Chapter XVII: Act III: SCENE. Same as Act I (2)

“The Coasting Club!” retorts Mrs. Jack Symple, to whom my remark was addressed; “mercy, no! We haven’t even _thought_ of coasting this winter. As for me, I’ve been so interested in the Saturday Night Club that I haven’t had a moment’s time for anything else. Oh, you’ll be surprised when you see how much more cultured the town is now than it was when you went away! You never hear anything now about skating or coasting or sleigh-rides or doings of that sort. It’s all Ibsen and Browning and Tolstoï and pre-Raphaelite art and Emerson nowadays, and Professor Gnowital says that there’s as much real culture in Ourtown, in proportion to the number of inhabitants, as there is in Boston.”

My eyes dilated as Mrs. Symple rattled off this jargon about the intellectual growth of Ourtown. A year ago I had regarded her as a young woman with brain-cells of the most primitive form imaginable, picking up pebbles on the shores of the Shakespeare class; and here she was drinking deep draughts of advanced thought, and talking about Ibsen and Tolstoï and Emerson as glibly as if they were old acquaintances.

“And who is Professor Gnowital?” I asked, “and by what formula does he estimate the comparative degrees of culture to the square foot in Boston and Ourtown? He must be a man of remarkable gifts.”

“Remarkable gifts!” echoed Mrs. Symple, “well, I should think so. He comes from Boston and he’s been giving readings here before the Saturday Night Club. And oh, you _must_ come and make an address at the meeting next week! It’s to be the grand gala one of the whole course. Professor Gnowital is coming on to attend it with some really cultivated people from Boston, and you’ll be surprised to see what a fine literary society there is here now.”

I agreed to address the Saturday Night Club, but I saw with deep sorrow that the town had simply gone mad over what it termed “culture.” People whom I had always regarded as but little better than half-wits were gravely uttering opinions about Carlyle and Emerson, or “doing” German literature through the medium of English translations. And all this idiocy in place of the Shakespeare Club, sleigh-rides, late suppers, and coasting, that once made life so delightful for us all.

Mrs. Symple had asked me to address the club on whatever topic I might select, and while I was considering the invitation a great idea took possession of my brain. To think was to act; and without a moment’s delay I sat down and wrote a long letter to my old friend, Dr. Paulejeune, begging him to come up and address the club in my stead, and by so doing render a service not only to his lifelong friend, but to the great cause of enlightenment and human progress as well.

Now Dr. Paulejeune is not only an educated man with the thinking habit long fastened upon him, but also that _rara avis_, a Frenchman who thoroughly understands the language, literature, and social structure of America. Moreover he possesses in a marked degree the patriotism, wit, and cynicism of his race, and has a few hearty prejudices against certain modern vogues in art which are remote from the accepted ideals of the Latin race. Happily enough his name was well known in Ourtown by reason of his little volume of essays, which had just then made its appearance.

Our town society never gathered in stronger force than it did on the evening of the Saturday Night Club meeting at the Assembly Rooms. At half-past eight the president of the club introduced the first speaker, Mr. W. Brindle Fantail, a young man who made himself conspicuous in Boston a few years ago by means of Browning readings, which he conducted with a brazen effrontery that compelled the unwilling admiration of his rivals. In the words of Jack Symple, “He caught the Browning boom on the rise and worked it for all it was worth.” Mr. Fantail advanced to the edge of the platform, ran a large flabby hand through his dank shock of light hair, and then announced as his subject, “Tolstoï, the Modern Homer.” Then, with that calm self-possession which has carried him unharmed through many a dreary monologue or reading, he told his hearers what a great man Tolstoï was, and how grateful they ought to be for an opportunity to learn of his many excellences. Of course he did not put it quite as broadly as that, but that was the gist of his remarks. He told us, moreover, that the whole range of English literature contained no such work of fiction as _Sevastopol_, and that no writer of modern times excelled--or even equaled--this Russian Homer. “In short,” he said, impressively, “Tolstoï is distinctly epoch-making.”

The next speaker was the illustrious Professor Gnowital, who declared that Ourtown would never experience any genuine intellectual development unless a thorough study of the fantastic romances of Hoffmann was begun at once. I cannot imagine what started the professor off on that tack unless it was a desire to choose a subject of which his hearers knew absolutely nothing. His words had a great effect, however, for very few members of the club had ever heard of Hoffmann, and it had never occurred to these that his ghostly tales were at all in the line of that modern culture which they all adored.

The next speaker was Mrs. Measel, whose career I have watched with feelings of mingled respect and amazement. Mrs. Measel has taught art in a dozen towns, lectured on the Great Unknowable in at least two of the large cities, and given “Mornings with Montaigne,” “Babblings from Browning,” and “Studies from Stepniak,” in whatever place she could obtain a hearing. On this occasion she talked about the renaissance of something or other, I’ve forgotten exactly what--and, by the way, there is no better word for use in culture circles than renaissance, and that, too, whether you can pronounce it or not--well, she began with her renaissance, but very soon branched off into a dissertation on Tolstoï and Ibsen and a few more “epoch-making” people with whose names she happened to be familiar. I remember she said that _The Doll’s House_ was one of the grandest plays of modern times, whereat Dr. Paulejeune, who had listened to everything up to this point without turning a hair, smiled broadly. On the whole Mrs. Measel’s was a good shallow talk for good shallow people, and I am sure she made a delightful impression on us all.

Then, at a signal from the president, Dr. Paulejeune made his way to the platform and delivered an address which I am sure will never be forgotten by those who heard it. It was a daring speech for any one to make, and particularly so for a stranger, and that it proved effective in a far higher degree than either of us had ever expected was due to the tact, scholarship, subtlety, and sincerity of my distinguished friend, Dr. Émile Paulejeune.

The doctor began with a graceful tribute to the eloquence, wit, and scholarship of the speakers who had preceded him, and then went on to say that he had chosen as the subject of his discourse one of the greatest writers of fiction that the world has ever known--Daniel De Foe.

There was hearty applause at this, and some scratching of heads and obvious efforts on the part of certain guests to remember who De Foe was and what he had written. I could not help turning in my chair to take a look at Mrs. Symple. The poor little woman was leaning forward with an expression of absolute dismay on her silly face. I could read her thoughts plainly: “Oh dear, this new doctor has been and gone and dragged up another man for me to read about, and I’m sure if I get one more book into my head it’ll crowd some other one out!”

But the look of dismay changed to one of blank, open-mouthed amazement, which was shared by a large number of the guests, as Dr. Paulejeune continued impressively: “And the book which I have come prepared to speak of is _Robinson Crusoe_.”

Then the doctor took up, each in its turn, the writings and writers whom we had heard commended by the previous speakers. “Tolstoï is all very well,” he said, “if you happen to be fond of Russian pessimism, and are not fortunate enough to be familiar with classic English literature, which contains hundreds of stronger, better-drawn pictures than _Sevastopol_.” He dismissed Hoffmann from the discussion with the contemptuous remark that he was “simply a Dutch Poe, and very Dutch at that.” In speaking of Ibsen he threw his audience into convulsions of laughter by gravely comparing _The Doll’s House_ with Jacob Abbott’s _Rollo Learning to Work_, a book which he assured us not only surpassed Ibsen’s masterpiece in the simplicity and directness of its style, but abounded in dramatic situations that were as thrilling as any that the Northern writer had ever devised. “For instance,” he said, “there is a chapter in that estimable little Rollo book which tells us how the hero was making a woodpile, and, disregarding the sound counsel of the conservative Jonas, insisted upon piling the sticks of wood with the small ends out and the large ends inside against the wall of the woodshed. Do any of you, my friends, recall the scene of the heap toppling over? It is portrayed in Mr. Abbott’s most realistic style, and is in itself an ideal Ibsen climax.

“Do you know,” he exclaimed, advancing to the edge of the platform and shaking a long, bony forefinger at his auditors, “do you know--you who call this Scandinavian a dramatist--that perhaps the most thrilling dramatic situation in all literature is found here in this book, _Robinson Crusoe_? If you want to know what a dramatic situation is, read Daniel De Foe’s account of Crusoe finding the human footprint on the shore of his desert island. And then read the whole book carefully through and enjoy its vivid descriptions, its superb English, its philosophy, and the great lessons which it teaches. And when you have finished it ask yourselves if any man ever obtained as complete a mastery of the magic, beautiful art of story-telling as did Daniel De Foe!”

When the doctor finished his address he was greeted with thunders of applause, while Fantail, Gnowital, and Mrs. Measel sat dazed at this sudden attack on their stronghold.

“Thank Heaven for a little plain, ordinary sense at last,” was the way in which some one expressed the common sentiment of the club.

“And to think,” chattered Mrs. Symple, “that we were cultivated all along and didn’t know it! Why, I read the Rollo books and _Robinson Crusoe_ when I was a child, and never dreamt that they were artistic or literary or that sort of thing. I thought they were just stories. The idea of our paying a dollar apiece for Mrs. Measel’s lectures, and muddling our heads with Ibsen and Tolstoï and the rest of them that Professor Gnowital told us were so grand, while all the time we were really cultured and didn’t know it!”

The result of my friend’s lecture was that within a week we were sliding downhill and enjoying ourselves in the old way, and in less than a fortnight the prophets of culture had departed in search of fresh pastures.

I do hope, however, that Mrs. Measel will succeed, for she deserves to if ever a woman did. She has educated two children on the profits--or rather the spoils --of the Browning craze, and has made Tolstoï pay for the care of an invalid sister. She gives more culture for the money than any one in the business, and I can heartily commend her to any club or community that feels a yearning for the Unknowable.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CONSTRUCTION AND PRESERVATION OF JOKES.

I.--THE “JOKAL CALENDAR.”

Every joke has its appropriate season. The true humorist--one who finds comedy in everything--gathers his ideas from what goes on about him, and by a subtle alchemy of his own distils from them jokes suitable to the changing seasons. The only laws to which childhood willingly yields obedience are those unwritten statutes which compel the proper observance of “trap-time,” “kite-time,” and “marble-time.” So even must the humorist recognize the different periods allotted respectively to goats, stovepipes, ice-cream, and other foundations of merriment.

The _Jokal Calendar_ begins in the early summer, when girls are leading young men into ice-cream saloons, and keepers of summer resorts are preparing new swindles for their guests. Soon the farmer will gather in his crop of summer boarders; the city fisherman will entangle his patent flies in the branches of lofty trees, while the country lad catches all the trout with a worm. Then the irate father and the bulldog will drive the lover from the front gate, while married men who remain in the city during their wives’ absence play poker until early morn and take grass-widows to Coney Island. About this time the chronicler of humor goes into the country, whence he will return in the early fall with a fresh stock of ideas, gathered in the village store, at the farm-house table, and by the shores of the sounding sea.

Beginning his autumn labors with the scent of the hay-fields in his nostrils, and the swaying boughs of the pine forest still whispering in his ears, the humorist offers a few dainty paragraphs on the simple joys of rural life. The farmer who dines in his shirt-sleeves, the antiquity of the spring fowl, the translucent milk, and the saline qualities of the pork which grace the table; the city man who essays to milk the cow, and the country deacon who has been “daown to York”--all these are sketched with vivid pen for the delectation of his readers. But it must be remembered that these subjects have been used during the whole summer; and the humorist, after his return to the city, can offer, at the best, but an aftermath of farm-house fun. If it be a late fall the public may slide along on banana and orange peel jokes until the first cold snap warns housekeepers of the necessity of putting up stovepipes. (NOTE.--About this time print paragraph of gas-company charging a man for gas while his house was closed for the summer. Allusions to the extortions of gas-companies are always welcome.)

Stovepipe jokes must be touched upon lightly, for the annual spring house-cleaning will bring the pipes down again, six months later, to the accompaniment of cold dinners, itinerant pails of hot soap-suds, and other miseries incident to that domestic event.

And now that the family stovepipe has ceased to exude smoke at every joint and pore, the humorist finds himself fairly equipped for his year’s work. The boys are at school; lodge-meetings have begun, and sleepless wives are waiting for their truant lords; college graduates are seeking positions in newspaper offices (and sometimes getting and keeping them, though it won’t do to let the public know it); election is at hand, and candidates are kissing babies and setting up the drinks for their constituents; young men of slender means are laying pipes for thicker clothes--in short, a man must be dull of wit who cannot find food for comic paragraphs in what goes on about him at this fruitful season. The ripening of the chestnut-burr, and the harvesting of its fruit--beautifully symbolical of the humorist’s vocation--form another admirable topic at this time.

Winter comes with its snow and ice, and the small boy, who is always around, moulds the one into balls for destructive warfare, while corpulent gentlemen and pedestrians bearing eggs and other fragile articles slip and fall on the other. Oyster-stews, and girls who pine for them; the female craving for matinee tickets, and the high hats which obstruct the view of those in the back seats; nocturnal revelry in saloon and ball-room; low-necked dresses; and the extortionate idleness of the plumber now keep the pen of the comic writer constantly at work. Chapters on the pawning, borrowing, lending, and renovation of the dress-coat are also timely.

Spring brings the perennial spring poet with his rejected manuscript; the actor with his winter’s ulster; the health-giving bock-beer; and, above all, the goat, in the delineation of whose pranks and follies the _Jokal Calendar_ reaches its climax.

What the reindeer is to the Laplander the goat is to the writer of modern humor. His whole life is devoted to the service of the paragraphist. He eats tomato-cans and crinoline; he rends the theatre-poster from the wall, and consumes the bucket of paste; he rends the clothes from the line, and devours the curtain that flutters in the basement window; he upsets elderly men, and charges, with lowered horns, at lone and fear-stricken women.

But as the encroachments of civilization have driven the buffalo from his native plains, so is the goat, propelled by a stern city ordinance, slowly but surely disappearing from the streets and vacant lots which once knew him so well. He is making his last stand now in the rocky fastnesses of Harlem. I have seen him perched on an inaccessible crag on the border-land of Morrisania, looking down with solemn eyes on the great city where he once roamed careless and free from can to ash-barrel. Etched against a background of lowering clouds, his was, indeed, an impressive figure, the apotheosis of American humor.

II.--THE IDEA AND ITS EMBELLISHMENT.

In the construction of a joke the chief requisite is the Idea.

Making jokes without ideas is like making bricks without straw; and the people who tried that were sent out into the Wilderness to wander for forty years and live exclusively on manna and water--a diet which is not provocative of humor. Indeed it is a noteworthy fact that although the children of Israel were accompanied in their journeying by herds of goats, and were constantly hearing stories of the huge squashes and clusters of grapes which grew in the Promised Land--the California of that period--yet we have no record that they availed themselves of such obvious opportunities for jesting.

The humorist, having procured his Idea, should divest it of all superfluities, place it on the table before him, and then fall into a reverie as to its possibilities. Let us suppose, for example, that his Idea, in a perfectly nude condition, looks something like this:

“A girl is thin enough to make a good match for any one.”

Now it will not do to offer this simple statement as a joke. It is merely an Idea, or the nucleus of a short story, and can be greatly improved by a little verbiage.

There would be no point gained in calling the girl a New Yorker, or even a Philadelphian, though the latter city is usually fair game for the paragraphist. She should certainly hail from Boston. The girls of that city are identified in the popular mind with eye-glasses, long words, angularity and other outward and visible signs of severe mental discipline and parsimony in diet. The ideal Boston girl is not rotund. On the contrary, she is endowed with a sharply defined outline, and a profile which suggests self-abnegation in the matter of food. A little dialect will help the story along amazingly; therefore let the scene be laid in rural New England, and let the point be made with the usual rustic prefix of “Wa-al!” This will afford an opportunity to utilize a few minor ideas relative to New England rural customs, the maintenance of city boarders, the food provided, the economy practised, and other salient features of country life.

So, by judicious expansion--not padding--the humorist will stretch his little paragraph into a very respectable story, something like this:

_Sample of Short Story Erected on Paragraph._

A summer evening of exquisite calm and sweetness. The golden haze of sunset sheds its soft tints on hill and plain, and pours a flood of mellow light over the roofs and trees of the quaint old village street. The last rays of the sun, falling through the waving boughs of elm and maple, form a checkered, ever-moving pattern on the wall of the meeting-house; they kindle beacon-fires on the distant heights of Baldhead Mountain, and linger in tender caress on the dainty auburn tresses of Priscilla Whitney, who is displaying her flounces, furbelows, and other “citified fixin’s” on the front piazza of Deacon Pogram’s residence.

(It will be seen that the beginning of this paragraph is written in a serious vein; but the last two lines prepare the reader for a comic story. He now makes up his mouth for the laugh which awaits him a little farther along.)

From the kitchen comes a pleasant aroma of burnt bread-crusts, as dear old Samanthy Pogram, her kindly face covered with its snow-white glory, prepares the coffee for supper. Meanwhile the worthy deacon, in stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, sits by the open door and enjoys the cool evening breeze that sweeps in refreshing gusts down the fertile valley of the Pockohomock.

“There ye be again, Sarah,” says Aunt Samanthy to the hired help, a shade of annoyance crossing her fine old face. “Hain’t I told ye time ’n’ again not to put fresh eggs in the boarders’ omelet? I suppose ye think there hain’t such a thing as a stale egg in the haouse, but ye must be wastin’ good ones on the city folks! Sakes alive! but I’ll be glad when they’ve cleaned aout, bag ’n’ baggage. I’m nigh tuckered aout a-waitin’ on ’em ’n’ puttin’ up with their frills ’n’ fancy doin’s.”

“They tell me, Samanthy,” says the deacon, “that young Rube Perkins is kinder makin’ up to one of aour boarders. I s’pose ye hain’t noticed nothin’, mebbe?”

“I’ve seen him a-settin’ alongside o’ that dough-faced critter times enough so he’d like ter wear aout the rocker on the piazzy; but I guess Rube had better not set enny too much store by what _she_ says to him. Them high-toned Whitney folks o’ hern daown Bosting way hain’t over ’n’ above anxious to hev Rube Perkins fur a son-in-law, I kin tell ye.”

“Wa-al,” drawls the deacon, reflectively, “I kalkerlate they’ve got an idee she’d better make a good match while she’s abaout it.”

“She’s thin enough to make a lucifer match,” rejoins Aunt Samanthy; and with this parting bit of irony she goes in to put the saleratus biscuit on the tea-table.

* * * * *

Of course this is not a model of a humorous story, but it will pass muster. It is, however, a very creditable specimen of a story built up, as I have shown, on a very slender foundation. Some humorists would give it an apologetic title, such as “Rural Sarcasm,” or “Aunt Samanthy’s Little Joke,” in order to let the reader down easy.

III.--REVAMPING OLD JOKES.

It often happens that the humorist finds himself unexpectedly called upon for jokes at a moment when he has no ideas about him. Perhaps he is away from his workshop where his tools are kept, or perhaps he has lost the combination of the safe in which his precious ideas are securely locked up. The problem of how to make bricks without straw, and the awful fate of the people who attempted it, stares him in the face. But his keen intelligence comes to his aid. Like the trusty guide in Mayne Reid’s story, he exclaims, “Ha, it is the celebrated joke-root bush, called by the Apaches the ha-ha plant!” and seizing an ancient jest, he tears it from the soil, carefully cleanses the esculent root from its clinging mould, and then proceeds to revamp it for modern use.

The joke should be one that has slowly ripened under the suns of distant climes and other days. It should be perfectly mellow, and care must be taken to remove from it all particles of dust and lichen. Let us suppose, for example, that the joke, divested of all superfluities, presents this appearance:

“A man once gave his friend a very small cup of very old wine, and the friend remarked that it was the smallest thing of its age he had ever seen.”

I have selected this joke because it is one of the oldest of which the world has any record.

The world has known many changes since civilization reached the point that made old wine an appreciated and acknowledged delight to the dwellers in the fertile valley of the Euphrates, and thus threw open the doors for the appearance of this joke. The dust of him who gave and of him who drank the wine are blended together in the soil of that once populous region. Stately sarcophagi mark the last resting-places of many who have enjoyed this ancient bit of merriment. Empires have crumbled since then; mighty rulers have yielded the insignia of their power at the imperative summons of the conqueror of all; yet nothing has interrupted the stately, solemn march of this joke along the corridors of time. It flourished in Byzantium; it lingered in tender caress on each of the seven hills of Rome; when Hannibal led his cohorts across the snow-clad Alps it stepped out from behind a crag and said, “Here we are again!” And the astonished warrior recognized it at once, although it wore a peaked hat and a goitre.

It has awakened laughter among effeminate and refined Athenians as they lay stretched in languid and perfumed ease immediately after the luxurious bath, and about two hundred years before Christ. It has been said that cleanliness is next to godliness, and yet we find that in this instance there was room to slip this joke in between the two, and have two hundred years of space left.

It is found in the sacred writings of Confucius, side by side with his memorable injunction to his followers not to shed a single cuff or sock unless the ticket should be forthcoming. Under the iron crown of Lombardy and the lilies of France this joke has lived and thrived. It has even been published in the _Philadelphia Ledger_ which is a sure proof of its antiquity.

Surely no one but an American humorist could look upon this hoary relic without feelings of veneration. Let us see what the humorist does with it:

That which has worn a toga in Rome and a coat of mail in the middle ages, he now clothes in the habiliments of the present day. Watch him as he arrays it in the high hat, the patent-leather shoes, the cutaway coat, and the eye-glasses of modern times, and, behold, we have:

“Young Arthur Cecil, of the Knickerbocker Club, prides himself on his knowledge of wines, and boasts of a cellar of his own which cannot be matched on this side of the water. Bilkins dined with him the other night, and as a great treat his host poured out into a liquor-glass a few drops of priceless old ----.

“‘There, my boy,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’ll not find a drop of that anywhere in New York except on my table!’

“Bilkins took it down at a single gulp, smacked his lips, and said:

“‘I’ll tell you what it is, old man. There ain’t many things lying around loose that are as old as this and haven’t grown any bigger.’

“The joke was too good to keep, and Cecil had to square himself at the club by ordering up a basket of Mumm.”

IV.--THE OBVIOUS JOKE.

A large class of simple-minded people believe that the obvious joke is the most delightful form of humor. An obvious joke is one whose point or climax can be seen from the very start, and is, in fact, a natural sequence to the beginning.

For example, when we begin to read of a city dude who professed to understand the distinctively rural art of milking a cow, and volunteered to show his friends how to do it, we know perfectly well that he is going to get knocked out in the attempt, and that the story will end in a humorous description of the indignities inflicted upon him by the enraged animal. The only chance for variety in the sketch lies in the manner in which the cow will resent the dude’s impertinence. She may impale him on one or both of her horns; she may hurl him on a dunghill and dance on his prostrate form; she may content herself with kicking him; but whatever she does she will be sure to upset the milk-pail and excite the laughter of the lover of obvious humor. Of course a professional humorist never reads an obvious joke. He knows exactly what is going to happen the moment his eye falls on the first paragraph.

If a tatterdemalion appears at the county fair with a broken-down plug which he offers to trot against any horse on the track, the professional humorist knows that the decrepit charger is going to win the race, and that his owner will go away with his pockets bulging out with the money he has won from the too confiding.

If a man holding four aces is persistently raised by a gentleman of quiet demeanor and bland, childlike face, we can call the latter’s hand without looking at it, because we know from long familiarity with American humorous literature, as well as poker, that he holds a straight flush. Some writers have had the effrontery to deal him a royal flush, forgetting that he has already given his opponent all the aces.

If a gentleman of apparently delicate physique resents the impertinence of a bully who is forcing his attentions upon a lady, we know, without reading to the end of the chapter, that the man of effeminate build is in reality a prize-fighter or a college athlete, and will bundle the bully out on the sidewalk with great rapidity.

The professional humorist shuns these “comics” as he would the plague. They make him tired. He knows how easy they are to construct. Moreover he despises alike the mind that gives them birth and that which finds them funny.

The recipe for their concoction is very simple:

Think of some acquaintance who habitually eats sugar on his lettuce and sweetens his claret. The man who says, “I don’t want none of this _I_-talian caterwaulin’. The good old-fashioned tunes, like ‘Silver Threads among the Gold,’ suit me right down to the ground. I don’t want none of yer fancy gimcracks ’n’ kickshaws in mine.” Try to remember the sort of thing that has moved this man to laughter, and then fashion a joke on the same plan, taking pains to make it apparent to the most primitive intellect.

Persons of this description are found in large numbers in the rural districts, and, therefore, any story tending to cast ridicule on the city man who puts on airs, or, in other words, affects the amenities of civilized life, is sure to be appreciated.

For example: It is the delight of sportsmen to fish for trout with fly-rods and tackle of an elaborate description, to the intense amusement of the yokel who catches fish, not for sport, but in order that he may sell them at an exorbitant price to some ignorant stranger. Now it is a very easy matter to compose a story on this basis suited to the comprehension of such a rustic.

The following is a fair specimen of a story of the class I have described:

“He was a real sportsman, just from the city, and he had come down into the country to show the benighted inhabitants how to catch fish. He had a new patent rod in his right hand and a brand-new basket over his left shoulder. In his coat-tail pocket he carried a silver flask, and in his breast-pocket a big wallet filled with all the latest devices in newfangled flies. He walked down the road with the air of a man who had come to catch fish and knew just how to do it.

“It was growing dark when he returned to the hotel, wet, muddy, and weary, and sadly laid aside his implements of sport.

“‘Fish don’t bite in this blawsted country, yer know,’ was his reply to the landlord’s cheery inquiry, ‘What luck?’

“And just at this moment who should come along but old Bill Simons’s sandy-haired, freckle-faced boy Jim, with his birch-pole over his shoulder, and a fine string of the speckled beauties in his brown paw.

“‘Good Gawd!’ exclaimed the dude, ‘how did you catch those, me boy?’

“‘Hook ’n’ line, yer fool! How d’yer s’pose?’ was Jim’s answer, as he pulled a handful of angleworms, the last of his bait, from his pocket, and threw them out of the window.”

McCLURE’S MODEL VILLAGE FOR LITERARY TOILERS.

I paid a visit yesterday to the model village of Syndicate, founded by Mr. S. S. McClure for the benefit of the literary hands employed in his great enterprises, and I am bound to say that in point of neatness, order, and the completeness of its sanitary arrangements it is infinitely superior to the similar town of Pullman or any of the colonies established by the late Baron Hirsch.

It is situated on a bit of rising ground that overlooks the Hackensack River, the site having been chosen with a view to economy and convenience in the shipping of material by water. The village has been in existence a little less than two years, but it already has a population of nearly four thousand able-bodied authors, poets and syndicate hands, together with their wives and families, most of whom do their work in the village, though fully a hundred go each day to the McClure factory, in Twenty-fifth Street, returning in the evening in time to take part in the social life of the community.

On the banks of the river Mr. McClure has built a dock and warehouse for the reception and storage of goods. Yesterday the scene on the water-front was an animated one. A bark from Palestine, manned by the swarthy children of the East, was discharging its cargo of photographs of the Holy Land, reminiscences of the Hebrew patriarchs, bales of straw garnered by Boaz especially for the McClure monthly, and other raw materials to be used in the literary works. In the offing I saw the fleet canal-boat _Potato Bug_, hailing from Galesburg, Ill., and laden with hitherto unpublished photographs of Ulysses S. Grant and recollections of that warrior, and of his uncles, his aunts, his progenitors, his progeny, his man-servant, his maid-servant, his cattle, and the reporter within his gates.

At the same time a stanch schooner was receiving its cargo of serials, short stories, poems, and memoirs, destined for the New York office. I observed that the greatest care was exercised by the men in the work of stowing away the cargo, the ship having previously been ballasted with humorous articles and pungent literary reviews.

I found the village apparently deserted; only the smoke from the chimneys showed me that the place was inhabited. But very soon the noon whistle blew, and almost immediately the streets swarmed with well-fed, cheerful literary toilers. I was deeply impressed with the evidences of contentment and happiness that greeted me on every side. In the bright faces that smiled into mine I saw nothing to remind me of the sullen, low-browed, haggard literary weavers that one encounters at the Authors’ Club, or that may be seen lurking in the doorways of Union Square, with poems clutched in their toil-stained hands.

Some of the work is done in the shops under the supervision of foremen, but there is a great deal of piece-work given out and taken by the authors to their homes. Nearly a hundred hands are kept constantly busy on the Grant memoirs, under the careful supervision of Mr. Hamlin Garland. Near by, working under glass, I saw half a dozen pallid young men, all recent discoveries of Mr. W. D. Howells. The work of these spring lambs will be placed upon Mr. McClure’s counters at an early day.

With Mr. McClure’s permission I talked with several of the authors and questioned them closely in regard to the wages paid them and the conveniences and luxuries that the village of Syndicate affords to its inhabitants. Nearly every one of these frankly said that he preferred his life there to the more diverting existence in the congested sections of New York. “And,” he replied, “Mr. McClure frequently drafts off a squad of us for some special work in New York, and that makes a very pleasant variety in our lives. We are conveyed in a small steamboat from here to the foot of Twenty-fifth Street, and then transferred to the factory, near Lexington Avenue, where we work until four o’clock, when we are returned in the same manner. Sometimes, when there is a great pressure of work on hand, the cabin of the steamboat is fitted up with benches and we do piece-work, both coming and going, thus adding considerably to our pay.”

At one o’clock the factory whistle blew again and the men returned to their work. Mr. McClure took me through one of the large buildings and explained every detail of the work to me. Every morning the foreman goes from bench to bench and gives an idea to each author. Just before noon he passes along again and carefully examines the unfinished work, and, late in the afternoon, a final inspection is made, after which the goods are packed and sent down to the wharf for shipment.

I inquired whether there was any truth in the report that several authors had been taken with severe illness immediately after beginning work at Syndicate, whereupon the foreman explained that this had happened several times, but it had always resulted from giving an author a whole idea all at once--something to which very few of them had ever been accustomed.

I learned, also, that child labor is strictly prohibited on the McClure property. This was rather a surprise to me, for I have been a diligent reader of “McClure’s Magazine” ever since it was started. The art department has not been put into working order yet, but there is a large blacksmith shop near the village, which is celebrated for the inferior quality of its work, and, as its proprietor and foreman are both drinking, shiftless men, the place will probably develop into an art shop, in which case it will turn out all the pictures for the magazine and syndicate.

As I was taking my leave, my attention was drawn to several large oat fields in the neighborhood of the village, and I was thereby led to suspect that Mr. McClure was turning out literature by horse-power.

“Not at all,” he said, when I questioned him on the subject. “Everything here is made by hand, but I have made a contract with a padrone for a force of Scotch dialect authors, whom I must feed, clothe, and house while they are writing for me. I expect them within a week. I shall put them at once on a serial called ‘Blithe Jockie’s Gane Awee,’ which will be my ‘feature’ for the coming year.”

ARRIVAL OF THE SCOTCH AUTHORS AT McCLURE’S LITERARY COLONY.

Yesterday morning, at a very early hour, I was awakened by an imperative summons from one of the trusty sleuths that patrol the river-front in the interest of the paper on which I am employed and informed that a band of celebrated literary men had just been landed from a tramp steamer at a Hoboken pier.

The reticence of actors, singers, authors, practical evangelists, and female temperance agitators concerning their movements renders it necessary for a great daily paper to maintain a corps of reliable spies, whose duty it is to meet every incoming steamer and see that neither Henry Irving nor Steve Brodie nor Lady Henry Somerset lands unobserved and unchronicled on our hospitable shores.

The human ferret who aroused me from my slumbers declared that the newly arrived authors were met at the pier by an active, enthusiastic little man, who instantly departed with them in the direction of the setting sun.

“And what makes you think that they were literary men?” I inquired. “Are they entered on the ship’s papers as able-bodied authors?”

“Naw,” rejoined the sleuth. “They’re beatin’ the contract labor law. I knew they was authors the minute I seen the little man that met them at the dock. He’s a regular author’s padrone. He’s got a hull town full of ’em back in Jersey some place. I’ve known him this five year or more.”

I waited to hear no more, for I knew that the active little man could be none other than McClure; and so I started without a moment’s delay for the village of Syndicate on the banks of the fragrant Hackensack.

On my way to the station for the authors’ settlement I met a small boy hurrying along the dusty highway. I recognized him as the son of an author who is now acting as timekeeper of the Grant memoir gang, and stopped him to inquire about Mr. McClure.

“That’s him a-coming there now, I think,” replied the urchin.

I looked in the direction indicated, and saw what seemed to be a drove of cattle slowly approaching and enveloped in a cloud of dust. I sauntered along to meet them, and in a quarter of an hour at a sharp turn in the road, I encountered the strangest literary gathering that it has ever been my fortune to behold; and when I say this I do not forget that I have frequented some of the most brilliant literary and artistic salons that New York has ever known. At the head of the cavalcade marched Mr. S. S. McClure, the noted philanthropist, magazine editor, and founder of the model village of Syndicate. He carried a pair of bagpipes under his arm, and presented such a jaded and travel-stained appearance that I was involuntarily reminded of the Wandering Jew. Behind him marched a band of strange-looking men, attired in kilts and wearing broad whiskers, long bristly hair, and bare knees. A collie dog, panting and dust-covered, but still sharp-eyed and vigilant, trotted along beside them to prevent them from straying away and losing themselves in the New Jersey prairies.

As soon as Mr. McClure’s eyes fell upon me a bright smile lit up his face, and he stopped short in the road, raised the pipe to his lips, and burst into a triumphant strain of Scotch music. Those that followed him paused in their course, and with one accord began a masterly saltatorial effort, which, I have since learned, enjoys great vogue in Glasgow and Dundee under the name of the “Sawbath Fling.” While they danced the collie squatted on his hindquarters and watched them with bright, sleepless eyes.

“McClure,” I cried, “in the name of all that is monthly and serial, what does this mean?”

“Ford,” he replied solemnly, as he advanced and took me by the hand, “you know that I have published Lincoln and Napoleon and Grant and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Dodge and Company Ward, but I have something far greater than all these for the year 1897. Can you not guess the meaning of this brave cavalcade that you see before you?”

“What! Have you actually secured Professor Garnier’s ‘Equatorial Conversational Class’ as contributors to your monthly? That is, indeed, a literary triumph!”

“Equatorial nothing,” retorted the great editor, testily. “I have just imported a herd of blooded Scotch dialect authors under a one year’s contract. We had to walk all the way out from Hoboken, because I only agreed to pay their fares to that point, and you know it’s thirty cents from there out, and a Scotchman always likes to walk and see scenery when he can. The result was that I had to walk, too, for fear Scribner or some of those pirates would coax them away from me, and I swear that if it hadn’t been for that dog of mine I don’t think I could have got them out here at all.”

At this moment the authors resumed their march, for they were eager to reach their journey’s end, and we followed behind them, with the faithful collie trotting contentedly along.

As we walked Mr. McClure continued: “We passed through a suburban town about an hour ago, where one of those other Scotch authors was giving a morning lecture, and, before I knew it, we were in front of the very church in which he was at work. They heard him bleating, and there would have been a regular stampede if it hadn’t been for that dog. He had the leader of them by the throat before you could say ‘bawbee,’ and then he barked and growled and snapped at them, and finally chased the whole pack off the church steps and up the street. I got him of a firm of Edinboro’ publishers, and I am going to have a kennel for him in my New York office and use him in a dozen different ways. Look at him now, will you!”

I glanced around and saw that one of the authors had contrived to detach himself from the drove and was leaning over the fence engrossed in the contemplation of an advertisement of Glenlivet whiskey, which had caught his wandering eye, and as I looked, the dog came hurrying up from behind, nipped him, with a snarl of assumed ferocity, in the calf of his leg, and sent him scampering back to his place with the others.

We were now entering the principal thoroughfare of Syndicate, and the authors looked about in wonder at the silent streets and long rows of neat white cottages in which the literary toilers dwell. From the large brick factory, where the posthumous works of great authors are prepared, came the sound of busy, whirring wheels and the scratching of steam pens. In the art department the sledge-hammers were falling on the anvils in measured cadence--in short, everything told the story of cheerful literary activity. Mr. McClure threw open the door of a large whitewashed building, gave the word of command to the dog, and in less than a minute the sagacious quadruped had rounded up the herd of authors and driven them into their corral.

“Good-by,” said the editor as he closed and bolted the door and turned to take my outstretched hand. “Good-by,” he continued solemnly, and then raised his hands above my head. I took off my hat.

“Now is the time to subscribe,” said Mr. McClure, impressively.

THE CANNING OF PERISHABLE LITERATURE.

Saturday is a half holiday at Mr. McClure’s village of Syndicate. On that day the noon whistle means complete cessation of work, as it always has in every one of the departments of Mr. McClure’s great enterprise.

On the occasion of a recent Saturday visit to this model settlement I found scores of well-fed, happy-looking prosers and poets riding their bicycles up and down the village street or sitting in rows on the fence rails eagerly discussing the condition of the literary market and the business prospects for the coming year. In the large playground which lies to the north of the village an exciting game of football was in progress between two picked elevens, one selected from the various “reminiscence-of-celebrities” gangs employed about the works, and the other made up from the day shift of “two-rhyme-to-the-quatrain” poets.

The Scotch dialect authors were seated on the piazza in front of their quarters, mending their shoes, washing their clothes, and preparing in other ways for the impending “Sawbath.” Mr. McClure tells me that they are very shy and suspicious, and refuse to mingle socially with the other hands. One of them, Dr. Bawbee MacFudd, was confined to his room with brain fever, the result of having been asked to spend something the last time he went out of the house.

Just beyond the barn devoted to the Scotchmen Mr. McClure showed me a building which he erected last spring and which is now used as a canning factory and warehouse for the storage of perishable goods.

“You see,” said Mr. McClure, “we are doing a very large business here, and supplying not only my own magazine and newspaper syndicate with matter, but also various other publications, which I cannot name for obvious reasons, so it frequently happens that we find ourselves at the close of some holiday season with a number of poems, stories, or essays relating to that particular holiday left on our hands. These ‘perishable goods,’ as we call them in the trade, were formerly a total loss, but now we can and preserve them until the holiday comes round again.”

Mr. McClure directed my attention to the wooden shelves which encircled the main room of the building, and which contained long rows of neat tin cans and glass jars, hermetically sealed and appropriately labelled. In the Thanksgiving department were to be found cans containing comic turkey dinners in prose and verse, “First Thanksgiving in America” stories of the old Plymouth Rock brand so popular in New England, serious verses designed for “Woman and Home” departments in provincial newspapers, and other seasonable goods. Some of these were marked with a red X, indicating, as Mr. McClure informed me, that they were of the patent adjustable brand, made popular throughout the country by his syndicate, and could be changed into Christmas goods by merely altering the name of the holiday.

We were still standing there, when one of the hands, who seemed to be working overtime, appeared with a step-ladder, climbed up to one of the highest shelves, and brought down three dusty Washington’s Birthday jars, which he opened on the spot. Two were in good condition, but the third containing a poem on “Our Uncrowned King,” was found to be in a bad state of preservation and emitted such a frightful odor that the workman hastily carried it outside the building, Mr. McClure and I following to see what was the matter with it. The poem was lifted out with a pair of pincers, and we saw in an instant that decay had started in the third verse, in which “Mount Vernon” was made to rhyme with “burning,” and had spread until the whole thing was ruined.

“I am very lucky to get off as easily as this,” said Mr. McClure, as he noted the name of the author of the defective rhyme, “because it sometimes happens that these jars containing rotten poetry explode and do a great deal of damage.

“These are our odd lots,” he explained, as we continued our tour of inspection. “Here are a few cans of ‘Envois’ for use in the repair shops, and here are a lot of hitherto unpublished portraits of people and pictures of houses and babies and all sorts of things that have been left over from our serials, and will come in handy for the Grant memoirs. Those pictures of the children of old Zachariah Corncob, who used to live next door to Lincoln, will do very well for Benjamin Franklin or Henry Clay in infancy, and there is that house that Mr. and Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward used to live in, left over from a lot of forty that I contracted for last year; that will look well as the house that would be occupied by Andrew Jackson if he were alive now and lived in Massachusetts. You see, I am reducing the literary business to a system, and my plan is to have nothing go to waste.”

“It seems to me, McClure,” I remarked, as we left the building, “that you have everything here but love poems; won’t they bear canning, too?”

“Certainly,” replied the great manufacturer, “but I have to put them all in cold storage, even during the winter months.”

LITERARY LEAVES BY MANACLED HANDS.

The attempt of Warden Sage, of Sing Sing, to provide literary labor for the idle convicts has excited so much interest that yesterday morning a party of well-known literary men visited the state prison on invitation of the warden, and made a careful inspection of the methods employed in turning out convict-labor prose and verse.

Some of this work is done in the cells, and some is carried on in the shops formerly devoted to the manufacture of clothing, brushes, shoes, and other articles turned out under the old contract system. In the corridors outside the cells and in the shops were to be seen “trusties” going about with dictionaries, both Webster and rhyming, which they supplied to any convict who raised his hand as a signal.