Chapter III: Part TWO (1)

_Synopsis of Previous Chapter._ Having observed that
Match-boxes, placed in every room of the house, invariably
disappear in a few hours, the narrator resolves to solve the
mystery even though the trail should lead straight to the White
House in Washington. Accordingly he makes a plan of all the
rooms, closets, etc., and searches every possible hiding-place,
but no trace of the Match-boxes is found.

What can have become of them! I have searched every corner of every room in the house—Stay! There is one room I have overlooked—the Haunted Room in the West Corridor, haunted by the ghosts of dead cigarettes, unfinished poems and murdered ideas. It is my study (or studio, as the occasion may be). With trembling hand on the porcelain door-knob, I pause to recall the secret combination.

In vain I rack my brain to remember the secret combination of my study door. Then suddenly it flashes upon me that long ago I wrote it down in the address book I carried in my pocket.

There are twelve pockets in the suit I am wearing. Fearfully I go through the twelve pockets and many are the lost treasures and forgotten-to-mail letters I find, but no Address Book! Wait! there is still another pocket! One I never use—THE THIRTEENTH POCKET!

With the deliberation of despair I empty the Thirteenth Pocket of its contents—a broken cigarette, two amalgamated postage stamps, a device for cleaning pipe bowls, some box-checks for _The Famous Mrs. Fair_, four rubber bands, a fragment of an Erie time-table and—the Address Book!

On the last page of the Address Book is the Combination, written in a pale Greek cipher, but still legible, grasping the porcelain door-knob firmly between my thumb and four fingers I scan the cipher eagerly. De-coded, it reads as follows—_Twist knob to the right as far as possible and push door._

* * * * *

With heart beating like a typewriter I obeyed the directions to the letter, and to my intense relief the door yielded and in another moment I was in the room!

And there, scattered over the surface of my desk like surprised conspirators, feigning ignorance of one another’s presence, were twelve yellow Match-boxes!

How they mastered the combination of the door and got into the room, I shall not attempt to explain. I am only an amateur Detective.

All I know is that Match-boxes, though they be scattered to the ends of the house (or World), always get together in some one place.

Perhaps it is for safety, they get together.

I have always wondered why they are called Safety Matches.

Perhaps that is the reason!

ARE CATS PEOPLE?

If a fool be sometimes an angel unawares, may not a foolish query be a momentous question in disguise? For example, the old riddle: “Why is a hen?” which is thought by many people to be the silliest question ever asked, is in reality the most profound. It is the riddle of existence. It has an answer, to be sure, but though all the wisest men and women in the world _and_ Mr. H. G. Wells have tried to guess it, the riddle “Why is a hen?” has never been answered and never will be. So, too, the question: “Are Cats People?” seemingly so trivial, may be, under certain conditions, a question of vital importance.

Suppose, now, a rich man dies, leaving all his money to his eldest son, with the proviso that a certain portion of it shall be spent in the maintenance of his household as it then existed, all its members to remain under his roof, and receive the same comfort, attention, or remuneration they had received in his (the testator’s) lifetime. Then suppose the son, on coming into his money, and being a hater of cats, made haste to rid himself of a feline pet that had lived in the family from early kittenhood, and had been an especial favorite of his father’s.

Thereupon, the second son, being a lover of cats and no hater of money, sues for possession of the estate on the ground that his brother has failed to carry out the provisions of his father’s will, in refusing to maintain the household cat.

The decision of the case depends entirely on the social status of the cat.

Shall the cat be considered as a member of the household? What constitutes a household anyway?

The definition of “Household” in the Standard Dictionary is as follows: “_A number of persons living under the same roof._”

If cats are people, then the cat in question is a person and a member of the household, and for failing to maintain her and provide her with the comfort and attention to which she has been used, the eldest son loses his inheritance. Having demonstrated that the question “Are Cats People?” is anything but a trivial one, I now propose a court of inquiry, to settle once for all and forever, the social status of _felis domesticus_.

And I propose for the office of judge of that court—myself!

In seconding the proposal and appointing myself judge of the court, I have been careful to follow political precedent by taking no account whatever of any qualifications I may or may not have for the office.

For witnesses, I summon (from wherever they may be) two great shades, to wit: King Solomon, the wisest man of his day, and Noah Webster, the wordiest.

And I say to Mr. Webster, “Mr. Webster, what are the common terms used to designate a domestic feline whose Christian name chances to be unknown to the speaker?” and Mr. Webster answers without a moment’s hesitation:

“Cat, puss, pussy and pussy-cat.”

“And what is the grammatical definition of the above terms?”

“They are called nouns.”

“And what, Mr. Webster, is the accepted definition of a noun?”

“A noun is the name of a person, place or thing.”

“Kindly define the word ‘place’.”

“A particular locality.”

“And ‘thing’.”

“An inanimate object.”

“That will do, Mr. Webster.”

So, according to Mr. Noah Webster, the entity for which the noun cat stands, must, if not a person, be a locality or an inanimate object!

A cat is surely not a locality, and as for being an inanimate object, her chance of avoiding such a condition is nine times better even than a king’s.

Then a cat _must_ be a person.

Suppose we consult King Solomon.

In the Book of Proverbs, Chapter XXX, verse 26, Solomon says: “The coneys are but a feeble folk, yet they make their houses in the rocks.”

A coney is a kind of rabbit; folk, according to Mr. Webster, only another word for people.

That settles it! If the rabbits are people, cats are people.

Long lives to the cat!

MLLE. FAUTEUIL

It is harder for a table or chair to behave naturally on the stage than for a camel to be free and easy in a needle’s eye, or for Mr. Rockefeller to get into Heaven (or Hell?) with the money.

What can be more pathetic than the spectacle of a helpless young chair or table or settee starting on a stage career shining with gilt varnish and high ambition to reflect in art’s mirror the drawing-room manners of the furniture of real life.

Mlle. Fauteuil (that is her stage name, in private life she is just plain Sofa) is fresh, charming and of the best manufacture. She appears nightly in a Broadway theater, yet she has attracted no attention. She has received no press notices.

Certainly this is from no lack of charm on her part. Her legs are delightful. In the contemplation of their gilded curves, one scarcely notices that she has no arms or that her back is slightly curved, and her upholstery, a brocade of the season before last.

In a hushed papièr-mâché voice the property man told me the story of Mlle. Fauteuil’s persecution—how, at the first rehearsal with scenery, she occupied a perfectly proper position between the center table and the bay window, how the Leading Lady insisted on her being moved as she obstructed that superior person’s path when, after writing the letter, she crosses to the window to see if her Husband is in the garden.

Mlle. Fauteuil was then transferred to a station between the table and the fire-place. This was all right, until the scene between the Husband and Wife, when the Husband walks back and forth (quickly up stage and slowly down stage), _between the table and the fire-place_.

This time it was not a case of politely requesting the intervention of the stage-manager.

* * * * *

Poor mangled Fauteuil! When she was picked up from the orchestra pit where he had thrown her it was found that two of her rungs were fractured and her left castor was broken clean off at the ankle.

After half a day in the hospital without either anesthetics, flowers or press notices, she reappeared on the left side of the stage, between the center table and the safe. Here she was conspicuous and happy until it was found that the Erring Son in his voyage from the window to the safe, was compelled to take a difficult step to one side to avoid the fauteuil.

Bandied from right to left, up stage and down stage, at last Mlle. Fauteuil landed in her present obscure position, to the right of the stairway pillar, where, though miserably obscure, she interferes with nobody’s stage business.

* * * * *

In the interior set as now played there is only one chair with a speaking part—this is, the Jacobean chair on which the leading man leans when talking to the ingénue. In the first act, it faces left so that he may show his favorite profile. In the second act, the chair is reversed in order that the audience may enjoy his more popular and extensively photographed left profile.

The moral of this story is that the furniture on the stage must never appear more intelligent than the actors.

MONEY AND FIREFLIES

Oh, yes, Money talks. We all know that, and a very noisy talker it is and very harsh and metallic is its accent. But sometimes money talks in a whisper, so low that it can hardly be heard.

Then is the time it should be watched, even if spies and dictaphones must be set upon it. The money whose eloquence, we are told, wished the shackles of Prohibition on this land of the free, talked with such a “still small voice” that everybody (except you and me, dear Reader) mistook it for the voice of conscience.

Speaking of money perhaps you don’t know it, but it is nevertheless true, that the light given off by one of the many species of Firefly is the most efficient light known, being produced at about one four-hundredth part of the cost of the energy which is expended in the candle flame. That is what William J. Hammer says in his book on Radium, giving as his authority Professor S. P. Langley and F. W. Very.

And Sir Oliver Lodge says if the secret of the Firefly were known, a boy turning a crank could furnish sufficient energy to light an entire electric circuit.

But to the Casual Observer there is only one variety of Firefly.… Like Wordsworth’s primrose:

The Firefly with fitful glim
Is just a Lightning Bug to him
And it is nothing more.

In reality there are almost as many different kinds of Firefly in the United States alone as there are varieties of the great American Pickle.

The late Professor Hagen of Harvard College, it is said, when enjoying the beauties of Nature one night in the company of the Casual Observer, was aroused from an apparent reverie by the question “Have you noticed the Fireflies, Professor?”

“Yes,” replied Professor Hagen, “I have already counted thirteen distinct species.”

Another quite different story is told of a well-known English actress—Cecilia Loftus, if you insist on knowing her name. It was her first visit to America and Miss Loftus was sitting with another Casual Observer on the piazza of a country house whose grounds were separated from the road by a belt of trees.

“Do you see the Fireflies?” said the Casual Observer, pointing toward the road.

“Fireflies!” exclaimed Cecilia, “why, I thought they were hansom-cab lights!”

CONCERNING THE TROUSER-CREASE

It may perchance be questioned how long Britannia shall continue to rule the waves, but that she will ever cease to rule the fashions (the male fashions, I mean) is beyond the dreams of the boldest tailor or the maddest hatter.

Nevertheless, every rule has its exception and the Rule of Fashion is no exception to the rule that rules that every rule has its exception.

Every once in a while, since the invention of trousers, one or another English King has ruled that the human trouser-crease shall crown the Eastern and Western slope instead of the Northern and Southern exposure of the trouser-leg.

The law has never been considered by Parliament, for even the most radical House of Commons would balk at legislation so subversive of individual freedom, but by word of mouth, by courier, by post, by cable, by wireless, by airplane the edict has passed through all the nations and all the tribes to the trousermost ends of the earth.

And with what result?

With no result whatever. As far as it has been possible to push inquiry, it is safe to say that no trouserian biped bearing the mark of a lateral crease has been met with in any quarter of the Globe, or, for that matter, ever will be.

Strange, is it not, that the Tailors (proverbially the most complacent, not to say timid, of men) should, without any plan or program or fuss or demonstration of any sort, unite as one man—or rather one tailor—and refuse to obey the unlimited monarch of the male fashions of the civilized world. What is the explanation?

There are two explanations. One is Commercialism.

There is no profit to be made out of a change in the geography of a trouser-crease. It is purely a matter of self-determination on the part of the inhabitant of the trousers.

If there were no more financial profit to be gained by the remaking of the creases in the map of Europe than is to be got out of changing the trouser-crease, there would be no call for a League of Nations.

Should some inventive tailor (_inventive tailor!_) devise a crease that could be woven into the very being of the Trouser, then it would be a very different matter. The slightest variation in the location of the crease would cause an upheaval in the (I’m tired of the word Trouser)—in the “Pant” market that would mean millions of dollars to the trade.

As it is there is no money in it.

The other explanation is that the story of King Edward or King George creasing the Royal Pants in any but the usual place is made out of whole cloth.

But let us suppose for a moment (just for the fun of the thing) that in some possible scheme or caprice of creation there _were_ such a thing as an inventive tailor.

And the inventive tailor invented a permanent trouser-crease and planted it on the Eastern and Western frontiers of the trouser-legs.

What would be the probable effect of the innovation on the trouser-bearing species of the human race?

In that process of advancing alternate trouser-legs we call locomotion do we not consciously, or unconsciously, follow in the direction indicated by the point of the crease?

What then would happen if the crease were transferred from the front to the sides?

The Crab alone of all living creatures exhibits in its legs a formation that corresponds to the human trouser-crease.

This ridge-like formation or crease occurs in the _side_ of the Crab’s legs, not in the front as in the human species!

And the slogan of the Crab (as everyone knows) is, “First make sure you’re right _and then go sideways_.”

Shall we too go sideways?

* * * * *

Charlie Chaplin is the only human creature whose feet go East and West as his face travels North and his trouser-creases are so complicated it would be difficult to classify them.

Perhaps they hold the secret of his centrifugal orientation, his inexplicable fascination.

Who knows!

AN OLD-FASHIONED HEAVEN

We have to thank an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. G. Vale Owen, for the latest description of the Future Life of our species. Impelled by a “gentle, steady but accumulative force” this good man became the unwilling amanuensis of the spirit of his mother and “other friends” and has written a description of the houses, trees, bridges, gardens and people of the other world and their occupations that could scarcely be improved upon by the most imaginative motion-picture photographer, or mechanic or scrub-woman or whoever it may be that writes the scenarios.

We of this world are still, after many thousand years of waiting, eager for the faintest ray of light that may be thrown on the actual conditions of what we call “the world to come,” or as the Spiritists love to say, “behind the veil,” but for the tawdry imaginings of the Reverend Mr. Owen the “Veil” serves only as an opaque screen upon whose surface they flicker grotesquely like the disorderly apparitions of a cinema projection.

As a Seer this reverend gentleman, without for a moment questioning his sincerity, is a failure; his narrative, is childish in its crudity and tedious as a dream told at the breakfast table.

One thing, however, is interesting, and that is to trace as we do, through the transcendental claptrap of “rainbow brides” and white-winged angels and the pseudo-scientific jargon of “planes,” “vibrations,” “spheres,” and “fourth dimension,” the—shall I say humanizing—influence of the cinema.

For the first time we learn that there are bath tubs in the Heavenly Mansions—Bathtubs! With hot and cold water, and Dr. Owen does not stop at bathtubs; he assures us there are also—don’t faint—_water nymphs_! Can’t you see all Israel clamoring for the picture rights!

Imagine the angelic shade of St. Anthony or Mr. Spurgeon coming unexpectedly upon a school of water nymphs!

And how is this for a motion-picture “fade out”?

“_As we knelt the whole summit of the hill seemed to become transparent—we saw right through it and a part of the regions below was brought out with distinctness. The scene we saw was a dry and barren plain in semi-darkness and standing, leaning against a rock, was a man of large stature._”

I strongly suspect that the Reverend Mr. Vale Owen is, like myself (to my shame confess it), a motion-picture fan!

ANOTHER LOST ART

These are mournful days for the Polite Arts. One by one they are passing away—the Art of Conversation, the Art of Paying Calls, the Art of Letter Writing.

The Art of Conversation is no longer even a subject for conversation. No one so much as remembers of what it died. Did it languish and fade away into an Eternal Pause as such a dignified gentleman of the old school as the Art of Conversation would be expected to do—or was it murdered?

The mystery surrounding the death of the Art of Conversation has never been properly cleared up. Some think it died of heart failure induced by the killing modern pace. Others say it starved to death. Others again, that it was done to death by the chewing-gum trust. For my part, I believe the Art of Conversation talked itself to death. It died of obesity—it grew and grew and grew until, when all the world talked there was nobody left to listen. Then it burst.

No such mystery hangs about the death of the Art of Paying Calls. Here it was a case of plain every-day murder—and what is more, the murderer still lives. Millions of electric volts are pumped into him every day, but he still lives—the more electricity we give him the livelier he grows. He is the Telephone, and the Telephone is the murderer of the Art of Calling.

Poor old Art of Calling! We shake our heads and murmur perfunctory regrets—“good old chap,” and all that sort of thing, but really in our heart of hearts, let me whisper it very low—we don’t really miss him very much; to tell the truth, we are rather, that is to say, _quite_ glad he is dead. If anyone of us had had the courage of his conviction he would have killed him long ago. To speak plainly, the Art of Calling was a pestiferous tyrant—and he only got what he deserved.

MR. CHESTERTON AND THE SOLILOQUY

“I often talk to myself,” says Mr. G. K. Chesterton, speaking in defense of the stage soliloquy. “If a man does not talk to himself it is because he is not worth talking to.”

The deduction is obvious, but it is based upon false premises. If Mr. Chesterton is worth talking to, it is certainly not because he talks to himself. It is impossible to imagine a more foolish waste of energy than that expended in talking to one’s self. The man who talks to himself is twice damned (as a fool). First, for wasting speech on an auditor who knows in advance every word he will utter. Second, for listening to a speaker whose every word he can foretell before it is uttered.

Mr. Chesterton’s argument, failing as it does to prove that he is worth talking to, is still less happy as a defense of the stage soliloquy.

A character in a play talks to himself not, as Mr. Chesterton would have us believe, because he is worth talking to, but to enlighten the audience on points which the inexpert playwright has otherwise failed to make plain.

The stage soliloquy is only permissible as an indication of the character of one who talks to himself in real life. For instance, if I wished to dramatize G. K. Chesterton, since he often talks to himself, I should have him soliloquize upon the stage. I might make it a double part with two Mr. Chestertons dressed as the two Dromios. As a stage device the soliloquy is only a confession of weakness on the part of the playwright, and has been justly sentenced to death.

Its only hope for a reprieve is to retain (at great expense) an ex-president or an eminent K. C. who might argue that since the “fourth wall” of a stage interior is removed in order that the audience may view the actions of the players, it is therefore permissible to remove the “fourth wall” of the players’ heads so that the audience may view the action of their brains.

And the ex-president or the eminent K. C. would probably “get away with it.”

BUNK

When Alexander the Great cut with his sword the Gordian Knot, which had baffled all his efforts to untie with honest fingers, it goes without saying that his impudent performance received the applause of the onlookers.

As he stood there, his heavy sword still swaying from the impetus of the stroke and exclaimed with a challenging glare at those before him (and belike an apprehensive glance over his shoulder), “Did I or did I not untie that knot?”—whatever might—nay, must have been the unspoken comment that passed from eye to eye, the answer shouted in unison, was without a shadow of a doubt the Phrygian equivalent of “You sure did!”

For the Great God Bunk (whose worshipers are born at the rate of one a minute) is as old as the world itself; and since we have it on good authority that the world is a stage, even though we do not suspect him of a hand in its making, we know the old rogue assisted at the first dress rehearsal famous for all time for the smallness of the cast and the inexpensiveness of the costuming.

King Gordius, whose genius contrived the unpickable knot, is now comfortably forgotten, while Alexander who destroyed what he could not understand, still enjoys uneasy immortality; for what is immortality at best but the suspended sentence of Oblivion?

And the knot? The hempen hieroglyph that was never solved. When oblivion has overtaken Alexander and even the name of Gordius is forgotten, the world, which is surprisingly young for its age, will still babble wonderingly of the knot that never was and never will be untied.

Another high priest of the Great God Bunk was Christopher Columbus, and on how frail a foundation rests his immortal fame—nothing more than the fragile, calcareous container, (and fractured at that) of an unborn domestic fowl.

Unquestionably the fame of Columbus rests upon his impudent pretense of balancing an egg by crushing it violently upon the table. To be sure, Columbus also discovered America, but in that he was only one of a multitude. At that moment in the world’s history the discovering of America was, like golf, something between a sport and an obsession, everybody was discovering America. So common was it, that only a few of the discoverers are remembered by name, and had it not been for his famous egg-balancing fraud the name of Christopher Columbus would surely be among the forgotten ones.

To balance an egg on its apex—though not impossible, is a tedious and dispiriting task; and even if Columbus had accomplished it honestly without fracturing the shell, so far from adding to his laurels he might have lost them altogether. Queen Isabella would never have had the patience to sit through so long and boresome a performance, and when the Queen leaves, you know the performance is over.

Indeed, it is quite thinkable that it was the dread of just such an ending to his audience and the resultant stage fright reacting upon an excitable sea-faring nature that caused Columbus to break the egg.

The question now asks itself: Has Christopher Columbus, posing as a clever impostor when in reality only a stage-frightened bungler, obtained his fame under false pretenses? In unmasking his clandestine honesty do we but prove him the greater fraud? Bunk only knows!

Queen Dido of Carthage, on the other hand, came by her dishonesty quite honestly—she inherited it from her royal father’s sister Jezebel.

Yes, Jezebel, the patron sinner of half a world of womankind, was Queen Dido’s aunt. Good or bad, what was her Aunt Jezebel’s was also Dido’s by right of inheritance. And none of all the prophets of the Great God Bunk was greater than this prophetess.

Did she not for certain moneys receive the title to so much land as might be compassed by the bigness of a bull’s hide.

She did.

Did she not then carve said bull’s hide into fine strips and therewith enclose enough real estate for the foundation of the city of Carthage?

She did.

THE COST OF A PYRAMID

If you were suddenly asked, by way of a mental test, what particular thing or person was most closely associated in your mind with the word _strong_, you would probably say a giant or an ox unless you had been listening to a sermon whose text was the sixteenth chapter of Judges, thirtieth verse, in which case you would be more likely to say Samson, but the typical example of physical strength, would hardly be an Onion.

And yet the Onion, although, like the proverbial Prophet, it may be without honor among its fellow vegetables, is regarded by at least one human outsider as the giant and ox and Samson combined of the vegetable world.

Whatever your gastronomic leanings may be, let you not be tempted to think lightly of the Onion.

Though its name be unhallowed when it appears in vulgar consort with Tripe, and its reek abhorrent in the habitations of the lowly, though it be viewed with contempt as a poor relation by its kinsman the lily, the Onion has a glorious past; it has a record of achievement that is second to none; it was, as I shall presently show, chiefly due to the strength of Onions that at least one of the great Egyptian Pyramids owed its existence. Even Samson might envy the record of the Onion!

* * * * *

When I tell you that the Pyramids of Egypt, at any rate one of them, was built by sheer vegetable strength, you may not believe me, but perhaps you may believe the historian Herodotus.

Herodotus found engraved on one of the Pyramids a complete record of the exact number of onions, radishes and leeks supplied and consumed by the workmen who piled its monstrous stones one upon the other.[1]

And how were the Pyramids erected? By some forgotten mechanical farce? No.

According to the late Cope Whitehouse, Engineer and Egyptologist, the Pyramids were built from the apex downward over the conical hills that abound in the locality, the interior of the hill being afterwards dug away to form chambers and galleries. All of which was accomplished by the unaided physical power of human muscles and sinews.

And whence came this power?

It was derived mainly from the vegetable energy of Onions, leeks and radishes transmuted by the chemistry of digestion and assimilation to the muscles and sinews of the slaves employed in building the Pyramid.

Furthermore, Herodotus tells us that with the engraved record of the onions, leeks and radishes consumed by the slaves, was also the computation of their cost which amounted to 1,600 talents of silver, this being the total cost of the vegetable fuel for operating the human machinery employed in the construction of the Pyramid.

And now let me ask you—what it is, this thing we call Scent, this mysterious emanation which is the Love Message of the Rose, the Call of the Sea, the Strength of the Onion?

You don’t know? Neither do I, no more does anybody.

Of all the five recording faculties which we human creatures share with other animals, the sense of Smell is the most elusive, the most penetrating. It apprises us of impending peril when all our other wires of sensation are “busy” or “out of order” and incapable of giving us warning. It has the mysterious power of reproducing through the “flash back” we call memory the forgotten records of all of the other four sense-films, and yet the scientists who can tell us all about light waves and sound waves, and even make pictures of them, have very little to say about the movement of the invisible bodies whose impact upon our consciousness produces the sensation of smell.

The terrific scent-energy hurled forth from the seemingly inexhaustible storage battery of an Onion or a Tuberose is more of a mystery to our men of science than is the composition of the crooked light waves from the planet Mars or the height of the flames of the Corona, measured in a solar eclipse.

Even Dr. Einstein, to whom the movements of the heavenly bodies are as simple as is a game of baseball to the average intellect, cannot tell us whether the scent-atoms hurled from the Onion rush forth in an impeccable tangent or are pitched in a hyperbolic curve.

[1] _Herod._: 11, 125.

WALTZING MICE AND DANCING MEN

“On some men the Gods bestow Fortitude,
On others a disposition for Dancing.”

Thus the poet Hesiod, three thousand years ago, scored with vitriolic antithesis the Dancing man of his day⸺

And of all the days, for like the poor (and no less deplorable) the Dancing man is always with us.

The gods had much to answer for in the days of Hesiod, and man had much to put up with. Anything, good or evil, that befell him, from the measles to melancholia—from fortitude to dancing—was a gift of the gods, wished on him as a token of their high esteem, or otherwise. All man had to do was to accept the gift, and, if it chanced to be boils, as in the case of Job, he might be thankful it was nothing worse.

Today we view a gift of the gods with distrust. Before giving thanks we inspect it in the light of Science. We examine it (as a gift horse) in the mouth. If it is a good gift, such as patience, or an aptitude for cooking, we nurture and encourage it; if it is an undesirable gift, like the measles, we eradicate it, or give it to someone else as quickly as possible.

Without knowing it, Hesiod uttered a scientific truth.

That Fortitude and a Disposition to Dance are gifts of the gods is just as true physiologically as it is poetically speaking.

The Dancing man dances, the man of Fortitude faces a cannon—or a musical comedy—because he is built that way. In other words, his behavior is due to certain pathological structural conditions which are inherited.

The behavior of the man of Fortitude is due to the poverty of cerebral tissue in that part of the brain whose function it is to stimulate the activity known as imagination. That is to say, he faces the cannon without the least concern, because he can not imagine what it will be like to have a cannon explode right in his face.

What then are the pathological conditions in the brain of the Dancing man that cause him to dance? Unfortunately for the cause of Science, the brain of the true Dancing man is almost as rare a commodity as Radium. In the United States alone there is scarcely more than a fraction of an ounce of this elusive gray tissue. To procure even the minute quantity necessary for experimental purposes would require the sacrifice of thousands of Dancing men. This in these days of Antivivisection Hysteria, is out of the question.

Luckily for Science, there exists in the animal Kingdom another creature afflicted with the same peculiar tendency to perpetual rotation as the Dancing man.

It is but one alliterative step from the Dancing man to the Dancing mouse.

The restlessness and almost incessant movement in circles and the peculiar excitability of the Dancing mouse is attributed by Rawitz, the famous physiologist, to the _lack of certain senses which compels the animal to strive through varied movements to use to the greatest advantage those senses which it does possess_.

Comparative physiologists have discovered that the ability of animals to regulate the position of the body with respect to external objects is dependent in a large measure upon the groups of sense organs which collectively are called the ear.

To quote Rawitz again:

_The waltzing mouse has only one normal canal and that is the anterior vertical. The horizontal and posterior vertical canals are crippled and frequently they are grown together._

Panse, on the other hand, expresses his belief that there are unusual structural conditions in the brain, perhaps in the cerebellum, to which are due the dance movements.

When the doctors disagree what are we going to do about it?

For my part I am willing to leave it to Cicero—

“_Nemo fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit._”

THE HOBGOBLIN

There is a Hobgoblin that stalks in the path of the athletic young writers of the day and frightens them almost out of their wits.

The Hobgoblin is the third person singular, past tense, of the verb “Say,” and his name is SAID.

The Hobgoblin SAID does not stalk alone; with him stalk his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, indeed, all the SAID family except old Gran’ma QUOTH. Old Gran’ma QUOTH, who is much too old to stalk, stays at home and dreams of the good old days when she was a verb of fashion, honored and courted by all the greatest writers of the day.

And when her grandchildren come home in the evening and tell how they frightened the athletic young writers almost out of their wits, she nearly bursts her old-fashioned stays, laughing at the drollery of it. “Egad!” she cries. “An’ I were an hundred years younger, I’d like nought better than to take a hand myself, and lay my stick about their backs, the young whippersnappers!”

And I for one, would like to see her do it.

How the SAID family ever became professional Hobgoblins, I can not say. All I know is that, once a hardworking and highly respected family, suddenly they found themselves shunned. There was nothing left for them but to become HOBGOBLINS. Now their only pleasure in life is to see what funny antics they can make the athletic young writers perform in trying to escape from them.

And funny they certainly are.

Here are a few specimens from some of our leading “best sellers”:

“To think I have fallen to that!” _grated_ Gilstar with clenched teeth.

“I get rather a good price,” Gilstar _dared_.

“I’ll give you twenty-five dollars,” he _offered_ wildly.

“What are your terms?” he _clucked_.

But why bother about “best sellers,” when you can make almost as funny ones at home? Here is a home-brewed one:

“Where are you going to, my pretty maid?”
“I’m going to the Doctor’s, to ask his aid,
I caught a cold when I slept in the loft,”
“Sir,” she coughed,
“Sir,” she coughed,
“I’m going to the Doctor’s sir,” she coughed.

“May I go with you, my pretty maid?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, if you’re not afraid
Of catching my cold, I shall be pleased,”
“Sir,” she sneezed,
“Sir,” she sneezed,
“Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir,” she sneezed.

“Of catching your cold I have no fear,
For I’ll take no chances, my pretty dear!”
At this the maiden was sorely ruffled,
“Sir?” she snuffled,
“Sir?” she snuffled,
“What do you mean, kind sir,” she snuffled.

“I mean I won’t kiss you, my pretty maid!”
“Nobody asked you, my smart young Blade!”
In her pocket-handkerchief, large and new,
“Sir!” she blew,
“Sir!” she blew,
“Nobody asked you, sir!” she blew.

THE VOICE OF THE PUSSY-WILLOW

On the first of May I took a day off and used the telephone. It is best to take a day off if you want to get a number these times, and the number asked for was Spring one, nine, two, two—yes, Spring, Nineteen Twenty-Two. “There’s no such number,” said Central; “what you want is Winter 1921.” I assured her that was the last number in the world I desired, and after a wait of an hour or so she gave me Blizzard 1888 on a busy wire, comparing notes with Winter 1920, and I began to despair of ever getting my number.

I rang off and waited. I am a patient person, I waited a whole hour to allow the wire to cool off. Then I called again and this time I was rewarded by hearing at the other end of the wire a faint far-off, fuzzy, mewing sound.

It was the voice of the Pussy-Willow!

It was Lawrence Sterne, wasn’t it? who wrote, “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” and it is quite a happy thought that the gentle airs that succeed the blustering winds of March, are a Providential concession to the tender nurslings of the April fields.

But the Pussy-Willow comes in February and early March and it would be asking too much to expect Providence to temper the wholesome and necessary rigors of these months for the sake of the venturesome kittens of the Willow bough.

Who but Providence (or Mr. Hoover) could ever have thought of the happy expedient of providing each and every Pussy-Willow, not only in the United States but also in England, France, Belgium and even Germany, with a warm fur overcoat!

And I verily believe that if the Pussy-Willows were lodged on the cold wet ground instead of perched on the high and dry branches, Providence (or Mr. Hoover) would have seen to it that in addition to fur coats they were provided with galoshes.

PERNICIOUS PEACHES

The Pernicious Peaches whereof we speak are never out of season. They may be seen almost any month of the year on the covers of magazines, devoted to the moral and social uplift of young girls in general, and the American young girl in particular.

The February magazine peach crop is usually most abundant—All through the merry month of Saint Valentine they hang on the news-stands, singly or in clusters, and Peaches they are to be sure—Peaches in the stupidest, cheapest, slangiest nonsense of the word.

There they hang to quote the redundant Dr. Roget, F. R. S.—“_simpering, smirking, sniggling, giggling, ogling, tittering, prinking, preening, flaunting, flirting, mincing, coquetting, frivoling, attitudinizing, self-conscious artificial, smug, namby-pamby, sentimental, unnatural, stagy, shallow, weak, wanting, soft, sappy, spoony, fatuous, idiotic, imbecile, driveling, blatant, babbling, vacant, foolish, silly, senseless, addle-pated, giddy, childish, chuckle-headed, puerile_,” and, what is above all else inexcusable in a peach—mushy.

And these (in journals that set the fashions moral, mental, social and sartorial) for our young American sister at the most impressionable age of her life—the age when, whatever may be her dormant possibilities, she is by her nature irresistibly impelled to pattern herself after the favorite girl of her class in school, or the favorite actress on the stage—to copy her coiffure, her dress, her deportment, even the expression of her face.

And how, you ask, can a young girl be harmed by imitating what, however vacuous or silly, is after all only an expression?

The answer is, that just as a persistent bend of thought modifies and in time fixes the expression of the face, so a habitual expression (or lack of expression) of face influences the bend of thought and, in time, fixes the character.

If you don’t believe this, dear girl, stand before your looking-glass and smirk at yourself as hard as you can, until you look (as much as it is possible for a human girl to look) like a magazine-cover Peach. Then try to hold the “Peach” look while you recite:

_The stars of midnight shall be dear_
_To her; and she shall lean her ear_
_In many a secret place_
_Where rivulets dance their wayward round_
_And beauty born of murmuring sound_
_Shall pass into her face._

You see it’s impossible! You can’t do it, any more than you can stroke your head up and down at the same time as you stroke your chest sideways. Your mouth has come out of curl—the foolish light has gone out of your eyes. Perhaps (if you really feel what you were reciting) you look just the least bit solemn. If so, try to hold the solemn look while you recite the following by a popular song writer:

_Call me pet names dearest—_
_Call me a bird_
_That flies to my breast_
_At one cherishing word,_
_That folds its wild wings there_
_Ne’er dreaming of flight,_
_That tenderly sings there in loving delight._
_Oh my sad heart keeps pining_
_For one fond word,_
_Call me pet names dearest,_
_Call me a bird!_

By the time you have finished, your solemn reflection in the glass will have changed to something almost as idiotic as the “peach” on the magazine cover.

Without question, the vulgar standards of expression these simpering sirens are setting for the impressionable young girl of today will degrade her just as surely as the wholesome, high-bred type of womanhood evolved by Charles Dana Gibson improved and developed all that was best in her sister of twenty years ago.

* * * * *

The theory that nature imitates art is much older than Oscar Wilde, who (owing to the carelessness of Mr. Whistler) is supposed to have originated it.

It is so old that Mr. G. K. Chesterton any moment may rise to dispute it, and announce to an astonished London that it is Art that imitates Nature; nevertheless, Nature _does_ imitate Art.

Is it possible that there is method in all this magazine madness? Is it possible that these magazines being devoted (among other devotions) to ladies’ attire, fear that too great an improvement in the female of our species would divert her thoughts from the imbecilities of dress to higher—and less profitable—things?

Allah forbid!

SECOND CHILDHOOD’S HAPPY HOUR

I sometimes ask myself (when there is no one else to pester) whether the present tendency toward Primitivism, in Art, Religion, Government, Conduct and Costume (everything in fact) may not be a sign that the world is coming, if not already come, to its second childhood, and I invariably answer myself in the affirmative.

Second Childhood, as of course you know, is the “happy hour” of an old age whose faculties have diminished to the exact degree that marks the undeveloped mental and physical attributes of infancy.

Take any baby—not your own, dear reader, yours is an exception I know, but any common ordinary baby—and I think when you have examined it you will agree with me that, judged by ultra-modern standards of culture, it is the most decadent being on earth.

To begin with, the baby’s sociological viewpoint is a mixture of passionate pessimism and pure unmitigated Anarchism.

Its musical output is a hysterical cacophony with all the exasperating disregard of consonance and key characteristic of the up-to-date composition.

Its Plastic and Graphic Art (achieved through the accident of the inverted Porridge bowl or the overturned inkwell) is the Post-Impressionism of Matisse and Picasso, whose law is the Law of Moses—“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

The Literary Message of the baby is a combination of the styles of Gertrude Stein, Carl Sandberg and an unassisted Ouija board and is only to be interpreted through the medium of maternal intuition.

And as for the Art Sartorial, are not the fashions feminine venturing each successive season a little nearer to that of the newborn babe?

“Well,” says I to myself, “supposing we admit that Modern Culture and Infancy are identical in expression, and that the World is entering upon its second childhood; what does it mean⸺ Is it the end of all things or only a fresh start?”

There you have me! I reply. There are some questions that even I cannot answer. I give it up.

If, as Dr. Einstein asserts, our planet has been receiving crooked light-rays all this time, it is a very serious matter and there is no knowing _what_ may come of it; certainly the Cosmic Light Company ought to be investigated. But don’t be down-hearted, dear Reader, some day the Einstein Amendment to the Law of Gravitation may be repealed, and made retroactive into the bargain; it is all a matter of Relativity and it may turn out that the Relativity-shoe is on the other foot and that it is the Earth’s orbit that is on the blink and not the light rays at all.

Perhaps Mr. G. B. Shaw will enlighten us—as a projector of crooked light-rays, he ought to know something about it.

PITY THE POOR GUEST OF HONOR

Once when marooned on a small island in the midst of a turbulent sea of traffic, latitude Fifth Avenue, longitude Forty-second Street, I asked the governor of the island, a man of great stature and kingly mien, what he thought was the origin of the institution known as the Complimentary Banquet. Checking with an imperious gesture a monstrous traffic wave that seemed like to engulf us both the next moment, his voice came to me calm and reassuring above the tumult that surged and roared about us. “If it’s a wake you do be meaning, sorr, sure it’s as old as Ireland itself, it is!”

And the Traffic Cop was right.

Nearly two thousand years ago Strabo, the Greek geographer, describing the natives of Ivernia, wrote: “They are more savage than the English, and enormous eaters, deeming it commendable to devour their deceased relatives.”

In this, probably the first reference in literature to the Irish wake, the suggestion that the departed one contributed anything more than the honor of his company must be taken with a grain of salt. Strabo was an awful liar, and whole barrels of salt might be used on his “Geography” without perceptibly affecting its flavor. In all probability the cannibal touch was nothing more than an unseemly concession to the yellow taste of the Attic metropolis.

Nevertheless, though he never appeared on the menu, the “departed relative,” the _sine qua non_ of all festive gatherings, was (as the social instinct developed among the savage tribes) ever in increasing demand, and it is to be feared that in smart Ivernian circles it was not unusual to speed the departing relative in promoting the gaiety of an otherwise dull season.

Under such conditions it is hardly to be wondered at that in Ivernia, at that period, personal popularity was the most unpopular thing imaginable, and what more thinkable than that the reluctant candidate for a complimentary dinner should feign for the occasion the grewsome condition necessary for qualification.

With the spread of Christianity, this irksome feat of mimicry on the part of the Guest of Honor, at first a protective subterfuge, grew to be a social convention. And irksome indeed it was.

To feign at a banquet by the exercise of self-control a state of unconsciousness, joyfully achieved by one’s fellow guests through more convivial channels, was no task for the amateur. Then it was that, puffed up, comatose, obese, along came the Professional Diner Out. And now, after nearly two thousand years, what have we to show?

Could the savage rite, described by Strabo, depressing as it must have been, by any possibility be as gloomy as the Testimonial Banquet of today? Is the Guest of Honor, sitting at the High Table feigning unconsciousness, the miserable target for asphyxiating bombs of wit, of anecdote, and of reminiscence—is he any less to be pitied than the deceased relative of the Ivernian dinner? Yet we call ourselves civilized; we think it barbaric to hang a fellow being for anything short of murder. Why have we not equal consideration for the innocent Guest of Honor? Why do we not dine him in effigy?

Few of us have forgotten the outrage of 1912 when William Dean Howells was dragged from his comfortable fireside by Col. Harvey, then the editor of Harper’s Magazine, who deaf to his cries and entreaties, dined, wined and flashlighted in the presence of a frenzied mob armed to the teeth with knives, and forks and spoons.

How much more humane to have dined Mr. Howells in effigy! A waxen image simulating as far as possible the kindly features of the Great Novelist, sitting in the place of honor, bowing, even smiling by means of some ingenious mechanism! This, with a phonograph record of the graceful speech of acknowledgment, and the ravening public would have gone home happy and none the wiser. Thus with the dawn of a new era of Humanity, one more chapter of the ponderous book of martyrs would be closed forever.

A NEW MONROE DOCTRINE

When Old Doctor Monroe discovered and patented his famous anti-monarchical specific, warranted to prevent the spread of Effete Despotism, Imperialitis and Throne Trouble, why didn’t he invent some equally Reliable Nostrum to check the epidemic of Old World names that was spreading like a blight of infantile paralysis among the thousands of husky young cities then springing up all over the United States? Rome, Syracuse, Troy, Thebes, Memphis, Ithaca, and a host of others, names dark and ill ominous to chubby young cities with no evil traditions to live down to, staining their bright banners with bloody blots and black bars of sinister tradition where should only be the golden stars and crimson bars of freedom.

Indian names such as Oshkosh and Kankakee were to be had ready-made for the asking; but they were few and for the most part too grotesque and Asiatic sounding for the liking of a serious-minded young republic just starting out in the city-raising business.

But it is no easy task to find new names for cities, above all names that are euphonious, and the last place one would expect to find them is the Medical Dictionary. The names of diseases? And why should that deter us? If a Rose by any other name will smell as sweet, surely a Rose with any other smell will at least look and sound as pretty. Good Doctor Watts (or was it Mr. Wesley?)[2] when adapting tunes for his new hymn-book answered his critics by exclaiming, “Why should the devil have all the best tunes!”

Why, indeed! And by the same token, why should the Diseases have all the prettiest sounding names?

Try one on your city and see if you don’t like it.

Has not Dyspepsia, Maine, an austere dignity about it that no old-world city name could possibly confer?

Neurasthenia, Kansas, on the other hand, brings up visions of shady sidewalks, pleasant gardens, and glimpses through slender trees, of a sun-kissed river. If your doctor should prescribe for you mountain air and outdoor exercise would you not instantly buy a ticket to Colic, Vermont? What more catchy name than Measles, Illinois, or Diphtheria, Wisconsin? Stripped of medical association there is scarcely a name in all the _materia medica_ that is wholly lacking in euphonistic charm.

Why not bring the matter before a Special Session of Congress? Anything is better than Persepolis and Pekin—even Tonsilitis, Missouri.

[2] It was Martin Luther.

DO CATS COME BACK?

Certain it is that Cats are disappearing; that is to say the common friendly Tabbies and Tommies of the town we used to see doing their morning marketing in the ash cans, or with whom we were wont to pass the time of day in the neighboring door-yards.