannot express in it without sounding crass, which would be a disadvantage in telling a story like "Jurgen."

XLV

ANTI-IBÁÑEZ

While on the subject of books which we read because we think we ought to, and while Vicente Blasco Ibáñez is on the ocean and can't hear what is being said, let's form a secret society.

I will be one of any three to meet behind a barn and admit that I would not give a good gosh darn if a fortune-teller were to tell me tomorrow that I should never, never have a chance to read another book by the great Spanish novelist.

Any of the American reading public who desire to join this secret society may do so without fear of publicity, as the names will not be given out. The only means of distinguishing a fellow-member will be a tiny gold emblem, to be worn in the lapel, representing the figure (couchant) of Spain's most touted animal. The motto will be "Nimmermehr," which is a German translation of the Spanish phrase "Not even once again."

* * * * *

Simply because I myself am not impressed by a book, I have no authority to brand anyone who does not like it as a poseur and say that he is only making believe that he likes it. And there must be a great many highly literary people who really and sincerely do think that Señor Blasco's books are the finest novels of the epoch.

It would therefore be presumptuous of me to say that Spain is now, for the first time since before 1898, in a position to kid the United States and, vicariously through watching her famous son count his royalties and gate receipts, to feel avenged for the loss of her islands. If America has found something superfine in Ibáñez that his countrymen have missed, then America is of course to be congratulated and not kidded.

But probably no one was more surprised than Blasco when he suddenly found himself a lion in our literary arena instead of in his accustomed rôle of bull in his home ring. And those who know say that you could have knocked his compatriots over with a feather when the news came that old man Ibáñez's son had made good in the United States to the extent of something like five hundred million pesetas.

For, like the prophet whom some one was telling about, Ibáñez was not known at home as a particularly hot tamale. But, then, he never had such a persistent publisher in Spain, and book-advertising is not the art there that it is in America. When the final accounting of the great success of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" in this country is taken, honorable mention must be made of the man at the E.P. Dutton & Co. store who had charge of the advertising.

* * * * *

The great Spanish novelist was in the French propaganda service during the war. It was his job to make Germany unpopular in Spanish. "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is obviously propaganda, and not particularly subtle propaganda either. Certain chapters might have come direct from our own Creel committee, and one may still be true to the Allied cause and yet maintain that propaganda and literature do not mix with any degree of illusion.

There is no question, of course, that those chapters in the book which are descriptive of the advance and subsequent retreat of the German troops under the eye of Don Marcelo are masterpieces of descriptive reporting. But Philip Gibbs has given us a whole book of masterpieces of descriptive reporting which do not bear the stamp of approval of the official propaganda bureau. And, furthermore, Philip Gibbs does not wear a sport shirt open at the neck. At least, he never had his picture taken that way.