Chapter XLII: Censoring the Censor 222 (5)

The strangest part of all this is that the emotions described are not exceptional. A number of sane persons have assured me that they feel just the same about the big games. One of my best friends in college was always known to us as "the brother of the man who dropped the punt." The man who actually committed that dire deed was not even mentioned. I remember, also, a Harvard captain whose team lost and who horrified the entire university by remarking at the team dinner a few weeks later that he was always going to look back on the season with pleasure because he thought that he and the rest of the players had had good fun, even though they had lost to Yale. Naturally he was never allowed to return to Cambridge after his graduation. His unfortunate remark came a few years before the passage of the sedition law, but there was a militant public opinion in the college fully capable of taking care of such cases.

Feeling, then, as I do, that there is no such poignant ordeal possible to man as sitting through a tight Harvard-Yale game, any screen story of football seems not only piffling but sacrilegious. In the Charlie Ray picture, the two contending teams were Stanley and Baker. There were views of the rival cheering sections and closer ones of Charlie Ray running the length of the gridiron for a touchdown. This feat was made somewhat easy for him by the fact that all the extra people engaged for the picture seemed to have been instructed to slap him lightly above the knee with the little finger of the right hand and then fall upon their faces so that he might step over them.

It was not this palpable artificiality which was the most potent factor in bringing me into an extreme state of calm. A long Harvard run made possible by the entire Yale team's being struck by lightning would seem to me thoroughly satisfactory. The trouble with "Two Minutes To Go" was that I never forgot for a moment that Charlie Ray was a motion picture star instead of a halfback. Of course, you might object that I should properly have the same feeling when seeing Ray in pictures where he is engaged in altercations with holdup men and other scoundrels. That is different. In such situations the stratagems of the films are amply convincing, but in football nobody can possibly play the villain so effectively as a Yaleman. We have often wondered how one university could possibly corner the entire supply of treacherous and beetle-browed humanity.

The foemen lined up against Charlie Ray didn't begin to be fierce enough. Nor did the rival groups of rooters serve any better to convince me of their authenticity. It was quite evident that they were swayed by no emotion other than that of a willingness to obey the orders of the director. Football is too warm and passionate a thing to be reduced to the flat dimensions of the screen. Battle, murder, sudden death and many other things are done amply well in films. Football is different. Though it injure the heart, increase the blood pressure and shorten life, only the reality will do.

XXXIV

"ATABOY!"

Thomas Burke has a cultivated taste for low life and he records his delight in Limehouse so vividly that it is impossible to doubt his sincerity. In his volume of essays called "Out and About London," he spreads his enthusiasm over the entire "seven hundred square miles of London, in which adventure is shyly lurking for those who will seek her out."

In the spreading there is at least ground for suspicion that here and there authentic enthusiasm has worn a bit thin. It is no more than a suspicion, for Burke is a skillful writer who can set an emotion to galloping without showing the whip. Only when he comes to describe a baseball game is the American reader prepared to assert roundly that Burke is merely parading an enthusiasm which he does not feel. We could not escape the impression that the English author felt that a baseball game was the most primitive thing America had to offer and that he was in duty bound to enthuse over this exhibition of human nature in the raw.

We have seen many Englishmen at baseball games. We have even attempted to explain to a few visitors the fine points of the game, why John McGraw spoke in so menacing a manner to the umpire or why Hughie Jennings ate grass and shouted "Ee-Yah!" at the batter. Invariably the Englishman has said that it was all very strange and all very delightful. Never have we believed him. The very essence of nationality lies in the fact that the other fellow's pastime invariably seems a ridiculous affair. One may accept the cookery, the politics and the religion of a foreign nation years before he will take an alien game to his heart. We doubt whether it would be possible to teach an American to say "Well played" in less than a couple of generations.

Burke has no fears. Not only does he describe the game in a general way, but he plunges boldly ahead in an effort to record American slang. The title of the essay is well enough. Burke calls it "Atta-boy!" This is, of course, authentic American slang. It meets all the requirements, being in common use, having a definite meaning and affording a short cut to the expression of this meaning. We can not quite accept the spelling. There is, perhaps, room for controversy here. When the American army first came to France the word attracted a good deal of attention and some French philologists undertook to follow it to the source. One of them quickly discovered that he was dealing not with a word but a contracted phrase. We are of the opinion that thereafter he went astray, for he declared that "Ataboy" was a contraction of "At her boy," and he offered the freely translated substitute "Au travail garcon."

It will be observed that Mr. Burke has given his attaboy a "t" too many. "That's the boy" is the source of the word. Perhaps it would be more accurately spelled if written "'at 'a boy." The single "a" is a neutral vowel which has come to take the place of the missing "the." The same process has occurred in the popular phrases "'ataswingin'" and "'ataworkin'." These, however, have a lesser standing. "Ataboy" is almost official. One of the American army trains which ran regularly from Paris to Chaumont began as the Atterbury special, being named after the general in charge of railroads. In a week it had become the Ataboy special, and so it remained even in official orders.

Some of the slang which Burke records as being observed at the game is palpably inaccurate. Thus he reports hearing a rooter shout, "Take orf that pitcher!" It is safe to assume that what the rooter actually said was, "Ta-ake 'im out!"

Again Burke writes, "An everlasting chorus, with reference to the scoring board, chanted like an anthem--'Go-ing up! Go-ing up! Go-ing up!'"

Now, as a matter of fact, the "go-ing up!" did not refer to the scoring board, but to the pitcher who must have been manifesting signs of losing control. The shouts of baseball crowds are so closely standardized that we think we have a right to view with a certain distrust such unfamiliar snatches of slang as "He's pitching over a plate in heaven," or "Gimme some barb' wire. I wanter knit a sweater for the barnacle on second," and also, "Hey, catcher, quit the diamond, and lemme l'il brother teach you." It is impossible for us to reconcile "lemme l'il brother" and "quit the diamond."

It must be said in justice to Burke that it is entirely possible that he did hear some of the outlandish phrases which he has jotted down. Among the dough-boys gathered for the game there may have been some former college professor who had devoted the afternoon to convincing his comrades that he was no highbrow, but a typical American. Such a theory would account for "quit the diamond."

XXXV

HOW TO WIN MONEY AT THE RACES----

Perseverance, courage, acumen, unceasing vigilance, hard work and application are all required of the man who would win money at the races. He should also have some capital in easily marketable securities.

During his preliminary days at the university, the man who would win money on the races should specialize in science. It will be quite impossible for him in his later career to tell whether his selection was beaten by a nose or a head, unless he is absolutely familiar with the bone structure of the horse (Equidoe), (Ungulate), (E. caballus). In freshman zoology he will learn that, at the highest, the teeth number forty-four, and that the horse as a domestic animal dates from prehistoric times. This will serve to explain to him the character of the entries in some of the selling races.

Geology will make it possible for him to distinguish between "track--slow" and "track--muddy." The romance languages need not be avoided. French will enable the student to ask the price on Trompe La Morte without recourse to the subterfuge of "What are you laying on the top one?" In spite of the amount of science required, the young man will find that he has small need of mathematics. A working knowledge of subtraction will suffice.

As has been well said in many a commencement address, college is not the end but merely the beginning of education. The graduate should begin his intensive preparation not later than twelve hours before going to the track. He will find that the first edition of _The Morning Telegraph_ is out by midnight. Hindoo's selections are generally on page eight. I have never known the identity of Hindoo, but there is internal evidence pointing toward President Harding. At any rate, Hindoo is a man who has mastered the pre-election style of the President. His good will to all horses, black, brown and bay, is boundless.

In studying Mr. Hindoo's advice concerning the first race at Belmont Park last week, I found, "Captain Alcock--Last race seems to give him the edge." If I had gone no further, my mind might have been easy, but in chancing to look down the column I noted, "Servitor--Well suited under the conditions"; "Pen Rose--Plainly the one that is to be feared"; "Bellsolar--May be heard from if up to her last race." On such minute examination the edge of Captain Alcock seemed to grow more blunt. "Neddam," I discovered, "will bear watching," and "Hobey Baker may furnish the surprise." To a man of scientific training such conflicting testimony is disturbing. What for instance would the world have thought of the scholarship of Aristotle if, after declaring that the earth was spherical, he had added that it might be well to have a good place bet--at two to one--on its being flat.

As happens all too often in the swing away from science, mere emotion was allowed to rush in unimpeded. Turning to a publication called _The Daily Running Horse_, I found the section dealing with the first race to be run at Belmont Park and read, "Captain Alcock is a nice horse right now." That settled it. All too seldom in this world does one find an individual who has the edge and still refrains from slashing about with it and cutting people. Captain Alcock was represented to us as "nice" in spite of the fact that he was "in with a second rate lot," as _The Daily Running Horse_ went on to state. Later it seemed to us that the boast was in bad taste, but this factor, which we recognized immediately after the running of the first race as groundless condescension, appeared at the time a rather fetching sort of democracy. Captain Alcock was willing to associate with second raters and didn't even mind admitting it.

The price was eleven to ten, and after we made our bet the bookmaker revised his figures down to nine to ten. There was a thrill in having been a party to "hammering down the price." Soon we were to wish that Captain Alcock had been much less nice. Away from the barrier he went on his journey of a mile with a lead of two lengths. Next it was four and then five. His heels threw dust upon the second raters. Around the turn came Captain Alcock flaunting his edge in every stride. As they straightened out into the stretch the man behind us remarked, "Captain Alcock will win in a common canter."

The Captain was content to do no such thing. Although in with second raters he remained a nice horse and he was willing to do nothing common even for the sake of victory. He began to ease up in order to become companionable with the field. Evidently he had felt unduly conspicuous so far in front. Winning in a common canter was not cricket to his mind. He wanted to make a race of it while there was still time. And as the speed and the lead of Captain Alcock abated, down the stretch from far in the rear dashed the black mare Bellsolar. Suddenly I remembered the ominous words of Hindoo, "May be heard from if up to her last race." Evidently Bellsolar was up. Captain Alcock was carrying the business of being nice much too far. Before he could do anything about it, Bellsolar was at his shoulders. She did not stop for greeting, but dashed past and won before the genial Captain could begin sprinting again.

As a matter of fact, it was not until the next day that I appreciated just how much wisdom had been contained in _The Daily Running Horse_, advice which I had neglected. Turning back to the first race I found, "Advised play--None, too tough." If the tipster had only kept up that pace throughout the afternoon all his followers would be winners at the track.

XXXVI

ONE TOUCH OF SLAPSTICK

The Duchess in _Clair de Lune_ implored her gentleman friend to speak to her roughly, using hedge and highroad talk. Theatrical managers have now come to realize that many of us who may never hope to be duchesses are still swayed by this back to the soil movement. The humor of musical comedy grows more robust as the season wanes. It is broader, thicker and, to my mind, funnier. Comedy, like Antaeus, must keep at least a tiptoe on the earth. When the spirit of fun begins to sicken it is time that he should be hit severely with a bladder. Having been knocked down, he will rise refreshed.

All of which is preliminary to the expression of the opinion that Jim Barton, now playing at the Century, is the funniest clown who has appeared in New York this season. Mr. Barton was discovered in a burlesque show by some astute theatrical scout several seasons ago. Burlesque was several rungs higher in the ladder than his starting point, for his career included appearances in carnivals and the little shows which ply up and down some of the rivers, giving nightly performances on their boat whenever there is a cluster of light big enough to indicate a village. Jim Barton has been trained, therefore, in capturing the interest and attention of primitive and unsophisticated theatergoers. This training has encouraged him in zest and violence. It has impressed upon him the conception that the fundamental appeal to all sorts of people and all sorts of intelligences is rhythm. "When in doubt, dance" is his motto.

Primarily he developed his dancing as something which should make people laugh. It was, and is, full of stunts and grotesque movements and surprising turns. But it has not remained just funny. Consciously or unconsciously he knows, just as Charlie Chaplin knows, that funny things must be savored with something else to capture interest completely. And when you watch the antics of Barton and laugh there comes unexpectedly, every now and then, a sudden tightening of the emotions as you realize that some particular pose or movement is not funny at all, but a gorgeously beautiful picture. For instance, when Barton begins his skating dance the first reaction is one of amusement. There is a recognizable burlesque of the traditional stunts of the man on ice, but that is lost presently in the further realization that the thing is amazingly skillful and graceful. Again he follows a Spanish dancer with castanets and seems to depend upon nothing more than the easy laugh accorded to the imitator, but as he goes on it isn't just a burlesque. He has captured the whole spirit and rhythm of the dance.

There is, perhaps, something of hypocrisy and swank in taking the performance of Barton and seeming to imply, "Of course I like this man because I see all sorts of things in his work that his old burlesque audiences never recognized." It is dishonest, too, because as a matter of fact I like exactly the same things which won his audiences in the old Columbia circuit. I have never been able to steel myself against the moment in which the comedian steps up behind the stout lady and slaps her resoundingly between the shoulder blades. Jim Barton is particularly good because he hits louder and harder than any other comedian I ever saw. But even for this liking a defense is possible. The influx of burlesque methods ought to have a thoroughly cleansing influence in American musical comedy. More refined entertainment has often been unpleasantly salacious, not because it was daring but because it was cowardly. Familiar stories of the smoking car and the barroom have been brought into Broadway theaters often enough, but in disguised form. They have minced into the theater. The appeal created by this form of humor has been never to the honest laugh but to the smirk. If I were a censor I think I would allow a performer to say or do almost anything in the theater if only he did it frankly and openly. The blue pencil ought to be used only against furtive things. You may not like smut, but it is never half so objectionable as shamefacedness. The best tonic I can think of for the hangdog school of musical comedy to which we have fast been drifting is the immediate importation to Broadway of fifty comedians exactly like Jim Barton. Of course, the only trouble is that the scouts would probably turn up with the report that there was not even one.

Still rumor is going about of at least one other. I am reliably informed that Bobby Clark of _Peek-A-Boo_ is one of the funniest men of the year. Unfortunately I am not in a position to make a first hand report because on the night his show opened at the Columbia I was watching _Mixed Marriage_ break into another theater, or attending a revival of John Ferguson or something like that.

Accordingly, I missed the scene in which Bobby Clark tries to put his head into the lion's mouth. Clark must be a good comedian, because he sounds funny even when you get him at second or third hand in the form, "And then you see he says, 'You do it fine. You even smell like a lion. Take off the head now and we'll get along.'"

As it has been explained to me, Clark and the other comedian are hired by a circus because the trained lion has suddenly become too ill to perform. Clark's partner is to put on a lion's skin and pretend to be a lion while Clark goes through the usual stunts of the trainer, including the feat of putting his head into the lion's mouth. At the last minute the lion recovers and is wheeled out on to the stage in a big cage. Clark believes the animal is his partner in disguise and compliments him warmly on the manner in which he roars. Finally, however, he becomes irritated when there is no response, except a roar, to his request, "Take off the head now and come on." After a second roar Clark remarks with no little pique, "Come on, now, cut it out, you're not so good as all that."

What happens after that I don't know because the people who have been to the Columbia Theater always leave you in doubt as to whether Clark actually goes into the lion's den or not. Presumably not, because later in the show, according to these reports, there is a drill by The World's Worst Zouaves in which Clark as the chief zouave whistles continually for new formations only to have nothing happen. Whether Clark is the originator of the material about the lion and the rest, or only the executor, I am not prepared to say. All the scouts talk as if he made it up as he went along, and whenever a comedian can bring about that state of mind there need be no doubt of his ability.

XXXVII

DANGER SIGNALS FOR READERS

By this time, of course, we ought to know the danger signals in a novel and realize the exact spot at which to come to a full stop. On page 54 of "The Next Corner," by Kate Jordan, we found the situation in which Robert, husband, came face to face with Elsie, wife, after a separation of three years. Mining interests had called him to Burma, and she, being given the world to choose from, had decided to live in Paris. He was punctual at the end of his three years in arriving at his wife's apartment, but she was not there. The maid informed him that she had gone to a tea at the home of the Countess Longueval. Without stopping to wait for an invitation John hurried after her. He entered the huge and garish reception room and there, yes there, was Elsie. But perhaps Miss Jordan had better tell it:

"The effect she produced on him, in her yellow gauze, that though fashioned for afternoon wear was so transparent it left a good deal of her body visible, with her face undisguisedly tricked out and her gleaming cigarette poised, was a harsh one--a marionette with whom fashion was an idolatry; an over-decorated, empty eggshell. She could feel this, and in a desperate way persisted in the affectation which sustained her, the more so that under Robert's earnest gaze a feeling of guilt made her hideously uncomfortable.

"'Throw that away,' Robert said quietly with a scant look at the cigarette."

It seemed strange to us that Robert had been so little influenced toward liberalism during his three years in Burma, for that was the spot where Kipling's soldier found the little Burmese girl "a smokin' of a whackin' big cheeroot."

Still, Robert carried his point. Elsie, our heroine, gave a laugh. What sort of a laugh, do you suppose? Quite so, "an empty laugh," and "she turned to flick it from her fingers"; that is, the cigarette. Perhaps we should add that she flicked it to "a table that held the smokers' service." Elsie, undoubtedly, had degenerated during Robert's absence, but she was still too much the lady to put ashes on the carpet. And yet she did use cosmetics. This was the second thing which Robert took up with her. In the cab he wanted to know why she put "all that stuff" on her face. Perhaps her answer was a little perplexing, for she said, "Embellishment, mon cher. Pour la beaute, pour la charme!"

"I'm quite of the world in my tolerance," he explained to her. "If you needed help of this sort and applied it delicately to your face I'd not mind. In fact, if delicately done, probably I'd not know of it."

This, of course, seems to us an immoral attitude. Things are right or wrong, whether one notices them or not. After all, the recording angel would know. Elsie could use paint and powder with such delicacy as to deceive him. However, we are interrupting Robert, who went on, and "His voice grew kinder, although his eyes remained sternly grave."

"It's been from the beginning of the world," he said, "and it is in the East, wherever there are women. But--and make a note of it--they are always women of a certain sort."

Seemingly, Robert got away with this statement, although it is not true. Manchu women of the highest degree paint a great scarlet circle on the side of their face in spite of the fact that there is a native proverb which, freely translated, may be rendered, "Discretion is the better part of pallor."

It is only fair to add that the indiscretions of Elsie went beyond powder and paint and even beyond smoking cigarettes. When her husband told her that he must make a brief business trip to England she asked to be excused from accompanying him on the ground that she would prefer to remain in Paris for a while. As a matter of fact, she planned to go to Spain. And she did. She went to a house party at the home of Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, Marques de Burgos. She had been told that it was to be a house party, but when she got to the isolated little castle on the top of the crag she found no one but Don Arturo Valda y Moncado, Marques de Burgos. No sooner had she arrived than a storm began to rage and the last mule coach went down the mountain. She must stay the night! Still, after her first wild pleadings that he allow her to clamber down the mountain alone at night until she could find a hotel, reasonable in price and respectable, she did not feel so lonely with Arturo. To be sure, he sounded a good deal like a house party all by himself, and more than that she loved him.

After dinner he began to make love and soon she joined him. He grew impassioned, and Elsie said that she would throw in her lot with his and never leave him. In a transport of joy, Arturo was about to bestow upon her one of those Spanish kisses which no novelist can round off in less than a page and a half. Elsie commanded him to be patient. First, she said, she must write a letter to her husband. In this moment Arturo was superb in his Latin restraint. He did not suggest a cablegram or even a special delivery stamp. Perhaps it would have meant death to go to the postoffice on such a night. Elsie wrote to Robert, painstakingly and frankly, confessing that she loved Arturo and was going to remain with him and that she would not be home at all any more. Then a sure footed serving man was intrusted with the letter and told to seek a post box on the mountain side.

No sooner was that out of the way than a Spanish peasant entered the house and shot Arturo. It seems that Arturo had betrayed his daughter. The shot killed Arturo and Elsie wished she had never sent the letter. Unfortunately, you can't make your confession and eat it too. No postscript was possible. Elsie staggered down the mountain side and a chapter later she woke up in a hospital in Bordeaux. The strain had been too great.

Nor could we stand it either. We sought out somebody else who had already read the book and he told us that Elsie went back to America and found her husband, and that for months and months she lived in an agony of shame, thinking he knew all about what had never happened. Finally she decided that he didn't, and then she lived months and months in an agony of fear that the letter was still on its way. She got up every morning, opening everything feverishly and finding only bills and advertisements. At this point the person who knew the story was interrupted in telling us about it, but we think we can supply the end.

After more months and months, in which first shame died and then fear, hope was born. And then came happiness. The old hunted look faded from the eyes of Elsie. She seemed a superbly normal woman, save in one respect. During the political campaign of 1920, when practically every visitor who came to the house would remark, at one time or other during the course of the evening, "Don't you think this man Burleson is a mess?" Elsie would look up with just the suggestion of a faint smile about her fine, sensitive mouth and answer, "Oh, I don't know."

XXXVIII

ADVENTURE MADE PAINLESS

One of my favorite characters in all fiction is D'Artagnan. He was forever fighting duels with people and stabbing them, or riding at top speed over lonely roads at night to save a woman's name or something. I believe that I glory in D'Artagnan because of my own utter inability to do anything with a sword. Beyond self-inflicted razor wounds, no blood has been shed by me. Horseback riding is equally foreign to my experience, and I have done nothing for any woman's name. And why should I? D'Artagnan does all these things so much better that there is not the slightest necessity for personal muddling. When he gallops I ride too, clattering along at breakneck speed between ghostly lines of trees. Only there is no ache in my legs the next morning. Nor heartache either over heroines.

He is my substitute in adventure. After an evening with him I can go down to the office in the morning and go through routine work without the slightest annoying consciousness that it is, after all, pretty dull stuff. I am not tempted to put on my hat and coat and fling up my job in order to go out to seek adventures with swordsmen and horses and provocative ladies in black masks.

Undoubtedly there must be some longing in me for all this or I would not have such a keen interest in _The Three Musketeers_, but, having read about it, there is no craving for actual deeds. Possibly, after a long evening with a tale of adventure, I may swagger a little the next day and puzzle a few office boys with a belligerent manner to which they are not accustomed; but they do not fit into the picture perfectly enough to maintain the mood. It has been satisfied, and when it begins to tug again there are other books which will serve to gratify my keen desire to hear the clink of blades and the sound of running footsteps on the cobbles as the miscreants give way. The scurvy knaves! The system saves time and expense and arnica. Without it I might not be altogether reconciled to Brooklyn.

In my opinion, most of the men and women whom I know find the same relief in books and plays and motion pictures. The rather stout lady on the floor below us has three small children. I imagine that they are a fearful nuisance, but recently, after getting them to bed, she has been reading "The Sheik." Her husband--he is one of these masterful men--told me that he had glanced at the book himself and found it silly and highly colored. He said that he was going to tell her to stop. I agreed with him as to the silliness of the book, but it seemed to me that his wife had earned her right to a fling on the desert. If I knew him a little better, I would go on to say that it ought to comfort him to have his wife reading such a highly flavored romance. He is excessively jealous, and he ought to be pleased to have a possibly roving fancy so completely occupied by an intense interest in an Arab chieftain who never lived--no, not even in Arabia or any place at all outside the pages of a book. The husband has no need to worry. There is no one in our neighborhood who resembles Ben Ahmed Abdullah--or whatever his fool name may be.

Once, when my neighbor found me at the door of his apartment, where I had gone to borrow half an orange, he seemed unusually surly. That was certainly a groundless suspicion. At the time I was entirely absorbed in "The Outline of History." Mrs. X--of course I can't give her name or even provide any description which might serve to identify her--was entirely safe from my attentions, for during that particular week I was rather taken with Cleopatra, even though Wells did speak slightingly of her. Unfortunately we have no adequate idea of Cleopatra's appearance. Wells attempts no description. The only existing portrait is one of those conventionalized Egyptian things with the arms held out stiffly as if the siren of the Nile was trying to indicate to the clerk the size of the shoe which she desired. Still, we can imply something from the enthusiasm of Antony and the others. Somehow or other, I have always felt sure that there was not the slightest resemblance between Cleopatra and Mrs. X.

Here is what I am trying to get at. Mr. X sells something or other, and apparently nobody in New York wants it, which makes it necessary for him to go on long journeys in which he touches Providence, Boston, New Bedford, and Bangor. Practically all my evenings are spent at home.

I have spoken of the stairs, but it is only a short flight. Mrs. X is sentimental and I am romantic. And we are both quite safe, and Mr. X can go peacefully and enthusiastically around Bangor selling whatever it is which he has to sell. I resemble the Sheik Ben Ahmed Abdullah even less than Mrs. X resembles Cleopatra. Mr. Smith (we might as well abandon subterfuges and come out frankly with the name, since I have already been indiscreet enough for him to identify the personages concerned) has no rival but a phantom one.

Realizing how much Smith and I and Mrs. Smith owe to the protecting consolations of fiction, which includes history as written by Wells, I feel that I ought to go on to generalize in favor of many much-abused types of entertainment. Whenever a youngster steals anything, or a wife runs away from home, the motion pictures are blamed. Censorship is devoted to removing all traces of bloodshed from the films. Police magistrates are called in to suppress farces dealing with folk given to high jinks, on the ground that they threaten the morals of the community. We assume, of course, that the censors are thinking of morals in terms of deeds. They can hardly be ambitious enough to hope to curtail the thoughts of a community.

And I deny their major premise. Evil instincts are in us all. Practically everybody would enjoy robbing a bank or running away with somebody with whom he ought not to run away. These lawless instincts are invariably drained off by watching their mimic presentment in novels and films and plays.

If only accurate statistics were available, I would wager and win on the proposition that not half of 1 per cent of all the cracksmen in America have ever seen _Alias Jimmy Valentine_. No burglar could watch the play without being shamed out of his job by sheer envy. An ounce of self-respect--and there are figures to show that yeggs average three and a quarter--would keep a crook from continuing in his bungling way after observing the manner in which Jimmy Valentine opens the door of a safe merely by sandpapering his fingers. What sort of person do you suppose could go and buy nitroglycerine ungrudgingly after that? Even by the least optimistic estimate of human nature, the worst we could expect from a criminal who had seen the play would be to have him make a gallant and sincere effort to employ the touch system in his own career. Such attempts would be easy to frustrate. Night watchmen could creep up on the idealists and catch them unaware. They could be traced by their cursing. And, of course, the police might keep an eye open at the doors of the sandpaper shops.

_Kiki_, David Belasco's adaptation from the French, taps another rich vein of human depravity and allows it to be exploited and exhausted by means of drama. The heroine of the play is a rowdy little baggage. She has a civil word for no man. The truth is not in her. Now, every child born into the world would like to lie and be impertinent. There is practically no fun in being polite, and truth-telling is most indifferent judged solely as an indoor sport. Manners and veracity are things which people learn slowly and painfully. Undoubtedly both are useful, though I am not at all sure that their importance is not somewhat exaggerated. Community life demands certain sacrifices, particularly as the pressure of civilization increases. The men of a primitive tribe do not get up in the subway to give their seats to ladies, because they have no subways. Likewise, having no hats, they are not obliged to take them off. Of course it goes deeper than that. Even a primitive civilization has weather, and yet one seldom hears an Indian in his native state observing: "Isn't it unusually warm for November?"

Once everybody was primitive, and the most intensive training cannot wholly obliterate the old longing to be done with strange and self-imposed trappings. Until it is licked out of them, children are savagely rude. Training can alter practice, but even the most severe chastisement cannot get deep enough to affect an instinct. We all want to be rude, and we would, now and again, break loose in unrestrained spells of boorishness if it were not for an occasional Kiki who does the work for us. Accordingly, one of the most salutary forms of entertainment is the comedy of bad manners which recurs in our theater every once in so often.

"But," I hear somebody objecting, "no matter how much each of us may like to be rude, we don't care much about it when it is done to us. In real life we would all run from Kiki because her monstrous bragging would irritate us, and her vulgarity and bad manners would be most annoying."

All that would be true but for one factor. In any play which achieves success a curious transference of personality takes place. Before a play begins the audience is separated from the people on the stage by a number of barriers. First of all, there is the curtain, but by and by that goes up. The orchestra pit and the footlights still stand as moats to keep us at our distance. Then the magic of the playhouse begins to have its effect. If the actors and the playwrights know the tricks of the business, they soon lift each impressionable person from his seat and carry him spiritually right into the center of the happenings. He becomes one or more persons in the play. We do not weep when Hamlet dies because we care anything in particular about him. His death can hardly come as a surprise. We knew he was going to die. We even knew that he had been dead for a long time.

Probably a few changes have been made in adapting _Kiki_ from the French. Kiki is made just a bit more respectable than she was in the French version, but she remains enough of a gamin and a rebel against taste and morals to satisfy the outlaw spirit of an American audience. She is for the New York stage "a good girl," but since this seems to be only the slightest check upon her speech and conduct, there can be no violent objection. Of course the type is perfectly familiar in the American theater, but this time it seems to us better written than usual, and much more skillfully and warmly played. Indeed, in my opinion, Miss Ulric's Kiki is the best comedy performance of the season. Even this is not quite enough. It has been a lean season, and this particular piece of acting is good enough to stand out in a brilliant one. The final scene of the play, in which Kiki apologizes for being virtuous, seems to me a truly dazzling interpretation of emotions. It is comic because it is surprising, and it is surprising because it concerns some of the true things which people neglect to discuss.

By seeing _Alias Jimmy Valentine_, the safe-cracking instinct which lies dormant in us may be satisfied. _Kiki_ allows us to indulge our fondness for being rude without alienating our friends. But more missionary work remains. In _The Idle Inn_, Ben-Ami appears as a horse thief. Personally, I have no inclination in that direction. I would not have the slightest idea what to do with a horse after stealing him. My apartment is quite small and up three flights of stairs. However, there are other vices embodied in the role which are more appealing to me. The role is that of a masterful man, which has always been among my thwarted ambitions. In the second act Ben-Ami breaks through a circle of dancing villagers and, seizing the bride, carries her off to the forest. Probably New York will never realize how many weddings have been carried on without mishap this season solely because of Ben-Ami's performance in _The Idle Inn_. In addition to entrusting him with all my eloping for the year, I purpose to let Ben-Ami swagger for me. He does it superbly. To my mind this young Jewish actor is one of the most vivid performers in our theater. His silences are more eloquent than the big speeches of almost any other star on Broadway.

The play is nothing to boast about. Once it was in Yiddish, and as far as spirit goes it remains there. Once it was a language, and now it is words. The usually adroit Arthur Hopkins has fallen down badly by providing Ben-Ami with a mediocre company. He suffers like an All-America halfback playing on a scrub team. The other players keep getting in his way.

One more production may be drawn into the discussion, but only by extending the field of inquiry a little. _The Chocolate Soldier,_ which is based on Shaw's _Arms and the Man,_ can hardly be said to satisfy the soldiering instinct in us by a romantic tale of battle. Shaw's method is more direct. He contents himself with telling us that the only people who do get the thrill of adventure out of war are those who know it only in imagination. His perfect soldier is prosaic. It is the girl who has never seen a battle who romances about it. Still, Shaw does make it possible for us to practice one vice vicariously. After seeing a piece by him the spectator does not feel the need of being witty. He can just sit back and let George do it.

XXXIX

THE TALL VILLA

"The Tall Villa," by Lucas Malet, is a novel, but it may well serve as a textbook for those who want to know how to entertain a ghost. There need be no question that such advice is needed. For all the interest of the present generation in psychical research, we treat apparitions with scant courtesy. Suppose a visitor goes into a haunted room and at midnight is awakened by a specter who carries a bloody dagger in one hand and his ghostly head in the other; does the guest ask the ghost to put his things down and stay a while? He does not. Instead, he rushes screaming from the room or pulls the bedclothes over his head and dies of fright.

Ghosts walk because they crave society and they get precious little of it. Frances Copley, the heroine of "The Tall Villa," managed things much better. When the apparition of Lord Oxley first appeared to her she did not faint or scream. On the contrary, the author tells us, "The breeding, in which Frances Copley trusted, did not desert her now. After the briefest interval she went on playing--she very much knew not what, discords more than probably, as she afterward reflected!"

After all, Lord Oxley may have been a ghost, but he was still a gentleman. Indeed, when she saw him later she perceived that the shadow "had grown, in some degree, substantial, taking on for the most part, definite outline, definite form and shape. That, namely, of a young man of notably distinguished bearing, dressed (in as far as, through the sullen evening light, Frances could make out) in clothes of the highest fashion, though according to a long discarded coloring and cut."

From friends of the family Frances learned that young Oxley, who had been dead about a century and a half, had shot himself on account of unrequited love. After having looked him up and found that he was an eligible ghost in every particular, Frances decided to take him up. She continued to play for him without the discords. In fact, she began to look forward to his afternoon calls with a great deal of pleasure. Her husband did not understand her. She did not like his friends, and his friends' friends were impossible. Oxley's calls, on the other hand, were a social triumph. He was punctiliously exclusive. Nobody else could even see him. When he came into the room others often noticed that the room grew suddenly and surprisingly chilly, but the author fails to point out whether that was due to Lord Oxley's station in life or after life.

Bit by bit the acquaintance between Frances and the ghost ripened. At first she never looked at him directly, but regarded his shadow in the mirror. And they communicated only through music. Later Frances made so bold as to speak to his lordship.

"When you first came," she said, her voice veiled, husky, even a little broken, "I was afraid. I thought only of myself. I was terrified both at you and what you might demand from me. I hastened to leave this house, to go away and try to forget. But I wasn't permitted to forget. While I was away much concerning you was told me which changed my feeling toward you and showed me my duty. I have come back of my own free will. I am still afraid, but I no longer mind being afraid. My desire now is not to avoid, but rather to meet you. For, as I have learned, we are kinsfolk, you and I; and since this house is mine, you are in a sense my guest. Of that I have come to be glad. I claim you as part of my inheritance--the most valued, the most welcome portion, if you so will it. If I can help, serve, comfort you, I am ready to do so to the utmost of my poor capacity."

Alexis, Lord Oxley, made no reply, but it was evident that he accepted her offer of service and comfort graciously, for he continued to call regularly. His manners were perfect, although it is true that he never sent up his card, and yet in one matter Frances felt compelled to chide him and even tearfully implore a reformation. It made her nervous when she noticed one day that he carried in his right hand the ghost of the pistol with which he had shot himself. Agreeably he abandoned his century old habit, but later he was able to give more convincing proof of his regard for Frances. She was alone in the Tall Villa when her husband's vulgar friend, Morris Montagu, called. He came to tell her that her husband was behaving disgracefully in South America, and on the strength of that fact he made aggressive love. "Montagu's voice grew rasping and hoarse. But before, paralyzed by disgust and amazement, Frances had time to apprehend his meaning or combat his purpose, his coarse, pawlike--though much manicured--hand grasped her wrist."

Suddenly the room grew chilly and Morris Montagu, in mortal terror, relaxed his grip and began to run for the door as he cried, "Keep off, you accursed devil, I tell you. Don't touch me. Ah! Ah! Damn you, keep off----"

It is evident to the reader that the ghost of Alexis, Lord Oxley, is giving the vulgar fellow what used to be known as "the bum's rush" in the days before the Volstead act. At any rate, the voice of Montagu grew feeble and distant and died away in the hall. Then the front door slammed. Frances was saved!

After that, of course, it was evident to Alexis, Lord Oxley, and Frances that they loved each other. He began to talk to her in a husky and highfalutin style. He even stood close to her chair and patted her head. "Presently," writes Lucas Malet, "his hand dwelt shyly, lingering upon her bent head, her cheek, the nape of her slender neck. And Frances felt his hand as a chill yet tender draw, encircling, playing upon her. This affected her profoundly, as attacking her in some sort through the medium of her senses, from the human side, and thereby augmenting rather than allaying the fever of her grief."

Naturally, things could not go on in that way forever, and so Alexis, Lord Oxley, arranged that Frances should cross the bridge with him into the next life. It was not difficult to arrange this. She had only to die. And so she did. All of which goes to prove that though it is well to be polite and well spoken to ghosts, they will bear watching as much as other men.

XL

PROFESSOR GEORGE PIERCE BAKER

A great many persons speak and write about Professor George Pierce Baker, of Harvard, as if he were a sort of agitator who made a practice of luring young men away from productive labor to write bad plays. There is no denying the fact that a certain number of dramatists have come out of Harvard's English 47, but the course also has a splendid record of cures. Few things in the world are so easy as to decide to write a play. It carries a sense of satisfaction entirely disproportionate to the amount of effort entailed. Even the failure to put a single line on paper brings no remorse, for it is easy to convince yourself that the thing would have had no chance in the commercial theater.

All this would be well enough except that the author of a phantom play is apt to remain a martyr throughout his life. He makes a very bad husband and father and a worse bridge partner. Freudians know the complaint as the Euripidean complex. The sufferer is ailing because his play lies suppressed in his subconscious mind.

Professor Baker digs these plays out. People who come to English 47 may talk about their plays as much as they choose, but they must write them, too. Often a cure follows within forty-eight hours after the completion of a play. Sometimes it is enough for the author to read the thing through for himself, but if that does not avail there is an excellent chance for him after his play has been read aloud by Professor Baker and criticized by the class. If a pupil still wishes to write plays after this there is no question that he belongs in the business. He may, of course, never earn a penny at it but, starve or flourish, he is a playwright.

Professor Baker deserves the thanks of the community, then, not only for Edward Sheldon, and Cleves Kincaid, and Miss Lincoln and Eugene O'Neill and some of the other playwrights who came from English 47, but also for the number of excellent young men who have gone straight from his classroom to Wall Street, and the ministry, and automobile accessories with all the nascent enthusiasm of men just liberated from a great delusion.

In another respect Professor Baker has often been subjected to much undeserved criticism. Somebody has figured out that there are 2.983 more rapes in the average English 47 play than in the usual non-collegiate specimen of commercial drama. We feel comparatively certain that there is nothing in the personality of Professor Baker to account for this or in the traditions of Harvard, either. We must admit that nowhere in the world is a woman quite so unsafe as in an English 47 play, but the faculty gives no official encouragement to this undergraduate enthusiasm for sex problems. One must look beyond the Dean and the faculty for an explanation. It has something to do with Spring, and the birds, and the saplings and "What Every Young Man Ought to Know" and all that sort of thing.