A BOOK OF BURLESQUES

By H. L. MENCKEN

PUBLISHED AT THE BORZOI · NEW YORK · BY

ALFRED · A · KNOPF

COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1920, BY

ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

• CHAPTER PAGE

• Death: a Philosophical Discussion 11


• From the Programme of a Concert 27


• The Wedding: a Stage Direction 51


• The Visionary 71


• The Artist: a Drama Without Words 83


• Seeing the World 105


• From the Memoirs of the Devil 135


• Litanies for the Overlooked 149


• Asepsis: a Deduction in Scherzo Form 159


• Tales of the Moral and Pathological 183


• The Jazz Webster 201


• The Old Subject 213


• Panoramas of People 223


• Homeopathics 231


• Vers Libre 237

The present edition includes some epigrams
from “A Little Book in C Major,” now out of
print. To make room for them several of the
smaller sketches in the first edition have been
omitted. Nearly the whole contents of the book
appeared originally in The Smart Set. The references
to a Europe not yet devastated by war
and an America not yet polluted by Prohibition
show that some of the pieces first saw print in
far better days than these.

H. L. M.

February 1, 1920.

I.—DEATH

I.—Death. A Philosophical
Discussion

[11]The back parlor of any average American
home. The blinds are drawn and
a single gas-jet burns feebly. A dim
suggestion of festivity: strange chairs,
the table pushed back, a decanter and glasses.
A heavy, suffocating, discordant scent of
flowers—roses, carnations, lilies, gardenias. A
general stuffiness and mugginess, as if it were
raining outside, which it isn’t.

A door leads into the front parlor. It is
open, and through it the flowers may be seen.
They are banked about a long black box with
huge nickel handles, resting upon two folding
horses. Now and then a man comes into the
front room from the street door, his shoes
squeaking hideously. Sometimes there is a
woman, usually in deep mourning. Each visitor
approaches the long black box, looks into
it with ill-concealed repugnance, snuffles softly,
and then backs of toward the door. A clock
on the mantel-piece ticks loudly. From the
[12]street come the usual noises—a wagon rattling,
the clang of a trolley car’s gong, the shrill cry
of a child.

In the back parlor six pallbearers sit upon
chairs, all of them bolt upright, with their
hands on their knees. They are in their Sunday
clothes, with stiff white shirts. Their hats
are on the floor beside their chairs. Each
wears upon his lapel the gilt badge of a fraternal
order, with a crêpe rosette. In the
gloom they are indistinguishable; all of them
talk in the same strained, throaty whisper. Between
their remarks they pause, clear their
throats, blow their noses, and shuffle in their
chairs. They are intensely uncomfortable.
Tempo: Adagio lamentoso, with occasionally a
rise to andante maesto. So:

First Pallbearer

Who woulda thought that he woulda been
the next?

Second Pallbearer

Yes; you never can tell.

Third Pallbearer

(An oldish voice, oracularly.) We’re here
to-day and gone to-morrow.

[13]Fourth Pallbearer

I seen him no longer ago than Chewsday.
He never looked no better. Nobody would
have——

Fifth Pallbearer

I seen him Wednesday. We had a glass of
beer together in the Huffbrow Kaif. He was
laughing and cutting up like he always done.

Sixth Pallbearer

You never know who it’s gonna hit next.
Him and me was pallbearers together for Hen
Jackson no more than a month ago, or say five
weeks.

First Pallbearer

Well, a man is lucky if he goes off quick.
If I had my way I wouldn’t want no better way.

Second Pallbearer

My brother John went thataway. He
dropped like a stone, settin’ there at the supper
table. They had to take his knife out of
his hand.

Third Pallbearer

I had an uncle to do the same thing, but
[14]without the knife. He had what they call appleplexy.
It runs in my family.

Fourth Pallbearer

They say it’s in his’n, too.

Fifth Pallbearer

But he never looked it.

Sixth Pallbearer

No. Nobody woulda thought he woulda
been the next.

First Pallbearer

Them are the things you never can tell anything
about.

Second Pallbearer

Ain’t it true!

Third Pallbearer

We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow.

(A pause. Feet are shuffled. Somewhere
a door bangs.)

Fourth Pallbearer[15]

(Brightly.) He looks elegant. I hear he
never suffered none.

Fifth Pallbearer

No; he went too quick. One minute he was
alive and the next minute he was dead.

Sixth Pallbearer

Think of it: dead so quick!

First Pallbearer

Gone!

Second Pallbearer

Passed away!

Third Pallbearer

Well, we all have to go some time.

Fourth Pallbearer

Yes; a man never knows but what his turn’ll
come next.

Fifth Pallbearer[16]

You can’t tell nothing by looks. Them sickly
fellows generally lives to be old.

Sixth Pallbearer

Yes; the doctors say it’s the big stout person
that goes off the soonest. They say typhord
never kills none but the healthy.

First Pallbearer

So I have heered it said. My wife’s youngest
brother weighed 240 pounds. He was as
strong as a mule. He could lift a sugar-barrel,
and then some. Once I seen him drink damn
near a whole keg of beer. Yet it finished him
in less’n three weeks—and he had it mild.

Second Pallbearer

It seems that there’s a lot of it this fall.

Third Pallbearer

Yes; I hear of people taken with it every
day. Some say it’s the water. My brother
Sam’s oldest is down with it.

Fourth Pallbearer[17]

I had it myself once. I was out of my head
for four weeks.

Fifth Pallbearer

That’s a good sign.

Sixth Pallbearer

Yes; you don’t die as long as you’re out of
your head.

First Pallbearer

It seems to me that there is a lot of sickness
around this year.

Second Pallbearer

I been to five funerals in six weeks.

Third Pallbearer

I beat you. I been to six in five weeks, not
counting this one.

Fourth Pallbearer

A body don’t hardly know what to think of
it scarcely.

Fifth Pallbearer[18]

That.rss what I always say: you can’t tell
who’ll be next.

Sixth Pallbearer

Ain’t it true! Just think of him.

First Pallbearer

Yes; nobody woulda picked him out.

Second Pallbearer

Nor my brother John, neither.

Third Pallbearer

Well, what must be must be.

Fourth Pallbearer

Yes; it don’t do no good to kick. When a
man’s time comes he’s got to go.

Fifth Pallbearer

We’re lucky if it ain’t us.

Sixth Pallbearer

So I always say. We ought to be thankful.

First Pallbearer[19]

That’s the way I always feel about it.

Second Pallbearer

It wouldn’t do him no good, no matter what
we done.

Third Pallbearer

We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow.

Fourth Pallbearer

But it’s hard all the same.

Fifth Pallbearer

It’s hard on her.

Sixth Pallbearer

Yes, it is. Why should he go?

First Pallbearer

It’s a question nobody ain’t ever answered.

Second Pallbearer

Nor never won’t.

Third Pallbearer[20]

You’re right there. I talked to a preacher
about it once, and even he couldn’t give no answer
to it.

Fourth Pallbearer

The more you think about it the less you can
make it out.

Fifth Pallbearer

When I seen him last Wednesday he had
no more ideer of it than what you had.

Sixth Pallbearer

Well, if I had my choice, that’s the way I
would always want to die.

First Pallbearer

Yes; that’s what I say. I am with you there.

Second Pallbearer

Yes; you’re right, both of you. It don’t do
no good to lay sick for months, with doctors’
bills eatin’ you up, and then have to go anyhow.

Third Pallbearer[21]

No; when a thing has to be done, the best
thing to do is to get it done and over with.

Fourth Pallbearer

That’s just what I said to my wife when I
heerd.

Fifth Pallbearer

But nobody hardly thought that he woulda
been the next.

Sixth Pallbearer

No; but that’s one of them things you can’t
tell.

First Pallbearer

You never know who’ll be the next.

Second Pallbearer

It’s lucky you don’t.

Third Pallbearer

I guess you’re right.

Fourth Pallbearer[22]

That’s what my grandfather used to say:
you never know what is coming.

Fifth Pallbearer

Yes; that’s the way it goes.

Sixth Pallbearer

First one, and then somebody else.

First Pallbearer

Who it’ll be you can’t say.

Second Pallbearer

I always say the same: we’re here to-day——

Third Pallbearer

(Cutting in jealousy and humorously.) And
to-morrow we ain’t here.

(A subdued and sinister snicker. It is followed
by sudden silence. There is a shuffling
of feet in the front room, and whispers. Necks
[23]are craned. The pallbearers straighten their
backs, hitch their coat collars and pull on their
black gloves. The clergyman has arrived.
From above comes the sound of weeping.)

[25]

II.—FROM THE PROGRAMME
OF A
CONCERT

II.—From The Programme of a
Concert

[27]

"Ruhm und Ewigkeit" (Fame and Eternity),
a symphonic poem in B flat minor, Opus
48, by Johann Sigismund Timotheus Albert
Wolfgang Kraus (1872-  ).

Kraus, like his eminent compatriot,
Dr. Richard Strauss, has gone to
Friedrich Nietzsche, the laureate of
the modern German tone-art, for his
inspiration in this gigantic work. His text is
to be found in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, which
was not published until after the poet’s death,
but the composition really belongs to Also
sprach Zarathustra, as a glance will show:

I

[28]

II

III

IV

V

For the following faithful and graceful
translation the present commentator is indebted
to Mr. Louis Untermeyer:

[29]

I

II

III

IV

V

The composition is scored for three flutes,
one piccolo, one bass piccolo, seven oboes,
one English horn, three clarinets in D flat, one
clarinet in G flat, one corno de bassetto, three
bassoons, one contra-bassoon, eleven horns,
three trumpets, eight cornets in B, four trombones,
two alto trombones, one viol da gamba,
one mandolin, two guitars, one banjo, two tubas,
glockenspiel, bell, triangle, fife, bass-drum,
cymbals, timpani, celesta, four harps, piano,
harmonium, pianola, phonograph, and the
usual strings.

At the opening a long B flat is sounded by
the cornets, clarinets and bassoons in unison,
with soft strokes upon a kettle-drum tuned to
G sharp. After eighteen measures of this,
singhiozzando, the strings enter pizzicato with
a figure based upon one of the scales of the ancient
Persians—B flat, C flat, D, E sharp, G
and A flat—which starts high among the first
violins, and then proceeds downward, through
the second violins, violas and cellos, until it is
lost in solemn and indistinct mutterings in the
double-basses. Then, the atmosphere of doom
[31]having been established, and the conductor having
found his place in the score, there is heard
the motive of brooding, or as the German commentators
call it, the Quälerei Motiv:

The opening chord of the eleventh is sounded
by six horns, and the chords of the ninth,
which follow, are given to the woodwind. The
rapid figure in the second measure is for solo
violin, heard softly against the sustained interval
of the diminished ninth, but the final G natural
is snapped out by the whole orchestra
[32]sforzando. There follows a rapid and daring
development of the theme, with the flutes
and violoncellos leading, first harmonized with
chords of the eleventh, then with chords of the
thirteenth, and finally with chords of the fifteenth.
Meanwhile, the tonality has moved
into D minor, then into A flat major, and then
into G sharp minor, and the little arpeggio for
the solo violin has been augmented to seven, to
eleven, and in the end to twenty-three notes.
Here the influence of Claude Debussy shows itself;
the chords of the ninth proceed by the
same chromatic semitones that one finds in the
Chansons de Bilitis. But Kraus goes much further
than Debussy, for the tones of his chords
are constantly altered in a strange and extremely
beautiful manner, and, as has been noted,
he adds the eleventh, thirteenth and fifteenth.
At the end of this incomparable passage there
is a sudden drop to C major, followed by the
first statement of the Missgeschick Motiv, or
motive of disaster (misfortune, evil destiny, untoward
fate):

[33]

This graceful and ingratiating theme will
give no concern to the student of Ravel and
Schoenberg. It is, in fact, a quite elemental
succession of intervals of the second, all produced
by adding the ninth to the common
chord—thus: C, G, C, D, E—with certain enharmonic
changes. Its simplicity gives it, at a
first hearing, a placid, pastoral aspect, somewhat
disconcerting to the literalist, but the discerning
will not fail to note the mutterings beneath
the surface. It is first sounded by two
violas and the viol da gamba, and then drops
without change to the bass, where it is repeated
fortissimo by two bassoons and the contra-bassoon.
The tempo then quickens and the two
themes so far heard are worked up into a brief
but tempestuous fugue. A brief extract will
suffice to show its enormously complex nature:

[34]A pedal point on B flat is heard at the end
of this fugue, sounded fortissimo by all the
brass in unison, and then follows a grand pause,
twelve and a half measures in length. Then,
in the strings, is heard the motive of warning:

[35]Out of this motive comes the harmonic material
for much of what remains of the composition.
At each repetition of the theme, the
chord in the fourth measure is augmented by
the addition of another interval, until in the
end it includes every tone of the chromatic scale
save C sharp. This omission is significant of
Kraus’ artistry. If C sharp were included the
tonality would at once become vague, but without
it the dependence of the whole gorgeous edifice
upon C major is kept plain. At the end,
indeed, the tonic chord of C major is clearly
sounded by the wood-wind, against curious triplets,
made up of F sharp, A flat and B flat in
various combinations, in the strings; and from
it a sudden modulation is made to C minor, and
then to A flat major. This opens the way for
the entrance of the motive of lamentation, or,
as the German commentators call it, the Schreierei
Motiv:

This simple and lovely theme is first sounded,
not by any of the usual instruments of the
grand orchestra, but by a phonograph in B flat,
with the accompaniment of a solitary trombone.
[36]When the composition was first played at the
Gewandhaus in Leipzig the innovation caused
a sensation, and there were loud cries of sacrilege
and even proposals of police action. One
indignant classicist, in token of his ire, hung
a wreath of Knackwürste around the neck of
the bust of Johann Sebastian Bach in the Thomaskirche,
and appended to it a card bearing the
legend, Schweinehund! But the exquisite beauty
of the effect soon won acceptance for the means
employed to attain it, and the phonograph has
so far made its way with German composers
that Prof. Ludwig Grossetrommel, of Göttingen,
has even proposed its employment in
opera in place of singers.

This motive of lamentation is worked out
on a grand scale, and in intimate association
with the motives of brooding and of warning.
Kraus is not content with the ordinary materials
of composition. His creative force is always
impelling him to break through the fetters
of the diatonic scale, and to find utterance
for his ideas in archaic and extremely exotic
tonalities. The pentatonic scale is a favorite
with him; he employs it as boldly as Wagner
did in Das Rheingold. But it is not enough,
for he proceeds from it into the Dorian mode
of the ancient Greeks, and then into the Phrygian,
[37]and then into two of the plagal modes.
Moreover, he constantly combines both unrelated
scales and antagonistic motives, and invests
the combinations in astounding orchestral
colors, so that the hearer, unaccustomed to
such bold experimentations, is quite lost in the
maze. Here, for example, is a characteristic
passage for solo French horn and bass piccolo:

The dotted half notes for the horn obviously
come from the motive of brooding, in
augmentation, but the bass piccolo part is new.
It soon appears, however, in various fresh aspects,
and in the end it enters into the famous
quadruple motive of “sulphur-yellow truth”—schwefelgelbe
Wahrheit, as we shall presently
see. Its first combination is with a jaunty figure
in A minor, and the two together form what
most of the commentators agree upon denominating
the Zarathustra motive:

[38]I call this the Zarathustra motive, following
the weight of critical opinion, but various influential
critics dissent. Thus, Dr. Ferdinand
Bierfisch, of the Hochschule für Musik at Dresden,
insists that it is the theme of “the elevated
mood produced by the spiritual isolation and
low barometric pressure of the mountains,”
while Prof. B. Moll, of Frankfurt a/M., calls
it the motive of prowling. Kraus himself,
when asked by Dr. Fritz Bratsche, of the Berlin
Volkszeitung, shrugged his shoulders and
answered in his native Hamburg dialect, “So
gehts im Leben! ’S giebt gar kein Use”—Such
is life; it gives hardly any use (to inquire?).
In much the same way Schubert made
reply to one who asked the meaning of the
opening subject of the slow movement of his
C major symphony: “Halt’s Maul, du verfluchter
Narr!”—Don’t ask such question, my
dear sir!

But whatever the truth, the novelty and originality
of the theme cannot be denied, for it is
in two distinct keys, D major and A minor,
and they preserve their identity whenever it
appears. The handling of two such diverse tonalities
at one time would present insuperable
difficulties to a composer less ingenious than
Kraus, but he manages it quite simply by founding
[39]his whole harmonic scheme upon the tonic
triad of D major, with the seventh and ninth
added. He thus achieves a chord which also
contains the tonic triad of A minor. The same
thing is now done with the dominant triads, and
half the battle is won. Moreover, the instrumentation
shows the same boldness, for the
double theme is first given to three solo violins,
and they are muted in a novel and effective
manner by stopping their F holes. The directions
in the score say mit Glaserkitt (that is,
with glazier’s putty), but the Konzertmeister
at the Gewandhaus, Herr F. Dur, substituted
ordinary pumpernickel with excellent results.
It is, in fact, now commonly used in the German
orchestras in place of putty, for it does
less injury to the varnish of the violins, and,
besides, it is edible after use. It produces a
thick, oily, mysterious, far-away effect.

At the start, as I have just said, the double
theme of Zarathustra appears in D major and
A minor, but there is quick modulation to B
flat major and C sharp minor, and then to C
major and F sharp minor. Meanwhile the
tempo gradually accelerates, and the polyphonic
texture is helped out by reminiscences of the
themes of brooding and of lamentation. A sudden
hush and the motive of warning is heard
[40]high in the wood-wind, in C flat major, against
a double organ-point—C natural and C sharp—in
the lower strings. There follows a cadenza
of no less than eighty-four measures for
four harps, tympani and a single tuba, and
then the motive of waiting is given out by the
whole orchestra in unison:

This stately motive is repeated in F major,
after which some passage work for the piano
and pianola, the former tuned a quarter tone
lower than the latter and played by three performers,
leads directly into the quadruple
theme of the sulphur-yellow truth, mentioned
above. It is first given out by two oboes divided,
a single English horn, two bassoons in
unison, and four trombones in unison. It is
an extraordinarily long motive, running to
twenty-seven measures on its first appearance;
the four opening measures are given on the
next page.

With an exception yet to be noted, all of the
composer’s thematic material is now set forth,
and what follows is a stupendous development
of it, so complex that no written description
[41]could even faintly indicate its character. The
quadruple theme of the sulphur-yellow truth is
sung almost uninterruptedly, first by the wood-wind,
[42]then by the strings and then by the full
brass choir, with the glockenspiel and cymbals
added. Into it are woven all of the other
themes in inextricable whirls and whorls of
sound, and in most amazing combinations and
permutations of tonalities. Moreover, there is
a constantly rising complexity of rhythm, and
on one page of the score the time signature is
changed no less than eighteen times. Several
times it is 5-8 and 7-4; once it is 11-2; in one
place the composer, following Koechlin and
Erik Satie, abandons bar-lines altogether for
half a page of the score. And these diverse
rhythms are not always merely successive;
sometimes they are heard together. For example,
the motive of disaster, augmented to 5-8
time, is sounded clearly by the clarinets against
the motive of lamentation in 3-4 time, and
through it all one hears the steady beat of the
motive of waiting in 4-4!

This gigantic development of materials is
carried to a thrilling climax, with the whole
orchestra proclaiming the Zarathustra motive
fortissimo. Then follows a series of arpeggios
for the harps, made of the motive of warning,
and out of them there gradually steals the tonic
triad of D minor, sung by three oboes. This
chord constitutes the backbone of all that follows.
[43]The three oboes are presently joined by
a fourth. Against this curtain of tone the flutes
and piccolos repeat the theme of brooding in
F major, and then join the oboes in the D minor
chord. The horns and bassoons follow with
the motive of disaster and then do likewise.
Now come the violins with the motive of lamentation,
but instead of ending with the D
minor tonic triad, they sound a chord of the
seventh erected on C sharp as seventh of D
minor. Every tone of the scale of D minor
is now being sounded, and as instrument after
instrument joins in the effect is indescribably
sonorous and imposing. Meanwhile, there is
a steady crescendo, ending after three minutes
of truly tremendous music with ten sharp blasts
of the double chord. A moment of silence and
a single trombone gives out a theme hitherto
not heard. It is the theme of tenderness, or,
as the German commentators call it, the Biermad’l
Motiv: Thus:

[44]Again silence. Then a single piccolo plays
the closing cadence of the composition:

Ruhm und Ewigkeit presents enormous difficulties
to the performers, and taxes the generalship
of the most skillful conductor. When
it was in preparation at the Gewandhaus the
first performance was postponed twelve times
in order to extend the rehearsals. It was reported
in the German papers at the time that
ten members of the orchestra, including the first
flutist, Ewald Löwenhals, resigned during the
rehearsals, and that the intervention of the
King of Saxony was necessary to make them
reconsider their resignations. One of the second
violins, Hugo Zehndaumen, resorted to
stimulants in anticipation of the opening performance,
and while on his way to the hall was
run over by a taxicab. The conductor was
Nikisch. A performance at Munich followed,
and on May 1, 1913, the work reached Berlin.
At the public rehearsal there was a riot led by
members of the Bach Gesellschaft, and the hall
was stormed by the mounted police. Many arrests
[45]were made, and five of the rioters were
taken to hospital with serious injuries. The
work was put into rehearsal by the Boston Symphony
Orchestra in 1914. The rehearsals have
been proceeding ever since. A piano transcription
for sixteen hands has been published.

Kraus was born at Hamburg on January
14, 1872. At the age of three he performed
creditably on the zither, cornet and trombone,
and by 1877 he had already appeared in concert
at Danzig. His family was very poor, and
his early years were full of difficulties. It is
said that, at the age of nine, he copied the
whole score of Wagner’s Ring, the scores of
the nine Beethoven symphonies and the complete
works of Mozart. His regular teacher,
in those days, was Stadtpfeifer Schmidt, who
instructed him in piano and thorough-bass. In
1884, desiring to have lessons in counterpoint
from Prof. Kalbsbraten, of Mainz, he walked
to that city from Hamburg once a week—a distance
for the round trip of 316 miles. In 1887
he went to Berlin and became fourth cornetist
of the Philharmonic Orchestra and valet to
Dr. Schweinsrippen, the conductor. In Berlin
he studied violin and second violin under the
Polish virtuoso, Pbyschbrweski, and also had
[46]lessons in composition from Wilhelm Geigenheimer,
formerly third triangle and assistant
librarian at Bayreuth.

His first composition, a march for cornet,
violin and piano, was performed on July 18,
1888, at the annual ball of the Arbeiter Liedertafel
in Berlin. It attracted little attention,
but six months later the young composer made
musical Berlin talk about him by producing a
composition called Adenoids, for twelve tenors,
a cappella, to words by Otto Julius Bierbaum.
This was first heard at an open air concert
given in the Tiergarten by the Sozialist Liederkranz.
It was soon after repeated by the choir
of the Gottesgelehrheitsakademie, and Kraus
found himself a famous young man. His string
quartet in G sharp minor, first played early in
1889 by the quartet led by Prof. Rudolph
Wurst, added to his growing celebrity, and
when his first tone poem for orchestra, Fuchs,
Du Hast die Gans Gestohlen, was done by the
Philharmonic in the autumn of 1889, under Dr.
Lachschinken, it was hailed with acclaim.

Kraus has since written twelve symphonies
(two choral), nine tone-poems, a suite for brass
and tympani, a trio for harp, tuba and glockenspiel,
ten string quartettes, a serenade for flute
[47]and contra-bassoon, four concert overtures, a
cornet concerto, and many songs and piano
pieces. His best-known work, perhaps, is his
symphony in F flat major, in eight movements.
But Kraus himself is said to regard this huge
work as trivial. His own favorite, according
to his biographer, Dr. Linsensuppe, is Ruhm
und Ewigkeit, though he is also fond of the
tone-poem which immediately preceded it,
Rinderbrust und Meerrettig. He has written
a choral for sixty trombones, dedicated to Field
Marshal von Hindenburg, and is said to be
at work on a military mass for four orchestras,
seven brass bands and ten choirs, with the usual
soloists and clergy. Among his principal
works are Der Ewigen Wiederkunft (a ten
part fugue for full orchestra), Biergemütlichkeit,
his Oberkellner and Uebermensch concert
overtures, and his setting (for mixed chorus)
of the old German hymn:

Kraus is now a resident of Munich, where
he conducts the orchestra at the Löwenbräuhaus.
He has been married eight times and
is at present the fifth husband of Tilly Heintz,
[48]the opera singer. He has been decorated by
the Kaiser, by the King of Sweden and by the
Sultan of Turkey, and is a member of the German
Odd Fellows.

[49]

III.—THE WEDDING

III.—The Wedding. A Stage
Direction

[69]

IV.—THE VISIONARY

IV.—The Visionary

[71]“Yes,” said Cheops, helping his guest
over a ticklish place, “I daresay this
pile of rocks will last. It has cost me
a pretty penny, believe me. I made
up my mind at the start that it would be built
of honest stone, or not at all. No cheap and
shoddy brickwork for me! Look at Babylon.
It’s all brick, and it’s always tumbling down.
My ambassador there tells me that it costs a
million a year to keep up the walls alone—mind
you, the walls alone! What must it cost
to keep up the palace, with all that fancy work!

“Yes, I grant you that brickwork looks good.
But what of it? So does a cheap cotton night-shirt—you
know the gaudy things those Theban
peddlers sell to my sand-hogs down on the
river bank. But does it last? Of course it
doesn’t. Well, I am putting up this pyramid
to stay put, and I don’t give a damn for its
looks. I hear all sorts of funny cracks about
it. My barber is a sharp nigger and keeps his
ears open: he brings me all the gossip. But I
[72]let it go. This is my pyramid. I am putting
up the money for it, and I have got to be mortared
up in it when I die. So I am trying to
make a good, substantial job of it, and letting
the mere beauty of it go hang.

“Anyhow, there are plenty of uglier things
in Egypt. Look at some of those fifth-rate
pyramids up the river. When it comes to shape
they are pretty much the same as this one, and
when it comes to size, they look like warts beside
it. And look at the Sphinx. There is
something that cost four millions if it cost a
copper—and what is it now? A burlesque! A
caricature! An architectural cripple! So long
as it was new, good enough! It was a showy
piece of work. People came all the way from
Sicyonia and Tyre to gape at it. Everybody
said it was one of the sights no one could afford
to miss. But by and by a piece began to
peel off here and another piece there, and then
the nose cracked, and then an ear dropped off,
and then one of the eyes began to get mushy
and watery looking, and finally it was a mere
smudge, a false-face, a scarecrow. My father
spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, but
what good did it do? By the time he had the
nose cobbled the ears were loose again, and
so on. In the end he gave it up as a bad job.

[73]

“Yes; this pyramid has kept me on the jump,
but I’m going to stick to it if it breaks me.
Some say I ought to have built it across the
river, where the quarries are. Such gabble
makes me sick. Do I look like a man who
would go looking around for such child’s-play?
I hope not. A one-legged man could have done
that. Even a Babylonian could have done it.
It would have been as easy as milking a cow.
What I wanted was something that would keep
me on the jump—something that would put a
strain on me. So I decided to haul the whole
business across the river—six million tons of
rock. And when the engineers said that it
couldn’t be done, I gave them two days to get
out of Egypt, and then tackled it myself. It
was something new and hard. It was a job
I could get my teeth into.

“Well, I suppose you know what a time I
had of it at the start. First I tried a pontoon
bridge, but the stones for the bottom course
were so heavy that they sank the pontoons, and
I lost a couple of hundred niggers before I
saw that it couldn’t be done. Then I tried a
big raft, but in order to get her to float with
the stones I had to use such big logs that she
was unwieldy, and before I knew what had
struck me I had lost six big dressed stones and
[74]another hundred niggers. I got the laugh,
of course. Every numskull in Egypt wagged
his beard over it; I could hear the chatter myself.
But I kept quiet and stuck to the problem,
and by and by I solved it.

“I suppose you know how I did it. In a
general way? Well, the details are simple.
First I made a new raft, a good deal lighter
than the old one, and then I got a thousand
water-tight goat-skins and had them blown up
until they were as tight as drums. Then I got
together a thousand niggers who were good
swimmers, and gave each of them one of the
blown-up goat-skins. On each goat-skin there
was a leather thong, and on the bottom of the
raft, spread over it evenly, there were a thousand
hooks. Do you get the idea? Yes; that’s
it exactly. The niggers dived overboard with
the goat-skins, swam under the raft, and tied
the thongs to the hooks. And when all of them
were tied on, the raft floated like a bladder.
You simply couldn’t sink it.

“Naturally enough, the thing took time, and
there were accidents and setbacks. For instance,
some of the niggers were so light in
weight that they couldn’t hold their goat-skins
under water long enough to get them under the
raft. I had to weight those fellows by having
[75]rocks tied around their middles. And when
they had fastened their goat-skins and tried to
swim back, some of them were carried down
by the rocks. I never made any exact count,
but I suppose that two or three hundred of
them were drowned in that way. Besides, a
couple of hundred were drowned because they
couldn’t hold their breaths long enough to swim
under the raft and back. But what of it? I
wasn’t trying to hoard up niggers, but to make
a raft that would float. And I did it.

“Well, once I showed how it could be done,
all the wiseacres caught the idea, and after that
I put a big gang to work making more rafts,
and by and by I had sixteen of them in operation,
and was hauling more stone than the masons
could set. But I won’t go into all that.
Here is the pyramid; it speaks for itself. One
year more and I’ll have the top course laid and
begin on the surfacing. I am going to make
it plain marble, with no fancy work. I could
bring in a gang of Theban stonecutters and
have it carved all over with lions’ heads and
tiger claws and all that sort of gim-crackery,
but why waste time and money? This isn’t a
menagerie, but a pyramid. My idea was to
make it the boss pyramid of the world. The
[76]king who tries to beat it will have to get up
pretty early in the morning.

“But what troubles I have had! Believe me,
there has been nothing but trouble, trouble,
trouble from the start. I set aside the engineering
difficulties. They were hard for the
engineers, but easy for me, once I put my mind
on them. But the way these niggers have carried
on has been something terrible. At the
beginning I had only a thousand or two, and
they all came from one tribe; so they got along
fairly well. During the whole first year I
doubt that more than twenty or thirty were
killed in fights. But then I began to get fresh
batches from up the river, and after that it
was nothing but one fight after another. For
two weeks running not a stroke of work was
done. I really thought, at one time, that I’d
have to give up. But finally the army put down
the row, and after a couple of hundred of the
ringleaders had been thrown into the river
peace was restored. But it cost me, first and
last, fully three thousand niggers, and set me
back at least six months.

“Then came the so-called labor unions, and
the strikes, and more trouble. These labor
unions were started by a couple of smart, yellow
niggers from Chaldea, one of them a sort
[77]of lay preacher, a fellow with a lot of gab.
Before I got wind of them, they had gone so
far it was almost impossible to squelch them.
First I tried conciliation, but it didn’t work a
bit. They made the craziest demands you ever
heard of—a holiday every six days, meat every
day, no night work and regular houses to live
in. Some of them even had the effrontery to
ask for money! Think of it! Niggers asking
for money! Finally, I had to order out the
army again and let some blood. But every
time one was knocked over, I had to get another
one to take his place, and that meant
sending the army up the river, and more expense,
and more devilish worry and nuisance.

“In my grandfather’s time niggers were honest
and faithful workmen. You could take one
fresh from the bush, teach him to handle a
shovel or pull a rope in a year or so, and after
that he was worth almost as much as he could
eat. But the nigger of to-day isn’t worth a
damn. He never does an honest day’s work if
he can help it, and he is forever wanting something.
Take these fellows I have now—mainly
young bucks from around the First Cataract.
Here are niggers who never saw baker’s bread
or butcher’s meat until my men grabbed them.
They lived there in the bush like so many hyenas.
[78]They were ten days’ march from a
lemon. Well, now they get first-class beef
twice a week, good bread and all the fish they
can catch. They don’t have to begin work until
broad daylight, and they lay off at dark.
There is hardly one of them that hasn’t got a
psaltery, or a harp, or some other musical instrument.
If they want to dress up and make
believe they are Egyptians, I give them clothes.
If one of them is killed on the work, or by a
stray lion, or in a fight, I have him embalmed
by my own embalmers and plant him like a
man. If one of them breaks a leg or loses an
arm or gets too old to work, I turn him loose
without complaining, and he is free to go home
if he wants to.

“But are they contented? Do they show
any gratitude? Not at all. Scarcely a day
passes that I don’t hear of some fresh soldiering.
And, what is worse, they have stirred
up some of my own people—the carpenters,
stone-cutters, gang bosses and so on. Every
now and then my inspectors find some rotten
libel cut on a stone—something to the effect
that I am overworking them, and knocking
them about, and holding them against their
will, and generally mistreating them. I haven’t
the slightest doubt that some of these inscriptions
[79]have actually gone into the pyramid: it’s
impossible to watch every stone. Well, in the
years to come, they will be dug out and read
by strangers, and I will get a black eye. People
will think of Cheops as a heartless old
rapscallion—me, mind you! Can you beat it?”

[81]

V.—THE ARTIST

V.—The Artist. A Drama
Without Words

[83]

Characters:

• A Great Pianist


• A Janitor


• Six Musical Critics


• A Married Woman


• A Virgin


• Sixteen Hundred and Forty-three Other Women


• Six Other Men

Place—A City of the United States.

Time—A December afternoon.

(During the action of the play not a word
is uttered aloud. All of the speeches of the
characters are supposed to be unspoken meditations
only.)

A large, gloomy hall, with many rows of
uncushioned, uncomfortable seats, designed, it
[84]would seem, by some one misinformed as to
the average width of the normal human pelvis.
A number of busts of celebrated composers,
once white, but now a dirty gray, stand in
niches along the walls. At one end of the
hall there is a bare, uncarpeted stage, with
nothing on it save a grand piano and a chair.
It is raining outside, and, as hundreds of people
come crowding in, the air is laden with the
mingled scents of umbrellas, raincoats, goloshes,
cosmetics, perfumery and wet hair.

At eight minutes past four, The Janitor,
after smoothing his hair with his hands and
putting on a pair of detachable cuffs, emerges
from the wings and crosses the stage, his shoes
squeaking hideously at each step. Arriving at
the piano, he opens it with solemn slowness.
The job seems so absurdly trivial, even to so
mean an understanding, that he can’t refrain
from glorifying it with a bit of hocus-pocus.
This takes the form of a careful adjustment
of a mysterious something within the instrument.
He reaches in, pauses a moment as if
in doubt, reaches in again, and then permits a
faint smile of conscious sapience and efficiency
to illuminate his face. All of this accomplished,
he tiptoes back to the wings, his shoes again
squeaking.

[85]

The Janitor

Now all of them people think I’m the professor’s
tuner. (The thought gives him such
delight that, for the moment, his brain is
numbed. Then he proceeds.) I guess them
tuners make pretty good money. I wish I could
get the hang of the trick. It looks easy. (By
this time he has disappeared in the wings and
the stage is again a desert. Two or three
women, far back in the hall, start a halfhearted
handclapping. It dies out at once.
The noise of rustling programs and shuffling
feet succeeds it.)

Four Hundred of the Women

Oh, I do certainly hope he plays that lovely
Valse Poupée as an encore! They say he does
it better than Bloomfield-Zeisler.

One of the Critics

I hope the animal doesn’t pull any encore
numbers that I don’t recognize. All of these
people will buy the paper to-morrow morning
just to find out what they have heard. It’s infernally
embarrassing to have to ask the manager.
[86]The public expects a musical critic to
be a sort of walking thematic catalogue. The
public is an ass.

The Six Other Men

Oh, Lord! What a way to spend an afternoon!

A Hundred of the Women

I wonder if he’s as handsome as Paderewski.

Another Hundred of the Women

I wonder if he’s as gentlemanly as Josef
Hofmann.

Still Another Hundred Women

I wonder if he’s as fascinating as De Pachmann.

Yet Other Hundreds

I wonder if he has dark eyes. You never
can tell by those awful photographs in the
newspapers.

Half a Dozen Women

I wonder if he can really play the piano.

[87]

The Critic Aforesaid

What a hell of a wait! These rotten piano-thumping
immigrants deserve a hard call-down.
But what’s the use? The piano manufacturers
bring them over here to wallop their pianos—and
the piano manufacturers are not afraid
to advertise. If you knock them too hard you
have a nasty business-office row on your hands.

One of the Men

If they allowed smoking, it wouldn’t be so
bad.

Another Man

I wonder if that woman across the aisle——

(The Great Pianist bounces upon the
stage so suddenly that he is bowing in the center
before any one thinks to applaud. He makes
three stiff bows. At the second the applause
begins, swelling at once to a roar. He steps
up to the piano, bows three times more, and
then sits down. He hunches his shoulders,
reaches for the pedals with his feet, spreads
out his hands and waits for the clapper-clawing
to cease. He is an undersized, paunchy East
German, with hair the color of wet hay, and an
[88]extremely pallid complexion. Talcum powder
hides the fact that his nose is shiny and somewhat
pink. His eyebrows are carefully penciled
and there are artificial shadows under his
eyes. His face is absolutely expressionless.)

The Virgin

Oh!

The Married Women

Oh!

The Other Women

Oh! How dreadfully handsome!

The Virgin

Oh, such eyes, such depth! How he must
have suffered! I’d like to hear him play the
Prélude in D flat major. It would drive you
crazy!

A Hundred Other Women

I certainly do hope he plays some Schumann.

Other Women

What beautiful hands! I could kiss them!

(The Great Pianist, throwing back his
head, strikes the massive opening chords of a
[89]Beethoven sonata. There is a sudden hush and
each note is heard clearly. The tempo of the
first movement, which begins after a grand
pause, is allegro con brio, and the first subject
is given out in a sparkling cascade of sound.
But, despite the buoyancy of the music, there
is an unmistakable undercurrent of melancholy
in the playing. The audience doesn’t fail to
notice it.)

The Virgin

Oh, perfect! I could love him! Paderewski
played it like a fox trot. What poetry he puts
into it! I can see a soldier lover marching
off to war.

One of the Critics

The ass is dragging it. Doesn’t con brio
mean—well, what the devil does it mean? I
forget. I must look it up before I write the
notice. Somehow, brio suggests cheese. Anyhow,
Pachmann plays it a damn sight faster.
It’s safe to say that, at all events.

The Married Woman

Oh, I could listen to that sonata all day!
The poetry he puts into it—even into the
[90]allegro! Just think what the andante will be!
I like music to be sad.

Another Woman

What a sob he gets into it!

Many Other Women

How exquisite!

The Great Pianist

(Gathering himself together for the difficult
development section.) That American beer
will be the death of me! I wonder what they
put in it to give it its gassy taste. And the so-called
German beer they sell over here—du
heiliger Herr Jesu! Even Bremen would be
ashamed of it. In München the police would
take a hand.

(Aiming for the first and second C’s above
the staff, he accidentally strikes the C sharps
instead and has to transpose three measures to
get back into the key. The effect is harrowing,
and he gives his audience a swift glance
of apprehension.)

Two Hundred and Fifty Women

What new beauties he gets out of it!

[91]

A Man

He can tickle the ivories, all right, all right!

A Critic

Well, at any rate, he doesn’t try to imitate
Paderewski.

The Great Pianist

(Relieved by the non-appearance of the
hisses he expected.) Well, it’s lucky for me
that I’m not in Leipzig to-day! But in Leipzig
an artist runs no risks: the beer is pure. The
authorities see to that. The worse enemy of
technic is biliousness, and biliousness is sure
to follow bad beer. (He gets to the coda at
last and takes it at a somewhat livelier pace.)

The Virgin

How I envy the woman he loves! How it
would thrill me to feel his arms about me—to
be drawn closer, closer, closer! I would give
up the whole world! What are conventions,
prejudices, legal forms, morality, after all?
Vanities! Love is beyond and above them all—and
art is love! I think I must be a pagan.

[92]

The Great Pianist

And the herring! Good God, what herring!
These barbarous Americans——

The Virgin

Really, I am quite indecent! I should blush,
I suppose. But love is never ashamed—How
people misunderstand me!

The Married Woman

I wonder if he’s faithful. The chances are
against it. I never heard of a man who was.
(An agreeable melancholy overcomes her and
she gives herself up to the mood without
thought.)

The Great Pianist

I wonder whatever became of that girl in
Dresden. Every time I think of her, she suggests
pleasant thoughts—good beer, a fine
band, Gemütlichkeit. I must have been in love
with her—not much, of course, but just enough
to make things pleasant. And not a single letter
from her! I suppose she thinks I’m starving
to death over here—or tuning pianos.
[93]Well, when I get back with the money there’ll
be a shock for her. A shock—but not a
Pfennig!

The Married Woman

(Her emotional coma ended.) Still, you can
hardly blame him. There must be a good deal
of temptation for a great artist. All of these
frumps here would——

The Virgin

Ah, how dolorous, how exquisite is love!
How small the world would seem if——

The Married Woman

Of course you could hardly call such old
scarecrows temptations. But still——

(The Great Pianist comes to the last
measure of the coda—a passage of almost
Haydnesque clarity and spirit. As he strikes
the broad chord of the tonic there comes a roar
of applause. He arises, moves a step or two
down the stage, and makes a series of low bows,
his hands to his heart.)

[94]

The Great Pianist

(Bowing.) I wonder why the American
women always wear raincoats to piano recitals.
Even when the sun is shining brightly, one sees
hundreds of them. What a disagreeable smell
they give to the hall. (More applause and
more bows.) An American audience always
smells of rubber and lilies-of-the-valley. How
different in London! There an audience always
smells of soap. In Paris it reminds you
of sachet bags—and lingerie.

(The applause ceases and he returns to the
piano.)

And now comes that verfluchte adagio.

(As he begins to play, a deathlike silence
falls upon the hall.)

One of the Critics

What rotten pedaling!

Another Critic

A touch like a xylophone player, but he
knows how to use his feet. That suggests a
good line for the notice—“he plays better with
his feet than with his hands,” or something
like that. I’ll have to think it over and polish
it up.

[95]

One of the Other Men

Now comes some more of that awful classical
stuff.

The Virgin

Suppose he can’t speak English? But that
wouldn’t matter. Nothing matters. Love is
beyond and above——

Six Hundred Women

Oh, how beautiful!

The Married Woman

Perfect!

The Dean of the Critics

(Sinking quickly into the slumber which always
overtakes him during the adagio.) C-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!

The Youngest Critic

There is that old fraud asleep again. And
to-morrow he’ll print half a column of vapid
reminiscence and call it criticism. It’s a wonder
his paper stands for him. Because he once
heard Liszt, he....

[96]

The Great Pianist

That plump girl over there on the left is not
so bad. As for the rest, I beg to be excused.
The American women have no more shape
than so many matches. They are too tall and
too thin. I like a nice rubbery armful—like
that Dresden girl. Or that harpist in Moscow—the
girl with the Pilsner hair. Let me see,
what was her name? Oh, Fritzi, to be sure—but
her last name? Schmidt? Kraus? Meyer?
I’ll have to try to think of it, and send her
a postcard.

The Married Woman

What delicious flutelike tones!

One of the Women

If Beethoven could only be here to hear it!
He would cry for very joy! Maybe he does
hear it. Who knows? I believe he does. I
am sure he does.

(The Great Pianist reaches the end of
the adagio, and there is another burst of applause,
which awakens The Dean of the
Critics.)

[97]

The Dean of the Critics

Oh, piffle! Compared to Gottschalk, the
man is an amateur. Let him go back to the
conservatory for a couple of years.

One of the Men

(Looking at his program.) Next comes the
shirt-so. I hope it has some tune in it.

The Virgin

The adagio is love’s agony, but the scherzo
is love triumphant. What beautiful eyes he
has! And how pale he is!

The Great Pianist

(Resuming his grim toil.) Well, there’s
half of it over. But this scherzo is ticklish
business. That horrible evening in Prague—will
I ever forget it? Those hisses—and the
papers next day!

One of the Men

Go it, professor! That’s the best you’ve
done yet!

[98]

One of the Critics

Too fast!

Another Critic

Too slow!

A Young Girl

My, but ain’t the professor just full of
talent!

The Great Pianist

Well, so far no accident. (He negotiates a
difficult passage, and plays it triumphantly, but
at some expenditure of cold perspiration.)
What a way for a man to make a living!

The Virgin

What passion he puts into it! His soul is
in his finger-tips.

A Critic

A human pianola!

The Great Pianist

This scherzo always fetches the women. I
can hear them draw long breaths. That plump
girl is getting pale. Well, why shouldn’t she?
[99]I suppose I’m about the best pianist she has
ever heard—or ever will hear. What people
can see in that Hambourg fellow I never could
imagine. In Chopin, Schumann, Grieg, you
might fairly say he’s pretty good. But it takes
an artist to play Beethoven. (He rattles on to
the end of the scherzo and there is more applause.
Then he dashes into the finale.)

The Dean of the Critics

Too loud! Too loud! It sounds like an
ash-cart going down an alley. But what can
you expect? Piano-playing is a lost art.
Paderewski ruined it.

The Great Pianist

I ought to clear 200,000 marks by this
tournee. If it weren’t for those thieving agents
and hotelkeepers, I’d make 300,000. Just
think of it—twenty-four marks a day for a
room! That’s the way these Americans treat
a visiting artist! The country is worse than
Bulgaria. I was treated better at Bucharest.
Well, it won’t last forever. As soon as I get
enough of their money they’ll see me no more.
Vienna is the place to settle down. A nice
studio at fifty marks a month—and the life of
[100]a gentleman. What was the name of that little
red-cheeked girl at the café in the Franzjosefstrasse—that
girl with the gold tooth and
the silk stockings? I’ll have to look her up.

The Virgin

What an artist! What a master! What
a——

The Married Woman

Has he really suffered, or is it just intuition?

The Great Pianist

No, marriage is a waste of money. Let the
other fellow marry her. (He approaches the
closing measures of the finale.) And now for
a breathing spell and a swallow of beer.
American beer! Bah! But it’s better than
nothing. The Americans drink water. Cattle!
Animals! Ach, München, wie bist du so
schön!

(As he concludes there is a whirlwind of applause
and he is forced to bow again and again.
Finally, he is permitted to retire, and the audience
prepares to spend the short intermission in
whispering, grunting, wriggling, scraping its
feet, rustling its programs and gaping at hats.
[101]The Six Musical Critics and Six Other
Men, their lips parched and their eyes staring,
gallop for the door. As The Great Pianist
comes from the stage, The Janitor meets him
with a large seidel of beer. He seizes it
eagerly and downs it at a gulp.)

The Janitor

My, but them professors can put the stuff
away!

[103]

VI.—SEEING THE WORLD

VI.—Seeing The World

[105]The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg
at Innsbruck. It is the half hour
before sunset, and the whole lovely
valley of the Inn—still wie die Nacht,
tief wie das Meer—begins to glow with
mauves and apple greens, apricots and silvery
blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy
mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly
and misery of the world, there are touches of
piercing primary colours—red, yellow, violet.
Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little
Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and
Christmas garden villas. A battalion of Austrian
soldiers, drilling in the Exerzierplatz,
appears as an army of grey ants, now barely
visible. Somewhere to the left, beyond the
broad flank of the Hungerberg, the night train
for Venice labours toward the town.

It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the
most beautiful in all Europe. It has colour,
dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a
bit and so increase their spell. They are not
[106]the harsh precipices of Switzerland, nor the
too charming stage mountains of the Trentino,
but rotting billows of clouds and snow, the high
flung waves of some titanic but stricken ocean.
Now and then comes a faint clank of metal
from the funicular railway, but the tracks themselves
are hidden among the trees of the lower
slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or
maybe it is only a sheep bell) is heard from
afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon,
sweeps across the crystal spaces.

Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside,
and the hand of man has converted
it into a terrace. To the rear, clinging to the
mountain, is an Alpine gasthaus—a bit overdone,
perhaps, with its red-framed windows
and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of
the Alps. Along the front of the terrace, protecting
sightseers from the sheer drop of a
thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.

A man in an American sack suit, with a
bowler hat on his head, lounges against this
rail. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are
crossed in the fashion of a figure four, and
his face is buried in the red book of Herr
Baedeker. It is the volume on Southern Germany,
and he is reading the list of Munich hotels.
Now and then he stops to mark one with
[107]a pencil, which he wets at his lips each time.
While he is thus engaged, another man comes
ambling along the terrace, apparently from the
direction of the funicular railway station. He,
too, carries a red book. It is Baedeker on
Austria-Hungary. After gaping around him a
bit, this second man approaches the rail near
the other and leans his elbows upon it. Presently
he takes a package of chewing gum from
his coat pocket, selects two pieces, puts them
into his mouth and begins to chew. Then he
spits idly into space, idly but homerically, a
truly stupendous expectoration, a staggering
discharge from the Alps to the first shelf of
the Lombard plain! The first man, startled
by the report, glances up. Their eyes meet and
there is a vague glimmer of recognition.

The First Man

American?

The Second Man

Yes; St. Louis.

The First Man

Been over long?

[108]

The Second Man

A couple of months.

The First Man

What ship’d you come over in?

The Second Man

The Kronprinz Friedrich.

The First Man

Aha, the German line! I guess you found
the grub all right.

The Second Man

Oh, in the main. I have eaten better, but
then again, I have eaten worse.

The First Man

Well, they charge you enough for it, whether
you get it or not. A man could live at the Plaza
cheaper.

The Second Man

I should say he could. What boat did you
come over in?

[109]

The First Man

The Maurentic.

The Second Man

How is she?

The First Man

Oh, so-so.

The Second Man

I hear the meals on those English ships are
nothing to what they used to be.

The First Man

That’s what everybody tells me. But, as for
me, I can’t say I found them so bad. I had to
send back the potatoes twice and the breakfast
bacon once, but they had very good lima beans.

The Second Man

Isn’t that English bacon awful stuff to get
down?

The First Man

It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder
what an Englishman would say if you put
[110]him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, American
bacon.

The Second Man

I guess he would yell for the police—or
choke to death.

The First Man

Did you like the German cooking on the
Kronprinz?

The Second Man

Well, I did and I didn’t. The chicken à la
Maryland was very good, but they had it only
once. I could eat it every day.

The First Man

Why didn’t you order it?

The Second Man

It wasn’t on the bill.

The First Man

Oh, bill be damned! You might have ordered
it anyhow. Make a fuss and you’ll get
what you want. These foreigners have to be
bossed around. They’re used to it.

[111]

The Second Man

I guess you’re right. There was a fellow
near me who set up a holler about his room
the minute he saw it—said it was dark and
musty and not fit to pen a hog in—and they
gave him one twice as large, and the chief
steward bowed and scraped to him, and the
room stewards danced around him as if he was
a duke. And yet I heard later that he was
nothing but a Bismarck herring importer from
Hoboken.

The First Man

Yes, that’s the way to get what you want.
Did you have any nobility on board?

The Second Man

Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the
automobile business, and two English sirs. The
baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk
with him in the smoking room one night. He
didn’t put on any airs at all. You would have
thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs
kept to themselves. All they did the whole
voyage was to write letters, wear their dress
suits and curse the stewards.

[112]

The First Man

They tell me over here that the best eating
is on the French lines.

The Second Man

Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the
Scandinavian lines are best, and then again I
have heard people boosting the Italian lines.

The First Man

I guess each one has its points. They say
that you get wine free with meals on the French
boats.

The Second Man

But I hear it’s fourth-rate wine.

The First Man

Well, you don’t have to drink it.

The Second Man

That’s so. But, as for me, I can’t stand a
Frenchman. I’d rather do without the wine
and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared
with Berlin.

[113]

The First Man

So it is. But those Germans are awful
sharks. The way they charge in Berlin is
enough to make you sick.

The Second Man

Don’t tell me. I have been there. No
longer ago than last Tuesday—or was it last
Monday?—I went into one of those big restaurants
on the Unter den Linden and ordered a
small steak, French fried potatoes, a piece of
pie and a cup of coffee—and what do you think
those thieves charged me for it? Three marks
fifty. That’s eighty-seven and a half cents.
Why, a man could have got the same meal at
home for a dollar. These Germans are running
wild. American money has gone to their
heads. They think every American they get
hold of is a millionaire.

The First Man

The French are worse. I went into a hotel
in Paris and paid ten francs a day for a room
for myself and wife, and when we left they
charged me one franc forty a day extra for
sweeping it out and making the bed!

[114]

The Second Man

That’s nothing. Here in Innsbruck they
charge you half a krone a day taxes.

The First Man

What! You don’t say!

The Second Man

Sure thing. And if you don’t eat breakfast
in the hotel they charge you a krone for it
anyhow.

The First Man

Well, well, what next? But, after all, you
can’t blame them. We Americans come over
here and hand them our pocket-books, and we
ought to be glad if we get anything back at all.
The way a man has to tip is something fearful.

The Second Man

Isn’t it, though! I stayed in Dresden a week,
and when I left there were six grafters lined
up with their claws out. First came the porteer.
Then came——

[115]

The First Man

How much did you give the porteer?

The Second Man

Five marks.

The First Man

You gave him too much. You ought to have
given him about three marks, or, say, two
marks fifty. How much was your hotel bill?

The Second Man

Including everything?

The First Man

No, just your bill for your room.

The Second Man

I paid six marks a day.

The First Man

Well, that made forty-two marks for the
week. Now the way to figure out how much
the porteer ought to get is easy: a fellow I met
in Baden-Baden showed me how to do it. First,
[116]you multiply your hotel bill by two, then you
divide it by twenty-seven, and then you knock
off half a mark. Twice forty-two is eighty-four.
Twenty-seven into eighty-four goes
about three times, and half from three leaves
two and a half. See how easy it is?

The Second Man

It looks easy, anyhow. But you haven’t got
much time to do all that figuring.

The First Man

Well, let the porteer wait. The longer he
has to wait the more he appreciates you.

The Second Man

But how about the others?

The First Man

It’s just as simple. Your chambermaid gets
a quarter of a mark for every day you have
been in the hotel. But if you stay less than
four days she gets a whole mark anyhow. If
there are two in the party she gets half a mark
a day, but no more than three marks in any
one week.

[117]

The Second Man

But suppose there are two chambermaids?
In Dresden there was one on day duty and one
on night duty. I left at six o’clock in the
evening, and so they were both on the job.

The First Man

Don’t worry. They’d have been on the job
anyhow, no matter when you left. But it’s just
as easy to figure out the tip for two as for one.
All you have to do is to add fifty per cent. and
then divide it into two halves, and give one to
each girl. Or, better still, give it all to one
girl and tell her to give half to her pal. If
there are three chambermaids, as you sometimes
find in the swell hotels, you add another
fifty per cent. and then divide by three. And
so on.

The Second Man

I see. But how about the hall porter and the
floor waiter?

The First Man

Just as easy. The hall porter gets whatever
the chambermaid gets, plus twenty-five per
[118]cent.—but no more than two marks in any one
week. The floor waiter gets thirty pfennigs a
day straight, but if you stay only one day he
gets half a mark, and if you stay more than
a week he gets two marks flat a week after the
first week. In some hotels the hall porter don’t
shine shoes. If he don’t he gets just as much
as if he does, but then the actual “boots” has to
be taken care of. He gets half a mark every
two days. Every time you put out an extra
pair of shoes he gets fifty per cent. more for
that day. If you shine your own shoes, or go
without shining them, the “boots” gets half his
regular tip, but never less than a mark a week.

The Second Man

Certainly it seems simple enough. I never
knew there was any such system.

The First Man

I guess you didn’t. Very few do. But it’s
just because Americans don’t know it that these
foreign blackmailers shake ’em down. Once
you let the porteer see that you know the ropes,
he’ll pass the word on to the others, and you’ll
be treated like a native.

[119]

The Second Man

I see. But how about the elevator boy? I
gave the elevator boy in Dresden two marks
and he almost fell on my neck, so I figured that
I played the sucker.

The First Man

So you did. The rule for elevator boys is
still somewhat in the air, because so few of
these bum hotels over here have elevators, but
you can sort of reason the thing out if you put
your mind on it. When you get on a street car
in Germany, what tip do you give the conductor?

The Second Man

Five pfennigs.

The First Man.

Naturally. That’s the tip fixed by custom.
You may almost say it’s the unwritten law. If
you gave the conductor more, he would hand
you change. Well, how I reason it out is this
way: If five pfennigs is enough for a car conductor,
who may carry you three miles, why
shouldn’t it be enough for the elevator boy, who
may carry you only three stories?

[120]

The Second Man

It seems fair, certainly.

The First Man

And it is fair. So all you have to do is to
keep account of the number of times you go
up and down in the elevator, and then give the
elevator boy five pfennigs for each trip. Say
you come down in the morning, go up in the
evening, and average one other round trip a
day. That makes twenty-eight trips a week.
Five times twenty-eight is one mark forty—and
there you are.

The Second Man

I see. By the way, what hotel are you stopping
at?

The First Man

The Goldene Esel.

The Second Man

How is it?

The First Man

Oh, so-so. Ask for oatmeal at breakfast
and they send to the livery stable for a peck
[121]of oats and ask you please to be so kind as
to show them how to make it.

The Second Man

My hotel is even worse. Last night I got
into such a sweat under the big German feather
bed that I had to throw it off. But when I
asked for a single blanket they didn’t have any,
so I had to wrap up in bath towels.

The First Man

Yes, and you used up every one in town.
This morning, when I took a bath, the only
towel the chambermaid could find wasn’t bigger
than a wedding invitation. But while she
was hunting around I dried off, so no harm
was done.

The Second Man

Well, that’s what a man gets for running
around in such one-horse countries. In Leipzig
they sat a nigger down beside me at the table.
In Amsterdam they had cheese for breakfast.
In Munich the head waiter had never heard of
buckwheat cakes. In Mannheim they charged
me ten pfennigs extra for a cake of soap.

[122]

The First Man

What do you think of the railroad trains
over here?

The Second Man

Rotten. That compartment system is all
wrong. If nobody comes into your compartment
it’s lonesome, and if anybody does come
in it’s too damn sociable. And if you try to
stretch out and get some sleep, some ruffian
begins singing in the next compartment, or the
conductor keeps butting in and jabbering at you.

The First Man

But you can say one thing for the German
trains: they get in on time.

The Second Man

So they do, but no wonder! They run so
slow they can’t help it. The way I figure it, a
German engineer must have a devil of a time
holding his engine in. The fact is, he usually
can’t, and so he has to wait outside every big
town until the schedule catches up to him. They
say they never have accidents, but is it any more
than you expect? Did you ever hear of a mud
turtle having an accident?

[123]

The First Man

Scarcely. As you say, these countries are far
behind the times. I saw a fire in Cologne; you
would have laughed your head off! It was
in a feed store near my hotel, and I got there
before the firemen. When they came at last,
in their tinpot hats, they got out half a dozen
big squirts and rushed into the building with
them. Then, when it was out, they put the
squirts back into their little express wagon and
drove off. Not a line of hose run out, not an
engine puffing, not a gong heard, not a soul
letting out a whoop! It was more like a Sunday-school
picnic than a fire. I guess if these
Dutch ever did have a civilised blaze, it would
scare them to death. But they never have any.

The Second Man

Well, what can you expect? A country
where all the charwomen are men and all the
garbage men are women!—

For the moment the two have talked each
other out, and so they lounge upon the rail in
silence and gaze out over the valley. Anon the
gumchewer spits. By now the sun has reached
the skyline to the westward and the tops of the
[124]ice mountains are in gorgeous conflagration.
Scarlets war with golden oranges, and vermilions
fade into palpitating pinks. Below, in the
valley, the colours begin to fade slowly to a
uniform seashell grey. It is a scene of indescribable
loveliness; the wild reds of hades
splashed riotously upon the cold whites and pale
blues of heaven. The night train for Venice, a
long line of black coaches, is entering the town.
Somewhere below, apparently in the barracks,
a sunset gun is fired. After a silence of perhaps
two or three minutes, the Americans
gather fresh inspiration and resume their conversation.

The First Man

I have seen worse scenery.

The Second Man

Very pretty.

The First Man

Yes, sir; it’s well worth the money.

The Second Man

But the Rockies beat it all hollow.

[125]

The First Man

Oh, of course. They have nothing over
here that we can’t beat to a whisper. Just consider
the Rhine, for instance. The Hudson
makes it look like a country creek.

The Second Man

Yes, you’re right. Take away the castles,
and not even a German would give a hoot for
it. It’s not so much what a thing is over here
as what reputation it’s got. The whole thing
is a matter of press-agenting.

The First Man

I agree with you. There’s the “beautiful,
blue Danube.” To me it looks like a sewer. If
it’s blue, then I’m green. A man would hesitate
to drown himself in such a mud puddle.

The Second Man

But you hear the bands playing that waltz
all your life, and so you spend your good money
to come over here to see the river. And when
you get back home you don’t want to admit
that you’ve been a sucker, so you start touting
it from hell to breakfast. And then some
[126]other fellow comes over and does the same,
and so on and so on.

The First Man

Yes, it’s all a matter of boosting. Day in
and day out you hear about Westminster Abbey.
Every English book mentions it; it’s in
the newspapers almost as much as Jane Addams
or Caruso. Well, one day you pack your
grip, put on your hat and come over to have a
look—and what do you find? A one-horse
church full of statues! And every statue crying
for sapolio! You expect to see something
magnificent and enormous, something to knock
your eye out and send you down for the count.
What you do see is a second-rate graveyard
under roof. And when you examine into it,
you find that two-thirds of the graves haven’t
even got dead men in them! Whenever a
prominent Englishman dies, they put up a
statue to him in Westminster Abbey—no matter
where he happens to be buried! I call
that clever advertising. That’s the way to get
the crowd.

The Second Man

Yes, these foreigners know the game. They
have made millions out of it in Paris. Every
[127]time you go to see a musical comedy at home,
the second act is laid in Paris, and you see a
whole stageful of girls wriggling around, and
a lot of old sports having the time of their
lives. All your life you hear that Paris is
something rich and racy, something that makes
New York look like Roanoke, Virginia. Well,
you fall for the ballyho and come over to have
your fling—and then you find that Paris is
largely bunk. I spent a whole week in Paris,
trying to find something really awful. I hired
one of those Jew guides at five dollars a day
and told him to go the limit. I said to him:
“Don’t mind me. I am twenty-one years old.
Let me have the genuine goods.” But the
worst he could show me wasn’t half as bad as
what I have seen in Chicago. Every night I
would say to that Jew: “Come on, now Mr.
Cohen; let’s get away from these tinhorn shows.
Lead me to the real stuff.” Well, I believe the
fellow did his darndest, but he always fell down.
I almost felt sorry for him. In the end, when
I paid him off, I said to him: “Save up your
money, my boy, and come over to the States.
Let me know when you land. I’ll show you the
sights for nothing. This Baracca Class atmosphere
is killing you.”

[128]

The First Man

And yet Paris is famous all over the world.
No American ever came to Europe without
dropping off there to have a look. I once saw
the Bal Tabarin crowded with Sunday-school
superintendents returning from Jerusalem.
And when the sucker gets home he goes around
winking and hinting, and so the fake grows.
I often think the government ought to take a
hand. If the beer is inspected and guaranteed
in Germany, why shouldn’t the shows be inspected
and guaranteed in Paris?

The Second Man

I guess the trouble is that the Frenchmen
themselves never go to their own shows. They
don’t know what is going on. They see thousands
of Americans starting out every night
from the Place de l’Opéra and coming back
in the morning all boozed up, and so they assume
that everything is up to the mark. You’ll
find the same thing in Washington. No Washingtonian
has ever been up to the top of the
Washington monument. Once the elevator in
the monument was out of commission for two
weeks, and yet Washington knew nothing about
it. When the news got into the papers at last,
[129]it came from Macon, Georgia. Some honeymooner
from down there had written home
about it, roasting the government.

The First Man

Well, me for the good old U. S. A.! These
Alps are all right, I guess—but I can’t say I
like the coffee.

The Second Man

And it takes too long to get a letter from
Jersey City.

The First Man

Yes, that reminds me. Just before I started
up here this afternoon my wife got the Ladies’
Home Journal of the month before last. It
had been following us around for six weeks,
from London to Paris, to Berlin, to Munich, to
Vienna, to a dozen other places. Now she’s
fixed for the night. She won’t let up until she’s
read every word—the advertisements first.
And she’ll spend all day to-morrow sending
off for things; new collar hooks, breakfast
foods, complexion soaps and all that sort of
junk. Are you married yourself?

[130]

The Second Man

No; not yet.

The First Man

Well, then, you don’t know how it is. But
I guess you play poker.

The Second Man

Oh, to be sure.

The First Man

Well, let’s go down into the town and hunt
up some quiet barroom and have a civilised
evening. This scenery gives me the creeps.

The Second Man

I’m with you. But where are we going to
get any chips?

The First Man

Don’t worry. I carry a set with me. I made
my wife put it in the bottom of my trunk, along
with a bottle of real whiskey and a couple of
porous plasters. A man can’t be too careful
when he’s away from home——

[131]

They start along the terrace toward the station
of the funicular railway. The sun has
now disappeared behind the great barrier of
ice and the colours of the scene are fast softening.
All the scarlets and vermilions are gone;
a luminous pink bathes the whole picture in its
fairy light. The night train for Venice, leaving
the town, appears as a long string of blinking
lights. A chill breeze comes from the Alpine
vastness to westward. The deep silence of an
Alpine night settles down. The two Americans
continue their talk until they are out of hearing.
The breeze interrupts and obfuscates their
words, but now and then half a sentence comes
clearly.

The Second Man

Have you seen any American papers lately?

The First Man

Nothing But the Paris Herald—if you call
that a paper.

The Second Man

How are the Giants making out?

The First Man

... bad as usual ... rotten ... shake
up ...

[132]

The Second Man

... John McGraw ...

The First Man

... homesick ... give five dollars
for ...

The Second Man

... whole continent without a single ...

The First Man

... glad to get back ... damn tired ...

The Second Man.

... damn ...!

The First Man.

... damn ...!

[133]

VII.—FROM THE MEMOIRS
OF THE DEVIL

VII.—From the Memoirs of the
Devil

[135]

January 6.

And yet, and yet—is not all this contumely
a part of my punishment? To
be reviled by the righteous as the author
of all evil; worse still, to be venerated
by the wicked as the accomplice, nay, the
instigator, of their sins! A harsh, hard fate!
But should I not rejoice that I have been vouchsafed
the strength to bear it, that the ultimate
mercy is mine? Should I not be full of calm,
deep delight that I am blessed with the resignation
of the Psalmist (II Samuel XV, 26), the
sublime grace of the pious Hezekiah (II Kings
XX, 19)? If Hezekiah could bear the cruel
visitation of his erring upon his sons, why
should I, poor worm that I am, repine?

January 8.

All afternoon I watched the damned filing
in. With what horror that spectacle must fill
[136]every right-thinking man! Sometimes I think
that the worst of all penalties of sin is this:
that the sinful actually seem to be glad of their
sins (Psalms X, 4). I looked long and earnestly
into that endless procession of faces. In
not one of them did I see any sign of sorrow
or repentance. They marched in defiantly,
almost proudly. Ever and anon I heard a
snicker, sometimes a downright laugh: there
was a coarse buffoonery in the ranks. I turned
aside at last, unable to bear it longer. Here
they will learn what their laughter is worth!
(Eccl. II, 2.)

Among them I marked a female, young and
fair. How true the words of Solomon:
“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain!”
(Proverbs XXXI, 30.) I could not bring
myself to put down upon these pages the whole
record of that wicked creature’s shameless life.
Truly it has been said that “the lips of a strange
woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is
smoother than oil.” (Proverbs V, 3.) One
hears of such careers of evil-doing and can
scarcely credit them. Can it be that the children
of men are so deaf to all the warnings given
them, so blind to the vast certainty of their
punishment, so ardent in seeking temptation,
so lacking in holy fire to resist it? Such thoughts
[137]fill me with the utmost distress. Is not the command
to a moral life plain enough? Are we
not told to “live soberly, righteously, and
godly?” (Titus II, 11.) Are we not solemnly
warned to avoid the invitation of evil? (Proverbs
I, 10.)

January 9.

I have had that strange woman before me
and heard her miserable story. It is as I
thought. The child of a poor but pious mother,
(a widow with six children), she had every advantage
of a virtuous, consecrated home. The
mother, earning $6 a week, gave 25 cents of
it to foreign missions. The daughter, at the
tender age of 4, was already a regular attendant
at Sabbath-school. The good people of
the church took a Christian interest in the family,
and one of them, a gentleman of considerable
wealth, and an earnest, diligent worker for
righteousness, made it his special care to befriend
the girl. He took her into his office,
treating her almost as one of his own daughters.
She served him in the capacity of stenographer,
receiving therefor the wage of $7.00 a week,
a godsend to that lowly household. How truly,
indeed, it has been said: “Verily, there is a
[138]reward for the righteous.” (Psalms LVIII,
11.)

And now behold how powerful are the
snares of evil. (Genesis VI, 12.) There was
that devout and saintly man, ripe in good works,
a deacon and pillar in the church, a steadfast
friend to the needy and erring, a stalwart supporter
of his pastor in all forward-looking enterprises,
a tower of strength for righteousness
in his community, the father of four daughters.
And there was that shameless creature, that
evil woman, that sinister temptress. With the
noisome details I do not concern myself. Suffice
it to say that the vile arts of the hussy prevailed
over that noble and upright man—that
she enticed him, by adroit appeals to his sympathy,
into taking her upon automobile rides,
into dining with her clandestinely in the private
rooms of dubious hotels, and finally into accompanying
her upon a despicable, adulterous
visit to Atlantic City. And then, seeking to
throw upon him the blame for what she chose
to call her “wrong,” she held him up to public
disgrace and worked her own inexorable damnation
by taking her miserable life. Well hath
the Preacher warned us against the woman
whose “heart is snares and nets, and her hands
as bands.” (Eccl. VII, 26.) Well do we
[139]know the wreck and ruin that such agents of
destruction can work upon the innocent and
trusting. (Revelations XXI, 8; I Corinthians
VI, 18; Job XXXI, 12; Hosea IV, 11: Proverbs
VI, 26.)

January 11.

We have resumed our evening services—an
hour of quiet communion in the failing light.
The attendance, alas, is not as gratifying as it
might be, but the brethren who gather are
filled with holy zeal. It is inspiring to hear
their eloquent confessions of guilt and wrongdoing,
their trembling protestations of contrition.
Several of them are of long experience
and considerable proficiency in public speaking.
One was formerly a major in the Salvation
Army. Another spent twenty years in the
Dunkard ministry, finally retiring to devote
himself to lecturing on the New Thought. A
third was a Y. M. C. A. secretary in Iowa. A
fourth was the first man to lift his voice for
sex hygiene west of the Mississippi river.

All these men eventually succumbed to temptation,
and hence they are here, but I think
that no one who has ever glimpsed their secret
and inmost souls (as I have during our hours
of humble heart-searching together) will fail
[140]to testify to their inherent purity of character.
After all, it is not what we do but what we have
in our hearts that reveals our true worth.
(Joshua XXIV, 14.) As David so beautifully
puts it, it is “the imagination of the
thoughts.” (I Chronicles XXIII, 9.) I love
and trust these brethren. They are true and
earnest Christians. They loathe the temptation
to which they succumbed, and deplore the
weakness that made them yield. How the
memory at once turns to that lovely passage in
the Book of Job: “Wherefore I abhor myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.” Where is
there a more exquisite thought in all Holy
Writ?

January 14.

I have had that scarlet woman before me,
and invited her to join us in our inspiring evening
gatherings. For reply she mocked me.
Thus Paul was mocked by the Athenians. Thus
the children of Bethel mocked Elisha the
Prophet (II Kings II, 23). Thus the sinful
show their contempt, not only for righteousness
itself, but also for its humblest agents and advocates.
Nevertheless, I held my temper before
her. I indulged in no vain and worldly
recriminations. When she launched into her
[141]profane and disgraceful tirade against that
good and faithful brother, her benefactor and
victim, I held my peace. When she accused
him of foully destroying her, I returned her no
harsh words. Instead, I merely read aloud to
her those inspiring words from Revelation XIV,
10: “And the evil-doer shall be tormented with
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy
angels.” And then I smiled upon her and bade
her begone. Who am I, that I should hold
myself above the most miserable of sinners?

January 18.

Again that immoral woman. I had sent her
a few Presbyterian tracts: “The Way to Redemption,”
“The Story of a Missionary in
Polynesia,” “The White Slave,”—inspiring
and consecrated writings, all of them—comforting
to me in many a bitter hour. When she
came in I thought it was to ask me to pray with
her. (II Chronicles VII, 14.) But her heart,
it appears, is still shut to the words of salvation.
She renewed her unseemly denunciation of her
benefactor, and sought to overcome me with
her weeping. I found myself strangely drawn
toward her—almost pitying her. She approached
me, her eyes suffused with tears, her
red lips parted, her hair flowing about her
[142]shoulders. I felt myself drawn to her. I knew
and understood the temptation of that great
and good man. But by a powerful effort of the
will—or, should I say, by a sudden access of
grace?—I recovered and pushed her from me.
And then, closing my eyes to shut out the image
of her, I pronounced those solemn and awful
words: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!”
The effect was immediate: she emitted a moan
and departed. I had resisted her abhorrent
blandishments. (Proverbs I, 10.)

January 25.

I love the Book of Job. Where else in the
Scriptures is there a more striking picture of
the fate that overtakes those who yield to sin?
“They meet with darkness in the day-time, and
grope in the noon-day as in the night” (Job V,
14). And further on: “They grope in the
dark without light, and he maketh them to
stagger like a drunken man” (Job XII, 25). I
read these beautiful passages over and over
again. They comfort me.

January 28.

That shameless person once more. She
sends back the tracts I gave her—torn in
halves.

February 3.[143]

That American brother, the former Dunkard,
thrilled us with his eloquence at to-night’s
meeting. In all my days I have heard no more
affecting plea for right living. In words that
almost seemed to be of fire he set forth the
duty of all of us to combat sin wherever we
find it, and to scourge the sinner until he foregoes
his folly.

“It is not sufficient,” he said, “that we keep
our own hearts pure: we must also purge the
heart of our brother. And if he resist us, let
no false sympathy for him stay our hands. We
are charged with the care and oversight of his
soul. He is in our keeping. Let us seek at
first to save him with gentleness, but if he
draws back, let us unsheath the sword! We
must be deaf to his protests. We must not be
deceived by his casuistries. If he clings to his
sinning, he must perish.”

Cries of “Amen!” arose spontaneously from
the little band of consecrated workers. I have
never heard a more triumphant call to that
Service which is the very heart’s blood of righteousness.
Who could listen to it, and then
stay his hand?

I looked for that scarlet creature. She was
not there.

February 7.[144]

I have seen her again. She came, I thought,
in all humility. I received her gently, quoting
aloud the beautiful words of Paul in Colossians
III, 12: “Put on therefore, holy and beloved,
bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of
mind, meekness, long-suffering.” And then I
addressed her in calm, encouraging tones:
“Are you ready, woman, to put away your
evil-doing, and forswear your carnalities forevermore?
Have you repented of your black
and terrible sin? Do you ask for mercy?
Have you come in sackcloth and ashes?”

The effect, alas, was not what I planned.
Instead of yielding to my entreaty and casting
herself down for forgiveness, she yielded to her
pride and mocked me! And then, her heart
still full of the evils of the flesh, she tried to
tempt me! She approached me. She lifted up
her face to mine. She smiled at me with abominable
suggestiveness. She touched me with
her garment. She laid her hand upon my arm....
I felt my resolution going from me. I
was as one stricken with the palsy. My tongue
clave to the roof of my mouth. My hands
trembled. I tried to push her from me and
could not....

February 10.[145]

In all humility of spirit I set it down. The
words burn the paper; the fact haunts me like
an evil dream. I yielded to that soulless and
abominable creature. I kissed her.... And
then she laughed, making a mock of me in my
weakness, burning me with the hot iron of her
scorn, piercing my heart with the daggers of
her reviling. Laughed, and slapped my face!
Laughed, and spat in my eye! Laughed, and
called me a hypocrite!...

They have taken her away. Let her taste the
fire! Let her sin receive its meet and inexorable
punishment! Let righteousness prevail!
Let her go with “the fearful and unbelieving,
the abominable and murderers, the white-slave
traders and sorcerers.” Off with her to that
lake “which burneth with fire and brimstone!”
(Revelation XXI, 8.)....

Go, Jezebel! Go, Athaliah! Go, Painted
One! Thy sins have found thee out.

February 11.

I spoke myself at to-night’s meeting—simple
words, but I think their message was not lost.
We must wage forever the good fight. We
must rout the army of sin from its fortresses....

[147]

VIII.—LITANIES FOR
THE OVERLOOKED

VIII.—Litanies for the
Overlooked

[149]

I.—For Americanos

From scented hotel soap, and from the
Boy Scouts; from home cooking, and
from pianos with mandolin attachments;
from prohibition, and from Odd Fellows’
funerals; from Key West cigars, and from cold
dinner plates; from transcendentalism, and
from the New Freedom; from fat women
in straight-front corsets, and from Philadelphia
cream cheese; from The Star-Spangled
Banner, and from the International
Sunday-school Lessons; from rubber heels, and
from the college spirit; from sulphate of quinine,
and from Boston baked beans; from chivalry,
and from laparotomy; from the dithyrambs
of Herbert Kaufman, and from sport in
all its hideous forms; from women with pointed
fingernails, and from men with messianic delusions;
from the retailers of smutty anecdotes
about the Jews, and from the Lake Mohonk
[150]Conference; from Congressmen, vice crusaders,
and the heresies of Henry Van Dyke; from
jokes in the Ladies’ Home Journal, and from
the Revised Statutes of the United States; from
Colonial Dames, and from men who boast that
they take cold shower-baths every morning;
from the Drama League, and from malicious
animal magnetism; from ham and eggs, and
from the Weltanschauung of Kansas; from the
theory that a dark cigar is always a strong one,
and from the theory that a horse-hair put into
a bottle of water will turn into a snake; from
campaigns against profanity, and from the Pentateuch;
from anti-vivisection, and from women
who do not smoke; from wine-openers, and
from Methodists; from Armageddon, and
from the belief that a bloodhound never makes
a mistake; from sarcerdotal moving-pictures,
and from virtuous chorus girls; from bungalows,
and from cornets in B flat; from canned
soups, and from women who leave everything
to one’s honor; from detachable cuffs, and from
Lohengrin; from unwilling motherhood, and
from canary birds—good Lord, deliver us!

II.—For Hypochondriacs

From adenoids, and from chronic desquamative
nephritis; from Shiga’s bacillus, and from
[151]hysterotrachelorrhaphy; from mitral insufficiency,
and from Cheyne-Stokes breathing;
from the streptococcus pyogenes, and from
splanchnoptosis; from warts, wens, and the
spirochæte pallida; from exophthalmic goitre,
and from septicopyemia; from poisoning by
sewer-gas, and from the bacillus coli communis;
from anthrax, and from von Recklinghausen’s
disease; from recurrent paralysis of the laryngeal
nerve, and from pityriasis versicolor; from
mania-à-potu, and from nephrorrhaphy; from
the leptothrix, and from colds in the head; from
tape-worms, from jiggers and from scurvy;
from endocarditis, and from Romberg’s masticatory
spasm; from hypertrophic stenosis of
the pylorus, and from fits; from the bacillus
botulinus, and from salaam convulsions; from
cerebral monoplegia, and from morphinism;
from anaphylaxis, and from neuralgia in the eyeball;
from dropsy, and from dum-dum fever;
from autumnal catarrh, from coryza vasomotoria,
from idiosyncratic coryza, from pollen
catarrh, from rhinitis sympathetica, from rose
cold, from catarrhus æstivus, from periodic
hyperesthetic rhinitis, from heuasthma, from
catarrhe d’ été and from hay-fever—good
Lord, deliver us!

[152]

III.—For Music Lovers

From all piano-players save Paderewski,
Godowski and Mark Hambourg; and from the
William Tell and 1812 overtures; and from
bad imitations of Victor Herbert by Victor
Herbert; and from persons who express astonishment
that Dr. Karl Muck, being a German,
is devoid of all bulge, corporation, paunch or
leap-tick; and from the saxophone, the piccolo,
the cornet and the bagpipes; and from the
theory that America has no folk-music; and
from all symphonic poems by English composers;
and from the tall, willing, horse-chested,
ham-handed, quasi-gifted ladies who stagger
to their legs in gloomy drawing rooms after
bad dinners and poison the air with Tosti’s
Good-bye; and from the low prehensile, godless
laryngologists who prostitute their art to the
saving of tenors who are happily threatened
with loss of voice; and from clarinet cadenzas
more than two inches in length; and from the
first two acts of Il Trovatore; and from such
fluffy, xanthous whiskers as Lohengrins wear;
and from sentimental old maids who sink into
senility lamenting that Brahms never wrote an
opera; and from programme music, with or
without notes; and from Swiss bell-ringers, Vincent
[153]D’Indy, the Paris Opera, and Elgar’s
Salut d’Amour; and from the doctrine that
Massenet was a greater composer than Dvorák;
and from Italian bands and Schnellpostdoppelschraubendampfer
orchestras; and from Raff’s
Cavatina and all of Tschaikowsky except ten
per centum; and from prima donna conductors
who change their programmes without notice,
and so get all the musical critics into a sweat;
and from the abandoned hussies who sue tenors
for breach of promise; and from all alleged
musicians who do not shrivel to the size of five-cent
cigars whenever they think of old Josef
Haydn—good Lord, deliver us!

IV.—For Hangmen

From clients who delay the exercises by
pausing to make long and irrelevant speeches
from the scaffold, or to sing depressing Methodist
hymns; and from medical examiners who
forget their stethoscopes, and clamor for waits
while messenger boys are sent for them; and
from official witnesses who faint at the last
minute, and have to be hauled out by the deputy
sheriffs; and from undertakers who keep looking
at their watches and hinting obscenely that
they have other engagements at 10:30; and
[154]from spiritual advisers who crowd up at the
last minute and fall through the trap with the
condemned—good Lord, deliver us!

V.—For Magazine Editors

From Old Subscribers who write in to say
that the current number is the worst magazine
printed since the days of the New York Galaxy;
and from elderly poetesses who have read all
the popular text-books of sex hygiene, and believe
all the bosh in them about the white slave
trade, and so suspect the editor, and even the
publisher, of sinister designs; and from stories
in which a rising young district attorney gets
the dead wood upon a burly political boss
named Terrence O’Flaherty, and then falls
in love with Mignon, his daughter, and has to
let him go; and from stories in which a married
lady, just about to sail for Capri with her husband’s
old Corpsbruder, is dissuaded from her
purpose by the news that her husband has lost
$700,000 in Wall Street and is on his way home
to weep on her shoulder; and from one-act
plays in which young Cornelius Van Suydam
comes home from The Club at 11:55 P. M.
on Christmas Eve, dismisses Dodson, his Man,
with the compliments of the season, and draws
[155]up his chair before the open fire to dream of
his girl, thus preparing the way for the entrance
of Maxwell, the starving burglar, and for the
scene in which Maxwell’s little daughter, Fifi,
following him up the fire-escape, pleads with
him to give up his evil courses; and from poems
about war in which it is argued that thousands
of young men are always killed, and that their
mothers regret to hear of it; and from essays
of a sweet and whimsical character, in which
the author refers to himself as “we,” and ends
by quoting Bergson, Washington Irving or
Agnes Repplier; and from epigrams based on
puns, good or bad; and from stories beginning,
“It was the autumn of the year 1950”;
and from stories embodying quotations from
Omar Khayyam, and full of a mellow pessimism;
and from stories in which the gay nocturnal
life of the Latin Quarter is described by
an author living in Dubuque, Iowa; and from
stories of thought transference, mental healing
and haunted houses; and from newspaper
stories in which a cub reporter solves the mystery
of the Snodgrass murder and is promoted
to dramatic critic on the field, or in which a city
editor who smokes a corn-cob pipe falls in love
with a sob-sister; and from stories about trained
nurses, young dramatists, baseball players,
[156]heroic locomotive engineers, settlement workers,
clergymen, yeggmen, cowboys, Italians,
employés of the Hudson Bay Company and
great detectives; and from stories in which the
dissolute son of a department store owner tries
to seduce a working girl in his father’s employ
and then goes on the water wagon and marries
her as a tribute to her virtue; and from stories
in which the members of a yachting party are
wrecked on a desert island in the South Pacific,
and the niece of the owner of the yacht falls
in love with the bo’sun; and from manuscripts
accompanied by documents certifying that the
incidents and people described are real, though
cleverly disguised; and from authors who send
in saucy notes when their offerings are returned
with insincere thanks; and from lady authors
who appear with satirical letters of introduction
from the low, raffish rogues who edit rival
magazines—good Lord, deliver us!

[157]

IX.—ASEPSIS

IX.—Asepsis. A Deduction in
Scherzo Form

[159]

Characters:

• A Clergyman


• A Bride


• Four Bridesmaids


• A Bridegroom


• A Best Man


• The Usual Crowd

Place—The surgical amphitheatre in a
hospital.

Time—Noon of a fair day.

Seats rising in curved tiers. The operating
pit paved with white tiles. The usual operating
table has been pushed to one side, and in place
of it there is a small glass-topped bedside table.
[160]On it, a large roll of aseptic cotton, several pads
of gauze, a basin of bichloride, a pair of clinical
thermometers in a little glass of alcohol,
a dish of green soap, a beaker of two per cent.
carbolic acid, and a microscope. In one corner
stands a sterilizer, steaming pleasantly like a
tea kettle. There are no decorations—no flowers,
no white ribbons, no satin cushions. To
the left a door leads into the Anesthetic Room.
A pungent smell of ether, nitrous oxide, iodine,
chlorine, wet laundry and scorched gauze.
Temperature: 98.6 degrees Fahr.

The Clergyman is discovered standing behind
the table in an expectant attitude. He is
in the long white coat of a surgeon, with his
head wrapped in white gauze and a gauze
respirator over his mouth. His chunkiness suggests
a fat, middle-aged Episcopal rector, but
it is impossible to see either his face or his vestments.
He wears rubber gloves of a dirty
orange color, evidently much used. The
Bridegroom and The Best Man have just
emerged from the Anesthetic Room and are
standing before him. Both are dressed exactly
as he is, save that The Bridegroom’s rubber
gloves are white. The benches running up the
amphitheatre are filled with spectators, chiefly
[161]women. They are in dingy oilskins, and most
of them also wear respirators.

After a long and uneasy pause The Bride
comes in from the Anesthetic Room on the arm
of her Father, with the Four Bridesmaids
following by twos. She is dressed in what appears
to be white linen, with a long veil of
aseptic gauze. The gauze testifies to its late
and careful sterilization by yellowish scorches.
There is a white rubber glove upon the Bride’s
right hand, but that belonging to her left hand
has been removed. Her Father is dressed
like the Best Man. The Four Bridesmaids
are in the garb of surgical nurses, with their
hair completely concealed by turbans of gauze.
As the Bride takes her place before the
Clergyman, with the Bridegroom at her
right, there is a faint, snuffling murmur among
the spectators. It hushes suddenly as the
Clergyman clears his throat.

The Clergyman

(In sonorous, booming tones, somewhat muffled
by his respirator.) Dearly beloved, we
are gathered here together in the face of this
company to join together this man and this
woman in holy matrimony, which is commended
[162]by God to be honorable among men, and therefore
is not to be entered into inadvisedly or
carelessly, or without due surgical precautions,
but reverently, cleanly, sterilely, soberly, scientifically,
and with the nearest practicable approach
to bacteriological purity. Into this laudable
and non-infectious state these two persons
present come now to be joined and quarantined.
If any man can show just cause, either clinically
or microscopically, why they may not be safely
sutured together, let him now come forward
with his charts, slides and cultures, or else hereafter
forever hold his peace.

(Several spectators shuffle their feet, and an
old maid giggles, but no one comes forward.)

The Clergyman

(To the Bride and Bridegroom): I require
and charge both of you, as ye will answer
in the dreadful hour of autopsy, when the
secrets of all lives shall be disclosed, that if
either of you know of any lesion, infection, malaise,
congenital defect, hereditary taint or other
impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined
together in eugenic matrimony, ye do now confess
it. For be ye well assured that if any
persons are joined together otherwise than in
[163]a state of absolute chemical and bacteriological
innocence, their marriage will be septic, unhygienic,
pathogenic and toxic, and eugenically
null and void.

(The Bridegroom hands over a long envelope,
from which the Clergyman extracts a
paper bearing a large red seal.)

The Clergyman

(Reading): We, and each of us, having
subjected the bearer, John Doe, to a rigid clinical
and laboratory examination, in accordance
with Form B-3 of the United States Public
Health Service, do hereby certify that, to the
best of our knowledge and belief, he is free
from all disease, taint, defect, deformity or
hereditary blemish, saving as noted herein.
Temperature per ora, 98.6. Pulse, 76, strong.
Respiration, 28.5. Wassermann,—2. Hb.,
114%. Phthalein, 1st. hr., 46%; 2nd hr., 21%.
W. B. C., 8,925. Free gastric HCl, 11.5%.
No stasis. No lactic acid. Blood pressure,
122/77. No albuminuria. No glycosuria.
Lumbar puncture: clear fluid, normal pressure.

Defects Noted. 1. Left heel jerk feeble.
2. Caries in five molars. 3. Slight acne rosacea.
4. Slight inequality of curvature in meridians
[164]of right cornea. 5. Nicotine stain on
right forefinger, extending to middle of second
phalanx.

(Signed)

Sigismund Kraus, M.D.

Wm. T. Robertson, M.D.

James Simpson, M.D.

Subscribed and sworn to before me, a Notary
Public for the Borough of Manhattan, City of
New York, State of New York.

(Seal) Abraham Lechetitsky.

So much for the reading of the minutes. (To
the Bride): Now for yours, my dear.

(The Bride hands up a similar envelope,
from which The Clergyman extracts a similar
document. But instead of reading it aloud,
he delicately runs his eye through it in silence.)

The Clergyman

(The reading finished) Very good. Very
creditable. You must see some good oculist
about your astigmatism, my dear. Surely you
want to avoid glasses. Come to my study on
your return and I’ll give you the name of a
trustworthy man. And now let us proceed with
the ceremony of marriage. (To The Bridegroom):
John, wilt thou have this woman to
[165]be thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy
state of eugenic matrimony? Wilt thou love
her, comfort her, protect her from all protozoa
and bacteria, and keep her in good health; and,
forsaking all other, keep thee unto her only, so
long as ye both shall live? If so, hold out your
tongue.

(The Bridegroom holds out his tongue and
The Clergyman inspects it critically.)

The Clergyman

(Somewhat dubiously) Fair. I have seen
worse.... Do you smoke?

The Bridegroom

(Obviously lying) Not much.

The Clergyman

Well, how much?

The Bridegroom

Say ten cigarettes a day.

The Clergyman

And the stain noted on your right posterior
phalanx by the learned medical examiners?

[166]

The Bridegroom

Well, say fifteen.

The Clergyman

(Waggishly) Or twenty to be safe. Better
taper off to ten. At all events, make twenty
the limit. How about the booze?

The Bridegroom

(Virtuously) Never!

The Clergyman

What! Never?

The Bridegroom

Well, never again!

The Clergyman

So they all say. The answer is almost part
of the liturgy. But have a care, my dear fellow!
The true eugenist eschews the wine cup.
In every hundred children of a man who ingests
one fluid ounce of alcohol a day, six will be left-handed,
twelve will be epileptics and nineteen
will suffer from adolescent albuminuria, with
[167]delusions of persecution.... Have you ever
had anthrax?

The Bridegroom

Not yet.

The Clergyman

Eczema?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Pott’s disease?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Cholelithiasis?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Do you have a feeling of distention after
meals?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Have you a dry, hacking cough?

[168]

The Bridegroom

Not at present.

The Clergyman

Are you troubled with insomnia?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Dyspepsia?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Agoraphobia?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Do you bolt your food?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Have you lightning pains in the legs?

[169]

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Are you a bleeder? Have you hæmophilia?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

Erthrocythæmia? Nephroptosis? Fibrinous
bronchitis? Salpingitis? Pylephlebitis?
Answer yes or no.

The Bridegroom

No. No. No. No. No.

The Clergyman

Have you ever been refused life insurance?
If so, when, by what company or companies, and
why?

The Bridegroom

No.

The Clergyman

What is a staphylococcus?

The Bridegroom

No.

[170]

The Clergyman

(Sternly) What?

The Bridegroom

(Nervously) Yes.

The Clergyman

(Coming to the rescue) Wilt them have this
woman et cetera? Answer yes or no.

The Bridegroom

I will.

The Clergyman

(Turning to The Bride) Mary, wilt thou
have this gentleman to be thy wedded husband,
to live together in the holy state of aseptic matrimony?
Wilt thou love him, serve him, protect
him from all adulterated victuals, and keep him
hygienically clothed; and forsaking all others,
keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall
live? If so——

The Bride

(Instantly and loudly) I will.

[171]

The Clergyman

Not so fast! First, there is the little ceremony
of the clinical thermometers. (He takes
up one of the thermometers.) Open your
mouth, my dear. (He Inserts the thermometer.)
Now hold it there while you count one
hundred and fifty. And you, too. (To The
Bridegroom.) I had almost forgotten you.
(The Bridegroom opens his mouth and the
other thermometer is duly planted. While the
two are counting, The Clergyman attempts to
turn back one of The Bride’s eyelids, apparently
searching for trachoma, but his rubber
gloves impede the operation and so he gives it
up. It is now time to read the thermometers.
The Bridegroom’s is first removed.)

The Clergyman

(Reading the scale) Ninety-nine point nine.
Considering everything, not so bad. (Then he
removes and reads The Bride’s.) Ninety-eight
point six. Exactly normal. Cool, collected,
at ease. The classical self-possession of
the party of the second part. And now, my
dear, may I ask you to hold out your tongue?
(The Bride does so.)

[172]

The Clergyman

Perfect.... There; that will do. Put it
back.... And now for a few questions—just
a few. First, do you use opiates in any form?

The Bride

No.

The Clergyman

Have you ever had goitre?

The Bride

No.

The Clergyman

Yellow fever?

The Bride

No.

The Clergyman

Hæmatomata?

The Bride

No.

The Clergyman

Siriasis or tachycardia?

The Bride

No.

[173]

The Clergyman

What did your maternal grandfather die of?

The Bride

Of chronic interstitial nephritis.

The Clergyman

(Interested) Ah, our old friend Bright’s!
A typical case, I take, with the usual polyuria,
œdema of the glottis, flame-shaped retinal
hemorrhages and cardiac dilatation?

The Bride

Exactly.

The Clergyman

And terminating, I suppose, with the classical
uræmic symptoms—dyspnœa, convulsions,
uræmic amaurosis, coma and collapse?

The Bride

Including Cheyne-Stokes breathing.

The Clergyman

Ah, most interesting! A protean and beautiful
malady! But at the moment, of course,
[174]we can’t discuss it profitably. Perhaps later on....
Your father, I assume, is alive?

The Bride

(Indicating him) Yes.

The Clergyman

Well, then, let us proceed. Who giveth this
woman to be married to this man?

The Bride’s Father

(With a touch of stage fright.) I do.

The Clergyman

(Reassuringly) You are in good health?

The Bride’s Father

Yes.

The Clergyman

No dizziness in the morning?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

No black spots before the eyes?

[175]

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

No vague pains in the small of the back?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

Gout?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

Chilblains?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

Sciatica?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

Buzzing in the ears?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

Myopia? Angina pectoris?

[176]

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

Malaria? Marasmus? Chlorosis? Tetanus?
Quinsy? Housemaid’s knee?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

You had measles, I assume, in your infancy?

The Bride’s Father

Yes.

The Clergyman

Chicken pox? Mumps? Scarlatina? Cholera
morbus? Diphtheria?

The Bride’s Father

Yes. Yes. No. Yes. No.

The Clergyman

You are, I assume, a multipara?

The Bride’s Father

A what?

[177]

The Clergyman

That is to say, you have had more than one
child?

The Bride’s Father

No.

The Clergyman

(Professionally) How sad! You will miss
her!

The Bride’s Father

One job like this is en——

The Clergyman

(Interrupting suavely) But let us proceed.
The ceremony must not be lengthened unduly,
however interesting. We now approach the
benediction.

(Dipping his gloved hands into the basin of
bichloride, he joins the right hands of The
Bride and The Bridegroom.)

The Clergyman

(To The Bridegroom) Repeat after me:
“I, John, take thee, Mary, to be my wedded
and aseptic wife, to have and to hold from this
[178]day forward, for better, for worse, for richer,
for poorer, in sickness, convalescence, relapse
and health, to love and to cherish, till death do
us part; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

(The Bridegroom duly repeats the formula,
The Clergyman now looses their hands, and
after another dip into the bichloride, joins them
together again.)

The Clergyman

(To The Bride) Repeat after me: “I,
Mary, take thee, John, to be my aseptic and
eugenic husband, to have and to hold from this
day forward, for better, for worse, for richer,
for poorer, to love, to cherish and to nurse, till
death do us part; and thereto I give thee my
troth.”

(The Bride duly promises. The Best Man
then hands over the ring, which The Clergyman
drops into the bichloride. It turns green.
He fishes it up again, wipes it dry with a piece
of aseptic cotton and presents it to The Bridegroom,
who places it upon the third finger of
The Bride’s left hand. Then The Clergyman
goes on with the ceremony, The Bridegroom
repeating after him.)

[179]

The Clergyman

Repeat after me: “With this sterile ring I
thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee
endow.”

(The Clergyman then joins the hands of
The Bride and Bridegroom once more, and
dipping his own right hand into the bichloride,
solemnly sprinkles the pair.)

The Clergyman

Those whom God hath joined together, let
no pathogenic organism put asunder. (To the
assembled company.) Forasmuch as John and
Mary have consented together in aseptic wedlock,
and have witnessed the same by the exchange
of certificates, and have given and
pledged their troth, and have declared the same
by giving and receiving an aseptic ring, I pronounce
that they are man and wife. In the
name of Mendel, of Galton, of Havelock Ellis
and of David Starr Jordan. Amen.

(The Bride and Bridegroom now kiss, for
the first and last time, after which they gargle
with two per cent carbolic and march out of the
room, followed by the Bride’s Father and
[180]the spectators. The Best Man, before departing
after them, hands The Clergyman a
ten-dollar gold-piece in a small phial of twenty
per cent bichloride. The Clergyman, after
pocketing it, washes his hands with green soap.
The Bridesmaids proceed to clean up the room
with the remaining bichloride. This done, they
and The Clergyman go out. As soon as they
are gone, the operating table is pushed back into
place by an orderly, a patient is brought in, and
a surgeon proceeds to cut off his leg.)

[181]

X.—TALES OF THE MORAL
AND PATHOLOGICAL

X.—Tales of the Moral and
Pathological

[183]

I.—The Rewards of Science

Once upon a time there was a surgeon
who spent seven years perfecting an
extraordinarily delicate and laborious
operation for the cure of a rare and
deadly disease. In the process he wore
out $400 worth of knives and saws and
used up $6,000 worth of ether, splints, guinea
pigs, homeless dogs and bichloride of mercury.
His board and lodging during the seven years
came to $2,875. Finally he got a patient and
performed the operation. It took eight hours
and cost him $17 more than his fee of $20....

One day, two months after the patient was
discharged as cured, the surgeon stopped in his
rambles to observe a street parade. It was the
annual turnout of Good Hope Lodge, No. 72,
of the Patriotic Order of American Rosicrucians.
The cured patient, marching as Supreme
Worthy Archon, wore a lavender baldric, a pea-green
[184]sash, an aluminum helmet and scarlet
gauntlets, and carried an ormolu sword and
the blue polka-dot flag of a rear-admiral....

With a low cry the surgeon jumped down a
sewer and was seen no more.

II.—The Incomparable Physician

The eminent physician, Yen Li-Shen, being
called in the middle of the night to the bedside
of the rich tax-gatherer, Chu Yi-Foy, found his
distinguished patient suffering from a spasm of
the liver. An examination of the pulse, tongue,
toe-nails, and hair-roots revealing the fact that
the malady was caused by the presence of a multitude
of small worms in the blood, the learned
doctor forthwith dispatched his servant to his
surgery for a vial of gnats’ eyes dissolved in
the saliva of men executed by strangling, that
being the remedy advised by Li Tan-Kien and
other high authorities for the relief of this painful
and dangerous condition.

When the servant returned the patient was
so far gone that Cheyne-Stokes breathing had
already set in, and so the doctor decided to administer
the whole contents of the vial—an
heroic dose, truly, for it has been immemorially
held that even so little as the amount that will
[185]cling to the end of a horse hair is sufficient to
cure. Alas, in his professional zeal and excitement,
the celebrated pathologist permitted his
hand to shake like a myrtle leaf in a Spring
gale, and so he dropped not only the contents
of the vial, but also the vial itself down the
œsophagus of his moribund patient.

The accident, however, did not impede the
powerful effects of this famous remedy. In ten
minutes Chu Yi-Foy was so far recovered that
he asked for a plate of rice stewed with plums,
and by morning he was able to leave his bed
and receive the reports of his spies, informers
and extortioners. That day he sent for Dr.
Yen and in token of his gratitude, for he was
a just and righteous man, settled upon him in
due form of law, and upon his heirs and assigns
in perpetuity, the whole rents, rates, imposts
and taxes, amounting to no less than ten thousand
Hangkow taels a year, of two of the
streets occupied by money-changers, bird-cage
makers and public women in the town of Szu-Loon,
and of the related alleys, courts and lanes.
And Dr. Yen, with his old age and the old age
of his seven sons and thirty-one grandsons now
safely provided for, retired from the practise of
his art, and devoted himself to a tedious scientific
inquiry (long the object of his passionate
[186]aspiration) into the precise physiological relation
between gravel in the lower lobe of the
heart and the bursting of arteries in the arms
and legs.

So passed many years, while Dr. Yen pursued
his researches and sent his annual reports of
progress to the Academy of Medicine at Chan-Si,
and Chu Yi-Foy increased his riches and his
influence, so that his arm reached out from the
mountains to the sea. One day, in his eightieth
year, Chu Yi-Foy fell ill again, and, having no
confidence in any other physician, sent once
more for the learned and now venerable Dr.
Yen.

“I have a pain,” he said, “in my left hip,
where the stomach dips down over the spleen.
A large knob has formed there. A lizard, perhaps,
has got into me. Or perhaps a small
hedge-hog.”

Dr. Yen thereupon made use of the test for
lizards and hedge-hogs—to wit, the application
of madder dye to the Adam’s apple, turning it
lemon yellow if any sort of reptile is within, and
violet if there is a mammal—but it failed to
operate as the books describe. Being thus led
to suspect a misplaced and wild-growing bone,
perhaps from the vertebral column, the doctor
decided to have recourse to surgery, and so,
[187]after the proper propitiation of the gods, he
administered to his eminent patient a draught of
opium water, and having excluded the wailing
women of the household from the sick chamber,
he cut into the protuberance with a small, sharp
knife, and soon had the mysterious object in
his hand.... It was the vial of dissolved
gnats’ eyes—still full and tightly corked!
Worse, it was not the vial of dissolved gnats’
eyes, but a vial of common burdock juice—the
remedy for infants griped by their mothers’
milk....

But when the eminent Chu Yi-Foy, emerging
from his benign stupor, made a sign that he
would gaze upon the cause of his distress, it
was a bone that Dr. Yen Li-Shen showed him—an
authentic bone, ovoid and evil-looking—and
lately the knee cap of one Ho Kwang, brass
maker in the street of Szchen-Kiang. Dr. Yen
carried this bone in his girdle to keep off the
black, blue and yellow plagues. Chu Yi-Foy,
looking upon it, wept the soft, grateful tears of
an old man.

“This is twice,” he said, “that you, my
learned friend, have saved my life. I have hitherto
given you, in token of my gratitude, the
rents, rates, imposts and taxes, of two streets,
and of the related alleys, courts and lanes. I
[188]now give you the weight of that bone in diamonds,
in rubies, in pearls or in emeralds, as
you will. And whichever of the four you
choose, I give you the other three also. For
is it not said by K’ung Fu-tsze, ‘The good physician
bestows what the gods merely promise’?”

And Dr. Yen Li-Shen lowered his eyes and
bowed. But he was too old in the healing art
to blush.

III.—Neighbours

Once I lay in hospital a fortnight while an
old man died by inches across the hall. Apparently
a very painful, as it was plainly a very
tedious business. I would hear him breathing
heavily for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then
he would begin shrieking in agony and yelling
for his orderly: “Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!”
Now and then a nurse would come into my room
and report progress: “The old fellow’s kidneys
have given up; he can’t last the night,” or,
“I suppose the next choking spell will fetch
him.” Thus he fought his titanic fight with the
gnawing rats of death, and thus I lay listening,
myself quickly recovering from a sanguinary
and indecent operation.... Did the shrieks
of that old man startle me, worry me, torture
me, set my nerves on edge? Not at all. I had
[189]my meals to the accompaniment of piteous yells
to God, but day by day I ate them more heartily.
I lay still in bed and read a book or smoked
a cigar. I damned my own twinges and fading
malaises. I argued ignorantly with the surgeons.
I made polite love to the nurses who
happened in. At night I slept soundly, the noise
retreating benevolently as I dropped off. And
when the old fellow died at last, snarling and
begging for mercy with his last breath, the unaccustomed
stillness made me feel lonesome and
sad, like a child robbed of a tin whistle....
But when a young surgeon came in half an hour
later, and, having dined to his content, testified
to it by sucking his teeth, cold shudders ran
through me from stem to stern.

IV.—From the Chart

Temperature: 99.7. Respiration: rising to
65 and then suddenly suspended. The face is
flushed, and the eyes are glazed and half-closed.
There is obviously a sub-normal reaction to external
stimuli. A fly upon the ear is unnoticed.
The auditory nerve is anesthetic. There is a
swaying of the whole body and an apparent
failure of co-ordination, probably the effect of
some disturbance in the semi-circular canals of
[190]the ear. The hands tremble and then clutch
wildly. The head is inclined forward as if to
approach some object on a level with the
shoulder. The mouth stands partly open, and
the lips are puckered and damp. Of a sudden
there is a sound as of a deep and labored inspiration,
suggesting the upward curve of Cheyne-Stokes
breathing. Then comes silence for 40
seconds, followed by a quick relaxation of the
whole body and a sharp gasp....

One of the internes has kissed a nurse.

V.—The Interior Hierarchy

The world awaits that pundit who will study
at length the relative respectability of the inward
parts of man—his pipes and bellows, his
liver and lights. The inquiry will take him far
into the twilight zones of psychology. Why is
the vermiform appendix so much more virtuous
and dignified than its next-door neighbor, the
cæcum? Considered physiologically, anatomically,
pathologically, surgically, the cæcum is
the decenter of the two. It has more cleanly
habits; it is more beautiful; it serves a more
useful purpose; it brings its owner less often
to the doors of death. And yet what would one
think of a lady who mentioned her cæcum?
[191]But the appendix—ah, the appendix! The appendix
is pure, polite, ladylike, even noble. It
confers an unmistakable stateliness, a stamp of
position, a social consequence upon its possessor.
And, by one of the mysteries of viscerology, it
confers even more stateliness upon its ex-possessor!

Alas, what would you! Why is the stomach
such a libertine and outlaw in England, and so
highly respectable in the United States? No
Englishman of good breeding, save he be far
gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the
presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal
Family. To avoid the necessity—for Englishmen,
too, are subject to the colic—he employs
various far-fetched euphemisms, among them,
the poetical Little Mary. No such squeamishness
is known in America. The American discusses
his stomach as freely as he discusses his
business. More, he regards its name with a
degree of respect verging upon reverence—and
so he uses it as a euphemism for the whole
region from the diaphragm to the pelvic arch.
Below his heart he has only a stomach and a
vermiform appendix.

In the Englishman that large region is filled
entirely by his liver, at least in polite conversation.
He never mentions his kidneys save to
[192]his medical adviser, but he will tell even a parlor
maid that he is feeling liverish. “Sorry, old
chap; I’m not up to it. Been seedy for a fortnight.
Touch of liver, I dessay. Never felt
quite fit since I came Home. Bones full of
fever. Damned old liver always kicking up.
Awfully sorry, old fellow. Awsk me again.
Glad to, pon my word.” But never the American!
Nay, the American keeps his liver for his
secret thoughts. Hobnailed it may be, and
the most interesting thing within his frontiers,
but he would blush to mention it to a lady.

Myself intensely ignorant of anatomy, and
even more so of the punctilio, I yet attempted,
one rainy day, a roster of the bodily parts in
the order of their respectability. Class I was
small and exclusive; when I had put in the heart,
the brain, the hair, the eyes and the vermiform
appendix, I had exhausted all the candidates.
Here were the five aristocrats, of dignity even
in their diseases—appendicitis, angina pectoris,
aphasia, acute alcoholism, astigmatism: what a
row of a’s! Here were the dukes, the cardinals,
nay, the princes of the blood. Here were the
supermembers; the beyond-parts.

In Class II I found a more motley throng,
led by the collar-bone on the one hand and the
[193]tonsils on the other. And in Class III—but
let me present my classification and have done:

CLASS II

• Collar-bone


• Stomach (American)


• Liver (English)


• Bronchial tubes


• Arms (excluding elbows)


• Tonsils


• Vocal chords


• Ears


• Cheeks


• Chin

CLASS III

• Elbows


• Ankles


• Aorta


• Teeth (if natural)


• Shoulders


• Windpipe


• Lungs


• Neck


• Jugular vein

CLASS IV

• Stomach (English)


• Liver (American)


• Solar plexus[194]


• Hips


• Calves


• Pleura


• Nose


• Feet (bare)


• Shins

CLASS V

• Teeth (if false)


• Heels


• Toes


• Kidneys


• Knees


• Diaphragm


• Thyroid gland


• Legs (female)


• Scalp

CLASS VI

• Thighs


• Paunch


• Œsophagus


• Spleen


• Pancreas


• Gall-bladder


• Cæcum

I made two more classes, VII and VIII, but
they entered into anatomical details impossible
[195]of discussion in a book designed to be read
aloud at the domestic hearth. Perhaps I shall
print them in the Medical Times at some future
time. As my classes stand, they present mysteries
enough. Why should the bronchial tubes
(Class II) be so much lordlier than the lungs
(Class III) to which they lead? And why
should the œsophagus (Class VI) be so much
less lordly than the stomach (Class II in the
United States, Class IV in England) to which it
leads? And yet the fact in each case is known
to us all. To have a touch of bronchitis is
almost fashionable; to have pneumonia is
merely bad luck. The stomach, at least in
America, is so respectable that it dignifies even
seasickness, but I have never heard of any decent
man who ever had any trouble with his
œsophagus.

If you wish a short cut to a strange organ’s
standing, study its diseases. Generally speaking,
they are sure indices. Let us imagine a
problem: What is the relative respectability
of the hair and the scalp, close neighbors, offspring
of the same osseous tissue? Turn to
baldness and dandruff, and you have your answer.
To be bald is no more than a genial
jocosity, a harmless foible—but to have dandruff
is almost as bad as to have beri-beri.
[196]Hence the fact that the hair is in Class I, while
the scalp is at the bottom of Class V. So again
and again. To break one’s collar-bone (Class
II) is to be in harmony with the nobility and
gentry; to crack one’s shin (Class IV) is merely
vulgar. And what a difference between having
one’s tonsils cut out (Class II) and getting a
new set of false teeth (Class V)!

Wherefore? Why? To what end? Why
is the stomach so much more respectable (even
in England) than the spleen; the liver (even in
America) than the pancreas; the windpipe than
the œsophagus; the pleura than the diaphragm?
Why is the collar-bone the undisputed king of
the osseous frame? One can understand the
supremacy of the heart: it plainly bosses the
whole vascular system. But why do the bronchial
tubes wag the lungs? Why is the chin
superior to the nose? The ankles to the shins?
The solar plexus to the gall-bladder?

I am unequal to the penetration of this great
ethical, æsthetical and sociological mystery.
But in leaving it, let me point to another and
antagonistic one: to wit, that which concerns
those viscera of the lower animals that we use
for food. The kidneys in man are far down
the scale—far down in Class V, along with
false teeth, the scalp and the female leg. But
[197]the kidneys of the beef steer, the calf, the sheep,
or whatever animal it is whose kidneys we eat—the
kidneys of this creature are close to the
borders of Class I. What is it that young Capt.
Lionel Basingstoke, M.P., always orders when
he drops in at Gatti’s on his way from his
chambers in the Albany to that flat in Tyburnia
where Mrs. Vaughn-Grimsby is waiting for him
to rescue her from her cochon of a husband?
What else but deviled kidneys? Who ever
heard of a gallant young English seducer who
did’t eat deviled kidneys—not now and then,
not only on Sundays and legal holidays, but
every day, every evening?

Again, and by way of postscript No. 2, concentrate
your mind upon sweetbreads. Sweetbreads
are made in Chicago of the pancreases
of horned cattle. From Portland to Portland
they belong to the first class of refined delicatessen.
And yet, on the human plane, the pancreas
is in Class VI, along with the cæcum
and the paunch. And, contrariwise, there is
tripe—“the stomach of the ox or of some other
ruminant.” The stomach of an American citizen
belongs to Class II, and even the stomach
of an Englishman is in Class IV, but tripe is
far down in Class VIII. And chitterlings—the
excised vermiform appendix of the cow. Of
[198]all the towns in Christendom, Richmond, Va.,
is the only one wherein a self-respecting white
man would dare to be caught wolfing a chitterling
in public.

[199]

XI.—THE JAZZ WEBSTER

XI. The Jazz Webster

[201]

Actor. One handicapped more by a
wooden leg than by a wooden head.

Adultery. Democracy applied to love.

Alimony. The ransom that the happy pay
to the devil.

Anti-Vivisectionist. One who gags at a
guinea-pig and swallows a baby.

Archbishop. A Christian ecclesiastic of a
rank superior to that attained by Christ.

Argument. A means of persuasion. The
agents of argumentation under a democracy,
in the order of their potency, are (a) whiskey,
(b) beer, (c) cigars, (d) tears.

Axiom. Something that everyone believes.
When everyone begins to believe anything it
ceases to be true. For example, the notion that
the homeliest girl in the party is the safest.

Ballot Box. The altar of democracy.
The cult served upon it is the worship of jackals
by jackasses.

Brevity. The quality that makes cigarettes,
[202]speeches, love affairs and ocean voyages
bearable.

Celebrity. One who is known to many
persons he is glad he doesn’t know.

Chautauqua. A place in which persons
who are not worth talking to listen to that which
is not worth hearing.

Christian. One who believes that God
notes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked half
to death by the fall of a Sunday-school superintendent;
one who is willing to serve three Gods,
but draws the line at one wife.

Christian Science. The theory that, since
the sky rockets following a wallop in the
eye are optical delusions, the wallop itself is
a delusion and the eye another.

Church. A place in which gentlemen who
have never been to Heaven brag about it to
persons who will never get there.

Civilization. A concerted effort to remedy
the blunders and check the practical joking of
God.

Clergyman. A ticket speculator outside
the gates of Heaven.

Conscience. The inner voice which warns
us that someone is looking.

Confidence. The feeling that makes one
[203]believe a man, even when one knows that one
would lie in his place.

Courtroom. A place where Jesus Christ
and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the
betting odds in favor of Judas.

Creator. A comedian whose audience is
afraid to laugh. Three proofs of His humor:
democracy, hay fever, any fat woman.

Democracy. The theory that two thieves
will steal less than one, and three less than two,
and four less than three, and so on ad infinitum;
the theory that the common people know what
they want, and deserve to get it good and
hard.

Epigram. A platitude with vine-leaves in
its hair.

Eugenics. The theory that marriages
should be made in the laboratory; the Wassermann
test for love.

Evil. That which one believes of others.
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is
seldom a mistake.

Experience. A series of failures. Every
failure teaches a man something, to wit, that
he will probably fail again next time.

Fame. An embalmer trembling with stage-fright.

[204]

Fine. A bribe paid by a rich man to escape
the lawful penalty of his crime. In China such
bribes are paid to the judge personally; in
America they are paid to him as agent for the
public. But it makes no difference to the men
who pay them—nor to the men who can’t pay
them.

Firmness. A form of stupidity; proof of
an inability to think the same thing out twice.

Friendship. A mutual belief in the same
fallacies, mountebanks, hobgoblins and imbecilities.

Gentleman. One who never strikes a
woman without provocation; one on whose
word of honor the betting odds are at least 1
to 2.

Happiness. Peace after effort, the overcoming
of difficulties, the feeling of security and
well-being. The only really happy folk are
married women and single men.

Hell. A place where the Ten Commandments
have a police force behind them.

Historian. An unsuccessful novelist.

Honeymoon. The time during which the
bride believes the bridegroom’s word of honor.

Hope. A pathological belief in the occurrence
of the impossible.

Humanitarian. One who would be sincerely
[205]sorry to see his neighbor’s children devoured
by wolves.

Husband. One who played safe and is now
played safely. A No. 16 neck in a No. 15½
collar.

Hygiene. Bacteriology made moral; the
theory that the Italian in the ditch should be
jailed for spitting on his hands.

Idealist. One who, on noticing that a rose
smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it
will also make better soup.

Immorality. The morality of those who
are having a better time. You will never convince
the average farmer’s mare that the late
Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.

Immortality. The condition of a dead
man who doesn’t believe that he is dead.

Jealousy. The theory that some other fellow
has just as little taste.

Judge. An officer appointed to mislead, restrain,
hypnotize, cajole, seduce, browbeat, flabbergast
and bamboozle a jury in such a manner
that it will forget all the facts and give its decision
to the best lawyer. The objection to
judges is that they are seldom capable of a
sound professional judgment of lawyers. The
objection to lawyers is that the best are the
worst.

[206]

Jury. A group of twelve men who, having
lied to the judge about their hearing, health
and business engagements, have failed to fool
him.

Lawyer. One who protects us against robbers
by taking away the temptation.

Liar. (a) One who pretends to be very
good; (b) one who pretends to be very bad.

Love. The delusion that one woman differs
from another.

Love-At-First-Sight. A labor-saving device.

Lover. An apprentice second husband; victim
No. 2 in the larval stage.

Misogynist. A man who hates women as
much as women hate one another.

Martyr. The husband of a woman with
the martyr complex.

Morality. The theory that every human
act must be either right or wrong, and that
99% of them are wrong.

Music-Lover. One who can tell you offhand
how many sharps are in the key of C
major.

Optimist. The sort of man who marries
his sister’s best friend.

Osteopath. One who argues that all human
ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone
[207]upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory is
to be found in the heads of those who believe it.

Pastor. One employed by the wicked to
prove to them by his example that virtue doesn’t
pay.

Patriotism. A variety of hallucination
which, if it seized a bacteriologist in his laboratory,
would cause him to report the streptococcus
pyogenes to be as large as a Newfoundland
dog, as intelligent as Socrates, as beautiful as
Mont Blanc and as respectable as a Yale professor.

Pensioner. A kept patriot.

Platitude. An idea (a) that is admitted
to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

Politician. Any citizen with influence
enough to get his old mother a job as charwoman
in the City Hall.

Popularity. The capacity for listening
sympathetically when men boast of their wives
and women complain of their husbands.

Posterity. The penalty of a faulty technique.

Progress. The process whereby the human
race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform
appendix and God.

Prohibitionist. The sort of man one
wouldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.

[208]

Psychologist. One who sticks pins into
babies, and then makes a chart showing the ebb
and flow of their yells.

Psychotherapy. The theory that the patient
will probably get well anyhow, and is
certainly a damned fool.

Quack. A physician who has decided to
admit it.

Reformer. A hangman signing a petition
against vivisection.

Remorse. Regret that one waited so long
to do it.

Self-Respect. The secure feeling that no
one, as yet, is suspicious.

Sob. A sound made by women, babies,
tenors, fashionable clergymen, actors and
drunken men.

Socialism. The theory that John Smith is
better than his superiors.

Suicide. A belated acquiescence in the opinion
of one’s wife’s relatives.

Sunday. A day given over by Americans
to wishing that they themselves were dead and
in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead
and in Hell.

Sunday School. A prison in which children
do penance for the evil conscience of their
parents.

[209]

Surgeon. One bribed heavily by the patient
to take the blame for the family doctor’s
error in diagnosis.

Temptation. An irresistible force at work
on a movable body.

Thanksgiving Day. A day devoted by
persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking
a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.

Theology. An effort to explain the unknowable
by putting it into terms of the not
worth knowing.

Tombstone. An ugly reminder of one who
has been forgotten.

Truth. Something somehow discreditable
to someone.

University. A place for elevating sons
above the social rank of their fathers. In the
great American universities men are ranked as
follows: 1. Seducers; 2. Fullbacks; 3. Booze-fighters;
4. Pitchers and Catchers; 5. Poker
players; 6. Scholars; 7. Christians.

Verdict. The a priori opinion of that juror
who smokes the worst cigars.

Vers Libre. A device for making poetry
easier to write and harder to read.

Wart. Something that outlasts ten thousand
kisses.

Wealth. Any income that is at least $100
[210]more a year than the income of one’s wife’s
sister’s husband.

Wedding. A device for exciting envy in
women and terror in men.

Wife. One who is sorry she did it, but
would undoubtedly do it again.

Widower. One released on parole.

Woman. Before marriage, an agente provocateuse;
after marriage, a gendarme.

Women’s Club. A place in which the
validity of a philosophy is judged by the hat
of its prophetess.

Yacht Club. An asylum for landsmen
who would rather die of drink than be seasick.

[211]

XII.—THE OLD SUBJECT

XII.—The Old Subject

[213]

§ 1.

Men have a much better time of it than
women. For one thing, they marry later.
For another thing, they die earlier.

§ 2.

The man who marries for love alone is at
least honest. But so was Czolgosz.

§ 3.

When a husband’s story is believed, he begins
to suspect his wife.

§ 4.

In the year 1830 the average American had
six children and one wife. How time transvalues
all values!

§ 5.

Love begins like a triolet and ends like a
college yell.

§ 6.

A man always blames the woman who fools
[214]him. In the same way he blames the door he
walks into in the dark.

§ 7.

Man’s objection to love is that it dies
hard; woman’s is that when it is dead it stays
dead.

§ 8.

Definition of a good mother: one who loves
her child almost as much as a little girl loves
her doll.

§ 9.

The way to hold a husband is to keep him
a little bit jealous. The way to lose him is
to keep him a little bit more jealous.

§ 10.

It used to be thought in America that a
woman ceased to be a lady the moment her
name appeared in a newspaper. It is no longer
thought so, but it is still true.

§ 11.

Women have simple tastes. They can get
pleasure out of the conversation of children in
arms and men in love.

[215]

§ 12.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss
their marriage they are giving evidence
at a coroner’s inquest.

§ 13.

How little it takes to make life unbearable!...
A pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the
spaghetti, a woman’s laugh!

§ 14.

The bride at the altar: “At last! At
last!” The bridegroom: “Too late! Too
late!”

§ 15.

The best friend a woman can have is the
man who has got over loving her. He would
rather die than compromise her.

§ 16.

The one breathless passion of every woman
is to get some one married. If she’s single,
it’s herself. If she’s married, it’s the woman
her husband would probably marry if she died
tomorrow.

§ 17.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon.
Woman, that she was born so long ago.

[216]

§ 18.

Woman is at once the serpent, the apple—and
the belly-ache.

§ 19.

Cold mutton-stew; a soiled collar; breakfast
in dress clothes; a wet house-dog, over-affectionate;
the other fellow’s tooth-brush; an echo
of “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay”; the damp, musty
smell of an empty house; stale beer; a mangy
fur coat; Katzenjammer; false teeth; the criticism
of Hamilton Wright Mabie; boiled cabbage;
a cocktail after dinner; an old cigar butt; ...
the kiss of Evelyn after the inauguration
of Eleanor.

§ 20.

Whenever a woman begins to talk of anything,
she is talking to, of, or at a man.

§ 21.

The worst man hesitates when choosing a
mother for his children. And hesitating, he is
lost.

§ 22.

Women always excel men in that sort of
wisdom which comes from experience. To be
a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

[217]

§ 23.

No man is ever too old to look at a woman,
and no woman is ever too fat to hope that he
will look.

§ 24.

Bachelors have consciences. Married men
have wives.

§ 25.

Bachelors know more about women than married
men. If they did’t they’d be married,
too.

§ 26.

Man is a natural polygamist. He always
has one woman leading him by the nose and another
hanging on to his coat-tails.

§ 27.

All women, soon or late, are jealous of their
daughters; all men, soon or late, are envious of
their sons.

§ 28.

History seems to bear very harshly upon
women. One cannot recall more than three
famous women who were virtuous. But on
turning to famous men the seeming injustice disappears.
[218]One would have difficulty finding
even two of them who were virtuous.

§ 29.

Husbands never become good; they merely
become proficient.

§ 30.

Strike an average between what a woman
thinks of her husband a month before she marries
him and what she thinks of him a year
afterward, and you will have the truth about
him in a very handy form.

§ 31.

The worst of marriage is that it makes a
woman believe that all men are just as easy
to fool.

§ 32.

The great secret of happiness in love is to
be glad that the other fellow married her.

§ 33.

A man may be a fool and not know it—but
not if he is married.

§ 34.

All men are proud of their own children.
[219]Some men carry egoism so far that they are
even proud of their own wives.

§ 35.

When you sympathize with a married woman
you either make two enemies or gain one wife
and one friend.

§ 36.

Women do not like timid men. Cats do not
like prudent rats.

§ 37.

He marries best who puts it off until it is
too late.

§ 38.

A bachelor is one who wants a wife, but is
glad he hasn’t got her.

§ 40.

Women usually enjoy annoying their husbands,
but not when they annoy them by growing
fat.

[221]

XIII.—PANORAMAS OF
PEOPLE

XIII.—Panoramas of People

[223]

I.—Men

Fat, slick, round-faced men, of the sort
who haunt barber shops and are always
having their shoes shined. Tall, gloomy,
Gothic men, with eyebrows that meet over
their noses and bunches of black, curly hair in
their ears. Men wearing diamond solitaires,
fraternal order watchcharms, golden elks’ heads
with rubies for eyes. Men with thick, loose
lips and shifty eyes. Men smoking pale, spotted
cigars. Men who do not know what to do with
their hands when they talk to women. Honorable,
upright, successful men who seduce
their stenographers and are kind to their dear
old mothers. Men who allow their wives to
dress like chorus girls. White-faced, scared-looking,
yellow-eyed men who belong to societies
for the suppression of vice. Men who
boast that they neither drink nor smoke. Men
who mop their bald heads with perfumed handkerchiefs.
Men with drawn, mottled faces, in
[224]the last stages of arterio-sclerosis. Silent,
stupid-looking men in thick tweeds who tramp
up and down the decks of ocean steamers. Men
who peep out of hotel rooms at Swedish chambermaids.
Men who go to church on Sunday
morning, carrying Oxford Bibles under their
arms. Men in dress coats too tight under the
arms. Tea-drinking men. Loud, back-slapping
men, gabbling endlessly about baseball
players. Men who have never heard of Mozart.
Tired business men with fat, glittering
wives. Men who know what to do when children
are sick. Men who believe that any
woman who smokes is a prostitute. Yellow,
diabetic men. Men whose veins are on the
outside of their noses. Now and then a clean,
clear-eyed, upstanding man. Once a week or
so a man with good shoulders, straight legs
and a hard, resolute mouth....

II.—Women

Fat women with flabby, double chins. Moon-faced,
pop-eyed women in little flat hats.
Women with starchy faces and thin vermilion
lips. Man-shy, suspicious women, shrinking
into their clothes every time a wet, caressing
eye alights upon them. Women soured and
[225]robbed of their souls by Christian Endeavor.
Women who would probably be members of
the Lake Mohonk Conference if they were
men. Gray-haired, middle-aged, waddling women,
wrecked and unsexed by endless, useless
parturition, nursing, worry, sacrifice. Women
who look as if they were still innocent yesterday
afternoon. Women in shoes that bend their insteps
to preposterous semi-circles. Women
with green, barbaric bangles in their ears, like
the concubines of Arab horse-thieves. Women
looking in show-windows, wishing that their
husbands were not such poor sticks. Shapeless
women lolling in six thousand dollar motorcars.
Trig little blondes, stepping like Shetland
ponies. Women smelling of musk, ambergris,
bergamot. Long-legged, cadaverous, hungry
women. Women eager to be kidnapped, betrayed,
forced into marriage at the pistol’s
point. Soft, pulpy, pale women. Women with
ginger-colored hair and large, irregular
freckles. Silly, chattering, gurgling women.
Women showing their ankles to policemen,
chauffeurs, street-cleaners. Women with slim-shanked,
whining, sticky-fingered children
dragging after them. Women marching like
grenadiers. Yellow women. Women with red
hands. Women with asymmetrical eyes.
[226]Women with rococo ears. Stoop-shouldered
women. Women with huge hips. Bow-legged
women. Appetizing women. Good-looking
women....

III.—Babies

Babies smelling of camomile tea, cologne water,
wet laundry, dog soap, Schmierkase. Babies
who appear old, disillusioned and tired of life
at six months. Babies that cry "Papa!" to
blushing youths of nineteen or twenty at church
picnics. Fat babies whose earlobes turn out at
an angle of forty-five degrees. Soft, pulpy
babies asleep in perambulators, the sun shining
straight into their faces. Babies gnawing the
tails of synthetic dogs. Babies without necks.
Pale, scorbutic babies of the third and fourth
generation, damned because their grandfathers
and great-grandfathers read Tom Paine.
Babies of a bluish tinge, or with vermilion
eyes. Babies full of soporifics. Thin, cartilaginous
babies that stretch when they are
lifted. Warm, damp, miasmatic babies. Affectionate,
ingratiating, gurgling babies: the
larvæ of life insurance solicitors, fashionable
doctors, Episcopal rectors, dealers in Mexican
mine stock, hand-shakers, Sunday-school superintendents.
Hungry babies, absurdly sucking
[227]their thumbs. Babies with heads of thick,
coarse black hair, seeming to be toupees. Unbaptized
babies, dedicated to the devil. Eugenic
babies. Babies that crawl out from under
tables and are stepped on. Babies with lintels,
grains of corn or shoe-buttons up their noses,
purple in the face and waiting for the doctor or
the embalmer. A few pink, blue-eyed, tight-skinned,
clean-looking babies, smiling upon the
world....

[229]

XIV.—HOMEOPATHICS

XIV.—Homeopathics

[231]

1.

Scene Infernal.

During a lull in the uproar of Hell two voices
were heard.

“My name,” said one, “was Ludwig van
Beethoven. I was no ordinary musician. The
Archduke Rudolph used to speak to me on the
streets of Vienna.”

“And mine,” said the other, “was the Archduke
Rudolph. I was no ordinary archduke.
Ludwig van Beethoven dedicated a trio to me.”

2.

The Eternal Democrat.

A Socialist, carrying a red flag, marched
through the gates of Heaven.

“To Hell with rank!” he shouted. “All
men are equal here.”

Just then the late Karl Marx turned a corner
and came into view, meditatively stroking
his whiskers. At once the Socialist fell upon
[232]his knees and touched his forehead to the dust.

“O Master!” he cried. “O Master, Master!”

3.

The School of Honor.

A trembling young reporter stood in the presence
of an eminent city editor.

“If I write this story,” said the reporter,
“it will rob a woman of her good name.”

“If you don’t write it,” said the city editor,
“I’ll give you a kick in the pantaloons.”

Next day the young reporter got a raise in
salary and the woman swallowed two ounces
of permanganate of potassium.

4.

Proposed Plot For a Modern Novel.

Herman was in love with Violet, the wife of
Armand, an elderly diabetic. Armand showed
three per cent of sugar a day. Herman and
Violet, who were Christians, awaited with virtuous
patience the termination of Armand’s distressing
malady.

One day Dr. Frederick M. Allen discovered
his cure for diabetes.

[233]

5.

Victory.

“I wooed and won her,” said the Man of
His Wife.

“I made him run,” said the Hare of the
Hound.

[235]

XV.—VERS LIBRE

XV.—Vers Libre

[237]