Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Or, there might be an entirely different ball used during a rain storm--a large, red rubber ball such as some nuisance always has at the beach in the summer. This could be tossed back and forth, the players screaming with excitement the while, until one side or the other gets tired. With this type of ball, a very neat trick play could be utilized, the “U-56, or concealed ball play” in which the quarterback, immediately on receiving the pass, would shove the ball under the surface of the water, sit on it, and paddle himself around left end or through left tackle, if a hole could be opened up for him. The fun here would be for the defense to drown the runner.

Of course, the rain is not always sufficiently heavy to make the water deep enough for the two plays outlined above. Sometimes it merely drizzles and there is nothing but mud on the field. This would call for an entirely new list of plays. Under these conditions, the old Carlisle Indian trick could be revived, each of the backs scooping up an armful of mud and running with it, the defense being unable to tell in which armful the ball is hidden. Or, as an alternate play, the backfield could daub their faces with mud to look like a negro quartette and could start humming old plantation melodies. Then, while the defense stopped and listened, enchanted, the right end could pick up the leather and slide down the field with it.

The big spectacular play, however, for a muddy day is the “sappers’ wedge” or “East Side subway.” In this trick, the linemen throw up breastworks of mud in front of the line of scrimmage. When the ball is put into play, the backs burrow down into the soft ground and tunnel themselves under the line, digging out on the other side for a gain of perhaps five yards. This play can be used effectively when within five yards of the goal, as the back carrying the ball has made, _ipso facto_, a touchdown.

This outline of aquatic football has, however, not taken the spectators into account. Who ever does? But there they are, millions and millions of them, and something must be done for _them_ on a rainy day.

Since there is always someone in front of you who has an umbrella up, you might as well give up any idea you may have had of watching the game. Don’t torture yourself by trying to peek around the umbrella, catching sight of the beginning of a play and never knowing until you hear the cheering whether or not it succeeded. In this way lies madness. Just give up trying to spy on the field maneuvers and get your neighbors to enter into a few little games with you to pass the time away.

There is, for example, the game of “Neck Cisterns.” In this game, all the people sitting in a row open out the collars of their coats in the back, sitting hunched forward so as to make the opening as big as possible. The idea is to see who can catch the most rain water down the back of the neck. Drippings from an umbrella are not allowed. The water must come directly down and into the collar. The winner is the one whose collar runs over first.

This may seem like a very simple game to play, and one dependent entirely on the capacity of the coat of the contestant. This is not so. A great deal of skill can be brought into playing it by adjusting the angle of the body to meet the angle of the rain at a point where the maximum amount of water will drive into the collar. An old hand at “Neck Cisterns” can fill his coat up to overflowing before a beginner has got even his shoulder blades wet.

Another similar game is that of “Brimming.” The players in this turn the brims of their hats up so as to catch the rain water. At a given signal, the brims are suddenly turned down and the heads thrust forward, the idea being to project the deluge of water as far out as possible. The one hitting the person farthest in front wins and is the champion “brimmer” of the section. During the final period of the football game, the champion “brimmers” from each section meet and play off the finals.

Of course, one of the chief features of watching a contest in the rain is the wet seat. You hop up in your excitement at seeing the boys pull off a forward pass (which is grounded) and, by the time you have got around to sitting down again, the place which you have been keeping dry up until the forward pass is now a tiny lily pond with swan boats in it. Into this you sink back exhausted from your cheering, and in it you sit for the rest of the game while, starting from the pond as a base, a series of chills race up your spine to a spot directly behind your ears, where they break ranks.

One of the most interesting by-products of watching a football game in the rain occurred in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1919. It had rained all during the first three periods of the game and everyone was sitting in individual pools, giving the matter no more thought. Several hundred of them had been fighting a brave fight against the cold and damp by means of that greatest little cold and damp fighter of them all, the pocket flask, and these brothers didn’t even _know_ that they were sitting in water. They knew that they were sitting pretty and it didn’t make any difference to them where. Suddenly, at the beginning of the fourth period, the weather changed and grew much colder. There was a great deal of time out and dull playing, and no one felt called upon to hop up for quite some time. As a matter of fact, the game ended with the ball in mid-field and a lot of substitutes running in to get their letter. When the whistle blew, the fans started to get up to go home, but found that they were frozen to the stands. The entire Lawrence fire department came with axes and worked until eleven that night chopping the people out. A couple of old grads, who had very poor seats down in the corner behind the goal posts, were overlooked and had to stay there until spring.

In order to avoid a recurrence of this unfortunate accident, and in general to keep the seats dry, it has been suggested that the rules committee make it illegal for any spectator to jump to his feet during a game. This would apply even when two rival rooters started a fist fight in the stand. Coincident with the passage of this rule, similar prohibitions might be put on a man’s falling when dropped out of a window, and on the earth’s rotating on its axis.

MORE SONGS FOR MELLER

As Señorita Raquel Meller sings entirely in Spanish, it is again explained, the management prints little synopses of the songs on the program, telling what each is all about and why she is behaving the way she is. They make delightful reading during those periods when Señorita Meller is changing mantillas, and, in case she should run out of songs before she runs out of mantillas, we offer a few new synopses for her repertoire.

(1) ¿VOY BIEN?

(AM I GOING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?)

When the acorns begin dropping in Spain there is an old legend that for every acorn which drops there is a baby born in Valencia. This is so silly that no one pays any attention to it now, not even the gamekeeper’s daughter, who would pay attention to anything. She goes from house to house, ringing doorbells and then running away. She hopes that some day she will ring the right doorbell and will trip and fall, so that Prince Charming will catch her. So far, no one has even come to the door. Poor Pepita! if that is her name.

(2) CAMISETAS DE FLANELA

(FLANNEL VESTS)

Princess Rosamonda goes nightly to the Puerta del Sol to see if the early morning edition of the papers is out yet. If it isn’t she hangs around humming to herself. If it is, she hangs around humming just the same. One night she encounters a young matador who is returning from dancing school. The finches are singing and there is Love in the air. Princess Rosamonda ends up in the Police Station.

(3) LA GUIA

(THE TIME-TABLE)

It is the day of the bull fight in Madrid. Everyone is cock-eyed. The bull has slipped out by the back entrance to the arena and has gone home, disgusted. Nobody notices that the bull has gone except Nina, a peasant girl who has come to town that day to sell her father. She looks with horror at the place in the Royal Box where the bull ought to be sitting and sees there instead her algebra teacher whom she had told that she was staying at home on account of a sick headache. You can imagine her feelings!

(4) NO PUEDO COMER ESO

(I CAN NOT EAT THAT!)

A merry song of the Alhambra--of the Alhambra in the moonlight--of a girl who danced over the wall and sprained her ankle. Lititia is the ward of grouchy old Pampino, President of the First National Banco. She has never been allowed further away than the edge of the piazza because she teases people so. Her lover has come to see her and finds that she is fast asleep. He considers that for once he has the breaks, and tiptoes away without waking her up. Along about eleven o’clock she awakes, and is sore as all get-out.

(5) LA LAVANDERA

(THE LAUNDRYMAN)

A coquette, pretending to be very angry, bites off the hand of her lover up to the wrist. Ah, naughty Cirinda! Such antics! However does she think she can do her lessons if she gives up all her time to love-making? But Cirinda does not care. Heedless, heedless Cirinda!

(6) ABRA VD. ESA VENTANA

(OPEN THAT WINDOW)

The lament of a mother whose oldest son is too young to vote. She walks the streets singing: “My son can not vote! My son is not old enough!” There seems to be nothing that can be done about it.

FASCINATING CRIMES

_IV. The Lynn Horse-Car Murders_

Early in the morning of August 7th, 1896, a laborer named George Raccid, while passing the old street-car barns at Fleeming and Main Streets, Lynn, Massachusetts, noticed a crowd of conductors and drivers (horse-cars were all the rage in 1896) standing about a car in the doorway to the barn. Mr. Raccid was too hurried to stop and see what the excitement was, and so it was not until the following Wednesday, when the bi-weekly paper came out, that he learned that a murder had been committed in the car-barn. And at this point, Mr. Raccid drops out of our story.

The murder in question was a particularly odd one. In the first place, it was the victim who did the killing. And in the second, the killing occurred in a horse-car, an odd conveyance at best. And finally, the murderer had sought to conceal his handiwork by cramming his victim into the little stove in the middle of the car, a feat practically impossible without the aid of scissors and a good eye for snipping.

The horse-car in which the murder occurred was one of the older types, even for a horse-car. It was known in the trade as one of the “chummy roadster” models and was operated by one man only. This man drove the horses, stoked the fire, and collected the fares. He also held the flooring of the car together with one foot braced against a “master” plank. On his day off he read quite a lot.

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

The driver of the murder-car was named Swelf Yoffsen, a Swedish murder-car driver. He had come to this country four years before, but, not liking it here, had returned to Sweden. It is not known how he happened to be back in Lynn at this late date.

If we have neglected to state the name of the victim thus far, it is because nobody seemed able to identify him. Some said that he was Charlie Ross, who had disappeared shortly before. Others (the witty ones) said it was Lon Chaney. A vote taken among all those present designated him as the one least likely to succeed.

An interesting feature of this crime was that it was the sixth of a series of similar crimes, all of which had occurred in Swelf Yoffsen’s horse-car. In the other five cases, the victims had been found inadequately packed in the stove at the end of the run, but as Yoffsen, on being questioned, had denied all knowledge of how they got there, the matter had been dropped. After the discovery of the sixth murder, however, Yoffsen was held on a technical charge of homicide.

The trial was one of the social events of the Lynn Mi-Careme season. Yoffsen, on the stand, admitted that the victim was a passenger in his car; in fact, that he was the only passenger. He had got on at the end of the line and had tried to induce Yoffsen to keep on going in the same direction, even though the tracks stopped there. He wanted to see a man in Maine, he had said. But Yoffsen, according to his own story, had refused and had turned his horses around and started for Lynn again. The next he saw of him, people were trying to get him out of the stove. It was Yoffsen’s theory that the man, in an attempt to get warm, had tried to crowd his way into the stove and had smothered. On being reminded that the affair took place during a very hot week in August, Yoffsen said that no matter how hot it got during the day in Lynn, the nights were always cool.

Attorney Hammis, for the State, traced the movements of Yoffsen on the morning of the murder and said that they checked up with his movements on the occasions of the five other murders. He showed that Yoffsen, on each occasion, had stopped the horse-car at a particularly lonely spot and asked the occupants if they minded making a little detour, as there was a bad stretch of track ahead. He had then driven his horses across a cornfield and up a nearby hill on the top of which, in the midst of a clump of bayberry bushes, stood a deserted house. He pointed out that on four out of the six occasions Yoffsen had driven his horses right into the house and asked the passengers (when there were any, other than his victim) if they would step into the front room for a few minutes, giving them some magazines to read while they waited. According to the testimony of seven of these passengers, after about fifteen minutes Yoffsen had appeared and yelled “All aboard!” in a cheery voice and everyone had piled back into the horse-car and away they had gone, over the cornfield and down the hill to Lynn. It was noted that on each occasion, one of the passengers was missing, and that, oddly enough, this very passenger was always the one to be found in the stove on the way back.

It was the State’s contention that Yoffsen killed his victims for their insurance, _which is double when the deceased has met his death in a common carrier_.

On April 14th, the ninth day of the trial, the jury went out and shortly after asked for a drink of water. After eighteen hours of deliberation they returned with a verdict of guilty, but added that, as it was not sure whether Yoffsen had actually killed his victims _in_ the car or had killed them outside and _then_ stuffed them in the stove, he was not entitled to the double insurance.

When they went to inform Yoffsen of the verdict, he was nowhere to be found.

THE _LIFE_ POLAR EXPEDITION

_En route with “Life’s” Bicycle Polar Expedition.--May 24._

We chose this route northward, through Mt. Vernon, Tuckahoe and Scarsdale, because we figured out that it might be pleasant to stop off at my house in Scarsdale for maybe a bite to eat, or, in case there was not time for that, at any rate to let the boys see our bicycles. But I guess now that we would have done better to take the Hudson River road.

We reached Scarsdale late yesterday afternoon, intending to put in at my side-yard, get a drink of cool water and perhaps a pocketful of Rosa’s cookies, show my two boys how the gyro-balancer works, and then push on to White Plains for the night. The cool-water-and-cookies part of the plan worked out to the dot, but in demonstrating the gyro-balancer to the boys we ran into a snag which has held us up for an entire day.

It was really due to the kind-heartedness of Lieut.-Commander Connelly that the whole thing happened. He insisted on removing his gyro-balancer from the frame of his “bike” in order to show Nathaniel, my older boy, just how it worked, and, as he did so, he laid the loose nuts on a piece of paper on the ground. Robert, my younger boy (who is only six and so mustn’t be blamed too much), claims that he didn’t go near the paper or the nuts. And he probably doesn’t realize that he did. But one of the nuts was found over a nail on a boat that he was working on a few feet away, and the other had disappeared completely.

A search was immediately instituted which covered every square inch of the lawn and extended into the street--those things roll so. But when darkness came we were no nearer to finding it than we had been at the beginning, and it was necessary to telephone back into New York for an extra nut, which they said they would send out the first thing in the morning. It is now 4:17 in the afternoon and the man hasn’t come yet. We are very discouraged.

It was while we were searching for the nut that a neighbor came up and asked us if we had heard anything about the Byrd expedition’s having flown over the Pole. I got him aside out of earshot of the other men and asked him if he was sure. He said no, but that he had seen a cartoon in some paper which seemed to have reference to a successful flight by Byrd. I, however, laughed his fears away and went back to the search. Even if Byrd _does_ beat us to it, his victory will have been by flying-machine, while ours will be by bicycle--two entirely different things.

The trip from Mt. Vernon to Scarsdale was one of great beauty and was accomplished without a mishap. The route led along the Bronx River Parkway, through woods and across streams, which made up in a way for the rough time we had in the traffic in New York City.

While passing through Tuckahoe, Lieut.-Commander Connelly saw a scarlet tanager perched on a bush overhanging the stream. Thinking that it might be interesting to have it for our collection of flora and fauna which we are making for the Museum, we dismounted and crept up very quietly beside it, thinking to bag it before it could collect its wits. But it heard us coming and flew away.

There is a particularly odd family of ferns which grows along the bank of the Bronx River, and, ferns not being as agile as birds, we were able to pick great quantities of it. I wish that some of my readers could tell me what the name of it is. It is green, like other ferns, but it seems to have a sort of flower which looks like a carnation. The blossom was still in bud and so we were unable to tell exactly what it does look like, but I should say that a carnation would just about fit it. Any naturalist who happens to have run across this fern, and who knows what it is, would relieve our minds considerably if he, or she, would write to the _Life_ Polar Expedition, General Delivery, White Plains, N. Y., and tell us. Just a regular fern, with a carnation blossom.

We are now going out into the side-yard again with a flashlight to take another look for the missing nut, as evidently the man from town isn’t going to bring out that extra one today, and we _must_ get started early tomorrow morning.

Every cloud, they say, has a silver lining, and, as a result of our being held up here in Scarsdale like this, we have been able to have some of Rosa’s excellent baked-beans. I find it almost impossible to get _real_ New England baked-beans in this region, unless you tell someone just how they should be done. In the first place, it must be a California pea-bean that is used, and these should be put to soak the night before and then baked in a slow fire all the next day. If we had got away when we expected, the beans would not have been ready. So perhaps we were a little harsh with Bobbie.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE COUNTESS KAROLYI

An interview with Countess Karolyi was very difficult to get, as she is not allowed to enter this country and I am not allowed to leave it. So we met at the drug store on the corner.

The Countess being Hungarian, it seemed that the least I could do would be to conduct the interview in her native tongue. It certainly wasn’t the _best_ I could do.

“_Hogy szercted americat?_” I began, as a feeler. It wasn’t much, as feelers go, but I am not very strong.

“_Közönöm nomigon nagyon_,” she replied, blushing prettily. I had not looked for this frankness. I glanced out over the blue Mediterranean, obviously waiting for her to break the silence. I had not long to wait.

“_Asz önök epülitegi igon maghsak_,” she said, so low that I could hardly hear her. It was like a bombshell.

I wheeled and confronted her.

“_Gindolja hogy a Ni holgye ink szójeck talán?_” The situation demanded it. I have no apologies to offer.

Fortunately for the interview, the bell in the monastery tolled eleven at just this moment. There was one extra stroke--for the war tax.

“_Hánz ora?_” I asked, more for something to say than anything else.

Countess Karolyi glanced over her shoulder apprehensively. I had evidently confused her.

“_Tisz peresel mult öt_,” was all that she could reply. But it was enough. I had fainted.

“Do you mind if we speak English from now on?” she said when I had opened my eyes. “You speak Hungarian so fast that it is difficult to follow you.”

I smiled. “Look!” I said, pointing to the courtyard below. They were changing the guard, a ceremony which consisted of putting a false beard and blue glasses on the watchman. It certainly changed him, except that his nose gave him away.

“_Maqyen szcretez Te enzom?_” I asked. It was a silly thing to say, but it seemed pat at the moment. Now I realize that it was mike.

Her reply was characteristic. “_Nom magyen_,” she said and hid her face.

We reached home at eight o’clock, tired but happy, and all agreed that it had been the most interesting hike the Club had taken thus far.

THE BOYS’ CAMP BUSINESS

There seems to be an idea prevalent among parents that a good way to solve the summer problem for the boy is to send him to a boys’ camp. At any rate, the idea seems to be prevalent in the advertising pages of the magazines.

If all the summer camps for boys and girls turn out the sterling citizens-in-embryo that they claim to do, the future of this country is as safe as if it were in the hands of a governing board consisting of the Twelve Apostles. From the folders and advertisements, we learn that “Camp Womagansett--in the foothills of the White Mountains” sends yearly into the world a bevy of “strong, manly boys, ready for the duties of citizenship and equipped to face life with a clear eye and a keen mind.” It doesn’t say anything about their digestions, but I suppose they are in tiptop shape, too.

The outlook for the next generation of mothers is no less dazzling. “Camp Wawilla for Girls,” we learn, pays particular attention to the spiritual development of Tomorrow’s Women and compared to the civic activities of the majority of alumnæ of Wawilla, those of Florence Nightingale or Frances Willard would have to be listed under the head of “Junior Girls’ Work.”

Now this is all very splendid, and it is comforting to think that when every boy and girl goes to Womagansett or Wawilla there will be no more Younger Generation problem and probably no crime waves worth mentioning. But there are several other features that go hand in hand with sending the boy to camp which I would like to take up from the parents’ point of view, if I may. I will limit myself to twenty minutes.

In the first place, when your boy comes home from camp he is what is known in the circular as “manly and independent.” This means that when you go swimming with him he pushes you off the raft and jumps on your shoulders, holding you under water until you are as good as drowned--better, in fact. Before he went to camp, you used to take a kindly interest in his swimming and tell him to “take your time, take it easy,” with a feeling of superiority which, while it may have had no foundation in your own natatorial prowess, nevertheless was one of the few points of pride left to you in your obese middle-age. After watching one of those brown heroes in one-piece suits and rubber helmets dive off a tower and swim under water to the raft and back, there was a sort of balm in being able to turn to your son and show him how to do the crawl stroke, even though you yourself weren’t one of the seven foremost crawl experts in the country. You could do it better than your son could, and that was something.

It was also very comforting to be able to stand on the springboard and say: “Now watch Daddy. See? Hands like this, bend your knees. See?” The fact that such exhibitions usually culminated in your landing heavily on the area bounded by the knees and the chest was embarrassing, perhaps, but at that you weren’t quite so bad as the boy when he tried the same thing.

But after a summer at camp, the “manly, independent” boy comes back and makes you look like Horace Greeley in his later years. “Do this one, Dad!” he says, turning a double flip off the springboard and cutting into the water like a knife blade. If you try it, you sprain your back. If you don’t try it, your self-respect and prestige are shattered. The best thing to do is not to hear him. You can do this by disappearing under the surface every time it looks as if he were going to pull a new one. After a while, however, this ruse gets you pretty soggy and waterlogged and you might better just go in and get dressed as rapidly as possible.

The worst phase of this new-found “independence” is the romping instinct that seems to be developed to a high state of obnoxiousness at all boys’ camps. I went to camp when I was a boy, but I don’t remember being as unpleasant about my fun as boys today seem to be. I have done many mean things in my time. I have tortured flies and kicked crutches out from under cripples’ arms. But I have never, so help me, Confucius, pushed anybody off a raft or come up behind anyone in the water and jumped up on his shoulders. And I don’t think that Lincoln ever did, either.

There is evidently a course in raft pushing and back jumping in boys’ camps today. Those photographs that you see in the camp advertisements, if you examine them closely, will disclose, in nine cases out of ten, a lot of boys pushing each other off rafts. You can’t see the ones who are jumping on others’ shoulders, as they are under water. But I want to serve notice right now that the next boy who pushes me off a raft when I am not looking, or tries to play leapfrog over me in ten feet of water, is going to be made practically useless as Tomorrow’s Citizen, and I am going to do it myself, too. If it happens to be my own son, it will just make the affair the sadder.

Another thing that these manly boys learn at camp is a savage habit of getting up at sunrise. The normal, healthy boy should be a very late sleeper. Who does not remember in his own normal, healthy boyhood having to be called three, four, or even five times in the morning before it seemed sensible to get up? One of the happiest memories of childhood is that of the maternal voice calling up from downstairs, fading away into silence, and the realization that it would be possibly fifteen minutes before it called again.

All this is denied to the boy who goes to a summer camp. When he comes home, he is so steeped in the pernicious practice of early rising that he can’t shake it off. Along about six o’clock in the morning he begins dropping shoes and fixing up a new stand for the radio in his room. Then he goes out into the back yard and practices tennis shots up against the house. Then he runs over a few whistling arrangements of popular songs and rides his bicycle up and down the gravel path. You would be surprised at the sound two bicycle wheels can make on a gravel path at six-thirty in the morning. A forest fire might make the same crackling sound, but you probably wouldn’t be having a forest fire out in your yard at six-thirty in the morning. Not if you had any sense, you wouldn’t.

Just what the boys do at camp when they get up at six is a mystery. They seem to have some sort of setting-up exercises and a swim--more pushing each other off the raft--but they could do that by getting up at eight and still have a good long day ahead of them. I never knew anyone yet who got up at six who did anything more useful between that time and breakfast than banging a tennis ball up against the side of the house, waiting for the civilized members of the party to get up. We have to do enough waiting in this life without getting up early to wait for breakfast.

Next summer I have a good mind to run a boys’ camp of my own. It will be on Lake Chabonagogchabonagogchabonagungamog--yes, there is, too, in Webster, Massachusetts--and I will call it Camp Chabonagogchabonagogchabonagungamog for Manly Boys. And by the word “manly,” I will mean “like men.” In other words, everyone shall sleep just as long as he wants, and when he does get up there will be no depleting “setting-up” exercises. The day will be spent just as the individual camper gosh-darned pleases. No organized “hikes”--I’d like a word on the “hike” problem some day, too--no camp spirit, no talk about Tomorrow’s Manhood, and _no pushing people off rafts_.

AT LAST A SUBSTITUTE FOR SNOW

While rummaging through my desk-drawer the other night I came upon a lot of old snow. I do not know how long it had been there. Possibly it was a memento of some college prank long forgotten. But it suddenly struck me what a funny thing snow is, in a way, and how little need there really is for it in the world.

And then I said to myself, “I wonder if it would not be possible to work up some sort of mock snow, a substitute which would satisfy the snow people and yet cause just as much trouble as real snow.” And that, my dears, is how I came to invent “Sno.”

As you know, real snow is a compound of hydrogen, oxygen, soot, and some bleaching agent. (There is a good bleaching agent who has an office in Room 476, Mechanics’ Bank Building. He was formerly General Passenger Agent for the Boston and Maine, but decided that bleaching was more fun. As a matter of fact, his name is A. E. Roff, or some such thing.)

Again, as you know, real snow is formed by the passage of clouds through pockets of air which are lighter than the air itself, if such a phenomenon were possible. That is to say, these clouds (A) passing through these air-pockets (C) create a certain atmospheric condition known as a “French vacuum.” This, in turn, creates a certain amount of ill-feeling, and the result is what we call “snow,” or, more often, what we call “this lousy snow.”

Now in figuring out what I would have to do to concoct a mock snow, it was necessary to run over in my mind the qualities of snow as we know it. What are the characteristic functions of snow?

Well, first, to block traffic. Any adequate substitute for snow must be of such a nature that it can be applied to the streets of a city in such a way as to tie up all vehicular movement for at least two days. “This,” I thought, “requires distribution.” Our new snow must be easily and quickly distributed to all parts of town. This will necessitate trucks, and trucks will necessitate the employment of drivers. _Now_, if the weather is cold (and what good is snow unless the weather is cold enough to make it uncomfortable?) these drivers (B) will have to have mittens. So mittens are the first thing that we must get in the way of equipment.... And I took a piece of paper and wrote down “Mittens.” This I crossed out and in its place I wrote “Mittens” again. So far, so good.

Next, one of the chief functions of real snow is to get up in under the cuffs to your sleeves and down inside the collar to your overcoat. Here was a tough one! How to work up something which could be placed up the sleeves and inside the overcoat-collars of pedestrians without causing them the inconvenience of stopping and helping the process. For no substitute for snow could ever be popular which called for any effort on the part of the public. The public wants all the advantages of a thing. Oh, yes! But it doesn’t want to go to any trouble to get them. Oh, no! No trouble! If it is going to have snow up its sleeves and in its collars, it wants it put there while it is walking along the street, and no stopping to unbutton or roll back.

So it was evident that, if this function of snow was to be imitated, it would be necessary to hire boys to run along beside people and tuck the substitute in their sleeves and collars as they walked. One boy could perhaps tuck two hundred handsful in an afternoon, and when you figure out the number of people abroad on a good snowy afternoon, you will realize the enormous number of boys it would take to do the job. Girls would be even worse, because they would stop to talk with people.

The problem of distribution thus unsuccessfully met with, the next thing was to decide what other attribute our “Sno” should have that would give it a place in the hearts of millions of snow-lovers throughout the country. Someone suggested “wetness” and in half a second the cry had been taken up in all corners of the conference-room (for we were in conference by now), “Wetness! Wetness! Our ‘Sno’ must be wet!”

It was decided that the place in which we should have to simulate wetness the most was under bedroom windows. Who does not remember getting up to shut the bedroom windows and stepping into a generous assortment of snow-flakes in their prettiest form of disintegration--water? Or even into a drift ’way, ’way out in the middle of the room right where Daddy could slip in it on his way to and from the office? This is perhaps the most difficult feature of snow to imitate--this bedroom drifting, and if, in addition to getting our composition snow into bedroom windows, we could manage some appliance whereby it could be shot into the folds of whatever underclothing might be lying on the chair nearest the window, then indeed might we cry “Eureka!”

The way in which we decided on the name “Sno” for our product would make a story all in itself. The copyright laws forbid one from naming anything “Snow” or “Gold” or “Rolls-Royce,” or any noun. This law was passed by some fanatics who took advantage of our boys being away at war to plunge the country into an orgy of blue laws. However, we have no other curse than to abide by the code as it stands.

We therefore decided that, by dropping the _W_, we could make a word which would sound almost like the real word and yet evade the technical provisions of the law. Some of the backers held out for a dressier-sounding name, like “Flakies” or “Lumpps,” but our advertising man, who specializes on Consumer Light Refractions, told us that the effect of a word like “Sno” on the eye of the reader would telegraph a more favorable message to his brain than that of a longer word ending in “ies” or “umpps.” Look at the word “Ford,” for instance. The success of the Ford product is almost entirely due to the favorable light refractions of the name on the consumer’s retina.

This decided us on the trade-name “Sno” and left nothing more for us to do but work out the actual physical make-up of the product and the sort of package to put it out in. The package is also an important feature of any merchandising scheme, and it was decided that a miniature snow-show would be appropriate and rather smart for our particular article. If we could work out some way in which “Sno” could be wrapped up in a six-inch snow-shoe it would not only give the dealer something snappy to display, but would make a nice-looking package for the consumer to take home--nicer-looking than a snootful of scotch, for example. You would be surprised, however, to find how difficult it is to wrap up a unit of imitation snow in a snow-shoe, unless you put them both in a box together.

And now all that remains to divulge is the physical make-up of “Sno.” That is what we are working on now.

THE NEW WING

(_Or That Sagredo Bed_)

Although the new wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“Wing K,” if that makes it any easier for you) was opened on April 5th, I have only just this week got around to inspecting it. I’m sorry.

“Wing K” has, since 1916, been empty, and, although passers-by late at night have often reported strange noises coming from its vast recesses, the Museum officials stubbornly maintain that it has been put to absolutely no use at all. This sounds a little fishy to me, however, and if those old walls could talk we might learn a little something more about where Mr. Munsey’s money went. It is said that only a couple of hundred dollars remain of all the millions that he bequeathed to the Museum. Money doesn’t _fly_ away, you know.

At any rate, “Wing K” is full now and it takes a good twenty minutes of fast walking to see everything in it. This does not include the time taken up in getting lost or in walking through the same hall twice.

My inspection was somewhat hampered by having Mr. Charles MacGreggor along with me. Mr. MacGreggor kept constantly asking to see Dr. Crippen. “I want to see Dr. Crippen,” he would say, or “Where is Dr. Crippen?” I told him that the waxworks were in another wing of the Museum, but someone had told him that a replica of Dr. Crippen was to be found in “Wing K” and nothing would do but he must see it. Along toward the end, as Mr. MacGreggor got tired and cross, he began sniveling and crying, “I want to see Dr. Crippen” so loudly that an attendant put us out. So we probably missed some of the funniest parts of the exhibit. If you want me to I will go up again sometime without Mr. MacGreggor. Or maybe Dr. Crippen _is_ there, after all.

The feature of the new wing is, of course, the Bedroom from the Palazzo Sagredo at Venice. The best way that I can describe it is to say that it is fully twice the size of our guest room in Scarsdale, and fifty per cent fancier. The chief point in favor of our guest room in Scarsdale is that there isn’t a whole troop of people strolling through it at all hours of the day, peeking under the bed and asking questions about it. If you want to sleep after nine in the morning in Scarsdale you can do it without being made an exhibition of. My two little boys may romp into the room three or four times during the morning to show you an engine or a snake, but all that you have to do is to tell them to get the hell out or you will tell me on them.

The owner of the Palazzo Sagredo was a great cupid fancier. Over the doorway to the alcove where the bed is, there are over a dozen great, big cupids stuck on the wall, like mosquitoes in a summer hotel. They are heavy, hulking things and seem to have fulfilled no good purpose except possibly to confuse any guest who may have retired to the fancy bed with a snootful of good red Sagredo wine. To awaken from the first heavy sleep of a Venetian bun and see fifteen life-sized cupids dangling from the doorway must have been an experience to send the eighteenth century guest into a set of early eighteenth century or late seventeenth century heebes. The comic strip on the ceiling is catalogued as “Diziani’s Dawn.” It may very well be.

This, in a general way, covers pretty well the Bedroom from the Palazzo Sagredo. In another month the Gideons will have slipped a Bible onto the table by the bed and it will be ready for occupancy, but not by _me_, thank you.

Walking rapidly through the rest of the new wing, you come to lots of things in cases which, frankly, do _not_ look very interesting. There is a bit of sculpture labeled “Head of Zeus(?)” showing that even the Museum officials don’t know whom it is meant to represent. Under the circumstances, it seems as if they might have cheated a little and thrown a bluff by just calling it arbitrarily “Head of Zeus” without the question mark. Certainly no one could have called them on it, and it would have made them seem a little less afraid to take a chance. Suppose that it turned out _not_ to be Zeus. What is the worst that could happen to them?

Then, too, there is “A Relief from a Roman Sarcophagus.” As we remember Roman sarcophagi, _anything_ would be a relief from them.

We could go on like this for page after page making wise-cracks about the various uninteresting features of the new wing, but perhaps you have already got the idea. It may have been the absence of Dr. Crippen, or it may have been a new pair of shoes, but the truth is that we weren’t _put_ out of the new wing. We _asked_ an attendant how to _get_ out. And here we are.

UNCLE CALVIN’S NO-WASTE GAMES

There is a time for play as well as a time for work. But even in
play it is possible to cultivate the art of well-doing. Games are
useful to train the eye, the hand and the muscles, and bring the
body more completely under the control of the mind. When this is
done, instead of being a waste of time, play becomes a means of
education.--_President Coolidge’s Christmas Message to the boys and
girls of the nation._

And now come, boys and girls, it’s play-time! You have worked hard _enough_ for one day, and Uncle Calvin is going to teach you some peachy games to clear the cobwebs out of those brains of yours. Play-time! Play-time!

But first of all we must remember that play in itself is a waste of time. And who remembers what we learned yesterday about Wasted Time? The boy or girl who wastes time, or anything else, is just as naughty as the boy or girl who steals, for, after all, wasting _is_ stealing, isn’t it? And play, just for the sake of play, is stealing time which belongs rightfully to our parents, our teachers or our country. And we don’t want to be known as _thieves_, do we?

So the games which Uncle Calvin is going to teach us are games which will do us good in one way or another. While we are playing them we shall, at the same time, be helping to make our eyes, our hands, and our minds more efficient. And, as we play, we must keep thinking: “Is this helping me? Or am I wasting time which I ought to be devoting to my lessons or my work or my country?”

The first game that we are going to play is called

EYE-SPY

This is just lots and lots of fun--and good for your eyes, too. The boys line up on one side, and the girls on the other. Now Uncle Calvin will stand over here and write on the board a lot of little teeny-weeny figures, problems in percentage, and we will see which can read them off and answer the problems the faster--the boys or the girls. Come now, boys, you don’t want the girls to beat you, do you? All right ... ready, get set ... _go!_

Now we are going to play a dandy game called

DRY, TOM, DRY

We must remember in playing this game not to get all hot and sweaty and too excited, for it is _really_ a game to train our hands. Three girls come over here to the sink, and three boys stand in a line from the sink to the table. Now each boy gets a brand new wiper and each girl a little tub full of hot water and dirty dishes. Now the game is to see which girl and her boy-partner can wash and dry her dishes first. As each dish is cleaned it is handed to the boy with the towel and when he has dried it he places it on the table. You must be very careful in passing the dishes not to drop them. Here is where the excitement comes in. For if you drop and break a plate, Uncle Calvin will lick hell out of you.... Now, no giggling, Walter Pearson! You don’t see Uncle Calvin giggling, do you? All ready?... Then--_play_!

And now for our final game we have a big surprise for you. The game is called

PRINTER’S-PIE

and what do you think? You are all actually going to take part in the Government of this big country which we all love so well! We are going to play a game called “type-setting” and, when we have finished, we will find that we have not only had loads and loads of fun, but that we have saved the Government thousands and thousands of dollars. Now here is how the game is played:

Each child brings his little savings-bank to Uncle Calvin and with what Uncle Calvin finds in there he will buy a box of type and a “galley” for each one. Then you stand in front of a high sort of desk and take a piece of paper which Uncle Calvin will give you. On this paper will be written something--different things--which your government wants to have printed. You will follow this very, very carefully, and try and find the little pieces of type in the box to correspond with the letters in the “copy.” When you find the right letter, place it in a little case which you hold in your hand until all the letters form the same words as those in your “copy.” Now put these words and sentences in the “galley,” or “holder” and pretty soon you will find that you have an exact duplicate _in type_ of the page which Uncle Calvin has given you. Isn’t that exciting! An _exact_ duplicate! This page of type will then be taken from you and plates made from it and then it will be _printed_ and you will see your own work in the _Congressional Record_ and all the little pamphlets that your congressman sends you. Just think! Your own work in print!

And, just because you have had all this fun, your government will have been able to cut down its printing appropriation to almost nothing and you will have trained your eyes and your hands and your minds which will please Uncle Calvin more than he can say.

And now that we have had our play, we must scamper back to work, for, as Uncle Calvin said in his cheery Christmas message, there is a time for play as well as a time for work, and, so long as you don’t _waste_ time when playing, you will be able to work all the better for your parents, your schools, and your country.

THE WORLD OF GRANDPA BENCHLEY

_Thinking Out Loud in the Manner of Mr. Wells’ Hero_

§1

I am eighty-nine years old, and I think I would like to write a book. I don’t know--maybe I wouldn’t.

§2

Eighty-nine this year, ninety next year, eighty-eight last year. That makes three years accounted for. Three into fourteen goes four times and two to carry. The Assyrians were probably the first people to evolve mathematics. I sometimes get to thinking about mathematics.

The average Englishman at the age of eighty-nine is dead--has been dead for several years. The average depth of the Caspian Sea is 3,000 feet. The average rainfall in Canada is 1.03 inches. During the Inter-Glacial Period it was 9.01 inches. Think of that--9.01 inches!

§3

All this has made me stop and think, think about the world I live in. I sometimes wonder what it is all about--this world I mean. I am not so sure about the next world. Sometimes I think there is one and sometimes I think there isn’t. I’ll be darned if _I_ can make it out.

I am not so sure about my wanting to write a book, either. But something has got to be done about this world--something explanatory, I mean. Here I am, eighty-nine years old, and I haven’t explained about the world to anyone yet--that is, not to anyone in this room.

§4

It is a beautiful day outside. The sun, that luminous body 95,000,000 miles from the earth, without which we should never be able to dry hides or bake biscuits, is shining through the trees outside my window, much as it used to shine through the trees outside the cave of Neolithic Man, ten thousand years before Christ. In fact, Neolithic Man sometimes built himself houses on piles driven in the water, but this was not until almost five thousand years before Christ.

Sometimes I get to thinking about Neolithic Man. Sometimes I get to thinking about Cro-Magnon Man. Sometimes it just seems as if I should go crazy thinking about things. There are so _many_ things! And I am only eighty-nine.

§5

I remember when I was a very small boy my mother used to forbid me to go out when it was raining. My mother was a very quiet woman, who never spoke unless it was to figure out how long it would take to reach the nearest star by train.

“Nipper,” she would say to me on such days as the rain would prevent my going out, “Nipper, I guess you don’t know that thousands of years before modern civilization there was a period known as the Pluvial or Lacustrine Age, the rain or pond period.”

I remember my crying myself to sleep the first night after she told me about the Pluvial or Lacustrine Age. It seemed so long ago--and nothing to be done about it.

§6