.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 52438
   :PG.Title: Imperfectly Proper
   :PG.Released: 2016-06-29
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Peter Donovan
   :MARCREL.ill: \R. \E. Johnston
   :DC.Title: Imperfectly Proper
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1920
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

==================
IMPERFECTLY PROPER
==================

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. container:: frontispiece

   .. vspace:: 4

   .. _`"We don't know what he struck, but he certainly struck something."—That Motor Boat of Algie's`:

   .. figure:: images/img-front.jpg
      :figclass: white-space-pre-line
      :align: center
      :alt: "We don't know what he struck, but he certainly struck something."—That Motor Boat of Algie's

      "We don't know what he struck, but he certainly struck something."—That Motor Boat of Algie's

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

   .. class:: xx-large bold

      Imperfectly Proper

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: large bold

      By P. O'D. (Peter Donovan)

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

      Illustrated by
      \R. \E. JOHNSTON

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

      McCLELLAND & STEWART
      Publishers - - Toronto

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: verso center white-space-pre-line

   .. class:: small

      COPYRIGHT, CANADA 1920
      BY MCCLELLAND & STEWART, LIMITED, TORONTO

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: small

      1st Edition, Nov., 1920
      2nd Edition, Feby., 1921

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: small

      PRINTED IN CANADA

   .. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   Preface

.. vspace:: 2

It is with extreme diffidence that the author
presents—but then is any healthy author ever
really as modest as he makes himself out in his
foreword?  Probably not, or there wouldn't be
any book.  The author, however, is quite
conscious of the many defects of these sketches, and
only hopes that in book form they will meet
with the indulgence which greeted their
original appearance.  They have been gathered
from the pages of *Toronto Saturday Night* and
are here reprinted, through the courtesy of the
publisher and editor, with such additions and
alterations as have been suggested by the
increasing years and wisdom of the writer—and
the removal of the censorship.  And they are
dedicated to those two splendid and long-suffering
friends, "Constant Reader" and "Old Subscriber,"
by their very grateful liegeman, the
author.

.. vspace:: 1

PETER DONOVAN.

.. vspace:: 1

Toronto, Sept. 1920.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   Contents

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

`That Motor Boat of Algie's`_
`Aesthetics and Some Tea`_
`Beauty in the Bank`_
`Koncerning Kosmetics`_
`Clurks and Clarks`_
`Ventilation`_
`City Chickens`_
`Porters, Pullmans and Patience`_
`Helping Our Friends to Economize`_
`Refreshments at Five`_
`Manners for the Masses`_
`Raiment and Mere Clothes`_
`That Fur Coat`_
`Spring in the City`_
`Moving Day`_
`Vacation Vagaries`_
`Lawnless Tennis`_
`That Glorious First Drive`_
`That Awful First Game`_
`On Keeping Cool`_
`Back to Nature in a Limousine`_
`Stringencies and How to Stringe in Them`_
`Taming the Furnace`_
`Mike`_
`Dogs`_
`On Being Handy with Tools`_
`Bumps and a Brogue`_

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`That Motor Boat of Algie's`:

.. figure:: images/img-007.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: THAT MOTOR BOAT OF ALGIE'S

   THAT MOTOR BOAT OF ALGIE'S

.. class:: center large bold

   That Motor-Boat of Algie's

.. vspace:: 2

His name really isn't Algie.  It wouldn't do
to use his real name—he has a very nice
wife, you know.  So we shall call him Algie,
partly as a disguise, and partly because we wish
to be offensive.  We want to hurt his feelings.
It is our earnest desire that he should read this
account and writhe painfully.  We claim to be
as patient and forgiving as the next one, but there
are some subjects—and that motor-boat picnic is
one of them.  When, in addition to being made
sea-sick, being scared into acute heart-disease,
and being banged about in a locoed launch like
a bean in a coal-scuttle, a gentleman is forced to
ruin his second-best pair of—but we anticipate.

For two or three weeks prior to the fatal
invitation and the fatal day on which he
perpetrated the picnic, Algie had been coming down to
the office late every morning—so late in fact that
his coming amounted to an afternoon call.
Furthermore, his face and shirt bore mysterious
smudges of train-oil.  And though Algie was
never what is known as a "swell dresser," he was
always a very neat sort of chap in the matter of
his personal adornment.

As soon as he arrived he would immediately
begin calling up all sorts of mechanics, plumbers,
boiler-makers, painters, boat-builders, and
electricians.  Lengthy conferences would ensue
in which frequent references would be made to
cylinders and hulls and carburetors and propellers,
and the time when certain jobs should have
been done, and what a helluva nerve they had to
ask any such price.  The language was usually
very technical.  But it was occasionally quite
lucid and human, though not of a nature to bear
repetition in print which is intended to go into
Christian homes.

During the two or three hours in the afternoon
when Algie was with us, he would run out every
few minutes and come back with a coil of lead
pipe, or a dry battery, or a can of gasoline.  And
then he would slip away at about four o'clock
with an intensely preoccupied air.

We all knew where he was going and what he
was going to do.  He had bought a motor-boat
from a friend, and he was trying to put it in such
condition that he could go out in it without
having to wear a life-belt.  Of course, the friend
had guaranteed it as the safest, speediest,
staunchest, and trimmest little craft that ever got
in front of a ferry-boat on the Bay.  But one
should never buy a motor-boat from a friend.
Better buy it from a deadly enemy.  Then you
may discover a big hole in the bottom of it, or a
dynamite bomb stowed away forward with a
clock attachment.  But that is all.  Once you
have patched up the hole or thrown the bomb
overboard, you are all right.  But when you buy
a motor-boat from a friend you are never done
with trouble.

After Algie had had the Gladiolus—his wife
christened it—for about a week, he realized that
he had to put a new engine in it.  He put the
engine in, got the thing started, and headed for
the Island.  He got there just in time—to save
his life, that is.  The Gladiolus sank gently to
rest on a sand-bar in three feet of water.  The
liquid composing the Bay is admittedly rather
thick, but it managed to ooze into that boat in
about four hundred and forty different places.
Algie said afterwards that it had looked to him
as though the boat were being invaded by an
army of angle-worms.

With a marine derrick they enticed the
Gladiolus out of the bosom of the sand-bar, and
got her back to dry-dock.  Then Algie started
in to put a new hull around the engine.  It
amounted to that by the time he got all the
repairs made.  Then she had to be painted.  Also
she had to have a new propeller, ditto some
chairs, ditto lanterns and a search-light, ditto a
set of cushions.  But at last the work was done.
Algie was tired but happy; and he wanted to
share his bliss.

"You simply got to come, old man," he said in
a spirit of exuberant hospitality, "won't take no
for an answer.  Ten sharp, Sunday morning, at
Sunnyside—the Missus and I will be right there
as you get off the car.  We'll run up beyond Port
Credit and have lunch by the lakeside.  Sharp
at ten, mind!"

In a moment of weakness we consented.  Nay,
more, we looked forward to it.  We had visions
of ourself leaning back in one of the sumptuous
deck-chairs of the Gladiolus, as that beauteous
speed-devil ate up the watery miles on old
Ontario.  We could imagine the shores whizzing
by, and the Hamilton boats being left hopelessly
behind.  So we prayed for fine weather.  And
when we say we prayed we don't mean that we
issued an order to Divine Providence like a
parson, but we made a timid and tentative
appeal.  It was answered.  It was one of the finest
Sundays we have ever seen.  We don't suppose
we were really the cause of it, you know, but we
felt gratified.  When a chap doesn't pray to
excess, he naturally is surprised and delighted
to get what he asks for.  But, alas, we knew not
what we did.

When we got off the car at Sunnyside—a
popular local beach—there was Algie, sure
enough, in white ducks and a stern expression of
countenance.  Just imagine the face of Admiral
Sir David Beatty as he prepared to take the
battle-cruisers into action off Jutland, and you will
have a faint notion of the concentrated solemnity
and sense of responsibility which sat upon
Algie's features as he shook our hand in an
absent-minded manner and told us to hustle
aboard.  We did hustle.  We don't mind
admitting that we were impressed.  We felt that
here was a seaman who entered upon the grave
duties of his position in no frivolous spirit—a
true sailor who loved and yet feared the mighty
deep.

When we got to the wharf where the gasoline
wonder reposed her graceful length, we found
Mrs. Algie and two other guests.  They were
very nice people, very nice indeed.  The
husband was a clerical-looking chap—his facial
make-up suggested a curate in an ineffectual
disguise.  But his conversation was at times
decidedly unclerical—at least, it wasn't the sort of
thing one gets from clergymen in their more
professional moments.  When that big wave
came over and sloshed down his neck, he
said—but again we anticipate.

Algie and his wife were in nautical costume as
befitted the skipper and skipperess.  Algie wore
a nice pair of white ducks and a white shirt very
open at the throat.  Mrs. Algie was also in
ducks—cut on a different pattern, of course.  It
was a very fetching little costume.  We say
"little" advisedly.  The skirt had been made
remarkably short, or it had grown that way from
too long and too intimate association with
steam-laundries.  The effect, in any case, was to keep
it hovering about midway between the nautical
and the naughty.

The rest of us were in the ordinary Sunday
garb of churchgoers who happen to be going
somewhere else.  Our clothes were sober and
restrained, but natty.  They expressed the sombre
atmosphere of the Sabbath, with a dash of
outing flavor.  Personally, we wore that grey suit
with the black-line pattern which everyone
admired so much.  You may have noticed it—two-button
coat and cuff-bottom trousers.  Really a
very pretty thing.  We don't mention this from
any feeling of childish vanity, but merely
because it has a bearing on later developments.

When we saw the Gladiolus we must confess
we were disappointed.  We had been hearing so
much about it, and Algie had spoken with such
enthusiasm, that we had formed an idea of a
vessel combining the luxury and grace of the Astor
family yacht with the rakishness and speed of a
torpedo-destroyer.  Instead of that gorgeous
conception, here was a boat which looked like a
very long and narrow packing-case, pointed at
one end.  It contained an engine that suggested
a coffee-mill with a very chunky fly-wheel.
Abaft—that, we believe is the technical
term—abaft the engine were a couple of cane-chairs.

The Gladiolus, however, was very strong in
the matter of decoration.  There were stencilled
flower-designs in every possible place, and a
huge flag drooped over the stern.  The cushions
presented florid designs of young ladies in
sailor-blouses.  A large and highly polished
search-light glared over the bow like the eye of an
enraged Cyclops.  There was no acetylene for the
light, but it looked well, and it made one feel
so much safer.

The party fitted itself into the boat as best it
could.  It was a very tight fit.  Two people
seated themselves on the little bench in the stern.
They were jammed in so tight that when one
was pulled out it made a noise like drawing an
obstinate cork.  And two sat on the cane-chairs,
when they weren't sitting on the bottom of the
boat to keep her steady.  The skipper had a
bench all to himself, so that he could get up and
wrestle with the fly-wheel every time the engine
paused to think.

When we were all in the boat, she settled down
to within three inches of the water—or so it
seemed to us personally.  We made a hesitating
comment on the subject to Algie.  He smiled a
wintry smile.

"Guess you don't know much about motor-boats,
old man," he said in a glacial tone.  "You
can't have speed unless you have narrow lines
and a low free-board.  Of course, if you want
something built like a grain-barge——"

Hastily we disclaimed any desire for a
grain-barge.  We stated our entire agreement with
him on the subject of low free-boards.  Our
concurrence was all the more enthusiastic that
we didn't know the difference between a low
free-board and a loose plank in the fence.

Soothed by our submission, Algie stepped
gingerly forward, taking great care not to kick the
engine over.  He gazed sternly about.  We
watched anxiously.  Algie bent down with dignity,
grasped the fly-wheel with both hands, and
gave a mighty heave.  The engine coughed
asthmatically and relapsed into silence.  Algie
heaved again.  The engine cleared its throat—only
that and nothing more.  Algie smiled a
sickly smile, muttered something about the
sparker, toyed with a few cocks and levers—that
engine seemed to possess more of them than
any piece of mechanism we have ever seen—and
then heaved that blessed wheel for fifteen
minutes without stopping.  Nothing doing!  Algie
was red in the face, his lovely ducks were all
smudged with oil, and still the engine preserved
the meditative silence of a paralyzed yogi.

It was very trying, very.  We all started in to
make suggestions, and Algie was so much at a
loss that he even tried to carry some of them out,
thus losing caste terribly in our eyes.  No
skipper should ever treat a suggestion with anything
but withering contempt.  At last he lost his
temper and gave the engine a kick.  We don't
know what he struck, but he certainly struck
something.  The result was miraculous.  The
engine started with a roar like an express-train
on a bridge, and before we knew we were shooting
out into the Lake, just missing a canoe in
which a young man sprawled with a double-bladed
paddle and beamed at his "ladifren."  As
we whizzed by, nearly knocking the paddle
out of his hand, that young man sat straight up,
and while we were within range his conversation
was of a character not countenanced by the
Lord's Day Alliance.

Thus we started.  Of course we didn't keep it
up long.  After about a hundred yards or so, the
Gladiolus settled down to a steady clip of about
three miles an hour—when she was going.
There were frequent intervals when the engine
stopped to get its breath.  But we didn't mind.
It was a lovely bright day, and there was very
little wind.  So with our one-lung engine we
gayly coughed our way over the glassy waters.
We made many jokes, and occasionally burst
into song—all except Algie, of course.  Algie
insisted on preserving the best traditions of
British seamanship.  On shore he might relax, but
while he was at sea and our lives depended on
him, he stayed right there on the bridge, and his
stern eyes swept the waste of waters and the
rock-bound coast lest danger should lurk there.  He
must have seen a lot of dangers that no one else
saw, for he kept zigzagging and tacking about in
the most extraordinary manner.

Pleasantly the hours passed and the landmarks
on shore—summer hotels, gaudy villas smirking
coquettishly through the trees, boating
establishments where gentlemen hire canoes for their
ladies, or perhaps ladies for their canoes.
Slowly we drew near to Mimico.  There is an
asylum at Mimico.  We have heard friends of
ours account for its presence there on the ground
that one must be out of one's mind to live at
Mimico; but as they had been fined for speeding
through the village, it is possible that their
opinion was not entirely unbiased.

Inch by inch Mimico slipped past the beautiful
low free-board of the Gladiolus.  And
incidentally, that famous free-board began to seem
lower than ever.  For some little time the wind
had been rising, and the waves kept growing
bigger—"quite a sea kicking up," as Algie said—and
now and then there was an unmistakeable
slap of spray over the side.  The original
intention had been to go some miles further along the
shore for lunch, but Algie finally decided to
turn back to Mimico—not that he distrusted the
seaworthy qualities of the Gladiolus or himself,
but merely as a concession to the fears of the
ladies in the party.  He announced his intention
of landing at the Asylum.  He had been a visitor
or a guest or something there, and professed to
know the doctor quite well.  Besides they had a
good wharf, he said.

Algie managed to warp in the Gladiolus, after
several determined efforts to knock the end off
the concrete pier.  Then we landed the grub.
Each of the three gentlemen—we include
Algie—assumed the white man's burden, while the
ladies tripped on gracefully ahead.  We
advanced into the grounds of the Asylum.  There
were a number of the inmates strolling about,
but they made no attempt to accost us.
Evidently they thought we were new and more than
usually weak-minded arrivals.  There was
much to support such a view.

We found a nice spot for picnicking.  It was
on a low bluff overlooking the Lake.  Sombre
pines cast romantic shadows about us.  And the
lunch was excellent—just such a lunch as
marooned sailors might dream to find awaiting them
in heaven.  We even had initialed napkins.
And as the food went down our spirits rose.  We
felt that the perils of the deep were a myth, and
we said ha-ha in our hearts and asked for another
piece of pie.  Then, having eaten and the
chicken bones having been thrown over the cliff,
we lay about in graceful postures, listening to
what the wild waves were saying and quoting
such verse as we remembered out of the fifth
reader.

Suddenly it occurred to someone that the wild
waves were saying a good deal and that they
were talking in a big bass voice.  We woke up
to the fact that the wind had wakened up some
time previously.

"Lord, but it's going to be rough!" said Algie:

But none of us realized just how rough it was
going to be, or we would have all walked to
town.  Seen from above, waves are very different
from what they are when seen from below—a
truth which no member of that party will ever
doubt again.  We hastily packed up and made
a run for the wharf and the boat.  When we got
there we found that another boat had also sought
its shelter.  Two sun-burned youths in extremely
primitive costumes brooded in it and smoked
cigarettes and cursed their engine.  They had
tried everything they could think of, including a
lot of language they had never thought of before,
and the darn thing wouldn't go.  Thereupon
Algie climbed into their boat and worked like an
African slave for half an hour, in spite of our
appeals and unveiled hints that he was an ass.

At last even Algie gave the task up and
consented to get back into his own boat and begin a
little Græco-Roman with his own engine.
Strangely enough, that temperamental machine
was quite amenable this time.  It took only
twelve minutes and a few damns to start it.
Promptly we backed into the other fellow's
anchor rope and put several fancy stitches into it
with our propeller.  Naturally our propeller
became somewhat involved in the process.  The
other gentlemen—and when we say "gentlemen!"—refused
to let us cut the rope, so there
was nothing for it but to land the ladies once
more, shoo them away from the wharf, undress
Algie, and put him into the water.  We kept
him there till he had untied the propeller, and
then we dragged him in, half-frozen.  When he
recovered sufficiently to be able to speak, he used
some expressions which we are personally treasuring
up for an occasion of great mental stress.

We rounded the break-water, incidentally
scraping all the paint off one side of the boat, and
then everything happened at once.  A great big
wave with a white head saw us coming, gave a
glad, wild shout, and jumped aboard.  The
Gladiolus shuddered and groaned, and we all
shuddered and groaned.  But it was only the
beginning.  The big wave was followed by a
bigger, which also climbed playfully aboard and
coiled up in our laps.  And then all Lake
Ontario seemed to crowd in on us at once.  We were
breathing, drinking, and absorbing water which
we had intended using solely for purposes of
navigation.

The way the Gladiolus acted would have been
a revelation to a builder of submarines.  That
rakish craft, with the long, narrow lines and the
lovely low freeboard, dived into every wave and
shipped it gracefully all over the passengers.
With a very little coaxing, she would have
plunged down and run along the bottom.  Now
and then she came up to breathe, and then we all
looked a mute farewell at one another and
disappeared once more beneath the foam.  None
of us ever expected to see Yonge Street and the
department-stores again.

The most extraordinary thing about the whole
damp business was the way the engine kept
going.  A real engine would have stopped dead the
first time a wave came in and lay down beside it.
But this rheumatic and asthmatic old bunch of
junk, which some heartless pirate had sold to
Algie for an engine, kept coughing and sputtering
through it all.  There was no spray-hood,
and the water was about a foot deep all around
the machine, but it hammered away with a
steadiness it would never have displayed in
happier circumstances.

We would have turned back if we could, but
we couldn't.  Algie was in no condition of mind
to steer, and the boat wouldn't answer the rudder
anyway.  So we just chug-chugged through the
welter, holding our breaths when we were under
water, and gasping for air when we could get
any.  Now and then we caught sight of Algie
hanging on to the wheel, evidently prepared to
go to his God like a sailor.  It was noble but it
wasn't seamanship.

For years and years we kept plunging into
huge waves that rose up from the nether abyss,
towered over our heads, and then crashed down
upon us like the side of the Woolworth Building.
Once or twice we caught a fleeting glimpse
of the shore, with peaceful cottages upon it, and
we remembered that somewhere the sun was
shining and somewhere hearts were light.  But
we had little time for reflection.

Suddenly, after a century or two of submarine
existence, we found that we were at Sunnyside
once more.  We were very much at Sunnyside.
We were on the beach, with huge waves breaking
over us, and three hundred people yelling
directions at us.  Some noble life-savers stood on
the end of a wharf and threw us a rope.  Algie
grabbed it and performed prodigies of pulling.
But it was no use.  There we stuck, and a lot
more waves came tumbling in to play with us.
That is where we personally saw our duty, and
we did it.  We got out and pushed.  It sounds
simple.  Most heroic things do.  But it took
the eye that saw and the legs that dared.  We
clambered out in the bosom of a wave, got a firm
toe-hold on the submerged soil of Sunnyside, laid
our head lovingly against the polished side of
the Gladiolus, and shoved her out into the Lake.
Then we held her there and got in again, carrying
about a barrel of water with us, like a
Newfoundland dog coming back with a stick he has
retrieved.

Far be it from us to dwell upon this part of
the adventure, though we know men who have
got their pictures into the paper and the pictures
of their entire families for deeds no braver.  And
these men have been sailors, hardened to the
perils of the splashy deep, while we are a raw
amateur whose favorite exercise is running a
typewriter.  But let us pass on.

Little remains to be told.  Algie finally
managed to blunder into the shelter of the Humber
River.  There we fished the ladies out of the
boat, wrung them out, and we all walked rapidly
home.  We walked to keep from being chilled to
death—also because there wasn't the slightest
chance of them letting us board a street-car in
that condition.  Fortunately, home wasn't more
than a mile or so away—Algie's home.  But it
seemed farther.  Our clothes stuck lovingly to
our personalities, and passers-by made unfeeling
remarks.

Algie and Mrs. Algie did their very best for
us.  They fed us, gave us old clothes while ours
were drying, made us take a little something with
hot water and lemon in it, and rendered all the
first aids usual in such circumstances.  When we
came away we told them we had had a lovely
time.

"You must come out again in her," said Algie,
"when I have had her decked in, and a new
four-cylinder engine...."

But that was a long time ago, and we are still
resisting the temptation—tactfully, we trust, but
firmly.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Aesthetics and Some Tea`:

.. figure:: images/img-027.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: AESTHETICS AND SOME TEA

   AESTHETICS AND SOME TEA

.. class:: center large bold

   Æsthetics and Some Tea

.. vspace:: 2

Why anyone should invite us to an æsthetic
tea is one of those insoluble mysteries
which Heaven alone can penetrate—supposing
that Heaven would so far condescend as to notice
the matter at all.  We are not æsthetic, and we
don't care a darn about tea.

What's more, we hate dressing up for it.
There might be some sense in dressing up for a
case of beer or a couple of bottles of Scotch.
But why people should get into afternoon gowns
and morning-coats for tea and postage-stamp
sandwiches—well, it beats us, dear reader, it
beats us.

Of course, nothing was stated in the invitation
about it being an æsthetic tea.  But we were
asked to meet Mrs. De Frizac-Jones, and we
knew what that meant.  The reader may not
know Mrs. De Frizac-Jones—at least, not by
that name—but she is a very real person.  She
is the arch-priestess of the higher cultchaw in our
town.  And she makes it pay—about five
thousand a year and unlimited kudos!  But more of
her anon.

So we shook the camphor out of our morning-coat,
and put a little indelible ink on the places
where the lining showed through the more recent
moth-holes in the vest.  We sewed a button or
two on our striped trousers, took a spot off one
leg, rectified the line of our shirt-bosom and cuffs
by clipping the feathers off the edges, read a
couple of chapters of a book of etiquette—all
about leaving your hat and stick in the hall
without fear, and making a bright, spontaneous
remark to your hostess on entering and leaving (a
different remark each time, we presume)—and
we felt prepared for the massed attacks of the
enemy, including gas.

When we arrived there was already a goodly
company assembled—thirty-seven ladies and
three men.  The ladies were bubbling over with
unsuppressed excitement, and the air was filled
with extremely cultured badinage involving the
frequent mention of Mæterlinck and Mrs. Inez
Haynes Gilmore.  The three men didn't seem
excited.  They weren't saying a word.  Till we
were introduced to them, we thought they were
the hired help.

The expression of intense eagerness with
which every lady's face was turned to the door
as we stepped in, caused a flush of pride and
modest confusion to mantle our Grecian features.
Not that we are entirely unused to such
manifestations of feminine approval—but
thirty-seven all at once!

When they saw it was only us—that is, when
they saw it was only we—O Lord, we mean when
they saw who it was, thirty-six of the ladies
turned around again and began talking to the
nearest person in loud, casual tones, with a
unanimity that we can only describe as unpleasantly
marked.  The thirty-seventh was our hostess.
She, poor woman, had to look at us, and she
came forward with a wan smile and her hand
stretched out.

"Oh, I'm so glad you have come," she assured
us without conviction.  "You will adore Mrs. De
Frizac-Jones—her influence makes so powerfully
for sweetness and light, as dear Matthew
Arnold would say.  And you newspapermen—you
are so dreadfully cynical, so *tout à fait
cynique*!  She will be here any moment now.  We
are all longing for her.  She is wonderful—so
psychic, you know."

So that was why they all looked at the door
when we first came in—they thought we were the
priestess herself.  And we were going to be
uplifted.  Also we were to be psyched—a
hilarious prospect for a healthy, single man!  We
told our hostess, however, that we were sure we
would adore Mrs. De Hyphen-Jones, as we
always liked 'em psychic.  We were about to
explain that as a rule we preferred psychic blondes,
but that a good psychic brunette with a neat
ankle—our hostess, however, turned and
addressed the company at large.

"Just to show you how wonderful she is," she
warbled ecstatically, "the very first time she
honored our little home with her presence, she
simply telephoned to say she was coming, and when
I began to tell her the address and how to get
here, she stopped me at once.  'Don't tell me,'
she said, 'don't even tell me the number.  For
when I come down the street, I will know at once
the house where you dwell by its emanation of
your personality, its you-ness, so to speak.'  And
she did!  She came straight to the door."

On every side were heard gurgles of wonder
and delight—"Marvellous!" "Isn't she just too
wonderful?" "Extraordinary creature of
genius!"  And right in the midst of that liquid
chorus of enthusiasm, we had to break in with
one of those inept and devastating remarks which
have time and again blasted our hopes of social
preferment.

"But if she telephoned to you," we said in a
loud voice like the imbecile we are, "she must
have seen your address in the telephone book."

There was a chilling pause of indignation and
a universal glassy stare.  We felt the finger of
scorn burning a hole in our shirt-bosom just
above our heart.  It was a hideous situation for
us.  We glanced about anxiously for a nice, low
sofa to crawl under, when there was a sudden
diversion to the right.

Mrs. De Frizac-Jones!—we were a lot gladder
to see her than we had ever expected to be.
She stood in the doorway, a middle-aged vision
in powder-blue (or so we heard one lady
describe the color).  She carried her head slightly
on one side, and a pensive smile lit up the
shadows under her blue hat with a blue-and-black
ostrich-mount (more eavesdropping on our
part).  She held out her hand to the hostess as
though it were an orchid.

"So sorry to be late," we heard her say.  And
then the phalanx of ladies charged as one woman,
leaving us four men stranded in the middle of
the floor.  We looked furtively at one another,
but no one winked.  We were all gentlemen.
Besides, we were all badly scared.

"I am so utterly exhausted," Mrs. De Frizac-Jones
explained languidly, when the first wild
enthusiasm of welcome had somewhat subsided.
"I have been lecturing to a class of dear girls on
rhythm and deportment, you know, and it takes
so much out of one.  But their sweet sympathy
and intelligence are very reviving.  I was
teaching them how they must walk—stooping
slightly forward, with the face gracefully
uptilted.  The mannish swagger of most girls
nowadays is so very frightful.  I told them that
when they glide across a room, they must say to
themselves, 'I am a lily swaying in the breeze.'  And
they understood at once—they are so
exquisitely plastic."

All the ladies, talking together, said it was
really miraculous how she thought of such lovely
metaphors.  And it brought the idea home to
one so beautifully—a lily swaying in the breeze!
Personally, we recalled that the last time we saw
anyone trying to walk like a lily swaying in the
breeze, was about 1.35 a.m. on a down-town
thoroughfare.  The person in question was
trying to carry a most splendiferous slosh past a
watchful guardian of the law without affording
an excuse for police intervention.  The result
was something like a lily, and also something
like a wrecking-crane that had got out of control.
But we didn't tell the company this bright
thought of ours.  We didn't tell anybody—we
had had enough of telling.

A few minutes later we were presented to the
great woman.  Our hostess did it with the air
of one consciously heaping coals of fire on our
head.  She murmured something about our being
a literary critic—as a matter of fact, the
Managing-Editor makes us review such books
as come in, because the stenographer has too
much other work to do, and the last office-boy he
tried it on quit.

"Ah-h-h!" said the prophetess giving us her
hand, and promptly dismissing that limb from
her thoughts—we nearly put it in our vest-pocket
we were so embarrassed.  "Ah-h-h!  And where
is your centre?"

Just casually like that—just as though she were
asking us where was our favorite hotel.  In fact,
for a wild moment we did think she might mean
where did we usually hang out socially, and we
almost said that we could generally be found
after office-hours in the Press Club playing
poker or waiting for a friendly boot-legger.  But
the slight vestige of sanity remaining to us
prevented this final catastrophe, and we managed
to stammer out that we were not aware of
possessing any centre at all—none to speak of.

"Oh, but you must have a centre," she
persisted brightly.  "We who are engaged in the
sacred service of the arts and muses must have a
centre, a guiding beacon leading us ever onward
and upward to the stars.  Have you no star?"

We hadn't the heart to tell the dear lady that
the star to which we generally turned our longing
eyes in the service of the arts and muses was
the hope that the Business Office of the journal
on which we work would increase the weight and
thickness of our weekly envelope—(the printer
will please not spell this "weakly," however
appropriate and true the epithet may be).  We
did not care to introduce these mercenary
considerations, so we said nothing and blushed.  We
may be a benighted newspaperman, but we retain
certain rudiments of delicacy.  She smiled on us
in imitation of a Pre-Raphaelite madonna, and
floated away.

Then we had tea—not right away, but after
half an hour or so of pained wonder whether or
not we were going to get anything at all, and
where the dickens the people were all drifting
away to.  They disappeared, two or three at a
time, and none of them came back.  We began
to suspect that we were being ostracized, when
our hostess came up and collected us.

"Oh, you naughty, naughty man," she said in
that mischievous and knowing tone which some
married ladies love to adopt towards bachelors,
"you don't deserve that I should bother about
you at all, but you really must have something
to eat.  Come out to the dining-room."

We went out to the dining-room, disguising
as well as we could our extreme eagerness for
vittles of some sort or other; and there we found
that assemblage of giant intellects wandering
about picking sandwiches and little cakes and
cups of tea off the mantel, off the side-board, off
the window-sill, off chairs, and even off the stairs
in the hall.  They were taking their food the
way the Twentieth Century Limited takes water,
scooping it up on the run.  We must have looked
a little amazed, for our hostess deigned to
explain.

"That is the way we eat now," she said.  "We
do it spontaneously and almost unconsciously.
Mrs. De Frizac-Jones suggested it.  She said
there was something so gross and premeditated
about sitting down deliberately to food.  One
should eat as the bees sip honey, flitting about
from flower to flower."

We said we thought it a very delightful idea—no
doubt, the cook does, too.  Then we walked
six miles and a half around the place trying to
get enough to sustain the vital forces till
supper-time.  We finished up by nearly sitting in a
plate of angel-cake.  And we were still hungry.
It may be a good system for humming-birds, but
it has its drawbacks for people gifted with the
usual thirty-two feet of internal equipment.

When the sandwiches had at last been all
tracked down and destroyed spontaneously and
unconsciously, there was a general demand that
Mrs. De Frizac-Jones should read something to
us.  After the usual amount of ah-do-pleasing on
our part and no-I-rully-can'ting on hers, she
suddenly remembered that she had Mæterlinck's
"Death of Tintagiles" with her, and if they rully
insisted—and, of course, they rully did.

The company draped itself in attitudes more
or less graceful all over the furniture and the
window-ledges, and assumed expressions of
gloomy concentration.  Mrs. De Frizac-Jones
cleared her throat two or three times in a silvery
way, and then began to read in a deadly monotone
of the soul-freezing sort which villains used
to employ in the "ten-twenty-thirt's" before the
movies killed the spoken drama.

Personally, we feared the worst from the very
moment that the name of Mæterlinck was
mentioned.  It acts like a spell.  We have seen big,
bouncing matrons, accustomed to bully their
husbands and run large families, turn pale and
tremble at the sound of it.  We have known it
to reduce to silence even the sort of prosperous
business person who talks continually in a loud
voice about his new car, and the cost of its tires,
and the number of its cylinders, and the oceans
of gasoline it consumes every time it runs around
the block.  The word makes them feel like a
greenhorn at a Spiritist sceance watching a
visitor from another plane materialize in the
corner of the room.

The only people who seem to thrive on a diet
of Mæterlinck are the æsthetes like Mrs. De
Frizac-Jones.  The gloomier the twilight of his
scene, the more mournful the voices that float
down the wind, the more the real enthusiasts
expand and burgeon.  Just give them a nice poetic
strangling or something like that, and they are
perfectly happy.  Certainly, Mrs. De Frizac-Jones
seemed to get a lot of fun out of "The
Death of Tintagiles."

It was a cheerful little piece, all about a dear
child and a black castle and a vampire queen.
His young sisters try to shield him in their arms,
but the queen's servants tear him away, and she
slowly strangles him to death behind a big iron
door while his sisters beat in despair upon it.

The reader will recognize at once how much
better and stronger one feels when a play like this
is over.  Personally we almost gave three cheers
when the poor little beggar was finally and
completely killed.  It put him out of pain—us, too.
But fortunately Mrs. De Frizac-Jones checked
us in time.

"No applause!" she commanded the company.
"No applause!  Silence is best."

We heroically restrained our desire to clap
with our hands and pound with our feet on the
rug; and everyone else sat still and frowned in
intense thought.  While they were wrestling
with their souls, we slipped out into the hall.
There we found one of the other men slipping
away, too.  Neither spoke a word, till we were
both safely out on the sidewalk.  Then he turned
and pointed with his thumb to the house.

"Don't they beat hell!" he said.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Beauty in the Bank`:

.. figure:: images/img-041.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: BEAUTY IN THE BANK

   BEAUTY IN THE BANK

.. class:: center large bold

   Beauty in the Bank

.. vspace:: 2

Somehow we enjoy going to the bank nowadays
far more than we used to.  It isn't that
we are more solvent than heretofore—our
solvency does not seem to increase with our
years—but the banks are much more interesting resorts
than in the old days before the war filled them up
with young ladies.  The banks now have more
color and animation, so to speak—especially
since the girls have taken to wearing those gaudy
pull-over sweaters.

We were reminded of this changed aspect of
our sterner financial institutions the other day,
when we caught ourself going in to have our
bank-book made up for the third time in the
week.  Formerly it had been our custom to wait
till we got a short and nasty note from the
accountant asking us to call around and fix up that
overdraught.  But now we run right in every
time we pass and have a little book-keeping done
for us.

Instead of the gloomy young man who used to
preside over the records of the savings
department, they now have a bright young woman.
This naturally introduces a very pleasing social
atmosphere.  We no longer chuck our bankbook
in through the wicket with an air of weary
nonchalance, or gaze coldly at the clerk as
though daring him to make an insolent remark
about the size of our balance and the amount of
book-keeping it involves.  Our account is still
small and very lively, but we don't gaze
coldly—on the contrary!

Now we take off our hat, and try to think up
something sprightly to say about the weather.
If it is a nice day in the summer, for instance,
this leads naturally to a discussion of the best
place to spend one's vacation, and whether or not
one likes sailing, and does one do much dancing
in the summer, and how good the roads are for
motoring just now.

If it is winter or the weather is bad, it brings
one at once to the tragic impossibility of going
anywhere or doing anything, and how dull town
is just now, and the theatre and the
movies—especially the movies!  This last is an opening
we have found invariably successful.  Once you
mention Mary Pickford or Francis X. Bushman,
acquaintance ripens visibly.  Young ladies who
turn coldly from almost any other conversational
bait rise voraciously to this one, and take it hook,
line, and sinker.

A great thing, too, about discussing film-favorites
is that it furnishes a most useful index to
character.  Girls who like Mary Pickford and
Douglas Fairbanks, for instance, are apt to be of
the merry, hoydenish sort—fond of romping, you
know, and caramels and practical jokes, and all
that sort of jolly rot.  The admirers of Clara
Kimball Young or Mr. Bushman, on the other
hand, are usually of the yearning, soulful type,
the kind of girl who wants you to recite poetry
to her in the twilight, and longs for some strong
man to protect her—this sort of thing usually
leads to solitaire-diamond rings.  But the young
ladies who enthuse over Theda Bara and Pauline
Frederick—well, when we run across one of
these we always look around for help.  When
one meets an amateur of vamping one had best
not get too far from one's strategic reserves.

This conversational gambit, is all right, but
the trouble in the banks is that they keep
changing the young ladies around.  Just as soon as we
have got things moving along nicely, and have
reached the point where we can talk about the
young lady's preferences in the matter of
supper, or can throw out general suggestions in the
direction of an evening's paddle in the Island
lagoon, they remove her to an inaccessible
portion of the building—perhaps they confine her
in the main vault—and we have to start all over
again.  It is a little discouraging, even though
our heart is in the work.  Bank managers and
chief accountants certainly seem to be jealous
devils.

Business men, too, are an awful nuisance.
They have a way of breaking in disastrously on
our little *tête-à-têtes* at the wicket.  One day last
summer an awfully nice girl was reading a
cheque we brought in, while we playfully seized
her other hand which she had left carelessly
within reach.  Naturally she didn't notice that
we were holding it—wonderful concentration
these business women have!  And naturally
neither of us was paying much attention to
anyone else—not while this particular business
matter was being settled.

"Say, what is this?" a wheezy voice asked at
our ear.  "Is this a bank or have I butted into
a manicuring parlor?"

We looked at the person, a fat and clammy
merchant with a bunch of colored cheques in his
flabby fist, the sort of human hippo who wears a
pink shirt with a Palm Beach suit, and perspires
on the end of the nose.  We looked coldly down
him from the gaudy band on his Panama, to the
gilded buckle of his belt—everything below that
was concealed by the overhang—but we couldn't
think of a darn thing to say.  Nothing suitable
for a bank, that is.

Fortunately the lady was more than equal to
the occasion.  She raised her eyebrows and
looked at the cheques he held.

"Do you want to cash those?" she asked in
silvery tones of hauteur.

"I do," he said with unabashed assurance, "if
you can spare the time—and a hand."

"Well, then you had better run out and get
someone to identify you—perhaps one of the
other butchers might be willing."

We could see the ripples of rage run up the
back of that fat financier's neck.  He turned a
rich magenta, and the diamond on his little
finger wobbled about as though he were trying to
send a distress message by heliograph.

"Where—where's the Manager?" he spluttered.
"I want the Manager.  I'll report you,
that's what I'll do—you—you minx!"

"Second door at the left of the main entrance,"
she said sweetly, and reached for a ledger.  She
did not seem flustered in the least, but our little
conversazione was over—this sort of interruption
makes it so difficult to recapture the first fine
careless rapture.

It was our own fault.  We shouldn't have
gone in at an hour when business men were likely
to be shouldering their way up to the financial
trough.  In order to take advantage of the social
possibilities of present-day banking, it is best to
call early—say, around ten o'clock.  Then the
commercial machine has not got properly under
way and little flowers of romance may be made
to bloom in the arid paths of business.

But, of course, one mustn't go too early.  One
must give the girls a chance to exchange their
little confidences with one another about the sort
of time they had the night before, and what
canoe club he belongs to, and how many fox-trots
she had with him, and what she said to Reggie
when Reggie objected to her going around with
a former aviator—aviators presumably being
men of flighty notions of morality—and the
other vital topics that ladies discuss the morning
after.

We made that mistake one morning two or
three months ago.  A fellow had given us a
cheque—it was rather a surprise, we admit—and
we were quite short of money, which is never a
surprise to us.  We needed it and we needed it
quickly, so we were at the door of his bank just
one minute and a half after it opened.  We
didn't want to give anyone else a chance to beat
us to his bank-balance, so we were there at
nine-thirty-six-and-a-half.

The young ladies were present all right—most
of them, at any rate—but they had not yet turned
their minds to the business of the day.  About
a dozen of them were gathered in chatty little
groups, from which stray snatches of conversation
reached our ears.

"I think I'd have frills on it, my dear," said
one.  "You know those net and muslin frills are
all the rage.  Gertie was over at Buffalo last
week, and she said that the girls were wearing
them all over."

How "all over?"  But another broke in.

"Say, have you girls seen Maud's new Dew-Kist
silk skirt?" she burbled.  "It's just too
sweet.  But don't you think Dew-Kist is an
awful nuisance?—everything sticks to it, you
know.  And it gets so fuzzy when it's rubbed."

Dew-Kist!—it certainly was a very pretty
name.  A Dew-Kist skirt suggested Arcadian
gambols about the morning meadows, with
singing and laughter and—well, there is no need of
leaving all the kissing to the dew.  But we
decided not to rub one of those skirts—not if it was
going to get all fuzzy and give us away like
that.  We even made a brief mental prayer that
the vogue of Dew-Kist silk would be a short one,
much as we liked the name.

Then we waited patiently for another five
minutes, while the conversation turned lightly to
chenille hats and knitted sweaters.

"I am doing mine in old-rose silk," one young
lady informed the other girls and the banking
public generally, as represented by us.  "Wool
is getting so common, don't you think?  And the
silk clings to the figure much better.  You don't
get that bulkiness around the waist."

Under the circumstances, we were strong for
silk, and we were glad to think the girls were
taking it up.  In fact, we found the whole
conversation very pleasant and improving.  But we
could not help reflecting that our financial
purpose in visiting the bank was not being furthered
by it, and that the Managing Editor might
perhaps be impatient for our presence at the office.
Of course, his humor would all depend on what
sort of golf he had played the afternoon before,
but one mustn't count too confidently on a good
score.

So we coughed.  We coughed gently at first,
and then louder and louder, until finally we were
tearing the fur lining out of our throat.  A
couple of fair bankeresses glanced at us as though
we were an obnoxious June-bug.  And then one
of them—we think it was Claire—sauntered over
to us humming one of Al Jolson's newest records.
She laid a powder-puff on the desk and stretched
a languid hand for our cheque.  She read the
cheque.  She seemed to read it over several
times.  Then she laid it on the ledger and
walked back to the group.  An idea had
evidently struck her—we thought she was going to
call the police.

"Oh, girls," she said, "do you know what that
dirty little cat, Edith...."

We wouldn't have minded so much if we had
been able to catch the rest of it, but she lowered
her voice, their heads all drew together, and we
were left to beat our forehead against the brass
grating in impotent rage.  We also thumped on
the desk with the end of our cane.  They heard
us—you could hear us two blocks away—but
they heeded not.

Finally, the only man in sight came out of the
teller's cage—if we worked in a bank these days,
we also would wish to be kept in a cage.  We
would feel much safer that way.  He was a
comparatively young man but he looked harassed and
worn.  He came up to the wicket, and we
pointed to our cheque—we were too hoarse to
speak.  He picked it up.

"Say, would some of you ladies kindly consent
to attend to this?" he asked in an O-my-gawd
tone of voice.  It was the voice of a man who
had suffered much and saw no relief in sight.

Claire came back, still humming.  Her manner
indicated that she despised us both.  The
Paying Teller—at least, that was the name on
his cage—went into the big vault in the back of
the office.  Then he returned.

"Have you changed your combination, Miss
Jenkins," he asked curtly, "or do you wish me
to do it for you?"

Her combination—great heavens!  We
gasped and the purple flood of embarrassment
mantled our particularly open countenance.
But Claire was perfectly cool.

"Thanks," she said without the quiver of an
eyelid, "but I want to get used to doing it myself."

She handed us our cheque and then she disappeared
into the vault.  No wonder they have big
iron doors on those things!

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Koncerning Kosmetics`:

.. figure:: images/img-053.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: KONCERNING KOSMETICS

   KONCERNING KOSMETICS

.. class:: center large bold

   Koncerning Kosmetics

.. vspace:: 2

As a matter of fact—and we are a bear for
facts—it should be spelled with a "k."  It
comes from the Greek "kosmetikos," meaning
one skilled in ornament.  Honest to heaven, it
does!  We looked it up in the dictionary; and
who are we that we should quarrel with a
ten-pound lexicon?  As a concession to custom,
however, and to the beauty-experts who spell it
with a "c," we will so far unbend from our
classical austerity as to use the vulgar form
"cosmetics" in the present article.  The Greeks
aren't likely to buy this book, anyway.

In the meantime the reader is probably wondering
what in the world should cause us to write
about the subject at all.  The reader, we hope,
is too well aware of our chaste aloofness of soul
to suppose for a second that we have perhaps
been cavorting about with persons who dye and
stencil themselves—God bless us, no!  We
wouldn't do such a thing, even if the income
taxes left us any money to do it with.

To tell the whole truth as simply as possible—and
the person who tells the whole truth is
obviously very simple—we were walking down to
the office the other morning with a good churchman.
Oh, a real pillar of ecclesiasticism!  Not
that we are in the habit of hunting up good
churchmen to walk down with, but if we run into
one—hang it all! we have to walk with him.  We
can't very well shout for a policeman.

Well, as we were walking down with him, and
he was telling us some pretty little thing or other
about something in the Thirty-Nine Articles—not
to be confused with the Fifty-Seven, which
are much spicier—we met a young lady, another
pretty little thing.  We meet her quite often.
Morning after morning she walks up the street
just about the time that we walk down.  We
don't know her.  We don't even speak to her.
But she looks sweetly at us, and we regard her in
the tenderly paternal way befitting our years.  A
very nice little girl, indeed, and one of these
days we are going to raise our hat, and...

This morning she dimpled daintily as usual,
and we felt that soft glow which even the
middle-aged can acknowledge without shame.  It was
pleasant meeting her.  It gave a headier zest to
the morning air, an additional sparkle to the
winter sunshine, a sudden glamor as of green
leaves and singing birds amid the bleak trees of
December.  It was as though old Pan had
suddenly blown a few wild notes on his pipes and
set a host of little elves peeping roguishly around
the posts and porches of that monotonous and
respectable street.  For a moment we felt quite
young and—well, rather devilish, you know.

"Tut, tut, tut," said our religious friend.
"My, my, my—too bad, too bad!"

We wondered what the dickens he was
tut-tutting about.  He couldn't read our thoughts,
and in any case they were entirely innocent.  So
why the tut-tutting?  Why should a well-known
drygoods merchant with a grown-up family go
along making a noise like a sick Ford?

"What's the matter?" we asked.  "Have you
left something behind you at the house, or have
you forgotten to shut off the draught of the
furnace?  That's the worst of furnaces, you have to
be so...."

But he turned on us an appalled countenance
as though he had just caught the rector kissing
the president of the Ladies' Auxiliary.
Instinctively we felt he was going to say something
about our little friend of the dimples.  He did.

"She paints!" he gasped.  "Isn't it terrible to
see a young girl—and rather comely, too, so far
as I could observe in passing—paint the way she
does?"

The old snooper!  And he looked at us in the
confident expectation that we would agree with
him.  We affected to misunderstand him and
said that perhaps she did paint badly, and that
Cubism and Futurism and the other new
movements were playing the very devil with art.
Painting wasn't at all what it used to be, and we
proceeded to instance two or three men we know
who also paint very badly indeed.

"They seem to have lost their sense of tonality
and chiaroscuro," we remarked desperately,
hoping the technical balderdash would distract his
attention.  "The vibration seems to have gone
out of their paint, and their brush-work is..."

"But she paints herself!" he insisted.

Isn't that characteristic of the truly religious
mind?  They never miss a thing, those chaps.
They seem to know instinctively—at least, we
hope it is instinctively—everything that a woman
shakes, smears, or pours on herself.  They can
tell rouge, face-powder, or hair-dye blocks away.
If they tried hard they could probably tell you
where every woman on the street buys her
complexion, her coiffure, and her contours, and how
they are put on.  It is a great gift.  Personally,
it takes us years of acquaintance to find out.

We remember once a very churchly young
man—the kind that always shows you to a pew
and opens the hymn-book at the right place for
you—telling us of a musical comedy into which
he would seem to have wandered under a
misapprehension.  We had gone ourself, and it had
struck us as being decidedly tame.  But he was
filled with indignant wonder that the Censor
should permit such shameless and Babylonian
displays.

"Fortunately I sat at the back of the house,"
he said, "or I wouldn't have known where to
look.  One of the girls in the chorus, the second
from the right, didn't even wear tights, but
danced in her bare legs!"

Great guns!  And there we had sat up in Row
E on the aisle—the Dramatic Critic let us have
the seats that night—and hadn't seen a darn
thing.  Verily there is some power that sharpeneth
the eye of the virtuous man and revealeth
unto him the dishabille of the wicked.  For an
upright heart is more powerful than opera-glasses,
and sanctity more exciting than a seat in
the front row.

But to return to the young lady we met on our
walk down to the office.  Naturally we assured
our godly friend that he must be mistaken in his
suspicions.  A little powder, perhaps, to give
that pearly translucency to the complexion and
soften the high-lights on the nose, but no
paint—nothing like that.

"But powder won't make your face that funny
shell-pink color," he argued.  For a man of
pious pursuits, it struck us, his knowledge was
fairly broad.

We told him that powder was liable to make
your face any shade in the spectrum.  We know
from personal experience.  Occasionally after
shaving, when our face feels more than usually
lacerated, we rub some talcum on.  It seems to
take part of the sting out.  It also covers the
places on our neck where we have made futile
and fumbling slashes at our jugular vein.

One morning we shook some powder out of a
new tin, patted ourself with it, and then hurried
down to breakfast.  Our landlady looked at us
with an interest and sympathy that were entirely
unexpected and a little disquieting.

"Are you feeling well?" she asked, instead of
demanding acrimoniously as usual what under
heaven we had been doing upstairs for the last
half hour or so, while the coffee was boiling
itself to a poisonous consistency on the back of the
stove.

We said we were perfectly all right, thanks,
and would she please pass the prunes?

"But you don't look well," she persisted.
"You got an awfully queer color this morning—kind
of mauve."

A vague suspicion struck us that all was not
well.  We went over to the side-board and
squinted at ourself in the silly little mirror which
furniture-makers put in the back of such things.
"Mauve" was right, though perhaps it would be
more exact to state that we were a lovely shade
of heliotrope, very decorative but rather
Futurist in general effect.  We looked as if we had
succeeded in cutting our throat at last, and were
now a pale and beautiful corpse.  We suddenly
recalled that our heart had been acting a little
strangely of late, especially when we were
introduced to new and pretty girls.  Perhaps there
really was something wrong with our old
carburetor—or should we say our ignition system?
We were scared a still paler shade of lavender.

Then we remembered the powder—somehow
it hadn't seemed quite the same as the old stuff,
though we had been in too much of a hurry to
look closely at it.  We ran upstairs and shook
some of it out in our hand—it was a pretty and
quite distinct violet, both as to color and
perfume.  Naturally there is no serious objection to
smelling like a violet, but we had no ambition
to have a complexion like one—we prefer that
the resemblance should be confined to the
beautiful modesty of our disposition.

We took the tin back to our druggist on the
way down-town, and asked him with some
asperity what the big idea was.  We assured him
that we hadn't bought the powder as part of the
make-up to play the leading role at a wake, and
that even in the event of our being laid out we
didn't intend the dash of lavender to be so
brazenly conspicuous—a little purple on our tie,
perhaps, but none on our countenance.

"Oh, that's too bad," he said calmly—druggists
are always calm—"I must have given you
the powder for brunettes by mistake."

For brunettes!—but why, in the name of all
that is sensible, we asked, should brunettes
powder themselves with pale purple?  He
explained patiently that ladies of a dusky
complexion sometimes used it to give their faces that
fashionable pallor which is deemed a symptom
of a certain blueness of the blood.  He had
several other shades, too, for other complexions,
natural or desired.

We told our censorious walking companion all
about this little experience of ours, but it had
not the slightest effect on his opinion—you never
saw such a hard man to convince.  He still
persisted that the young lady painted.  In fact, he
went so far as to describe how they rub the rouge
on, spreading it out carefully with a rabbit's
foot—for luck, we presume—and then cover it up
with powder.  Where the devil do these pious
fellows get their information, anyway?  He was
too much for us.  We had to let him have the
last word.

After all, suppose she does paint—where's the
harm?  See how healthy and attractive it makes
her look.  Of course, the thing has to be done
skilfully and with judgment.  One must display
artistic restraint in such matters, and not lay the
color on with a palette-knife.  Just a *nuance*, a
*soupçon*, that's all.

Mind you, there is nothing like the real
complexion—for one thing, it doesn't rub off on the
shoulder of a fellow's coat.  But suppose a lady
hasn't a complexion which she can afford to
display in unadorned splendor, what's she to do
about it?  She can't very well go out without a
complexion, can she?  The thing seems hardly
decent.

Personally we have never sympathized with
the censorious outcry against the more ruddy
cosmetics.  Why should this particular bit of
camouflage be taboo, when so many other forms
of it are regarded as permissible or even obligatory?
Look at the liberties ladies take with their
waist-line, for instance.  Sometimes it is up
under their shoulder-blades, and a few months
later it is so low they are sitting on it.  Half the
time a man has to look twice to know where to
place his arm.

It is true that the added brilliancy imparted
to the female countenance by the judicious use of
cosmetics constitutes a very formidable weapon
against masculine peace of mind.  So clearly is
this recognized that in Kansas, the home of
fearless and advanced legislation, there is a law
forbidding the use of rouge by any woman under
forty-five years of age.  After that age it is felt
they are entitled to every possible assistance—barring
shot-guns, of course, or other forms of
physical violence.

Perhaps it is a realization of the danger to
himself that causes the average man to inveigh
so furiously against cosmetics.  But his attitude
is more than a little absurd.  He is bound to fall
sooner or later, poor chap, and how does it really
matter if he falls a bit sooner and a bit harder?
Nevertheless, the average man is usually bitterly
opposed to his fair friends making themselves
still fairer by deftly heightening or counterfeiting
the rosy bloom of youth.  He is opposed to
his own sisters doing it—the mean old thing!—and
he frankly rages when he catches his wife at
it.  Extraordinary how sore hubbies get when
they find wifey thus striving to make herself
beautiful in their eyes—can it be that they are
not quite sure whose eyes?

The deliciously inconsistent part of the whole
thing is that no respectable woman ever dreamed
of daubing herself up with cosmetics the way the
ordinary barber plasters most men with powder
and perfumed hair-tonic and toilet dope of all
sorts.  We have seen fat middle-aged men come
out of a barber-shop with their face massaged
and powdered, their hair greased back, their
mustache waxed, their eyebrows smoothed into
place, and their hands manicured, doing their
utmost to look and smell like beautiful Circassian
slaves.  And yet those are the chaps who go
home and holler if they catch their wives
rubbing a little powder on their noses!

Not that it makes the slightest difference, of
course!  The ladies, bless their hearts, will go
right on making themselves beautiful in every
old way they know how, no matter what men
say.  And you are quite right, girls.  Personally
we feel that you can't go too far or be too successful.
So do your darndest!  It's a sad old world
just now, in spite of peace with victory.

But there is just one little word of warning,
girls.  We know you will take it in good part
from a man who has grown grey in the intensity
of his admiration for you.  And that is, don't
do it in public.  A bachelor, it is true, dearly
loves to be initiated into the little mysteries of
the toilet, but not at dinner.  That talcum
powder has an unpleasant way of floating on the
soup or the salad dressing.  And you can't
possibly spread it with the true artistic evenness at
the table.  You nearly always get too much on
one side of your nose.  This gives us an almost
irresistible impulse to lean over and brush it off
for you, and—well, what would the head-waiter
think?  It would probably cost us five dollars
in hush money.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Clurks and Clarks`:

.. figure:: images/img-067.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: CLURKS AND CLARKS

   CLURKS AND CLARKS

.. class:: center large bold

   Clurks and Clarks

.. vspace:: 2

The chief difference between a "clurk" and
a "clark" is about six dollars a week—the
difference, that is, in mere vulgar coin of the
post-war period.  There are tremendous differences,
however, in clothes, dignity, *savoir faire*,
and such intangible things.  There is also a very
pronounced difference between the kinds of
service they give you.  A mere "clurk" may keep
you waiting, but he or she never manages to make
you feel apologetic.  "Clarks" always do—it is
their social privilege.

It is at the blessed season of Christmas that we
are especially reminded of these things.  It is a
time when we are much exposed to clerks—"clerks"
being the generic term.  We consort—not
to say cohabit—with both species.  If hanging
over a counter for hours at a time, yelling
futile directions at a monomaniac who insists on
dragging down everything on the shelves except
the thing one wants—if this doesn't amount to
cohabitation, we would like to know what does.
But, of course, there is something to be said in
extenuation for the clerks.

Some day when we are a lot older and have
made our pile, and have the whole four hundred
and sixty dollars salted away carefully in some
nice safe mining-stock—some day, in short, when
we are independently rich and careless of what
we say, we will write down our frank and
unexpurgated opinion of Christmas shoppers, and
then spend the rest of our life trying to induce
some paper to print it.  But that is a long way
off yet.  For the present we will compromise
with the simple generalization that the average
Christmas shopper is a lineal and typical
descendant of such Gadarenes as managed to swim
to safety after they had taken that historic jump
off the cliff.

We feel that it is only fair to make this
statement before we go on writing about the Christmas
"clurk" and the Christmas "clark."  For the
Christmas shopper explains many things.  To
have to stand for ten, twelve, perhaps fifteen
hours a day, while a lot of people, who have gone
insane from starting in to do their Christmas
shopping early and keeping at it without
intermission ever since, howl impossible orders at one,
would make the patient man of Uz himself pick
up a bolt of dress-goods or a reading-lamp or
some such handy trifle and clear a breathing
space with it.  Samson used the jaw-bone of an
ass.  But the asses who wedge themselves up
against counters and scream at the clerk for
things that are sold either two floors up or three
circles over, keep their jaw-bones to jaw with.

The movement in favor of doing your Christmas
shopping early is no solution of the problem.
It has been worked to death.  If you want to
get ahead of the Christmas shoppers now, you
have to start in the latter part of August.  In
that case your Christmas presents are likely to
consist of lawn-mowers, mosquito netting, and
parasols.

As a matter of fact, the wise man will do his
shopping—unless he is so darn wise that he
doesn't shop at all—the very last thing on
Christmas Eve.  By then all the red-eyed shock-troops
will have got through their deadly work in the
stores, and will be strapped to their beds
surrounded by anxious nurses.  A week earlier an
ordinary man who plunged into a department-store
at any hour of the day would take his life
in his hand—along with his eighty-seven cents.
If he managed to get through alive, he wouldn't
have enough clothes left on him to make it safe
to meet a modest policeman.

Another advantage of putting off your Christmas
shopping is that you are bound to forget a
lot of people to whom you would otherwise have
sent a collection of assorted junk.  Of course, it
is too late by the time you do think of them.  You
are just that much in pocket, and they are
relieved because they won't have to send you
anything next year.

But, to return to the clerks, we had a simply
awful experience last Christmas.  There is a nice
old lady for whom we buy a present every year.
As she isn't our grandmother—grandmothers are
satisfied with any old token of affectionate
regard whether it be a postcard or a hot-water
bottle—we have to exercise a certain care and
judgment.  And naturally our knowledge of the
personal needs and tastes of old ladies is
somewhat limited.

Well, we were standing deep in thought before
a shop-window full of fluffy white garments with
frills and ribbons, intended for purposes mysterious
to bachelor men, when a friend's wife, who
occasionally takes a maternal—or perhaps we
should say sororal—interest in us, came up and
asked us what we were doing there.  Her tone
suggested that she did not believe our interest to
be entirely innocent.  But we did not take
offence.  We told her frankly that we were trying
to pick out something that would be suitable as
a gift for an old lady.

"But you don't suppose, do you, that a nice old
lady would be willing to wear anything in that
window?" she asked.

We said we didn't see why not, and that
personally we thought that cute-looking garment
up there in the corner, with the baby ribbon at
the top and the two ruffles around the bottoms,
would be just the thing.  We spoke in complete
guilelessness, but we spent the next ten minutes
trying to convince her that we hadn't intended to
be objectionable.  Will someone please tell us
why it isn't all right to talk about a thing that it
is all right to display brazenly in a window?  If
it isn't fit to be mentioned it surely isn't fit to be
shown.  But you know what women are when
they get an idea of that sort in their minds.  This
one looked us sternly in the eye.

"I don't believe there is any old lady at all,"
she said, "but if there is and you really want to
buy her a present that won't cause her to write
and complain to your family when she gets it,
why not buy her a hug-me-tight?"

A hug-me-tight!—now that sounded like the
very last thing we would have nerve enough to
send a lady, no matter how old she was.
Besides, we didn't know that a hug-me-tight was a
thing one could send.  We thought it was
something one did.  But we are always ready to
learn, especially about things that have to do
with hugging, figuratively or otherwise—and
the more figuratively the better.  But, of course,
a good deal depends on the figure.  So we got a
few more directions, and then we walked right
into that department-store and accosted a tall
superior person in a morning-coat.

"Where do they sell hug-me-tights?" we asked.

"What's that?" he barked at us, in a manner
which would have been offensive in anyone but a
real silver-mounted "clark."

"A hug-me-tight," we repeated with emphasis,
"a woolly business used by old ladies to protect
the chest and back against draughts—the kind
that come through the window, not out of a bottle."

We thought to cheer him up with this little
touch about the "draughts"—mild, you know,
but still a pun.  Somehow he didn't seem to like
it.  Perhaps he didn't get it—these toffs often
don't.  Stately, you know, but a little slow.

"Woollen goods—third floor!" he finally grunted.

His manner was not of the sort to inspire much
confidence, but we took his word—also the
elevator.  And when we say that we "took" the
elevator, we mean that we fought our way into it
through an army of maddened suffragettes.  We
bit the ends off two feathers; we were stabbed in
several places with hat-pins; and finally at the
third floor we were disgorged into the woolliest
woollen department we have ever seen.  It was
full of woolly garments—some of a most
embarrassingly intimate description—and ladies.
There wasn't a man in sight.  It was rather
trying for us.  There was on view a great deal of
raiment of the sort that is "knit to fit,"
and—well, it has always seemed to us that there is
something rather gross about wool.  Now
muslin—especially if complicated with lace and
insertion—is filmy and charmingly illusive.  But
wool—no!

We picked out a plump little clerk-lady with
woolly hair and brown eyes.  We don't know
why we picked her out particularly, except that
she was the sort of girl we would naturally pick
out.  She seemed a young person who would
know about hug-me-tights.  So we went right
up to her and—remembering just in time not to
take off our hat as if she were a "ladifren" of
ours—we asked her as casually as the nature of
the case would permit where we could get a
hug-me-tight.

"A hug-me-tight—you want a hug-me-tight?
You—you?" and the shameless little huzzy
buried her face in a pair of blankets with blue
borders and bleated convulsively.

We moved on—with dignity, but hurriedly.
It was a painful thing to have happen.  There
are dissolute and daring characters who would
perhaps have enjoyed the situation.  They might
even have taken occasion from it to enter into
conversation and find out the young lady's
Christian name—if Christian—and whether or not she
liked movie-shows.  But ours is a mind above
such trivial manoeuvres.  We moved on, while
a clammy perspiration bedewed our brow.

The next time we picked out the oldest and
homeliest clerk we could see in that department.
Taking courage from the thought that here was a
woman who could not possibly put any personal
significance into a request for a hug-me-tight, we
went up to her and told her we wanted one.
Involuntarily we lowered our voice till it was
little above a whisper.  Too late we realized our
mistake.  She gave us one horrified glance, and
then, no doubt, recalling all the terrible stories
she had read of young and pretty girls being
"loored" to "roon" and never heard of more, she
turned to cry for help.  But we stopped her short.

"Madam," we said sternly, "the hug-me-tight
referred to is a nice garment for a woolly old
lady—no, no, a woolly garment for a nice old
lady—and the sole motive in asking you for it is
the hope that you might direct——"

"Three circles to the left!" she snapped in a
sour tone, which for a wild moment suggested
that she was disappointed.  But we would hate
to think that—at her age, too!

It was fully ten minutes before we could nerve
ourself sufficiently to go to that third circle.
Instead, we went over and looked at a lot of
assorted mittens for children.  We gazed at them
with an intensity that must have given the young
lady behind the counter the impression that we
were the father of at least ten children—all
small.

We even got a silly notion of buying a pair of
them for the old lady—she has rather small
hands.  And there was a nice pair of red ones on
a tape.  Whenever she went out in the back-yard
to make snowballs—but we decided against it.
We were told to get a hug-me-tight; and a
hug-me-tight we were resolved to get, even if they
sent in a hurry-up call for the Morality Squad.

By this time, however, we were aware that a
hug-me-tight was not a thing for a nervous man
to ask a young lady for, without preparing her
mind gently.  We have always believed that we
have a spiritual face—the grave, sweet
expression of a monk who is happy in his calling.  But
any healthy man who says he can look spiritual
while asking a lady-clerk for a hug-me-tight is a
liar.  We hate to be vulgar, but no other word
will do.  The thing isn't possible—that's all.
So we were politic.

"Have you any woollen garments, something
in the nature of a jacket," we asked in our most
elaborately casual tone, while the blond person
patted her hair and stared negligently past our
right ear, "which would be suitable for an
elderly lady to wear in the house or under a
coat?"

"Oh, what you want is a hug-me-tight," she said.

And she never batted an eye!  The self-control
of women at times is really a wonderful
thing.  So we got our hug-me-tight at last.  But
never again—s'elp us!  We'll get that nice old
lady a meerschaum pipe first.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Ventilation`:

.. figure:: images/img-079.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: VENTILATION

   VENTILATION

.. class:: center large bold

   Ventilation

.. vspace:: 2

This is the season of the year—we are
writing on a fine brisk December day, friend
reader—when ventilation becomes one of the
paramount issues.  To open the window or not
to open it, that is the question.  Discussions on
this topic have been known to split families.
They have even led to the splitting of heads.

Heaven only knows how many divorces have
been started by arguments as to how much air
should be let into the bedroom o' nights—with
the number of blankets and the thickness of the
eiderdown as sub-headings of debate.

Consider the sad lot of the ordinary poor
anæmic husband married to one of those hardy
modern women, who are so full-blooded that
they can't bear to wear anything to speak of
above the corset-top or below the knees.  We
saw one on the street the other day, and about
the only difference between her and "September
Morn" was a sealskin coat thrown back on the
shoulders, and the fact that she didn't stand the
same way as the lady in the picture.  It was a
cold day, too.

Naturally persons of such airy inclinations and
fervid temperament wouldn't want to be burdened
with a whole lot of blankets and quilts
when they go by-by.  Obviously you can't take a
really truly "beauty sleep" with several layers of
bed-clothes piled up on you like the roof of a
dug-out.  The thing isn't done—not in any
pictures that we have seen, that is.  As a pious and
embarrassed bachelor, of course, we speak of
such matters purely from report and from such
evidences as we have gleaned from the movies
and from those bed-room scenes now so popular
in stage-performances.  Stage-beds never have
any blankets.  Their appointments always are of
pink silk, and no conscientious actress would
dream of pulling them up any higher than the
lace-work on her nighty.

But consider the case of the modern husband.
He, poor devil, is not hardened by going around
the streets with his shirt laid open so as to expose
everything from his collar-bone to his solar-plexus.
Also his pants are of wool—or so the
tailor claims—and they extend to his feet.  If
they were made of georgette (we got this from a
department-store "ad") and cut off at the knee so
as to display about three dollars' worth of
transparent silk stocking, they might help to harden
his constitution—also his nerve.  But, as a
matter of fact, he would probably get double
pneumonia while the first policeman he met was
dragging him off to the station.  If he didn't get
double pneumonia, he would certainly get three
months.

Naturally such a man is soft and sensitive to
cold.  If he lets any draught into his room at
night, he wants a nice, tame little draught that
will coil up quietly under the dresser and stay
there.  His wife on the other hand, accustomed
to the rigors of the open street with hardly any
other defence than her natural beauty, insists on
letting into the room one of those northern
zephyrs that play about exposed street-corners in
the month of January.  That is where the trouble
starts, and—well, when we finally get a
divorce court in Canada, this will probably be
regarded as one of the statutory causes.

Of course, it isn't only a man's wife that drives
him into nightly cold storage.  There is the
pressure of public opinion, for instance.  The same
absurd force of custom which drags a man out
of bed in the morning, blue and shivering, and
plunges him into a tub full of icy water, directs
that he shall leave his window open all night for
fear of what the neighbors would think of him
if he didn't.

We are a coward like everyone else, and we do
it.  We don't believe the health-hints we see in
the magazines.  We have no wife to bully us
in the matter of the aeration of our boudoir.
And yet we cower miserably under the clothes
all winter long, while icy gales leap in through
the window, chucking our garments off the chair
where we pile them up, blowing the undress
portraits of our favorite characters in ancient
history, Helen of Troy, Venus, and Phryne, about
the room, and reaching under the clothes to
tickle our feet with icicles.

It isn't good for us.  It isn't good for any man
to spend the night with his head under the
pillow instead of on top of it.  But what are we
to do about it?  We don't dare keep our window
closed—what would our landlady say, if she
found out?  She'd probably decide we had measles,
and throw us out to prevent the house being
quarantined.

And next morning!  Great guns, but that room
is cold!  It would be just about right for a little
Esquimau, but we are not a little Esquimau.  We
don't rub ourself all over with train-oil or
whale-blubber.  We don't even know how to induce
a whale to blubber on us.  Neither do we sleep
in fur pyjamas, which also serve for business and
social purposes.  Little Esquimaus don't even
have to put their hats on when they get up.  They
are all dressed as it is.

The terrible predicament of a civilized man
dressing in a cold room is that he has to take
off what little he has on before he can put on
anything else.  One's flannelette nighty may be
no great shakes as a protection, but at least one
has been able to warm it up a little during the
night.  And then to take it off, while your teeth
chatter and your blood congeals—there are few
sadder partings than this.

One's only safety lies in speed.  If you could
only see us as we leap—oh, with a chaperon, of
course, dearie—no, no, we don't mean that we
leap with a chaperon, but that it would be all
right for you to see us if you brought a
chaperon—oh, well, anyway, we certainly leap.

But it must be admitted that civilized male
habiliments are not adapted to speedy dressing.
Neither are female, for that matter, judging by
the length of time we have to wait whenever we
take anyone to the theatre.  If they would only
devise some sort of clothes—for the winter
months, at any rate—that a man could jump into
and fasten with one or two buttons!  You know
how a firehorse runs into his harness.  Well,
something along that line would do.

As it is, we drop our *robe de nuit* like Psyche
at the bath—only a little more hurriedly,
perhaps—and then we start a deadly wrestle with
a set of underwear which has deliberately tied
itself up in a series of fancy knots.  Our feet
stick halfway in, and we stagger about on one
foot dragging and moaning, while our epidermis
assumes all the colors of a sick chameleon.  It
is a very painful predicament, mortifying to one's
sense of dignity, and hurtful to one's eternal
salvation because of the expletives one is sometimes
led to blurt out.

And then think of the complication of hose-supports,
suspenders, collars and ties, and all the
rest of it.  Besides, you have probably forgotten
to put buttons in a clean shirt the night before,
and you have to stand there with palsied fingers
babbling in imbecile rage while the studs roll
gaily under the bureau.  No wonder a man
comes down to his breakfast on cold mornings
with a seething rage that would make a Prussian
hate-party look like a June day in the pigeon-loft.

Who started this ventilation racket, anyway?
Our grandfathers had no use for it, Heaven
knows.  Personally we can recall our paternal
grandparent, armed with a large, strong kitchen-knife,
shoving gobs of cotton-batting into the
cracks around the double-windows, in case a
skinny little draught should be able to worm its
way in somewhere.  And yet the old gentleman
was not cut off prematurely by some wasting
disease.  He celebrated, on the contrary, a very
merry ninety-fourth birthday before he went
aloft to poke cotton-batting cloudlets, no doubt,
into the crevices in the pearly panes of heaven.

We have also known a lot of other vigorous old
people who had about as much use for ventilation
as they had for a velocipede.  Of course, this
sort of talk from us sounds very reactionary and
benighted and all that, but we can't help
recalling that people seemed to live longer and more
comfortably in the good old stuffy days than
they do now, when a man is a small body of
chills entirely surrounded by draughts.
Perhaps some brother or sister will rise up in
meeting and explain this little matter to us.

Air, fresh air—everyone seems to be shouting
for it as though they were Huns caught in a
foundered submarine.  But old-fashioned
business men used to do their work in hermetically
sealed offices containing a wood-stove that made
the varnish smoke on the furniture.  If anyone
opened the door wide enough to let in a draught
the size of a lead-pencil, they swore at him.
And as for opening the windows—only over
their dead bodies, that's all!  Besides, they were
usually nailed down till the next spring.

But your modern business man's ideal seems
to be an office that is about as weather-proof as
a squirrel-cage.  We called on a man the other
day, and he was sitting between two wide-open
windows with a gale blowing through them that
nearly shot us back down the stairs again.

"Great, isn't it?" the Arctic idiot chortled.
"Nothing like good fresh air!  Keeps up your
efficiency, you know, puts pep into you."

We said that obviously a man would have to
keep moving if he wanted to save himself from
freezing to death in that office.  But where did
his customers get off?  It might be all right for
him to freeze out a poor devil of a journalist
like ourself, but how about freezing out a
pork-packer or a bank-president?  Not that we have
any painful objection to seeing them frozen, God
Wot—we have been frozen out of banks too often
ourself.

"Oh, a man's customers come in off the street,"
he said breezily, "and they're usually wearing
their street-clothes, so they're all right."

We took the tip.  We buttoned our overcoat,
turned up our collar, pulled our hat well down
on our head, drew on our gloves, hunched up
our back, and were able to talk to him for three
minutes about as comfortably as though we were
sitting on the top ledge of a sky-scraper in a
blizzard.  If there's anything we hate, it is a
draught in the ear.  The only draught we don't
object to is the sort that one gets out of a keg,
and naturally one doesn't get it in the ear—not
unless the party has been going on a long time.

Take our own office.  The window swings on
a central pivot.  The beauty of this system is
that you can get more air this way in a shorter
time than by any other expedient short of
removing the side wall.  But you can't get just
a little air.  Either you don't get any at all, or
you get a tornado that lifts you out of your seat
by the back-hair.

Of course, the system has one advantage—you
can aim the draught.  By setting the window at
the correct angle, you can switch an aerial
Niagara into the next office, from which it comes
back slightly warmed up and as a rule highly
flavored with cigarette smoke and profanity.
This vicarious ventilation, so to speak, has its
advantages, but it is apt to lead to reprisals—and
not always in kind.  Some son of a gun, for
instance, slipped into our office this afternoon
and stole all our matches.  We know they weren't
blown away, for they were in a drawer.

While we feel keenly on this subject of ventilation
and believe that the thing is being greatly
overdone, we don't wish to write ourself down
as entirely opposed to fresh air.  Some
concessions must be made to the popular hygiene of
the day.  All that we ask for is reasonable
moderation.  We don't mind a nice little draught
slipping into the room from time to time, so
long as it comes in quietly and unnoticeably.
What we hate is the sort of draught that leaps
at the back of our neck and shoves an icy mitt
down our collar.

Personally, we look forward to the time—will
the reader please excuse us for a moment?
The chap in the office next door has just opened
his pivot window again, and has blown our hat,
ten pages of this manuscript, a dollar bill, and
seventeen cents' worth of postage stamps down
the corridor.  We are going in to speak to him
about it.

(We are taking a paper-weight with us).

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`City Chickens`:

.. figure:: images/img-091.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: CITY CHICKENS

   CITY CHICKENS

.. class:: center large bold

   City Chickens

.. vspace:: 2

For a long time we have wanted to write
about urban poultry; but we have been too
nervous to start.  It may seem to the reader that
we are carrying our natural delicacy too far and
are becoming almost prudish, but the fact
remains that we were afraid to write about city
chickens for fear of being misunderstood.

You see the word "chicken" has acquired
ramifications of meaning which have nothing
whatever to do with Plymouth Rocks, or Silver
Wyandottes, or Buff Cochins, or any of the other
standard breeds of hen.  It occurred to us,
therefore, that if we were to start an article about
keeping chickens and dressing chickens and that
sort of thing, readers of a precipitous turn of
mind might jump to indecorous conclusions.

We hasten to assure the reader that we don't
mean that kind of "chicken" at all.  In the first
place, we don't know anything about them.  We
are too virtuous—also too poor.  It is true that
occasionally, when forced by our professional
duties to investigate the night-life of great cities,
we have seen poultry of this sort gaily cavorting
about and—but we are growing prolix.  Let
it suffice to state that this article is written about
the sort of chicken that goes garbed in feathers—hen
feathers, we mean, not ostrich plumes.

It is really extraordinary how many people
in town keep chickens.  The love of things rural
seems to die hard in the urban breast.  Unable
to go out in the early dawn and chew straws
while he gazes placidly at his hay field or his
hog lot, the city man keeps hens.

First of all he purchases a whole library of
hen literature.  He discovers that there are about
seven hundred breeds, and that each one is ideal
for his purposes.  Finally he buys four hens and
a rooster which can trace back their ancestry
through two hundred generations or more of
aristocratic hendom.  No common pullets for
the city man who is going in for poultry—nothing
but the real blue bloods at about forty dollars
apiece.

He has previously built a strictly up-to-date
hen-house—steam heat, hot and cold water,
nursery, tiled bathroom, maid's quarters, and all
the rest.  If he is a very kind-hearted man, he
may even put in a gramophone and hang comic
pictures on the walls.  They say it is very
important that hens should be kept in a cheerful
state of mind.  Personally, we have always had
our doubts about a chicken having any mind at
all.  But that's what the books say, and who are
we that we should venture to dispute with a book?

Of course, these chickens don't lay.  Purse-proud
and aristocratic chickens of this sort
never do.  They have no incentive.  Why should
they go to the trouble of laying eggs and having
a family when they can get everything a hen's
heart desires without it?  Besides, the late hours
they keep tend to a low birth-rate.

The Downer, however, gets it into his poor
numb noodle that the food isn't right.  He starts
experimenting, and once you start experimenting
with hen-feed you are headed for bankruptcy
and the bug-buggy.  The only thing that
saves you is that the chickens die in
time—chickens that are fed everything from canary
seed to lobster and champagne are apt to die
young.

Is the owner discouraged?—usually, no.  Ten
to one he goes out and buys another half dozen
members of the poultry peerage.  The only difference
is that this time he gets a different family,
Brown Leghorns instead of Black Minorcas, for
instance.  But the result is always the same.

Occasionally, of course, a hen will forget herself
and the social exigencies of city life and will
lay an egg.  Now and then they are even known
to have a chicken—in extreme cases, two or
three.  But families of this unfashionable size
are extremely rare.  At a moderate estimate—allowing
only a reasonable interest on capital
invested, the house, hens, food, etc.—the eggs cost
three dollars and a half each, and the baby chickens
six and a quarter.  But every time one arrives
the proud owner goes about for days telling
all his friends what a convenience and economy
it is to grow your own eggs and spring chickens
right there on the premises.

There is something pathetic about the way the
moral character of chickens deteriorates in
town.  We have often wondered, in fact, why
the parsons do not draw stern ethical lessons for
their sermons from the way decent, well-behaved
country chickens take to evil courses in large
cities.

Time and time again we have seen innocent
and energetic young roosters from the farm come
into our neighborhood—rather a respectable
neighborhood, too, as neighborhoods go—nice,
young roosters of good habits, who always got
up at the proper time in the morning and went
to bed early o'nights and crowed with fidelity
and discretion.

And what happened?  Why, those roosters
wouldn't be exposed to the pernicious influence
of city life for more than a month before they
would be staying up all night, crowing at the
electric lights, and keeping the hens up, too.
What becomes of family life under these
conditions?  What sort of future is there before a
hennery where the rooster sleeps all day and
the hens sit around and hold mothers' meetings
without an egg or a chick in the place?

There is a rooster in our block just now, who
has gone absolutely to the demnition bow-wows.
We first knew him as a kindly young cockerel
from one of the small provincial towns, good
humored, honest, and orderly.  But you ought
to see him now—especially you ought to hear
him.  The brute crows his head off every time
in the night that an automobile goes by; and he
spends his afternoons sitting on the side fence
watching the girls in the tight skirts—with the
nastiest leer in his eye!  We often hear the hens
calling to him; but what does he care about his
family responsibilities?—not a kluck!

The neighbors are all talking about that rooster.
They are also shying things at him whenever
he gets within range.  This brings up another
unpleasant feature of keeping hens in town.  The
neighbors are very apt to be cross about it.  They
never seem able to take the same idyllic view of
chickens that the owner does—very narrow-minded
people, neighbors, as a rule.

Even the best-behaved fowl are likely to fly
over the fence occasionally into a neighbor's
yard and dig worms out of the gravel walk or
make impromptu salad of his geraniums and
young onions.  And you have no idea how
annoyed the neighbor gets over these little
outbreaks of playfulness.  Think, too, of the eggs
that must result from it.  Just imagine, friend
reader, an egg with a geranium shell and a flavor
of young onion!—or heliotrope and carrot tops!—or
burdock and tomato can!  The possibilities
are unlimited.

This reminds us of a man we knew once who
lived back of a brewery.  We didn't seek out his
acquaintance and make ourself a friend of his
just because he lived back of a brewery—it
happened that way, that's all.  We couldn't very
well cut a man just because he lived back of a
brewery, could we?

He also kept chickens.  We didn't let this
interfere with our friendship either.  But
he had certainly the gosh-darndest time with
his chickens of anyone we ever knew.  There
were about fifty of them—four roosters—and
they had a nice, roomy hen-house with separate
beds and great big perches to sit around and talk
on, every comfort in fact.

But did those chickens stay at home and lay
eggs and rear large families and attend to the
other duties of their station in life?  No, they
did not.  They took to drink.  We can hear the
reader snort in disgust as he reads this—if he
does.  The reader no doubt thinks we are lying.
Not knowing the sterling honesty of our nature,
the reader doubts our word.  But fortunately
we have court records to back us up, for our
friend sued the brewery for damages.

You see, the brewers used to throw out their
used malt and the lees of the beer-vats in a huge
pile just back of our friend's fence.  One day an
enterprising young rooster, whose moral
upbringing had been neglected, hopped over the
fence and tried some of the malt.  It tasted good.
Little did he know, poor bird, that he was
getting into the clutches of the Demon Rum.  He
ate fermented malt till he couldn't jam down
another grain.

Did it go to his head?  Did it?—dear reader,
that young rooster accumulated the loveliest load
of lush, the most beauteous and bountiful "bun"
ever seen in that district—and it is a district
rather famous for its "buns."

It was long after dark when the young rooster
got home—trying to find the key-hole, no
doubt—and he aroused the whole hennery.  He
staggered around crowing comic songs, insulted all
the most respectable hens in the place, started
out to whip the other roosters, and put the whole
place on the blink generally.

Our friend was aroused by the uproar, and
rushed out, thinking that a rat or a stray dog had
got into the hen house.  He said that it was the
finest representation of a hilarious "jag" in an
old ladies' home that he ever saw.  But, of
course, he didn't know at the time what was
wrong with the young rooster.  He thought he
was sick, and went out next morning and gave
him some bread and milk—or whatever it is one
gives sick roosters.  But the rooster would have
none of it.  He didn't want bread and milk.
What he wanted was some bromo-seltzer or a
"Collins."

Was the young rooster enlightened as to the
evil of his ways?  Did he take the pledge and
climb on the water-bucket?  Alas, no!  What
that young rooster did was to fly right back over
the fence that very afternoon and tank up once
more.  Worse still, he brought the other roosters
with him.

That night there was another rough party in
the hennery—four times rougher than the other,
for there were four roosters in it.  They went
in for close harmony in their choral work, and
also did a little close scrapping.  They even tried
to whip our friend the owner when he went out
to restore order.

Talk about drunkards' homes and temperance
lessons!—that hennery would have furnished the
W.C.T.U. and the Prohibitionists generally
with arguments for a five years' campaign.  In a
few days every chicken in the place had
developed a taste and capacity for beer that would
have filled half the population of Bavaria with
envy.  Life for them became just one big "bust"
after another.

Instead of hopping cheerfully from bed at the
first peep of dawn, those chickens slept in till
noon.  They didn't care who got the early worm.
Then they piled over the fence to the malt pile,
and stayed right there till closing time and after.
They stayed, in fact, till our friend went over and
carried them back.  He said it made him feel
like a police van on the Twelfth of July.

Nothing could keep those hens away from the
booze.  Our friend built the fence higher; but
they dug a tunnel under it.  When he blocked
that up, they flew over into the neighbors' yards
and got around that way.  They would even go
out by his front gate and walk around the block,
and come staggering back at all hours of the
night in a way that would give any house a bad
name.

Finally he sued the brewery for alienating his
hens' affections—they only laid one egg in three
months, and when our friend tried to eat it it
went to his head it was so full of alcohol.  But
the Judge said that a man who kept hens in town
should be shut up somewhere and have his
property managed for him.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Porters, Pullmans and Patience`:

.. figure:: images/img-103.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: PORTERS, PULLMANS AND PATIENCE

   PORTERS, PULLMANS AND PATIENCE

.. class:: center large bold

   Porters, Pullmans and Patience

.. vspace:: 2

The luxury of modern travel is a thing one
often hears spoken about nowadays.  Personally,
we have had to listen to it for so long,
and we are so heartily convinced that it is a piece
of arrant humbug, that we are finally moved to
protest.  "The luxury of modern travel"—pish
tush, and again pish!  There ain't no such thing.

Travel may not have been luxurious, but it
was at least interesting in the good old days of
the mail-coaches.  We like to think of them
rolling with a tremendous clatter of hoofs and a
flourish on the guard's horn through grey
villages dozing among their elms, right up to the
doors of glorious old inns where the hostlers
tumbled out with fresh horses and journeying
gentlemen tumbled in for a glass of mulled port.

That was travelling, bless you!  There was
some sport to that, some exhilaration.  A man
might well be moved to song on the top of one of
those old coaches of a fine spring morning with
the hedge-rows all in tender green.  Even we
ourself, who have a voice that causes people to
turn around and scowl when we join in a chorus,
even we might be led to troll a rollicking catch
under such circumstances as that.

But who ever heard of anyone singing in a
Pullman car—unless it should be a traveller in
the smoking-room who had travelled not wisely
but too well?  And even those days are past now.
Singing isn't done, that's all.  There is no excuse
for it, except inebriety or a brainstorm—and we
have ruled out inebriety, more or less.  Besides,
the man who manages to get an extra Scotch or
so nowadays doesn't make a fuss about it.  He
keeps the fact a dark and happy secret.  So,
instead of singing in a Pullman car, one simply sits
and grouches until that blessed moment of
release when the porter has brushed all the dust
off one's coat into one's eye, and one can seize
one's grip and totter out into the open air once
more.

The misery of modern travel starts from the
moment the traveller, laden with disheveled
impediments of all sorts, plunges madly out of the
house watch in hand—this is difficult but it can
be done—to the taxicab which has come just
twenty minutes late.  The driver says it is
because the people at the garage gave him the
wrong address, the intimation being that he had
finally arrived at the right one by some process
of complicated and inspired ratiocination.  The
real truth is that he stopped to talk to a "ladifren."

Personally, we plunge out and catch a streetcar.
We are a democratic cuss.  Also they
don't make one wait so long.  Moreover, it is so
exciting to stand on the back platform and pull
out one's watch—it is ten minutes fast, though
one doesn't suspect it—and break into a cold
sweat every time anyone stops the car either to
get on or off.

The car-line we usually take crosses railroad-tracks
in two or three places.  This may seem to
the reader an irrelevant detail, but it wouldn't
seem so if the reader had to take it.  Invariably
when one is in a bigger hurry than usual, a
shunting-engine and a crew of leisurely fiends in dingy
overalls are engaged in chivvying a bunch of
freight-cars backwards and forwards over the
crossing, while one notes the second-hand of one's
watch slipping merrily around and one mentally
calls on all the lurid reserves of language.

Rushing into the depot—dear reader, did you
ever rush into the Toronto Union Depot?  Did
you ever sprint madly, with your bag banging
against your knees, down that interminable
corridor—it seems a mile and a half long at the very
least—from the main entrance to the door where
a cool ruffian in a uniform insists on stopping
you and seeing your ticket, though you have just
four seconds to catch your train and you know on
what track it is just as well as he does?  And
when you have finally got by him, did you ever
slide down one of those flights of iron steps into
that damp and dismal tunnel where the trains
stand?  If you have ever done any of these
things, you can sympathize with us when we
repeat with an intonation of melancholy
contempt, "The luxury of modern travel!"

But somehow or other in a fashion which
strengthens our belief in a kindly Providence,
we catch the train.  We always do.  Just as the
porter picks up his little stool and climbs aboard,
we hurl ourself and our bag into the vestibule
after him.  Then, when the conductor and
brakeman have lifted us off our ebony brother in
livery, we are shown to our berth.  Removing
our overcoat and picking out of our bag a book
and such cigars as have not been reduced to
fine-cut, we adjourn to the smoking-room.

There is a general notion, principally among
ladies, that the smoking-room of a sleeping-car is
a place of extraordinary hilarity and indecorous
enjoyment.  They have visions of men sitting
around in their shirt-sleeves playing poker,
drinking out of pocket-flasks, and exchanging
amid clouds of smoke stories that would make
even the porter blush.  But, alas, it is not thus.

Our own experience of Pullman smoking-rooms
is that they are the dullest holes on earth.
The smoke is there all right, dense clouds of it.
And such smoke!—any old thing that will burn,
native shag, Turkish cigarettes, five-cent cigars,
pipes of every age and degree of disrepute, all
mixed up together.  But of conversation there is
none, except when a couple of commercial
travellers start a competition in mendacity as to the
number of orders they have taken in the towns
along the line.  As for stories—we haven't heard
a new one yet.

So far as cards are concerned, we once saw a
man play solitaire.  And on two or three
occasions in the more convivial past, crude but
friendly souls have drawn from hip-pockets
pint-flasks which they have timidly proffered by way
of brightening the general gloom.  We always
hated to refuse—exhibitions of hospitality were
so rare there.  If an African chief came in and
wanted to rub noses—we believe that is the usual
expression of friendly interest in Ashantee—we
would hardly have had the heart to decline.

About midnight, when one has no decent excuse
for putting it off any longer—especially as
the porter, who sleeps in the smoking-room,
comes in and scowls every few minutes until one
gives it up to him—we drag ourself to our berth.
That is, we stow ourself away in a dark cubby-hole,
too short for us by three inches actual
measurement, and just high enough to bruise the top
of our head every time we sit up.  There we
proceed to divest ourself of our garments and lay
them away in places where they will fall down
on our face at intervals during the night—the
intervals being whenever we start to doze.

We would like to go into the details of our
divestiture, with a view to comparing notes with
other tall gentlemen who have been compelled
to remove their habiliments—mentionable and
otherwise—within the confines of a berth.  In
view, however, of the somewhat intimate nature
of the case, we are obliged to let it go with the
general statement that the performance is a
highly acrobatic one.  We get our things off
somehow or other—probably we give anyone
coming along the aisle the impression that a
sea-lion or a dromedary has got into our compartment.
And then, our final frantic struggle having
made us free, we address ourself to sleep.

Sleeping-cars are so named because you try to
and can't.  Some people can, of course.  When
they can, they always snore—fiendishly.
Invariably there is a man across the aisle with one of
those going-down-for-the-third-time snores, the
kind that suggest a muffled shriek of agony.  All
night long you keep hoping against hope that he
is really strangling.  But he never is.  Next
morning he always bobs up smiling and rubicund,
and informs everyone in the wash-room
that he slept like a top—meaning, of course, a
racing automobile with the muffler cut out.

Somehow the night goes by.  It is one of the
melancholy compensations of life that everything
passes.  Just about dawn you drop off into
the first decent nap you have been able to get;
and twenty minutes later the porter reaches in
and punches you in the ribs or pounds on the
roof of the berth to let you know it is time you
were up.  As a matter of fact, you have a full
hour or more before you arrive.  But he believes
in getting people up early.  It gives him a
chance to roll up the berths and stow them out of
sight in the mysterious recesses the Lord and
Mr. Pullman have provided for that purpose.
Besides, it is a display of authority, and this is
always dear to the porteresque heart—most
people's hearts, in fact.

So you sit up suddenly and bang your head.
Being thus thoroughly awakened, you glance out
of the window and study the fence-posts or the
clay banks past which you are speeding.  Then
you poke a frowsy head into the aisle through
the curtains, and promptly drag it back as a large
lady in a flowered kimona bears down upon you
with an angry glare.  It is obvious that she thinks
you have been sitting there for half an hour peeping
into the aisle till you could get that chance to
look at her in her dishabille.  Naturally you
can't explain.  What is there to say?  Least of
all can you tell her the simple truth, which is
that if you had known anything like that was
prowling around the car you wouldn't have
peeped out for a flock of limousines—or should
it be "covey?"

Will someone kindly tell us, will someone
please explain, why it is ladies assume that
frigidly severe attitude when anyone happens to
look at them during their matutinal parades up
and down the aisle?  If we ourself catch anyone
glancing at us while we meander towards the
wash-room with our toothbrush and our other
collar—anyone, that is, of the opposite sex, and
it is surprising how very opposite some of them
are—we merely blush in simple-hearted
confusion.  We may wonder why the lady should
look at us.  But it would never occur to us to be
indignant over the matter, not even if we were
wearing a flowered kimona and carried our toilet
tools in a cute little silk bag.

In the wash-room you stand for half an hour
behind a row of gentlemen with their heads in
basins.  Every now and then one comes up to
breathe, and then he goes down again for
another five minutes during which he throws
soap-suds all over you.  When finally you manage to
get a basin yourself, the car gives a sudden lurch
and it empties itself gracefully into your lap.

When you have contrived at last to wiggle into
your clothes—they always look as if you had
spent the night tying knots in them—you go back
and sit on the end of your suit-case in the aisle,
or somebody else's suit-case, while the porter
brushes everybody in sight and takes a quarter
away from each of them.  We don't mind the
quarter.  We'd gladly give much more than
that if he would only leave us alone.  But he
won't.  He fixes us with his shiny eye; he
beckons to us; and we walk away down the aisle to
meet him.  There he turns our coat-collar back,
sifts an ounce or two of coal-dust down our neck,
deftly blows the rest of it into our ear, knocks our
hat all out of shape, seizes the coin which we
feverishly proffer him as the price of our
deliverance, and then drops us for the next victim.

"Montreal—this way out!"

One staggers painfully from the car down to
the station platform.  There a horde of "red
caps" descend upon you in a flying phalanx.
Taking your luggage and your breath at the same
time, they vanish, only to reappear ten minutes
later at the station door—you have just about
decided they have absconded with your bags—and
there they demand salvage for them.

"The luxury of modern travel"—O Lord!

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Helping our Friends to Economize`:

.. figure:: images/img-115.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: HELPING OUR FRIENDS TO ECONOMIZE

   HELPING OUR FRIENDS TO ECONOMIZE

.. class:: center large bold

   Helping our Friends to Economize

.. vspace:: 2

We are of a saving nature.  We say this
more in sorrow than in pride.  It has been
forced on us.  We have saved stamps and
cigar-bands.  We have saved cigarette pictures and
theatre programmes.  We have even made sporadic
endeavors to save our soul.  For the past
few months especially our gaze has been fixed on
the skies.  We had hoped that once the fighting
was over—but peace hath her battles no less than
war.  So we turn our eyes to those celestial
abodes where the Bolsheviki cease from troubling.
Our only hope is in heaven.  In fact,
even a nice, quiet corner in hell—but, hush, let
us not think of such things!

When we speak, however, of our saving
nature, we refer principally, if not exclusively,
to money.  We have a disposition to save money.
We would like to put away huge jars of it.  We
would enjoy sneaking down to the vault in the
middle of the night to count our gold and gloat
over it.  We would do it even at the risk of
getting our new pyjamas all dirtied up with gold-dust.

Not that we have ever been able to accumulate
any vast amount of coin, specie, mazuma, cush,
dust, rhino, bullion, long green—in short, money.
No trust companies grow plethoric with our
securities.  No vaults strain at their rivets with
our lacs of rupees.  But the disposition is there
on our part.  We would save if we had the
wherewithal.

That is why we have such a kindly feeling for
others who are trying to save—especially now
when the high cost of living has combined with
the high cost of killing, as represented in
war-taxation, to put such a crimp in a fellow's income
that it looks like a French pea to a famished
ostrich.  That is why we never feel aggrieved
when our friends don't invite us to dinner, or
give us cold mutton or stew when they do.  That
is why we never make any remarks on the age of
their hats or complain of the cold in their houses
or express wonder that they don't light the
furnace sooner.  They are cutting down expenses
and we sympathize with them.

We like to see people save.  We smile
benignly, as one who murmurs, "Bless you,
children," when we catch them laying by for a rainy
day.  We believe in economy.  At the same time,
it should not be carried to extravagant lengths—at
least, not at our expense.  We are willing to
help our friends to economize, but there are
reasonable limits.  They must not crowd the
kindly mourner too far.

For instance, there is Binks—awfully nice
chap, Binks.  You must know him, short, fairly
stout, wears lavender ties, and rides down to the
office every morning on the rear platform of the
street-car for the sake of the air.  Great fellow
for hygiene is Binks.  Plays a good game of
tennis, too.

Binks invited us over to dinner one Saturday
not long ago.

"Tell you what," said Binks in his buoyant
way, "come on over early—say, about two
o'clock—and we'll walk out to my new lot in the
West Annex if it's a fine day and get back in nice
time for dinner.  Great for the appetite—you'll
feel like a prize-fighter after you've strolled
around through the woods for a few hours."

It sounded good, and the day was fine, and we
were there at two sharp—difficult as it is for us
to be anywhere at anything sharp.  We were
neatly but inconspicuously clad in our walking
clothes, Norfolk jacket, green hat, and pipe.  We
also wore a tan cane and chamois gloves.  Nothing
elaborate, you know, but grace in every line.

Binks, on the contrary, had on the worst suit
we have ever seen out of the furnace room.  A
greasy old peak-cap reposed on his head, and his
trousers were patched and frayed.  We didn't
mind that.  We are not snobbish.  But we did
object to the tools.

Binks had a cross-cut saw, a sledge-hammer
weighing approximately twelve pounds, an axe,
and two steel wedges weighing about five pounds
each.  We looked long and hard at them, and
longer and harder at Binks.  He had the grace
to blush.

"I hope you don't mind, old man," he said
with affected lightness, "but there's a bit of a
tree fallen down on the lot, and I thought it
would be good sport to cut it up this afternoon.
Great exercise, you know—brings all the muscles
of the back into play.  Besides, the wood will
come in handy in the grate this winter.
Stringency, you see—got to save every penny these
times, eh, what?"

We are weak.  We gulped once or twice, but
what was there to say?  We could do nothing
but fall in with the plan, and let on that we were
overjoyed at the prospect of bringing the muscles
of our back into play.  It did occur to us,
however, that there might be jollier methods of
doing so than cutting up fallen trees.

"You better carry the saw," said Binks, "it's
light.  I'll pack the rest of the stuff—unless you
could carry one of the wedges.  It's only a short
way to the car, you know."

It was only a short way to the car, true enough.
But, friend the reader, have you ever tried to
carry a cross-cut saw?  This particular one was
about six feet long, and it had a full set of
two-inch teeth, the suppleness of a boa-constrictor,
and the temper of a worried weasel.  It was
simply a long thin band of steel with a heavy
wooden handle at each end and enough elasticity
to curl around you twice and reach up and bite
the top off either ear.

The instant that we put the infernal saw oh
our shoulder we realized that we had made a
mistake.  It slashed around in the air a couple
of times to get the exact range, and then it dived
down and chewed a neat triangular piece out of
our trouser-leg.  It would probably have kept
right on through our own leg, if we had not by
some happy chance or unconscious skill managed
to get our cane in the way.  This saved the leg,
to which we not unnaturally attach a certain
value, but it was the last of a very fine piece of
malacca.  That ferocious saw gnashed its teeth
just once, and there were two canes where only
one had grown before—two nice little canes each
about twenty inches long and cut somewhat on
the bias.

This was only a starter.  In two seconds that
saw had us tied up in a complicated knot, with
one handle gouging us just under the left ear,
and the other playfully wandering about our
frame, while the teeth nipped off exposed pieces
of cuticle here and there in an arbitrary and
capricious manner.  When we got a chance to
examine ourself that night in the chaste seclusion
of the boudoir, we looked as if we had been
tied up in the cellar and the mice had got at us.

We shrieked to Binks to pull the thing off us.
After some time and effort—also a few light
casualties of his own—he finally did manage to
extricate what was left of us.  We were going
to quit on the spot.  We told Binks so with what
he must have regarded as a great deal of
unnecessary emphasis.  But he is a very persuasive
cuss, and—well, as we said before, we are weak.
We consented to see the thing through.  But we
declined firmly to carry that saw another foot of
the way.  We finally compromised, however,
and each took a handle.  It was awkward but
safe enough.  The thing bucked occasionally
and made frantic efforts to jump on one or other
of us; but we held it tight and we got it to the
car without further bloodshed.

When we tumbled on board, the conductor
took one good look at our equipment and
immediately became distinctly unpleasant.  He
asked us if we had mistaken the car for a
motor-lorry, and whether or not we intended to bring a
few trees along, too.  He said it seemed too bad
to leave them behind when there was all that
room in the aisle.  He also suggested that we
should put the saw on the roof and let the
handles hang down at each end of the car—he said
it was less likely to kill anyone up there.

Our position was most embarrassing—even
Binks almost lost his temper, though that
wouldn't have done any good.  The worst of it
was that the passengers seemed to consider the
vulgar brute funny, while we couldn't think of
anything crushing to say in reply till we had got
off and the car was blocks away.  Then we
realized that we should have said—but perhaps we
had better save this up.  We may need it some day.

We reached the lot at last after tramping
through so-called woodland scenery for miles
and miles.  The landscape was a tumbled stretch
of scrubby bush which had never been fit for
anything once the original big trees had been cut
off.  So a soulless real-estate agent had sliced it
up into suburban lots and sold it to enthusiastic
asses like our friend Binks.  Twenty years from
now it will, no doubt, be a thriving and even
fashionable suburb, but not now—Lord, no!  It
is possible, however, that we are somewhat
prejudiced against this particular landscape.  Who
can enjoy scenery while tramping through it
with a twelve-pound sledge, a five-pound wedge,
and the handle of a cross-cut saw—sounds almost
like a refrain, doesn't it?

How the mischief Binks was able to tell his
own lot in that wilderness will always remain a
marvel to us.  But he picked it out all right,
and there, sure enough, was the tree.  It was the
biggest, knottiest, meanest-looking jack-oak we
have seen in years.  No wonder the lightning
struck it.  The only wonder is that it didn't
burn it right up.

"Isn't she a beauty?" gloated Binks insanely.
"Won't those gnarled logs crackle fine in the
grate this winter?"

We looked at him in gloomy wonder.  Did the
poor idiot think we were going to help dissect
that ligneous monstrosity entirely?  We didn't
mind cutting off a limb or two, but no more—not
in one day.  Little did we suspect the fate
that was hanging over us.

"And now to work," said Binks with the
imbecile cheerfulness of his kind.  "We'll cut this
old rascal into handy lengths in a couple of hours
or so, and then the carter will come along with
the team, and we'll ride home on the load—just
like one of those old pictures of forest-life, you
I know."

But we were in no mood to enthuse.  Slowly
and sadly we pulled off our Norfolk jacket and
folded it neatly.  We turned a wistful and
lingering regard on the landscape; and then we
betook us dismally to our toil.  We were helpless
in the grip of Bink's will, a regular slave of
the lamp.

That afternoon will remain a nightmare for
years to come.  Whenever after this we go into
gilded dens of folly and eat lobster *à la
Newburg*, whenever we commit indiscretions with
mince-pie or home-made whiskey, we know the
form our penitential dreams will take.  We will
see ourself standing at one end of that awful saw
with Binks at the other, and we will go on
forever and ever shoving the saw away from us and
pulling it back again through a cast-iron log
with Bessemer-steel knots, which will shriek in
agony at every stroke.  And Binks will be wearing
a red suit of tights and a pair of cute little
horns and a spiked tail.

It was a terrible experience.  What Binks said
about bringing our back muscles into play was
perfectly true.  We brought them into play with
a vengeance.  We brought into play muscles
that we never dreamed of possessing.  But we
didn't like the way they played.  There was
something very rough about it.

The shades of night fell softly upon us, and
still we sawed.  The hoot-owls hooted at us in
derision, but still that fiendish saw rasped on.  In
the beginning we had suggested rest a few times,
but Binks merely assured us that once we got our
second wind we would be all right.

We got our second wind, but it wasn't long
before we used it up.  Then we called out our
third line of reserves, our pulmonary landsturm,
so to speak, and we exhausted that, too.  By the
time we finally quit we were using only the
extreme upper lobe of each lung, and all we could
do was to gasp and hang on to the handle of the
saw lest the thing should leap at us and sink its
teeth in our jugular.

Finally Binks stopped.  We had cut through
the last knot of the last limb of the last length of
that interminable trunk—by this time it seemed
seven miles long.  Binks stopped, and we fell in
our tracks.  We dropped where we stood, right
there in the saw-dust.

"Tell you what," said Binks mopping his brow—we
could barely see him in the darkness—"tell
you what, there is nothing like this fine, simple,
open-air life to make a fellow feel like a king."

The creature was inexorable.  His remark was
a gratuitous insult; but we were beyond the
desire or even the possibility of reply.  We could
only lie there on our back and look up longingly
at the stars, and think how mother used to steal
in and kiss us in our little white cot, and how
horrified Binks would be when he discovered that
we were dying.

"Great Jumping Jee-hosophat!" shouted
Binks a moment later.  He had struck a match
and looked at his watch.  "It's a quarter to eight,
and we were to have been back at dinner at seven.
And that damn carter hasn't come yet!"

He said a lot more about the carter, and the
carter's family for some generations back, and
the carter's prospects in the future life.  Binks
is not exactly a cussing man, but he gave a very
fair imitation of one—it would do till a real
cusser came around.

We heard him, but we heeded not.  We just
lay there and smiled blandly at the Milky Way.
We had reached the point where we didn't care a
darn if the race of carters became utterly extinct,
and we were extinguished with them.  All we
wanted was to be left alone.

Binks, however, was indomitable.  That man's
energy was positively terrifying.  He got us on
our feet, put our coat on us in spite of our feeble
resistance, stuck one end of that fatal saw in our
hand, and dragged us two miles or more through
the bush and the darkness to the street-car.
With the help of the conductor he lifted us on
and propped us up in the end of a seat.  We
remember that we moaned when they took the
handle of the saw away from us.  We had grown
attached to it.

We don't recall much about the trip on the
car, except hearing the conductor tell Binks that
people who couldn't carry liquor any better than
we seemed able to do shouldn't be allowed to
have any.  He said that sort of thing was what
started Prohibition movements.  And Binks
agreed with him!

When we got to Bink's house, the dinner had
long since been burned to a crisp, and Mrs. Binks
registered about six hundred pounds pressure on
her temper-gauge.  It was a terrible meal.  We
don't remember what we ate, or whether we ate
at all.  All we know is that when it was over,
we stumbled right over to our hat and then back
to Mrs. Binks.

"Goo' night—lovely time," we said.  "Hope
you're the same!"

Binks saw us to the door.  As a matter of fact,
we had started to walk into the fire-place.  He
seemed to feel the need of some explanation.

"Sorry, old man, about that infernal carter,"
he said, "but tell you what we'll do.  Some day
next week we'll stroll out to the lot and have the
fun of loading up, and then...."

We are not quite clear what it was that we said
to Binks, but we must have said something fairly
significant, for neither Binks nor his wife has
spoken to us since.

Of course, we are sorry that Binks and his
wife feel that way about it.  But after all the
first law of life is self-preservation, and we can't
afford to run that sort of risk again.  We didn't
heal up for a week or more after that dreadful
grapple with the cross-cut saw.  In fact, we had
some notion of going to a surgeon and having
the bites cauterized.

Even this was nothing to the soreness in our
legs and arms and the famous "back-muscles"
that Binks brought into play.  We spent all our
evenings for the next fortnight rubbing arnica
into them—also a wonderful liniment which our
landlady gave us.  It must have been a fine
liniment for it smelled so strong that people turned
around and looked after us on the street, as if
they thought we ought to be quarantined and
were in two minds about calling a policeman.
And we didn't dare visit our friends.  But then
what's the use of going to see a lady if you moan
in pain every time you try to put your arm
around—well, around the back of the chair?

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Refreshments at Five`:

.. figure:: images/img-131.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: REFRESHMENTS AT FIVE

   REFRESHMENTS AT FIVE

.. class:: center large bold

   Refreshments at Five

.. vspace:: 2

Five o'clock appears to be a very critical
time in the day.  On the manner in which
the next three-quarters of an hour are spent may
depend one's well-being and good temper for the
rest of the day and the evening and possibly the
first couple of hours of the morrow.

Some people—low persons who need the
money or whose bosses will not permit them to
leave the office—make a habit of working
through till six, or whatever time it is that they
punch the clock and go home in a street-car
strap.  Naturally such persons have no place in
an article of this character.

To sensitive and cultured people who have
spent the afternoon playing bridge or in the
cellar brewing the family liquor—that, we believe,
is the intellectual pastime of the moment—or in
mahogany-furnished offices persuading innocent
folk with money to buy Nicaragua banana-lands
or bunk stocks on punk margins, five o'clock is
the blessed hour of surcease and repose.  It is
balm in Gilead, cool rains after the heat of the
day, a friendly hotel after walking across a "dry"
county, divorce after—oh, g'wan and make your
own metaphors!

Personally we are an ardent and determined
five-o'clocker.  We have played it every way
there is—straight, for place, for show, and across
the board.  There is no kind of five-o'clock
performance—in accordance, that is, with the purity
and piety of our character and upbringing—that
we have not done or witnessed.  We have
attended teas of every description and shade of
color, pink, yellow, mauve, and with dashes of
cerise.  We have gone to the tango kind, and to
those discreet teas in sequestered corners of
tea-rooms to which one conducts fair students of the
drama after the matinee.

In older and perhaps happier—certainly freer—days,
we were a frequent guest and occasional
host at little informal five-o'clock functions,
where one inquired of the rest of the company
what they were having and requested the
attendant to "fill 'em up again, Jawn!"  We attended
such functions in clubs, cafes, and those
democratic places of resort which were entered by
swinging doors—up to eleven on ordinary nights
and seven on Saturdays.  And we did this as part
of that systematic study of humanity—including
the things they eat and the drinks they drink—which
is recommended so earnestly by the philosophers.

All this is by way of letting the reader see how
thoroughly qualified we are by nature and
training to write on this important subject of
five-o'clock refreshments.  We say "important"
advisedly and with no ironic intent.  We have
devoted to the question of how best to spend the
time between five and a quarter to six much time,
energy, and serious thought—not without
considerable difficulty and several vigorous rows
with persons we have at various times consented
to work for.  And, as a result of our studies, we
are convinced that rest and refreshment at five
are a human necessity, whether you take it with
two lumps or with soda, and whether you eat out
of the "curate" or off the free-lunch counter.

Of course, this whole institution of five-o'clock
refreshment is an intensely modern and
hyper-civilized development—at least, here in Canada.
It represents a reaction from the nerve-stresses
of up-to-date urban existence.  Our sturdy
forefathers knew it not, and verily there are still
many places where people do not practice it.
Farmers as a class, for instance, have still
maintained their ancient prejudice against eating and
drinking till it is too dark or the weather is too
bad to do anything else.

Naturally there would have been something
absurdly incongruous in our great-grandfathers
stopping in the midst of shooting bears or
Indians or burning out a clearing, in order to tramp
back to the log-cabin for a pimento sandwich or
a cup or two of oolong.  But, even at that, we
would hate to believe that the old boys didn't
occasionally knock off for a few minutes about
five, and drag the old cider-jug from its place of
concealment in a hollow stump, and have a pull
or two at the juice that cheers and eke
inebriates—if it is "hard" enough.

Five-o'clock refreshments, however, as we
know them, are a peculiarly modern institution.
We got the habit from England, where we get
our spats and our knighthoods, our green hats
and our Governors-General.  In England they
all do it, and it won't be long before we are all
doing it, too.  Talk about the effects of the War
on our soldiers!—if you could see the splendid
fellows now pouring their own in the tea-rooms,
you would fear the worst.

A friend of ours who occasionally—and even
oftener if things are slow at home—takes a run
over to London to refresh his accent and to study
life in its more dignified and also its lighter
phases, has told us of a visit he paid to a great
English factory.  As he was being shown over
the plant by the owner—jolly old dog, too,
egad!—a gong sounded suddenly.  Everybody
instantly dropped their tools and climbed down
from their machines; a gang of waiters burst
upon the scene carrying huge trays of steaming
cups with two little crackers on the side of each
saucer; and everybody had tea.  Even the boss,
just to show what a democratic old cuss he was,
had a cup with the rest—the clawsses drinking
with the mawsses, so to speak.

Once in our journalistic youth—we felt about
a hundred and eighty in experience of life—we
had occasion (meaning we were sent by a
profane and peremptory city editor) to interview
the heads of a great business corporation
regarding the financial situation.  It was a time of
panic, and this particular concern was reported
to be in a bad way.  A heavy sense of
responsibility weighed upon us as we loosed our pencil
in its patent sheath, and entered the office of the
two brothers who directed the destinies of the
company.

They were at tea!  A fat, perspiring
waiter—why do waiters always perspire?—had just
carried in from a neighboring cafe a large tray
bearing a tea-pot, a jug of hot water, plate of
sandwiches, ditto of cute little cakes, and all the
various accessories of tea-making and drinking.
Our heart sank.  We felt that this particular
company was doomed.  It wouldn't have been
a greater shock to us if we had discovered them
playing marbles—in fact, we would have been
more likely to regard marbles as an amiable
eccentricity.

They hospitably insisted that we should join
them, but we declined with decision.  We felt
as if we had been invited to take out our sewing
and while away a pleasant hour with the rest of
the girls doing embroidery and eating marshmallows.
But our contempt for these particular
gentlemen was slightly modified by their
producing cigarettes—very good cigarettes,
too—after tea and lighting up.  Naturally we joined
in that.  And our feelings were changed to
something like genuine respect when we discovered
what rattling good "copy" they could talk.
Oh, they weathered the financial gale all right,
in spite of the tea.  And the experience made us
more tolerant of the vice.

As for the ordinary sort of pink tea—you know
the kind of thing where the dear boys in
morning-coats pass the vittles to the dear girls in
feathers and a string of beads—we are a
hardened and weary veteran.  We used to be one of
the best young amateur waiters you ever saw,
and could juggle a "curate" with a grace and
efficiency that would have been the despair of
Beau Brummel, if he had survived to witness it.
But never again!

Incidentally, why are those three-storey
arrangements called "curates?"  Is it because they
are always planted among the girls?  Or because
social events are not really respectable without
one around?  Or is it simply because they can
hold so much cake?

Whatever the reason for the name, we became
an out-and-out expert at wielding the things.
Handing cups of tea with the right hand, and
with the left dealing from the top or bottom deck
of the "curate" with equal ease, we must have
been a genteelly inspiring sight.  But we have
no joy of the recollection.  Think of a healthy
man spending his time like that!

Of course, we still go to teas occasionally—even
the most fertile and mendacious excuser
is sometimes caught without an alibi.  Not that
these social evasions are lies exactly, but you
know the way one says: "Next Thursday did you
say, my dear?  So good of you, and I would just
love to, but I'm all filled up for next Thursday,"
etc., etc.  And being "all filled up," naturally
one cannot be expected to fill up any more.  But
sometimes it is not so easy to get out of it, and we
are occasionally caught by a sudden flank attack.
But we are never a willing prisoner—we go
down fighting desperately to the last.

As a matter of fact, teas long ago ceased to
hold any delight for us.  Like Martha we chose
the worser part; but this was back in the wicked
days before Prohibition descended on us all like
a bomb from a Zeppelin.  Every now and then—not
every day, for we were not unabashed in
our delinquency—a friend or two would drop in
about five.  We would discuss the weather in a
dispassionate and scientific manner, as well as
the Mexican situation—it was the only war on
at the time—and the prospects for the baseball or
hockey championship, according to the time of
year.  We talked of many things, but all in the
same cool and detached way, as of men whose
minds were elsewhere and busy with more vital
matters.  Then suddenly we would all rise up as
one man and go silently away to a place we
wotted of, where the clerk knew us by name, and
asked us if we were having "the same old
poison."  Or better still, he would nod in a
friendly way and without waiting to ask would
set out the materials on the ba—no, no,
counter!—with calm assurance bred of an intimate
knowledge of our preferences.

It is a curious trait in human nature but the
average man used to take much joy and pride out
of having a refreshment-clerk—and when we
say "refreshment" we use the word in its most
dynamic significance—call him by name and
hand him out his favorite brand without asking.
It did him more good than if the president of the
bank he made his over-draughts on had picked
him up in the presidential limousine as he was
walking down to the office of a morning.

Perhaps we should not speak about these
things now that they are over and done with and
everyone is reformed and uncomfortable; but
how is the coming generation to know anything
about the habits of us their ancestors, unless
someone tells them the thirsty truth?  As a matter
of fact, it is more than likely that the reader
of fifty years from now, coming on this book
among some empty bottles in a dark corner of the
attic, won't know what the dickens we are talking
about.  Poor old John Barleycorn may have
ceased to be even a memory, and—but then again
perhaps he won't.  Very hardy old chap, John!

We do not wish, however, to close this veracious
and useful disquisition on what might be
called the Bacchic note—though Bacchic in the
most gentlemanly and respectable sense, of
course.  Besides, all this talk of teas has
reminded us of one which we like best—though it
is a wistful pleasure—to remember.  You see, it
was quite a long time ago, and—but let us get on
with the story.

To begin with, we had telephoned to the
house—Heaven only knows about what!  Any old
excuse was a good excuse in those days.  And she
said, after a certain amount of persiflage and
badinage—you know the sort of thing people
talk over the 'phone in the spring—she said to
come up and have a cup of tea with her.

It was right in office hours and we had a lot of
work to do.  But did we go?  Yes, Friend
Reader, we did.  We rushed out clutching our
hat in our hand, nearly broke a leg catching a
car, and every time it stopped to let anyone on or
off, we indulged in a line of mental profanity
which must have created a faint blue aureole
around our head like a mediæval saint.

They were all out—the family, that is—even
to the servant-girl.  But we didn't mind.  In
fact, our relief was such that we realized at once
it would be unseemly to show it.  Our recollection
is that we expressed a certain mild regret for
their absence—Lord, what a liar a man can make
of himself at times!  Then having behaved like
a really nice boy, we had an apron tied on us, for
we had to help make the sandwiches.  A pair of
very pretty arms reached round us from behind
and hung a silly little arrangement of linen and
frills upon our manly waist, after a great deal of
tugging and squeezing, which was rather
complicated by our irresistible inclination to twist
around and watch the strings being tied in the
middle of our back—obviously a difficult feat of
an acrobatic nature.

The sandwiches were finally made—we remember
we were told we had spread the butter
too thick.  Then we carried the tray in beside a
grate-fire, just an ordinary gas-grate, but if it
had been the fires of the eternal dawn it couldn't
have seemed any more cheering.  Sunlight
streamed in through the window on a big bowl
of daffodils, themselves like a great splash of
sunshine.  Outside in the street youngsters were
at play.  We never even yet eat a certain kind of
sandwich that we don't remember....

But, oh, pshaw, what's the use?  What's the
use?  Besides, think how much freer and more
solvent we are in our present celibate condition.
But there are times and moods, mere trifles like
a glimpse of flowers in the spring or a robin's
song or the odor of wet lawns, which bring her
back to us again and make us wince once more as
we recall that her name is now Mrs. Spoffkins.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Manners for the Masses`:

.. figure:: images/img-145.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: MANNERS FOR THE MASSES

   MANNERS FOR THE MASSES

.. class:: center large bold

   Manners for the Masses

.. vspace:: 2

"Manners Makyth Man."

How often in our eager youth was
that hoary old maxim quoted to us with stern
insistence, what time we had seized the last piece
of cake on the plate, or were absorbing our soup
with a noise like that of a punctured vacuum
cleaner.  Manners makyth man, perhaps; but in
those days manners made us tired.

Now that we have attained manhood's estate,
however, and grey hair and a nice discrimination
in Scotch, when there is any to practice on, we
realize the need of more manners—manners for
the masses.  People in general are not so polite
as they used to be and ought to be.  Street-car
conductors, for instance, do not treat us at all
times with the consideration we feel to be our due.

We do not object so bitterly to being told to
"step lively there," or having the conductor jab
the end of the fare-box into our diaphragm.
Such little crudities of manner are perhaps
inseparable from his rather trying profession.  But
the other day we handed a conductor by mistake
a quarter of suspicious antecedents—metallurgically
speaking, of course.  Money we can't pass
is the only sort of tainted money we recognize.
We fear this particular coin contained more
than the usual amount of alloy.  As a matter of
fact, we hadn't intended giving it to him at all.
We had laid it aside for a church collection, or a
tag-day, or the first pretty Salvation Army lass
we should see with a "self-denial-week" box at a
street corner.  But it got into the wrong pocket.

We handed it to the conductor and said, "Blue,
please!"—alluding to the cerulean hue of the
tickets.  He turned it over two or three times in
his hand, glared at us, walked down to the rear
platform to see it in the better light there, asked
two or three men what they thought of it, and
then carried it back to us between the thumb and
index finger of the right hand as though he were
holding something dead by the tail.  The whole
car watched him drop it with a thud into our
grey-suede palm.

"The Company don't let us take nothin' but
silver quarters," he remarked in a loud voice and
with quite undue emphasis on the "silver."

We had to hunt through our pockets for a
five-cent piece to put in the box.  It was a very
painful moment, and naturally the only nickle we
owned hid itself amid a mass of coppers—we had
enough of them to bust our suspenders.  And
while we hunted, the conductor stood there and
shook the box belligerently under our nose.

Therefore, we repeat, let us by all means have
more manners—manners for street-car conductors
and plumbers and elevator-men and the
masses generally.  Not even bank-clerks are
altogether above reproach in this respect.  We have
had several rather regrettable experiences with
bank-clerks—usually in connection with slight
over-draughts.  And yet bank-clerks are
generally regarded as the budding Chesterfields of
the financial world.

Talking of Chesterfield reminds us of that
period in our development at which his "Letters"
burst upon us as a brilliant and a guiding
star.  We were about sixteen, and our voice still
oscillated between a squeaking treble and a
booming bass.  We were also having considerable
difficulty in keeping our extremities
decently within the compass of our clothes.

Our manners at that time were those of a
breezy but well-intentioned caveman.  No effete
conventions for us!—no, sir, nothing but the
simple, unaffected utterance of the heart.  It was
our aim to be a rough diamond, a fellow whose
shaggy exterior concealed a beautiful soul, and
whom people would come to understand and
love after a long time—maybe, after we were
dead.  We could see ourself smiling peacefully
in our padded coffin, while the family wept all
over the oxidized-silver plate bearing our name
and two dates—n-n-nothing m-m-more!

Perhaps this shaggy-breast-and-heart-of-gold
business was not "getting across" as successfully
as we had hoped.  Perhaps we had grown weary
of doing little acts of kindness and of love in a
rude, untutored way.  Or perhaps the time was
merely ripe for a new phase of our social
development.  Anyhow, we one day picked up Lord
Chesterfield's "Letters to My Son," and at a
bound became a suave and graceful man of the
world, concealing under a smile of wistful charm
a cynical and disillusioned heart.  Whatever
might be the bitterness of our regrets, as befitted
a man who had known life and women and had
suffered, no shadow disturbed the serenity of our
brow.  We continued to smile and bow with the
old nonchalant grace, as though it were roses,
roses all the way.  This was the impression we
tried to convey, at any rate.

The family received our change of heart and
manner in a spirit of levity against which our
new ideals were not always proof—but you know
the gentle way of families.  Instead of teaching
the young idea how to shoot, they are apt to
suggest that it ought to go out and shoot itself.
Naturally we suffered, and not unresentfully.
In fact, we so far forgot ourself as to try to lick
our younger brother—a very un-Chesterfieldian
endeavor, and not entirely successful.  He had
a rushing style of fighting which—but there are
bygones which had best be has-beens.

Of course, we have long since realized that it
isn't wise to carry even so good a thing as
manners to an over-elaborate extreme.  Not long ago
we had an instance of this—which brings us back
to a street-car again.  Wonderful how much one
can learn in those humble but interesting
conveyances!  It was a crowded car, and we got up
when a statuesque young woman in a very tight
skirt stood right in front of us.  We got up as
gracefully as the movement of the car would
permit, and hanging on a strap with the skill of
long practice we adroitly removed our hat and
bowed.  We wanted to let her know that our
action was the expression of a distant but
chivalrous respect.

The statuesque young woman never quivered a
hair of her expensive willow-plume, but stared
penetratingly at a male collar-ad just over her
head.  Perhaps she had not seen us in her
reverie.  Perhaps the face of the young gentleman
in the dreadfully conspicuous collar reminded
her of someone she knew or loved or both—though
we have never known any human being
to look like those faces, and certainly would not
think of loving him if he did.

Whatever the reason she certainly did not see
us.  We waited for a block or two, and then we
made bold to touch her arm just above the chain
of her beaded bag—it looked like something the
Shah of Persia would wear.

"Madam," we said in our most mellow and
flute-like tone, "won't you take this seat?"

She flashed on us a pair of large, dark
pupils—belladonna, we presume—and said in a voice like
the drip of an icicle in a cemetery, "I don't care
to sit down."

That was all—no "Thank you" or "Much
obliged" or any other of the ready phrases of
casual courtesy.  Just, "I don't care to sit down."

It was an unfortunate and deucedly embarrassing
experience.  We didn't like to sit down
again—in our confusion we would probably have
sat in someone else's lap.  And yet it seemed
frightfully silly for the two of us to go on
standing there in front of that empty seat.  So we
stopped the car and got off half a mile from home.

Now, why did she do that?  Was she afraid
that if she sat down and said, "Thank you," we
might presume on her graciousness to make a
few timely remarks about the weather, and after
a brief survey of the Russian situation or the
newest thing in "movies," should end up by
offering her some gum?  Or, on the other hand was
she a suffragette who refused to be put on a basis
of inequality and treated as a member of a
weaker sex?  Did she see in our action the
gloating superiority of man the master?

Then again she may have been unwilling to sit
down because—well, because—oh, dash it all,
you know how tight those skirts are!  Besides,
occasionally in shop-windows and while hurrying
modestly past certain "circles" in
department-stores, we have inadvertently seen articles
of feminine attire (warranted pure whalebone)
which would seem to make the operation of
sitting down a difficult and painful feat of
compression.  We feel a certain delicacy in mentioning
this, and not for worlds would we dream of
using the language in which these garments are
described in the newspaper ads—the accompanying
photographs almost make it impossible for us
to read them.  But the fact remains that the
statuesque young lady in the car may not have
been able to bend any more than her neck, which
was quite bare and untrammelled halfway down
the lungs.

Of course, Lord Chesterfield and all the books
of etiquette since his time have been strong for
self-possession.  A man, they say, should be
self-possessed under any and every circumstance—the
more surprising and unpleasant they are, the
more self-possessed he should be.  It is the secret
of good manners.

Now that is just the sort of excellent and
utterly futile advice that we are always getting.
Be self-possessed—sure!  But how?  That's
what we want—specific directions, not general
advice.  We would welcome a few concrete
illustrations for maintaining one's self-possession
when meeting one's recently divorced wife, for
instance, or after dropping a soda-check in the
collection plate, or while mother is showing
pictures of one as a baby, or while purchasing long
silk hose and explaining that auntie is having a
birthday.  Situations such as these are apt to
occur in the most skilfully regulated lives, and
naturally we would like to know what to
do—meaning, what to do with our hands and the
perspiration on our brow and the blushes on our face.

Just as a case in point—we went into a
department-store some months back to buy a thimble.
We do a little sewing now and then, you know—nothing
fancy, just buttons and repairs of a temporary
and intimate nature.  It occurred to us
that we ought to have a thimble.  A bed-post is
all right, if it is handy.  But you are not always
near enough to be able to shove the needle against
it; and naturally one can't very well carry a
bed-post around with one, can one?

So we decided to buy a thimble and went into
a department-store for the purpose, having
previously steeled our breast and made brazen our
countenance.  But we didn't have the courage to
ask anyone, least of all a floor-walker, where the
things were sold.  For fifteen minutes we
wandered about peering at the various "circles," and
rousing the worst suspicions of the shop-detectives.
There were at least two men shadowing
us by the time we finally saw a tray of thimbles
and rushed at it with a gasp of relief.

Our relief, however, was premature.  There
was a girl standing back of the tray—not the
usual beauty in a lace blouse, who toys with her
back-hair and stares through a man with
devastating indifference.  We were prepared for
that sort, and had several curt and peremptory
things ready to say.  But this was a nice,
motherly girl, the kind of girl who makes a man
feel that he is just seven years old and is about
to have his face washed.  These are overwhelming!

"A thimble?—you want a thimble?" she asked
with an air of bustling solicitude.  "What size?
But, of course, a man never does know the size.
Let me see your finger."

Now, we had started out with an insane notion
that we would say the thimble was for our wife,
who was too ill to come down-town and wanted a
thimble for a little crochet-work or something to
while away the time.  You know the sort of silly
yarn a man would naturally invent.  But we
realized at once that it was no use here.  We felt
that this girl knew we were a bachelor; knew the
sort of sewing we do; and probably knew just
what buttons were missing on just what coat, and
all about that rip in the waist-band of our
trousers.

So we held out our finger—our index finger!
Patiently she put it back and took the next one
to it, holding it very firmly while she tried two
or three thimbles on it in rapid succession.  We
felt like a June bride watching the bridegroom
fiddle with the ring.

"Will you take this thimble?" she finally asked.

"I w-w-will!"

The infernal phrase slipped out in spite of us,
in a voice which we in vain endeavored to make
assured.  It was an absurd predicament.  All
that was lacking was a parson and that
tum-tum-tiddee thing from "Lohengrin."

"But isn't it a little loose?" she persisted.
Then she took it off and tried on a few more.  By
this time three or four other girls had come up,
and were inspecting us with a detached and
somewhat contemptuous interest—all except a
little fool who blushed and giggled.  If the
maternal one hadn't had such a tight hold on our
finger, we would have run.  We could feel the
perspiration sizzling on our burning cheeks.

"Ah, that's better," she said at last, after she
had tried on about fifteen.  "Men always like
them tight, you know.  And now you want some
thread, don't you?—some nice, strong, black and
white thread."

We did, but we wouldn't have admitted it for
anything in this world—or the world to come
either.  Not if we had to fasten our suspenders
with clothes-pins.  We simply seized that
infernal thimble and hurried away in such a blind
agony of shame that we forgot our change and
nearly knocked a floor-walker down.

Self-possession—gawd!

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Raiment and Mere Clothes`:

.. figure:: images/img-159.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: RAIMENT AND MERE CLOTHES

   RAIMENT AND MERE CLOTHES

.. class:: center large bold

   Raiment and Mere Clothes

.. vspace:: 2

Women, of course, dress to annoy one
another.  We wouldn't be guilty of a truism
of this nature, if it were not that a lot of worthy
people have gone about lately talking and
writing and warning from pulpits as though women
dressed for the express purpose of luring the
minds of men from the contemplation of the
higher and more spiritual things to which they
are naturally inclined.

There has even been a Papal Bull—or if not a
real honest-to-goodness Bull, at least a good
husky yearling of the sort known as an
Encyclical—condemning slit skirts and demi-tasse waists
and the dances people do in them, on the ground
that they put in masculine minds ideas that
wouldn't be there naturally.  This, however,
shows how little the Vatican knows about
feminine psychology—though their ignorance is
naturally very much to their credit.

In the first place, no lady would do such a
thing—would you, girls?  In the second, the
average man is too unobservant.  And in the
third, the women are too busy considering how to
"put it over" one another, to have time to worry
about the effect of the things they wear—or don't—on
their male *entourage* (with the accent on
the "—rawzh," the Society Editor assures us).
As we said above with epigrammatic force and
brilliancy, women dress to annoy one another.
The mere fact that someone else or several may
have said the same thing before does not lessen
the truth of the aphorism or the pleasure we take
in it.

Whatever their motive, women devote a lot of
thought, time, and some man's money to the
subject of dress.  Most people are agreed on this.
With men, however, it is supposed to be very
different.  There is a curious theory that men don't
give a dern—whatever that may amount to—about
their clothes.  People generally seem to
have an idea that a man waits till his suit is torn,
or so shiny that he gives the effect of an
animated heliograph, before he orders another.
And when he does, he is supposed to rush in to
his tailor for half a minute between important
business calls, or he rings him up on the 'phone.

"Send me up a new suit," he shouts, or something
to this hasty effect.  "What color?—oh,
any old color you got.  Something that will wear
a long time.  Solong!"

That is the way most women and a few men
think the average man buys his clothes.  But they
are wrong.  If you want to know how wrong,
you have only to go into a tailor's place, Friend
Reader—supposing you keep a tailor and not a
bargain-counter—while some fat old boy with
mutton-chops and a protuberant abdominal profile
is raising the dickens because the poor tailor
can't take the strain off the trouser-band and put
it on the top buttons of the vest.  Then you will
learn that the shaping of collars and shoulders is
a matter of supreme masculine concern, and that
the hang of a trouser-leg is a thing on which the
happiness of years may depend.  Then possibly
you will come to the conclusion that the average
man thinks a great deal more about his attire
than you have ever suspected.

Not that the average man's clothes are numerous
or conspicuous—not at present prices, anyway.
On the contrary, they are usually quite
few and inconspicuous—except possibly from
age.  But the fewer they are the more attention
he has to devote to them.  That is the paradox of
the thing.

A wealthy Adonis—or one with a good line of
credit, at least—can adopt a careless attitude
towards his clothes.  He may even keep a valet
to worry about them.  When he orders a new
suit he orders two or three.  His shirts and ties
and socks he buys by the dozen.  Suits he doesn't
like, he doesn't have to wear.  If he grows weary
of a certain color or pattern—one of those
shepherd-plaids you can play chess on, for instance,
or a nice hot brown that would melt the film of
a camera—he tosses it to his man or an itinerant
Hebrew and turns to one of a dozen other outfits
in the wardrobe.  Why should he worry?  He doesn't.

The man, however, who gets a couple of suits
a year—or more probably only one—has a quite
different problem to face, calling for the finest
qualities of artistic and economic judgment.
With what anxiety he studies the various samples
of cloth!  Will this wear well?  Will that one
gloss?  Will the grey go with his brown
overcoat?—perhaps not, but then the green is so
striking that people will notice it next year and
remember.

Then as to the cut.  It must be in the style,
but not too pronounced.  Those lapels are too
wide, or the slit in the back isn't long enough, or
the cuff on the trousers isn't sufficiently deep.
One has to be careful, for—dash it all!—the suit
has to do two years.  So he worries the life out
of his tailor for an hour a day through a
fortnight or more, brings the coat back three times
for alterations, and then pays for the suit in small
instalments.

If a man's troubles were over once he got his
suit, it wouldn't be so bad.  But the older a suit
gets the more trouble it gives.  For one thing,
you have to keep it pressed.  Coats will get
wrinkled, and human knees are obviously
intended by nature to put bags in trousers.
Occasionally, too, while playing approach shots with
the soup or making short putts in the pudding
sauce, a gentleman is liable to foozle and get it
all over his vest—unless, of course, he makes a
habit of tying his napkin around his neck.
Incidentally, this is a much more sensible system
than draping it over his right knee.  Who ever
spilled anything on his right knee, anyway?

These are serious questions to resolve.  What
should one do about it?—have a fellow in
livery and a Ford call around once a week and
carry one's garments off and bathe them in
benzine and manhandle them with electric-irons?
This is handy, of course, but in a few months it
costs more than the suit is worth.  Tip the cook,
then, to press your trousers, and trust to heaven
and a patent-hanger to keep the coat in shape?
Sometimes this works, but naturally a lot
depends on the cook.

Once we entrusted the trousers of our "other"
suit to the cook, a colored lady of unblemished
character and cheerful disposition.  We were
going out informally that evening, but we
wanted to make a good showing, and we needed
those trousers pressed in a hurry.  She pressed
them all right.  She pressed them so hard she
almost split the cloth on the edges.  But when
we saw them—modestly stretching a bare arm
for them around the corner of the door—we
smiled bravely, thanked her for her exceeding
goodness, and then closed the door and wept
feebly upon them.  She had put the creases in the
sides!  Since then we make a point of keeping
our "other" trousers under the mattress that they
may be ready in cases of sudden emergency.

Another difficulty is in the matter of the
buttons to be sewn on and the occasional rents to be
mended.  These are more slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune which noble bachelor minds
are called upon to suffer.  Landladies are
sometimes kind-hearted and can be flattered into
displaying other domestic virtues than those
connected with the making of beds and the frying of
matutinal bacon.  But usually they are too busy.
Of course, a man can always get married, but
... and you don't always get your buttons
sewn on, at that.

Personally, after much worry and embarrassment,
we have acquired a very decent skill with
the needle—nothing fancy, you know, but
substantial.  We can't use a thimble yet with any
confidence, but there is usually a bed-post handy
to shove the needle against.  Not even during the
patriotic activities of the war did we have any
occasion to sew in hotel-lobbies or at concerts or
in street-cars.  What sewing we do is done in the
privacy of the boudoir, and only when vitally
necessary.

We have a friend, rather a dandy, who says
that the ideal of good dressing—no, not the kind
that comes with a turkey, girls—is that a man's
personality should show through his clothes.
This, of course, is very æsthetic and quite as it
should be.  But the thing must not be overdone.
Occasionally a man's personality shows through
too clearly, and then the only thing to do is to
take a large needle, double the thread, and sew
the place up.

Some day we hope to have a million—honestly
acquired, we trust, but still a million.
When that happy time arrives, we will dress as
we darn well please.  We will wear old clothes
and let our pants bag at the knees.  We will
cease to pinch our feet in tight boots, or
half-strangle ourself with high stiff collars.  And
people will not despise us for our shabby exterior.
On the contrary, they will admire us for it,
and think we are a democratic old cuss, and
forgive us for owning so much money.

Till that period of affluence arrives, however,
we will be forced to go on devoting too much
time and attention and money to our habiliments.
Not that we are a "knut," Friend Reader—the
mere thought fills us with horror.  On the
contrary, our whole endeavor is to avoid the garish
and extreme.  We aim at elegant discretion.  It
is our ideal to give the impression that we are a
wealthy amateur who has taken up journalism
as a hobby.

A time there was, however, when we cherished
other notions of journalistic attire.  It was
when we had first left our *alma mater*—one's
*alma mater* may be anything from a night-school
to five years at Oxford—and had entered on the
high mission of moulding public opinion at
"twelve per."  Then it was our ambition to be
Bohemian.  We wore very wide-brimmed hats,
and low collars with generous openings in front
so as to display the Adam's-apple in all its
unfettered freedom.  We never brushed our clothes,
and we kept our hair rather long.  We wanted
to look like an eager young genius, whose gaze
was on far and high things, and who spurned
such petty distinctions as are conferred by
creases in the front of one's pants.

One night our theory of sumptuary beauty
received an awful jolt.  The discovery was
forced upon us that other people did not see eye
to eye with us in the matter of the æsthetics of
dress.  There was one suit we owned—one of the
two, that is—which we hated with a whole-hearted
hatred.  It was too much even for us.
We bought it from a friend who had just gone
into the tailoring profession.  It was probably
his first case, and the operation was not a
success—he was nervous, perhaps.  The cloth was a
heather-mixture—that is what he called it, at
any rate, though the color suggested that a
number of chameleons had committed suicide on it.
The cut was indescribable.  The coat was dimly
reminiscent of a Roman toga—we had told him
to make it loose—and the trousers were obviously
modelled on those of Micawber in old illustrated
editions of "David Copperfield."

Being unable to afford the relief of throwing
the thing away, we tried to get a certain amount
of wear out of it under an overcoat.  One evening
when we were surreptitiously taking it for a
walk under a mackintosh, we met an artist friend
of ours.  He was all muffled up to the throat, as
though he, too, were concealing a sartorial mishap.

"Come on over to the Art Gallery," said he,
"there are some rather nice things over
there—imported."

We like pictures, especially those foreign
ones—"Lady with Green Stocking," you know the
sort—so we hastened gladly along with our
friend, only stopping twice on the way.  It was
before the advent of Prohibition, and—well, if
we had known what we were going to run into
at the Art Gallery, we would have had about a
quart, neat.

When we reached the place and our friend
struggled out of his overcoat, we saw that he was
in evening clothes.  We were surprised, but
thinking he was perhaps saving his business
suit—besides, you never can tell how an artist will
dress—we said nothing.  But when we got into
the gallery we understood.  It was opening
night, private view, by invitation only—the
complete formal caper, b' Jove!—and every blessed
soul in the place was in full regalia.  Every
woman present seemed to be "posing for the
bust"—that, we believe is the technical phrase—and
the gentlemen could be distinguished from
waiters only by the wrinkles in their clothes and
the faint aroma of camphor and moth-balls.

We would have cut and run if we had been
given the chance; but our friend was a hospitable
chap.  He grabbed us by the arm and dragged
us about from picture to picture, while we
perspired agony at every pore and everybody in
the gallery glared at us as though we were the
tattooed man clad only in our illustrations.
Art-lovers are supposed to be an unconventional set.
If you want to find out how unconventional they
are, go to an "opening night" in business clothes,
and see!

Finally we made our escape—we pleaded illness
or a twisted ankle or something of that sort.
We hurried home and as soon as we got there
we pitched that suit out of the window.  It
caught in the branches of a tree where it stayed
till the family made us get a ladder and take it
down—they said it gave the public the idea that
the gentlemen in the house ran around without
any clothes on.

We never did wear it again.  The very next
day we went out and bought a set of open-faced
formal clothes.  For months afterwards we
wouldn't go out for a walk in the evening
without them.  We didn't feel safe.  Mere clothes
might be all right for millionaires and geniuses,
but sumptuous raiment for ours!  We couldn't
afford to wear less.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`That Fur Coat`:

.. figure:: images/img-173.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: THAT FUR COAT

   THAT FUR COAT

.. class:: center large bold

   That Fur Coat

.. vspace:: 2

Ever since our downy and callow youth the
fur-lined overcoat has been for us a symbol
of wealth and a certain dashing deviltry.  Of
course, we are perfectly well aware that a
number of tame married men, holding positions
worth about twenty dollars a week, own fur-lined
coats.  Even on the editorial staff of which we
are the bright particular star there are two or
three overcoats lined with something definitely
recognizable as fur.

Nevertheless we have never been able to
conquer our instinctive feeling that a fur-lined
overcoat indicates the possession of a great deal of
money and a doggish tendency to spend it on
wine, women, and—well, the singing is not so
important in the picture.  Whenever we see a
man sporting a fur-lined overcoat our first
thought is to wonder whether or not his wife has
found out about him.  Our second is to wish we
had a coat like it.

The origin of this curious and somewhat
pathetic feeling about fur-lined coats is probably
to be found in the days of our adolescence, when
we wore deliriously exotic ties and attended the
presentations of refined melodrama.  We
devoted much thought in those days to the subject
of masculine attire—possibly with some obscure
notion of attracting the weaker sex by the
brilliancy of our plumage—and the villain always
fascinated while he revolted us.  We had much
joy of his clothes.

To see the handsome devil swing across the
stage with his light but fiendish ha-ha, his
cigarette, and the dress-suit which is the national
costume of villains, always gave us a thrill which
the chaste embraces of the hero and heroine
seldom provided.  Even to this day we wouldn't
give a darn to watch some other fellow hugging
a comely young woman.

Usually the villain wore a fur-lined coat at
some stage of his hellish machinations—preferably
at the height of them, when he was about to
boil the heroine's baby, for instance, or was
engaged in tying that long-suffering and virtuous
lady in the path of the onrushing train.  It was
at such moments that he threw open the coat
loaned by the well-known firm of local furriers—as
the programme never forgot to state—and
displayed the mink lining of luxurious sin.  We
always wondered how the heroine found the
strength of mind to resist his wicked advances to her.

Incidentally, we noticed that no matter what
liberties the hero might take with the person of
the villain—the hero was usually a muscular
blond—he always forebore to lay the hands of
avenging justice on the fur-lined coat.  He
might pitch the tr-r-raitor-r off a cliff, or slowly
choke him to death after a furious grapple, or
shoot him in the nick of time and the chest, but
never with the coat on.  If the villain forgot to
take it off, the hero always taunted him into
doing so.  Whereupon the villain, knowing full
well that he had come to the end of his evil
tether, either hung the coat carefully on a handy
hook or folded it neatly on a chair.  The owner
might be down in the orchestra seats.

Such scenes bred in us a superstitious
reverence for fur-lined garments.  It became the
dream of our young life to possess such an
overcoat, a gold cigarette-case, and three or four
wives whom we had married for their money.
But you know how disappointing these dreams
are apt to be.  We didn't even get the wives.

The nearest we ever came to a fur-lined coat
was owning one with a Persian-lamb collar.  We
never cared much for that coat.  There was an
air of superficiality about it.  Not that we have
anything against Persian-lamb collars so far as
they go.  But they don't go very far.  Besides,
they make one look like a police-lieutenant or a
chauffeur.

Mind you, it was a swagger garment in its
way.  In addition to the fur collar it had a
double-breasted front, and was fastened with
barrel-shaped arrangements instead of buttons.  It had
everything pertaining to a fur-lined coat, except
the fur-lining.

Of course, you wouldn't notice that vital
defect unless we opened the coat or took it off.
And we never did either in public.  We have sat
in street-cars up near the stove with that coat
buttoned up to our chin, until people have moved
away from us under the impression that we had
the measles.  We have almost had to thrash
butlers to prevent them helping us off with it—if
there is anything obstinate on earth, it is a
butler with the idea that you are hiding something
from him.  We have even retired into dark
doorways to get a cent out of our pants-pocket to
buy a paper, rather than open the coat on a busy
corner.

In spite of these precautions, we always had
the feeling that people knew about that coat and
discussed it.  They had a way of looking at it as
though they thought the collar had been put on
with safety-pins.  We grew to hate the coat.
Finally the moths got it.  That is, they bored
holes in it—probably looking for the lining.

Still our thwarted ambition to possess a real
fur-lined coat has persisted.  We want it as
badly as we ever did.  It is nothing to us that
they have gone out of exclusive style.  We care
not that every second man on the street has a coat
with some sort of hairy stuff on the collar and the
interior draped with the mortal remains of the
commoner sort of muskrat.  We are still faithful
to our early love.

From time to time we have gone into one or
other of the various local emporiums—or should
it be "emporia?"—of skins, peltry, fleece, hides,
and fur, and have priced the garment of our
longing.  We have looked at mink-lined ones,
rat-lined, rabbit-lined, and even seal-lined.  We
have tried them on and talked sagely to salesmen
about them.  But we have bought not, neither
have we paid down in instalments.  We have
sighed, jingled the quarter against the small
change in our pocket, and said we would call
again soon.

The trouble is that the only coats we like are
those ranging from about four hundred up—up
as far as you can see, and then some!  The seal
ones we definitely gave up.  No one but a former
manufacturer of munitions or an inventor of
booze-substitutes should aspire to those.  It isn't
only the initial expense but the way you have to
live up to them—taxicabs, diamonds, and half a
dollar to the hat-boy every time he helps you on
with it.

That left mink, and mink we resolved it
should be, in spite of its scarcity.  You see, the
mink is a small animal of retiring nature and
celibate instincts.  At least, the mink does not
seem to run to large families.  The rabbit takes
up fatherhood as a profession—but nothing like
that for the mink!  One or two little minks, and
that's all.  The mink is a sort of natural
Eugenist.  "Better babies" is his slogan, not "More
babies."  As a result minks are hard to get, and
correspondingly expensive.

Frequently have we cast eyes of longing on
mink-lined coats in fur-store windows, as we
strolled along to the office on cold mornings in
our combination raincoat and winter ulster.
They have been handsome coats, too, many of
them, but there has always been something about
them we didn't like—sometimes the collar,
occasionally the shell (how those military terms will
creep in even yet!), and nearly always the small
tag hanging from the upper righthand button-hole
and proclaiming the price.

But one fine day during that very cold snap
we finally saw the fur-coat of our youthful
vision.  There it hung, or rather stood, in the
window, spreading its mink lining to the
ravished gaze and ruffling its otter collar in
tantalizing beauty.  That collar had been peeled off
the emperor of all the otters—or the crown
prince, at the very least—and Heaven alone
knows how many minks had delivered up their
fluffy integument to furnish forth that
sumptuous lining.

It was a beautiful thing, God wot, and the
price was right—only two hundred and fifty iron
men, simoleons, bucks, bones, or spondulicks.
Not that we take a light view of a sum which in
the old days would have bought two thousand
cocktails, and if judiciously expended on "lush"
would have enabled one to laugh at Prohibition
for many happy weeks.  But what is two
hundred and fifty dollars for a fur-coat which was
originally five hundred as the tag explicitly
declared, and had come down through successive
stages to this absurdly inadequate figure?

We rushed right in and made a clerk drag it
out of the window.  He did it a little doubtfully,
it seemed—evidently unaware how many
moneyed men dress very plainly, not to say
shabbily.  But our enthusiasm finally impressed
him.  He held it up for us, and we slipped with
a sigh of tremulous delight into its soothing
embrace.  Lordy, how that coat fitted!  How
gently it caressed us, and how gracefully it hung
upon the angles of our frame!  There is something
positively sinful in such comfort as that.

Of course, it wouldn't do to let the clerk see
how delighted we were with it—he might raise
the price again.  So we controlled our voice as
best we could, and asked him if the skins were all
right.  We even tried to look disparaging.

"All right?" he almost shouted.  "Why, if it
wasn't for the stringency and all that, this coat
would be selling at three times—but you can see
for yourself.  Just look at those skins—everyone
of them taken in the middle of winter!"  And
in his indignation at our attitude, he
grabbed a couple of minks and crumpled them up as
if he were going to tear them out of the coat and
throw them away.

That's a peculiar thing about fine furs.  The
finer they are, the more the connoisseur seems to
abuse them.  Poor skins have to be handled with
great care, we presume, but when your real
expert gets hold of a good piece of fur, he shakes
it and beats it and tries to pull the hair out of it.

It was also very nice to know that the minks
had been taken in the winter when they had all
their fur on.  In the summer, when the minks
are wearing nothing but their swimming-trunks,
so to speak—but the thing doesn't bear thinking of.

It was just the coat we had always wanted—the
clerk said we looked great in it—but after a
hasty recollection of our bank-balance as it
appeared when we last put a dint in it, we told him
we would call again.  And we kept calling.  We
called about a dozen times.  We simply couldn't
keep away from that fur-coat.  And every time
we went we brought a friend or two with us to
look it over and give us advice.  We put the
coat on and walked around the store in it to show
how it hung, and then we took it off and
adjourned to the nearest cigar-stand or blind-pig
to discuss the matter.  The coat cost us about
twenty dollars in a couple of weeks.

Our friends all admired the coat, but curiously
enough, they all advised against us buying
it—perhaps from a conscientious objection to seeing
so much money tied up in mere fur.  They
always warned us that if we once wore it, we'd
have to go on wearing it all the time for fear of
catching cold.  They said that's the worst of
fur-coats—one doesn't dare leave them off.  But
naturally, if we got that coat, we intended to go
on wearing it till about the middle of June.
When it got too hot to wear it open, we'd carry
it on our arm with the lining turned out.

Lately the clerk had been getting quite sniffy.
The last time we were in, he intimated that the
coat was beginning to look rather used from
being worn around the store so much.  We finally
had to discontinue these visits, but we hated to
tear ourself away from that glorious garment.
The first thing we knew some butcher might
buy it.

But perhaps some rich relative of ours, turning
up rather unexpectedly—we don't insist on
any close consanguinity so long as he is rich—may
see this pathetic screed and feel that here is
a chance to help genius in distress.  What's the
use of erecting monuments to us after we are
dead?  How much better and kinder it would be
to buy that coat and send it down to the office
while we are still comparatively alive.  In fact,
this is our idea in writing this article.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Spring in the City`:

.. figure:: images/img-185.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: SPRING IN THE CITY

   SPRING IN THE CITY

.. class:: center large bold

   Spring in the City

.. vspace:: 2

A thick, creamy, white lather covering
that part of our countenance which indicates
strength of character, showed that we were
about to shave.  It is our matutinal custom.
Poised in our hand was the lethal weapon with
which we perform this painful rite.

At that moment we heard the robin!  At that
very instant of the morning of Saturday, April
the sixth, the voice of the robin was heard in the
block.  Immediately we threw up the window,
and careless of the rather intimate nature of our
habiliments, we leaned out over the ledge.

There was no robin in sight.  No glimpse of
red-breast gladdened our heart.  We looked in
vain at each of the miniature plots of mud which
residents on our street refer to as the
"lawn."  Nowhere could we see Cock Robin sturdily
dragging a large, thick worm from his lair, or
waiting with dignified alertness for breakfast to
poke up its head.  But his voice filled the street,
clear and high and vibrant with delight—the
very voice of triumphant spring!

"Some class to that whistlin'," said someone
below us.

We looked down and saw a dingy man with a
bag of tools on his shoulder, who was frankly
watching us and grinning with disgusting
familiarity.  Plumbers never are in a hurry.

"Makes a fella feel like chuckin' his work,
don't it?" he persisted.

"It does," we burbled through the lather, and
drew in our head with reckless haste.  We
afterwards discovered some of our back-hair still
clinging to the lower edge of the window-frame.
But not even the painful presence of a protuberance
on our skull where none had been before
could banish our joy in that robin's song.

Spring was here at last!  It is true there was
still much ice in our backyard, and in our
neighbor's backyard, and in the backyard beyond his.
It is true also that icicles hung from the roofs,
and that the water in our bath-tub was still of a
temperature to produce curiously mottled effects
on our general complexion.  But we were
happy and we sang as we splashed about, for we
knew that spring was here.

Therefore did we kick into a corner with
joyous abandon the thick, fuzzy garments—warranted
pure wool and unshrinkable (base
deception!)—with which we had armed ourself as
with triple brass against the onslaught of old
Boreas.  And from a camphored recess in our
trunk we drew forth tenuous and elastic vesture
which clung to our manly form and restored to
it its summer slimness.

When the coal-man's bill arrived in the
morning mail, we threw it carelessly aside for our
landlady.  Our attitude towards coal-men had
suddenly changed from anxious propitiation to
bored indifference.  The strike news in the
papers moved not our Olympian serenity.  We
sympathized with the miners.  We felt that if
we were a miner ourself, we would strike at once
and stay struck till the dog-days caused us to long
for subterranean coolness.

Then draping our light overcoat in a jaunty
way over our arm, we walked down town.  It
wasn't a case of going out with the avowed
intention of walking, and then sprinting after the
first street-car we saw.  No, we really walked,
inhaling large breaths of vernal ozone.  And a
lot of other men were similarly engaged.
Fellows that we used to see morning after morning
furtively slipping into a street-car—the same car
that we slipped into ourself—now swung along
with their chests swelling out of their coats and
a good-to-be-alive expression on their faces.  We
also noticed that they seemed to take more than
the normal masculine interest in the spring
dresses which flitted by—especially those
affectionate gowns which cling so alluringly to their
fair owners.  Verily it was the spring.

In a bit of ground where the mud had been
pounded to the shiny consistency of overdone
chocolate blanc-mange, three very dirty and very
serious-minded urchins played marbles.  Further
on a spoiled darling of fortune who possessed
a top spun it with studied indifference—and
with a cord, too, of course—while a couple
of other youngsters less favored of the gods
looked enviously on.

A garden patch littered with sticks and wet
leaves and the water-logged aftermath of
winter held a resolute little old man with an
immense rake, who was endeavoring to introduce
some order into his chaotic cosmos.  He was
having a very busy time, something like a pup
who had got into a boneyard.  He scratched and
tugged and grunted, and here and there he
managed to get the stuff gathered into piles.  He
may have had some notion of burning it, but it
would take many sunny days before the stuff
would be dry enough to burn anywhere but in a
very hot and active volcano.

We leaned on the fence and sniffed the moist
rich odors of the dead leaves.  They brought to
mind pleasant pictures of the approaching time
of planting, when enthusiastic amateurs,
heedless of the mud on the knees of their trousers,
would be jabbing holes in every available bit of
ground and sticking seeds and bulbs into them.
And we reflected sadly on the sardonic humor of
fate which had made us a book-reviewer instead
of a happy farmer lad carolling to the sun as we
went about the simple and healthful duties of
our husbandry.  We thought of striding out to
the fields with the sun turning the frosted grass
to silver filigree, and then we noticed that the
old gentleman was contemplating us with the
cold and wary eye of a disillusioned sparrow.

"Are you looking for work, young man?" he
asked, "or are you merely looking at it?  Because,
if you really want a job, there is one right
here that I would like...."

But we were already on our way.  We suddenly
recalled that the mail must be piled up on
our desk, and that our presence was urgently
needed at the office.  Did we want work?  And
so in an instant we were brought back from the
golden meadows of dreamland, where we saw
ourself wandering a flushed young god in the
morning of the world, and became once more a
middle-aged office-man, somewhat stooped from
bending over a desk.

The spring was in our blood, however, and
our spirits revived at the first park we came to.
On such mornings one makes a point of walking
through the parks, and Allen Gardens lay right
on our line of march.  They were a scene of
joyous activity.  Chief gardeners and assistant
and deputy-assistant gardeners ran about in
amiable confusion.  There was a tremendous
raking up of straw and mulch—mulch being the
technical name for everything that is thrown on
a flower-bed, from bricks to sardine-tins.

Around the fountain a lot of blithesome little
toddlers pulled one another's hair, or made frantic
efforts to drown themselves, while the nurse-girls
exchanged confidences as to the precise tone
in which "he said" and the elegant vivacity with
which "I said to him."

The benches were out and they were occupied.
Perhaps it is enough to say that the benches were
out.  They are never left unoccupied on a nice
day of spring.  Gentlemen of shabby leisure
abhor a vacant seat.  One is led to wonder
where the men who sit in parks go during the
winter—into cracks in the wall, possibly, like the
flies.  But the day was warm and the bench-boarders
were out.  There they sat blinking their
eyes in drowsy contentment and sniffing
hopefully the breezes of spring.

We paused to make some of the kindly and
philosophic reflections which are dictated to us
on such occasions by our whimsical genius.  We
looked about us with just such a keen and
humorous expression as we felt Montaigne would
have worn under similar circumstances.  We
were preparing to say something rather clever to
ourself about the life of man, which is as a spring
day, etc.

"Well, the long winter is over at last," said a
voice at our elbow, or rather at our left shoulder-blade.
It was a melancholy voice, a voice which
intimated that the owner doubted he would ever
see another spring.  But a large face of more
than usual redness caused one to question the
likelihood of a demise so immediate.

"Yes," we admitted, "it seems to be over, and
it is about time."

"Ah, the spring is a great season for them as is
young and strong and handsome."

The wistful expression with which this battered,
red-faced, watery-eyed person regarded us
indicated that he thought we were all these
things.  We blushed slightly, and to hide our
embarrassment—we are not used to such compliments,
implied or otherwise—said in a voice of
great heartiness:

"Ho, yes—nothing like the spring!  Makes a
fellow glad to be alive."

"Yes, yes," he agreed still more wistfully, "it
makes a handsome young gentleman's heart
expand—it makes him free-handed and generous."  A
sudden cold suspicion seized our vernal
ardor and strangled it.  Could it be possible that
... yes, it could!  And that rubicund old
scoundrel proceeded to inform us that the
"temporary loan—(the printer will please
emphasize temporary")—of half a dollar would cause
him to recall our memory with gratitude at
frequent intervals for the rest of his life.

If we had had half a dollar in our pocket, we
might ... but what man who is paid on
Saturdays ever had any money to bring down to
the office Saturday morning?  We hinted
discreetly at our destitution, but the red-faced man
merely grunted and turned away.  We fear he
did not believe us.

We regretted his distrust, of course, but, as
Emerson might have said, it is great to be
misunderstood in the spring.  In a few minutes we
forgot our embarrassment and remembered the
ruddy one merely as a humorous episode of the
jovial day.  We chuckled all the way down to
the office as we thought of the open and
unabashed admiration with which he had regarded
us, till he discovered that we were a good
Samaritan without the price.

At the office everybody was glad to see us.
Even the Managing Editor was amiable.  He
said nothing about the hour we got in—he
seemed to think it was very nice of us to come
down at all.  And then he sat on the corner of
our desk and talked about the beauty of living
in the country, and waking up in the morning
with the calves bleating around you and the
hens and all that, and walking out in the fields
to see the fine, healthy farmer lads turning up
the sod and reaping and harrowing and everything.

Of course, it was immediately obvious to us
that the Managing Editor's idea of country life
had been gained from the reading of sentimental
verse.  Unfortunately, we find it difficult to
share this enthusiasm for rural life.  You see,
we worked on a few farms when we were a wild
lad just out of college—we were seeking inspiration
in the soil.  So we know just how a farm
looks and smells in the spring when they are
enriching the ground.  But we didn't disillusion
the M.E.—we wanted everyone to be happy.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



It is true that winter rose again Sunday
morning.  It is true that Monday was cold and
blustery, that there was a thick covering of snow on
the ground Tuesday morning, that we had to get
out our woollens once more, that in the interval
we caught a cold in the head.  We knew it, but
we heeded not.  Our eyes had seen the glory
of the coming of the spring.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Moving Day`:

.. figure:: images/img-197.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: MOVING DAY

   MOVING DAY

.. class:: center large bold

   Moving Day

.. vspace:: 2

It all depends on how much or how little you
have to move—the much or little referring
to the amount of impediment with which your
habitat is furnished.  At either end of the scale
moving is a matter involving slight personal
inconvenience.  But midway toil and trouble lie.

If you live and move and have your meals in
what reporters are fond of describing as a
"palatial residence," and if it occurs to you to remove
yourself and all that is yours to a still more
palatial mansion, you have only to give orders.  The
work and worry you leave to the 'elp, while you
and the family spend the interval gaily at Palm
Beach or Monte Carlo.  When you come back
everything is in readiness.  You can walk right
in, chuck your grip to your valet, and jump into
the new porcelain bath-tub.  When you emerge,
the bath-towel is waiting for you on the
gold-plated rack to which you have always been
accustomed.

And if, gentle reader, instead of a valet you
should have a maid—even among the most
modern women maids are still usual—it makes no
difference in the general readiness of the new
home.  You trip joyously into your boudoir, she
unhooks your gown, and you—but, of course, at
this point visitors are always asked to wait in the
library.  But these details are irrelevant.  The
main thing is that all the work has been done for
you.  All the worry has been borne by someone
else.  It only remains for you to accustom
yourself to your new surroundings.

In the same way at the other end of the social
scale, moving is equally a matter calling for little
thought and less trouble.  The mover puts his
tooth-brush and his comb in his vest-pocket; he
throws his other pair of trousers into his bag
along with his other shirt and the pair of shoes
he had half-soled; and then he slips quietly away
while his landlady is not looking.  It is not that
he is running away exactly, but that he is sensitive
and shy, and dreads the emotional strain of
bidding farewell.  Parting is such sweet sorrow
that she might not let him go without keeping his
grip as a souvenir—just to remind her of that
"ten" he promised to give her at the end of the week.

Gentlemen who make these periodical migrations
do not worry much about it.  Even if they
did pay their bills, they would still grow tired of
staying in the same place.  So they pack up and
move, suddenly and with light-hearted unconcern.
They don't call it "moving."  They refer
to it as "making a getaway."

It is not our intention, however, to treat of
either the wealthy or the "stony broke" in this
serious consideration of the crises in the affairs
of house-holders known as "moving-days."  The
wealthy don't move often enough, the "busted"
move too often, and both move too easily to make
the operation an important factor in their lives.
But the fellow on a one-cylinder salary who uses
a fifty-dollar-a-month house for purposes of
domicile—he is the man to whom moving is all
that General Sherman declared war to be.  It is
a revolution, a cataclysm.  He dates important
events as occurring in "the year we moved" from
this house to that other.  Moving-days mark off
periods of existence the way the Olympian games
served for the ancient Greeks.

Why then do people do it?  Sometimes because
they can't help it.  Landlords have a way
of handing over their property to syndicates to
build apartment-houses on the site.  At other
times landlords, whose actions no man can
foretell, decide to raise the rent.  Or they may object
to the playful ways of the tenant's children—perhaps
the little dears have dug a cave or two in
the wall of the living-room, or have in childish
glee filled the plumbing with half-bricks and
gunny-sacks.

Then there are landlords who have acquired
the please-remit habit to such an extent that a
trifling delay of a couple of months with the rent
leads to intense unpleasantness.  They won't
even take it in kind—except Scotch, perhaps.
And that, of course, is too good for landlords.
In fact, there are a thousand and one things
which may cause friction between the man who
lives in the house and the man who merely owns
it.  As the landlord generally refuses to leave,
the tenant has to.

This explains a good many movings, but not
all, nor even the greater number of them.  Most
people, as a matter of fact, move for the simple
reason that hope springs eternal, and man never
is but always to be.  Every house has its faults
and drawbacks.  Even the palaces which cost
eighty-five dollars a month serve to remind their
occupants that there are beauties and comforts
which even their comparative affluence cannot
command.  And naturally the lower one drops
in the financial scale the truer this truism—the
truth of truisms is our chief objection to them.

Man wants but little here below—just a nice,
twelve-room house, hot-water heating, lawn all
around, commodious shed where he can stow the
lawn-mower and the spade during the period of
hibernation, enamel bath, electric lighting, and
such other necessities of the simple life as
improved by Edison.  But he wants that little a
long time before he gets it—for fifty dollars a
month.  Therefore he moves.

Probably the house he already lives in has a
hot-air furnace that goes into a state of coma on
cold nights, the kind of plumbing that has to be
operated on every few days by a surgeon in over-alls,
and a roof that permits every thunderstorm
to come right down and jump into bed with him.
Probably the girl next door plays "I'm Always
Chasing Rainbows" till midnight every night of
the week, except Sunday when she plays hymn-tunes.
But he has hopes.  He feels that the next
house is going to possess all the beauty and
comfort of Aladdin's fairy palace, and that the
landlord will be one of those dear old boys with white
whiskers, who will answer every complaint with,
"Just have the work done and send the bill to
me."  There is no such landlord, but the tenant
keeps on looking for him.  He moves.  And lo,
in another little while he moves again.  He
keeps right on moving, poor chap, till that final
move when they put plumes on the moving-van.

Your old experienced mover starts in early.
He makes a real occasion of it.  After he and
his wife and the baby-carriage have strolled
around town for about six weeks, they finally
select a prospective residence.  It is just about
the same as the old house—they are lucky, in
fact, if it isn't worse.  But they see the new one
through pink spectacles.  Everything looks like
a sunset-scene in a musical comedy.

"Oh, how happy we're all going to be!"

Exit dancingly.  Then they go home and start
packing up.

The first thing you always do when you pack
is to take up the carpets and oil-cloths.  You
don't bother picking up the tacks.  They are
picked up in instalments by members of the
family in the early morning and late at night.
No electro-magnet ever had half the allurement
for a tack that a bare foot exerts.  A defenceless
big toe will draw them right across a room.

The next move is to drag all the trunks and
packing-cases out of their lairs in the attic or
cellar and place them in the upper and lower
halls in the most unexpected places.  Then one
is always sure to find them in the dark.  Uncle
especially, coming home rather late from the
lodge meeting—but this is a tragic theme.  We
have been in uncle's place.

Pictures are then taken off the walls and laid
in readily accessible places on the floor.  In this
way one can put one's foot through a lovely
seascape, or tread upon the features of defunct
relatives in enlarged photographs, with the
minimum of exertion.  Personally, we prefer
walking into mirrors—the pieces look so much
prettier.

Gradually the house assumes the appearance
of a place in the devastated area of Flanders.
Furniture is piled up in barricades everywhere.
Bales of linen and curtains and that sort of thing
are built up into parapets.  All they need is a
firing-step and a periscope or two to look like the
real thing.  Behind these obstructions the family
cowers as it eats its meals—if the food may be so
described—and seeks shelter from the prying eye
when it goes to bed.  You see, the windows are
all bare and one can't be too careful of the
observer in the sniping-post across the way.
Probably the best course is to sit on the side of one's
bed and undress in the dark.  Not only would
this plan of action be more likely to commend
itself to the Moral Reform League, but it has
the further advantage of avoiding the tacks.
One is not so apt to give an impromptu imitation
of a man who has inadvertently stepped on a
porcupine.

At last the great day arrives!  You are
awakened by a large hairy man, who wants to know
when you are going to get out of your bed so he
can take it apart and load it into the van.
Hurriedly you jump into the oldest and most
primitive clothing permitted by the rules of society
and the state of the weather.  And you get
busy—Homerically busy!

It is true that you have hired a couple of men
and a huge waggon.  But these gentlemen are
professionals.  They direct the operation.  They
are the headquarters' staff, so to speak.
Occasionally they take a hand in the game and then
you wish they hadn't.  You beg them to be
careful with the piano—rented—and promptly they
carry off half the front porch on the end of it.
The enormous walnut whatnot, which has been
"an old family possession" ever since you bought
it second-hand, is made to look like part of the
steerage furniture of the Ark.

Some artistic friends of ours had a fine cast of
the Venus of Milo.  It was the only thing in the
house to be proud of, and they were.  They
loved it so much that they had never even
pawned it, no matter how bitter the temporary
stringency.  Then one sad moving-day, a
horny-handed cyclops with fusel oil instead of brains
picked it up and dropped it.  If Venus had
disputed the right-of-way with an armored car she
couldn't have been reduced to more or smaller
pieces.

"Oh, how could you—how could you be so
stupid?" sobbed the lady of the house.

"Ah, it ain't worth makin' all that fuss about,"
growled the son of Anak, "sure the darn old
thing was bust anyhow."

Finally all the household effects are piled out
on the sidewalk, while the neighbors sit on their
stoops and make remarks about the quantity and
quality of your equipment.  Of course, no
furniture would look good under such circumstances.
If the fittings of Buckingham Palace were piled
up on the front lawn, they would hardly be
impressive.  And you are keenly conscious that
your furniture has nothing on King George's.
The only thing to do is to pretend that you don't
see your neighbors while your sofas and chairs
stand on their heads on the sidewalk, kicking
their ancient legs in the air, and showing with
painful frankness the places where they have
been mended.

In the meantime, you keep travelling between
the old house and the new one.  As the pile
keeps diminishing in front of your home that has
been, it keeps growing in front of your home to
be.  There, too, the neighbors are on the watch,
and as your old mattresses are carried in,
bleeding excelsior from a dozen wounds, you can see
their anticipations of your desirability as an
addition to the society of the block going
steadily down to below the freezing point.

At last the work is done.  Everything you can
think of has been piled up higgledy-piggledy at
the new place.  The family sits forlornly in the
midst of it—camping out in a strange house!

"Where's the baby?" shrieks mother suddenly
in the midst of the weary silence.

Then you remember that you left the little
innocent in the bath-tub in the old house for safe
keeping.  As you tear madly off to retrieve him,
you keep wondering if he has turned on the
water and drowned himself.

And yet, the following spring, your fancy
lightly turns to thoughts of still another move.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Vacation Vagaries`:

.. figure:: images/img-209.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: VACATION VAGARIES

   VACATION VAGARIES

.. class:: center large bold

   Vacation Vagaries

.. vspace:: 2

Vacation is an excellent institution.
Anything that makes a man so contented
with his job and his ordinary lot in life as it does
must be a good thing.  After two weeks spent at
the average summer resort the food at home or
in the old boarding-house in the city seems rich
and varied, and the work at the office proves an
intellectual recreation.

The best thing about vacation is making plans
for it.  This is a truism, did you say?  Of course,
it is a truism.  Occasionally we indulge in
truisms, though our natural preference is for "isms"
that are not true.

When we say "making plans," we mean plans
only in the most general and romantic sense.
Once you come down to details all the poetry is
squeezed out of the thing.  The business of
writing to hotelkeepers and railway passenger-agents
and other rich but dishonest people for information
is a bore and a burden.  So also is packing up.

Honestly, now, as one man to another, dear
reader—or as one woman to a man, or whatever
the circumstances may require—did you ever
bring half the things you wanted, and did you
ever use half the things you brought?  Did you?
No, of course not.  No one ever does.

Personally, we have travelled light, and we
have travelled heavy, and the result has always
been the same.  The year we took a trunk with
raincoats and overcoats and various weights of
underwear, and all the other encumbrances of
civilization, the weather was fine and warm
throughout, and all we really needed was a
couple of shirts and some duck trousers.  Even our
toothbrush was useless, for we got practically
nothing to eat.

The next time we decided to limit our impedimenta
very strictly, and we carried our belongings
in our pocket and a brown-paper parcel.
That year we encountered every one of the
fifty-odd varieties of weather and temperature, and
two freight-cars couldn't have carried all the
clothes we needed.  The irony of things?—yes,
also the tinnery and leadery, and any other base
metal you can think of.

Therefore, we repeat, the practical details of
getting ready for a vacation are a weariness and
an abomination.  But the general plans, the
vague and glowing dreams—ah, the pictures of
one's self poised like a god in the path of the
breakers while the peaches on the beaches gaze
longingly upon one, or again smiling carelessly
while one steers canoes containing beautiful
ladies down dangerous rapids, or still again
singing amorous madrigals by moonlight while one
drifts in the shadow of the pines!  These visions
are well worth the disillusion which follows.

Every young man—whether fifteen or fifty—has
cherished these or similar dreams of the joys
that await him in the days of vacation.  And
nearly every young man has had the same
experience of going up to the same old summer hotel
or boarding-house, where you sleep on a lumpy
bed with a crazy quilt, battle with the flies for
your food, and spend your evenings rowing a fat
girl around a pond in a flat-bottomed boat.

Are we pessimistic?—well, perhaps we are
pessimistic.  But we have had some experience
of summer resorts.  We have sat on the porch
with the married ladies in the evening, and
listened to the merry crash as character after
character fell in ruins to the ground.  We have
gone fishing for mythical bass and trout in
famous fishing-grounds, where there hadn't been a
fish within the memory of man—driven out by
the mosquitoes, probably.

And the girls of summer resorts!  We have
walked with them, and read poetry to them, and
eaten ice-cream cones with them, and discussed
with them whether marriage is possible where
true love is not.  We have paddled them around
on hot afternoons, and retrieved the balls which
they drove into the river when we played tennis
together.  We have even proposed to—but we
must not carry these confidences too far.  Suffice
it to state, that even those who accepted us let us
see clearly that they regarded the eternal affection
we swore to one another as being subject to
recall with due notice.  Sometimes they didn't
even bother to give us the notice.

It was all vanity, vanity!  But we cannot help
remembering that some of the vanity was of a
rather pleasant variety.  There was that blonde
up at—oh, never mind where!—a little thin, you
know, but very soulful.  She "adored" Browning,
and claimed to understand "Sordello"—which
was a lie, of course.  And the little brunette,
brown eyes and reddish hair—very "chick,"
eh, what?—with an abnormal appetite for
brandied chocolates.  Nice girls both.  But
time passes and one forgets.  We don't even
remember where they work!

If a man—almost any unattached male will
do—wishes to feel the joys of being sought after
and an object of general female attention, let
him hasten away to a summer hotel, especially
in one of the less fashionable resorts.  At the
fashionable ones there are always a few gilded
youth about, who own motor boats and look
divine in flannels.  Their glory would be apt
to make his seem like a star in the presence of the
sun.

But at the others, those quiet family-hotels, to
which people go ostensibly because the air is so
much better, and they dislike the noise and
fashion of the other places, but really because
the board is five times cheaper—at these
seminaries of bored spinsters a rash bachelor who
intrudes can easily persuade himself that he is a
combination of Richard the Lion-Heart and
Don Juan.

What gay and girlish groups will be formed
about him!  How they will laugh at his jokes
and listen with awe to his opinions!  With what
warmth they will admire his atrocious ties and
homicidal socks—the colors are so striking and
virile you know.  They may even sit still while
he sings.

The only objection is that popularity of this
sort is apt to send a man back to the office a
mental and physical wreck.  Even a year of
loafing on the boss's time hardly qualifies a man
to paddle canoes, play tennis, walk miles, go for
hay-cart drives, eat canned goods, and dance the
foxtrot till one every morning, and then retire
to fight for his life with a dozen big husky
mosquitoes that have been sitting on the foot of his
bed waiting for him in bloodthirsty fury for
hours.

Talking of mosquitoes, have you ever seen any
mosquitoes or flies to equal for size and ferocity
those that flourish at any summer hotel or
boarding-house?  And the poorer the place the more
various and highly developed are the
entomological specimens.

There are mosquito-nets on the windows, of
course, but they seem merely to annoy those birds
of prey, and exacerbate their naturally hasty
temper.  After being obliged to bite his way
through two or three folds of pink or blue gauze,
no wonder a mosquito sits on your pillow and
shrieks insanely in your ear what he is going to
do to you.  He then proceeds to do it, worse
luck!

As for the flies, deserting in the most heartless
manner the cows and horses they have lived with
all winter, they rush with a glad shout into the
dining-room, and standing with their hind feet
in your bacon-and-eggs, reach over and lap up
your coffee, or whatever it is people serve under
that alias.  Very chummy those flies, much more
democratic than flies in town.  The simple life
of the country probably accounts for that—also
for the way they wade into the butter like a hired man.

But if you really want to know what flies and
mosquitoes—not to speak of ants and beetles and
caterpillars—can really do, you ought to go
"roughing it."  As if the ordinary summer
boarding-house wasn't rough enough for
anything but the most exotic taste!  "Roughing it"
is a disease to which Canadian youth between
the ages of eighteen and twenty-five is peculiarly
liable.

We succumbed once.  We went with a canoe
and a tent and some beans and a couple of
fellows who said they were old woodsmen and knew
how to cook.  Some day we may be able to bring
ourself to write up that trip in detail.  But it is
only ten years ago, and the memory still rankles
too bitterly.

After two weeks of carrying loads over portages,
washing dishes, eating the bread and
pancakes those two murderers baked, and sitting up
nights to stab the bugs that crept upon us in the
dark, we had almost to be sent to a sanitarium
to recuperate.  But good nursing and cod-liver
oil brought us around again in a month or so.
Roughing it?—yes, only "rough" seems a mild
word to apply to it.

Everyone has his own notion of the perfect
vacation.  We have ours, and that is the vacation
which takes one home to a small town a long
way off.  This, of course, implies considerable
foresight in picking out one's ancestral seat.
You must also arrange to have a mother there
waiting for you—preferably with white hair.
Always mention the color of the hair when
ordering a mother.  White is best, and perhaps
next to that iron-grey.

Let us suppose that you haven't been home in
a couple of years or more.  You have written a
number of letters and telegrams telling them the
exact hour you will arrive, and so when you
finally chug-chug into the little station on the
same old stub-line which is always half an hour
late, you find them all drawn up to meet you.

For a few minutes the world becomes one blur
of arms that go around one's neck, and faces held
up to be kissed.  And then you are gravely
passed in review, the cut of your clothes and the
color of your hat, and whether or not you have
got stouter or leaner or greyer than before.

In the ordinary world where you live and
move and have your job and vote, you may be a
man of standing, a well-known politician or
banker or editor.  But here, whether captain or
clerk, you are just "Mollie's boy, Bill," or
"Annie's boy, Pete," or whatever may be your
mother's first name and your own.  Here you
are never permitted to grow up.  Here you are
liable to be called "Willie" or "Babe" to your
death at eighty.

Outside the station the same old family horse
is rubbing his ear against the same old battered
telephone pole to which he is hitched.  He
gazes with mild indifference on the confusion
and bustle around him.  He has long ceased to
show interest in anything but oats.

As you drive up the main street you notice
with extraordinary interest that old man Johnson
has put a new plate-glass front in his store,
and young Brown has hung his shingle up as a
doctor.  You pass by the one street-car waiting
to make its half-hourly trip, and the motorman
yells joyfully, "H'lo, Pete, when did yuh get back?"

At the house the dinner is waiting—ah, a
dinner that really is a dinner!  There are all the
things you used to like, and have ever since
wistfully dreamed of in city restaurants, the fried
chicken and the pumpkin-pie and all.

"And now," says mother, as you lay down your
knife and fork and come up to breathe, "how is
your Aunt Kate, and have you seen Cousin
Maggie lately, and have you heard how Lizzie is
getting on with that fellow she married, and
when were you last in—?"

And you begin and talk for two weeks.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Lawnless Tennis`:

.. figure:: images/img-221.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: LAWNLESS TENNIS

   LAWNLESS TENNIS

.. class:: center large bold

   Lawnless Tennis

.. vspace:: 2

Lawn tennis is not generally regarded as a
sport of a violent nature.  We make this
statement without fear of contradiction or
controversy.  There is little likelihood of our finer
feelings ever being harrowed by accounts of the
brutalities of tennis.  Editors of newspapers are
in no danger of being besieged with letters from
"Constant Reader" and "Pro Bono Publico"
demanding why the police don't interfere in
championship tennis matches and bind the
participants over to keep the peace.

No, tennis is not usually a violent or brutal
sport.  In fact, it is frequently associated in the
popular mind with weak tea and girls and
beg-pardons and curates and other evidences of the
amenities of life.  Rough persons who play
lacrosse or football are apt to class tennis with
tiddlywinks or casino.

We had some such idea ourself before we took
it up.  We could see ourself treading daintily
across a verdant lawn and popping a nice white
ball, covered in wool so it wouldn't hurt anyone,
over a nice white net to a nice white young lady
on the other side.  If we should have the
misfortune to put it in a place where she couldn't
pop it back to us, we would apologize in a
profuse and genteel manner, and then would go
blushingly to the other side of the court and pop
it over again.

Somehow or other the picture did not at first
appeal to us.  Was thy servant a bank-clerk that
he should do this thing?  And yet we needed
exercise, gentle exercise.  Not that we were
getting fat—we are not of a stout habit—but we
could feel our arteries hardening from day to
day, and rheumatism working slowly but surely
into many of our most useful joints.

We decided to do something to arrest the
progress of senile decay—something easy and
pleasant.  Besides, we knew a fellow who belonged
to a tennis club, and he insisted on us joining it.
We succumbed at last, but it was a long time
before we admitted as much to our newspaper
associates.  One is so apt to be misunderstood.

The first day we went up to the tennis club
Harry accompanied us.  Harry was a nice chap
who wore glasses and spoke grammatically, and
we felt we were in safe hands.  He was also very
fond of music, and we had some dim notion that
perhaps he played the mandolin and sang in the
shade between "sets."  We made up our mind
that we wouldn't sing ourself, no matter how
much the company insisted.  The way we came
to know what a "set" meant, was that we had
been preparing ourself by reading several
volumes on the history and practice of the game,
with short biographies of about a hundred
champions.  We had decided to become one.

The first shock came in the club-house when
we were taken into the locker-mom.  It was just
like the locker-room of any athletic club.  Wire
lockers were ranged along the walls, and the
benches were of somewhat battered wood.
Somehow we had expected silk curtains and
cushions and natty little bows of pink ribbon.

On the benches a number of gentlemen in various
stages of dishabille, and with varying claims
to manly beauty, were getting into or out of
tennis clothes.  When they didn't like their own
clothes, they took some out of someone else's
locker—just like the pirates who occupy their
leisure with rougher games.  If Harry had not
been there we would have felt sure we had got
into the wrong place.

Every now and then a man would stagger into
the room in very damp ducks or flannels, would
tumble out of them, and would totter over to a
shower where he would yell with inarticulate
rage as the cold water struck him.  Sometimes
they were very pale, and sometimes very red in
the face.  But always they were perspiring and
exhausted, and we could not help wondering
what the dickens they had been doing to get
themselves into that condition.  Too much tea,
perhaps!

We got into our own outfit—all nice and new
and unspotted of the world.  We had brought
it along in a suit-case.  We had white ducks and
white shoes and a white shirt, low in the neck.
We felt like a young girl high-school graduate
just about to receive her diploma.  Also we had
a blazer.  Possibly the reader does not know
what a "blazer" is.  We would hate to think so,
but we will explain.  A "blazer" is a striped
sack-coat, which was originally designed as part
of a costume to ride zebras in, or to prevent
dangerous convicts from escaping—we are not sure
which.  Anyway, it makes the man who wears
it look like a party-brick of ice-cream—you
know the way they deposit the stuff in gorgeous
layers.

Our blazer was composed of stripes of purple
and black, each about two inches wide.  We
selected it because it was so quiet compared to
the others.  When we put it on that first day,
however, we had an unpleasant consciousness
that two or three gentlemen in our immediate
neighborhood said something about "hell."  Possibly
a little theological controversy.  Just
the same, we never wore it again.  We lost our
taste for it.

Being both togged out in our tennis outfit, we
stepped through the door leading to the courts.
Personally we gave one wild look around and
turned to Harry with a gasp of dismay.

"But where's the lawn?" we asked.

Harry seemed annoyed, but we couldn't help
it.  We had expected to see a wide smooth lawn,
with shady elms and tea-trays and gentle curates
and all the rest of it.  We thought that was why
the game was called "lawn tennis."  What we
actually saw was a great big backyard with a
pounded clay floor.  A series of dingy nets ran
down the centre of it, and it was crossed and
recrossed by a gridiron of half-obliterated lines.

It was easy to see what had obliterated the
lines, for some eighteen or twenty active young
men in badly rumpled attire were tearing up and
down in clouds of dust, working like demons,
jumping and rushing and dodging about, and all
the while banging away with fury at balls which
we afterwards discovered did not possess a
particle of wool to cover them.  It had all been
knocked off.  Gentle popping?—good lord!

Surrounding the courts was a lovely vista of
other backyards with clothes hung out to dry.
Extraordinary the amount of washing the people
in that block seemed to do!  Every day was
wash-day in that neighborhood.  During the
weeks that followed we became thoroughly
acquainted with the clothes of its inhabitants.  We
discovered who wore red flannel petticoats, and
who leaned toward gay and passionate pyjamas.
We also knew who wore—but perhaps we had
better stop right here.  There are things which
no gentleman should discuss—certainly not in
the cold light of public print.  But it was
astonishing how life-like they used to look—especially
in a breeze.

Over that first game with Harry we would like
to draw a veil, a good thick veil—say, several
plies of sack-cloth.  We did not shine, or, if we
did, it was rather as a conflagration than a star.
We turned red with the very first ball we hit—we
knocked it on to a neighboring housetop—and
we slowly became a richer and richer
maroon during the progress of the match.  Somehow
or other we seemed to be too strong for the
game.  When we hit a ball, which wasn't often,
we put it into the bleachers for a home run, or
tore a hole in the net with it.

The rest of the time we fanned the atmosphere
in a ferocious manner which was not without its
humorous features.  We didn't notice the humor
ourself, but a number of our new fellow-members
did.  They stopped playing and crowded
around to see us.  They were very encouraging,
but we were a little confused by their coaching.
They kept counting us out on strikes, or when we
got a hit would beseech us to stretch it into a
three-bagger or slide into the home plate.  They
got us so worked up that we actually called
"Ball!" like a baseball umpire when Harry
served out of the proper court.  Presumably we
were waiting for four before taking our base.  It
was a very trying game—very!

Of course, this was only the beginning.  We
wouldn't write about tennis at all, if we couldn't
give the reader a better account of ourself than
this.  Our first game filled us with rage, but
also with determination.  After that we were up
at the courts every day the weather permitted,
and a few that it didn't.  And we
worked—Heavens, how we worked!  If we had worked
like that in the office, we would own the plant by
now.  When we came in day after day out of
the dust and smother, we used to be too tired even
to holler in the cold shower.  There was no hot
water—it was considered effeminate.

Did we make ourself a great player?  Well,
we are a modest cuss, and although it is with the
greatest reluctance that we deny the charge of
greatness, we still deny it.  Of course, dear
reader (presuming that you have been sufficiently
interested in our tennis career to read thus
far), if you didn't know anything about tennis
and were to see us smashing out some of those
brilliant drives of ours which always land just a
few inches out of the court, or getting that
meteoric service over the net—sometimes we
rully do, rally!—you might think we were great.
But 't is not for us—you understand the delicacy
of our position.

As a matter of fact, we did begin to suspect
that we were a winner.  Not that we got into the
habit of bragging about our playing at all, but
occasionally we would tell our ladifrens that we
thought Norman Brookes and McLaughlin were
greatly overrated, and that we wished our club
would send us over to Wimbledon to take part
in one of the tournaments.  They would always
assure us that they felt we must be a very fine
player, for we were so well built for tennis, so
tall and active and such a long reach.  Nice girls!

Just when our self-confidence was at its height,
we spent a week-end at a place on the Lake
where they had a good court.  They also had a
couple of pretty girls in the family.  There was
another chap, too, a weedy little Englishman
with a blond moustache and a tenor voice that
was almost a soprano.  The conversation turned
on tennis—we believe that we brought it around
to that point ourself—and we gave a dramatic
account of an awful beating we had handed out
to a fellow at the club only a day or so before.
We even contributed living pictures of several of
our most deadly strokes.

"You play tennis, too, don't you, Mr. Blyth?"
asked one of the girls, more by way of bringing
him into the conversation than anything else.

He blushed and said he did—a little.  Then
nothing would do them but that he should play a
match with us.  He seemed very unwilling, and
the more unwilling he was, the more anxious we
became to play.  Finally we gave our word of
honor that we would not drive very hard.  He
said it was awfully decent of us, and he borrowed
one of the girls' rackets, while we drew our
gold-medal beauty from its nifty leather case.

Did we drive hard?  No, we didn't drive
hard.  We didn't get a chance.  His first ball
paralyzed us.  Then that little blond brute
would get into the middle of the court, and he
would place the ball just an inch inside the
left-hand line.  If we got it back—by a miracle we
occasionally did—he would place it just an inch
inside the right-hand line, varying the
programme with smashes which a man twenty feet
tall couldn't handle.  He had a service which
broke in all directions except where our racket
was; and he could pick the ball off the ground
or jump ten feet in the air and kill it with equal
ease.  He drove till our knees wobbled and our
head swam; and then he popped over little lobs
with a cut on them, which made us look like a
cinnamon bear trying to catch butterflies.

We could hardly eat any dinner that evening.
For the rest of the week-end the girls sat at that
little bounder's feet and begged him to show
them how to "serve," how to hold their rackets
for the back-hand stroke, etc., etc.

Later we learned he was champion of half a
dozen English counties.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`That Glorious First Drive`:

.. figure:: images/img-233.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: THAT GLORIOUS FIRST DRIVE

   THAT GLORIOUS FIRST DRIVE

.. class:: center large bold

   That Glorious First Drive

.. vspace:: 2

Safety lies only in complete absence—we
hope the printer won't make this "a couple
of absinthes," though they might help if one
could get them.  But, remember, if you really
wish to escape the infection, stay away from
golf-courses.  Touch not a single club, not a blooming
ball.  Above all, resist that desire to swing one
of the darn sticks—"just to see how it feels."  That
way madness lies.  As soon as you touch
the leather end of the thing, the malignant
animal magnetism gets to work and you are lost.
After that there is nothing for your family to do
but appoint a guardian for you.

Do as we say, don't do as we did.  For we,
who write this in sack-cloth and ashes—we speak
metaphorically, of course, though we do notice a
little cigar-ash on our vest—we neglected this
simple precaution and are suffering accordingly.
We let ourself be lured to the links.  We picked
up a driver and waggled it about a few times,
and now we are suffering from an acute and very
distressing form of the disease.  This is how the
calamity occurred.

An old and esteemed friend of ours, for
whom we feel the respect which one able man
feels for another, said to us not long ago: "Doing
anything Saturday afternoon, old man?"  He
spoke with an affected carelessness, but we have
since had reason to suspect that his casual
manner covered a seething ocean of vindictive
purpose.  It was his intention to infect us with the
virus of *dementia golfiana*.

"Oh, nothing special," we said, after pausing
for a few moments to give the impression that we
were mentally conning over a long list of
important social engagements.  "Oh, nothing
special"—fatal words!

"Good!  Come on down and walk around the
course with me at Barborough"—that isn't the
name exactly, but it will serve—"they're getting
it into nice shape now.  It'll do you good to get
out into the country a bit.  Will you come?"

He spoke with an appearance of cordial good-fellowship.
We believed in the entire friendliness
of his intentions—alas, ours has always been
a trusting nature!  We said we'd go.

"All right—catch the two-fifteen radial.  I'll
be waiting for you at the club-house.  You can't
miss it."

We caught it, along with two hundred and
sixty-seven children, women, and men, who were
likewise wooing the country breezes at points
along the road.  Several of the children made
the trip in our lap.  The little dears seemed to
know instinctively how much we hated it.
When we got there our trousers had a large
number of creases, in addition to those which our
valet puts in them.  But fortunately we were
wearing our other suit.

When we had walked back half a mile or so
from where the curmudgeon of a conductor put
us off, we discovered the club-house.  It is a very
handsome building, impressively combining the
characteristics of a munition-magnate's
bungalow and a summer hotel.  Obviously it had
been built long before Prohibition became a
serious menace.

We looked all about for our friend.  He was
nowhere in sight.  Several gentlemen in soiled
negligee roamed aimlessly about the grounds,
dragging what looked at a distance like short
lengths of drain-pipe.  We discovered afterwards
that they were golf-bags and these gentlemen
were doing their own caddying—the caddies,
we presume, being all engaged as bell-hops
in the club-house.

Finally, a very hot and dusty and particularly
disreputable gentleman, dragging a reluctant
bag by the nape of the neck, came towards us.
We recognized our friend.  He looked tired and
unhappy, and his eye had the dull stare of a
somnambulist.  We have since learned it was merely
a mild form of golf-face.

"Come on over to the tee," he said.

We brightened up at once—our throat really
was rather dry.  But that wasn't the sort of tea
he meant.  Instead, he took us over to a little
square terrace.  Gouging a handful of damp
sand out of a box, he made a tiny mound and set
the ball on top of it.  Somehow or other it looked
very small and pale and pitiful—especially as it
was already pretty badly scarred up.  Then he
wiped his hands on his trousers—in view of their
condition perhaps it would be more accurate to
call them pants—and drew out of his bag a long
stick with a wooden head about the size of a
small cocoanut.  It was certainly an awesome
weapon.

Stepping up to that miserable ball, he carefully
assumed one of the most awkward positions
we have ever seen a human being adopt.  His
feet were about a yard apart and his toes were
pointed with elaborate care.  Then he laid the
cheek of that murderous club alongside the ball,
waggled it a few times, gazed long and earnestly
at a point in the landscape a mile or so away, and
finally brought his eye back again and fixed it on
the ball with a hypnotical glare.  We thought
we could see the ball tremble.  Our own heart
was palpitating frightfully.  We had no idea of
the strain of watching a man play golf.

Slowly that ponderous club arose.  Higher
and higher it went.  But never for a fraction of
an instant did our friend cease to glower at that
unfortunate globule.  Then, just as the strain was
about to become unendurable, he swung.  The
mighty knob on the end of that stick shrieked
through the air.  It made a complete circle and
a half and nearly threw our friend off his feet.
We have since learned to recognize this as the
"follow-through."

So interested were we in our friend's
extraordinary movements—we had never seen him act
like this before—that it was almost a full minute
before it occurred to us to look for the ball.  It
was still there.  Missed?  Could it be that he
had really—but no!

"I always make a trial swing," he said with a
smile decidedly wan and unconvincing.  "Helps
a fellow to get the force into it, you know."  We
didn't know, and we had strong suspicions, in
spite of our entire ignorance of golf.

Once more he went through the performance,
waggles and all.  Once more the big club swung
up, and once more it came down.  This time it
hit the ball—hit it with a vengeance.  Tearing a
nasty gash in the top of that miserable pellet, the
club sent it bounding in agony along the ground
for about forty yards.

Our friend grew violently red in the face, and
he said—but, on second thoughts, it doesn't really
matter what he said.  There are times when even
the best of men.....

We followed meekly as he strode after the
offending spherule with a homicidal gleam in his
eye.  Hurling his bag of clubs to the ground,
after he had picked out a thing with an iron
head which no man should be allowed to carry
around in a law-abiding country, he sneaked up
on the ball and hit it a clout which drove it clear
out of sight over an intervening hill.

"Ha! ha!" he said, with a chortle of maniacal
glee, "that's better.  That's more in my style."  But
personally we felt as though we had aided
and abetted a murder.

Then we both went and looked for that
blessed ball.  We hunted under every bush and
blade of grass, but it had crawled away wounded
to die alone.  Fifteen minutes later he decided to
drop one on the edge of the green.  He finally got
it into the hole all right after several lovely putts.

We have no intention of giving a minute
description of our friend's game.  We have
since found reason to believe that it was not
exactly an awe-inspiring exhibition.  But, as he
explained to us several times in the course of
play, we should have been there earlier to see his
work during his first round.  So far as we could
judge from his description, it would have made
Harry Vardon jealous enough to quit the game
and get a job delivering meat.

"You should have seen my shot from the third
tee—the Devil's Drive, we call it.  It was a
lallapaloosa!  By the way, what is the record
drive?  I've forgotten for the moment."

We told him not to ask us, as we wotted not of
such things.  He smiled at us with what seemed
an expression of great relief, as though he felt he
could speak with confidential frankness.

"Well, whatever it is," said he, "mine was at
least three hundred and sixty yards!  How about that?"

We said that it was very fine; and no doubt it
is.  But we noticed that he lowered his voice as
he spoke—perhaps because of the impressive
nature of the statement, perhaps because he was
afraid someone would overhear him, someone
who knew better.

As we said above, it is not our intention to
enter into the details of our friend's game, or to
give a verbatim report of the language he was led
to use on several regrettable occasions.  Our
whole purpose in writing this article is to tell
what we ourself did in a moment of recklessness.
We are telling it to serve as a warning to others
who still are unbitten by the dread microbe of "gawf."

We had gone right around the course, and had
finally got back to the club-house and the first tee.
We had duly admired the scenery of the grounds,
which were really far too beautiful to be delivered
over to a lot of feeble-minded golfers.  Our
friend threw down his bag of clubs with a grunt
of relief.

"Better take a shot or two," he said, "while I
slip into the office to have a word with the secretary."

That was the moment of doom.  That was the
time when, breathing a brief prayer to such of
the saints as we still have a pull with, we should
have sprinted down the road to the car-line.  We
should have begged our friend to take the things
away with him.  We should have broken every
stick in the bag and burned the pieces.  We
should have thrown ourself down in a fit.  We
should have done anything rather than run the
risk we actually took.  Alas, we knew not what
we did.

Heedless of impending doom, we laid our new
hat on the ground.  We playfully extracted the
big club with the swollen head and the brass
bottom.  We clawed out of the box a handful of wet
sand and made with it a neat little pyramid, on
the top of which we carefully placed the ball.
Then we stepped back and contemplated it.  It
was a very pretty thing—a nice little pyramid
and a nice little white ball.  It looked
shamefully easy.

The club felt rather queer, and it wobbled in
our grasp.  If we had recognized the omen,
there might still have been hope for us.  But we
were cheerfully, idiotically irresponsible.  No
time was lost on the proper "stance."  We stood
any old way.  Our only desire was to knock that
ball off that silly little pile of sand; and we
simply made a swipe at it—crack!

Did we hit that ball?—O Lord, did we hit it!
The birds around Barborough must still tremble
when they think of the way that blessed ball went
whizzing among the clouds.  Don't ask us how
we did it.  We don't know.  We just swung the
club as hard as we could at the ball, heard a nice,
crisp crack, turned around two or three times,
almost putting our legs out of joint in the
process, and then recovered in time to see that locoed
spheroid sailing along like a racing aeroplane, a
mile high and going due north.  Just missing a
crow, it vol-planed to earth and lay shimmering
like a diamond in the sun.  How far away?
We won't tell you—you wouldn't believe us if
we did.

"Some drive!" said a voice at our back.  It
was the club professional!  Our cup of pride
filled up with a rush and slopped all over our
soul.  Hastily seizing an iron, we ran after the
ball.  We didn't hit it hard.  We didn't want
to break the windows in the club-house.  But a
couple of brisk taps dropped it dead on the tee
again.  We weren't trying to play the hole, of
course, but were merely batting the ball around.
If we had tried to play it, we would probably
have done it in about three.

Naturally, we repeated the performance
several times.  We were in a fever of delighted
excitement.  We couldn't miss the ball if we
tried.  We had it tamed and domesticated.  It
would eat right out of our hand, sit up and beg,
and lie dead.  And all the time we didn't
suspect for a moment that this exhilaration was
merely the first symptom of that dreadful and
incurable disease—gawfitis!

We have since learned that this is not at all
unusual with beginners.  Every golfer we have
discussed the matter with tells us that he had a
somewhat similar experience.  In fact, one
fellow assured us that the first time he ever had a
club in his hand he played the first four holes in
par—he was holing putts forty feet long as
though there was no place else for the ball to go.
But we didn't know this.  We didn't suspect
that the demon of golf lures his victims on.  We
simply took it for granted that we were a natural
master of the game, and that all we had to do
was to devote an occasional afternoon to it and
we would soon have our room filled with silver
cups big enough to bath the dog in.

Our friend came out of the club-house and
stood for a few minutes with the professional
watching our work.  But the presence of a
"gallery" did not disturb us.  We were beyond all
that.  We had Colonel Bogey down and were
thumping the life out of him.  When we had
finally and reluctantly finished—it was time to
go in and get something to eat—our friend told
us that the professional had said: "That man has
the makings of a real golfer in him."

It may seem to the reader that it was very nice
of our friend to pass this compliment on to
us—especially after the exhibition of golf he himself
had given.  But it wasn't nice.  It was the
refinement of cruelty.  Then and there our doom
was sealed.  The mid-iron was in our soul.  That
glorious first drive had done it.  A few days
later we went out with another friend and played
our first game.  But that is quite another story.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`That Awful First Game`:

.. figure:: images/img-247.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: THAT AWFUL FIRST GAME

   THAT AWFUL FIRST GAME

.. class:: center large bold

   That Awful First Game

.. vspace:: 2

In a previous article we have told of picking
up a friend's golf-club in a spirit of gay
nonchalance and making a glorious drive—our first.
How our friend artfully left us alone with his
bag of tools, how we drew a club out of it, how
we carelessly set a quivering little white ball on
a neat little pyramid of sand, how we swung the
deadly weapon with serene insouciance, and how
that doomed spheroid tore a shrieking gash in the
atmosphere and lit on a hillside in the next
county—all that we detailed to our friends with
a frankness untempered by any feeling of
personal modesty.  We were not modest about it.
We saw no reason to be modest.  On the contrary,
we felt we had every reason to be proud of
ourself, and we were at the time.

Naturally, we were not satisfied to let things
go at that.  If we had stopped then and there, if
we had refused firmly and with cuss-words ever
to touch a club again, we might to-day be able to
go about with the pleasant conviction that we
were a champion in possibility.  When people
talked of young Ouimet, as they still do
occasionally—it is a great man who is famous for
more than a few months in these bustling times—we
could smile in a thoughtful way and ask
casually if we had ever told them of that time
when we had picked up that club and placed
that ball, etc., etc.

Of course, they would probably be bored by
the recital—especially after we had told it a few
dozen times—but think of the satisfaction it
would be to us to know that if we turned our
giant intellect and steel muscles to the subject of
golf, we would have Ouimet wishing that his
parents had apprenticed him to a grocer or a
plumber instead of making him a little caddy.

Unfortunately, we did not refrain from golf.
We allowed ourself to be persuaded into going
out and playing a game—starting a game, that
is—and now whenever we hear the word "golf,"
we turn a peculiar bright salmon pink, and get a
trembling all over us.  That first game of ours
was a thing no man who respects himself could
look back on with anything but agony.  Nothing
but our passion for truth, even at the risk of
exposing all the weakness of our nature—it is the
same determination with us as with St. Augustine
and Rousseau and the other great confessors—nothing
but this could lead us to mention the
game at all.  But our favorite motto is, "The
whole truth and then some."  So with trembling
pen we tear the veil from this crying gash on the
milestones of memory—there seems to be
something wrong with this metaphor.  But never
mind.  On with the tale, let truth be unrefined!

A few days after that famous first drive we
dropped into a friend's office to discuss several
important matters of business—such as the
weather and the market quotations in the leading
blind-pigs.  Our real purpose, however, was to
tell him, quite incidentally, how we picked up
that club and placed that ball, etc., etc., etc.

"Ah, ha, sounds like a pretty nice drive," said
Bjones—let's call him that, anyway—when we
had finished our modest little recital of how we
had established a new record for the course.
"You must come out and have a game with me at
Boozedale to-morrow afternoon—hope I can
give you a game all right."

As a matter of fact, this friend of ours is a
mighty golfer.  He's the sort of player that
spends a bad night every time he takes more
than eighty-five to go around in.  And when he
plays he drags around with him a leather
barrel—or rather, the caddy drags it—containing
enough carnal weapons to arm a division of the
Bolshevik army.  To see him coming to a decision
between a jigger and a driving mashie, to see
him taking his stance and addressing the ball,
would fill the breast of the least reverent with
awe.  Napoleon playing his famous approach-shot
with the Old Guard at Waterloo had nothing
on our friend Bjones dropping one dead on
the eighteenth green.  But, alas, it was only later
on that we discovered all this.

"Hope I can give you a game," said he.

We knew not the irony that lurked in his suave
tones.  It ran right off the umbrella of our
self-satisfaction.  We could see in it nothing but
deference to our huge natural genius for the game.
Besides, we were delighted at this chance to give
free rein to our golfing abilities.  We felt that
to refuse the invitation would be flying in the
face of Providence, which had obviously
designed us for a champion.  We did not accept
too eagerly, however.  We felt a certain
reluctance about taking a fellow out to his own club
and making a holy show of him.  But finally we
allowed ourself to be persuaded.  The hour was
named and the car.

Next day at the appointed time we were on the
job.  It was a lovely day, not too warm and not
too cold—just the right temperature to call out
the best that was in us.  We felt that we would
make our previous driving record look like
something that had been done in the palæozoic
age.  When we caught sight of Bjones, however,
we felt twinges of regret.  Bjones seemed to look
older than usual.  And his stoop was more
apparent than ever.  We thought we could see lines
of anxiety on his face.

When we made that famous first drive we
were, of course, in our ordinary street-clothes—not
that they are so ordinary, you know, not at all—but
still the garb of convention.  This time,
however, we removed our civilized habiliments
and got into a curious assortment of garments
that Bjones dug out of his locker for us.  They
must have been in his family a long time.  There
was an old khaki shirt, and a pair of lavender
trousers with a tendency to open-work effects.
The boots had evidently been worn for years by
a gigantic policeman, till a blacksmith came
along and filled the soles full of horse-shoe nails.
Bjones said they were fine for side-hills.
Perhaps they were, but they made us feel like a
touring-car travelling in chains.

After Bjones had succeeded in making us look
like a tramp that had just been run off a farm
by a couple of bull-dogs, he led us out to the first
tee—right in front of the verandah where a number
of ladies were sitting.  They smiled at us and
seemed to wonder if our escape had been noticed,
or if we had been discharged as cured.  It was a
mortifying position.  We found consolation,
however, in the thought that our first stroke
would show them that a champ' is a champ' for
a' that.

A couple of men who were ahead of us drove
off and hurried down after their balls into the
valley below.  After a suitable pause Bjones
teed his ball up and whacked it into space in the
general direction of a little white flag on the
other side of the valley.  But we waited.  We
could see the pair ahead of us putting on the first
green, and we weren't taking any chances of
slaughtering a fellow-creature, even if he did
take four to the hole—mentally we allowed
ourself about two.

Finally they holed out and disappeared on
their way to the next tee.  Carelessly we jabbed
down a little lump of wet sand, set the ball on it,
took a good look at the flag in the distance,
waggled the club a few times in a business-like
manner, and swung.  There was no joyous crack.
We gazed off over the landscape, but could see
no ball wildly careering.

"Ahem, you were a little too hurried, old
man," said Bjones.

We retrieved the ball.  It had rolled about
six inches under the impulse of the wind raised
by the club.  It was a painful moment, and we
murmured a few words which we hope will not
be remembered against us in the day of final
reckoning.  Then we erected a slender column
of moist sand, somewhat on the model of the
tower of Babel.  It was a miniature campanile.
On the top we carefully set the ball.

This time we were cautious—there could be
no question about that.  We were still confident,
but were running no risks.  Half a dozen times
did we change our grip.  For a full minute we
wobbled the club about the ball, picking out the
exact spot where we were going to hit it.  Then
slowly we brought the club back, higher and
higher.  Keeping our eye glued with maniacal
intensity on the globule, we finally made a
tremendous swipe at it and—carefully cut the sand
from under it, so that it came down kerplunk!
We had driven it just two inches—straight down.
Bjones said nothing.  There are times when
silence is more precious than radium.  And the
caddy—the caddy was beyond speech.

We don't know how we finally managed to
persuade the ball to vacate the tee and seek the
green expanse of the valley below.  But we did
at last, and stumbled down the hill after it with
vengeance in our eye.  Selecting the ugliest-looking
iron club in the bag Bjones had given us, we
remorselessly drove that ball and a number of
sods right up to the edge of the green—in eight,
we believe.  Or was it eighteen?

"Now, a nice little tap, a wrist-shot," said
Bjones, who had holed out and had smoked half
a cigar in the meantime.

It was a nice little tap.  Tearing a hole in the
flag and just missing the caddy's head by a
fraction of an inch, that perverted pellet plunged
screaming into an oak-forest, where it buried
itself and will probably in the course of time
grow into a cork-and-rubber plant.

"Hard luck, old man," Bjones murmured.
But there was something very wistful in his
smile.  You see, that ball was brand new, and
had cost Bjones just one dollar.  The next ball
he gave us was not quite so new—not by several
gashes.

We have no intention of going into all the
painful details of that game.  Suffice it to state
that after three hours of play and seven balls we
had made eight holes.  We didn't count our
strokes.  It would require one of those patent
calculating machines that can add up three
columns of figures at a time.  When we hit the ball
a good wallop, it invariably sought refuge in the
woods or in a creek.  The rest of the time it just
dribbled along.

"Your game isn't so bad," said Bjones in
answer to our apologies, "if you could only get
it distributed properly.  The trouble seems to be
that you do all your putting from the tee and on
the fairway, and all your driving on the green.
If you could only reverse that, you would be a
real winner."  But, of course, that was precisely
what we couldn't do.

One hole was an especially depressing experience.
The tee is on the edge of a cliff, at the
foot of which a little bubbling brook burbles
beauteously.  Now, any human being with the
full use of one leg could kick a golf-ball over
that stream without the slightest difficulty.  So
could we.  But we made the mistake of going at
it with a driver.  We swung with savage
determination, nicked the ball neatly on top, and had
the pleasure of seeing it describe a pretty
parabola and plunge with a gurgle to a watery grave.
That, if we remember well, was the fourth ball.
Of course, about thirty or forty pairs went
"through" us.  That is, some sixty or eighty
gentlemen in more or less mussy garments came
up behind us, watched us cynically, and then
with grins more or less politely disguised went
on ahead.  Again and again, when we had just
made a wicked drive of several yards, a fat
duffer old enough to be one of our remote ancestors,
with a red face and a girth that indicated years
of reckless indulgence in pork and port, would
come along, watch us for a moment, and then,
growling apologetically, would drive like a
rifle-bullet straight for the green we wouldn't reach
for half an hour.  And we have always rather
fancied our lithe and athletic build!—or so we
like to describe it.

Bjones was awfully decent about the whole
thing.  Bjones is a thorough-bred.  He kept
framing excuses for us, blaming the clubs he
loaned us and the clothes he had induced us to
wear.  He even spoke harshly of the state of the
turf in several places.  We must admit that it
did look pretty rough—after we got through
with it.

In the end even he fell silent—that was when
we had broken the second club.  Unbroken
gloom settled like a pall on our soul.  We were
too depressed even to swear.  Besides, we had
used up all the expressions we had been treasuring
up for a time of mental stress, and we ceased
to find consolation in the repetition.

The only sensible thing for us to do was to put
the clubs—those that remained of them—back
in the bag and refuse to take another swing.
But no one is ever sensible at golf.  We still kept
hoping that the next shot would reveal the
superb natural genius for the game that we had
possessed only a few days before.  And now and
then a shot really would go right—usually when
we lost our temper completely and simply took
a savage swing at the ball without any
formalities whatever.  But the next stroke always
plunged us into more horrible depths than ever.
When we had finally managed to dribble and
stagger our way to the last green, we felt so sick
and lonesome and helpless that we could have
lain right down there on the velvet sward and
cried into the little cup—only we probably
would have missed it even with our tears.

The only hole we could have played in really
masterly fashion was the nineteenth—the one
they used to keep in the club-house.  Only it
wasn't there any more.  The Prohibitionists
have seen to that.  Driving right on to the green
carpet, we would have putted discreetly with our
right hand, and would have holed out with a
quart bottle and a glass in two.  Vardon himself
couldn't play it any better than we would have
done if—oh, those "ifs!"

We might moralize easily and at great length
on this experience of ours, but what's the use?
Besides, the moral is obvious.  It is this.  Once
you have made a fine drive in a moment of
reckless inspiration, either keep your hands off
golf-clubs for the rest of your life, or go away
somewhere and practice in secret for several years
with an instructor to whom you have given hush
money, before you display yourself and your
golfing skill on the links.  Otherwise, you will
fill the caddy's soul with loathing—-we did.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`On Keeping Cool`:

.. figure:: images/img-261.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: ON KEEPING COOL

   ON KEEPING COOL

.. class:: center large bold

   On Keeping Cool

.. vspace:: 2

The worst of hot spells is that they always
occur in the summer.  Now a nice hot spell
in the middle of winter or the beginning of
March, when we are all getting sick of the snow
and heavy woollens, would be—but enough of
this!  We are not the man to fly in the face of
Divine Providence and suggest changes in the
climatic arrangements.  We leave that to the
parsons.

It is quite possible, of course—in fact, with
our usual luck in such matters, it is highly
probable—that by the time this has been printed,
bound, and inflicted on the public, the public
will be sitting in front of a grate-fire with a
shawl and a cold in the head, having been caught
in the sleet on the way home from the office.
The public will therefore regard our advice on
the best way to keep cool as an impertinence and
an imposition.  And we hate to have the public
think us a jackanapes or a darn fool.  Of
course, the public is bound to find us out some
time, but we would like to postpone the dread
day as long as possible.

Whatever the weather may be like at the time
of reading, at the time of writing and for some
days back we have been going through a period
of torridity during which keeping cool has been
an art—a lost art, we regret to state.  Having
devoted to it all the powers of our mind and all
the energy we had left after the business of
perspiring, we feel qualified to speak on the subject
with assurance and authority.  Not that we
have ever considered it necessary for us to feel
qualified before speaking, but it is just as well.

As soon as the heat-wave hit us in our office-chair,
we took off our coat, vest, collar and tie,
and knotting our suspenders around our editorial
waist, we sent out for all the heat-literature that
could be obtained for love or money—preferably
for love.  And then we plunged with characteristic
impetuosity into the task of mastering
this subtle science or esoteric philosophy or
whatever it is.  Only we didn't master it.

We never in all our life became so hot as we
did reading the various directions for keeping
cool.  When we got through we were stuck to
the back of our chair, the pattern of our shirt
had been roughly transferred to our epidermis,
and we had gone into liquidation to the extent
of several pounds—avoirdupois, not sterling.
But we had the satisfaction of feeling that we
knew all there was to be known about keeping
cool, all the hints, surmises, suggestions, and
epizootic bosh generally.

Advice on how to keep cool, so far as we can
find out, usually concerns itself with clothes,
food, rest, and the state of one's mind.  The
crest of the heat-wave is always littered with
suggestions as to what one should wear and eat
and drink—especially what one shouldn't—how
much one should rest, and how peaceful and
serene one's mind, or what one uses in its place,
should always remain.  This last is considered
very important.  Perhaps if one can only get
cool, a cool mind will help one to keep so.  But
we never get—not till the hot spell is over.

Concerning clothes we are told that we should
wear as little as possible—as little, that is, as the
crossing-policemen will let us get by with.  And
what little we do wear should be of silk or linen
or thin flannel, and very light in color,
preferably white.

Now, so far as the girls are concerned, this is
easy.  They have already at the dictate of
fashion removed all the lower strata of clothing,
retaining only the extreme outer layer.  And
even this they have cut so low and slit so high,
that there is practically no obstacle in the way of
the weakest zephyr that ever zephed.  And, as
for mosquitoes, a really sporting mosquito would
scorn to take opportunities so easy.

But men are somewhat handicapped.  We
still retain vestiges of primitive reticence.  Or
perhaps it is only that we do not think we would
look so well in transparent garments.  The
thought of wearing muslin trousers tastefully
slashed to the knee causes us to shrink painfully.
Nor would we like our shirts cut low to display
our collar-bone and Adam's-apple.  There is
something crude and ungainly about masculine
architecture when exposed in that unabashed way.

Of course, there are linen suits and mohair
suits.  Now and then one even sees a silk
suit—very seldom, though, for few men are
dare-devils of this unfaltering type.  But, though
cool enough in a way, there are disadvantages to
all such clothes.  We know, for we have tried them.

Five or six years ago, we recall, there was a
hot spell of the good old blast-furnace type.  In
its tropical glare one's ordinary suit felt like the
winter garb of an Esquiman.  Fat men became
slim, though not graceful, in a single afternoon.
It was like being rendered in one of those
German plants for producing glycerine.

Personally, we became desperate.  Not that
we are of a fat or particularly full-blooded type.
But then neither are we a lightning-rod—not,
except in the most figurative sense.  We rushed
out to our barber and had him reduce our dome
of thought somewhat to the appearance of a
stubble-field.  We got a pair of canvas shoes and
a Panama hat.  We tried beer.  Then we tried
ice-cream sodas.  Then we tried beer again—this
time we gave it a really good trial.  Still no
relief.  As a last resort we bought two linen
suits.  We were desperate, that's all!  The idea
in buying two was to wear one while the laundry
was hanging, drawing, and quartering the other.

They were nice suits—not a doubt about it!
On the stage they would have caused matinee-girls
to dream about us.  But for private life,
especially such a modest and retiring private life
as ours, they were rather pronounced.  One of
them was made out of a genteel sort of
gunny-sacking; while the other was smooth with
hair-line stripes at wide intervals.  But both had the
same general color-effect.  It suggested a sick
canary—yellow, you know, but not up to its
usual form.

The first time we put one of them on, we
sneaked out the back way.  We didn't dare step
out where the neighbors could see us.  Of course,
there would not be the same occasion for nervousness
nowadays, when suits of this airy character
have become so much more familiar.  But this
was five or six years ago, when masculine tastes
were less Arcadian.

While we stood waiting for a street-car—we
felt as though we had been waiting several
hours—hot blushes coursed over us from head to foot.
The perspiration fairly sizzled on our cheeks.
We couldn't have felt hotter in a coon coat.

As the car bore down upon us, we noticed that
the motorman kept his eye fixed on us with
withering contempt.  He fairly snorted with
indignation as he applied the air-brake.  We put it
down to jealousy.  He was wearing one of those
nice serge suits, blue and shiny, made of cloth
weighing half a pound to the square foot, and
bound with leather at the wrists, as is popular in
municipal-traction circles.  A coat like that is
about as pervious to air as a zinc roof.  We tried
to persuade ourself that he envied us.

The conductor, while he held out the box for
our yellow ticket—no, we didn't choose it to
match the suit—studied us as though we were a
new and exotic specimen at the local zoo.  Then
he went up to the front of the car, and as he went
the motorman turned halfway round and said in
a stage-whisper that carried easily the full length
of the car: "Fer gawd's sake, did yuh see what
got on?"  Then they talked seriously together
for a moment or two.  They seemed to be
considering whether or not they ought to throw us
off.  It was very difficult to look unconcerned,
but we tried.

There are many painful recollections
connected with that day.  We bore up against the
flood of contumely and ridicule as best we could.
But in the end it was too much for us.  We
passed a group of boys on a street-corner.  We
had passed several such groups during the day,
and had been obliged to listen to many personal
remarks of a vulgar character utterly lacking in
true wit.  As we went past this last group the
usual derisive comments were made, but we
neither slackened nor hastened our stately progress.
Then in the midst of them a shrill voice
suddenly piped up: "Oh, you Votes-for-Women!"

It was too much.  Our cup was full—in fact,
it was sloshing over our anguished soul.  We
hurried home and tore the suit off, and were only
prevented by fear of our landlady from burning
it in the corner of our room.  We never wore it
again.

As we pointed out before, however, the public
attitude towards garments of this sort has
changed very considerably in the past few years.
A man may now clothe himself like the lily—the
orange lily, that is—without causing people on
the street to suspect him of being a poet or a
professional fox-trotter.  Think of the vogue of the
Palm Beach suit in the past few years!—which
reminds us.

We were sitting in the office the other day—a
real sizzler, too!—with the door locked for
protection and most of our clothes piled up on the
extra chair.  Oh, it's all right.  We had
arranged with the office-boy to ring a bell when he
saw anyone coming towards our door, so we
could put some of them on again.

Well, we had hastily scrambled into our coat
and an expression of alert dignity when a fat
man was ushered in.  He is a friend of ours who
had dropped in to show us a nice new Palm-Beach
suit he had bought for ten dollars and a
quarter the day before—heaven alone knows
what the quarter was for!  In fact, at the first
glance we wondered what the ten dollars was for.

To be perfectly frank—always an interesting
and perilous endeavor—we took a scunner
against that suit.  In the first place it was so
darn baggy; and then the color!  It hung on
him in folds like an elephant's skin—a light tan
elephant who had been crossed in love.  We
wouldn't wear a suit like that—not, if we had to
go around in our pyjamas.  But naturally we
didn't tell him so—there is such a thing as tact.
We said all we could for the suit.  We remarked
that there seemed to be a good deal of cloth in it
for the money, and it would be a nice invisible
shade for sitting around the beach in the
evening.  Even the sand-flies would hardly be able
to find him.

If we had let the matter rest right there, we
would have been all right.  He wasn't flattered
exactly, but he was satisfied.  Unfortunately, in
our desire for information, we asked him if the
waiters in the better-class restaurants made any
objection to serving him.

You should have heard that fat man talk—that
is, when he ceased to foam and his rage became
articulate.  What he said about us and our
clothes we would hate to admit in the police
court, let alone print in cold type here.  He
wound up with the statement that the only
reason we hadn't been sun-struck before now was
because there was nothing in our noodle for the
sun to strike.  And this was flattering compared
to some of the things that went before.

Finally we were forced to remind him that he
was exhausting what little air there was in our
office.  As a matter of fact, we don't know of
anything that will exhaust the air of an ordinary
room so quickly on a hot day as a fat man in one
of those pale, porous suits.

The immediate chill that ensued in our
conversation was very grateful to us.  It was the
first chill we had had in days, and we were
looking for chills.  Night after night we kept
hoping some burglar would break into the house, or
a good gruesome ghost start strolling around, so
we could have a few authentic chills chasing one
another up and down our spinal column.  But
no luck!  You couldn't hire a burglar in such
weather—not if you doubled the regular rates of
the Burglars' Union.  And as for ghosts—well,
they found it cooler, no doubt, even in the place
where the naughty ones are sent.

By way of finishing with the subject of
summer clothes, we may as well confess that we
bought a mohair suit once.  It was very nice
stuff, a little shiny, but quite cool.  All went
well till we were caught in a shower.  Then
that suit did things we had never before thought
possible for anything but a snake or a contortionist.
It tied itself into incredible knots.  The
trousers climbed up one leg, and twisted
frantically in an endeavor to break the other.  The
tails of the coat curled up, presumably with a
view to getting around our neck and strangling
us.  It took a couple of our friends to pry the
suit off and restore our circulation.  We never
felt the same towards it afterwards.

So much for the heat-suggestions about clothes.
And the advice they give you in the matter of
food is almost as bad—nothing but milk and
eggs and salads.  Spoon-feed and garden truck!
Fine stuff to expect a man to do his work on.
Not that we are so set on working that we eat
solely with that end in view.  But one must hold
one's job, if one is obliged to have such a thing at
all.  And holding a job implies, so far as we are
concerned, a certain number of steaks and slices
of roast-beef-rare.

"Ah, but, my friend," says the heat-suggester,
"you must not over-exert yourself.  You must
repose, especially during the heat of the day.
You may do a little work in the early morning
and again in the evening.  But from eleven to
four—nay, nay, 't is very unwise."  And then he
proceeds to dwell at length on that beautiful
Southern custom of the siesta.

It is a beautiful custom all right.  Far be it
from us to deny it.  For years we have been
dreaming of nice little siestas out in the
grape-arbor with a bubble-pipe and a couple of
senoritas singing Spanish love-songs to the silvery
tinkling of the mandolins.  We realize that the
bubble-pipe is not especially Spanish, but it is
cool and that is the principal thing.

We have never dwelt on this ambition to the
Managing Editor.  We do not believe he possesses
a romantic imagination—not sufficiently
romantic, at any rate.  But what do hot-weather
tipsters care about managing editors?—pish-tush
and less!  What do they care for jobs, or
even positions?  They simply refuse to take them
into account.  All they ever stop to consider is
temperature.

In the same way they take no stock of human
infirmities and foibles.  They ruthlessly cut out
all the pleasures of life, innocent or
otherwise—especially otherwise, as you might expect, but
the innocent ones, too.  For instance, you mustn't
smoke.  That raises your blood-pressure!  We
presume that having one's blood-pressure raised
is a very serious thing, something like having
one's taxes raised.  Anyway, we are warned
against it.

The same applies to drink—only much more
so.  God bless us, yes!  Of course, when we say
"drink," the reference is to fluid of a sociable and
cheering character, not to iced tea or well-water
or such other insipid means of internal refrigeration.
But then the Prohibitionists have cut
drink off, too—and much more effectually, alas!—so
the warnings of the health-cranks find us
unresigned but acquiescent.  We may even be
soothed by their assurances that "booze" is bad
for us in the summer, though personally we have
never found much consolation in reflections of
this nature.

The thing is done, however—at least, for the
present, whatever hopes one may entertain for
referendums in the future—and we must accept
our thirsty destiny.  So farewell the jovial
Collins and the smooth and voluptuous Gin Fizz,
whether silver or golden.  No longer must we
soar on the bounding High Ball to celestial
regions where the heat-waves cease from troubling
and the mercury is at rest.  The pungent and
appetizing Cocktail is not for us, nor the
enticing Rickey.  Even the mild and genial Shandy-gaff
must we shun, for it contains Beer, and the
name of Beer is anathema in anything but
negligible percentages.

Their merry reign is over, and all their
kingdom is given up to plebeian beverages like
Sarsaparilla and Soda-Pop.  But those of us who
are royalists at heart will still continue to look
forward to a restoration of the old regime.
They have gone, but their memory is green in
our hearts—green with sprigs of mint.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Back to Nature in a Limousine`:

.. figure:: images/img-277.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: BACK TO NATURE IN A LIMOUSINE

   BACK TO NATURE IN A LIMOUSINE

.. class:: center large bold

   Back to Nature in a Limousine

.. vspace:: 2

There has been in recent years a good deal
of talk about "going back to nature"—perhaps
we should make that a capital "N."  Even
some of the highest-class magazines have been
devoting to it so much space that we begin to
suspect the advertisers must have asked to be put
next to extra-pure reading matter.  It is true
that most of it was written at so much a line or an
inch or a column by chaps living in hall-bedrooms,
but it is none the less an indication of a
genuine back-to-the-land movement.  We know
for we have taken part in it ourself.

Last summer we went back to the land for a
week-end.  As a result of our experience we
wish to state that we now approve of the land as
an institution.  But you have to go back to it
right.  Everything depends on that.

Years and years ago when we were younger
and foolisher than we will ever be again, we
trust—as a matter of fact, we were fresh out of
college, very fresh—we went back to the land.
The experience embittered our nature for years.
We made the mistake of going back to work on
the land.  Never, never do that.  That way
misanthropy lies.

Brutally heedless of our "B.A." and our other
scholastic honors, big, coarse farmers bullied us
around from four o'clock in the morning till ten
at night.  The rest of the time was our own.  We
went out at dewy dawn and hitched two or three
imbecile horses to a rusty old plough, and spent
the day tearing irregular gashes in the scenery
till it looked like a crochet pattern, and till our
head swam and our knees wobbled.

When we tottered in at twilight, an old and
broken man, we had to go and chase home several
festive cows who did the Maxixe and Tango and
several other dances quite unknown to human
beings at that time—they are still unknown to all
but dancing professors.  It usually took an hour
at least to shoo them into the barn and hog-tie
them so they wouldn't kick us through the pail,
or the pail through us—they didn't care which.

We were supposed to be doing this for our
health.  We had never been robust, though
always very sound as to appetite, and the family
said the fresh air and joyous work of the fields
would do us so much good, poor boy.  It nearly
did us for good and all.  When we got home to
mother after a year of it, with callouses on our
hands and on our soul, the house-dog sat up and
howled in anguish of mind, and the town-undertaker
licked his lips and measured our length
and breadth—there wasn't much breadth—with
his eye.  We could see him wondering whether
the family would stand for solid silver handles or
just the plain oxidized kind.

For years afterwards the mere mention of the
word "farm" would cause us to tremble from
head to foot and perspire clammily at every pore.
We couldn't look at a cow without wanting to
heave a brick at her, or a hired man without a
sudden desire to go over and shake his honest
hand and murmur a few words of sympathy.

So when a wealthy friend of ours—we make a
point of picking 'em rich—called us up last
summer and suggested that we should go out to his
"little place in the country" for the week-end, we
feared the worst.  We realized in a moment that
his hired man had quit or had died of over-exertion,
and that he was trying to work us in as a
substitute—for our keep.  But we couldn't think
of any decent excuse to give, so we yielded a
dismal consent.

"You mustn't expect too much," he warned us,
"it's the simple life, you know—no fol-de-rols,
but just good plain farm fare."

Our heart sank at the words.  Not that we
have ever been so stuck on fol-de-rols.  We don't
mind an occasional fol-de-rol—a fol-de-rol for
two, say, with a quart of "extra dry" in a tin pail
of ice alongside.  But we have never hankered
for them as a steady diet.  At the same time the
warning sounded ominous.  Plain farm fare!—we
could see the platter of pork and cabbage and
the slab of marmoreal pie.

He called for us—or rather, we stood on the
street-corner and he picked us up in a
ten-thousand-dollar limousine, lined in grey silk,
with a big bouquet of roses concealing the
chauffeur from the gaze of the occupants.

This cheered us up somewhat, but we had a
feeling that our doom was merely postponed.
We had a notion that we were being lured.  We
had heard of people who had been made "white
slaves" that way.  And if a farm-hand is not a
white slave, we would like to know who has any
better right to the title.  Not that he is so very
white, but....

With the engine purring softly and the cushions
heaving voluptuously, we swiftly glided—or
should it be "glid" or "glode?"—out past the last
suburban lot, meaning about thirty miles.  It
was a beautiful pastoral region, occupied mostly
by golf-clubs and villas.  Long rows of peonies
and Canterbury-bells and flowering shrubs were
the nearest approach to farming we could see—these
and a few cows of the domestic-pet variety.

Our host was very chatty all the way, and his
talk was of the beauties of the simple life and the
general rottenness of civilization as evidenced by
stock-exchanges and clubs and all-night restaurants.

"Luxury and indolence," he assured us over
and over again, "are eating the heart out of
modern society.  We are all living too fast and too
high.  We have too much money—that's what's
wrong with people in our class."

We said he was quite right and that too much
money was certainly the cause of gout and
divorce and all the other ills to which we were
heir.  We spoke with as much conviction as we
could, while we listened to the merry clinking in
our right-hand trouser-pocket of the six dollars
and eighty-odd cents which we had received
that morning along with the I.O.U's in our pay-envelope.

"Look at what we eat," said our host, "and
look at what we drink!"

Of course, our host was one of the lucky ones
who still have some drink to look at.  He could
therefore afford to adopt a somewhat deprecating
attitude on the subject of beverages.

Suddenly the limousine whirled off the high-road
and shot along a beautiful private driveway
under swaying elm-trees.  We were on the farm!
Wildly we gazed about for the fields of grain,
the hog-lot and the cow-pasture, the big red
barn, and, and all the other familiar stage-properties
of our agricultural tragedy of years before.
But we saw none of these things.

Instead our eye rested on well-groomed
apple-orchards and cherry-groves, on clumps of pines
and Japanese summer-houses, on strawberry-patches
and vegetable gardens.  The vegetable
gardens may seem to the reader to suggest
farming.  But the "kitchen-garden" on a real farm
is merely a frowsy patch where "table truck" is
grown.  This particular vegetable garden was
the work of a landscape artist.  Judging by the
amount of toil which had been put into designing
it and weeding it and picking bugs off it,
every potato or carrot would cost about forty
cents each.

The big car swung on a wide curve, and
"round the cape of a sudden came the Lake!"
Browning!—we know.  We do that sort of thing
now and then just to show that we are a literary
editor in the half of the week that we don't spend
farming with our friends among the idle rich.

There was good old Lake Ontario shimmering
in the glimmering sunlight, or glimmering
in the shimmering sunlight—it works either
way.  And there was the thirty-thousand-dollar
farmhouse nestling in the midst of ten acres of
lawn.  There, too, was the farmer's wife on the
steps to welcome us—she was clad in a simple
little importation from the Rue de la Paix.  It
was a lovely rural scene.

"Well, and what do you think of the farm?"
asked our host.

Farm!  Good Lord!  Our thoughts leaped
back to the real farms we had known, and in a
broken voice we tried to tell him that this was
the sort of farm we had dreamed of but never
worked on.  This was farming as it should
be—farming de luxe.

We began farm-life that very afternoon on the
grounds of the adjacent golf-club, where we
planted several balls in various parts of the
landscape and couldn't find them again.  There
would be a very decent little grove of rubber-plants
on that course in a year or so, if they
would let us play there a few times.

Then we went back to the farm for dinner and
had a sample of the farm-fare.  It was a simple
repast of seven or eight courses.  One of the
farm-hands, a butler, waited on table.  Most of
the food was of the sort that we try to conceal on
the menu-card from a lady, in case she should
order it and we would have to leave our watch
with the waiter.

In the midst of the meal there was a solemn
pause.  We felt dimly that some marvel of the
culinary art was about to appear.  In came the
butler with an air of importance and a silver dish
containing six or seven anæmic radishes.

"Grown on the place!" said our host in the
tone of a man who expects to astonish.  He
glanced with pride at his wife and she glanced
back in affectionate joy at him.  Theirs was the
delight with which young parents exhibit their
first-born.

We nibbled a little piece out of one, while they
leaned back and waited confidently for our
words of almost incredulous admiration.  We
are a bad liar as a rule—persistent, that is, but
unsuccessful—but we would have cut off our
right hand rather than disappoint that good man
and that dear lady, so charming both of them in
their simple faith.  It had taken fifty or sixty
thousand dollars and several years of thought
and labor to produce those poor runts of
radishes.  So we forgot all the lessons of
truthfulness that we had learned at our mother's
knee—perhaps we should say, while laid across our
mother's knee—and swore that they were the finest
radishes we had ever tasted, and that no joy
in life was equal to eating the vegetables grown
on one's own door-step, so to speak.

"You're right, my boy, you're right," beamed
our host.  "The only truly happy and independent
man on earth is the farmer."

The next day they showed us over the farm.
We saw the aristocratic cows, whose ancestry
went back as far as that of the kings of Ireland.
Their milk, at a low estimate, must have cost
about as much as a vintage wine.

We were particularly interested in the hens.
They all belonged to the royal families of
hendom.  Most of them had been exhibited and had
won ribbons or medals or whatever it is they give
hens.  They certainly were beautiful in a
poultry way, but they seemed cold and proud.  Our
host said they didn't lay very well.  We
suggested it might be for the same reason as prevents
people in the smart set from having any children.

"No, I don't think it's that," said our host very
earnestly.  "I believe it's because they haven't
enough to interest them.  I read in a poultry
book the other day that hens must be kept bright
and cheerful."

We recommended comic selections on a gramaphone.
We also asked him if he had ever tried
reading our articles to these haughty fowl.  We
felt that might draw a cluck or two of amusement
out of them.  But he treated our remarks
with the silent contempt they no doubt deserved.
We would like to tell a lot about life on that
farm—about the trip in our host's big motor-boat,
and the dance in the evening, and the horse-back
rides on high-stepping horses that chinned
themselves at every step and were always going
up when we were coming down.  We would
like to tell also about the tennis and the billiards
and the canoeing.

We would like to do all this, but we haven't
the heart.  Some real farmer might read this
article, and go right out to his barn, and fasten a
bit of rope between his neck and a beam, and
kick the box over.  Our only hope is that if one
should happen to see this, he will merely grunt
to "maw" that we are another of "them dern slick
liars in the city," and refuse to believe a word of
it.  We don't wish to spoil his life.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Stringencies and How to Stringe in Them`:

.. figure:: images/img-289.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: STRINGENCIES AND HOW TO STRINGE

   STRINGENCIES AND HOW TO STRINGE

.. class:: center large bold

   Stringencies and How to Stringe in Them

.. vspace:: 2

It is extraordinary and also somewhat
disconcerting how prayers are sometimes answered.
When we were a little boy we were often warned
by pious relatives of the perils of too much
wealth—usually when we displayed a pagan
desire for pocket money.  Local pulpiteers also
added their authority to this doctrine,
reinforcing it with excerpts from Holy Writ.  As a
result our young soul was filled with horror at
the thought of millionaires and camels trying to
crawl through the eyes of needles.  And, being a
very earnest-minded little boy, we prayed that
we might never be rich.

This prayer has been answered.  We are not
rich.  Moreover, present indications are that we
will never be rich.  Whether or not our character
has been benefited by the chronic depression
which has been the outstanding feature of our
financial career, we are in no position, and are far
too modest, anyway, to state.  There are times,
however, when we would like to test our moral
fibre by exposing it to the seductions of wealth.
We might even like to succumb once or twice, or
three or four times or oftener, just to show that
we are one of those supermen who can "take it
or leave it alone."  But these opportunities for
moral "swank" have been denied us.

We prayed for poverty and we got it.  We
have prayed for a lot of other things in our time,
which we haven't got.  But the celestial
Committee on Prayers certainly O.K'd that
poverty-petition of ours.  They gave it to us "good and
plenty," in the vulgar idiom.  Of course, there
is no use at this late date in explaining to the
Powers that we were only praying against
becoming a millionaire—half a million would
more than satisfy our modest requirements.  The
thing is settled.  As a result we have become
mighty careful what we pray for.  There is
always a chance that we might get it.

This introduction is by way of letting the
reader know that stringencies, such as the one
through which we have all been passing ever
since peace started, are no new thing with us.
We are quite undismayed by the present state
of the markets of the world.  We are facing the
situation with unruffled brow and the assured air
which bespeaks long experience.  We know how
to deal with stringencies.  We have tackled
many of them.  In fact, we have reason to regard
ourself as one of the best little stringe-ists in this
part of the country; and we are prepared to
stringe with anyone of our financial weight for a
reasonable purse and a modest side-bet.

There was that time, for instance, Friend
Reader, that we went broke in 'Frisco, many,
many miles from home and mother and the bed
in the spare room.  In a week we were
acquainted with every free-lunch counter and
ten-cent restaurant in the City of the Golden Gate.
As a result of the acquaintance we developed a
horror of "boiled beef Spanish," which has
remained with us to the present day.  And we
ended up on a dairy ranch—thirty per and our
keep!  But let us draw the veil—we hate to
think of the way we used to talk to those cows.

Stringent experience such as ours is a very
valuable thing at a time like this, and we feel
that it is in the nature of a public duty for us to
lay before our readers—the whole five of them—the
ripe results of our painfully acquired wisdom.
Of course, we may be compelled to make
revelations of a personal nature; but we don't
mind.  We can stand it.  We have no social
position that we need be worried to lose.

The trouble with the general public is that so
few people know how to tackle a stringency.
They are impulsive and unscientific.  They go
at it in a precipitate, not to say temerarious, manner.

Take, for instance, all those eager little
housewives who rushed right out on the news of the
declaration of war and tried to corner all the
flour the grocer had, and all the bacon in the
butcher-shop, forgetting that by the time the
family had eaten about one-fifth of the supply,
the flour would make a Limburger cheese seem
like sweet hay for aroma, and the bacon would
be scratching at the cellar door to get out.  They
even bought crates of eggs and oranges and
cart-loads of vegetables!

Men's notions of economy are frequently not
much better.  We have a friend—oh, we still
manage to keep one or two—who announced not
long ago that he had given up cigars.  He said
they cost too much.  We were rather sorry to
hear of his decision, for he is one of those large,
expansive fellows who are becoming to a
cigar—he smokes them with the band on.  We
expressed our surprise.

"Not giving up smoking altogether, are you?"
we asked.  "Won't you find it difficult to think
without nicotine to act as a...."

"Certainly I'm not giving up smoking!  I've
taken to a pipe, and believe me, my boy, it's the
only smoke that...."

But you know how they all talk the first few days.

He showed the pipe to us.  It was a beautiful
thing, meerschaum, all dolled up with gold and
amber.  And it reposed in the cutest little
case—one of those plush and papier-maché affairs
that add a dollar and a half to the cost of any
pipe.  They are really worth about seven cents.

He showed us also a new tobacco pouch—grained
leather, with gold monogram and rubber
lining.  Eight dollars, if it cost a cent!

Under his arm he carried a tin of tobacco that
looked as big as a hat-box, and his pockets were
full of pipe-cleaners, special ash-trays, and a
patent combination arrangement of tools with
which you could tamp the tobacco down in your
pipe, gouge holes in the wad if you got it too
tight, scrape the charcoal off the sides, and dig
the pipe out when you had smoked it.  All the
thing lacked was a compartment in the end for
ice to cool your tongue.

Altogether the outfit cost about twenty-five or
thirty dollars.  We said nothing.  The thing
was too pathetic.  Three days later we met him
smoking a cigar—still with the band on.  He
looked us straight in the eye with a truculent air,
as though daring us to make a comment.  We
didn't.  We knew how he felt.  We had been
through it all ourself.

Personally we have taken to smoking cheaper
cigars, ever since that last increase in taxes.  In
our days of affluence we used to walk into the
shop of our favorite tobacconist, and throwing
down a quarter with a reckless hand, would say,
"Gimme three!"  Now we slip into a drug-store—we
cannot bear to abate a jot of our lordly air
in the presence of our tobacconist—and dejectedly
buy a "five-cent straight," though they cost
ten cents now.

(No, girls, the cigars are not always straight,
nor are they always made of straight tobacco—on
the contrary!  We presume that they were
called "five-cent straights" because they were
bought by people in straightened circumstances,
in dire straits, so to speak.)

In happier days if we had dared to smoke
five-centers around the office, we would have been
subjected to nasty personal remarks from the
other members of the staff.  But nobody says
anything now.  They are smoking stogies
themselves, or consorting with pipes of ill-repute.
The Financial Editor in the room next door
smokes a villainous briar that growls even at its
owner.  We hate to say this, but only the other
day we put our hand too near it as it lay on his
desk asleep, and it almost got our little finger.

Not only are we smoking cheaper cigars, but
we are making them last longer.  How do we do
this?  Easily, dear reader, easily.  We don't
light them, that's all!  We bite the end off very
carefully, and insert the cigar at a rakish angle
in the middle of our expression, and carry it
around like that for nearly an hour before we
touch a match to it.  That way two cigars can
be made to do the work of six.  The worst of
lighting a cigar is that it becomes oxidized so
quickly.  After that it isn't any good, except
possibly as tooth-powder.

Another economy we indulged in during last
fall was the buying of a straw hat.  Of course,
it may at first seem rather late in the season for
one to start in and buy a "boater."  But we got
this one for ninety-eight cents—a three-dollar
hat, the salesman assured us.  But more of that anon.

You see, we had met our old friend Bjones on
the street, carrying under his arm a box about
the size of those they crate oranges in.

"G'wan in and buy one before they're all sold,"
he gasped, "greatest bargain I ever saw!"

"But what are they?" we asked, displaying an
indulgent interest by ceasing to twirl our
silver-mounted cane—(yes, a present from a lady).

"Hats, of course—ninety-eight cents—worth
three and a half or four!  Just bought six of
them.  Everything going up—got to keep
supplied, you know."

We never stopped to reflect that Bjones would
take the next six years to wear those hats out, and
that his wife would probably divorce him if he
tried.  In fact, that may have been part of his
plan.  But we caught the fever from him.  We
hunted up the store and rushed right in.  There
was a big table of sailor straws, with about thirty
men grabbing them up and trying them on.  The
lot didn't contain our exact size, so we took the
nearest we could get.  It was a little small, and
it sat up on our head in a way that suggested an
amateur performance of "H.M.S. Pinafore."  But
it was a very nice hat.  That is, we thought
it a nice hat.

Candor, however, compels us to state that we
showed it to a friend in the hat business whom we
met while we were triumphantly carrying it
home.  We asked him if he didn't think it was
a mighty nice hat.

"Oh, yes, it's a nice hat all right," he answered
cordially.  "Why, those hats cost forty-nine
cents each, buying them by the dozen wholesale!"

We tried to ascribe his words to professional
jealousy.  But somehow we took a sudden scunner
against that hat.  In fact, we tried a few days
later to give it to the office-boy.  But he
declined.  He sports a six-dollar one himself.
Besides, his head is bigger than ours.

We have also been looking at some celluloid
collars lately—just looking, you understand.  Of
course, we wouldn't think of wearing one of the
things, but it is just as well to keep them in mind,
for you never can tell, with the price of laundering
where it is.  Besides, they aren't so bad—a
little blue and shiny, perhaps, and with peculiar
button-holes.  But with the washer-ladies
buying closed cars, and the stringency becoming
more stringent all the time, it is well to know of
collars that can be done up with a tooth-brush or
simply left on the neck when taking a bath.

But we have no intention of wearying the
reader with a further account of those symptoms
of a financial depression which has long since
become chronic with us.  We are no more
depressed now than we ever were, except inasmuch
as any kindly and sensitive heart must be
depressed at the sight of widespread
destitution—especially among millionaires.

Depression—and when we speak of depression
we naturally refer to financial depression and not
to the state of a man's liver or conscience—depression,
we repeat, is largely a relative matter.
A man is depressed or otherwise in comparison
with the high-water mark of his prosperity.  A
financial status which would make the hairs of
John D. Rockefeller's Sunday wig rise up in
separate and individual horror, might cause us
in sheer exuberance of joy to buy and stock a
"Winter Garden" just for ourself alone.  In
view of the jeopardy which would ensue for our
eternal salvation, we are glad—or should be
that this is not immediately imminent.

It is really the rich who suffer most in a period
of stringency.  The mental anguish of hardened
stringe-ists like ourself is nothing to what must
be endured by the people who have never before
had to ask the price of anything.  We met one
of them not long ago on the street.  He is not a
regular millionaire—only an intermittent, so to
speak.  Every little while he manages to chin
himself on the trapeze of wealth, though he
never quite succeeds in climbing securely into it.
He was looking very gloomy, his suit needed
pressing, and the diamond in his tie seemed
smaller and less brilliant than of yore.

"Hello, old pirate, why so glum?" we asked
insolently—we always make a point of being
rude to millionaires.  "What's the trouble?—those
naughty stocks misbehaving again, or does
some fresh Aleck of a legislator propose to
investigate you?"

He looked at us with a melancholy and lack-lustre
eye.  There was none of the old bounce
and condescension in his manner.

"It's all right for you chaps to make bum
jokes," he grumbled.  "You're on Easy Street.
What difference does the depression make to
you?  You haven't promised a new touring-car
to your wife as I did.  And now the poor little
girl has to worry along on last year's model.
And I could only give her a pearl pendant for
her birthday instead of the diamond sun-burst
she wanted.  While you...."

But we hurried away.  Far be it from us to
stand idly by and gaze upon a strong man's
agony.  The vision of that defeated and broken
man has followed us ever since.  Not even the
little sunburst she wanted—gawd, can such
things be!  Why doesn't someone start another
war so that he can get back into the munitions
business?  There must be dozens of others like
him.  And while these deserving millionaires
are in this state of comparative destitution, here
are gay, care-free fellows like ourself swaggering
about town, jingling the quarter against the
small change in our pocket, and wondering
whether we will blow it on two cigars or on three.
It doesn't seem fair, does it?

It has been said thousands of times—therefore,
we have no hesitation in repeating—that
one-half the world doesn't know how the other half
lives.  Not that millionaires constitute half the
world—God forbid!  They are not even the
emerged tenth, if we may say so.  But it is none
the less true that the rest of us don't know how
they live.

You may see the magnificent, yea, verily, the
palatial residences they have built after the
model of famous prisons and royal stables
abroad.  You may hear the accents and see the
spats of their sons who have been to Oxford—in
fact, you can almost see the accents and hear
the spats.  You may gaze upon their daughters
at theatre-parties, clad in feathers and the rail
of the box, with nothing between them and lumbago
but the backs of their chairs.  You may be
dazzled by the flash of the twenty-carat headlight
in fawther's dress-shirt, or by the soft refulgence
of mother's stomacher of pearls.  You
may witness all this—you may even envy it.  But
little you know the breaking heart that may lurk
in the limousine.

To look at the average millionaire you would
never suspect what worm may prey upon his
damask cheek—or should we say, damaged
cheek?  The gilded sausages of his double
watch-chain may be as ponderous and resplendent
as ever.  The crease in his trousers and the
shine on his shoes may still show the skill and
energy of an expensive valet.  He may curse at
the waiters in his old lordly manner, even though
he no longer is able to order his cocktails in a
tumbler.  But he is not at peace within.

If you are a shrewd observer you will notice
that his sixty-cent cigar is not quite at the old
aggressive, betcha-million-dollars angle.  And
the familiar wad of mazuma in the right-hand
front pocket of the pants is not so swollen as of
yore.  We should say it is thinner by several
one-hundred-dollar bills.  In fact, it may be padded
up with fives and tens and other bills of small
denomination just to make it look good.

In a word, the average millionaire is not the
man he was only two or three years ago, when the
war was on, and orders were flowing in, and he
was picking what crumbs of comfort he could—and
also quite a few nice, bright little nuggets—out
of the general chaos.  It may seem to you
that he is going as strong as ever.  You may
suppose that once a week he still has a lorry back
around to the side entrance to take his profits
down to the bank to be weighed and shoveled
into the vaults.  You may imagine that he still
spends his leisure hours clipping the nimble
coupon.  But such is far from being the case, as
you would realize if you could only get him to
open his heart to you.

Try asking him to increase your salary—this
is a really good way to find out.  Then you will
discover that most of his business day is devoted
to running around with his hat in his hand
begging hard-hearted bankers to let him have just
a few more hundred thousands—surely a man
has a right to this pittance—so that he may pay
his bills and be able to look the world in the face
once more.  You will be horrified to learn of
such hideous octopuses—(thank you, Professor,
we should have said "octopi")—as Labor
Unrest, Overhead Charges, Depreciation, and
Stagnant Markets.  Secure in your weekly envelope
with its usual twenty dollars—unless like ourself,
dear reader, you draw an occasional I.O.U.—you
may care little for the vagaries of any other
market than the one at which your wife or
landlady buys the family meat and vegetables.  But
this great and good man has to bear the brunt of
the fight.  Is he complaining?  No, friend, he
is not.

"It is not for myself," he tells you in a voice
quivering with emotion and considerable
brandy-and-soda—they can still get it, of course.
"It's not for myself, my boy.  I must keep the
old plant going for the sake of the men and
their families."

Just about then you burst into tears and beg
his pardon for ever having even thought of such
a thing as more pay.

"You have no idea how delicate and complicated
these financial problems are," he assures
you in a burst of confidence, "You don't realize,
for instance, that if I were to raise the wages of
everyone in the institution a dollar a month, I'd
simply have to shut the old place up.  And I
couldn't bear to do that—the associations, you
know."

You have a vision of him in his poverty-stricken
old age, out of work, condemned to spend all
his time at Palm Beach or the Riviera.  If you
are a man of real feeling, you will tell him you
think you could get along on ten dollars a month
less, and would he please take it to help tide him
over his difficulties?

It is experiences like this which convince a
man that these are indeed times of depression.
And everything deepens the feeling.  See the
lines of people waiting to buy the best seats for
musical comedies and hockey-matches!  See
them crowding into the cabarets at midnight!
And the jolly little dance-and-supper parties
after the show in homes where the cellar has not
yet been entirely despoiled of its treasures!

All this is merely a proof of general anguish
of mind.  They are seeking for respite and
nepenthe and surcease of sorrow.  They are
dying game, so to speak.  If they were to sit down
quietly at home and think things over, they
might become so desperate as to cut down their
expenses.  So they roll out the old touring-car
instead, and collect a few congenial spirits, and
possibly some more spirits under the cushion of
the back seat, and go—but it doesn't matter so
much now where one goes.  All towns are alike.

Of course, there are financial giants, whose
position is so secure that no money panic can
ever disturb their equilibrium or equanimity.
We called on one the other evening—two floors
up over a grocery store.  It was a cold night,
the heat was off, he was wearing his overcoat in
the house, and was feeding old newspapers into
the parlor grate.  In the intervals he was
reading Anatole France in the original, and
consulting a big French dictionary every line or so.

"Come in," he roared, "and help feed the fire.
I've left the hero in a delicate and somewhat
improper position, and I want to see if anything
happened.  I'll tell you in a minute."  And he
reached for the dictionary.

We intimated that we would certainly like to
know if anything of an indelicate nature occurred,
so that we might rush right out and report
the matter to the proper authorities.

"But how can you be interested in such things
as that," we enquired, "when hundreds of your
fellow-millionaires and near-millionaires—they
are human beings after all—are writhing in
financial agony?  Have you any European holdings,
any Russian roubles, or anything of that sort?"

"I'm not holding 'em any longer," he said with
a shameless grin.  "I gave them to the butcher
as an instalment on last month's bill."

"But you must have some stocks on margin—are
they properly covered?" we persisted.
That's the kind of fellow we are, always looking
for information—the more unpleasant the better.

"Huh, what's that?" he grunted, after a long
pause during which he had been hunting
feverishly for a word.  "What's that, margins?
Are my margins covered?  Sure, they're covered,
old top—and so are the missus's and the
kid's.  Our margins are all protected from the
weather—also our chests and such other places
as one usually takes cold in."

But what's the use of talking to a man like
that?  He shut the book with a bang and
reached for the tobacco-jar.

"Now what do you know about that?" he
groaned.  "Nothing happened after all.  Just
as things were at their liveliest, and the hero held
out his arms, and the heroine—well, just then the
old Abbé blundered in and...."

But there is something criminal and callous
about such indifference as this.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Taming the Furnace`:

.. figure:: images/img-309.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: TAMING THE FURNACE

   TAMING THE FURNACE

.. class:: center large bold

   Taming the Furnace

.. vspace:: 2

"And what the devil do you know about
taming furnaces, anyway?" asks the
reader, presuming that the reader has a
somewhat abrupt style in conversation.  "Here you
go around bragging about being a bachelor and
having inclinations for the monastic life and all
that sort of rot"—meaning the bragging, of
course—"and yet you have the nerve to write an
article on how to handle a furnace.  G'wan and
teach your grandmother to suck eggs!"

Thereupon, the reader in torrid indignation
drops the book and goes down into the cellar,
and seizing a short shovel with a broken handle
tosses half a ton of coal into the maw of the steel
dragon there—a dragon which consumes its own
heat and lets none of it get as far as the radiators.

Incidentally, why should it be regarded as the
height of absurdity to teach one's grandmother
to suck eggs?  Why should one's grandmother be
expected to know all about sucking eggs?  Is
one's grandmother a weasel that she should be
universally regarded as a supreme exponent of
this art?  We are aware that this paragraph is
in the nature of a digression, but we have all our
life been puzzled to account for this curious
tradition that grandmothers know everything to
be known about removing the contents of eggs
by the primitive process of suction.  We feel
quite sure that both our own personal and private
grandmothers knew nothing about it.  We are
also sure that we would never have had the nerve
to teach them how to do a thing so obviously
vulgar and futile.  Furthermore, no one's
grandmother could afford to suck eggs at the present
market quotations.  So what would be the use,
anyway, even if she did know how?  Altogether
this seems to us a very silly proverb.

But, to return to furnaces, we really do know
something about them—not everything (what
man does?), not even a great deal, perhaps, but
still something.  And we ought to know something,
for we have wrestled in spirit and otherwise
with every one of the fifty-odd varieties—hot
air, hot water, steam, and everything that lies
between.  Some men are born furnace-tenders.
Some learn it from plumbers.  But we have had
our knowledge forced upon us.

One of our earliest and least-treasured
recollections is of an enormous old furnace in our
grandfather's house—a mediæval contraption,
all bricked-in, as big as a cottage, with a mouth
the size of a pair of folding doors, and a capacity
for coal which would make a twin-screw steamship
turn a dark bottle-green.  We used to be
held up to the door of it when we had been very
naughty, and have it explained to us that
naughty boys were sent to a place bearing a
general resemblance to that bed of red-hot coals.
We do not recall that we had much joy of the
prospect.

Later on, when we had got to the point of
having Holy Writ retailed to us with expository
remarks—our preceptors usually picked out
something infernally gruesome—we used to
associate that old furnace with the various trials
by fire mentioned in the Old Testament.
Especially could we see those three brave young
Hebrews, who were condemned by old
Nebuchadnezzar to be burned to death, standing
smilingly on the familiar coals—each with a
fire-insurance policy in his pocket, as we presume
now.  Else why be so cheerful about it?

Even as a boy at grandfather's place we began
to form that intimate acquaintance with furnaces
which has been the bane of our young life.
When the furnace man did not turn up—usually
as a sequel to a nocturnal endeavor to make the
distilleries enlarge their plants—we had to
shovel coal into that grinning old monster until
our back and arms ached, and we would cheerfully
have thrown in a few sticks of dynamite if
there had been any handy.

But, of course, that sort of thing is part of the
penalty of being a member of a family.  We
have no complaints to make.  If a fellow will
permit himself to be dragged into a family he
must pay the price thereof.  What we really
object to is that since we have attained the
dignity of manhood and the responsibility of a vote
in provincial and federal affairs, we are still
obliged to toil in cellars with a coal-shovel—a
black-and-white slave, so to speak.

It would be different if we were married.  We
would expect to look after a furnace.  And,
anyway, to a married man what is a little trouble
more or less?—he has lots of it.  But freedom
from worry about the furnace should be one of
the most sacred privileges of the bachelor.  We
have been deprived of our rights.  Instead of
"the" furnace, we have several to think about.
We are one of the busiest little amateur stokers
in town.

There must be something in our appearance
which suggests that we have a masterful way
with furnaces, that we can make them eat right
out of our shovel.  It has become a habit with
our lady friends when we call on them in the
evening—naturally we have social duties to
perform—to pat the radiator in a reflective sort of
way, and then smiling brightly at us to say in a
casual but wheedling tone something to the
following effect:

"Oh, Mister O'D."—a few of them call us
Peter in a sisterly way—"I just hate awfully to
bother you, but paw is at the lodge and—well,
you are such a good hand with a furnace.  It's
such a comfort to have a man who is really handy
around the house, and—just a shovelful—thanks!"

So we bid a temporary farewell to the company
and to all the delights of polite conversation,
and retire to the cellar to give first aid to a
rusty demon of a furnace whose vital spark is
almost extinct.  Laying our coat neatly folded
on the bottom step of the cellar-stairs, we first
seize a long lever which comes out every moment
or two on our toe, and we shake enough ashes out
of the grate to stifle Pompeii.  Then groping our
way to the coal-bin—away at the other end of the
cellar—we proceed forcibly to feed the furnace
with a broken scoop-shovel.  About half of each
shovelful misses the little opening—why the
dickens do they put such small doors on the
things?—and by the time we have accomplished
the chore we are knee-deep in anthracite.  Great
stuff for a nice, new serge suit, that!

When we come upstairs again we are coated
with a soft covering of powdered ash, our collar
is melted, our hands suggest that we have been
working on a slag-pile, and the young lady insists
on sitting on a little narrow chair instead of on
the sofa as usual.  Every time we stir she
glances nervously at the rug and the upholstery.
The social atmosphere grows chillier and chillier,
though the water is boiling in the "rads."

About an hour later "paw" comes home from
the lodge, disappears into the subterranean
depths, and emerges in a moment to ask in a
loud belligerent voice who th'ell has been and
gone and put all that coal on the furnace, and if
people are aware that coal costs fifteen
dollars a ton, and if people wouldn't be better
advised to mind their own business.  Whereupon
daughter blushes violently and rushes out to him
in the hall.  There is a brief dialogue which is
brought to a conclusion by "paw" grunting,
"Oh, him, is it?" in a manner not altogether flattering.

Even at home in the flat where we lived for
two somewhat cramping years—we swept the
pictures off the walls every time we put on our
shirt—we could not get away from furnace
troubles.  The thing was an obsession, that's all.
Our proprietor, that inaccessible local divinity,
was supposed to supply heat, which naturally
implies a furnace and a furnace-man.  There really
was a furnace and also a furnace-man, but the
two were seldom found in conjunction.

Down in the cellar there was an enormous
structure of cast iron, with twisted pipes sticking
out of it in all directions as though it were some
sort of mechanical octopus.  And down in the
very heart of it there were usually half a dozen
coals smouldering away.  That was its ordinary
condition.  But two or three afternoons a week
a local financier, who had about thirty furnaces
on his visiting list, used to call and pour a ton or
so of coal down its throat.  Then he opened wide
all the drafts and went rejoicing on his way to the
bank to deposit his latest dividend.

About midnight on such days we were all
awakened by a noise which seemed to combine
the roar of the angry surf with a riot in the Ford
automobile plant.  There were also suggestions
of a volcano in active eruption.  The furnace
was boiling!  Then one hustled into a dressing-gown
and one hurried down to the cellar to shut
the thing off; and, as one passed bashfully by,
one saw sights through open doors that no
gentleman would ever speak of.

We have a friend, however, who has mastered
the furnace problem—about as well, that is, as
mortal can hope to do it.  He has devoted years
of thought and much bullion and energy to the
task.  He has a huge furnace all encased in
white asbestos—it sheds its nighty every now and
then and has to get a new one—and on this furnace
he has more electric attachments than would
run a suburban trolley system.  All he has to do
before he goes to bed is to wind up two or three
clocks and set half a dozen hands on as many
dials, and the furnace does the rest.  It keeps the
house at a certain specified heat—unless, of
course, it goes out, which it does every so
often—and moreover, it will turn on the heat at any
specified time in the morning.  Instead of having
to get up in a chilly house and wander dismally
down to the cellar to open the blamed
thing up, he has only to lie awake in bed and
listen if the regulator is working properly—and
three times out of five it is.  But, of course, this
is rather hard to hear, and if it shouldn't be
working and he didn't notice it—well, on those
mornings he eats his breakfast in his coon-skin coat.

Naturally he has to remove the ashes and
shovel in the coal, but that only takes an hour or
so a day.  Besides, it is fine exercise.  Nothing
like putting on your furnace-clothes and tying a
damp silk handkerchief over your face and
going down for a little bout of græco-roman with
the furnace to give you an appetite.  And the
thirst!—but what's the use of talking about that
nowadays?

It may be thought that we are prejudiced
against furnaces.  We are.  We admit it
frankly.  And we have good reason to be.  If it
hadn't been for a furnace that went out, we might
to-day be a happily married man and the father
of a large—oh, well, perhaps that is taking a
little too much for granted.  But we might have
been married, at any rate.

She was a druggist's daughter, a lovely girl of
about eighteen summers.  That is, she claimed
eighteen summers, though perhaps a few summers
were so short and so cold that she forgot to
count them.  Her father lived and had his shop
in a Prohibition town—this was before there was
no other kind of town.  Naturally he was the
principal citizen of the place and the popular
saver of many masculine lives.  Father used to
prescribe for gentlemen for miles around, the
prescriptions being usually taken in the back of
the store.  No one ever bought anything out of
the show-case except cigars.

We used to drop into the store occasionally to
ward off a chill or a fever or something of that
sort—we were always strong for preventive
medicine—and it was there we met daughter.
It was a case of one good long look, a few words
about the weather we were having, and then we
went straight home and tore up all the pictures
on our chiffonier.  Not long after we got into
the habit of taking her out in father's buggy—it
had a large top and the horse could be trusted.

So we whiled away the autumn.  At Christmas
we sold something and blew the proceeds on
a couple of dozen of those red, red roses, which
are almost as significant as an engagement-ring.
Gwendoline—'t was thus she loved to be called—told
us several times with thrilling emphasis
that she "just loved those roses to
death."  Everything seemed to smile upon our suit.

The night we went with our mind made up to
settle the matter conclusively—even to the date
of the ceremony and the nicest place to spend the
following week—was a bitterly cold one.  In
fact, the parlor where we sat waiting for Gwen
to come down seemed decidedly chilly.  But she
floated in looking radiantly beautiful to the eye
of affection, and the light was low, and—oh, dash
it all, we forgot about the temperature entirely.
It is a poor lover who can't furnish his own heat.

Conversation was graceful and animated, but
with an undercurrent of serious purpose.  We
felt that something was expected of us, but
naturally a man of tact and romantic feeling doesn't
plunge into a proposal of marriage as though it
were the purchase of a dog-collar.  It is a thing
to be led up to; and we were casting about in our
mind for the most graceful and effective way of
doing so, when we began to realize that the room
had grown strangely cold and that the lady was
looking rather blue—with a tendency to redness
about the nose.  Also she was gazing at us in a
curiously critical way, and we remembered that
we never look our best when we are chilly.
There is a certain spottiness—but these details
are unnecessary.

It grew colder and colder.  Gwendoline got a
shawl, and we turned up our coat-collar as
unobtrusively as possible and put our hands in our
pockets.  The lady became absent-minded, and
in spite of ourself our thoughts wandered to tall
glasses with something hot in them and pieces of
lemon floating around.

There is no use dragging out this account of
the disaster.  The whole thing simply fizzled
out.  A masterful man might perhaps have
saved the day—or the evening, to be accurate—by
seizing the lady, slamming her against his
throbbing heart, and warming her up at the fire
of his own ardor.  But we let the psychological
moment shiver by.  She passed us with a curt
nod on the street next day, and six months later
was married to a chap in the bank.  Her father
took him into the business at once—she was an
only child.

Do you wonder we hate furnaces?

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Mike`:

.. figure:: images/img-323.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: MIKE

   MIKE

.. class:: center large bold

   Mike

.. vspace:: 2

Cats have character.  You may not like
them, but you have to respect them.
They feel no affection, and they make no pretence
of it.  If they rub up against your leg and
purr, it is because they like the stuff your
trousers are made of—yes, madam, we are speaking
for ourself!

Now, it is just the opposite with dogs.  You
like dogs, but usually you don't respect them.
They are not sufficiently self-centred and
independent.  They lack poise and that repose of
manner which is the unfailing sign of the aristocrat.

Dogs are too fond of you—in itself an
evidence of a lack of discrimination—and too
demonstrative.  One of the meanest-souled human
weasels that ever slunk home from his office in
the evening to be nasty to his wife and slap the
children has a dog.  And that dog watches for
him for hours, and comes tearing down the street
to greet him, barking his head off and turning
somersaults in delirious joy.

Now, who ever saw a cat come tumbling and
barking down the street to greet anyone?  The
finest and ablest man in the Empire—Lloyd
George, Haig, or even Sir Arthur Currie or
the virtuous Newton Wesley Rowell—couldn't
get a flicker of a cat's whisker, if they came home
after six months' absence all covered with
medals.  The only arrival to make a cat sit
right up and mew in salutation is the milkman
in the morning.

That's the fascination and mystery of cats—their
independence and their inscrutability.
Furthermore, they have utterly no morals, and
they are perfectly unabashed about it.  If a dog
does something he knows to be wrong, he hangs
his head and his tail and crawls around on his
stomach and presents a ridiculous spectacle of
contrition and self-abasement, till you let him
know he is forgiven.  Then he probably jumps
into your lap, and licks your glasses off your nose,
and sticks his paw in among the cigars in your
vest-pocket.  The only safe way to forgive a dog
is from the top of a high ladder.

But a cat doesn't care whether you forgive her
or not.  She feels no compunction and shows no
gratitude.  She will walk off with a porter-house
steak or present the household with a family of
war-kittens with equal nonchalance and aplomb—we
always make a point of using French words
when discussing these matrimonial irregularities,
such is our delicacy.

Of course, Mike wasn't that kind of a cat—to
present the household, that is.  He might figure
as the injured husband or the co-respondent in
these regrettable affairs, but never as the fair,
frail one.  Though, as a matter of fact, the
family at first was under the impression that he
was a tabby.

Mike was an under-sized and very quiet black
kitten, with a pair of the worst bow legs we have
ever seen on anyone but Harry Lauder.  His
back legs were straight enough, but he looked as
if he had been run over by a motor lorry in front,
or brought up with his head under a low beam.
They gave him a curious resemblance to a
somewhat battered prize-fighter—whence the
war-like title, "Mike."

It has never been clearly established in the
family who was responsible for bringing Mike
into its bosom and its milk-pitcher, so to speak.
Mike arrived, that's all—probably he liked the
air of cultured serenity about the house and
walked in.  With a promptness which is a
strong tribute to his fascination of manner, even
at this early age, he won our landlady's heart,
and was formally adopted under the name of
Yvonne.

Personally, we were always opposed to
Yvonne as savoring too much of coquetry or
hauteur.  We wanted something simple and
homely like Mary Elizabeth or Emma Jane.
But Yvonne it was, and Yvonne it remained till
it became generally apparent that the name
didn't fit Mike's gender or his mode of life.

We would like to devote a great deal of space
to telling the reader what a cute little rascal
Mike was in his Yvonnehood, so to speak, and
how we loved to come down in the morning and
find him sitting in our Toasted Pine Flakes, or
stuck in the cream-jug—he used to come right up
from the cellar to be with us.

We would like to tell all this, so that our
unmarried lady-readers could write in to us about
their own cats and their cunning ways, and all we
girls could have a perfectly lovely time
together—they might even bring the cats down.  But
*tempus fugit*—these French phrases will break
in—and we must on to the mournful and
disheartening story of Mike's adult life, with the
sad light it throws on the impotence of pure and
beautiful surroundings to correct a naturally evil
character.

The beginning of Mike's downfall was staying
out o' nights.  While still a kitten Mike had
been accustomed to take an evening stroll, but
his notion of bedtime grew hazier and hazier.
He became distinctly less and less retiring.
Finally Mike had to be stalked like a chamois every
evening and dragged by the tail off some perilous
peak of fence.

It was then that we got a brilliant idea, one of
those flashes, you know.  We reminded our
landlady that Mike always came running when he
heard anyone whet the carving knife on the
steel, knowing that it was a musical prelude to
dainty tidbits of meat.

"Why not go to the back-door and rub the
knife on the steel?" we asked, modestly trying to
appear unconscious that we were getting off
something rather dazzling.  "Then when he
hears it, he'll rush up and you can—"

The suggestion was so obviously sensible that,
in spite of its coming from us, our landlady
adopted it at once.  Other suggestions of ours
had not worked out quite according to specifications,
but this one looked good.  Our landlady
was even moved to say that she hadn't expected
so much wisdom from us.

She got a chance to try the ruse soon after.  It
was a warm dark night, when the feet of even
the wisest cat might stray from the paths of piety,
and Mike's had very evidently wandered.  In
fact, it seemed to us that the strong but lyric
tenor voice singing of love down the lane might
well belong to him.  But we couldn't be sure.
There was a good deal of singing going on,
mostly of a sentimental nature.

We cheerfully undertook to do the knife-grinding,
being an adept at any operation connected
with eating.  Squaring our elbows in a
professional manner, we gave three or four
slashing cuts on the steel that would have earned
us a job in any packing-house.  We made a noise
like a duel in romantic comedy—some of that
matinee idol stuff, you know, "Have at ye, caitiff
knave!" lunging in tierce and quart, and then a
quart or so in the dressing-room after the act.

Did it work?  Yes, friend reader, it worked.
It brought Mike all right—also every other cat
off every other fence in that block.  Before the
landlady could slam and bolt the door, about ten
frenzied felines hurled themselves into that quiet
and orderly kitchen and immediately started
trying to throw one another into the stove or drown
one another in the sink.

While it lasted—and it was some minutes before
the landlady's screams brought sufficient
assistance, including the Chinaman out of the
laundry across the way—it was the liveliest little
scramble one could see outside the Petrograd
Soviet.  In ten seconds that kitchen looked like
the plucking room of an otter-shop.  Those cats
just grabbed the fur in handfuls and threw it
away.  We got it in our porridge for weeks
after, giving to that wholesome breakfast dish a
still further resemblance to soft mortar.

Mike finally took to staying out all night.  It
was about this time that we began to entertain
doubts as to his sex and morals—we were still
calling him Yvonne in moments of friendship.
He also wore a bow of red ribbon and a bell, the
bell being for the purpose of tracking him
around the house when he elected to go up and
sleep in someone's bed.

The bell must have been an awful nuisance to
Mike.  Perhaps that is why he never could catch
a mouse.  We saw him tracking one in the grass
one night.  Every time he got ready to spring
the infernal bell would tinkle, and Mike would
sit up and moan.  It was no use, and Mike
definitely gave up mouse-catching as a steady
job—stone-deaf mice being presumably rare.

His bow and bell, no doubt, made him
unpopular with the other Toms.  The decoration
was not particularly becoming—he was about as
pretty as a prize-fighter in a rose necklace—but
his *confrères* probably regarded it as a sign of a
vain and uppish disposition.  So they used to
chasten him—three or four at a time, we should
judge from Mike's mussed appearance when he
came home for breakfast.

His bandy front legs must also have been a
handicap at first in these nocturnal affrays, but
he learned how to use them to good effect after a
while—they were probably all right for upper
cuts and short hooks from either side.  We
noticed that as time went on he used to bring
more of his fur back with him in the morning,
and we judged he was working well up towards
the top of his class—welter-weight, we should
say.  Mike never got beyond medium size, and
he was always rather lean.

His voice, however, was superb.  He was the
Caruso of the block.  His range was tremendous,
with great power and fine quality all the
way.  His upper register especially was quite
wonderful.  There were tenor notes in Mike's
voice on still summer nights that could be heard
for six blocks in all directions.  We have no
doubt that a greater number of useful articles,
such as boots, hairbrushes, perfume bottles, and
shaving mugs, were thrown at Mike than at any
other ten cats in that end of town.

But he wasn't stuck up about it.  He remained
the same simple, unassuming fellow—no professional
airs whatever, and always willing to sing.
He loved his art, that's all.

Mike is gone, however.  He hasn't turned up
for a week, and we write this article in the hope
that if any reader sees a black Tom with a red
bow and a brass bell, the reader will please
destroy him in some speedy and sure way.  Poor
Mike, we may never look upon his like again—such
is our heartfelt prayer!

The last time we saw Mike was about two
a.m.—we had been detained at the office.  As
we neared the house, mentally debating whether
or not we would take off our boots downstairs—the
last time we did so we absent-mindedly hung
them on the hat-rack—we noticed a nice grey
tabby stepping daintily across the deserted street
ahead of us.

It had just occurred to us that this was no hour
for a well-brought-up cat to be strolling around,
when we noticed Mike pussy-footing along about
three yards behind—no doubt with some chivalrous
intention of seeing that she got home all
right.  He was wearing his bell and an
expression of concentrated interest.

And right behind Mike came the biggest and
dingiest tomcat we have ever seen.  With a few
dabs of paint he would have made a very fair
panther; and he had much the same glare in his
eye.  It seemed to bode ill for Mike, and we felt
vague stirrings of pity, which a moment's reflection
caused us sternly to repress.  We decided to
let justice take its course.

We have never seen Mike since.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Dogs`:

.. figure:: images/img-335.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: DOGS

   DOGS

.. class:: center large bold

   Dogs

.. vspace:: 2

Most men like to represent themselves as
being very popular with dogs.  Why
any sane, self-respecting man should be proud of
having dogs notice him on the street, is a thing
we have never quite been able to understand.
But they are.  They seem to take it as a sign of
a generous, sporting nature on their part that
dogs should wag a friendly tail at sight of them.

A similar superstition exists as to babies.  It is
quite true that it is sometimes deuced embarrassing
for a man to have a baby conceive a sudden
passion for him.  But even the victim is proud
of it.  The onlookers, especially the parents—oh,
God bless us, yes!—regard it as an absolute
certificate of character.  They would hardly
find it in their hearts to blame that man if they
afterwards heard he was a burglar and a
wife-beater.  He might be indiscreet, but still "how
Baby took to him!"

Now, personally, we get on pretty well with
babies—also with grandmothers.  Up to the age
of six and after the age of sixty the girls seem to
love us.  Affection for us appears to be a
characteristic of childhood—first or second.  It would
do your heart good to see the little dears grab for
our watch and bang it on the arm of the chair
or the top of the table, or anything that is handy
and hard.

Grandmothers, too, are always very nice to us,
and laugh at our jokes—especially if they are a
little off color (the jokes, not the grandmothers).
But girls of sixteen, say, or twenty-six, make it
clear from their manner that they consider us a
tiresome old stiff, afflicted with a pathetic
hallucination that we are funny.  There is
something a little depressing about this.

As for dogs—well, frankly, we don't get on
with them at all.  The best we receive from
them is a cold neutrality.  Of all the dogs we
know not one has a gosh-darn bit of use for
us—except when we are sitting at their master's
dining-table.  Then they come and fix us with a
threatening eye and black-mail us out of half
our dinner.  In fact, we have a suspicion that
nothing but a certain leanness and stringiness in
our lower members prevents them from eating
out of our leg.

There is a house, for instance, where we dine
almost every—well, as often as our hostess will
let us.  We like eating there.  The cooking and
the conversation are excellent.  Also they don't
regard the wine-cellar as a place to keep the
winter's coal and ashes in.

But they have a dog—a big, black, furry dog,
with feathers on his legs, and the ability to sit up
and beg for hours at a stretch.  He has also the
biggest mouth we have ever seen on a dog of his
size.  When he opens it he splits himself apart
right down to his hind legs.  Some day in a
moment of forgetfulness or excitement he is
going to take our right arm off at the elbow.  But
still we go on feeding him.  We don't dare stop.

In addition to getting most of our beefsteak
and our lamb and our veal, that dog has got our
goat.  He sits right up beside us and counts
every mouthful we take, looking all the time as
if he hoped it would choke us.  If we don't
"come across" promptly with what he considers
his proper "rake-off" on our food—the brute
regards us as a parasite, anyway—he howls in fury.

"My dear," says our hostess to our host with
characteristic thoughtfulness, "I think your dog
is misbehaving himself—hadn't you better put
him out?"

"Oh, the dog's only a little playful," says our
host, eyeing us with the cold disapproval of a
man who has his own opinion of a fellow who
would sit in front of a big plate of roast beef and
trimmings and let a poor dog suffer.  "You don't
want him put out, do you?" says he to us.

"Not for worlds!" we roar in counterfeit
horror at the thought, and chuck a slab of sirloin
into the gap at our elbow—it's as big as a
manhole in the street.  After that, whenever we
catch this nice little doggie's eyes, we give him
whatever happens to be on our fork, all the time
hoping that he will go out on the street next day
and eat a sausage full of arsenic, or some
ptomaine pork.

If we don't catch his eye often enough, he pats
us on the arm with a paw the size of a Virginia
ham.  He did that once when we were drinking
a cup of coffee, and we poured it over a new
pair of striped pants.  We never cared to wear
them afterwards—in fact, we didn't care to wear
any at all for several days, until the new skin
formed.

Talking of clothes reminds us that we were
mistaken when we said no dog ever loved us.
One did—Lord, how that dog worshipped us!
He was a brindle bull belonging to an uncle of
ours, who had an undershot jaw, one ear gone, a
broken tail, and a record of seventy-odd
murders—that is, Mutt had, not uncle.

Mutt was in many respects a very tough dog,
but he loved us dearly.  He dogged our
footsteps, and he dogged us when we sat.  In fact,
when we were visiting uncle, which was fairly
often—uncle always kept a few bottles on
ice—that darn dog did nothing but dog us.  He was
the doggonest dogger we have ever known.

But we had little joy of his affection.  We
would rather have had him form a taste for
anyone else on earth.  We wouldn't have cared if
he had taken up with the niggers down around
the barn.  In fact, when uncle wasn't looking,
we used to punch him in the face and kick him
behind the ears—even farther behind than that.
But he regarded these caresses as proofs of
affection, and would leap upon us and slobber in a
riot of emotion till we were reduced to soggy
helplessness.

That was the whole trouble—the slobbering.
A friendly bulldog is a moist beast at best.  If he
loves you he drools on you, and the more he loves
you the more humid he gets.  But this brute
was the dankest, wettest, coziest, sloppiest
bulldog that ever drivelled his affection on a fancy
vest.  His finer feelings were a perfect swamp.
His welcome was an inundation.

If, in a moment of forgetfulness or exhaustion,
we so far relaxed our vigilance as to sit down,
Mutt would waddle up with tears of love in his
eyes and lay his head in our lap.  He would
gaze at us in worship as though we were a god
or a side of beef, and in two minutes we would
be soaking from the waist down.  The trenches
in Flanders had nothing on Mutt for sogginess.

Once, after we had been away for some
months, we were visiting uncle, and were sitting
in a nice, deep, easy chair—you know, those
chairs that are so hard to get out of in an
emergency.  Suddenly the door burst open and seventy
pounds of slobbering enthusiasm hurled itself
upon us.  There was no escape.  Mutt took us
fair in the chest and knocked our breath and all
thoughts of resistance out of us in one agonized
grunt.

Before they pulled him off our hair was licked
into tufts, our collar was melted, the colors had
run in our new tie, and we were wet to the skin.
We couldn't go home that night for fear of
catching double pneumonia.  Mutt was a grand
dog in his way, but if he took a fancy to you, you
weren't safe in anything but a bathing suit or a
raincoat.

Nearly all our friends have dogs—Airedales
mostly.  Now we have nothing against Airedales.
They are good enough dogs in their way.
It is true that they are as ugly as a moth-eaten
buffalo in a zoo, as boisterous as Billy Sunday,
and as quarrelsome as a female peace-advocate.
But they are good dogs—let it go at that.

There are no less than six Airedales on the
staff of the paper we work on—that is, six dogs
more or less definitely recognizable as such.  In
fact, if you were to take the whole six of them—one
dog's ears and another's tail and another's
legs and another's coat—you would almost have
a real Airedale, which is pretty good going with
average Airedales these days.

One of them got lost the other day.  They are
always getting lost.  Airedale books and salesmen
will tell you that you can't lure an Airedale
away from home.  The suggestion is that if you
were to invite a neighbor's Airedale out for a
walk he would knock you down and bite a piece
out of your Adam's apple.

Well, all we can say is that every postman or
butcher boy or grocer's man in town is escorted
on his rounds by two or three Airedales belonging
to the best families.  We even used to know
one that came down-town and spent his days in
the back room of a saloon.  We saw him there
ourself, but he cut us dead—perhaps because we
didn't treat him.

The Staff Airedale that got lost is principally
distinguished by the possession of a thoroughbred
tail.  So the owner claims, at any rate.  He
has frequently called our attention to it, and
asked us to note the correctness of the angle at
which it is held.  But we could never see much
in a shaggy stub of that sort, no matter how
perpendicular.  Now, if it was a nice, long curly
tail—but then, of course, it wouldn't be an
Airedale.  And this dog was bought for an Airedale,
the price being the principal evidence of pure
breeding—that and the tail.

Well, when the dog left home, the owner
immediately advertised for his recovery.  Personally,
we would have moved at once to another
street to prevent him finding us again.  But the
owner advertised; and for the past two or three
days we have spent most of our time listening to
him answer enquiries over the 'phone.  He is
called up every twenty minutes by someone who
has an Airedale which he is sure must be the one
wanted.

The thing begins to sound like a conspiracy.
Are people trying to work off a lot of second-hand
Airedales—model 1916—for the sake of
the reward?  Or do they just want to get rid of
their own dogs, and are too kind-hearted to shoot
them?  Anyway, this is how it sounds—his office
is near our own:

"Hello!—yes, an Airedale—where did you
find him, hey?"

A long pause, during which the person at the
other end of the line tries to prove honesty of
character and purity of intention.

"What sort of a tail has he, hey?—is it a good
tail?—what do I call a good tail, hey?—well, a
good tail stands up straight with a little bend in
it—oh, about four or five inches long and pretty
thick."

Another long pause, while the person at the
other end of the line drops the receiver, goes out
to the barn to study the dog's tail, and comes
back to report.

"It isn't standing up now, hey?—well, did it
stand up before?—does it stand up most of the
time, hey?"

Usually the answer is favorable.  Naturally a
man with a dog he doesn't want speaks as well
of its tail as he can.  Thereupon our friend
seizes his hat, rushes out of the building for the
nearest car line, and comes back two hours later
to expatiate on the crass stupidity of people who
find dogs.

The tail, it seems, is never the perfect tail he
is looking for—thick, shaggy and perpendicular,
with a slight bend.  Half the time the dogs are
not even Airedales.  The last one he went to
look at—seven miles away in the suburban
slums—proved to be a Scotch terrier, a bandy-legged,
little black chap.

We told him he ought to have taken it anyway.
But he is a persistent beggar, and he is still
answering "ads."  He is weakening, however,
and we are laying bets that he will take whatever
the next person who 'phones in has to offer—A
Persian cat, perhaps, or a Belgian hare.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`On Being Handy With Tools`:

.. figure:: images/img-347.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: ON BEING HANDY WITH TOOLS

   ON BEING HANDY WITH TOOLS

.. class:: center large bold

   On Being Handy With Tools

.. vspace:: 2

We are not handy with tools.  We state this
with all solemnity and knowing full well
the nature of an oath.  But even if we were
handy with tools we would perjure ourself rather
than admit it—we know what that admission
leads to.

We have a brother, dear reader—a tall,
broad-shouldered, handsome fellow, as you might
guess, with a very open face.  That is the chief
cause of his troubles, his face is so very open.
And in his tender youth he used to open it
regularly and widely about the things he could
do with tools.

There was nothing that boy couldn't make or
mend.  There was no domestic emergency
which he couldn't meet with the appropriate
tools—either the family tools or the neighbors'.
Did a tap need a washer?  Frank was right
there with a rubber disk in one hand and a
monkey-wrench in the other.  Were the electric
lights on the blink, or was the gas-stove doing its
best to suffocate the cook?  Did the family dog,
a descendant of several shaggy breeds, require a
hair-cut or a shampoo?  Had the horse kicked
the side out of his stall?—we are not bragging,
friend reader, as you would realize if you had
ever seen that ancient charger.  Or was the barn
itself in need of a coat of paint?  In any and all
of these cases Frank was electrician, gas-fitter,
barber, carpenter, painter, or whatever the
circumstances called for.

And what was the result of all these various
services so far as he was concerned personally?
Did he get any special consideration because of
them?  Was he the favorite child of the family?
Did anyone kill even a lean calf for him, or
clothe him in a coat of many colors?  Not that
the rest of us ever noticed.  About the only way
we ever showed any gratitude or any acknowledgement
of his skill and energy was by saving
up jobs for him.

No matter what the emergency might be, no
one else ever touched a hammer or a saw or a
paint-brush for fear of breaking in on Frank's
personal preserves and so hurting his feelings—at
least, that is the way we put it.  If ever he
went out of town for a few days, he had to work
nights and Sundays when he came back, so as to
catch up with the chores and odd jobs.  And
because he had always done them he went on
doing them.  He might grouse about it, but you
know how it is once you have established a
family tradition.  The laws of the Medes and
Persians are nothing to it for permanence.

All this happened because he was handy with
tools and fancied himself as an amateur
mechanic.  The boy was clever at it, too, but this
is something one should never admit about one's
self.  If a job should turn up to be done around
the place and you should be asked if you can do
it, deny it utterly.  Say you know not neither do
you understand a darn thing about it.  If they
ask you again, deny it again.  Then if one come
up to you saying, lo, this is a handy man, curse
and swear and say that the only nail thou canst
hit with a hammer is that which groweth upon
thy thumb.  Even so wilt thou find peace.

You must be eternally watchful, if you would
keep yourself clean from the taint of handiness.
There is something balefully fascinating about
tools.  They are so shiny and efficient-looking,
or so rusty and inefficient-looking, that one is
tempted to try them in either case, just to see how
they work.  And they are always lying about
within easy reach—except perchance when you
want some particular tool very badly.  Then, if
so be you desire a tack-hammer, you will find
many gimlets and screw-drivers and eke a saw
or two.  But aye verily we say unto you, you
won't know where th'ell the tack-hammer is, but
will be obliged to tack down that bit of linoleum
with a sad-iron—perhaps that is what makes the
irons so sad.  If, on the other hand, thou
shouldst require a gimlet in thy business, then
surely will there be tack-hammers in every
drawer, but the gimlets will have crawled off
into a hole somewhere to play with the young rats.

Even young children are inoculated with the
virus of handiness.  Little boys at Christmas-time
are presented by silly old uncles—generally
uncles who do not have to live in the same house—with
sets of little tools all nicely arranged in
gaudy boxes.  Then the little boys, having
bright and enquiring minds, proceed to saw
sections out of the piano-legs and drive nails into
mother's Circassian-oak dresser.  The result is
usually much pain for the little boys, though not
in the parts of their anatomy which they use for
purposes of sawing and hammering.

When we were a little boy, we were even as
other little boys in this respect, though much
more beautiful and clever—we state this on the
authority of our maiden aunts.  Having been
presented by some reckless relative with a set of
tin tools, we went right out to the family shed
and built a nice little house with a real fireplace
in it made out of two or three half-sections of
brick.  Then we started a fire in it, and when it
got going nicely, we ran off to tell some of the
other boys in the block about it.

There could be no question about that fire.
It wasn't a big fire as fires go nowadays, but it
was a lively one.  It took two hose-reels and a
chemical engine half an hour to put it out.  We
don't know what grandfather told the insurance
company, but even over the lapse of years we
distinctly remember what he told us.  You see it
was grandfather's shed, and grandfather at that
period of our life was acting towards us *in loco
parentis*—certainly there can be no doubt about
the amount of loco which he put into the role of
parent on that particular occasion.

Our natural genius for mechanics was nipped
in the bud by that unfortunate occurrence.  Ever
since we have struggled manfully and—with a
few exceptions—successfully against any
inclination to monkey with tools.  Taps have wheezed
and leaked in our presence for weeks on end,
but we have carefully ignored them till such
time as a plumber or brother Frank was around.
Coal-bins have broken down, but never have we
taken saw and hammer in hand to put them up
again.  We have sworn off tools.

It is true that we have sometimes been compelled
to run a lawn-mower.  But then a lawn-mower
is not properly a tool.  It is more in the
nature of a plague, something like typhoid fever
or Prohibition.

We have stated that there were two or three
exceptions to our abstinence from tools.  Alas,
yes, we succumbed to temptation or pressing
need, and the result was in each case deplorable.
Worst of all was the little ladder we constructed
so as to reach certain high book-shelves in the
room which the family calls "the study"—probably
because no one would dream of doing such a
thing there.  It was a pretty little ladder, a bit
of work we were proud of.  But it cost us an
inheritance—not actual, you know, but prospective.

We made the ladder out of a couple of pieces
of scantling and parts of an old packing-case.
We planed and fitted and nailed it, till it was
goodly to the eye and fairly sound to the feel.
Then we painted it an art-green, and put nice
round knobs of leather on the ends that leaned
against the wall.  It was really an ornament, the
sort of thing that people years ago used to gild
and hang up with pink ribbons.  But unfortunately
it was not a very reliable ladder.  It
would do everything but ladd, so to speak.

Uncle Aleck was in the house one day, and
having nothing particular to do formed an evil
desire for a book on the top shelf.  This
particular uncle, be it understood, is regarded as a
wealthy old bachelor—though personally we
can't be sure to what extent he is either single or
rich.  Anyhow, he always professed a special
affection for us personally, on the curious ground
that we were the image of himself at our age—a
reflection which furnished us no pleasure from
the point of view of physical pulchritude, however
flattering it might be as a financial prospect.
We were regarded by the family generally as his
heir—alas, that we should have to say we "were"
regarded.

Naturally Uncle, seeing this book which he
shouldn't have wanted to read—at his age, too,
the old rascal!—seized that infernal ladder and
climbed up.  It let him get right up to the top
rung, and then it bucked or shied or kicked or
something equally effective.  When they got
the splints off Uncle's leg and he was able to
move around on crutches, he sent for his lawyer.
Ever since he has regarded us with ill-concealed
dislike.  Whenever we see a short ladder from
that fateful day to this we get a curious "gone"
feeling under the middle button of our vest.

This is the sort of luck we have had with tools,
but, of course, there are people who have had
worse.  We have a friend, for instance, who is
an absolute victim to them.  He has a fine home
and a charming wife, not to mention the dog.
But he is gradually undermining his health and
wrecking his own happiness and theirs by his
insane conviction that he is a plumber, a carpenter,
an electrician, a cabinet-maker, a plasterer, and
a stone-mason combined.  There are three or
four other trades as well, but these will do to go
on with.

When he built his house, he had a large room
constructed down in the basement adjoining the
boudoir occupied by the furnace and the coal-bin.
It is a really beautiful room, a little low
as to the ceiling, perhaps, and a little dim as to
the light.  But there is a fine cement floor, fine
big beams in the ceiling, and splendid brick walls
in all their natural beauty of cool grey.  It is
his workshop.  He tries to persuade his wife
that some day it will be the billiard-room.  But
she, poor woman, knows better.  It is his workshop
now and forever, till his last tool is rusted
and his last finger busted and—well, there are
"dusted" and "crusted" left to rhyme with.

He has that place simply jammed with tools
of all sorts and work-benches and the like.  He
keeps a regular harem of hammers and hatchets
and saws cooped up down there, each in her own
little cubicle.  Not even the Sultan himself in
all his matrimonial glory was ever half so jealous
of his better halves—perhaps one should say, his
better ninety-nine one-hundredths—as our friend
is of these same tools.  Why, if he were to catch
anyone cutting with a chisel of his, or planing
with a plane from his seraglio, he would be liable
to bowstring the poor tools and throw them into
the Bosphorus, as represented by the sewer or a
neighbor's backyard or some similar abyss of
oblivion.

Sunday afternoons and any evening when his
wife has company, he disappears down into this
den of hardware, and the noise of hammering
and sawing which emerges from it—the place
sounds like a busy shipyard on the Clyde—indicates
that he is having much joy of his chilled-steel
darlings.  Every now and then he comes
up to have a piece of court-plaster put on a new
place during the temporary absence of cuticle.
Then he goes back with the solemn and determined
expression of a man who at great personal
sacrifice is accomplishing a sacred duty.

What does he do down there?  Generally
speaking, Heaven only knows.  We have heard
him talk in vague terms of the new set of
storm-windows and storm-doors he is making for the
house.  But that was over two years ago, and
there have been some very tidy little storms since
then.  But never yet have we seen sash or panel
of those doors and windows.

It is true he did make a set of window-boxes
for the flowers in the sun-room—so-called because
you can sit in there and look at the sunlight
outside.  But even a union carpenter could have
made those boxes in half an hour, and members
of the union have never been accused of undue
and ill-considered haste in such matters.

It is when our friend comes up out of the cave,
however, to do a job in the upper regions of the
house that things really happen.  There was a
tap in the bath-room, rather a nice tap as taps
go—a very handsome tap, in fact.  But, in the case
of taps, handsome is as handsome pours.  And
pouring was one thing this particular tap
refused to do—thought it vulgar, perhaps.  So our
friend one bright Sunday afternoon—these
things seem always to happen on Sunday—got
an idea in his mind and a big monkey-wrench in
his hand, and went up to the bath-room and took
a half-nelson on the handle of that tap.  He
gave one twist—just one.  It was all that was
needed.  The tap came away with a jerk, and a
solid jet of water as thick as your wrist took him
in the face.

Gurgling yells of agony brought everyone in
the house to his assistance.  Naturally we had to
be right there among the shock-troops, heedless
of the nice new suit we were wearing for the first
time.  We dashed in and found our friend standing
in front of the pipe into which he was vainly
endeavoring to stick his thumb—mindful,
perhaps, of the famous exploit of the little hero
of Haarlem.  We succeeded in prying him away,
but our new suit never looked the same again.
If we had had any sense we would have left him
there till he was washed away.  The trouble was
that no one else knew where to shut off the water,
and—well, we simply had to drag him away to do it.

The next day a battalion of plumbers, plasterers,
and decorators did what they could to repair
the damage to the house.  It took them about a
week.  But our friend is still hopeful.  He still
thinks he is a mechanical genius wasted as a mere
lawyer.  Only the other morning we dropped
into his office.  He was laboriously trying to
make a piece of black court-plaster about the size
of a war-map stick to the back of one hand by
holding it down with the bandaged thumb of the
other.  There was a lump on his forehead and
one of his cheeks was badly scratched.  But he
was in excellent spirits.

"Tell you what, old man," he burbled in his
enthusiasm, "there's nothing like being able to
do the odd-jobs around the house.  Why, only
last night I went down into my workshop, and I——"

We wiped away a furtive tear.  There is
something very pathetic about a fine mind
falling into such decay as this.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Bumps and a Brogue`:

.. figure:: images/img-361.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: BUMPS AND A BROGUE

   BUMPS AND A BROGUE

.. class:: center large bold

   Bumps and a Brogue

.. vspace:: 2

As we were combing our hair somewhat
hurriedly in our boudoir at 8.58 the other
morning—we are supposed to be down at the office at
nine—it was suddenly borne in upon us that we
had a remarkable set of bumps on our head.  We
made this discovery by the simple and painful
process of running into several of them with a
large, sharp comb.  We thereupon decided that
a set of protuberances like ours should be
measured at once by a competent phrenologist.

We had seen the Professor's notices in the
"want-ad" departments of the local dailies; and
our attention had been drawn to them by their
diagrams of extraordinarily bumpy heads, and
the peculiar line of language in which the
Professor advanced his modest claims to be regarded
as a benefactor of the human race and one of the
greatest phrenologists of all time.  Besides, the
Professor's protuberance-parlors were on our
way down to the office.  They have a central
location, so that phrenological patients can run
in every now and then and have a new bump
examined, we presume.

We read the handsome and dignified brass
plate on the door, and we knocked a respectful
knock.  After two or three minutes of waiting
we knocked again—less respectfully.  After we
had knocked several more times, with constantly
diminishing respect and constantly increasing
force, the door was opened by a blond and
comely young woman who explained that the
Professor's hours were from three to five in the
afternoon, and from seven to eight in the
evening—to accommodate people who might drop
in on their way to the theatre, no doubt.  Did we
want a chart as well as a reading?

"How much does the Professor set one back
for a chart?" we inquired, as we toyed with the
forty cents left out of our weekly envelope of
the Saturday before.  Two dollars for a reading
and five dollars for a chart.

We stated firmly that we would have two
dollars' worth, and that we would come for it at
three o'clock in the afternoon.  We were going
to see this thing through if we had to hock
something.  As we bowed our adieu smilingly, the
young lady pressed upon us one of the Professor's
cards, in which we were advised to "get my
new great chart and be helped—as many also
numerous worried, etc., have—for life."  On
the back of the card there was more of the Prof's
best phrenological English, which promised
among much else that "marriage adaptions"
would be explained.  Immediately we resolved
that we would see him that very day or expire in
the effort.

We got there at three.  The same blond and
comely young woman let us in.  Would we take
off our hat and coat and sit in the parlor till the
Professor got through examining the bumps on
someone else's cranial arch?  We would and we
did.  We sat down by a table on which there
was a pile of calling cards—presumably left by
grateful persons whose protuberances had been
explained—and also a bound copy of the
Professor's famous chart.  We opened it and
glanced through a few long passages on amativeness
and combativeness and philoprogenitiveness
and other polysyllabic characteristics, as
indicated by convexities on the skull.

While we read there floated down to us from
the mysterious regions above a rich Hibernian
voice and the most superb brogue we had heard
in many a long day.  It was one of those thick,
mashed-potatoes-and-buttermilk brogues which
usually go with a semi-circular rim of reddish
whiskers and a prehensile upper lip.  We
dropped the book and listened.  We didn't pay any
particular attention to what was being said—far
be it from us to display an ungentlemanly
curiosity as to the meaning of anyone else's bumps!
We just listened to the voice.  It made us think
of St. Patrick ordering the snakes out of Ireland.

The voice came downstairs and accompanied
someone to the front door.  "Goodboy and good
luck to yez both," said the voice—perhaps some
cautious young man was having his fiancee's head
studied—and then we were told that the Professor
awaited us in his sanctum.  We hastened out
just in time to see a pair of short, thick legs
scurrying upstairs ahead of us.  We joined them in a
neat little office at the top—where legs are usually
joined—and found that they and the voice
belonged to the Professor, in whose hands we
had come prepared to place our head and a
two-dollar bill.

The Professor looked us over, and we in turn
gazed at him with the respectful and somewhat
timid interest due to his professional insight into
human character and destiny.  But we must
confess to a distinct disappointment.  We had
expected to see a large and impressive personage,
with the face of a seer, piercing eyes, flowing
locks—also a flowing robe, covered with cabalistic
signs.  We had expected him to be a sort of
cross between a medicine man and an ancient
alchemist.  Instead we saw a round-faced,
plump little Irishman, with close-cropped hair,
a bristling mustache, and a decided leaning
towards rotundity in the abdominal profile.

"Well, young man, and what can Oi do for
ye?" asked the Professor, as though we might
have come to get a tooth filled, or be measured
for a new pair of pants.

We explained that we had come to have our
head read, with a view to finding out what business
in life we were best fitted for, and also to
have our "marriage adaption" explained.

Without a word the Professor sat us in a chair
in the middle of the room.  Still without a word
he seized a pair of callipers that were unpleasantly
suggestive of ice-tongs.  Then in ominous
silence he proceeded to pick up our head by the
ends, by the sides, by the front, by the back, under
the ears, and in several other painful places
where heads are not usually picked up.  We felt
as though our head were a block of ice, which
was being carried up several long flights of stairs.
And each time the Professor seized it in the
tongs, he carefully scrutinized the scale at the top
of them.  Some measurements he took several
times, either to verify them, or to make it plain
that he was working hard on our case.

Having finished with the callipers, he drew
out a tape and measured our head in more ways
than we had ever thought possible—around the
rim, over the dome, back of the ears, till we must
have resembled a new real-estate sub-division.
Only he didn't drive in any stakes.  Finally he
tilted our head back as far as it would go, and
very solemnly measured us over the eyes to the
point of the jaw on each side.  This he did four
or five times, gazing sternly at the tape each time
like a judge warning a backward witness.

Then he gave us the third round.  He grasped
our head firmly in his hands, and pressed our
various bumps with fingers that seemed to be
about the size and shape of chocolate-eclairs.
But they were not soft.  On the contrary, they
were very hard indeed.  Just when we felt sure
that our last bump had given way under the
pressure, he rocked our head violently from side
to side, backwards and forwards.  Reducing us
to a momentary condition of coma by gouging
his thumbs into us at that sensitive point where
one's spinal column joins one's cerebellum—or is
it one's medulla oblongata?—he seized us by the
hands, each in turn, wobbled our wrists, twisted
our fingers, and finally did his best to remove our
thumbs completely.  This, we believe, is what
alienists call the "thumb test."

The Professor sat down.  All this time he
had preserved an absolute and ominous silence.
Now he gazed at us with melancholy interest,
and we nerved ourself to hear the worst.
Immediately he plunged into an abyss of statistics.
We can recall only a few of them, and probably
these few are not altogether correct.  We never
were much good at arithmetic.  Besides, the
Professor reeled them off at breathless speed.

"The average head is twinty-wan to twinty-wan
and a half inches in circumference," he
roared in a voice that would easily carry a block
in all directions, "and your head is twinty-three
and a half.  Over the dome the average head is
twilve to twilve and a half inches; yours is
fourteen.  In len'th the average head is siven to
siven and a half inches; yours is eight and a half.
And your head is six and three-quarter inches
woide, while the average is only foive and a
half."

We asked if he had any objections to our
jotting down a few of those figures.  He had.

"Niver you mind, niver you mind," said the
Professor impatiently, waving our question
aside, "ye don't need them.  You listen to me
and to what Oi'm tellin' ye.  It doesn't matter
if ye forgit thim misurements.  But here is wan
Oi don't want ye to forgit.  This is the most
important of thim all.  Oi misured ye over the
oiyes to the temporo-mandible j'int.  Well, the
average woman misures there from tin and a
half to ilivin inches; and the average man from
ilivin to ilivin and a half.  And many a foine,
dacent, respectable man comes in to me that
doesn't misure over tin and a half.  But you, me
young man, you misure twilve and wan-eighth
inches."

The Professor leaned back to let it soak in.
We gasped in delighted amazement.  What do
you know about that?—"twilve and wan-eighth"
inches to our temporo-mandibles!  Nothing
cheap about our mandibles, eh, what?

"Av coorse," said the Professor deprecatingly,
"Napoleon misured fourteen inches; the
Duke of Wellington misured thirteen; and
Timothy Eaton—gawd rest his soul!—misured
twilve and three-quarters."

We were out-classed!  There could be no
doubt of it.  But then who are we that we should
compete with the great immortals, with
Bonaparte and the Iron Duke and the founder of a
department-store?  Besides, we were in good
company with our "twilve and wan-eighth."  So
we plucked up heart of grace and listened
cheerfully to the Professor as he continued.

"You have a foine head," said he, "one of the
foinest that has come to me in a year or more.
But it's a head that requoires special attintion.
In fact, it requoires moy thurd course, which is
tin dollars.  Me terms is always the same.
There is no change and no reduction.  It is two
dollars for a plain readin', foive dollars for a
chart, and foive dollars extry for me thurd
course of special attintion and secret advoice.
Just that, tin dollars, no more and no less!"

The Professor said it with great solemnity and
impressive slowness, especially the last phrase,
presumably with a view to forestalling any
endeavor on our part to obtain this wonderful
"thurd" course for nine dollars and a half or
eight-ninety-eight.  We dismissed the whole
subject, and asked him what calling in life we
seemed best fitted for—if any.

"Oi'm comin' to that, Oi'm comin' to it," said
the Professor in a very testy tone of voice.  "But
furst Oi want ye to understand the advantages
of havin' a chart.  No man can possibly remimber
all the things Oi'm goin' to tell ye, and it is
quoite essintial ye should have a chart.  It will
be worth thousands to ye."

Suddenly we saw the reason why he had been
so very peremptory in his refusal to let us take
notes.  He wanted to reduce us to helpless
amazement by the flow of his statistics.  We
were amazed all right, but still firm in our
resolve to spend no more than two dollars—it was
all we had been able to raise at the office.

The Professor returned to that magnificent
head of ours, intimating that it stood out like the
rock of Gibraltar from amid the ordinary run
of heads that came to him for inspection.  But
this did not make us so conceited as the reader
might imagine.  It occurred to us that the
average head that comes to a phrenologist may be
rather small and thick, possessors of such heads
having naturally most reason to wonder what
they are fitted for in life.

"You have a big head," said the Professor, "a
head quoite large enough for almost anny
purpose known to man.  And it is a well-shaped
head.  Some heads that have a big dome have a
depression in the top.  But you've a ridge on yer
skull that ye could balance a lead pencil on.
That shows great stren'th of character.  But
you have one fault.  On either soide of that
ridge, where the bumps of hope ought to be,
you've a hollow.  Ye lack confidence in yerself.
Y're nervous and diffident.  And that is where
moy chart would be worth untold wealth to ye.
It would show ye how to develop yer hopefulness,
and also yer chest—the chest havin' a great
deal to do with yer hopefulness.  Whoy, with a
head loike yours ye could do almost annythin'!"

Instinctively, we sat very erect, feeling that
the Professor was about to enter on a list of the
splendid careers from which we had only to
choose.  We were confident that he was about
to proclaim the magnificent position we would
one day occupy in the literary hall of fame.
After what he had said about our peerless set of
protuberances, we felt that no forecast could be
too rosy.  So we straightened up in eager
expectation.

"With a head loike yours," said the Professor
in his loudest and most impressive tone, "ye'd
have no difficulty in takin' a very liberal
eddication if ye'd only lay yer moind to it.  Ye moight
roise to be a bookkeeper or a commercial thraveller.
Ye moight even become a lawyer or a doctor
or a professional man, if ye only had
confidence in yerself.  Ye could be a foine
piano-player and an iligant parlor singer.
Ye could also be a fluent and graceful public
speaker.  Ye have a good deal of real-estate
ability and consid'rable speculatin' capacity and
quoite a bit of organizin' talent.  Ye could be a
furst-rate draughtsman; and ye have a genius for
inventin'.  In fact, ye could be almost annythin'
ye made up yer moind to be—and there ye are!"

Yes, there we were!  We could take a "liberal
eddication," if only—and all the time a big
parchment with a huge red seal lay carefully
rolled up in our trunk as evidence of our
scholastic attainments!  It is the only evidence we
possess.  We could "roise" to be a book-keeper or
a commercial "thraveller"—but never a word to
the effect that we might some day be able to write
or might ever aspire to journalistic eminence.
Not that the Professor was necessarily so far
astray at that.  He may have been quite right.
We admit it humbly.  But it was a sad blow to
have such a commonplace future outlined for us,
after the way he had raised our hopes.  And
real-estate ability!—it sounded like an attack on
our moral character.

"Moreover, ye could become a foine boxer,"
he continued, "or a beautiful fencer.  Ye have
such soople movements.  Ye could learn to
fence in half the toime it takes an ordinary man.
And a useful thing it is, too.  Suppose ye were
attacked on the street, fer instance."

All we would have to do in such a case, we
presume, would be to draw our flashing rapier,
throw ourself on guard, and "have at you,
varlets!"  Or perhaps the Professor intended that
we should do this with our walking-stick or
rolled up umbrella.  Somehow the idea did not
appeal much to us—spitting a man with your
umbrella musses it up so dreadfully.

A bright idea suddenly occurred to us to
relieve our deep dejection.  Our "marriage
adaptions" still remained to be explained.  Timidly
we broached the subject, for ours is a tender and
shrinking nature, and we are not in the habit of
speaking out in meeting about our dearest hopes.
Our voice sank to a whisper as we asked if he
thought we ought to get married.

"Would Oi advoise ye to git marrud?" roared
the Professor, possibly for the benefit of some
new patients who were just being let in—he had
stopped to listen to the door-bell a few moments
previously.  "Av coorse Oi would.  There are
physiol'gical reasons for it.  Ye know what they
say, don't ye?"

Here the Professor smiled and winked in a
distinctly doggish manner.  We felt that he was
about to say something decidedly improper in
connection with those same "physiol'gical"
reasons.  We blushed violently.

"Ye know, they say that single min go insane
much oftener than marrud min.  And it is
explained on physiol'gical grounds.  Take the
Turks, fer instance.  Look at the foine,
upstandin', healthy min they are, with their harems
and their Circassian slaves and all the rist of it.
And Oi remimber when Oi was in the heart of
Africa forty years ago...."

"What part of Africa were you in?" we asked,
expecting to be told that he had acted as a guide
for David Livingstone.

"Oi was at Cape Town—no, no, Oi was two
thousand moiles north of Cape Town, up in a
country they call Nay-tawl.  The whole district
was filled with magnificent fellas, great, big,
deep-chested, two-fisted, up-standin' six-footers,
ivry wan of thim with their six or sivin woives—and
divil a bit of immorality in the whole country!"

Under the circumstances we could easily believe
in the high moral status of the inhabitants
of Natal.  But we didn't see how it helped our
own particular case.  Whatever may be our
personal opinions on the subject of polygamy, police
magistrates have been known to cherish prejudices
against people who carry "physiol'gy" as
far as that.

Then the Professor went back to his chart.  He
dragged one out of a drawer and insisted that we
should gaze upon the picture of a hairless
gentleman with his head neatly divided into choice
building lots, each containing a little sketch
suggestive of the characteristic represented by a
bump at that point.  For instance, in the section
allotted to "amativeness"—lovely word!—there
was a picture of a young man and young woman
kissing.  In the section labelled "combativeness"
two prize-fighters faced one another; while
in the "love of home" department a gentleman
sat under a large stump and gazed wistfully at a
barn in the distance.

We still refused to be won over, even by these
allurements of graphic art.  Thereupon the
Professor read out several extracts of a nature to
help us in the development of hopefulness and
our chest.

"Ye must practice self-confidence and
hopefulness," said he.  "That's the only way ye can
develop yer faculty of hope.  And the chart
shows ye how ye can do it."

Presumably the chart contained directions for
fifteen-minute hoping exercises to be gone
through morning and night.  In the course of
time, no doubt, we would develop into one of
the best little hopers in town.  But for the time
being we were still somewhat dejected.  We
couldn't get our mind off those "foine, up-standin'
min in Nay-tawl."

As a final inducement, the Professor took a
five-cent piece out of his pocket, and bent it to
show the strength of his fingers.  He said he
didn't do it for everyone—whether on account of
the wear and tear on his fingers or on five-cent
pieces, he left to the imagination.  He also
made us feel his biceps and watch the expansion
of his chest, all acquired by carefully following
out the directions on the chart—five dollars!—and
also the third course and secret advice,
which we would have to swear not to
communicate—ten dollars!

"Oi'll tell ye the secret soign possessed by all
the strongest min in the world," he assured us,
"not only proize-foighters and wrastlers, but
great doctors and artists as well.  Oi'll tell it to
ye so ye can pick thim out on the street.  That's
part of the secret advoice."

But we refused to rise to the bait.  As a result
we are still unable to tell a "wrastler" on the
street from a drug-clerk, or a "proize-foighter"
from a country curate.

We entrusted a two-dollar bill to the Professor's
care.  We thanked him for the information
he had given us.  Then we came sadly away,
wondering vaguely how much was the fare to
Nay-tawl.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center small white-space-pre-line

   Warwick Bro's & Rutter, Limited,
   Printers and Bookbinders, Toronto, Canada.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::
