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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life's Minor Collisions, by
+Frances Warner and Gertrude Warner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life's Minor Collisions
+
+Author: Frances Warner
+        Gertrude Warner
+
+Release Date: November 1, 2011 [EBook #37899]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE'S MINOR COLLISIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [ Transcriber's Notes:
+
+    Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
+    as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation.
+    Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They
+    are listed at the end of the text.
+
+    Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
+  ]
+
+
+
+
+  LIFE'S MINOR COLLISIONS
+
+  BY
+  FRANCES AND GERTRUDE WARNER
+
+  AUTHORS (RESPECTIVELY) OF "ENDICOTT AND I"
+  AND "HOUSE OF DELIGHT"
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press Cambridge
+  1921
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+TO OUR GRANDMOTHER
+MARCIA JANE CHANDLER CARPENTER
+WHO NEVER COLLIDES
+
+
+
+
+WHY MINOR?
+
+
+Collisions are measured by what they will smash. Potentially, all
+collisions are major. A slight blow will explode a bomb. But since most
+of us do not commonly carry dynamite through the busy sections of this
+life, we can take a good many brisk knocks and still survive.
+
+The collisions, though dealt with in separate chapters by two of us, are
+seldom between two people alone. They are collisions, mostly minor,
+between the individual and the group, the individual and circumstances,
+the individual and the horse he rides on.
+
+All the chapters are for those kindred spirits who try to be easy to
+live with--and find it difficult.
+
+  F. L. W.
+  G. C. W.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  Love's Minor Frictions             1
+
+  Boston Streets                    27
+
+  To Horse                          37
+
+  Wheels and how they go round      55
+
+  The Will to boss                  73
+
+  More to it than you'd think       97
+
+  Trio Impetuoso                   111
+
+  The Return of A, B, C            134
+
+  Understanding the Healthy        146
+
+  Carving at Table                 162
+
+  The Feeling of Irritation        175
+
+
+NOTE
+
+Acknowledgment of permission to reprint certain of these papers is made
+to the editors of _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Education_, _The Ladies' Home
+Journal_, _The Outlook_, _Scribner's Magazine_, and _The Unpartizan
+Review_.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE'S MINOR COLLISIONS
+
+
+
+
+LOVE'S MINOR FRICTIONS
+
+
+Minor friction is the kind that produces the most showy results with the
+smallest outlay. You can stir up more electricity in a cat by stroking
+her fur the wrong way than you can by dropping her into the well. You
+can ruffle the dearest member of your family more by asking him twice if
+he is _sure_ that he locked the back door than his political opponents
+could stir him with a libel. We have direct access to the state of mind
+of the people with whom we share household life and love. Therefore, in
+most homes, no matter how congenial, a certain amount of minor friction
+is inevitable.
+
+Four typical causes of minor friction are questions of _tempo_, the
+brotherly reform measure, supervised telephone conversations, and tenure
+of parental control. These are standard group-irritants that sometimes
+vex the sweetest natures.
+
+The matter of _tempo_, broadly considered, covers the whole process of
+adjustment between people of hasty and deliberate moods. It involves
+alertness of spiritual response, alacrity in taking hints and filling
+orders, timely appreciations, considerate delays, and all the other
+delicate retards and accelerations that are necessary if hearts are to
+beat as one. But it also includes such homely questions as the time for
+setting out for places, the time consumed in getting ready to set out,
+and the swiftness of our progress thither. When a man who is tardy is
+unequally yoked with a wife who is prompt, their family moves from point
+to point with an irregularity of rhythm that lends suspense to the
+mildest occasions.
+
+A certain architect and his wife Sue are a case in point. Sue is always
+on time. If she is going to drive at four, she has her children ready at
+half-past three, and she stations them in the front hall, with muscles
+flexed, at ten minutes to four, so that the whole group may emerge from
+the door like food shot from guns, and meet the incoming automobile
+accurately at the curb. Nobody ever stops his engine for Sue. Her
+husband is correspondingly late. Just after they were married, the choir
+at their church gambled quietly on the chances--whether she would get
+him to church on time, or whether he would make her late. The first
+Sunday they came five minutes early, the second ten minutes late, and
+every Sunday after that, Sue came early, Prescott came late, and the
+choir put their money into the contribution-box. In fact, a family of
+this kind can solve its problem most neatly by running on independent
+schedules, except when they are to ride in the same automobile or on the
+same train. Then, there is likely to be a breeze.
+
+But the great test of such a family's grasp of the time-element comes
+when they have a guest who must catch a given car, due to pass the white
+post at the corner at a quarter to the hour. The visit is drawing to a
+close, with five minutes to spare before car-time. Those members of the
+family who like to wait until the last moment, and take their chances of
+boarding the running-board on the run, continue a lively conversation
+with the guest. But the prompt ones, with furtive eye straying to the
+clock, begin to sit forward uneasily in their chairs, their faces drawn,
+pulse feverish, pondering the question whether it is better to let a
+guest miss a car or seem to hurry him away. The situation is all the
+harder for the prompt contingent, because usually they have behind them
+a criminal record of occasions when they have urged guests to the curb
+in plenty of time and the car turned out to be late. The runners and
+jumpers of the family had said it would be late, and it was late. These
+memories restrain speech until the latest possible moment. Then the
+guest is whisked out to the white post with the words, "If you _could_
+stay, we'd be delighted, but if you really _have_ to make your train--"
+Every punctual person knows the look of patronage with which the
+leisured classes of his family listen to this old speech of his. They
+find something nervous and petty about his prancing and pawing, quite
+inferior to their large oblivion. As Tagore would say, "They are not too
+poor to be late."
+
+The matter of _tempo_ involves also the sense of the fortunate moment,
+and the timing of deeds to accord with moods. In almost every group
+there is one member who is set at a slightly different velocity from the
+others, with a momentum not easily checked. When the rest of the
+household settles down to pleasant conversation, this member thinks of
+something pressing that must be done at once.
+
+The mother of three college boys is being slowly trained out of this
+habit. Her sons say that she ought to have been a fire-chief, so brisk
+is she when in her typical hook-and-ladder mood. Whenever her family
+sits talking in the evening, she has flitting memories of things that
+she must run and do. One night, when she had suddenly rushed out to see
+if the maid had remembered to put out the milk tickets, one of the boys
+was dispatched with a warrant for her arrest. He traced her to the door
+of the side porch, and peered out at her in the darkness. "What's little
+pussy-foot doing now?" he inquired affectionately. "Can she see better
+in the dark? Come along back." But her blood was up. She thought of
+several other duties still waiting, and went at once to the kitchen and
+filled the dipper. With this she returned to the room where sat the
+waiting conversationalists, and systematically watered the fern. It was
+like wearing orange to a Sinn Fein rally. At the chorus of reproach she
+only laughed, the scornful laugh of the villain on the stage. Six
+determined hands seized her at once. The boys explained that, when they
+wanted to talk to her, it was no time to water ferns. As habitual
+breaker-up of public meetings, she was going to be reformed.
+
+But the reform measure, a group-irritant second to none, is generally
+uphill business in the home. Welfare work among equals is sometimes
+imperative, but seldom popular. Any programme of social improvement
+implies agitation and a powerful leverage of public opinion not wholly
+tranquillizing to the person to be reformed.
+
+There is one family that has worked for years upon the case of one of
+its members who reads aloud out of season. When this brother William
+finds a noble bit of literature, he is fired to share it with his
+relatives, regardless of time and circumstances. He comes eagerly out of
+his study, book in hand, when his public is trying on a dress. Or he
+begins to read without warning, when all the other people in the room
+are reading something else. Arguments and penalties never had the
+slightest effect, until one of the company hit upon a device that proves
+a defensive measure in emergencies.
+
+Brother William started suddenly to read aloud from a campaign speech.
+His youngest sister was absorbed in that passage in "Edwin Drood" called
+"A Night With Durdles," where Jasper and Durdles are climbing the
+cathedral spire. In self-defence she also began to read in a clear tone
+as follows: "Anon, they turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and
+the night air begins to blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled
+jackdaw or frightened rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a
+confined space, and the beating down of dust and straws upon their
+heads."
+
+The idea spread like wildfire. All the others opened their books and
+magazines and joined her in reading aloud from the page where they had
+been interrupted. It was a deafening medley of incongruous material--a
+very telling demonstration of the distance from which their minds had
+jumped when recalled to the campaign speech. Brother William was able to
+distinguish in the uproar such fragments as these: "Just at that moment
+I discovered four Spad machines far below the enemy planes"; "'Thankyou
+thankyou,' cried Mr. Salteena--"; "Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus, a
+most dear wood-rat"; and "'It is natural,' Gavin said slowly, 'that you,
+sir, should wonder why I am here with this woman at such an hour.'"
+
+This method did not work a permanent cure, because nothing ever cures
+the reader-aloud. His impulse is generosity--a mainspring of character,
+not a passing whim. But at a crisis, his audience can read aloud in
+concert.
+
+The reform measure is more hopeful when directed, not at a rooted trait,
+but at a surface phase or custom. Even here success is not without its
+battles. My sister Barbara and I were once bent upon teaching our
+younger brother Geoffrey to rise when ladies entered the room. Geoffrey,
+then at the brigand age, looked at this custom as the mannerism of an
+effete civilization. He rose, indeed, for guests, but not as to the
+manner born. One day he came home and reported that the lady next door
+had introduced him to an aunt of hers who had just arrived on a visit.
+"And," said he, with speculative eye upon his sisters, "_I didn't get up
+to be introduced._"
+
+The effect was all that heart could wish. Tongues flew. Geoffrey
+listened with mournful dignity, offering no excuse. He waited until our
+sisterly vocabulary was exhausted.
+
+"Why didn't you ask me where I was when she introduced me?" he asked at
+length. "I was crawling along the ridgepole of her garage catching her
+cat for her, and I couldn't get up."
+
+But we were not easily diverted from our attempts to foster in him the
+manly graces. We even went so far as to invite Geoffrey to afternoon
+tea-parties with our friends. But a Tea-Lion, he said, was one thing
+that he was not. On such occasions he would be found sitting on the
+kitchen table dourly eating up the olives and refusing to come in. We
+were too young in those days to know that you cannot hurry a certain
+phase. But now, when we meet our brother at receptions, we smile at our
+former despair. Reformers often find their hardest tasks taken out of
+their hands by time.
+
+Few brothers and sisters, however, are willing to trust to time to work
+its wonders. There is a sense of fraternal responsibility that goads us
+to do what we can for each other in a small way. The friction that
+ensues constitutes an experience of human values that the hermit in his
+cell can never know. Whenever people of decided views feel personally
+responsible for each other's acts, a type of social unrest begins to
+brew that sometimes leads to progress and sometimes leads to riots.
+
+For this reason, in any home that aspires to peace at any price, the
+telephone should be installed in a sound-proof box-office with no glass
+in the door. There is nothing that so incenses a friendly nature as a
+family grouped in the middle-distance offering advice when a telephone
+conversation is going on. The person at the receiver looks so idle;
+there seems to be no reason why he should not listen with his unoccupied
+ear; and, when he is so evidently in need of correct data, it seems only
+kind to help him out. It is the most natural thing in the world to
+listen. The family listens, in the first place, to find out which one of
+them is wanted, and they continue to listen to find out what is said.
+When the wrong thing is said, all loyal relatives feel responsible.
+
+The person telephoning is unfairly handicapped by necessary politeness,
+because he can be heard through the transmitter and his advisers cannot.
+Only extreme exasperation can unleash his tongue, as happened once when
+Geoffrey, in our father's absence, undertook to answer a telephone call
+while Barbara, in the next room, corrected his mistakes.
+
+Geoffrey, pricking both ears, was doing very well, until the lady at the
+other end of the line asked a question at the exact moment when Barbara
+offered a new thought. "What did you say?" inquired Geoffrey. Both
+Barbara and the lady repeated. "What is it?" said Geoffrey, waving one
+foot at Barbara. Barbara, not seeing the foot, repeated, and so did the
+lady, this time more distinctly. "I beg your pardon," said Geoffrey
+anxiously, "but what did you say?" Like an incredible nightmare the
+thing happened again. "Shut up!" roared Geoffrey; "what did you say?"
+
+Barbara, recognizing instantly that part of the message directed to her,
+wrote her suggestion on the telephone pad and stole prudently away.
+Minor friction, she had learned, can sometimes lead to action on a large
+scale. Only after some such experience as this do we allow a kinsman to
+conduct his own telephone conversations, taking his own
+responsibilities, running his own dark risks.
+
+But the sense of mutual responsibility is, after all, the prime
+educational factor in family life. Every good parent has a feeling of
+accountability for the acts of his children. He may believe in
+self-determination for the small States about him, but after all he
+holds a mandate. The delightful interweaving of parental suggestion with
+the original tendencies of the various children is the delicate thing
+that makes each family individual. It is also the delicate thing that
+makes parenthood a nervous occupation. When parental suggestion is going
+to interweave delightfully as planned, and when it is not going to
+interweave at all, is something not foretold in the prophets.
+
+The question of parental influence becomes more complex as the family
+grows older and more informally organized. Sometimes a son or daughter
+wants to carry out a pet project without any advice or warning or help
+from anybody. There is nothing rash or guilty about his plan. He simply
+happens to be in the mood to act, not in committee, but of himself. To
+achieve this, surrounded by a united and conversational family, becomes
+a game of skill. To dodge advice, he avoids the most innocent questions.
+At such times as these, the wisest parents wonder what they have done to
+forfeit confidence. They see this favorite son of theirs executing the
+most harmless plans with all the secrecy of the young poisoning princes
+of the Renaissance.
+
+When this happens, the over-sensitive parent grieves, the dictatorial
+parent rails, but the philosophical parent picks up whatever interesting
+morsels he can on the side, and cocks a weather eye.
+
+"Robert seems to have a good many engagements," wrote the mother of a
+popular son in a letter to an absent daughter, "but whether the nature
+of the engagements is social, athletic, or philanthropic, we can only
+infer from the equipment with which he sets out. I inferred the first
+this morning when he asked me to have his dress-suit sent to be pressed;
+but I could not be certain until Mrs. Stone said casually that Robert
+was to be a guest at Mrs. Gardiner's dinner next week. Don't you love to
+see such tender intimacy between mother and son?"
+
+Secrecy of this kind is not the monopoly of sons. Excellent young women
+have chopped ice and frozen sherbet behind closed doors because they did
+not want to be told again not to get the ice all over the back piazza.
+Certain warnings go with certain projects as inevitably as rubbers with
+the rain. The practised mother has so often found the warnings
+necessary, that the mere sight of the act produces the formula by rote.
+Model sons and daughters should accept these hints with gratitude, thus
+avoiding all friction, however minor. But rather than be advised to do
+that which they were planning to do already, the most loyal of daughters
+will resort to clandestine measures, and go stealthily with the ice-pick
+as with a poniard beneath a cloak. This annoys an affectionate and
+capable mother very much. And she has a right to be annoyed, has she
+not? After all, it is her ice-pick.
+
+There is something of spirited affection about the memory of all these
+early broils. They were heated enough at the time, for the most violent
+emotions can fly out at a trifling cause. Remarks made in these
+turbulent moments are often taken as a revelation of your true and
+inward self. The sentiments that you express in your moment of wrath
+sound like something that you have been repressing for years and are now
+turning loose upon an enlightened world. There is an air of desperate
+sincerity about your remarks that makes your hearers feel that here, at
+last, they have the truth.
+
+With friends, after such an outburst, you could never feel quite the
+same again. But with your relatives, such moments can be lived down--as
+once occurred in our own family when our father one hot summer day sent
+Geoffrey back to town to perform a forgotten errand. I had not heard of
+the event until I took my place at table.
+
+"Where's Geoffrey?" said I.
+
+"I sent him back to get a letter he forgot," said my father.
+
+"In all this heat?" I protested. "Well, if I had been in his place, I'd
+have gone away and stayed away."
+
+"Well, you could," said my father serenely.
+
+"Well, I will," said Little Sunshine, and walked out of the door and up
+the street in a rage.
+
+After you have left your parental home as suddenly as this, there comes
+a moment when you have the sensation of being what is termed "all
+dressed up with no place to go." You feel that your decision, though
+sudden, is irrevocable, because going back would mean death to your
+pride. You try to fight off the practical thought that you can hardly go
+far without hat or scrip. Therefore, when Geoffrey met his eloping
+sister at the corner, it was with some little diplomacy that he learned
+my history and took me back to the table under his wing. The
+conversation barely paused as we took our places. Our father went on
+affably serving the salad to the just and the unjust alike. If, at this
+point, I had been treated with the contumely that I deserved, the memory
+would be unpleasant in the minds of all. As it is, the family now
+mentions it as the time when Margaret ran away to sea.
+
+The only thing that can make minor friction hurtful is the
+disproportionate importance that it can assume when it is treated as a
+major issue, or taken as an indication of mutual dislike. It is often an
+indication of the opposite, though at the moment the contestants would
+find this hard to believe. Kept in its place, however, we find in it
+later a great deal of humorous charm, because it belongs to a period
+when we dealt with our brethren with a primitive directness not possible
+in later years. An intricate ambition, this matter of harmony in the
+home. Ideally, every family would like to have a history of
+uninterrupted adorations and exquisite accord. But growth implies
+change, change implies adjustment, and adjustment among varied
+personalities implies friction. Kept at the minimum, kept in its place,
+such friction does not estrange. Instead, it becomes a means to an
+intimate acquaintance with one another's traits and moods--an intimacy
+of understanding not far remote from love.
+
+
+
+
+BOSTON STREETS
+
+
+I am trying to learn how to get from the Majestic Theatre to the South
+Station. I am convinced that in time I might be able to learn this, if I
+were not also trying at the same time to learn how to get from the
+Hollis Street Theatre to the Dennison Manufacturing Company on Franklin
+Street.
+
+I suppose that trying to solve two problems simultaneously is always
+confusing. A student trying to compute problems with both hands at the
+same time--problems dealing respectively with yards and pounds--might
+ultimately confuse his inches with ounces. Similarly, I confuse Eliot
+Street and Essex, Kneeland and Otis.
+
+My brother Geoffrey who goes with me to Boston thinks that this is
+funny; that is, he thinks it something appalling that should be
+remedied. In consequence of this, he draws for me a series of beautiful
+little sketches on an envelope he has about him. He letters the roads
+meticulously with a fountain pen, traces our route-to-be with little
+arrows, and then flings me heartlessly into the Boston Streets.
+
+Boston Streets, and Boston Streets on an envelope, are not alike at all.
+On the envelope, the streets are simple lines, all related to each
+other; in reality, each street is an individual personality, distracting
+you from a noble grasp of the Whole, by presenting the sole gigantic
+unit of itself, further complicated by detail. Geoffrey is not bothered
+by a unit, or by a detail. He branches from one street into another with
+as sure an instinct as a cat who retraces on foot a journey once
+traversed in a bag.
+
+This is not because he _knows_ Boston, but because he has a _capacity_
+for Boston. He leads me patiently over one route a great many times,
+verifying our position at intervals with reference to his map. After a
+day at my books, I am faint-heartedly supposed to have comprehended a
+fact. When this actually takes place, it is very hard for me to conceal
+my pride in any trifling bit of erudition which I may have accidentally
+picked up about Boston. Once I distinctly remember saying to Geoffrey,
+"Do you want to walk down to the Colonial Theatre or shall we go by
+Subway?" Since we were at that time near the entrance of a suitable
+subway, my good brother stared at me in radiant expectation. I fear that
+he hoped that I was at last laying a slight hold on a working knowledge
+of his favorite city. But his hope was unfounded, for this glimmer of
+mine was one of only four facts that I have actually been able to learn
+about the crooked miles in Boston.
+
+The remaining three truths are here recorded for the curious.
+
+I know the Public Library, from any angle, without map or guide, by its
+fair face alone, and how to reach it from the station at Back Bay.
+(This, in such a meagre description of Boston, might perhaps qualify as
+two distinct facts.) I know that if one walks far enough past the
+Library, in the direction in which the lady with the black ball is
+looking, one will eventually come to Commonwealth Avenue, where eozoic
+cabbies may be seen. And now that we have unearthed, on our way back to
+the station, the Copley Theatre, I am sure that I could go to Boston,
+friendless, find this theatre, lunch across the street, and retrace my
+steps to some proper railway.
+
+It may seem to the observer that I am abnormally interested in finding
+my way to the theatres. I am. This is my primary reason for going to
+Boston at all; and surely it is a quiet wish to do a little shopping and
+get a lunch before the play begins. Therefore, our main interest lies in
+locating, on each trip, one theatre and one depot. Then, if time
+permits, I am supposed to articulate a shop of some kind from the tangle
+of Butterfly Boxes, Corner Book Stores, and Florist windows, and some
+sort of hostelry where we can eat. If my guide is less obdurate than
+usual about compelling me to find my way without his assistance, he
+shows me the front steps of a Department Store _once_. Then I am
+supposed to know that store for all time, when viewing it from all
+angles--from its front door, its back door, its basement, and from its
+roof. I am supposed to know what store I am in from the looks of the
+elevator boys. It always gives me acute pain to disappoint a valued
+friend. Hence, in a department store, I suffer. Once inside the store, I
+can find my way about very easily. I merely do not know what street I am
+on.
+
+There are certain things in Boston about which even Geoffrey inquires.
+This concession on his part, instead of bringing him down to my fallible
+human level, instantly elevates him to a still higher caste. He makes
+his inquiries of policemen, and he understands what they say. When a
+policeman directs _me_--solitary--to go up one street and down another,
+and mixes in a little of the Public Garden or the Common, I cannot carry
+his kind words in my mind, even with the aid of a mnemonic. He cannot
+direct me from the known to the unknown, because I know nothing. He
+cannot explain to me; he has to go with me. I do not know the Common
+from the Public Garden. They both look like gardens to me, both equally
+public, and neither, common. "But," protests my brother, "the Public
+Garden is regular--a rectangle. And the Common is irregular--a
+trapezium." This is perfectly true on the envelope (now dirty). But when
+you are in the park itself, you are not especially aware of its shape.
+Individual pigeons are more obvious. The park is too big to look square.
+
+In just this same way, Washington Street is too big to look parallel.
+When you are on Washington Street, and it alone, it is not blindingly
+parallel to anything, unless, perhaps, the other side of itself. And if
+my policeman, on his pretty horse, should tell me that that was Tremont
+Street, I should believe him. Boston has done as bad. It would be no
+stranger than it is to spring miraculously from Summer Street into
+Winter, simply by following it across the road. In fact, I was not aware
+that we had changed streets at all, when on my maiden trip through this
+section. I preserved to the end an hallucination that I was still on
+Summer Street.
+
+Perhaps a few will do me the magnificent honor of absolving me from
+boasting, when I say that I am capable of apprehending really nice bits
+of information in other walks of life;--other than Boston walks. I can
+pick you out a pneumonia germ from under the microscope, and count your
+red corpuscles for you. I can receive the Continental Code by wireless,
+and play on a violoncello. I can get a baby to sleep.
+
+But I cannot tell you where you are in Boston. There are people who
+would not admit this. They would set themselves, with their faces
+steadfastly toward the Hub, to learn. Geoffrey is one of these. But I
+have neither the time nor the proper shoes. I readily admit that Boston
+is too much for me at my age. So I take my brother with me. Then I
+placidly relegate Boston Streets to that list of things which I am
+constitutionally unable to learn:--how to tat, just what is a Stock, and
+what a Bond, and the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.
+
+
+
+
+TO HORSE
+
+
+"A duck," we used to read in the primer at school, "a duck is a long low
+animal covered with feathers." Similarly, a horse is a long high animal,
+covered with confusion. This applies to the horse as we find him in the
+patriotic Parade, where a brass-band precedes him, an unaccustomed rider
+surmounts him, and a drum-corps brings up his rear.
+
+In our own Welcome Home Parade, after the boys returned from France, the
+Legion decided to double the number of its mounted effectives: all the
+overseas officers should ride. All the overseas officers were instantly
+on their feet. Their protests were loud and heated. A horse, they said,
+was something that they personally had never bestridden. They offered to
+ride anything else. They would fly down the avenue in Spads, or do the
+falling leaf over the arch of triumph. They would ride tanks or
+motor-cycles or army-trucks. But a horse was a thing of independent
+locomotion, not to be trifled with. It was not the idea of getting
+killed that they objected to, it was the looks of the thing. By "the
+thing," they meant not the horse, but the rider.
+
+In spite of the veto of the officers, the motion was carried by
+acclamation. The mediaeval charm of a mounted horse-guard instantly
+kindled the community imagination. The chaplain, fresh from the navy,
+was promised a milk-white palfrey for his especial use, if he would wear
+his ice-cream suit for the occasion.
+
+There was no time to practise before the event, but the boys were told
+to give themselves no anxiety about mounts. Well-bred and competent
+horses would appear punctually just before the time for falling in. The
+officers were instructed to go to a certain corner of a side street,
+find the fence behind the garage where the animals would be tied, select
+their favorite form of horse from the collection they would see there,
+and ride him up to the green.
+
+When Geoffrey came home and said that he was to ride a horse in the
+procession, our mother, who had been a good horsewoman in her girlhood,
+took him aside and gave him a few quiet tips. Some horses, she said, had
+been trained to obey certain signals, and some to obey the exact
+opposite. For instance, some would go faster if you reined them in, and
+some would slow down. Some waited for light touches from their master's
+hand or foot, and others for their master's voice. You had to study your
+horse as an individual.
+
+Geoffrey said that he was glad to hear any little inside gossip of this
+sort, and made his way alone to the place appointed, skilfully dodging
+friends. We gathered that if he had to have an interview with a horse,
+he preferred to have it with nobody looking on.
+
+The fence behind the garage was fringed with horses securely tied, and
+the top of the fence was fringed with a row of small boys, waiting.
+Geoffrey approached the line of horses, and glanced judicially down the
+row. Books on "Reading Character at Sight" make a great point of the
+distinctions between blond and brunette, the concave and the convex
+profile, the glance of the eye, and the manner of shaking hands.
+Geoffrey could tell at a glance that the handshake of these horses would
+be firm and full of decision. As one man they turned and looked at him,
+and their eyes were level and inscrutable.
+
+"Which of these horses," said he to the gang on the fence-top, "would
+you take?"
+
+"This one!" said an eager spokesman. "He didn't move a muscle since they
+hitched 'im."
+
+This recommendation decided the matter instantly. Repose of manner is an
+estimable trait in the horse.
+
+Geoffrey looked his animal over with an artist's eye. It was a slender
+creature, with that spare type of beauty that we associate with the
+Airedale dog. The horse was not a blond. The stirrups hung invitingly at
+the sides. Geoffrey closed the inspection with satisfaction, and
+prepared to mount.
+
+In mounting, does one first untie one's horse and then get on, or may
+one, as in a steam-launch, get seated first and then cast off the
+painter? Geoffrey could not help recalling a page from "Pickwick
+Papers," where Mr. Winkle is climbing up the side of a tall horse at the
+Inn, and the 'ostler's boy whispers, "Blowed if the gen'l'man wasn't for
+getting up the wrong side." Well, what governs the right and wrong side
+of a horse? Douglas Fairbanks habitually avoids the dilemma by mounting
+from above--from the roof of a Mexican monastery, for instance, or the
+fire-escape of an apartment house. From these points he lands,
+perpendicularly. With this ideal in mind, Geoffrey stepped on from the
+fence, clamped his legs against the sides of the horse, and walked him
+out into the street.
+
+When I say that he walked him out into the street, I use the English
+language as I have seen it used in books, but I think that it was an
+experienced rider who first used the idiom. Geoffrey says that he did
+not feel, at any time that afternoon, any sensation of walking his
+horse, or of doing anything else decisive with him. He walked, to be
+sure, dipping his head and rearing it, like a mechanical swan. But on a
+horse you miss the sensation of direct control that you have with a
+machine. With a machine, you press something, and if a positive reaction
+does not follow, you get out and fix something else. Not so with the
+horse. When you get upon him you cut yourself off from all accurately
+calculable connection with the world. He is, in the last analysis, an
+independent personality. His feet are on the ground, and yours are not.
+
+We bow to literary convention, therefore, when we say that Geoffrey
+walked his horse.
+
+Far ahead of him, he saw the khaki backs of two of his friends who were
+also walking their horses. One by one they ambled up to the green and
+took places in the ranks. Geoffrey discovered that his horse would stand
+well if allowed to droop his long neck and close his eyes. Judged as a
+military figure, however, he was a disgrace to the army. If you drew up
+the reins to brace his head, he thought it a signal to start, and you
+had to take it all back, hastily. With the relaxed rein he collapsed
+again, his square head bent in silent prayer.
+
+With the approach of the band, however, all this changed. He reared
+tentatively. Geoffrey discouraged that. Then he curled his body in an
+unlovely manner--an indescribable gesture, a sort of sidelong squirm in
+semi-circular formation. His rider straightened him out with a fatherly
+slap on the flank.
+
+It was time to start. The band led off. Joy to the world, thought the
+horse, the band is gone. The rest of the cavalry moved forward in docile
+files, but not he. If that band was going away, he would be the last
+person to pursue it. Instead of going forward, he backed. He backed and
+backed. There is no emergency brake on a horse. He would have backed to
+the end of the procession, through the Knights of Columbus, the Red
+Cross, the Elks, the Masons, the D.A.R., the Fire Department, and the
+Salvation Army, if it had not been for the drum-corps that led the
+infantry. The drum-corps behind him was as terrifying as the band in
+front. To avoid the drum-corps, he had to spend part of his time going
+away from it. Thus his progress was a little on the principle of the
+pendulum. He backed from the band until he had to flee before the drums.
+
+The ranks of men were demoralized by needless mirth. Army life dulls the
+sensibilities to the spectacle of suffering. They could do nothing to
+help, except to make a clear passage for Geoffrey as he alternately
+backed from the brasses and escaped from the drums. Vibrating in this
+way, he could only discourse to his horse with words of feigned
+affection, and pray for the panic to pass off. With a cranky automobile,
+now, one could have parked down a side street, and later joined the
+procession, all trouble repaired. But there was nothing organic the
+matter with this horse. Geoffrey could not have parked him in any case,
+because it would have been no more possible to turn him toward the
+cheering crowds on the pavement than to make him follow the band. The
+crowds on the street, in fact, began to regard these actions as a sort
+of interesting and decorative manoeuvre, so regular was the advance and
+retirement--something in the line of a cotillion. And then the band
+stopped playing for a little. Instantly the horse took his place in the
+ranks, marched serenely, arched his slim neck, glanced about. All was as
+it should be.
+
+Geoffrey's place was just behind the marshal, supposedly to act as his
+aide. During all this absence from his post of duty, the marshal had not
+noticed his defection or turned around at all. Now he did so, hastily.
+
+"Just slip back, will you," he said, "and tell Monroe not to forget the
+orders at the reviewing stand."
+
+Geoffrey opened his mouth to explain his disqualifications as courier,
+but at that moment the band struck up, and his charger backed
+precipitately. The marshal, seeing this prompt obedience to his request,
+faced front, and Geoffrey was left steadily receding, no time to
+explain--and the drum-corps was taking a vacation. There was, therefore,
+no reason for the horse ever to stop backing, unless he should back
+around the world until he heard the band behind him again. As he backed
+through the ranks of infantry, Geoffrey shouted the marshal's message to
+the officer of the day. He had to talk fast--ships that pass in the
+night. But the message was delivered, and he could put his whole mind on
+his horse.
+
+He tried all the signals for forward locomotion that he could devise.
+Mother had told him that some horses wait for light touches from their
+master's hand or foot. Geoffrey touched his animal here and there, back
+of the ear--at the base of the brain. He even kicked a trifle. He jerked
+the reins in Morse Code and Continental, to the tune of S O S. The horse
+understood no codes.
+
+They were now in the ranks of the Knights of Columbus, and the marching
+boys were making room for them with shouts of sympathetic glee. Must
+they back through the Red Cross, where all the girls in town were
+marching, and into the Daughters of the Revolution float where our
+mother sat with a group of ladies around the spinning-wheel? Geoffrey
+remembered that the Red Cross had a band, if it would only play. It
+struck up just in time. The horse instantly became a fugitive in the
+right direction. On they sped, the reviewing stand almost in sight. The
+drum-corps had not begun to play. Could they reach the cavalry before it
+was too late? Geoffrey hated to pass the reviewing stand in the guise of
+a deserter, yet here he was cantering among the Odd Fellows, undoubtedly
+A.W.O.L.
+
+But Heaven was kind. The drums waited. Through their ranks dashed
+Geoffrey at full speed, and into the midst of his companions. The
+reviewing stand was very near. At a signal, all bands and all drums
+struck up together. The horse, in stable equilibrium at last, daring not
+to run forward or to run backward, or to bolt to either side, fell into
+step and marched. Deafening cheers, flying handkerchiefs; Geoffrey and
+his horse stole past, held in the ranks by a delicate balance of
+four-cornered fear. If you fear something behind you and something in
+front of you, and things on both sides of you, and if your fear of all
+points of the compass is precisely equal, you move with the movements of
+the globe. Geoffrey's horse moved that way past the stand.
+
+People took their pictures. Our father, beaming down from the galaxy on
+the stand, was pleased. Later he told Geoffrey how well he sat his
+horse.
+
+But that evening Geoffrey had a talk with his mother, as man to man. He
+told her that, if these Victory Parades were going to be held often, he
+should vote for compulsory military training for the horse. He told her
+the various things his horse had done, how he went to and fro, going to
+when urged fro, and going fro when urged not to.
+
+"Probably he had been trained to obey the opposite signals," said our
+mother. "You must study your horse as an individual."
+
+That horse was an individual. Geoffrey studied him as such. He is quite
+willing to believe that he had been trained to obey the opposite
+signals. But Geoffrey says that he still cannot stifle one last question
+in his mind:--signals opposite to what?
+
+
+
+
+WHEELS AND HOW THEY GO ROUND
+
+
+It is a simple matter, I have been told, to keep a locomotive running
+smoothly on its track, once it is well coaled-up and started. In an
+artistic moment in a summer vacation, Margaret and I likened our house
+and all its simple well-oiled machinery to a locomotive--Mother and
+Carrie being the engineer.
+
+Therefore, we accepted rather blandly the charge of the house and
+grounds while the engineer took a vacation. I rather think we had it in
+mind to look in occasionally upon the house as it ran along, and to save
+the bulk of the day for other things. We were already accustomed to the
+complexities of a house; we had officiated at each separate complexity.
+But I am not sure that we did not plan to run the house a trifle more
+nonchalantly than the average anxious housewife, and welcome both our
+daily duties and any unexpected guests with a minimum of morbid
+foreboding.
+
+The first thing we noticed after we were left alone was a little steady
+drip in the back room. This was the refrigerator leaking. When this fact
+had once been agreed upon, Margaret and I began to see with eyes of the
+mind fragments of motion pictures in which the refrigerator was being
+fixed. It is queer what vague remnants of a scene will stay with you,
+when at the time of the scene you were not responsible for the outcome.
+Margaret, from her ever-active and interesting memory, called up
+Mother's dream-shape at the silcock, all ready to turn on the
+garden-hose. I dimly remembered Carrie with her arm under the
+refrigerator holding the hose and calling respectfully from the back
+room--"All ready, mum." So we hatched a plot and proceeded to act it.
+
+We had to assume the pipe at the rear of the ice-box, for we could not
+see it. We assumed also that it was plugged up. I had chanced once upon
+Carrie, lying prone on a rug in the back room, directing the nozzle of
+the hose into this inaccessible pipe-hole near the farther wall. I
+elected to plumb for the hole, with Margaret to run about alternately
+holding matches for me and working the spray. My arms are the longer;
+her fear of fire is somewhat less. After I had found the hole, Margaret
+attached the hose to the silcock outside the house, threaded it through
+the screen door, passed the nozzle to me, and went back to turn on the
+water. Hose in hand, face averted,--prone,--I waited. Prone means on
+your face. If you turn your head to look under the refrigerator, your
+arm is not long enough. I directed the water almost wholly by the
+Braille system. Why it should have entered into the heart of man to
+construct a refrigerator so deep that the arm of man is not long enough
+to reach its drain, will have to be explained to us when we reach the
+city four-square. But a good workman never finds fault with his tools,
+Margaret said, so we set to work with what Nature offered us.
+
+I soon found that no cue was needed for some of my lines. My manner of
+shouting, "Turn it off!" was extremely unstudied;--art disguising art.
+Twice the back room was inundated. I became a saturated solution. I felt
+like the brave boy of Haarlem. Margaret came in and advanced the theory
+that, when you have reached a certain stage of wetness, it does not
+matter at all how much more water you lie in. Acting on this
+supposition, and with my consent, she turned on all the city's
+water-power with great suddenness. I shall always think that this did
+make a difference in my wetness, but it dislodged the obstruction. We
+could hear the glad water leaping and gurgling through the pipe out of
+doors.
+
+Why this pipe should have had any connection with the boiler and
+attendant pipes behind the stove remains forever shrouded in mystery.
+These pipes began to leak on the morning of the second day, and we sent
+for a plumber. He pronounced us unpatchable, unsolderable. Margaret and
+I convened. We decided, in committee of the whole, to be re-piped and
+re-boilered. We did not know then that the plumbers were going to find
+still more serious trouble with the pipes that led to the main. Were we
+justified in ordering complete repairs? Our eternal query of Life
+became, "What would Mother do?" We went the whole figure--well up into
+three figures.
+
+It was not until the third day that we succeeded in making our
+nonchalance at all prominent. We invited a guest to supper,
+nonchalantly. She was not the type of guest that you take into the
+kitchen and tie an apron around. In her honor, we decided to have, among
+other things, popovers and cherry pie. We decided that we could
+conventionally have popovers because the hour was really a supper hour;
+that we might have cherry pie because the meal was really a dinner. To
+make this strange plan at all intelligible, I shall have to state that,
+as far as our names are known, we are famous for our popovers and our
+cherry pie. We were at our nonchalant best.
+
+Our cherry tree is a unique specimen among the vegetables. It has a
+curious short, gnarled trunk just as a cherry tree should; but, aside
+from that, it runs along the general lines of a spirea. Each main
+branch, nearly six inches in diameter at the point of departure,
+sprangles instantly into showers of fragile twigs. These in turn branch
+gracefully higher and higher, occasional cherries on the outskirts. To
+pick our cherries, one really ought to be a robin. Each cherry has an
+exquisite red cheek and a black ant running to and fro across it.
+
+We chose Margaret to pick the cherries. We chose her because she is
+lighter than I by half a stone; and we thought the fewer stone on the
+twigs, the better. Then it was going to be her pie.
+
+The cherries which could be reached from the ground were satisfactory in
+the extreme. They rattled into the pail, just as other people's cherries
+rattle. It would have been my instinct to leave these till the last. But
+I was not picking the cherries. I found it impossible, however, to stay
+away from the cherry-picking. Margaret is rather quick in some of her
+mannerisms. And her mannerism of mounting our cherry tree was little
+short of lightning. She was wearing white silk hose and white canvas
+slippers. Personally I did not consider these correct climbing shoes,
+but Margaret is accustomed, when far from home, to choose her own boots
+for all occasions, and to pay for new ones when her choice proves
+disastrous. So I watched her rise above me without remark.
+
+I freely admit that it always seems less dangerous to one whose feet can
+feel the crotches on the tree, and on whose arm the tin pail is, than to
+the anxious relative on the ground below. As Margaret's manoeuvres
+transmitted unpleasant little cracks along the tree, I recalled bits of
+sage advice that I had on a time given to my mother concerning her
+attitude when Geoffrey was climbing trees. I had told Mother that
+Geoffrey was just as safe in a tree as in his bed. But Margaret did not
+give this reassuring appearance. Perhaps I like Margaret better than I
+do Geoffrey. Certainly I was more afraid she would fall out of the
+cherry tree.
+
+She finally passed out of my sight. After a prolonged interval of
+silence, I suggested to Margaret that she come down.
+
+"My foot is caught," returned my sister, her tone of voice wholly
+explanatory. "It won't come out."
+
+"The shoe tapers to a point," I called encouragingly. "Try to turn it
+sideways and pull backwards at the same time."
+
+"Barbara," said my sister tonelessly, "I just said it wouldn't come
+out."
+
+"Then you'll have to take your foot out, and leave the slipper up
+there," I responded with finality.
+
+"What would Mother do?" called Margaret from her lady's bower.
+
+It was so obvious, even to me, that Mother would not have been up a tree
+at this hour that I could only repeat my original project of abandoning
+the slipper. I learned afterwards that it is not an entirely
+uncomplicated process to buckle in the centre when swinging in a
+tree-top with one foot stationary and a tin pail on one's arm, and untie
+a slipper-strap without tipping the pail or falling out of the tree.
+Margaret soon appeared within my line of vision, listing dangerously,
+chastened, dignified, and stocking-footed. She reminded me
+simultaneously, as she descended, of a mystic Russian premiere danseuse,
+a barefooted native swinging down his cocoanut grove, and High Diddle
+Dumpling my son John.
+
+I was rash enough later to inquire into the mechanics of retrieving the
+slipper, but Margaret, as she finished her tart, replied so
+appropriately in the words of the Scriptures as to be too sacrilegious
+to repeat.
+
+As our nonchalant day wore on, I lighted the gas-oven for popovers.
+Popovers are casuals. They are not supposed to be a _chef d'oeuvre_.
+They are the high-grade moron of the hot-bread family. A guest expects
+the popovers to be good, just as he expects the butter to be good. I
+expected mine to be good.
+
+As they neared the crisis, the city gas was shut off. I acted instantly,
+treating the phenomenon as a rare exception in housekeeping. I aroused a
+dying fire in the coal range with great speed and an abundance of
+kindling, and conveyed my gems across kitchen. It is a sweet-tempered
+popover, indeed, which will bear shifting from a hot oven to a
+moderately comfortable one. I began steadily to lose my unconcern. Once
+on my knees before an oven door, I usually ask no quarter and receive no
+advice. Advice is sometimes given me, but my advisers realize that it is
+not being received. This time I called Margaret in consultation.
+
+"I think they are going to pop," she pronounced judicially, "but not
+over." She was right.
+
+Does Life hold, I wonder, a more sorrowful moment than that time when a
+true cook has to instruct her guest to scoop out the inside of her
+popover for the chickens, and eat only the outside? Every one knows that
+delicate tinkling sound that a good popover makes when tossed on a china
+plate. These made somewhat the same sound as a Florida orange. We
+learned quite cogently that evening that Hospitality may depend, not
+upon greatness of heart, but upon the gas stove.
+
+This experience of ours, however, could not be regarded strictly as a
+test case. Any one would admit that all of our adversity was unusual. It
+is the rare exception when all the pipes in the house burst at once,
+when there is no gas in the gas-stove, and when one loses a slipper in
+making a cherry pie.
+
+It took another day to show us that running a house _normally_ consists
+in dealing with a succession of unusual events.
+
+We did not court disaster, or attempt anything ambitious. We had not
+even planned to invite any more company. But an old friend of Geoffrey's
+appeared at our door in uniform with his new wife, to wait over a train.
+Margaret promptly invited them to lunch. Our lunch, as already planned,
+was simple. We told them that it would be simple. Margaret leans, during
+hot weather, to such things as iced tea, lettuces, cheese wafers, and
+simple frozen desserts. Fiction has it that the water-ices are the
+simplest of anything. They _are_ simple to eat. We had planned to freeze
+the water-ice together. But in view of the fact that we had company,
+Margaret, who had first suggested our simple dessert, slipped quietly
+out to freeze it alone.
+
+Ice may be cold stuff, but it is heating to chop. Three minutes may
+freeze a pudding in some freezers, but not in ours. As much time wore
+away, I gradually hitched my chair in a backward direction, to permit a
+stealthy glance at Margaret on the back piazza. It is almost as wearing
+to hold our freezer down as it is to turn the crank. Margaret was doing
+both at once, stopping frequently to chase a slippery chunk of ice about
+with her pick, chivying the bits of ice and salt finally into a cup. Her
+cheeks had become flushed a vivid freight-car color. It was with great
+relief that I finally saw her peer into the freezer, remove the dasher,
+and proceed to seal up her confection and cover it with newspapers and
+an astrakhan cape.
+
+The precise moment when a water-ice becomes simple is when it is
+smoothly slipped into a long-stemmed sherbet glass. Our guests, we
+think, enjoyed our simple meal. But after they had gone, the word which
+exactly described our state of mind was not the word nonchalant.
+
+"Barbara!" said Margaret energetically, "for supper, let's open a box of
+blueberries."
+
+We did. Blueberries really _are_ simple. We made our evening meal of
+them, accompanied by a few left-over popover skins.
+
+Margaret and I still feel that we could deal somewhat hopefully with a
+leaking pipe. We still think that our calamities were a little out of
+the ordinary. But we do not wonder quite so much now that Mother does
+not wholly appreciate her dinner when she has guests, that she does not
+oftener make simple frozen desserts, or that she stays in such close
+company with her wheels when they are on their way around.
+
+
+
+
+THE WILL TO BOSS
+
+
+There are people who have a right to boss;--parents, for instance, and
+generals in the army. With these we are not concerned. But most of us,
+not officially in authority, now and then have ideas of our own that we
+are willing to pass on. Some of us have them more than others.
+
+The typical boss is usually a capable executive with a great unselfish
+imagination and the gift of speech. He usually knows enough to curb
+himself in public; it is only in the home that his tendencies run riot.
+In a family where all the brothers and sisters belong to this type, you
+can run riot only to a certain extent. If you go too far, you meet
+somebody else also running riot, and collisions ensue.
+
+If you are an elder sister, for instance, with a tendency toward what
+your younger brothers call "getting bossy," you find yourself constantly
+having vivid mental pictures of the best way to do a given thing. With
+these fancy-pictures in mind, it is hard for you to believe that your
+companions have any ideas at all. As you look at another person from the
+outside, you find it hard to believe that his head is working. If our
+heads were only made like these ovens with glass in the door, so that
+you could watch the half-baked thinking rise and fall--but no. Your
+brother sitting carelessly on the veranda may have his mind on the time;
+he may be planning just how he will presently rush to his room, bathe
+and change, snatch his hat, run to the station, and connect with the
+train on daylight-saving time. He may be thinking hard about all this,
+but he does not look as if he were. You fidget while the minutes go by,
+and then you go to the window and speak. If your spirit has been broken
+by much browbeating for past attempts to give advice, you speak timidly.
+If you are of stouter stuff, you speak roughly to your little boy.
+
+"Tom," you say (timidly or roughly as the case may be)--"I suppose you
+know what time it is."
+
+"Yes," says Tom.
+
+That ought to end it. But if you are a true boss, you go on. You know
+that you are being irritating. You know that Tom is of age. But you are
+willing, like all great prophets, to risk unpopularity for the sake of
+your Message. The spirit of the crier in the wilderness is upon you, and
+you keep at it until one of two things happens. If Tom is in a good
+temper, he goes upstairs to humor you, with a condescending tread and a
+tired sigh. If he is fractious, he argues: Did you ever know him to miss
+a train? Did you ever hear of his forgetting an appointment? How do you
+suppose he ever manages to get to places when you are away from home?
+
+My brother Geoffrey, in his day, has been a great sufferer from this
+kind of thing. As memory reviews his youth, there stands out only one
+occasion when he really achieved anything like freedom from sisterly
+counsel. This was when he picked the pears. The pears on six large
+loaded trees were ready to harvest. Geoffrey said that he was willing to
+pick, but not to pick to order. We would have to engage to let him pick
+the pears in his own way. We promised, though we knew too well our
+brother's way of picking pears. He holds quite a little reception from
+the tree-tops, entertaining passers-by with delightful repartee, and
+giving everybody a pear. As time goes on, he gets to throwing pears.
+"Somebody will get hurt," said our mother anxiously. But a contract is a
+contract, and we tried not to look out of the window. In this
+unaccustomed air of freedom, Geoffrey's spirits rose and rose. High in
+the branches, taking his time, he grew more and more abandoned. He had
+just reached the very top of the tallest tree when he saw far up the
+street the form of the ugliest and largest dog who ever visited our
+town, a strange white creature named Joe--a dog hard to define, but
+resembling one's childhood idea of the blood-hound type. Every one spoke
+of this dog as "Joseph A. Graham": "Joe" seemed too simple a name to be
+in scale with his size and ferocity. Down the street he came, loafing
+along. Geoffrey, ordinarily kind to pets, selected a large mellow pear,
+aimed it with steady eye, and hit Joseph A. Graham, accurately,
+amidships. Joseph flew up into the air, landed on a slant, gathered his
+large feet together for a plunge, and came dashing down the street with
+murder in his great red eye. At that moment Geoffrey looked down and saw
+with horror that an elderly gentleman was just coming up the street. It
+was obvious that Joseph thought that the old gentleman threw the pear.
+Geoffrey, emitting hoarse cries of warning, came swarming down the tree
+to the rescue, swinging from branch to branch like an orang-outang. The
+elderly gentleman, grasping the situation in the nick of time, stepped
+neatly inside our screen door, and Joseph, thwarted of reprisal, snuffed
+around the steps, muttered to himself for a few moments, and then went
+shuffling on down the street. Geoffrey, still ardently apologizing to
+the passer-by, went back to his tree-top to recover from this, the only
+troubled moment in that influential day.
+
+By clever bargaining, you can occasionally buy off your natural advisers
+in this way, and enjoy perfect independence. But there are projects that
+really call for a good boss. When a number of people are at work
+together, the trained worker should direct the group. Even in your
+family, you are allowed to be an autocrat in things that are your
+specialty. But you are supposed to be pleasant about it. This is not so
+easy when you are in the full heat of action. When you have your mind on
+a difficult project, your commands to your helpers are apt to sound
+curt. You are likely to talk to them as if they were beneath you. The
+unskilled helper in an affair demanding skill gives the impression of
+belonging to an inferior class--something a little below the social
+status of a coolie. He even feels inferior, and is therefore touchy. If
+you order him too gruffly, he is likely to take offence and knock off
+for the day.
+
+Barbara, for instance, once very nearly lost a valued slave when I was
+giving her my awkward assistance about the camera. She had decided to
+take a picture of Israel Putnam's Wolf-Den from a spot where no
+camera-tripod had ever been pitched before. The Wolf-Den sits on a slant
+above a cliff in the deep woods. At one side of it there is a capital
+place from which to take its picture, a level spot on which a tripod
+will stand securely. From this point most of the pictures hitherto taken
+of the Den were snapped. But Barbara was resolved to get a full front
+view to show the lettering on a bronze tablet that had recently been
+placed on the Den. She wanted a time exposure, and she said that she was
+going to need assistance. Her idea was to stand on a jutting rock just
+at the edge of the cliff and hold the camera in the desired position
+while the rest of the party adjusted the legs of the tripod beneath it.
+
+Every one who has ever set up a tripod knows that its loosely hinged
+legs can be elongated or telescoped by a system of slides and screws. In
+order to arrange our tripod with all its three pods on the uneven
+ground, we found that we must shorten one leg to its extreme shortness,
+and lengthen the second leg to its maximum length. This left the third
+leg out in the air over the brink of the precipice. Our guest was to
+manage the short leg, our mother was to manage the important and
+strategic leg among the rocks, and I offered to build a combination of
+bridge and flying buttress out from the slope of the cliff, for the
+third.
+
+We started our project with that cordial fellow-feeling that rises from
+a common faith in a visionary enterprise, and I am sure that we could
+have kept that beautiful spirit to the end if it had not been for the
+mosquitoes. There are no wolves at the Wolf-Den now, but on a muggy day
+the mosquitoes are just as hungry. They rise all around in insubstantial
+drifts, never seeming to alight, yet stinging in clusters. A true
+Wolf-Den mosquito can land, bite, and make good his escape before you
+have finished brushing him out of your eyes. You cannot brush insects
+out of your eyes, slap the back of your neck, and take a picture at the
+same time. Barbara, both hands busy holding the camera, was desperately
+kicking the ankle of one foot with the toe of the other. I counted
+fifteen mosquitoes sitting unmoved around the rims of her low shoes.
+
+"Don't take too much pains with that bridge," said she to me in
+considerate company tones.
+
+"No," said I respectfully, "but I have to build it up high enough to
+meet the leg."
+
+"Well, then, hurry," said she, still kindly.
+
+"Yes," said I evenly, "I am."
+
+When two sisters discourse like this before a guest, there creeps into
+their voices a note of preternatural sweetness, a restraint and
+simplicity of utterance that speak volumes to the trained ear.
+
+I was hurrying all I could, but for my unnatural bridge I had not the
+materials I could have wished. I found a weathered wooden fence-rail,
+balanced one end of it on the cliff and the other end in the crotch of a
+big tree that leaned over the side hill; but this bridge had to be built
+up with a pile of sand, leaves, small stones, and stubble balanced
+carefully upon it. Meanwhile, my mother was busily drilling a hole in
+the rock to make a firm emplacement at a distance for leg number two.
+
+Finally our three positions were approximately correct, and the more
+delicate process of adjustment began. Barbara, from under her dark
+cloth, gave muffled directions. We obeyed, shifting, screwing,
+unscrewing, adjusting. Our guest was still cheery. Success hovered
+before us in plain sight. So did the mosquitoes. Barbara's directions
+began to sound tense. They sounded especially tense when she spoke to
+me. I was balancing precariously part-way down the shale cliff, digging
+in my heels and doing the best I could with the materials at hand.
+Looking timidly up at my sister's black-draped, mosquito studded figure,
+I had been first conciliatory, then surly, then sullen. Barbara had now
+begun to focus.
+
+"Lower!" said Barbara between her teeth.
+
+Obediently we all three lowered.
+
+"No, no, not you!" said Barbara to me. "Yours was too low already."
+
+There are moments in this life when the presence of a guest is an
+impediment to free speech. Barbara, as anybody can see, had the
+advantage. She was the commanding officer. Any response from me would
+have been a retort from the ranks. Since one of her other two helpers
+was her mother and the other a guest, her words to them had to be
+sugared. In a sugar-shortage, it is the lower classes who suffer. By
+this time one could easily distinguish her directions to me by their
+truculent tone.
+
+"Make the bridge a trifle higher," said she curtly.
+
+I obediently brought another grain of sand.
+
+"Higher!"
+
+I silently added five smooth stones.
+
+"Oh, build it up!" she begged. "You ought to see the slant."
+
+I pried a large boulder from the ledge and balanced it on the rail.
+
+"Your rail's breaking!" cried my mother, so suddenly that I lost my
+footing.
+
+I seized the leg of the tripod in one hand, the branch of a tree with
+the other, while the flying buttress went rumbling down the defile, and
+I was left clinging to the bare rock, that refuge of the wild goat.
+
+We have now some very attractive pictures of the Den, taken from a spot
+where no tripod was ever pitched before, and where I hope no tripod will
+be pitched again. But as we developed the plates that night, I told
+Barbara that I did not think that I was qualified to help her much about
+the camera any more.
+
+"You were all right," said she kindly. "It was the mosquitoes."
+
+And I was mollified by this as perhaps I could have been by no logic in
+the world.
+
+The right to boss is conceded to the expert. It is also sometimes
+extended to members of the family who are for the time being in the
+centre of the stage. At such times you are permitted to dictate--when
+you are to have a guest, for instance, or when you are about to be
+married. For a day or two before the wedding, your wish is law. You
+really need to stay on hand until the last minute, however, to enforce
+the letter of the law to the end. Otherwise, circumstances may get ahead
+of you.
+
+Geoffrey, for example, directly after announcing his engagement to our
+best friend Priscilla Sherwood, enjoyed a time of perfect power. He knew
+that he needed only to say, "Priscilla likes so and so," and so and so
+would follow. Barbara and I reminded him that we knew Priscilla better
+than he did, but we could not say that we were engaged to her. Just
+before the wedding, Geoffrey took us aside to explain seriously about
+his plans, and to give us our orders for the day.
+
+"We don't want you to throw anything," said Geoffrey reasonably. "No
+rice or confetti or shoes. And you needn't even see us to the train.
+Priscilla doesn't care about any demonstration, and I think it would be
+just as well to go off quietly. We'd just as soon the other people on
+the train didn't know we were a bride and groom."
+
+Barbara and I, struck with the originality of this point of view,
+promised to throw nothing. Priscilla, meanwhile, reasoned equally well
+with her brothers. After the wedding, we all stood cordially on the
+curbstone and let them drive off to the train. Then, deserted, the two
+families confronted each other rather blankly.
+
+"It doesn't seem as if they had actually gone, does it?" said Barbara
+uneasily.
+
+"They wouldn't mind if we waved to them when the train goes out, would
+they?" began one of the Sherwoods tentatively.
+
+Barbara was inspired. "Come on down to our house," said she, "and then
+they can see us from the train."
+
+One of the advantages of a home near the railway is the fact that you
+can see your friends off on trips without leaving your dooryard. Each
+man for himself, we went streaming down the last hill, fearing at any
+minute to hear the train pull out. To our dismay, we saw that a long
+freight-train was standing on the siding in such a position as to cut
+off our view of the express.
+
+"When you are on the train," I panted as I ran, "you can see our
+upstairs windows even when freight-cars are in the way."
+
+"We'll wave out of the front windows," said Barbara, and we all rushed
+upstairs.
+
+"They'll never think to look up here, will they?" said one of the
+brothers Sherwood anxiously as we peered out along the vista of track.
+"The pear trees are in the way."
+
+"We might just step outside the window," said Barbara resourcefully.
+"The piazza roof is perfectly safe. Then they couldn't help seeing us."
+
+Wrapping our best clothes about us, we crept out through the window one
+by one, and went cautiously along the tin roof to a vantage-point beyond
+the pear trees. When a company of grown people goes walking on a tin
+roof, there are moments of shock when the tin bubbles snap and crackle,
+making a sound nothing short of terrifying, like the reverberations of
+season-cracks in the ice on a pond. We ranged ourselves in a row near
+the eaves-pipe, just in time. The train went hooting by. They saw us. We
+waved the wedding flowers, and they waved back. We saw them laughing. We
+waved until the end of the train disappeared around the curve. And as we
+assisted each other politely one by one through the window again, we had
+a comfortable sensation of having wound up the affair with a finish and
+completeness that had been lacking after the first farewell.
+
+Still feeling a little uplifted with excitement, we went up the street
+to report events to our grandmother.
+
+"You mean to say that you went up on to the _roof_ to wave?" said our
+grandmother.
+
+"Well," said Barbara thoughtfully, "it didn't seem quite like going up
+on the roof at the time. It all happened so gradually. We just stepped
+out."
+
+"And they saw you?" inquired Grandmother.
+
+"Oh, yes. Nobody could help it. Everybody saw us." Barbara glowed
+reminiscently.
+
+"And you waved the wedding flowers?"
+
+"Yes," said Barbara happily. "Father Sherwood gave us each an armful."
+
+"Well," said our grandmother, resuming her sewing, "I shouldn't wonder
+if the other passengers on that train thought that something had
+happened to Geoffrey."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+To govern one's own kinsmen successfully, one certainly does need to be
+on the spot. One cannot afford to leave them for an instant. One should
+be alert and watchful, and as diplomatic as circumstances will allow.
+The ability to boss implies a ready understanding and the knack of
+seeing the end from the beginning. It implies also a hardy constitution
+and the gift of tongues. But after all, in the last analysis, it is
+largely a matter of the Will.
+
+
+
+
+MORE TO IT THAN YOU'D THINK
+
+
+I am often reminded of a lady, who, during the war, volunteered to
+oversee all the Canteen work for soldiers passing through our town. Her
+favorite phrase, accompanied by a surprised accent, became the following
+one: "There's more _to_ this job than you'd think from the outside
+looking in." Then she would proceed with many astounding details:
+soldiers who required two cups of coffee, or three lumps of sugar, milk
+that in the course of time became dubious, and trains that in the course
+of time became late.
+
+I sympathized with this lady and helped her wash the dishes. And I have
+never questioned her statement. Moreover, I have yet to find the job to
+which this statement does not apply. I suppose that, until you become a
+postal clerk, you know very little about the intricacies into which a
+capital "S" may go, or how the rats eat the stamps. A job is always
+annotated for the employee.
+
+Certainly, teaching school introduces you to manifold works which could
+not be anticipated by looking in. In fact, when my friendly janitor once
+said that it must be very easy to teach the First Grade, I caught myself
+falling back on the popular phrase with some emotion--"There's more to
+it than you'd think." My most baffling problems were just a little too
+complex to mention to my janitor.
+
+"What instantly comes to your mind," says my college friend who is
+"taking" Psychology, "when I say the word 'ping-pong'?"
+
+I tell him. By right of which I retaliate, "What instantly comes to your
+mind when I say the word 'sand-table'?"
+
+"Oh, little paper pine trees," responds the student (who is also
+"taking" Education),--"and wigwams and canoes, and a real piece of glass
+for a pond."
+
+All this comes to my mind, too,--with addenda. The addenda, however,
+come to my mind first: Spilling Sand, Sweeping up Sand, Trailing your
+fingers in Sand as you march past, and, if you are _very_ newly five
+years old, Throwing Sand. This is not because I am soured on the
+sand-table. I have merely learned that there is more _to_ one than you
+would suspect from the outside of one, looking in. Sand-tables may mean
+pine trees, and they may mean pandemonium.
+
+Throw several such freighted words into a mixed group, and the reactions
+are passionately interesting. If you say, "Muscular movement," "Interest
+and Attention," "Socialized Classes," or "Projects," you can sift out
+the school-teachers by their smile.
+
+In fact, there is a very large group of noun substantives which mark,
+for an Elementary teacher, at least, the seasons of the year. Usually
+she has a top drawer full of these. Many a teacher longs for the
+horse-chestnut-on-a-string season to appear, if only to finish up the
+season of the maple-key;--that large pale-green maple-key, which, by
+clever splitting of the central seed, may be made to stay on one's nose.
+My young friend Junior O'Brien once read to me "The Three Billy Goats
+Gruff," with a maple-key over each ear, one on his freckled nose, and
+two on his apple cheeks. I gave over my reading-lesson period to
+researches as to how his hard little cheeks could yield enough slack to
+accommodate a key; and before I was ready to ask Junior to remove his
+decorations, the force of gravity intervened.
+
+The maple-key, I suppose, suggests eye-glasses. Certainly a bit of wire,
+twisted into spectacles, follows keys. These may be very ornate in the
+upper grades, more nearly approaching the lorgnette, or even the
+opera-glass. It is a fascinating thing to see what a wire hairpin
+correctly treated will do to a young face. It lightens my day's load,
+this vision of grave childish eyes through the twisted rims, and that
+magnificent effort of will, contrary to nature, to obtain perfect
+immobility of the nose.
+
+In company with the gross of wire spectacles in my drawer are numerous
+"snapping-bugs." These may be bought for one cent each, in the
+snapping-bug season, of the ice-cream man. They are double bugs of tin,
+which, if pinched in the proper spot, will yield a sharp click
+reminiscent of the old-fashioned stereopticon lecture. Snapping-bugs may
+go far in "socializing" a First Grade, and in making friends with a
+newcomer at recess, but when they snap in school they give me an uneasy
+sense that my audience is in haste to have the picture changed. So I
+have six snapping-bugs.
+
+I have five tumble-bugs. These are vivid green or purple gelatin
+capsules about an inch long, each housing a lead ball. Place the bug on
+an inclined plane, and it will promptly turn right side up, or the other
+side up, as long as the plane continues to incline. Since tumble-bugs
+are practically noiseless, their life is somewhat longer than that of
+their snapping cousins.
+
+I have one sling-shot. It might be argued that First Graders are too
+young for sling-shots. So they are. They all too often receive their own
+charge full in the eye. They much prefer their comfortable acorn pipes.
+These are pandemic in October, as are also balloons.
+
+I once perceived Dominick, in the height of the balloon season, with a
+frankfurter balloon, a shape then new. The active part was at just that
+moment inert--a dried and crumpled wisp of rubber. But its tube was
+unmistakably going to be blown. Dominick will never know how much his
+teacher wished to see his balloon, properly inflated, swaying and
+glowing as only a green sausage balloon can glow. I was deterred by a
+misgiving as to whether this type of balloon collapsed quietly after its
+magnificent spectacle, or whether it was of that variety which emits a
+peculiar penetrating whistle as it shrinks--an unmistakable sound, due
+to be placed accurately in her list of sounds by my teacher-friend next
+door, who does not approve of balloons in academic session. Dominick,
+however, wished more than I did to see his lighter-than-air craft in all
+its glory. I finally deposited it among the false noses and
+horse-chestnuts in my drawer.
+
+I used to wonder why a teacher _wanted_ marbles and walnuts, and
+pencil-sharpeners shaped like a rabbit. She doesn't. She simply does not
+want to hear them dropping, dropping, ever dropping, like the pennies in
+Sabbath School. There is something thrilling to _any_body about a real
+agate. If it is about, you have to look at it. It is so perfectly round.
+Anything perfectly round, or perfectly cylindrical, likes, as we learn
+in Kindergarten, to roll. It likes, upon occasion, to "rest"; but it
+does not like this nearly as well. It is not fair to a child to let him
+spend his time playing with an agate in school. Neither is it fair to
+him to destroy the beauty of an agate for him--the charm of its shape,
+or the marvel of its construction. A teacher should strike a medium so
+delicately and absolutely medium that the angels themselves pause lest
+they jar the weights.
+
+But the most curious phenomenon which I have observed, one which could
+not possibly be anticipated by an outsider looking in, is the effect of
+my setting the clock. There are times when a perfectly innocent
+shuffling of thirty-four feet in the First Grade assumes proportions far
+more important than Murder in the First Degree. Then it is that I set
+the clock. If it does not need setting, I set it forward first, and then
+back again. The clock is high on the wall, reached by the janitor (all
+too seldom) from a very high step-ladder. I set it from the floor. I
+take the yardstick and advance on the clock. It is a nice operation to
+push up the glass crystal with a pliant stick, haul down the
+minute-hand, and finally to close the door. The door must first be
+lifted into its proper position, and then hammered shut. Each bang of
+the yardstick sounds as if it would be followed certainly by showers of
+broken glass. I think that this uncertainty is what keeps my pupils'
+hearts fluttering and their feet still. Deathly silence always
+accompanies my setting of the clock. An imperceptible sound of relief,
+like a group-sigh, follows the click of the door in its catch. I can
+tiptoe back, on that sigh, to quiet industry.
+
+It is true that children, with the best intentions, sometimes bring
+inappropriate busy-work to school. But teaching them has not dowered me
+with any disdain for my students. They are beneath me only in years. In
+fact, I raise my hat to some of them in spirit, as I teach them to raise
+theirs to me in truth. Here and there I calmly recognize a superior. I
+am constantly taking care that no youthful James Watt can say to me in
+later years, "You put out my first tea-kettle which boiled in school."
+
+I suppose that Pauline will eventually be a gracious hostess, saying
+just the right thing to her guests and to her husband--charming every
+masculine acquaintance on sight. Even now, I find that she is engaged,
+provisionally, to James Henry Davis. Perhaps some day Adamoskow, with
+his long clever fingers and his dreamy eyes, and no head whatever for
+"number," will be charging me five dollars a seat to hear him play. His
+impresario can count the change for him.
+
+And I know that James Henry Davis, at seventeen, will have the power to
+break hearts to the right of him, and hearts to the left of him, with
+the same dimple, the same wonderful pompadour, and the same lifted
+eyebrow that he now uses for the same purpose in Grade I. I know that he
+will out-dance his dancing-master at his Junior Prom. I shall wonder,
+when I see him in his white gloves, how I ever dared to take his acorn
+pipe away. Therefore I take it away as innocuously as possible, and
+touch his soft pompadour, in passing, with a reverent hand.
+
+
+
+
+TRIO IMPETUOSO
+
+
+The first steps of certain things are beautiful; the first flush of buds
+along a maple branch, for instance, or the first smooth launching of an
+Indian canoe. But the first steps of music are commonly not so. The
+first note of a young robin is a squawk. The first piercing note of a
+young violinist is not in tune with the music of any sphere.
+
+Musicians learn to expect a certain amount of wear and tear in first
+attempts. Even the professional orchestra makes bad work of a new
+symphony the first time through. And in an amateur orchestra, where the
+players are of various grades of proficiency, the playing of a new piece
+of music is a hazardous affair.
+
+In our own orchestra, when we read a new piece of music for the first
+time, we usually decide to "try it once through without stopping." Come
+what will, we will meet it together. The great thing is to keep going.
+Sometimes we emerge from this enterprise with all bows flying and
+everybody triumphantly prolonging the same last note. At other times we
+come out at the finish one by one, each man for himself, like the
+singers in an old-fashioned round-song rendering of "Three Blind Mice."
+
+To enjoy playing in an orchestra like ours, the musician should have a
+great soul and a rugged nervous system. He should not be too proud to
+play his best on music that is too easy for him, and he should not be
+afraid to try music that is too hard. Music within the easy reach of
+every member of an amateur orchestra is scarce. The first time through,
+there is usually somebody who has to skirmish anxiously along,
+experimenting softly to himself when he loses his place, and coming out
+strong when he finds it again. From among the many desirable notes in a
+rapid passage, he chooses as many as he can hit in the time allowed,
+playing selected grace-notes here and there, and skipping the rest. We
+cannot all have everything.
+
+Most amateurs call this process "vamping the part." This, and the clever
+deed known as "cueing in" passages supposed to be played by instruments
+that we lack, are our chief offences against the law.
+
+There are proud spirits in the world who refuse to have anything to do
+with either of these sins. When they come to a passage that is not well
+within their reach, they lay down the fiddle and the bow, and sit back
+tolerantly while the rest go on without them. Their motto is the one
+made famous by a certain publishing house: _Tout bien ou rien._ That is
+a fine watchword for a publisher, but fatal in a scrub orchestra. There,
+it is likely to mean that "tout" must go "bien," or you resign.
+
+Nobody has ever resigned from our orchestra. We are called a Trio,
+because our minimum is three. But, in actual fact, we rarely play with
+less than seven performers. Whenever we are about to play in public, we
+reenforce ourselves with additional instruments, beginning with a
+favorite extra violin. If we are to play in the evening, we can count on
+a viola and a clarinet, played respectively by the senior and the junior
+partner of a hardware firm: Mr. Bronson and Mr. Billings, of Bronson and
+Billings. If we are to play on Sunday, we are sure of a double-bass. And
+on state occasions, we are joined by an attorney-at-law who plays the
+piccolo. People who invite us to play always request music by Our Trio,
+and then inquire delicately how many of us there will be.
+
+A trio of this kind is sure to be in demand. In making our way to the
+place where we are to play, we have learned to go in relays through the
+streets. This is not because we are ashamed to be seen carrying the
+badge of our talent through the town, but because if we all go together
+there is a discussion about who shall carry what instruments. Barbara,
+our 'cellist, is the storm-centre of these broils. The 'cello, like some
+people, has the misfortune to look a great deal heavier than it really
+is. No gentleman likes to let a lady carry one.
+
+"Really, it's as light as a feather," says Barbara, swinging it easily
+alongside.
+
+"But," reasons the viola earnestly, "think how it looks."
+
+To avoid all friction, Barbara goes ahead with the gentleman who plays
+the bass-viol. Together they present a striking aspect to the passer-by,
+but they have peace and mutual understanding in their hearts. Nobody
+could expect a gentleman, however gallant, to carry both a 'cello and a
+double-bass.
+
+The rest of us follow along at a safe distance, and arrive at becoming
+intervals at the place where we are to play.
+
+For convenience in talking among ourselves, we have divided our
+performances into three classes: the platform performance, the
+semi-screened, and the screened. Our semi-screened programmes are those
+where we are partly hidden from view, in choir-lofts, conservatories,
+verandas, and anterooms. The screened are those that take place behind
+palms. Of all these sorts, we vastly prefer the screened.
+
+Each of us has a special reason for this preference. Mr. Bronson, the
+viola, prefers it because, screened, he is allowed to beat time with his
+foot. There is something very contented-looking about the tilt of his
+long shoe, thrust out informally amidst the shrubbery--the toe rising
+and falling in exact rhythm with the music, now legato, now
+appassionato, our perfect metronome. Such happiness is contagious.
+
+Barbara likes to be screened because then she can dig a tiny hole in the
+floor for the end-pin of the 'cello, and stick the pin into it once for
+all, while she plays. The vogue of the waxed hardwood floor is a great
+trial to 'cellists. It is upsetting to feel your great instrument
+skidding out from under you suddenly, with a jerk that you can neither
+foresee nor control. When we go to places where the device of boring a
+hole in the floor may not be well received, Barbara takes along a neat
+strip of stair-carpet, anchors it at one end with her chair and at the
+other with her music-stand, and sits on it firmly, much as the ancient
+Roman used to camp upon a square of tessellated pavement brought with
+him from Rome.
+
+Mr. Billings, the clarinet, likes the screened performance because his
+wife has told him that he has a mannerism of arching his eyebrows when
+he plays. In playing a wind-instrument, the eyebrows are a great help.
+He can arch them all he likes, behind the palms.
+
+The rest of us enjoy the sense of cosy safety that comes when we arrange
+our racks, distribute the parts, and settle down with our backs to the
+foliage for an evening of music, out of sight. We can play old
+favorites, far too tattered to appear on a printed programme; new things
+not sufficiently rehearsed; extracts from compositions that we cannot
+play beyond a certain point; and, best of all, those beloved collections
+of what Mr. Robert Haven Schauffler used to call "derangements." All
+these things, barred by the platform artist, we play blissfully, behind
+the potted plants.
+
+Since everybody outside our leafy covert is talking, we are free, not
+only from criticism, but also from the obligation of acknowledging
+applause. All the little niceties of platform procedure--bowings, exits,
+dealing with encores--are out of the question. Since we play
+continuously, there is no chance for encores.
+
+There has been one exception to this rule. One night at a Saint
+Patrick's Day banquet, Our Trio was out in full force. Even the piccolo
+was with us. Our corner was carefully walled in with heavy burlap
+screens, because this was a business-men's supper, and no ladies were
+supposed to be present. We had brought along a sheaf of Irish music in
+honor of the day, and we played it unexpectedly after a series of other
+things. As we finished one of the appealing Irish airs, the applause
+broke out all over the hall in a genuine encore. We listened,
+electrified, laying an ear to the cracks. Barbara, who thinks that we
+are altogether too easily set up by the plaudits of the crowd, stood up,
+'cello at an angle, and made a series of elaborate bows for our benefit
+behind the screen. The viola sprang to his feet and joined her, and they
+were bowing and scraping hand in hand like Farrar and Caruso, when the
+front screen was thrown suddenly wide open by the toastmaster who had
+been sent to request an encore, and no less than forty gentlemen looked
+in. Since that time, we have not felt too sheltered, even with burlap
+screens.
+
+The question of applause, so nearly negligible in the screened
+performance, is a matter of the greatest moment on the platform. The
+process of responding to it is complicated by numbers. A solo artist can
+step in easily, bow, and step out again. But it takes too long for a
+trio of eight or more to step in, bow, and step out. We have to wait
+behind the scenes for a real encore.
+
+We are highly gratified at a chance to play our encores, of which we
+carry a supply. The only hitch is the little matter of deciding just
+what an encore is. The viola thinks that an encore consists of applause
+going in waves--starting to die out and reviving again in gusts of
+hearty clapping. Two such gusts, he says, should comprise an encore. But
+our pianist thinks that we should wait until the clapping stops
+entirely, and that, if it then bursts out afresh, it shall be esteemed
+an encore.
+
+One evening the encore was by every standard unmistakable. Our mother
+was at the piano that night, and, supposing that we were ready, led the
+way in. The rest of us, absorbed in giving out the parts of the music,
+did not see her go. We waited, wondering where she was. Tempests of
+amused applause meanwhile surged up around our lonely accompanist
+stranded in the hall. We heard the thundering, and scattered in frantic
+search. One of us could have played the piano part, but the music for
+that had disappeared as well as the musician. The double-bass chanced
+upon the janitor's little boy in the corridor, and asked him if he knew
+where our accompanist could be.
+
+"Why, yes! Can't you hear 'em clap?" said the boy in surprise. "She's
+went in."
+
+I have heard that there are sensitive people who are jarred upon by
+applause, people who hold the perfect-tribute theory: they think that
+the audience, out of respect to the artist, ought to remain reverently
+silent after each number. I cannot answer for the great artist, but I
+know that our trio does not feel that way about it. We like applause.
+Silence is a mysterious thing. From behind the stage how are you to tell
+a reverent hush from a shocked one? The trained ear can instantly
+classify applause; but silence, however reverent, does not carry well
+behind the scenes. We like a little something after each number to cheer
+us on.
+
+We do know, however, that in a small private audience there is a sense
+of strain if the listeners feel obliged to make a demonstration after
+each selection. Clapping seems affected in a group of three or four, and
+the business of thinking up well-selected remarks is a serious matter.
+Knowing this, we always relieve our drawing-room audiences of
+embarrassment by making the remarks ourselves. The moment the last
+lingering whisper has completely died away from the strings, we turn as
+one man and begin to compliment the music. "We like that ending better
+than any other part of the whole thing," we say appreciatively. This
+lifts a load of anxiety from the minds of our hearers, and serves to
+break the hush.
+
+The question of playing to guests in our own home is the subject on
+which our family _ensemble_ most nearly came to mutiny. Our father had a
+way, contrary to orders, of suggesting a little music when we had
+visitors. The rest of us objected to this, especially if the guests were
+people who did not play. Once, when an evening of hospitality to
+strangers was in store, our mother was giving us all our final
+instructions. She turned to our father last of all.
+
+"Endicott," she began impressively, "this evening you mustn't say the
+word 'music' unless somebody else suggests it. If they want us to play,
+they will ask us."
+
+Our father, a little grieved to think that any one should worry lest he
+do so strange a thing, promised to comply.
+
+But that evening, finding the guests more and more congenial in the
+midst of firelight conversation, he turned to them cordially and said,
+"I know that this is just the time when you would enjoy a little music,
+but I have been told that I must not say the word unless you suggest it
+first."
+
+The guests, highly diverted, rose to the occasion and begged prettily.
+They said that they had been starving for some music all along. When
+visitors who do not really care for music have once been launched on the
+process of asking for it, the kindest thing to do is to play promptly
+something brief and sweet and trailing--some _Abendlied_ or
+_Albumblatt_, for instance, and have it over. In the presence of guests,
+such family crises must be tided over with neat persiflage. It was only
+after the company had gone that the mutiny took place.
+
+But there is one kind of audience that we like the best of all.
+Sometimes of an early summer evening, when our whole orchestra has
+gathered to rehearse for a performance that we have in store, the
+relatives and friends of the players ask to be allowed to come and
+listen. We arrange the hammock and steamer-chairs in a screened corner
+outside the house, and there our listeners--perhaps the sister of the
+bass-viol, the business partner of the piccolo, and a neighbor or
+two--settle themselves comfortably under the windows. Then we play,
+interrupted only by an occasional shout from outside, when somebody
+requests an encore, or asks what that last thing was. Our steamer-chair
+audience has often begged us to announce the composer and the name of
+each selection as we go along, and we usually appoint somebody to do
+this, megaphoning the titles through the window. But before we have gone
+very far, we forget our audience. They lie there neglected, scattered on
+the lawn. The dew falls around them, the shadows gather over them, and
+they give up the attempt to attract our notice. We are rehearsing now,
+not performing, and our blood is up.
+
+Sometimes we have a strong-minded guest who refuses to be treated in
+this way. He declines the steamer-chair, with steamer-rug and cushion,
+preferring to sit against the wall in a cramped corner of the room where
+we are playing. We assure him that the music sounds better from a
+distance, but he begs to be allowed to stay. He says that he likes to
+watch as well as listen. This does not disturb us; we are rather
+flattered if the truth were known. In fact, we know a little how he
+feels. There is a dramatic and pictorial value in the humblest
+orchestra, no matter how densely you populate your music-room. Usually
+the guest who enjoys this sight is a person who would like to play if he
+knew how--one who can join in the excitement when things are going well.
+
+Like all amateurs, we do become excited. And when we are excited, we
+tend to play faster and faster, and louder and louder, unless something
+holds us up. "Pianissimo!" shouts the double-bass, fortissimo. Thus
+exhorted, we settle down just as earnestly, but with more attention to
+the waymarks and the phrasings of the score.
+
+Probably it is at these moments that we do our very best. The bass-viol
+standing by the fireplace, his genial face unsmiling now, intent, takes
+the rich low harmony with great sweeps of his practised bow. Barbara,
+over against the music-cabinet, plays smoothly on, her dark old 'cello
+planted firmly, the shadow of her hair across its great brown pegs. Mr.
+Billings, with pointed eyebrows arching steeply, pipes and carols above
+us like a lark. And through it all the vibrant foot of Mr. Bronson
+faithfully beats time.
+
+"Why don't you get together and play like this often?" inquires the
+sister of the bass-viol, when the audience at last, with arms full of
+steamer-rugs and cushions, comes trailing in.
+
+The piccolo, passing sandwiches, looks up with hearty response. "Yes,
+why can't we?" he asks. "After the reception, let's try to keep it up."
+
+The rest of us, fastening the covers around our instruments, give
+enthusiastic consent. "Every other Monday, let's meet without fail," we
+say. But in our hearts we know that we shall not. We shall all be
+busy--all sorts of things will happen to prevent--and the weeks will
+fly. Yet we know that sooner or later our trio will meet again--probably
+for a desperate rehearsal some months hence, just in time for the next
+event where we are asked to play.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN OF A, B, C
+
+
+That is, I used to hope that they were returning. My neighbor's small
+son, Tony, aged six, needed them. He needed them to learn to read with.
+This was before I had any first-hand evidence about modern school
+methods. I saw school only through Tony.
+
+Tony was able to read, "over to school," such excerpts as the following:
+"The gingerbreadboy went clickety-clack down the road." "Sail far, sail
+far, o'er the fabulous main!" "Consider, goat, consider!" "You have made
+a mistake, Mr. Alligator." Just why, I reflected, should "Mr. Alligator"
+and "fabulous" be introduced to a pleasant child like Tony, who had not
+as yet been allowed to meet "cat," "dog," "hen," "red," "boy," "bad,"
+and a great many other creatures really necessary to a little boy's
+existence?
+
+His mother knew that Tony was not learning to read very fast. She argued
+with me a little on principle. She said that James Whitcomb Riley wrote
+"fabulous." I reminded her in a neighborly way that Mr. Milton wrote the
+"Areopagitica," thought by some to be a good sort, but that, until Tony
+knew his letters, the "Areopagitica" would be almost wasted on him. I
+would have stepped in at this point myself and ponied him a bit, for
+pure love, had it not been for the fact that I hated to have him get a
+sensible A, B, or C mixed up with such corrupting associates as a
+considering goat or a mistaken alligator. And he would certainly have
+mixed them up. He would never have been able in this world to decide in
+his little mind what relation "consider" had to A,B,C. And he would have
+been quite excusable.
+
+I began to think that his mother was too optimistic. She was trying to
+console herself by the fact that, if she should die, Tony could at least
+order gingerbread off a menu card. But could he? The sad fact that my
+neighbor overlooked was that he didn't know "gingerbread" when he saw
+it, but just "gingerbread_boy_"! Perhaps even at that, Tony might not
+have starved, for even gingerbread_boys_ are edible, if Tony really
+could have recognized that. But he couldn't. Not outside the confines of
+his "reading-book"--Heaven save the mark! A modern word-fiend tried to
+explain to me here, that, after having learned "gingerbreadboy," a child
+comes naturally by three words (and even four if they allowed "gin" in
+the school curriculum)--namely, "ginger," "bread," and "boy." But Tony
+didn't. I tried him. He looked upon "ginger" as an entire stranger,
+interesting in form, perhaps, but still foreign. Something, I was
+convinced, was wrong. And I attributed this state to the fact that Tony
+didn't know A, B, and C.
+
+Just as I reached the high noon of this conviction, I was drawn by the
+most curious of circumstances into the business of teaching little
+children to read. I held the novel position of being besought to bring
+all my heresies and all my notions, and join the influenza-thinned ranks
+of the teaching profession. The Board of Education said that it was
+desperate. It must have been.
+
+I suppose that no other power on earth could have converted me so
+quickly to the decried method, as my being forced, out of loyalty to my
+employers, to support it. I was plunged on the first day--not into
+"clickety-clack," but "slippety-slip." It was my first object lesson to
+hear the laughter of many little children, as the small gray cat
+swallowed slippety-slip in rapid succession the white goose, the
+cinnamon bear, the great, big pig, and others which have
+"slippety-slipped" my mind just now. It was easy to teach them which
+fantastic word said "slippety-slip." It was very hard to teach them
+which plain-faced word said "and." I was happy to find many fine old
+words ranging themselves in the same category as "slippety-slip."
+"Goose" is intrinsically easier to learn than "duck"; "red" is a
+bagatelle beside "blue." But the easiest word of all is "slippety-slip."
+
+I took notes of phenomena like these, for use later in dealing with
+critics who theorized as I had theorized on the day previous. I was not
+quite ready with any solution on this first day when a visiting mother
+assured me that she, when a girl, was wont to read much better when her
+book was open before her. Her son, on the contrary, read better, she
+told me, and with more interpretation and fine feeling, without his
+book. "People think," said my visitor, "that when a child has his book
+open and says aloud the words printed on that page, that he is reading.
+He may be," she added mildly, "and then again, of course, he mayn't."
+
+I determined that, when this logical lady should come again, her son
+should be reading. So I taught him to read. I taught him via the method
+I had disparaged; via "Mrs. Teapot," "Goosey-Poosey-Loosey," and the
+goat that would not go home, without once mentioning the names of A, B,
+or C. This boy is in the third grade now, skimming the "Literary Digest"
+for material for his oral language.
+
+The second step in my conversion occurred when one of the overworked
+teachers showed me hastily how to teach Phonics. She drew a flight of
+stairs on the blackboard, and on each step she placed a letter of the
+alphabet. I did not find "A" among them, but I discerned both B and C.
+To my surprise, the little children knew these, but they called them (as
+nearly as the printed page can convey the sound) _buh_ and _kuh_. They
+called "R" _err_, and "H" they called _huh_.
+
+When I reached home, I looked up a few letters in the Dictionary, and
+received new light. Of what use is it, after all, to know that "W" is
+called "Double-you," unless you know first the sound for which it
+stands? The Dictionary, in fact, explains that the proper sound of this
+letter is really a "half u" instead of a "double u." Certainly "W" is a
+more helpful tool to a child when he has been taught to pucker up his
+lips like the howling wind when he sees this letter coming, than when he
+has been taught to get set for a "d" sound which is not there. Why
+confuse a child's mind at first with what a letter is arbitrarily called
+by some one else? Surely it is more sensible to show him what noise to
+make when he sees it.
+
+But I found that some of the children did not connect the delightful
+game of the blackboard stairs with their reading at all. Tony was among
+this number. Right here I was electrified to find out the real trouble
+with Tony. I found that it had not occurred to him that the letter "g,"
+at the beginning of the word "good," for instance, could have any part
+in distinguishing this word from the Little Red Hen. I found also that
+many of the children were recognizing "good-day to you" wholly by the
+quaint little dash in the middle of "good-day." They shouted heartily
+"good-day to you" whenever I showed them any word containing a hyphen.
+
+To remedy this difficulty, I abstracted Phonics bodily from my afternoon
+session, and inserted it directly before the reading period in the
+morning. In fact, I allowed a few Phonics to spill over into Reading,
+and commenced to read a little before the children were quite finished
+with the staircase. I can say that the greatest triumphal moment of my
+life was when an entire class saw, independently and suddenly and of
+themselves, that "ice-cream" could not possibly be "good-day to you."
+And the fact that the children now knew these apart by a phonetic tool
+did not prevent them from saying "good-day to you" just as cordially and
+just as fast as before. Moreover, they had not compelled the school
+system to wait for them to spell out the words letter by letter.
+
+This is the only stage in a modern phrase-and-sentence method which
+contains a pitfall. If this is solidly bridged, most children will learn
+to read more understandingly than we used to. They will read twice as
+well, and three times as fast.
+
+At the end of the school year, after Tony had read nineteen books, I did
+throw in the alphabet itself as a classic. We even sang it to the good
+old-fashioned tune.
+
+Tony will use A, B, and C, in the Second Grade to spell with, and in the
+Fourth Grade to look up words in the Dictionary with; but he did not
+need them, after all, in the First Grade, to learn to read with.
+
+
+
+
+UNDERSTANDING THE HEALTHY
+
+
+The healthy in all centuries have misunderstood the sick. In the days
+when sickness was supposed to be the result of possession by devils, the
+healthy gathered around the invalid, beating upon drums. When all
+disease was supposed to be the chastening of the Lord, they gathered at
+the bedside again, teaching repentance of sins. And in our own
+generation, they come again around the sufferer telling him to take his
+mind off himself.
+
+I myself, being healthy, have never been the victim of that form of
+ministration. I have simply observed the effect of it on others. And
+since there is no hope of converting the healthy from this habit, the
+next best thing is to explain the obscure workings of the healthy mind.
+
+Of course, no two healthy people are quite alike, and general statements
+about any great composite type are dangerous. But no matter how
+divergent their styles, all up-to-date, unspoiled, healthy persons can
+be trusted to make certain stock remarks to or about the sick. The
+context may vary, but sooner or later the following phrases will crop
+up: "pulling yourself together"; "bracing up"; "standing a little real
+hardship"; "forgetting all about your aches and pains"; "people who
+never have _time_ to be sick"; "people who are worse off than you are";
+and, "taking your mind off yourself."
+
+At any one of these cheery phrases, the spirited sick man feels his
+gorge begin to rise. He knows that if his gorge rises, so will his
+temperature. With a mighty effort he swallows his temper, and his
+temperature goes up anyway at the exertion. All this time he knows that
+his visitor meant well, and he despises himself for his irritation. He
+has no way of defending himself, for, if he should describe how ill he
+really is, would not that convict him of having his mind on himself, of
+craving sympathy, of "enjoying poor health"? Over and over the words of
+his visitor go ringing in his ears--words intended tactfully to
+stimulate recuperation. "It's fine to see you looking so well. All you
+need to do now is to get something to take up your mind. I know how hard
+it will be, for I have been there myself, but circumstances were such
+that _I_ just _had_ to brace up. It would be the best thing in the world
+for you if you only had to rough it a little."
+
+Any one of these remarks is guaranteed to leave the person who is really
+suffering in a very storm-beaten state of mind, unless by the luckiest
+chance he understands two basic facts about the healthy: first, our
+healthy imagination; second, our healthy ignorance.
+
+The healthy imagination, in the first place, cannot bear to move in
+circles. Any novelist knows that a story must progress. If the action is
+dramatic, the final downfall or the final victory must follow swiftly
+upon the heels of conflict. The attention wanders if the story goes
+monotonously along in the style of "Another grasshopper came and brought
+another grain of corn. And then another grasshopper came and brought
+another grain of corn."
+
+On the same principle, the general public gives intelligent
+understanding to the great dangerous diseases where there is a grand
+struggle of life and death, where the sufferer grows rapidly worse,
+reaches the crisis, hangs for a moment between time and eternity, and
+then either dies or gets well. Here is the stuff of contest, the essence
+of Greek drama: pity and fear, unity of action, and dignity of conflict.
+The imagination rises to it as to whirlwinds and the noise of
+waterspouts. But when it comes to the good friend who neither dies nor
+gets well, who begins to recover and succumbs again, travelling the
+monotonous round of one ill after another, none of them fatal,--then the
+healthy imagination stops following the circles.
+
+It is time by every calculation that our friend recovered. We hope that
+he will soon be well and strong. He hopes so, too, we admit
+broad-mindedly. But most of us fall into generalities at this point. We
+are not impatient _with_ our friend; we are impatient for him. A delayed
+convalescence, we have heard, is usually the result of mismanagement
+somewhere; the wrong doctor, perhaps, a family inclined to spoil by
+kindness, or mind over matter imperfectly understood. Suppose our sick
+friend could get away from his anxious relatives, and be suddenly cast
+upon a desert island; would he not have to brace up and rattle down his
+own cocoanuts with a will? We have known such cases--paralytics who got
+thrown overboard and nimbly swam ashore, rescuing women and children on
+their way. Our friend is not an extreme case like that, but, if he
+actually had to get to work, would he not forget all about his troubles,
+and suddenly find himself cured?
+
+Once having put him into the class of needless suffering, we roll along
+merrily to the moment when we decide that it is time for us to speak.
+Let us speak tactfully, by all means. Let us auto-suggest as it were!
+Let those of us who are amateurs do what we can in a quiet way.
+
+At this point, the healthy do three things. We diagnose, we prescribe,
+and we tell you to take your mind off yourself.
+
+This is where the healthy ignorance comes in. When we are well, we think
+of the mind as a convenient tool; in Huxley's words, "a cool, clear,
+logic engine." We know that minor ailments of our own have vanished when
+we have vigorously taken our mind off our symptoms and gone to the
+movies. We are at our best, we know, when we have given our whole
+attention to something absorbing, quite outside ourselves; business,
+friendship, good works. We feel that our acquaintance will be the better
+for this valuable thought. We do not know that every other healthy
+person in town has also decided that it is time to pass on the same
+idea. Neither do we realize that the ability to do as we suggest is the
+sick person's idea of heaven.
+
+Thinking thus masterfully of the mind, we speak glibly of doing things
+with it. We do not know how slippery and complex a thing the mind is
+when assailed by suffering. "Take off your mind." Take off your hat. We
+do not know what long hours every invalid spends driving his mind along
+on every pleasant topic under the sun, only to feel it skidding,
+skidding, from side to side, just as you feel yourself steering for the
+nearest tree when you begin to drive a car. And after all this effort,
+what has he been doing but putting his mind on his mind? Less exhausting
+to put it on the pain and be done with it. When we urge our friend not
+to steer for the tree, we feel that we are presenting him with a new
+idea.
+
+Healthy ignorance, in the second place, assumes that the mind of a sick
+person is more than normally susceptible to suggestion. We have heard
+that, if you say to a patient, "How thin you are," he will instantly
+feel thinner and thinner, will droop and wilt and brood morbidly upon
+his state. Very well, then. We go to visit our friend resolved to make
+no such unfortunate remark. We conceal our shock at the changed
+appearance of our friend, but we cannot help thinking about it. Every
+healthy person is a trifle taken aback when he sees anybody else laid
+low. The neat white corners of the counterpane lend an awe-inspiring
+geometrical effect; if the patient is a man, he looks subtly changed
+without his high collar; if the patient is a lady, she is transformed
+with her hair in braids. We know that we must not cry, "How changed you
+are, Grandmother," lest we send the patient into a relapse. It is a poor
+rule that will not work both ways. If a comment on frail appearance
+would thus depress our friend, surely the contrary assurance ought to
+chirk him up in proportion. We therefore say blithely, "Well, you
+certainly do look fine!" Then later we perhaps repeat it, to make sure
+that auto-suggestion has a chance to set in.
+
+Now, personally, if somebody told me that I looked well, I feel that I
+could manage to bear up. But in the sick-room, the remark seldom makes a
+hit. Nine chances out of ten the patient does not understand the
+healthy. He feels that we suspect him of rusticating in bed under false
+pretences. He does not want to be ill, nor to look ill; but since he
+_is_ ill, he would be sorry to have us think that he might as well be up
+and about. He does not know that we adopt the cheery note to avoid the
+fatal opposite, and to encourage him. He does not know how helpless we
+are, nor how sure of the susceptibility of the stricken mind.
+
+All these traits of the healthy imagination and the healthy ignorance
+are magnified tenfold if the invalid's disorder is nervous. To the
+untutored layman, a nervous disorder means an imaginary disorder. What
+nervous wreck has not prayed to exchange his baffling torments for
+something showy and spectacular, like broken bones or Spotted Fever? The
+healthiest imagination can grasp a broken leg. The healthiest ignorance
+can see that it should lie for a while in splints, and that we cannot
+help our friend by urging him, however tactfully, to forget all about
+his fracture and join us on a hike. But disordered nerves are different.
+Everybody admits that. We feel instantly competent to prescribe. We have
+read up on psychotherapy, in the magazines.
+
+Having diagnosed the case, having prescribed remedies, we feel a trace
+of impatience if our friend seems not quite cured.
+
+In addition to our eager way of giving advice, we who are healthy have
+also a way of confusing cause and effect. When our patient finally does
+succeed in building up his vitality to the point where he can resume his
+work, when we see him going busily about the world again taking his
+share of hard knocks without flinching, then we say, "There! Didn't we
+say he'd be better the minute he had something to do?" We know nothing
+about the times when he hoped that he had recovered, attempted to take
+up work again, and succumbed. We see only the triumphant emerging of his
+renewed vitality. To us the cause is obvious, just what we had been
+prescribing all along. When he was idle, he was ill. Now that he is
+busy, he is well. Could anything be more logical? Therefore, when we
+find him working hard at his old profession, we smile indulgently upon
+him and we say, "That's right! It will do you good! _Now_ you have
+something to take your mind off your--"
+
+But I will not repeat it. Never in all my life shall I say that
+beautiful and grammatical phrase again. There is probably a good deal in
+it--how much, I, for one, have not the least idea. Probably there are
+invalids in the world who would be completely cured if they could be
+worried into hard work at all costs, "roughing it" with a vengeance. We
+stray perilously near the fields contested by experts when we come to
+that. The point is that the subject will always be a field for experts,
+and that never in the long history of suffering was very much
+accomplished by the well-meant exhortations of friends. As far back as
+Old Testament days, friends came to see a patient man, and reasoned at
+length with him. And he cried unto the Lord.
+
+Nearly every invalid loves his friends. He cannot bear to have them
+misunderstand him. And yet, if he only understands _them_--if he
+understands the healthy as a class, with our healthy imaginations, our
+healthy ignorance, our superstitions, and all our simple ways, the most
+desolate Job in a friend-strewn world can afford to brandish his
+potsherd and take cheer. He will know the explanation of our kindly
+words, and their proper discount at the bank. And perhaps he may be able
+finally, with a prodigious effort of his will, to take them off his
+mind.
+
+
+
+
+CARVING AT TABLE
+
+
+Carving at table is one of the most virile things that a man can do, and
+yet it usually has to be done according to feminine standards. It is a
+primitive art overlaid with a complex technique, a pioneer act in a
+dainty environment. For so masterful a deed with an edged tool, a man
+should be allowed the space and freedom of the Maine woods. Environed by
+the modern tablecloth, he must be not only masterful but cautious; not
+so much fearless as adroit.
+
+The process tests not only the man himself, but also his relations with
+his wife. When a married couple feel equally responsible for an act at
+which only one of them can officiate, they are tempted to exchange
+remarks. The most tactful wife yields now and then to the impulse to do
+a little coaching from the side-lines, and many husbands have been known
+to reply with a few well-chosen words about the knife. They sometimes
+carry on quite a little responsive service. This happens occasionally
+even when the husband is an artist at his work. The ideals of two
+artists will occasionally conflict. And even the model wife, who ignores
+the carving and engages the guests in conversation until the worst is
+over, will at times find herself clutching the tablecloth or holding her
+breath at the critical points--when the drum-stick is being detached
+from the second joint, for instance, or when the knife hovers over the
+guest's portion of the steak. These two crises are the great moments for
+the man who carves.
+
+In fact, you have not taken the complete measure of a man until you have
+seen him carve both steak and fowl. These two make totally different
+demands upon the worker. The chicken calls for a sense of structure, a
+versatile skill in manoeuvring for position, and the delicate wrist of
+the violinist. But your true porterhouse calls for shrewd judgment and
+clear-cut decisions, with no halfway measures or reconsiderations at
+all. With the chicken, you can modify, slice, combine, arrange to best
+advantage on the plate. With the steak, you work in the flat and in one
+color; every stroke must count. There are men who would rather parcel
+out the Balkans than map a steak.
+
+Great artists in carving are of several classes: those who stand up to
+their work and those who remain seated; those who talk and those who do
+not. I recall one noble old aristocrat, with the eye of a connoisseur
+and the suavity of an Italian grandee, who stood above the great turkey
+that he had to carve and discoursed with us as follows, pronouncing
+every word with the dramatic vigor that I try to indicate by the
+spelling, and illustrating each remark with one deft motion of his
+knife; this was his monologue: "Now, we cut off his Legg.... Now, we
+take his Winng!... And now,--we _Slice_ him."
+
+To my mind, this conversation is about the only sort in which the
+successful carver can afford to indulge. The nervous amateur thinks it
+necessary to keep up a run of wise comment on the topics of the day to
+show that he is at ease; or perhaps he does it as the magician talks
+when he puts the rabbits into his hat, to distract the spectators'
+attention from his minor tactics. But he might as well learn that he
+cannot distract us. The matter is too close to our hearts. It is natural
+to watch the carving intently, not necessarily with an eye to our own
+interests, but because for the moment the platter is the dramatic centre
+of the group. Action, especially in an affair demanding skill,
+irresistibly holds the eye. The well-bred guest chats along of one thing
+and another, but his eye strays absently toward the roast.
+
+This is very hard upon the newly married husband. Spectators add
+immensely to his difficulties. Some years ago, one such bridegroom, now
+an experienced host and patriarch, was about to carve a chicken for his
+bride and her one guest. I was the guest, and at that time I held
+theories about the married state. While we were setting the table, I had
+mentioned a few of these, among them my belief that all little boys
+should be taught the rudiments of carving, so that when married they
+would know how to preside correctly at their own tables. My friend the
+bride agreed with me, and supported my views by anecdotes from real
+life. The anecdotes were about boys who had not been so trained.
+Meanwhile the bridegroom listened intently from his post on the kitchen
+table. Young women are likely to forget that young men have feelings,
+especially if they have been trained by brothers who displayed none. We
+therefore went on at great length. Carving, we said, was not an
+instinct, but a craft.
+
+As we sat at soup, the young husband became more and more uneasy, and
+when the chicken made its appearance he leaned back with beads of
+perspiration on his brow. "After all this," said he, "I hope nobody
+expects me to carve that chicken. I'll just pass it around, and you
+girls chip off what you like."
+
+The central difficulty in carving, however, is found not so much in the
+actual chipping as in the tactful distribution of choice parts. This
+matter is complicated by the fact that unselfish people will lie about
+their preferences, polite people will refuse to disclose them, and
+critical people expect you to remember them. Even the expert carver,
+therefore, looks with favor on those convenient meats that come
+naturally in individual units--croquettes, cutlets, chops, sausages;
+here the only difficulty is the choice between brown and not so brown,
+large and small. There is only the mathematical matter of making the
+food go around, and the man with the vaguest sense of proportion can
+count chops and divide by the number of guests.
+
+But when the company is large, and the platter of steak just adequate,
+there really is cause for anxiety. Some carvers, under such
+circumstances, begin cautiously, serving small helpings at first until
+they are sure they are safe, and then becoming gradually more lavish.
+Others begin recklessly, and have to retrench. A group of college
+students once made a study of this matter with data and statistics that
+would have adorned a doctor's degree. The object was to locate the seat
+at any table of fourteen where one could count on the most even diet,
+the golden mean between feast and famine, no matter which member of the
+faculty chanced to carve. There were many variables to be considered:
+some members of the faculty habitually carved with giant portions at
+first, and then dwindled suddenly; others varied from day to day,
+profiting at one meal by what they learned at the last. A few were
+expert dividers by fourteen. The conclusion was reached after weeks of
+minute toil. Like all great investigators, these students were prepared
+to warrant their findings for all time. The best seat at a table of
+fourteen--the one where you can count on the least fluctuation and the
+largest security--in short, Whitman's Divine Average--is the fifth seat
+from the professor, left. Things in that position run, barring
+accidents, quite well. If caution was the slogan at the outset, the
+plentiful supply on the platter has by that time begun to tell upon the
+mind of the carver, and things are looking up. If the first helpings
+were extravagant, there has still not been quite time to feel the real
+pinch of want. Fifth seat from the professor, left.
+
+Of course, fourteen is too large a number to divide by. When it comes to
+long division, brain-fag is bound to set in. Since those days, I am
+told, food in that college is sent in ready apportioned in advance.
+
+We should miss something in our homes, however, if the art of carving
+should decline. There is a certain symbolic grace in the fatherly act of
+hewing away at a large roast, even if a man does not do it so very well.
+It is true that a great many pleasant gentlemen do not feel quite at
+home when dealing with a meat; they do not feel quite at their best.
+They carve tentatively, parcelling it out at random. Until they come to
+their own serving, they are vague. At that point, however, the most
+helpless amateur takes on cheer. Watch him as he settles himself more
+comfortably, draws up the platter at a better angle, and selects the
+fragments of his choice. It is here that he does his best carving, not
+consciously, not at all selfishly, but because he now feels sure. He has
+something to go by. He knows what he wants.
+
+After all, the task of carving at table is not an infallible test of
+man. Some of the most uncertain carvers in the world are great and good
+men, standing high in their professions and revered by a family who must
+nevertheless shiver for the fate of the table-linen when the sirloin
+steak comes on. But the fact remains that the man who can carve
+equitably, neatly, and with discrimination has nearly always a balanced
+brain and a reliable self-command. In an army test he would stand high.
+He is your genuine "officer material." And he is very scarce.
+
+
+
+
+THE FEELING OF IRRITATION
+
+
+The feeling of irritation in its earliest form once overtook a little
+girl whose mother had enforced a wholesome bit of discipline. In a great
+state of wrath the little girl went to her room, got out a large sheet
+of paper, and ruled it heavily down the middle. Then she headed one
+column "People I Like," and crowded that half of the sheet with the
+names of all her acquaintances. The other half of the page she headed
+"People I Don't Like," and in that column listed one word only--"Mama."
+This done, she locked the grim document in her safe-deposit box, and hid
+the key.
+
+That glowering deed was the very ritual of irritation. The feeling of
+irritation is not merely one of heat; it is a tall wave of violent
+dislike that goes mounting up our blood. When we have it, it feels
+permanent. Our friend is not what we thought he was--our family is not
+what it should be--our job is a failure--we have placed our affections
+in the wrong quarter. When young politicians have this feeling, they
+bolt the ticket; when young employees have it, they resign. The first
+time when young married people have it, they think that love is dead. If
+they have too much wealth and leisure, they fly apart and eventually get
+a decree. But in households where the budget does not cover alimony,
+they commonly stay together and see for themselves how the wave of wrath
+goes down. The material inconveniences of resignations, abscondings,
+law-suits, and the like have been a great safeguard in many a career.
+Nothing in Barrie's plays is more subtle than the perfect moment when
+the young couple decide to postpone separation until the laundry comes
+home.
+
+It is not necessary to be a "temperamental" person or a fire-eater of
+any sort in order to know how it feels to be irritated--and irritating.
+The gentlest folk are capable of both sensations. Any one who has seen a
+lovely lady deliberately stir up strife in the bosom of a genial
+story-teller, by correcting his facts for him and exposing his fictions,
+will remember the tones of restrained choler with which the merry tale
+progressed. Who has not remarked to a kind relative, "Well, if you know
+so much about it, why don't you tell it yourself?"
+
+There is no ratio or proportion at all between the cause of irritation
+and the ensuing state of mind. In our moments of ferment we lose the
+faculty of discrimination. We hardly ever refer our exasperation to the
+trivial detail that brought it on. We feel that the detail is simply an
+indication of the great flaws in the whole situation. We have a crow to
+pluck, not only with our friend, but--to use the words of
+Quiller-Couch--with everything that appertains to that potentate.
+
+For example, suppose that we are at loggerheads with a fellow-member of
+a public-welfare committee. He opposes a measure that we endorse. He
+will not see reason. We therefore refer him to his class: he is a
+typical politician, a single-track mind, a combination of Mugwump and
+Boss Tweed. We ourselves, meanwhile, are a blend of Martin Luther, John
+Huss, and the prophet Isaiah, with tongs from the altar.
+
+Or perhaps we are irritated with a colleague on a teaching-staff after
+the events of a varied day. Irrelevant matters have happened all the
+morning in amazing succession: an itinerant janitor filling inkwells; an
+inkwell turning turtle--blotters rushed to flood-sufferers; an
+electrician with tall step-ladder and scaling-irons to repair the
+electric clock; a fire-drill in examination period; one too many
+revolutions of the pencil-sharpener; one too many patriotic "drives"
+involving the care of public moneys kept in a candy-box. And now our
+zealous academic friend calls an unexpected committee meeting to
+tabulate the results of intelligence-tests.
+
+We are in no mood for intelligence-tests. We object. He persists. We
+take umbrage. He still calls the meeting. Then, up rears the wave of
+dislike and irritation, not at the details that have brought us to our
+crusty state--not dislike of ink and electricity and patriotism and
+intelligence--but dislike of our friend and of the Art of Teaching that
+he represents. The trouble with our friend, we decide, is his academic
+environment. He is over-educated--attenuated; a Brahmin. Nobody in touch
+with Real Life could be so thoroughly a mule and an opinionist. Better
+get out of this ultra-civilized atmosphere before our own beautiful
+catholicity of thought is cramped, crippled, like his. At these moments
+we do not stop to remember that people are opinionated also on the
+island of Yap.
+
+Most frequently of all, we apply our dudgeon to the kind of community in
+which we live. We are nettled at a bit of criticism that has reached our
+ears. Instantly we say cutting things about the narrow ways of a small
+community, with page-references to "Main Street" and the Five Towns. We
+forget that our friends in great cities might be quite as chatty. Margot
+Asquith lives and thrives in crowds.
+
+We refer our irritation, also, to types. Any skirmish in a women's
+organization is referred to women and their catty ways. Any Church or
+Red Cross breeze is an example of the captious temper of the godly. All
+friction between soldiers of different nations is a sign of Race
+Antagonism; the French are not what we had inferred from Lafayette.
+
+In short, the whole history and literature of dissension shows that
+people have always tried to make their irritations prove something about
+certain types, or situations, or nations, or communities. Whereas the
+one thing that has been eternally proved is the fact that human beings
+are irritable.
+
+If we accept that fact as a normal thing, we find ourselves ready for
+one more great truth. Violent irritation produced on small means is a
+deeply human thing, a delicately unbalanced thing, something to reckon
+with, and something from which we eventually recover on certain ancient
+and well-recognized lines. When our feeling is at its height, we are
+ready to throw away anything, smash anything, burn all bridges. Nothing
+is too valuable to cast into the tall flame of our everlasting bonfire.
+This sounds exaggerated. Emotion remembered in tranquillity is a pallid
+thing, indeed. But it is hot enough at the time. The whole range of
+sensation and emotion may be travelled in an hour, at a pace
+incredible--a sort of round-trip survey of the soul.
+
+The father of a large family sat in church at one end of a long pew. His
+wife sat at the other end of the pew, with a row of sons, daughters, and
+guests ranged in the space between. Near the close of the sermon one
+morning, the father glanced down the line, gazed for a horrified moment
+at his eldest daughter, Kate, got out his pencil, wrote a few words on a
+scrap of paper, put the paper into his hat, and passed the hat down the
+line. As the hat went from hand to hand, each member of the family
+peered in, read the message, glanced at Kate, and began to shake as
+inconspicuously as is ever possible in an open pew. Kate, absorbed in
+the sermon, was startled by a nudge from her brother, who offered her
+the hat, with note enclosed. She looked in and read, "Tell Kate that her
+mouth is partly open."
+
+Kate remembered that it must have been. The whole pew was quivering with
+seven concentrated efforts at self-control.
+
+Now, one would think that a moment like this would be jolly even for the
+cause of laughter in others. But it was not. Kate knew that they had
+been laughing before the note reached her, and she was hurt. If they
+loved her as she loved them, they would not want to laugh. She set her
+jaw like iron, and looked straight ahead. This started them all off
+again. With the instinct of a well-trained elder sister, she knew that
+if she wanted any peace she ought to turn and smile and nod cordially
+all down the row, as at a reception. But it was too late for that. She
+had taken the proud line, and she would follow it.
+
+As her expression grew more austere, the boys grew more convulsed. Aloof
+now, cut off from her kin entirely, she sat seething. Floods of scarlet
+anger drowned the sermon's end. The closing hymn was given out, but she
+declined the offered half of her brother's hymnal. "Tell Kate she can
+open it now," telegraphed one of the boys as the congregation began to
+sing. Here was Kate's chance to unbend and join the group and nod and
+smile again, but she was too far gone. She received the message with
+lifted eyebrows, and stood with cold pure profile averted until after
+the benediction. Then she turned away from her reeling family, and
+walked off in a white heat. Her anger was not at her father whose note
+caused the stir. She had no resentment toward him at all. If one's mouth
+is open, one would wish to be advised of the fact. Her feeling was the
+mighty wrath of the person who has been laughed at before being told the
+joke. Unwilling to face her family, she went up to take dinner at her
+grandmother's house, that refuge for all broken hearts.
+
+After dinner, Kate looked out of the window and saw her family coming up
+the drive. They filed into the house and gathered in a group. "I think,"
+said one of the boys, "that in the cause of friendship we owe Kate an
+apology."
+
+The grand manner of formal apology from one's relatives is the most
+disarming thing in the world. Friendly conversation flowed back into the
+normal at once. But it was years before it was quite safe for Kate to
+rest her chin on her hand in church.
+
+Very often our most genuine irritations appear unreasonable to our
+friends. For instance, why should people object to being called by each
+other's names? Two brilliant young lawyers once developed animosity
+against each other because their names Stacey and Stanton were
+constantly interchanged. Children suffer from this sort of thing
+continually; grown people tend to confuse brothers and to call them by
+one another's names promiscuously. We may love our brother tenderly, and
+yet not like to be confounded with him. Even parents sometimes make
+slips. The smallest boy in a lively family had a mother who used to call
+the roll of all her children's names, absent-mindedly, before she hit
+upon the right one. Consequently, the smallest boy learned to respond to
+the names George, Alice, Christine, and Amos. But the thing had happened
+to him once too often. One morning he came down to breakfast with a
+large square of cardboard pinned to his bosom; and on the placard in
+large letters was printed the word "Henry." Rather go through life with
+a tag around his neck than be called Alice any more.
+
+All these capricious facts about irritability rather explode the old
+adage that it takes two to make a quarrel. If we are really on the
+rampage, the other person may be a perfect pacifist and still call down
+our ire. We can make the hot-foot excursion to the heights of madness,
+for instance, when a friend with whom we are arguing whistles softly
+away to himself while we talk. Even worse is the person who sings a gay
+little aria after we are through. In the presence of such people, we
+feel like the college girl who became annoyed with her room-mate, and,
+reflecting prudently upon the inconveniences of open war, rushed out of
+the room and down the stairs to relieve her feelings by slamming the
+front door. She tore open the great door with violent hands, braced it
+wide, and flung it together with all her might. But there was no crash.
+It was the kind of door that shuts with an air-valve, and it closed
+gradually, tranquilly, like velvet; a perfect lady of a door. People who
+sing and hum and whistle softly to themselves while we rage, are like
+that door.
+
+Knowing that human beings are occasionally irritable, that they can
+recover from their irritation, and that we can also recover from ours,
+why is it that we ever hold resentment long? Some people, like
+soap-stones, hold their heat longer than others; but the mildest of us,
+even after we have quite cooled off, sometimes find ourselves warming up
+intermittently at the mere memory of the fray. We are like the old lady
+who said that she could forgive and forget, but she couldn't help
+thinking about it. We love our friend as much as ever, but one or two of
+the things he said to us do stay in mind. The dumb animals have an
+immense advantage over us in this regard. They may be able to
+communicate, but their language has presumably fewer descriptive
+adjectives than ours. Words spoken in the height of irritation are
+easily memorized. They have an epigrammatic swing, and a racy
+Anglo-Saxon flavor all their own. Unless we are ready to discount them
+entirely, they come into our minds in our pleasantest moods, checking
+our impulses of affection, and stiffening our cordial ways.
+
+On this account, the very proud and the very young sometimes let a
+passing rancor estrange a friend. When we are young, and fresh from much
+novel-reading, we are likely to think of love as a frail and perishable
+treasure--something like a rare vase, delicate, and perfect as it
+stands. One crash destroys it forever. But love that involves the years
+is not a frail and finished crystal. It is a growing thing. It is not
+even a simple growing thing, like a tree. A really durable friendship is
+a varied homelike country full of growing things. We cannot destroy it
+and throw it away. We can even have a crackling bonfire there without
+burning up the world. Fire is dangerous, but not final.
+
+Of course, it is in our power to let a single conflagration spoil all
+our love, if we burn the field all over and sow it with salt, and refuse
+to go there ever again. But after the fires have gone down on the waste
+tract, the stars wheel over and the quiet moon comes out--and forever
+afterwards we have to skirt hastily around that territory in our
+thought. It is still there, the place that once was home.
+
+Perhaps it is trifling and perverse to be harking back to nature and to
+childhood for parables. But sometimes there is reassurance in the
+simplest things. The real war-god in our own family was Geoffrey, and
+Barbara was his prophet. Many a doughty battle they waged when they both
+happened to be in the mood. Whenever Barbara wanted a little peace, she
+used to take her dolls to the attic, saying to our mother as she went,
+"K. G." This meant, "Keep Geoffrey." But one time Barbara was very ill.
+Geoffrey was afraid that she was going to die, and showered her with
+attentions assiduously. He even gathered flowers for her every day. The
+trained nurse was much impressed. One afternoon, when the crisis was
+passed, the nurse told Geoffrey that she thought that he was very sweet,
+indeed, to his little sick sister. Geoffrey was squatting on the arm of
+the sofa, watching Barbara with speculative eye. He considered this new
+light on his character for a moment, and then remarked, "Well, you just
+wait until she gets her strength."
+
+We live in cantankerous days. Anybody who has enough energy to do
+anything particular in the world has more or less difficulty in getting
+on with people. Unless he chooses to take his dolls to the attic, he is
+in for occasional criticisms, laughter, interruptions, and the
+experience of being called by names that are not his own. The world
+sends flowers to the dying, but not to people when they get their
+strength. It is the very rare person, indeed, who goes through life with
+nothing to ruffle him at all.
+
+In moments of irritation at all this, we unconsciously divide the world
+into two columns: people who agree with us and people who do not;
+"People I Like," and "People I Don't Like." Instinctively we make the
+lists, and file them away. If we could lay hands on the ghostly files of
+twenty years and scan them through, we should find that the black-lists
+were not a catalogue of permanent and bitter hatreds, but a sort of
+Friendship Calendar. Many of our collisions, after all, were with the
+people to whom we came most near.
+
+Almost every one wants to be easy to get along with. Some of us find it
+hard. In those discouraging moments when we have proved obnoxious to our
+friends, we are inclined to feel that a policy of isolation would be the
+most attractive thing in the world. But there are practical drawbacks
+even to isolation.
+
+A blizzard had once drifted all the streets of our town. Our mother,
+with the true pioneering spirit, decided that she was going out. Our
+father was urging her to wait until the streets were cleared.
+
+"Now, Endicott," said our mother reasonably, "the snow-plough has been
+down, and there's a path."
+
+"But," persisted Father, "the wind has drifted it all in again." He
+paused while she put on her hat, and then he added earnestly, "You don't
+know how windy and drifted it really is. I just saw Mrs. Muldoon coming
+down the street, and she was going along single file, and making hard
+work of it too."
+
+The family was immensely taken with the picture of Mrs. Muldoon's ample
+figure going downtown in single-file formation; but, in spite of the
+jeers of his audience, our father still insisted that Mrs. Muldoon _was_
+going single file, and that she _was_ making hard work of it at that.
+
+Now and then there is an extreme individualist who yearns to go through
+life absolutely unmolested, single file. He is impatient of collisions,
+and collisions certainly do occur through one's proximity to one's kind.
+But even the most arrant individualist can hardly go single file all by
+himself--not without making hard work of it, at least. And even if such
+a thing were possible it would not be a natural or kindly way of life.
+Our hardy race has always valued the strength that comes from contacts
+of every sort and kind. We therefore keep up the hearty old custom of
+going through life in groups of families and associates and
+friends--even though, inadvertently, we sometimes do collide.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+  The Riverside Press
+  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
+  U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+  [ Transcriber's Note:
+
+    The following is a list of corrections made to the original.
+    The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
+
+  precipitatly. The marshal, seeing this prompt obedience to his request,
+  precipitately. The marshal, seeing this prompt obedience to his request,
+
+  ]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life's Minor Collisions, by
+Frances Warner and Gertrude Warner
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE'S MINOR COLLISIONS ***
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