Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

THE EARLY WORM

THE EARLY WORM

BY ROBERT BENCHLEY

_Author of_

OF ALL THINGS! LOVE CONQUERS ALL PLUCK AND LUCK

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GLUYAS WILLIAMS

NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

_August, 1927_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author wishes to thank the following periodicals for permission to reprint the articles in this book: _Life_, _The Detroit Athletic Club News_, _The New Yorker_, _Vanity Fair_, _College Humor_ and _The Bell Syndicate_. Thanks are also due to John Held, Jr., for permission to use his elegant engravings and to Carol Goodner for suggesting the title to the book.

CONTENTS

PAGE

A TALK TO YOUNG MEN 3

THE SEED OF REVOLT 9

PAUL REVERE’S RIDE 13

FASCINATING CRIMES 21

UPSETS 27

AN INTERVIEW WITH MUSSOLINI 29

THE “LIFE” POLAR EXPEDITION 32

THE SAVING-“OLD-IRONSIDES” HABIT 39

A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED CHRISTMAS 41

LIFE IN THE RITZ TENEMENT 56

OLD PROGRAM FROM THE BENCHLEY COLLECTION 60

WHAT COLLEGE DID TO ME 69

AN INTERVIEW WITH THEODORE DREISER 78

FASCINATING CRIMES 80

LOUIS DOT DOPE 84

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CHRISTMAS CARD 88

THE HENNA DECADE 96

A PLAN TO STABILIZE THE FRANC 100

SEX IS OUT 106

UNCLE EDITH’S GHOST STORY 109

FASCINATING CRIMES 115

THE END OF THE SEASON 120

EXAM TIME 124

THROWING BACK THE EUROPEAN OFFENSIVE 127

AN INTERVIEW WITH VICE-PRESIDENT DAWES 134

THE “LIFE” POLAR EXPEDITION 137

A GHOST STORY 142

DISCOVERING WEBER AND FIELDS 148

WATER FOOTBALL 150

MORE SONGS FOR MELLER 159

FASCINATING CRIMES 163

THE “LIFE” POLAR EXPEDITION 168

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE COUNTESS KAROLYI 172

THE BOYS’ CAMP BUSINESS 174

AT LAST A SUBSTITUTE FOR SNOW 183

THE NEW WING 190

UNCLE CALVIN’S NO-WASTE GAMES 195

THE WORLD OF GRANDPA BENCHLEY 200

THE “LIFE” POLAR EXPEDITION 209

HOW TO START A SUPPER CLUB 216

THE NEW VILLAINY 223

TIME-OFF FROM THE SHOW 230

THE “LIFE” POLAR EXPEDITION 237

SPYING ON THE VEHICULAR TUNNEL 241

COMPILING AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY 246

STORM WARNINGS FOR NEW YORK 251

THE “LIFE” POLAR EXPEDITION 259

THE EARLY WORM

A TALK TO YOUNG MEN

_Graduation Address on “The Decline of Sex”_

To you young men who only recently were graduated from our various institutions of learning (laughter), I would bring a message, a message of warning and yet, at the same time, a message of good cheer. Having been out in the world a whole month, it is high time that you learned something about the Facts of Life, something about how wonderfully Nature takes care of the thousand and one things which go to make up what some people jokingly call our “sex” life. I hardly know how to begin. Perhaps “Dear Harry” would be as good a way as any.

You all have doubtless seen, during your walks in the country, how the butterflies and bees carry pollen from one flower to another? It is very dull and you should be very glad that you are not a bee or a butterfly, for where the fun comes in _that_ I can’t see. However, they think that they are having a good time, which is all that is necessary, I suppose. Some day a bee is going to get hold of a real book on the subject, and from then on there will be mighty little pollen-toting done or I don’t know my bees.

Well, anyway, if you have noticed carefully how the bees carry pollen from one flower to another (and there is no reason why you should have noticed carefully as there is nothing to see), you will have wondered what connection there is between this process and that of animal reproduction. I may as well tell you right now that there is no connection at all, and so your whole morning of bee-stalking has been wasted.

We now come to the animal world. Or rather, first we come to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, but you don’t get off there. The animal world is next, and off you get. And what a sight meets your eyes! My, my! It just seems as if the whole world were topsy-turvy.

The next time you are at your grocer’s buying gin, take a look at his eggs. They really are some hen’s eggs, but they belong to the grocer now, as he has bought them and is entitled to sell them. So they really _are_ his eggs, funny as it may sound to anyone who doesn’t know. If you will look at these eggs, you will see that each one is _almost_ round, but not _quite_. They are more of an “egg-shape.” This may strike you as odd at first, until you learn that this is Nature’s way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls. You see, Mother Nature takes no chances. She used to, but she learned her lesson. And that is a lesson that all of you must learn as well. It is called Old Mother Nature’s Lesson, and begins on page 145.

Now, these eggs have not always been like this. That stands to reason. They once had something to do with a hen or they wouldn’t be called hen’s eggs. If they are called duck’s eggs, that means that they had something to do with a duck. Who can tell me what it means if they are called “ostrich’s eggs”?... That’s right.

But the egg is not the only thing that had something to do with a hen. Who knows what else there was?... That’s right.

Now the rooster is an entirely different sort of bird from the hen. It is very proud and has a red crest on the top of his head. This red crest is put there by Nature so that the hen can see the rooster coming in a crowd and can hop into a taxi or make a previous engagement if she wants to. A favorite dodge of a lot of hens when they see the red crest of the rooster making in their direction across the barnyard is to work up a sick headache. One of the happiest and most contented roosters I ever saw was one who had had his red crest chewed off in a fight with a dog. He also wore sneakers.

But before we take up this phase of the question (for it is a question), let us go back to the fish kingdom. Fish are probably the worst example that you can find; in the first place, because they work under water, and in the second, because they don’t know anything. You won’t find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains. They are just stupid, that’s all, and nowhere is their stupidity more evident than in their sex life.

Take, for example, the carp. The carp is one of the least promising of all the fish. He has practically no forehead and brings nothing at all to a conversation. Now the mother carp is swimming around some fine spring day when suddenly she decides that it would be nice to have some children. So she makes out a deposit slip and deposits a couple million eggs on a rock (all this goes on _under_ water, mind you, of all places). This done, she adjusts her hat, powders her nose, and swims away, a woman with a past.

It is not until all this is over and done with that papa enters the picture, and then only in an official capacity. Papa’s job is very casual. He swims over the couple of million eggs and takes a chance that by sheer force of personality he can induce half a dozen of them to hatch out. The remainder either go to waste or are blacked up to represent caviar.

So you will see that the sex life of a fish is nothing much to brag about. It never would present a problem in a fish community as it does in ours. No committees ever have to be formed to regulate it, and about the only way in which a fish can go wrong is through drink or stealing. This makes a fish’s life highly unattractive, you will agree, for, after a time, one would get very tired of drinking and stealing.

We have now covered the various agencies of Nature for populating the earth with the lesser forms of life. We have purposely omitted any reference to the reproduction of those unicellular organisms which reproduce by dividing themselves up into two, four, eight, etc., parts without any outside assistance at all. This method is too silly even to discuss.

We now come to colors. You all know that if you mix yellow with blue you get green. You also get green if you mix cherries and milk. (Just kidding. Don’t pay any attention.) The derivation of one color from the mixture of two other colors is not generally considered a sexual phenomenon, but that is because the psychoanalysts haven’t got around to it yet. By next season it won’t be safe to admit that you like to paint, or you will be giving yourself away as an inhibited old uncle-lover and debauchee. The only thing that the sex-psychologists can’t read a sexual significance into is trap-shooting, and they are working on that now.

All of which brings us to the point of wondering if it _all_ isn’t a gigantic hoax. If the specialists fall down on trap-shooting, they are going to begin to doubt the whole structure which they have erected, and before long there is going to be a reaction which will take the form of an absolute negation of sex. An Austrian scientist has already come out with the announcement that there is no such thing as a hundred per cent male or a hundred per cent female. If this is true, it is really a big step forward. It is going to throw a lot of people out of work, but think of the money that will be saved!

And so, young men, my message to you is this: Think the thing over very carefully and examine the evidence with fair-minded detachment. And if you decide that, within the next ten years, sex is going out of style, make your plans accordingly. Why not be pioneers in the new movement?

THE SEED OF REVOLT

In the hearts of many New Yorkers there glowed a strange and savage sense of satisfaction when fire, a few weeks ago, destroyed the wooden staging which had encased the lower half of the new Aeolian Building under construction at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street. That fire may prove to be the torch igniting a citizens’ revolt of city-wide proportions.

For several years now, ever since they began tearing down most of the buildings in New York and erecting others in their places to be torn down next year, pedestrians have been practically excluded from the use of their sidewalks. On each corner, and in the middle of each block, it has been necessary to tunnel through great wooden passageways, dodging avalanches of bricks on one side and workmen darting out from clammy recesses with wheelbarrows of mortar on the other. These workmen have a system whereby they lie in wait in the ground floor of the new building, each with a wheelbarrow full of unpleasant material poised ready, until you and I are directly upon the plank which slopes across the sidewalk to the waiting truck. Then, at a signal from the boss, they charge out directly in your path, shouting the Fascist war cry and scraping the buttons off your waistcoat. At the same moment a landslide of gravel is let loose from the fifth floor crashing on top of the flimsy structure over your head and sending through a blinding shower of fine white powder which stirs up all that old catarrhal trouble which the doctor has assured you will cause your death one day.

If you evolve some maneuver calculated to evade this ordeal by going around the structure on the outside, you are confronted by a line of trucks backed up against the curb, making it necessary for you to go way out to the middle of the street, where you are immediately run over in the traffic.

For years now the supine citizens of New York have forgone the use of their sidewalks, having first been prohibited the use of their streets, until the fire in the new Aeolian Building chewed to pieces the wooden shanty and boardwalk and, it is to be hoped, did irreparable damage to dozens of wheelbarrows. It is said that the fire was caused by a workman leaving an acetylene torch burning in the basement. Whether it was really a workman or some nerve-racked patriot with the courage of his convictions does not matter now. The idea has been implanted in the minds of hundreds of citizens and it would not be surprising if, before autumn, construction companies had evolved some other way of erecting their buildings.

PAUL REVERE’S RIDE

_How a Modest Go-Getter Did His Bit for the Juno Acid Bath Corporation_

Following are the salesman’s report sheets sent into the home office in New York by Thaddeus Olin, agent for the Juno Acid Bath Corporation. Mr. Olin had the New England territory during the spring of 1775 and these report sheets are dated April 16, 17, 18, and 19, of that year.

_April 16, 1775.
Boston._

Called on the following engravers this a. m.: Boston Engraving Co., E. H. Hosstetter, Theodore Platney, Paul Revere, Benjamin B. Ashley and Roger Durgin.

Boston Engraving Co. are all taken care of for their acid.

E. H. Hosstetter took three tins of acid No. 4 on trial and renewed his old order of 7 Queen-Biters.

Theodore Platney has gone out of business since my last trip.

Paul Revere was not in. The man in his shop said that he was busy with some sort of local shin-dig. Said I might catch him in tomorrow morning.

The Benjamin Ashley people said they were satisfied with their present product and contemplated no change.

Roger Durgin died last March.

Things are pretty quiet in Boston right now.

_April 17._

Called on Boston Engraving people again to see if they might not want to try some Daisy No. 3. Mr. Lithgo was interested and said to come in tomorrow when Mr. Lithgo, Senior, would be there.

Paul Revere was not in. He had been in for a few minutes before the shop opened and had left word that he would be up at Sam Adams’ in case anyone wanted him. Went up to the Adams place, but the girl there said that Mr. Revere and Mr. Adams had gone over to Mr. Dawes’ place on Milk Street. Went to Dawes’ place, but the man there said Dawes and Adams and Revere were in conference. There seems to be some sort of parade or something they are getting up, something to do with the opening of the new foot-bridge to Cambridge, I believe.

Things are pretty quiet here in Boston, except for the trade from the British fleet which is out in the harbour.

Spent the evening looking around in the coffee houses. Everyone here is cribbage-crazy. All they seem to think of is cribbage, cribbage, cribbage.

_April 18._

To the Boston Engraving Company and saw Mr. Lithgo, Senior. He seemed interested in the Daisy No. 3 acid and said to drop in again later in the week.

Paul Revere was out. His assistant said that he knew that Mr. Revere was in need of a new batch of acid and had spoken to him about our Vulcan No. 2 and said he might try some. I would have to see Mr. Revere personally, he said, as Mr. Revere makes all purchases himself. He said that he thought I could catch him over at the Dawes’ place.

Tried the Dawes’ place but they said that he and Mr. Revere had gone over to the livery stable on State Street.

Went to the livery stable but Revere had gone. They said he had engaged a horse for tonight for some sort of entertainment he was taking part in. The hostler said he heard Mr. Revere say to Mr. Dawes that they might as well go up to the North Church and see if everything was all set; so I gather it is a church entertainment.

Followed them up to the North Church, but there was nobody there except the caretaker, who said that he thought I could catch Mr. Revere over at Charlestown late that night. He described him to me so that I would know him and said that he probably would be on horseback. As it seemed to me to be pretty important that we land the Revere order for Vulcan No. 2, I figured out that whatever inconvenience it might cause me to go over to Charlestown or whatever added expense to the firm, would be justified.

Spent the afternoon visiting several printing establishments, but none of them do any engraving.

Things are pretty quiet here in Boston.

Went over to Charlestown after supper and hung around “The Bell in Hand” tavern looking for Mr. Revere. Met a man there who used to live in Peapack, N. J., and we got to talking about what a funny name for a town that was. Another man said that in Massachusetts there was actually a place called Podunk, up near Worcester. We had some very good cheese and talked over names of towns for a while. Then the second man, the one who knew about Podunk, said he had to go as he had a date with a man. After he had left I happened to bring the conversation around to the fact that I was waiting for a Mr. Paul Revere, and the first man told me that I had been talking to him for half an hour and that he had just gone.

I rushed out to the corner, but the man who keeps the watering-trough there said that someone answering Mr. Revere’s description had just galloped off on a horse in the direction of Medford. Well, this just made me determined to land that order for Juno Acid Bath Corporation or die in the attempt. So I hired a horse at the Tavern stable and started off toward Medford.

Just before I hit Medford I saw a man standing out in his night-shirt in front of his house looking up the road. I asked him if he had seen anybody who looked like Mr. Revere. He seemed pretty sore and said that some crazy coot had just ridden by and knocked at his door and yelled something that he couldn’t understand and that if he caught him he’d break his back. From his description of the horse I gathered that Mr. Revere was the man; so I galloped on.

A lot of people in Medford Town were up and standing in front of their houses, cursing like the one I had just seen. It seems that Mr. Revere had gone along the roadside, knocking on doors and yelling something which nobody understood, and then galloping on again.

“Some god-dam drunk,” said one of the Medfordites, and they all went back to bed.

I wasn’t going to be cheated out of my order now, no matter what happened, and I don’t think that Mr. Revere could have been drunk, because while he was with us at “The Bell in Hand,” he had only four short ales. He had a lot of cheese, though.

Something seemed to have been the matter with him, however, because in every town that I rode through I found people just going back to bed after having been aroused up out of their sleep by a mysterious rider. I didn’t tell them that it was Mr. Revere, or that it was probably some stunt to do with the shin-dig that he and Mr. Dawes were putting on for the North Church. I figured out that it was a little publicity stunt.

Finally, just as I got into Lexington, I saw my man getting off his horse at a house right alongside the Green. I rushed up and caught him just as he was going in. I introduced myself and told him that I represented the Juno Acid Bath Corporation of New York and asked him if he could give me a few minutes, as I had been following him all the way from Charlestown and had been to his office three days in succession. He said that he was busy right at that minute, but that if I wanted to come along with him upstairs he would talk business on the way. He asked me if I wasn’t the man he had been talking to at “The Bell in Hand” and I said yes, and asked him how Podunk was. This got him in good humour and he said that we might as well sit right down then and that he would get someone else to do what he had to do. So he called a man-servant and told him to go right upstairs, wake up Mr. Hancock and Mr. Adams and tell them to get up, and no fooling. “Keep after them, Sambo,” he said, “and don’t let them roll over and go to sleep again. It’s very important.”

So we sat down in the living room and I got out our statement of sales for 1774 and showed him that, in face of increased competition, Juno had practically doubled its output. “There must be some reason for an acid outselling its competitors three to one,” I said, “and that reason, Mr. Revere, is that a Juno product is a guaranteed product.” He asked me about the extra sixpence a tin and I asked him if he would rather pay a sixpence less and get an inferior grade of acid and he said, “No.” So I finally landed an order of three dozen tins of Vulcan No. 2 and a dozen jars of Acme Silver Polish, as Mr. Revere is a silversmith, also, on the side.

Took a look around Lexington before I went back to Boston, but didn’t see any engraving plants. Lexington is pretty quiet right now.

Respectfully submitted,
THADDEUS OLIN.

Attached.
_Expense Voucher_
Juno Acid Bath Corp., New York

Thaddeus Olin, Agent.

Hotel in Boston 15s.
Stage fare 30s.
Meals (4 days) 28s.
Entertaining prospects £3 4s.
Horse rent. Charlestown to Lexington and return £2 6s.
------
Total Expense £9 3s.

To Profit on three dozen tins of Vulcan No. 2 and 18s.
One dozen jars Acme Silver Polish 4s.
------
£1 2s.

Net Loss £8 1s.

FASCINATING CRIMES

_I. The Odd Occurrence in the Life of Dr. Meethas_

Early in the evening of October 14, 1879, Dr. Attemas Meethas, a physician of good repute in Elkhart, Indiana, went into the pantry of his home at 11 Elm Street, ostensibly to see if there was any of that cold roast pork left. The good doctor was given to nibbling cold roast pork when occasion offered.

As he passed through the living-room on his way to the pantry, he spoke to his housekeeper, Mrs. Omphrey, and said that, if everything turned out all right, he would be at that cold roast pork in about half a minute (Elkhart time--an hour earlier than Eastern time). “Look out for the pits,” Mrs. Omphrey cautioned him, and went on with her stitching. Mrs. Omphrey, in her spare time, was a stitcher of uppers for the local shoe-factory.

This is the last that was seen of Dr. Attemas Meethas alive. It is doubtful if he ever even reached the pantry, for the cold roast pork was found untouched on a plate, and Dr. Meethas was found, three days later, hanging from the top of the flag-pole on the roof of the Masonic Lodge. The mystery was even more puzzling in that Dr. Meethas was not a Mason.

--_Courtesy of John Held, Jr., and Life._
]

Citizens of Elkhart, on being grilled, admitted having seen the doctor hanging from the flag-pole for two days, but thought that he was fooling and would come down soon enough when he got hungry. But when, after three days, he made no sign of descending, other than to drop off one shoe, a committee was formed to investigate. It was found that their fellow-citizen, far from playing a practical joke on them, had had one played on him, for he was quite dead, with manifold and singular abrasions. A particularly revolting feature of the case was that the little gold chain which the doctor wore over his right ear, to keep his pince-nez glasses in place, was still in position. This at once disposed of the possibility of suicide.

Mrs. Omphrey and her uppers were held for examination, as it was understood that she had at one time made an attempt on the doctor’s life, on the occasion of his pushing her down when they were skating together. But her story in the present affair was impregnable. After the doctor had gone through the living-room on his way to the pantry, she said that she continued stitching at her machine until nine o’clock in the evening. She thought it a little odd that Dr. Meethas did not return from the pantry, but figured it out that there was probably quite a lot of cold roast pork there and that he was still busy nibbling. At nine o’clock, however, she stopped work and started on her rounds of the house to lock up for the night. On reaching the pantry, she found that her employer was not there, and had not been there; at least that he had not touched the pork. She thought nothing of it, however, as it occurred to her that the doctor had probably remembered an engagement and had left suddenly by the pantry window in order not to worry her. So, after finishing the cold pork herself, she locked the bread-box and retired for the night. The police, on investigation, found the bread-box locked just as she had said, and so released Mrs. Omphrey.

When the news of Dr. Meethas’ accident reached La Porte, Amos W. Meethas, a brother of the victim and a respected citizen of the town, came directly to Elkhart and insisted on an investigation. He said that his brother had accumulated quite a fortune tinting postcards on the side, and was known to have this money hidden in a secret panel in the hammock which hung on the back porch. The police, guided by Mr. Amos Meethas, went to the hammock, slid the panel open and found nothing there but some old clippings telling of Dr. Meethas’ confirmation in 1848. (He was a confirmed old bachelor.) This definitely established robbery as the motive for the crime. The next thing to do was to discover someone who could climb flag-poles.

Neighbors of the doctor recalled that some weeks before a young man had gone from door to door asking if anybody wanted his flag-pole climbed. He said he was working his way through college climbing flag-poles and would be grateful for any work, however small. He was remembered to have been a short youth about six feet two or three, with hair blond on one side and dark on the other. This much the neighbors agreed upon.

--_Courtesy of John Held, Jr., and Life._
]

Working in South Bend at the time was a young man named Herman Trapp. He was apprehended by the authorities, who subsequently decided that he had no connection whatever with the tragedy.

So the strange murder of Dr. Meethas (if indeed it _was_ a murder) rests to this day unsolved and forgotten, which is just as well, as it was at best a pretty dull case.

UPSETS

Thus far, the football season of 1927 has been one of upsets. Nothing has turned out according to the dope. Therefore, in its remaining weeks, we predict the following startling deviations from form:

1. It will not rain the day of the Big Game.

2. We shall have no more than a dozen requests for “a couple of seats.”

3. Our own seats will be, not in the wooden stands behind the scoreboard, but out in full view of the field. (We have to laugh even when writing this in fun.)

4. There will not be an intoxicated man in a rhinoceros coat directly in front of us who jumps up at the sound of the whistle.

5. There will not be a small man with a 13½ collar behind us who has ideas on how the team should be run.

6. The game will not have started while we are milling around in the crowd at the gate.

7. Nobody will fall down the steps.

8. Holding tickets for two seats, we shall find that there is space left in which two people can sit without being married to each other.

9. We shall not be too hot above the waist and too cold below.

10. Harvard will win and we shall see ten dollars of Donald Ogden Stewart’s money.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MUSSOLINI

Mussolini seemed to be a good man to interview; so I got an interview with him.

“Mr. Mussolini,” I said, “as I understand your theory of government, while it is not without its Greek foundations, it dates even farther back, in its essence, to the Assyrian system.”

“What?” asked Mussolini.

“I said, as I understood your theory of government, while it is not without its Greek foundations, it dates even farther back to the ancient Assyrian system. Am I right?”

“Assyrian here seen Kelly? K-E-double L-Y. That was a good song, too,” said Il Duce.

“A good song is right,” I replied. “And now might I ask, how did you come by that beard?”

“That is not a beard,” replied the Great Man. “That is my forehead. I am smooth-shaven, as a matter of fact.”

“So you are, so you are,” I apologized. “I was forgetting.”

We both sat silent for a while, thinking of the old days in Syracuse High.

“Whatever became of her?” It was Il Kuce who broke the silence.

“She married and went to Hingham to live,” I replied, watching him closely.

He went white for the fraction of a second. Then he turned to me and said:

“Give me your A, will you, please?”

So I gave him my A and we played “_Yes Patineurs_” (“The Skaters”), and very pretty, too.

“I had almost forgotten how it went,” he said.

“You _have_ forgotten how it went,” I corrected him. “You play awful.”

Laughter followed this remark of mine. But I noticed that Mussolini was not laughing.

“But about your theory of government,” I said, hoping to bring the roses back into those cheeks. “A lot of people try to tell me that it is Phonician, but I always say ‘No!’”

“What is it they say it is?” asked Il Huce, all a-tremble with excitement.

“Phœnician,” I repeated, putting in the “e.”

“That’s a tough one,” he said. “You’ll have to give me a couple of minutes on that. Phœnician, eh?... Phœnician drive up in a hack and ask yer.” He put this forward tentatively.

“Not so good, Il Duce,” I commented.

His eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, well, then,” I compromised, “have it your own way.”

“I’ll have it with plain water, please, and a little lemon-rind.” It was the Imperator who spoke.

I signaled to the driver.

“Stop the interview,” I said simply.

THE LIFE POLAR EXPEDITION

1

In spite of the fact that already three polar expeditions are well under way in the air, _Life_ has decided that the interests of science demand, or at any rate, ask nicely for, an expedition to be conducted through some other medium. We have therefore decided on the bicycle.

We realize that our expedition will have to hurry like everything on bicycles to catch up with the Amundsen and Byrd groups, but we are willing to make the try, and all our men are imbued with an enthusiasm and zeal to carry the banner of _Life_ to the Pole which cannot but result in _something_.

Feverish preparations are now under way for the belated start of the _Life_ bicycle expedition to the North Pole. The tardy departure has been due to the failure of the contractors to finish the trousers-clips in time, but everything is now in readiness and it looks as if we might start at any minute now. The men are all eager to catch up with Amundsen and Byrd and we all feel that, by very fast pedaling and no fooling along the way, we can do it.

“We _will_ do it,” Lieutenant Commander Marc Connelly said to me last night, and that just about expresses the spirit behind the whole trip.

“Why did you choose the bicycle?” a lot of people have asked us. “Why _court_ danger?”

We realize the risk that we are taking but feel that the bicycle is the logical means for a party of our description to reach the Pole. Three years ago it would have been impossible. But since then we have learned so much more about the earth’s magnetism and bicycle navigation that, with the improved technique in balancing which we have developed, we feel that the danger is merely nominal. The farthest that we can possibly fall, in case of an upset, is in an arc with a radius of six feet. Now in this latitude (or in any latitude in which we are likely to be for some time) the rate of acceleration of a falling body is thirty-two feet per second; so you will see that it can’t hurt much.

Furthermore, we are using the new Radley model bicycle, which combines all the best features of the old Columbia bicycle with several modern inventions, such as the gyro-balancer and the flash tail-light. The gyro-balancer is a contraption attached to the saddle, by means of which the rider is enabled to doze or shell nuts as he rides and be assured that, unless he leans beyond an angle of forty-five degrees, his machine will right itself automatically. If dozing, however, he must not forget to pedal, as the gyro-balancer does not function unless the wheel is in motion. The flash tail-light is more for looks than anything else. It flashes red, green and vanilla.

As at present planned, our course to the Pole will be as follows:

Leave the _Life_ office at 598 Madison Ave., New York. Over to Fifth Ave. and up Fifth Ave. to 120th St., skirting Mount Morris Park, past 138th St. (Mott Haven), striking onto the Bronx River Parkway. Up through Morrisania, Woodlawn, Mount Vernon, Bronxville, Tuckahoe, Crestwood, Scarsdale, and Hartsdale to White Plains. From White Plains we continue north direct into Canada and through Canada to Victoria Island. A short carry across Melville Sound to Melville Island. Another carry to Borden Island, followed by a short carry to Axel Heiberg Land and a final carry to Grant Land on Ellesmere Island. Thence direct to the Pole.

2

_En route with_ LIFE’S _Polar Expedition, passing through 125th St., Manhattan, May 12._--After a successful hop-off from the curbing in front of the office of _Life_ at 598 Madison Ave., New York City, we pedalled our bicycles slowly up Madison Ave. to 59th St., where it was discovered that Lieut.-Commander Connelly’s rear wheel was still locked, a precaution which had been taken while the machines were standing in the rack outside the office. This had made speed out of the question for Lieut.-Commander Connelly, and had resulted in an odd, dragging sensation which he was at a loss to account for until a passerby called his attention to the locked wheel. The trouble was immediately remedied, and the expedition proceeded at a much smarter pace up Madison Ave.

This little incident, at the very outset of our trip, while unimportant in itself, just goes to show the spirit which is animating our men and the determination in their hearts to see this thing through at any cost. Lieut.-Commander Connelly might very well have become discouraged when he found that his rear wheel was not revolving at all and abandoned the thing entirely, but with characteristic bulldog grit he kept pedalling right ahead with only one wheel and would probably have stuck at it until the Pole was reached, do or die. It is such courage that makes us all optimistic.

Proceeding up Madison Ave. to 60th St., we turned the wheels at a sharp right angle and cut across into Fifth Ave. This, while perhaps foolhardy on the face of it, was not the madcap move that it may seem to you sitting safely at home reading of our progress. For we had received wireless messages from the station at 72nd St. and Madison Ave. that at that corner there was a nasty excavation, into which we might very well have hurtled with disastrous results had we kept on our way up Madison. “I never before realized what a valuable service the wireless telegraph can accomplish,” said Ensign Thermaline to me. Ensign Thermaline was on the bicycle just ahead of me, and as he turned to make this remark, his front wheel struck the curbing a glancing blow, which threatened for a moment to result in a spill, but with rare presence of mind Ensign Thermaline turned his head front again without waiting for my corroboration of his remark (which I would have given willingly had there been time or had the occasion been more propitious) and, utilizing the gyro-balancer with which each of our Radley machines is equipped, righted himself and his wheel in no time at all. It was an exciting moment, however, and we all felt better when Ensign Thermaline was once again headed straight north up Fifth Ave.

All of our instruments are in excellent working order except the flash tail-light on Lieut.-Commander Connelly’s wheel, which persists in flashing red, a signal that he is going the other way. It should be flashing green. This has caused a little confusion among vehicles following in our wake, for the printed directions in the daily papers stated that those vehicles encountering our expedition en route could tell the direction in which we were moving by watching our flash tail-lights, red if we were going south and green if we were going north. Something akin to a panic was caused among the passengers on a Fifth Ave. bus which was following close on behind Lieut.-Commander Connelly’s wheel when he suddenly flashed red, indicating that he was pedalling head-on for the bus. It was only when Lieut.-Commander Connelly yelled a cheery “Mistake, mistake!” that the bus-driver could be convinced that he ought not to turn aside and let the Connelly wheel pass.

We are now approaching 125th St. and the difference in the atmospheric conditions between lower and upper Fifth Ave. is distinctly noticeable. The traffic, while just as heavy, is a little easier to steer through. Ensign Thermaline seems, at the moment, to be lost, but I have no doubt that he will turn up again as soon as that big van gets out of the way just beyond Capt. Nordney. Capt. Nordney joined the expedition at the Heckscher Foundation at 104th St. and Fifth Ave.

It now looks as if we might be able to make 138th St. (Mott Haven) by night-fall, but I rather hope that we don’t as there probably wouldn’t be any place to spend the night. I certainly have never seen, or heard of, any hotels in that neighborhood.

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_135th St., New York City, May 12._--At 5:58 p. m. today the _Life_ Polar Expedition passed through this street, bearing N.E. by N. The members seemed a little tired and Lieut.-Commander Connelly’s wheel was dragging badly. Commander Benchley was sending out messages in all directions, asking if anyone knew where they could put up for the night.

* * * * *

_Railroad Y. M. C. A., 140th St., New York City, May 12._--Preparations are being made here to take care of the _Life_ Polar Expedition, which is due to make a landing at 6:20 p. m. Searchlights are in readiness and hot baths are being run to accommodate at least two of the party.

THE SAVING-“OLD-IRONSIDES” HABIT

The annual campaign to “Save ‘Old Ironsides’” is on again. Every few years this ancient frigate is saved from some mysterious destruction, school children are lathered up into a foam of patriotic excitement in which they bring pennies from their banks to aid in the crisis, speeches are made and banners unfurled, and everybody sinks back with a sigh of relief. “Old Ironsides” has been saved again!

And yet it hardly seems more than a couple of years before the cry goes up again: “The enemy!” and bang! a shot whistles across the bows of the famous ship. Then it’s “Save ‘Old Ironsides,’ boys!” and the whole thing begins all over again.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, who aided the first “Save ‘Old Ironsides’” campaign by writing, “Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!” must smile a rather wan smile as he realizes that all that he did was save “Old Ironsides” for the fiscal year 1887-8 and that ever since then a Saving Committee has been kept busy night and day planning future campaigns. They say that the 1930 campaign is going to be the biggest and best yet.

What are these malign forces that seem so persistent in their plots to wreck the good ship “Constitution”? Sometimes it is an unsentimental Government that threatens to junk the whole thing. At other times it is the forces of Nature, which seem to wait until our backs are turned after a money-raising campaign and then jump at the poor old sea-dog as she lies in safety at Charlestown and bid fair to tear her limb from limb.

Whatever it is that we are constantly fighting off, would it not be possible to raise enough money at one crack to keep “Old Ironsides” afloat _forever_? We have a national surplus of $390,000,000. Couldn’t we just settle this whole thing once and for all by devoting, let us say, half of that to seeing that no more harm ever comes to this precious relic?

Having saved her three times, and won three legs on the trophy, might we not be entitled to permanent possession of it?

Or has the fact that there is a movie entitled “Old Ironsides” anything to do with what James Russell Lowell called “The Present Crisis”?

A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED CHRISTMAS

Sooner or later at every Christmas party, just as things are beginning to get good, someone shuts his eyes, puts his head back and moans softly: “Ah, well, this isn’t like the old days. We don’t seem to have any good old-fashioned Christmases any more.” To which the answer from my corner of the room is: “All right! That suits me!”

Just what they have in mind when they say “old-fashioned Christmas” you never can pin them down to telling. “Lots of snow,” they mutter, “and lots of food.” Yet, if you work it right, you can still get plenty of snow and food today. Snow, at any rate.

Then there seems to be some idea of the old-fashioned Christmas being, of necessity, in the country. It doesn’t make any difference whether you were raised on a farm or whether your ideas of a rural Christmas were gleaned from pictures in old copies of “Harper’s Young People,” you must give folks to understand that such were the surroundings in which you spent your childhood holidays. And that, ah, me, those days will never come again!

Well, supposing you get your wish some time. Supposing, let us say, your wife’s folks who live up in East Russet, Vermont, write and ask you to come up and bring the children for a good old-fashioned Christmas, “while we are all still together,” they add cheerily with their flair for putting everybody in good humor.

Hurray, hurray! Off to the country for Christmas! Pack up all the warm clothes in the house, for you will need them up there where the air is clean and cold. Snow-shoes? Yes, put them in, or better yet, Daddy will carry them. What fun! Take along some sleigh-bells to jangle in case there aren’t enough on the pung. There must be jangling sleigh-bells. And whisky for frost-bite. Or is it snake-bite that whisky is for? Anyway, put it in! We’re off! Good-by, all! Good-by! JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-Jangle-Jangle-Jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle- jangle-jangle!

In order to get to East Russet you take the Vermont Central as far as Twitchell’s Falls and change there for Torpid River Junction, where a spur line takes you right into Gormley. At Gormley you are met by a buckboard which takes you back to Torpid River Junction again. By this time a train or something has come in which will wait for the local from Besus. While waiting for this you will have time to send your little boy to school, so that he can finish the third grade.

At East Russet Grandpa meets you with the sleigh. The bags are piled in and Mother sits in front with Lester in her lap while Daddy takes Junior and Ga-Ga in back with him and the luggage. Giddap, Esther Girl!

Esther Girl giddaps, and two suitcases fall out. Heigh-ho! Out we get and pick them up, brushing the snow off and filling our cuffs with it as we do so. After all, there is nothing like snow for getting up one’s cuffs. Good clean snow never hurt anyone. Which is lucky, because after you have gone a mile or so, you discover that Ga-Ga is missing. Never mind, she is a self-reliant little girl and will doubtless find her way to the farm by herself. Probably she will be there waiting for you when you arrive.

The farm is situated on a hill about eleven hundred miles from the center of town, just before you get into Canada. If there is a breeze in winter, they get it. But what do they care for breezes, so long as they have the Little Colonel oil-heater in the front room, to make everything cozy and warm within a radius of four inches! And the big open fireplace with the draught coming down it! Fun for everybody!

You are just driving up to the farmhouse in the sleigh, with the entire right leg frozen where the lap robe has slipped out. Grandma is waiting for you at the door and you bustle in, all glowing with good cheer. “Merry Christmas, Grandma!” Lester is cross and Junior is asleep and has to be dragged by the hand upstairs, bumping against each step all the way. It is so late that you decide that you all might as well go to bed, especially as you learn that breakfast is at four-thirty. It usually is at four, but Christmas being a holiday everyone sleeps late.

As you reach the top of the stairs you get into a current of cold air which has something of the quality of the temperature in a nice well-regulated crypt. This is the Bed Room Zone, and in it the thermometer never tops the zero mark from October fifteenth until the middle of May. Those rooms in which no one sleeps are used to store perishable vegetables in, and someone has to keep thumbing the tomatoes and pears every so often to prevent their getting so hard that they crack.

The way to get undressed for bed in one of Grandpa’s bedrooms is as follows: Starting from the foot of the stairs where it is warm, run up two at a time to keep the circulation going as long as possible. Opening the bedroom door with one hand, tear down the curtains from the windows with the other, pick up the rugs from the floor and snatch the spread from the top of the bureau. Pile all these on the bed, cover with the closet door which you have wrenched from its hinges, and leap quickly underneath. It sometimes helps to put on a pair of rubbers over your shoes.

And even when you are in bed, you have no guarantee of going to sleep. Grandpa’s mattresses seem to contain the overflow from the silo, cornhusks, baked-potato skins and long, stringy affairs which feel like pipe cleaners. On a cold night, snuggling down into these is about like snuggling down into a bed of damp pine cones out in the forest.

Then there are Things abroad in the house. Shortly after you get into bed, the stairs start snapping. Next something runs along the roof over your head. You say to yourself: “Don’t be silly. It’s only Santa Claus.” Then it runs along in the wall behind the head of the bed. Santa Claus wouldn’t do that. Down the long hall which leads into the ell of the house you can hear the wind sighing softly, with an occasional reassuring bang of a door.

The unmistakable sound of someone dying in great pain rises from just below the window-sill. It is a sort of low moan, with just a touch of strangulation in it. Perhaps Santa has fallen off the roof. Perhaps that story you once heard about Grandpa’s house having been a hang-out for Revolutionary smugglers is true, and one of the smugglers has come back for his umbrella. The only place at a time like this is down under the bedclothes. But the children become frightened and demand to be taken home, and Grandpa has to be called to explain that it is only Blue Bell out in the barn. Blue Bell has asthma, and on a cold night they have to be very patient with her.

Christmas morning dawns cloudy and cold, with the threat of plenty more snow, and, after all, what would Christmas be without snow? You lie in bed for one hour and a quarter trying to figure out how you can get up without losing the covers from around you. A glance at the water pitcher shows that it is time for them to put the red ball up for skating. You think of the nice warm bathroom at home, and decide that you can wait until you get back there before shaving.

This breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men which they look back on with tremendous satisfaction. “When I was a boy, I used to have to break the ice in the pitcher every morning before I could wash,” is said with as much pride as one might say, “When I was a boy I stood at the head of my class.” Just what virtue there is in having to break ice in a pitcher is not evident, unless it lies in their taking the bother to break the ice and wash at all. Any time that I have to break ice in a pitcher as a preliminary to washing, I go unwashed, that’s all. And Benjamin Franklin and U. S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes can laugh as much as they like. I’m nobody’s fool about a thing like that.

Getting the children dressed is a lot of fun when you have to keep pumping their limbs up and down to keep them from freezing out stiff. The children love it and are just as bright and merry as little pixies when it is time to go downstairs and say “Good morning” to Grandpa and Grandma. The entire family enters the dining-room purple and chattering and exceedingly cross.

After breakfast everyone begins getting dinner. The kitchen being the only warm place in the house may have something to do with it. But before long there are so many potato peelings and turkey feathers and squash seeds and floating bits of pie crust in the kitchen that the women-folk send you and the children off into the front part of the house to amuse yourselves and get out of the way.

Then what a jolly time you and the kiddies and Grandpa have together! You can either slide on the horse-hair sofa, or play “The Wayside Chapel” on the piano (the piano has scroll-work on either side of the music rack with yellow silk showing through), or look out the window and see ten miles of dark gray snow. Perhaps you may even go out to the barn and look at the horses and cows, but really, as you walk down between the stalls, when you have seen one horse or one cow you have seen them all. And besides, the cold in the barn has an added flavor of damp harness leather and musty carriage upholstery which eats into your very marrow.