Kitabı oku: «The So-called Human Race», sayfa 11
Vacation Travels
It is a great pleasure to be free, for a time, from the practice of expressing opinion; free to read the newspapers with no thought of commenting on the contents; free to glance at a few hectic headlines, and then bite into a book that you have meant to get to for a long time past, to read it slowly, without skipping, to read over an especially well done page and to put the book aside and meditate on the moral which it pointed, or left you to point. Unless obliged to, why should anybody write when he can read instead? One’s own opinions (hastily formed and lacking even the graces of expression) are of small account; certainly they are of less account than Mr. Mill’s observations on Liberty, which I have put down in order to pen a few longish paragraphs. (I would rather be reading, you understand; my pen is running for the same reason some street cars run – to hold the franchise.) And speaking of Mill, do you remember the library catalogue which contained the consecutive items, “Mill on Liberty” and “Ditto on the Floss”?
One can get through a good many books on a long railway journey. My slender stock was exhausted before I reached Colorado, and I am compelled to re-read until such time as I can lay in a fresh supply. At home it is difficult to find time to read – that is, considerable stretches of time, so that one may really digest the pages which he is leisurely taking in. Fifty years ago there were not many more books worth reading than there are to-day, but there was more time to assimilate them. A comparatively few books thoroughly assimilated gave us Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Not long ago my friend the Librarian was speaking of this short classic. “Did you ever,” said he, “read Edward Everett’s address at Gettysburg?” “No,” said I, “and I fear I shall never get to it.” “It is stowed away among his collected orations,” said he. “Not half bad. Unfortunately for its fame, Mr. Lincoln happened along with a few well chosen remarks which the world has preferred to remember.”
Another advantage of a long railway journey is the opportunity it affords to give one’s vocal cords a (usually) well-merited rest. It is possible to travel across the continent without saying a word. A nod or a shake of the head suffices in your dealings with the porter; and you learn nothing from questioning him, as he has not been on that run before. Also, business with the train and Pullman conductors may be transacted in silence, and there is no profit in asking the latter to exchange your upper berth for a lower, as he has already been entreated by all the other occupants of uppers. When the train halts you do not have to ask, “What place is this?” – you may find out by looking at the large sign on the station. Nor is it necessary to inquire, “Are we on time?” – your watch and time-table will enlighten you. You do not have to exclaim, when a fresh locomotive is violently attached, “Well, I see we got an engine” – there is always somebody to say it for you. And you write your orders in the dining car. There is, of course, the chance of being accosted in the club car, but since this went dry the danger has been slight. And conversation can always be averted by absorption in a book, or, in a crisis, by pretending to be dumb.
Not everybody can travel three or four days without exchanging words with a fellow traveler. Mr. George Moore, for example, would be quite wretched. Conversation is the breath of his being, he says somewhere. I understand that Mr. Moore has another book on press, entitled “Avowals.” Avowals! My dear!.. After the “Confessions” and the “Memoirs” what in the world is there left for the man to avow?
What a delightful fictionist is Moore! And never more delightful than when he is writing fiction under the appearance of fact. No one has taken more to heart the axiom that the imaginary is the only real. As my friend the Librarian observed, the difference between George Moore and Baron Munchausen is that Moore’s lies are interesting.
Travelers must carry their own reading matter under government ownership. The club car library now consists of time-tables, maps, and pamphlets setting forth the never to be forgotten attractions of the show places along the way. These are all written by the celebrated prose poet Ibid, and, with a bottle of pseudo beer or lemon pop, help to make the club car as gay a place as a mortician’s parlor on a rainy afternoon.
The treeless plateau over which the train rolls, hour after hour, is the result of a great uplift. It was not sudden; it was slow but sure. This result is arid and plateautudinous, in a manner of speaking – not the best manner. It makes me think of democracy – and prohibition. To this complexion we shall come at last. To be sure, the genius of man will continue to cut channels in the monotonous plain; erosion will relieve the dreary prospect with form and color, but it bids fair to be, for the most part, a flat and dry world, from which many of us will part with a minimum of regret. There will remain the inextinguishable desire to learn what wonders science will disclose. Perhaps – who knows? – they will discover how to ventilate a sleeping car.
At Albuquerque I remarked a line of Mexicans basking in the sun (having, perhaps, finished jumping on their mothers). They looked happy – as happy as the Russian peasants used to be. Men who know Russia tell me that the peasants really were happy, even under the twin despotisms of Vodka and Czar. It was not, of course, a reformer’s idea of happiness: a reformer’s idea of happiness is perpetual attention to everybody’s business but his own. People who are interested academically in other people’s happiness usually succeed in making everybody unhappy. Now, the Russian’s happiness was a poor thing, but his own. In reality he was wretched and oppressed, and his voice and bearing should have expressed his misery and hopelessness, instead of a foolish content and a silly detachment from political affairs. But he is at last emancipated, and, as was said of Mary’s fleecy companion, now contemplate the condemned thing!
Liberty, equality, international amity, democracy, the kingdom of heaven on earth – All that is very well, yet Candide remarked to Dr. Pangloss when all was said and done, “Let us cultivate our garden.”
There are so many interesting things along the way that I should, I suppose, be filling a notebook. But why mar the pleasure of a journey by taking notes? as the good Sylvestre Bonnard inquired. Lovers who truly love do not keep a diary of their happiness.
In Phoenix, Arizona, distance lends enchantment to the view. But the hills are far away, and as I did not visit the Southwest to contemplate the works of man, however ingenious, I followed the westering sun to where the mountains come down to the sea. I do not fancy the elevated parts of New Mexico and Arizona; and as there was no thought of pleasing me when they were created, I feel free to express a modified rapture in their contemplation. I should have remembered enough geology to know that granite is not found in this section, except at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The hills I like are made of old-fashioned stuff, not young upstart tufa and sandstone that was not thought of when the Laurentians were built. One really cannot have much respect for a rock that he can kick to pieces. The gay young buttes in this land of quickly shifting horizons are not without their charm; they look well in certain lights, and they are decidedly better than no hills at all. Although immature, they have an air of pretending to be very ancient, to be the ruins of mountains. They are picturesque and colorful. And I would swap a league of them for one archaic boulder the size of a box-car, with a thick coverlet of reindeer moss.
When I left the train at Pasadena I saw what I took to be a procession of the K. K. K. It proved to be citizens in flu masks. I was interested, but not alarmed; whereas a lady tourist who debarked on the following day fell in a swoon and was conveyed to the hospital. The newspapers charged her disorder to the masks, but as she was from Chicago I suspect that her reason was unsettled by the sudden revealment of a clean city. And Pasadena is clean – almost immaculate. I was obliged to join the masqueraders, and I found the inconvenience only slight. The mask keeps the nose warm after sundown, and is convenient to sneeze into. And I have never remarked better looking folks than the people of Pasadena. The so-called human race has never appeared to better advantage. The women were especially charming, and were all, for once, equally handicapped, like the veiled sex in the Orient.
Whoever christened it the Pacific ocean was the giver of innocent pleasure to every third person who has set eyes on it since. “There’s the Pacific!” you hear people exclaim to one another when the train reaches the top of a pass. “Isn’t it calm! That’s why it is called the Pacific. And it is pacific, isn’t it?” Some such observation must have escaped the stout adventurer in Darien, before he fell silent upon his peak.
I shall say nothing about the never to be sufficiently esteemed climate of California, nor even allude to the windjammers of Loz Onglaze. The last word concerning those enthusiasts was spoken by a San Francisco man who, addressing the people of “Los,” explained how the city might overcome the slight handicap imposed by its distance from the sea. “Lay an iron pipe to tidewater,” he advised; “and then, if you can suck as hard as you can blow, you will presently have the ocean at your doors.” It would be difficult to improve on that criticism. And so, instead of praising the climate, I will gladly testify that it is easier to live in this part of the country than anywhere east of the Sierras. And San Diego impresses me as the easiest place in the state to live, the year round.
The mechanical effort of existence is reduced to its minimum in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego, where I am opposing a holiday indolence to pen these desultory lines. “There’s lots of good fish in the sea” that beats against this rockbound but not stern coast, and there is a fish market in the village. But each day I see the sign in the window, “No fish.” The fisherman, I am told, is “very independent,” a euphemism for tired, perhaps. He casts his hooks and nets only when the spirit moves him, and is not impelled to the sea by sordid motives. A true fisherman, I thought, though he never change his window sign.
To-day’s newspapers contain the protest of the governor of Lower California against the proposed annexing of his territory by the United States, Señor Cantu may be a hairless dog in the manger; he may, as he claims, represent the seething patriotism of all but a negligible percentage of the population; but he is no doubt correct in merely asserting that the peninsula will not be annexed. Incidentally, he is on sure ground when he attributes the chaos in Mexican affairs to “conflicting political criteria.” It is all of that. So far as I have casually discovered, there is no active annexation sentiment on this side of the border, for there is no hope of overcoming that provision in the Mexican constitution which makes it a matter of high treason to encourage a movement for the diminution of Mexican territory.
Gov. Cantu’s phrase, “conflicting political criteria,” applies rather happily to the doings in Paris these days. The Peace conference and prohibition in the United States are perhaps the two most prominent topics before the public, and they are the two things which I have not heard mentioned since I began my travels.
A LINE-O’-TYPE OR TWO
“Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
COUNTRY LIFE IN AMERICA
Sing high the air like dry champagne,
The fields of virgin snow!
(Sing low the mile-hike from the train,
In five or ten below.)
Sing high the joys the gods allot
To our suburban state!
(Sing low the dinner gone to pot,
Because the train is late.)
Sing high the white-arched woodland way,
Resembling faëry halls!
(Sing low the drifts that stay and stay,
In which your motor stalls.)
Sing high, sing low, sing jack and game,
Sing Winter’s spangled gown!
(Let him who will these things acclaim —
I’m moving in to town.)
Scratch a man who really enjoys zero weather, and you will find blubber.
Born in Sioux City, to Mr. and Mrs. Matt Hoss, a daughter. Who’ll contribute a buggy?
“For Sale – 1920 Mormon chummy.” – Minneapolis Journal.
Five-passenger at least.
THERE WERE IMMORTALS BEFORE JET WIMP
Sir: In the Lowell (Mass.) Daily Journal and Courier, dated Feb. 4, 1853, I find the following: “What’s in a name! The name of the superintendent of the Cincinnati Hospital is Queer Absalom Death.” Thus showing that there were candidates for the Academy seventy years ago. Concord.
Some sort of jape or jingle might be chiseled from the fact that Lot Spry and Ida Smart were married t’other day in Vinton, Ia.
CONTRIBUTIONS THAT HAVE AMUSED US
Proprietor of hotel in Keokuk, answering call from room: “Hello!”
Voice: “We are in Room 30 and now ready to come down.”
Prop.: “Take the elevator down.”
Voice: “Is the elevator ready?”
[Proprietor sends bellboy to Room 30 to escort newly-wedded couple to terra firma.]
“Weds 104th Veteran.” – Springfield Republican.
The first hundred veterans are the hardest.
For official announcer in the Academy, E. K. proposes James Hollerup of Endeavor, Wis.
SHE PREFERRED HER PSYCHOPATHY STRAIGHT
Sir: At a party last night one of my sex read the recent buffoonery, “Heliogabalus,” by the Smart Set editors. When the reader reached the choice second act one of the women (the bobbed hair type) refused to listen to any more of the “salacious rot,” and walked over to the bookcase, from which, after careful study, she picked out Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis. I ask you, ain’t women funny?
Philardee.
No, not in this instance. We quite sympathize with the lady. We much prefer Havelock Ellis to “Jurgen,” for example. Chacun à son goût.
This peculiar and unliterary preference of ours may be due to the fact that once upon a time, in a country job-print, we were obliged to read the proofs of a great many medical works, made up largely of “Case 1, a young man of 28,” “Case 2, a woman of thirty,” etc. These things were instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when “Case 1” is expanded to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or “Case 2” expressed in the form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of lassitude comes o’er us which is more or less akin to pain.
THE COME-BACK
Click! Click!
Goes my typewriter,
Transcribing letters
That the Boss dictates around
His chew
After he has discussed the weather,
And the squeak in his car,
And his young hopeful’s latest,
And the L. of N.
Click! Click!
While he writes impudent
Things
For the Line
About the Stenos,
And asks me how to spell
The words.
Hark!
To the death rattle of
The cuspidor
Upset,
As he departs at two o’clock
To golf,
While I type on
Till five. Agnes.
Mr. Gompers advises labor to accomplish its desires at the polls, instead of chasing after the red gods of political theory. This is excellently gomped, and will make as deep an impression as an autumn leaf falling on a rock.
Since the so-called working classes are unable or unwilling to do so simple a sum as dividing the total wealth of a nation by the number of its inhabitants; since they cannot or will not understand that if the profits of an industry are exceeded by the wages paid, the industry must stop; since they only reason a posteriori when that is well kicked, and by themselves – it is fortunate that the United States has the opportunity to watch the progress of the experiment now making in England.
Nowadays the buying and dispatching of Christmas gifts is scientifically made. One merely selects this or that and orders it sent to So-and So. One turns in to a book store a list of titles and a list of names and addresses, and the book store does the rest.
Consequently one misses the pleasant labor of tying up the gift, of journeying to the post-office, to have it weighed and stamped, and of dropping it through the slot and wondering whether the string will break, or whether the package will go astray.
We were engaged in dropping newly-minted double-eagles into the Christmas stockings of our contributors when an auto truck got mired near our chamber window, and the roar of it woke us up.
Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, and other Orientals are disliked, not because of race or color, but because they are willing to work. Anyone who is willing to work in these times is, like the needy knife-grinder, a wretch whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance.
Washladies get more money for less work than any other members of the leisure class, with the exception of the persons who work on putting greens. In addition to their wage, they get car-fare and two or three meals. Why? Because it is not generally known that a mere man, with a washing machine and a bucket of solution, can do more washing in three hours than a washlady does in three days.
What do they mean “industrial unrest”? Industry never rested so frequently or for such protracted periods.
The natives of Salvador can neither read nor write, but their happy days are numbered. The Baptist church is going to spend three millions on their conversion. Their capacity for resistance is not so great as that of the Chinese. Do you remember what Henry Ward Beecher said of the Chinese? “We have clubbed them, stoned them, burned their houses, and murdered some of them, yet they refuse to be converted. I do not know any way except to blow them up with nitroglycerine, if we are ever to get them to heaven.”
“Do you not know,” writes Persephone, “that with the coming of all this water, all imagination and adventure have fled the world?” Just what we were thinking t’other evening, when we dissipated a few hours with our good gossip the Doctor. “I am,” said he, pouring out a meditative three-fingers, “in favor of prohibition; and I believe that some substitute for this stuff will be found.”
We pursued that lane of thought a while, until it debouched into a desert. The Doctor then took down the works of Byron, and read aloud – touching the high spots in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” “Don Juan,” “Childe Harold,” “The Prisoner of Chillon” – pausing ever and anon to replenish the glasses. It was midnight ere the book was returned to its shelf.
It was a delightful evening. And we wondered whether, without the excellent bourbon and the cigars, we should not have had enough of Byron by 10:30.
An English publisher binds all his books in red because, having watched women choosing books in the libraries, he found that they looked first at the red-bound ones. Does that coincide with your experience, my dear?
Our interest in Mr. Wells’ “Outline of History” has been practically ruined by learning from a geologist that Mr. Wells’ story of creation is frightfully out of date. Should he not have given another twenty-four hours to so large an opus?
Visiting English authors have a delightful trick of diagramming their literary allusions. Only the few are irritated by it.
“And as I am in no sense a lecturer …” – Mr. Chesterton.
Seemingly the knowledge of one’s limitations as a public entertainer does not preclude one from accepting a fee five or ten times larger than one would receive in London. We are languidly curieux de savoir how far the American equivalent would get in the English capital.
You cannot “make Chicago literary” by moving the magazine market to that city. Authors lay the scenes of their stories in New York rather than in Chicago, because readers prefer to have the scene New York, just as English readers prefer London to Manchester or Liverpool. If a story is unusually interesting it is of no consequence where the scene is laid, but most stories are only so-so and have to borrow interest from geography.
THANKS TO MISS MONROE’S MAGAZINE
Only a little while ago
The pallid poet had no show —
No gallery that he could use
To hang the product of his muse.
But now his sketches deck the walls
Of many hospitable halls,
And juries solemnly debate
The merits of the candidate.
TRADE CLASSICS
Every trade has at least one classic. One in the newspaper trade concerns the reporter who was sent to do a wedding, and returned to say that there was no story, as the bridegroom failed to show up. Will a few other trades acquaint us with their classics? It should make an interesting collection.
Sir: The classic of the teaching trade: A school teacher saw a man on the car whose face was vaguely familiar. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but aren’t you the father of two of my children?” S. B.
Sir: The son of his father on a certain occasion, when the paper was overset, objected to adding two pages, but in a moment of economical inspiration agreed to permit one extra page. C. D.
Sir: Don’t forget the classic of dry stories. “An Irishman and a Scotchman stood before a bar – and the Irishman didn’t have any money.” L. A. H.
To continue, the Scotchman said: “Well, Pat, what are we going to have to-day? Rain or snow?”
Sir: “If you can’t read, ask the grocer.” But I heard it differently. An Englishman and an American read the sign. The American laughed. The Englishman did not see the humor of it. The American asked him to read it again; whereupon the Englishman laughed and said: “Oh, yes; the grocer might be out.” 3-Star.
You may know the trade classic about the exchange editor. The new owner of the newspaper asked who that man was in the corner. “The exchange editor,” he was informed. “Well, fire him,” said he. “All he seems to do is sit there and read all day.”
Divers correspondents advise us that the trade classics we have been printing are old stuff. Yes; that is the peculiar thing about a classic. Extraordinary, when you come to think of it.
“Timerio,” which is simpler than Esperanto, “will enable citizens of all nations to understand one another, provided they can read and write.” The inventor has found that 7,006 figures are enough to express any imaginable idea. But we should think that a picture book would be simpler.
“You can go to any hotel porter in the world,” says the perpetrator of Timerio, “and make yourself understood by simply handing him a slip of paper written in my new language.” But you can do as well with a picture of a trunk and a few gestures. The only universal language that is worth a hoot is the French phrase “comme ça.”
DENATURED LIMERICKS
There was a young man of Constantinople,
Who used to buy eggs at 35 cents the dozen.
When his father said, “Well,
This is certainly surprising!”
The young man put on his second best waistcoat.
“The maddest man in Arizona,” postcards J. U. H., who has got that far, “was the one who found, after ten miles’ hard drive from his hotel, that he had picked up the Gideon Bible instead of his Blue Book.” Still, they are both guide books, and they might be interestingly compared.
To one gadder who asked for a small coffee, the waitress in the rural hotel said, “A nickel is as small as we’ve got.” Some people try to take advantage of the bucolic innkeeper.
“I have not read American literature; I know only Poe,” confesses M. Maeterlinck. Well, that is a good start. For a long time the only French author we knew was Victor Hugo. Live and learn, say we.
“He is so funny with the patisserie,” says Mme. Maeterlinck of M. Charles Chaplin. “He is an artist the way he throw the pie.” Is he not? M. Chaplin is to Americans what the Discus Thrower was to the Greeks.
Sings, in a manner of singing, Mr. Lindsay in the London Mercury:
“I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
Candidate for President who sketched a silver Zion.”
But we prefer, as simpler and more emotional, the classic containing the lines —
“But my soul is cryin’
For old Bill Bryan.”
You are familiar with the cryptic inscription “TAM HTAB,” which ceases to be cryptic when you turn the mat over; but did you ever hear about the woman who christened her child “Nosmo King,” having been taken by those names on two glass doors which stood open?
A Chippewa Falls advertiser offers for sale “six Leghorn roosters and one mahogany settee.” And we are requested to ascertain whether the settee is a Rhode Island Red or a Brown Leghorn.
A Rotary club is being formed in the Academy by the Rev. Rodney Roundy of the American Missionary Association.
What do you mean “prosperity”? Even the Nonquit Spinning Co. of New Bedford has shut down.
Joseph Conrad’s latest yarn is the essence of romance. But what is romance? For years we have sought a definition in ten words; but while romance is easily recognized, it is with difficulty defined. Walter Raleigh came the nearest to it in a recent essay. “Romance,” said he, “is a love affair in other than domestic surroundings.” This would seem also to be the opinion of a West Virginia editor, who, reporting a marriage, noted that “the couple were made man and wife while sitting in a buggy, and this fact rendered somewhat of a romantic aspect to the wedding.”
MY LOVE, DID YOU KNOW THERE WERE SO MANY KINDS OF MAIDS?
[From the Derbyshire Advertiser.]
Mrs. Reeves requires – Cooks, £18 to £50, with Kitchenmaids, Scullerymaids, Betweenmaids, and Single-handed; Upper, Single-handed, Second, Under Parlourmaids £14 to £40; Head, Single-handed, Equal, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Under Housemaids, good wages; Ladies’ Maids, Useful Maids, Maid-Attendants, Maids, Housemaids, House-Sewingmaids, £18 to £30; Chambermaids, Housemaids, Stillroom-maids, Pantry-maids, Cooks, £20 to £52; Kitchenmaids, £12 to £30; Staffmaids, Hallmaids, etc.
A yarn about a clean Turk reminded W. D. W. of a story that came straight from Gallipoli; and in running over the files of the Line we happened on it. Some British officers were arguing as to which had the stronger odor, the regimental goat or a Turk. It was agreed to submit the matter to a practical test, with the Colonel as referee. The goat was brought in, whereupon the Colonel fainted. A Turk was then brought in, whereupon the goat fainted.
As confirming that goat and Turk story, the following extract from a British soldier’s letter, explaining the retreat before Bagdad, is submitted:
“We had been pursuing the Turks for several weeks, and victory was within our grasp, when the wind changed.”
As a variant for “loophound,” may we suggest “prominent hound about town”?
The Isle of Yap, the Isle of Yap,
Where burning Sappho never sung!
You ain’t so much upon the map,
But Uncle Samuel murmurs, “Stung!”
“After submitting a contribution, how long must one remain in suspense?” asks E. L. W. That, sir, depends, as has been well said. But you would be safe in assuming, after, say, three months, that the contribution has been mislaid.
THE SECOND POST
[Result of a collection letter that drew a sum on account.]
“Don’t get peevish about this. I have a wife and large family. More coming.”
Heard in the Fort Des Moines Hotel: “Call for Mrs. Rugg! Call for Mrs. Rugg! Is she on the floor?”
YES, SOMETIMES WE THROW THE WHOLE MAIL AWAY WITHOUT LOOKING AT IT
[From the Madison State Journal.]
It isn’t “B. L. T.” and “F. P. A.” that makes the respective columns of these most celebrated of the “conductors” great. It is their daily mail. It comes to them in great bags. They open enough letters to fill that day’s column, and consign thousands, unopened, to the waste basket. There is a fortune to some newspaper syndicate in the unopened mail of “B.L.T.” and “F.P.A.”
A limousine delegate from the Federated Order of Line Scribes has waited on us to present the demands of the organization, among which are (1) recognition of the union; (2) appointing a time and place for meeting with a business committee to determine on a system of collective bargaining for Line material; (3) allowing the Order to have a voice in the management of the column. A prompt compliance with the demands of the Order failing, a strike vote will be ordered.
We have never limited the output of a contributor; the union will. No matter how excellent the idea, no matter how inspired the contrib may be to amplify it, he will not be permitted to do more than a certain amount of work per day. However brilliant he may be, he will be held down to the level of the most pedestrian performer. In unionizing, moreover, he will be only exchanging one tyrant for another, and perhaps not so benevolent a one. Now, then, go to it, as the emperor said to the gladiators.
ALL RIGHT, DAISY
Dear B. L. T., pray take this hint:
I shrink to see my name in print,
The agate line – O please! – for me.
I sign myself just —
Daisy B.
THE SHY AND LOWLYS
I’m modest and meek,
And not a bit pushing.
Please set in Antique,
Or 14 point Cushing.
Iris.
HE MIGHT TRIM THE VIOLETS
Sir: Could you find an inconspicuous job around the Academy for a bashful man like Mr. Jess Mee, whom we had the pleasure of encountering in Toulon, Ill.?
We welcome Mr. Mark Sullivan, who fights the high cost of existence by turning his clothes inside out, to our recently established league, The Order of the Turning Worm. Mr. Sullivan, meet Mr. Facing-Both-Ways.
Mr. Mark Sullivan may be interested in this case: “My husband,” relates a reader, “did a job of turning for a man reputed to be wealthy. He removed the shingles from a roof, and turned all except those which were impossible: these few were replaced by new ones. The last I heard about this man he was said to have refused Liberty loan salesmen to solicit in his factory.”
Five years ago a neighbor told us that he had his clothes turned after a season or two of wear, but we neglected to ask him how he shifted the buttonholes to the proper side. Left-handed buttoning would be rather awkward, especially if one were in a hurry.
Miss Forsythe of the Trades Union league explains that young women in domestic service feel there is a social stigma attached to the work. It is this stigmatism, no doubt, that causes them to break so many dishes. Anyway, Stigma is a lovely name for a maid, just as pretty as Hilda.
“Why care for grammar as long as we are good?” inquired Artemus Ward. A question to be matched by that of the superintendent of Cook county’s schools, “Why shouldn’t a man say ‘It’s me’ and ‘It don’t’?” Why not, indeed! How absurd was Prof. McCoosh of Princeton, who, having answered “It’s me” to a student inquiry, “Who’s there?” retreated because of his mortification for not having said “It’s I.” Silly old duffer! He would not have enjoyed Joseph Conrad, who uses unblushingly the locution, “except you and I.”
