initial commit of ebook 4064HEADmain

1 files changed, 5556 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/4064-0.txt b/4064-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da5749f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4064-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5556 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER
+LUNACY ***
+
+
+
+
+MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER LUNACY
+
+By Stephen Leacock
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The prudent husbandman, after having taken from his field
+all the straw that is there, rakes it over with a wooden
+rake and gets as much again. The wise child, after the
+lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons from the bottom
+of it and squeezes them into a still larger brew. So does
+the sagacious author, after having sold his material to
+the magazines and been paid for it, clap it into book-covers
+and give it another squeeze. But in the present case the
+author is of a nice conscience and anxious to place
+responsibility where it is due. He therefore wishes to
+make all proper acknowledgments to the editors of Vanity
+Fair, The American Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Life,
+Puck, The Century, Methuen's Annual, and all others who
+are in any way implicated in the making of this book.
+
+STEPHEN LEACOCK.
+
+McGill University,
+Montreal.
+Oct. 1, 1915.
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+    I SPOOF: A Thousand-Guinea Novel
+   II THE READING PUBLIC
+  III AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB
+        l--The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So
+        2--The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge
+        3--The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner
+        4--The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer
+        5--The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot
+        6--The Last Man Out of Europe
+        7--The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks
+        8--The Ground Floor
+        9--The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
+   IV RAM SPUDD
+    V ARISTOCRATIC ANECDOTES
+   VI EDUCATION MADE AGREEABLE
+  VII AN EVERY-DAY EXPERIENCE
+ VIII TRUTHFUL ORATORY
+   IX OUR LITERARY BUREAU
+    X SPEEDING UP BUSINESS
+   XI WHO IS ALSO WHO
+  XII PASSIONATE PARAGRAPHS
+ XIII WEEJEE THE PET DOG
+  XIV SIDELIGHTS ON THE SUPERMEN
+   XV THE SURVIVAL or THE FITTEST
+  XVI THE FIRST NEWSPAPER
+ XVII IN THE GOOD TIME AFTER THE WAR
+
+
+
+I.--Spoof. A Thousand-Guinea Novel. New! Fascinating!
+Perplexing!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Readers are requested to note that this novel has taken
+our special prize of a cheque for a thousand guineas.
+This alone guarantees for all intelligent readers a
+palpitating interest in every line of it. Among the
+thousands of MSS. which reached us--many of them coming
+in carts early in the morning, and moving in a dense
+phalanx, indistinguishable from the Covent Garden Market
+waggons; others pouring down our coal-chute during the
+working hours of the day; and others again being slipped
+surreptitiously into our letter-box by pale, timid girls,
+scarcely more than children, after nightfall (in fact
+many of them came in their night-gowns),--this manuscript
+alone was the sole one--in fact the only one--to receive
+the prize of a cheque of a thousand guineas. To other
+competitors we may have given, inadvertently perhaps, a
+bag of sovereigns or a string of pearls, but to this
+story alone is awarded the first prize by the unanimous
+decision of our judges.
+
+When we say that the latter body included two members of
+the Cabinet, two Lords of the Admiralty, and two bishops,
+with power in case of dispute to send all the MSS. to
+the Czar of Russia, our readers will breathe a sigh of
+relief to learn that the decision was instant and unanimous.
+Each one of them, in reply to our telegram, answered
+immediately SPOOF.
+
+This novel represents the last word in up-to-date fiction.
+It is well known that the modern novel has got far beyond
+the point of mere story-telling. The childish attempt to
+INTEREST the reader has long since been abandoned by all
+the best writers. They refuse to do it.  The modern novel
+must convey a message, or else it must paint a picture,
+or remove a veil, or open a new chapter in human psychology.
+Otherwise it is no good. SPOOF does all of these things.
+The reader rises from its perusal perplexed, troubled,
+and yet so filled with information that rising itself is
+a difficulty.
+
+We cannot, for obvious reasons, insert the whole of the
+first chapter. But the portion here presented was praised
+by The Saturday Afternoon Review as giving one of the
+most graphic and at the same time realistic pictures of
+America ever written in fiction.
+
+Of the characters whom our readers are to imagine seated
+on the deck--on one of the many decks (all connected by
+elevators)--of the Gloritania, one word may be said. Vere
+de Lancy is (as the reviewers have under oath declared)
+a typical young Englishman of the upper class. He is
+nephew to the Duke of--, but of this fact no one on
+the ship, except the captain, the purser, the steward,
+and the passengers are, or is, aware.
+
+In order entirely to conceal his identity, Vere de Lancy
+is travelling under the assumed name of Lancy de Vere.
+In order the better to hide the object of his journey,
+Lancy de Vere (as we shall now call him, though our
+readers will be able at any moment to turn his name
+backwards) has given it to be understood that he is
+travelling merely as a gentleman anxious to see America.
+This naturally baffles all those in contact with him.
+
+The girl at his side--but perhaps we may best let her
+speak for herself.
+
+Somehow as they sat together on the deck of the great
+steamer in the afterglow of the sunken sun, listening to
+the throbbing of the propeller (a rare sound which neither
+of them of course had ever heard before), de Vere felt
+that he must speak to her. Something of the mystery of
+the girl fascinated him. What was she doing here alone
+with no one but her mother and her maid, on the bosom of
+the Atlantic? Why was she here? Why was she not somewhere
+else? The thing puzzled, perplexed him. It would not let
+him alone. It fastened upon his brain. Somehow he felt
+that if he tried to drive it away, it might nip him in
+the ankle.
+
+In the end he spoke.
+
+"And you, too," he said, leaning over her deck-chair,
+"are going to America?"
+
+He had suspected this ever since the boat left Liverpool.
+Now at length he framed his growing conviction into words.
+
+"Yes," she assented, and then timidly, "it is 3,213 miles
+wide, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "and 1,781 miles deep! It reaches from
+the forty-ninth parallel to the Gulf of Mexico."
+
+"Oh," cried the girl, "what a vivid picture!  I seem to
+see it."
+
+"Its major axis," he went on, his voice sinking almost
+to a caress, "is formed by the Rocky Mountains, which
+are practically a prolongation of the Cordilleran Range.
+It is drained," he continued--
+
+"How splendid!" said the girl.
+
+"Yes, is it not? It is drained by the Mississippi, by
+the St. Lawrence, and--dare I say it?--by the Upper
+Colorado."
+
+Somehow his hand had found hers in the half gloaming,
+but she did not check him.
+
+"Go on," she said very simply; "I think I ought to hear
+it."
+
+"The great central plain of the interior," he continued,
+"is formed by a vast alluvial deposit carried down as
+silt by the Mississippi. East of this the range of the
+Alleghanies, nowhere more than eight thousand feet in
+height, forms a secondary or subordinate axis from which
+the watershed falls to the Atlantic."
+
+He was speaking very quietly but earnestly.  No man had
+ever spoken to her like this before.
+
+"What a wonderful picture!" she murmured half to herself,
+half aloud, and half not aloud and half not to herself.
+
+"Through the whole of it," de Vere went on, "there run
+railways, most of them from east to west, though a few
+run from west to east.  The Pennsylvania system alone
+has twenty-one thousand miles of track."
+
+"Twenty-one thousand miles," she repeated; already she
+felt her will strangely subordinate to his.
+
+He was holding her hand firmly clasped in his and looking
+into her face.
+
+"Dare I tell you," he whispered, "how many employees it
+has?"
+
+"Yes," she gasped, unable to resist.
+
+"A hundred and fourteen thousand," he said.
+
+There was silence. They were both thinking. Presently
+she spoke, timidly.
+
+"Are there any cities there?"
+
+"Cities!" he said enthusiastically, "ah, yes!  let me
+try to give you a word-picture of them.  Vast cities--with
+tall buildings, reaching to the very sky. Why, for
+instance, the new Woolworth Building in New York--"
+
+"Yes, yes," she broke in quickly, "how high is it?"
+
+"Seven hundred and fifty feet."
+
+The girl turned and faced him.
+
+"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it. Some other time,
+perhaps, but not now."
+
+She had risen and was gathering up her wraps. "And you,"
+she said, "why are you going to America?"
+
+"Why?" he answered. "Because I want to see, to know, to
+learn. And when I have learned and seen and known, I want
+other people to see and to learn and to know. I want to
+write it all down, all the vast palpitating picture of
+it. Ah! if I only could--I want to see" (and here he
+passed his hand through his hair as if trying to remember)
+"something of the relations of labour and capital, of
+the extraordinary development of industrial machinery,
+of the new and intricate organisation of corporation
+finance, and in particular I want to try to analyse--no
+one has ever done it yet--the men who guide and drive
+it all. I want to set down the psychology of the
+multimillionaire!"
+
+He paused. The girl stood irresolute. She was thinking
+(apparently, for if not, why stand there?).
+
+"Perhaps," she faltered, "I could help you."
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes, I might." She hesitated. "I--I--come from America."
+
+"You!" said de Vere in astonishment.  "With a face and
+voice like yours! It is impossible!"
+
+The boldness of the compliment held her speechless for
+a moment.
+
+"I do," she said; "my people lived just outside of Cohoes."
+
+"They couldn't have," he said passionately.
+
+"I shouldn't speak to you like this," the girl went on,
+"but it's because I feel from what you have said that
+you know and love America.  And I think I can help you."
+
+"You mean," he said, divining her idea, "that you can
+help me to meet a multimillionaire?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, still hesitating.
+
+"You know one?"
+
+"Yes," still hesitating, "I know ONE."
+
+She seemed about to say more, her lips had already opened,
+when suddenly the dull raucous blast of the foghorn (they
+used a raucous one on this ship on purpose) cut the night
+air. Wet fog rolled in about them, wetting everything.
+
+The girl shivered.
+
+"I must go," she said; "good night."
+
+For a moment de Vere was about to detain her. The wild
+thought leaped to his mind to ask her her name or at
+least her mother's.  With a powerful effort he checked
+himself.
+
+"Good night," he said.
+
+She was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Limits of space forbid the insertion of the whole of this
+chapter. Its opening contains one of the most vivid
+word-pictures of the inside of an American customs house
+ever pictured in words. From the customs wharf de Vere
+is driven in a taxi to the Belmont.  Here he engages a
+room; here, too, he sleeps; here also, though cautiously
+at first, he eats.  All this is so admirably described
+that only those who have driven in a taxi to an hotel
+and slept there can hope to appreciate it.
+
+Limits of space also forbid our describing in full de
+Vere's vain quest in New York of the beautiful creature
+whom he had met on the steamer and whom he had lost from
+sight in the aigrette department of the customs house.
+A thousand times he cursed his folly in not having asked
+her name.
+
+Meanwhile no word comes from her, till suddenly,
+mysteriously, unexpectedly, on the fourth day a note is
+handed to de Vere by the Third Assistant Head Waiter of
+the Belmont.  It is addressed in a lady's hand. He tears
+it open. It contains only the written words, "Call on
+Mr. J. Superman Overgold. He is a multimillionaire. He
+expects you."
+
+To leap into a taxi (from the third story of the Belmont)
+was the work of a moment.  To drive to the office of Mr.
+Overgold was less.  The portion of the novel which follows
+is perhaps the most notable part of it. It is this part
+of the chapter which the Hibbert Journal declares to be
+the best piece of psychological analysis that appears in
+any novel of the season. We reproduce it here.
+
+"Exactly, exactly," said de Vere, writing rapidly in his
+note-book as he sat in one of the deep leather armchairs
+of the luxurious office of Mr. Overgold. "So you sometimes
+feel as if the whole thing were not worth while."
+
+"I do," said Mr. Overgold. "I can't help asking myself
+what it all means. Is life, after all, merely a series
+of immaterial phenomena, self-developing and based solely
+on sensation and reaction, or is it something else?"
+
+He paused for a moment to sign a cheque for $10,000 and
+throw it out of the window, and then went on, speaking
+still with the terse brevity of a man of business.
+
+"Is sensation everywhere or is there perception too? On
+what grounds, if any, may the hypothesis of a
+self-explanatory consciousness be rejected? In how far
+are we warranted in supposing that innate ideas are
+inconsistent with pure materialism?"
+
+De Vere listened, fascinated. Fortunately for himself,
+he was a University man, fresh from the examination halls
+of his Alma Mater.  He was able to respond at once.
+
+"I think," he said modestly, "I grasp your thought. You
+mean--to what extent are we prepared to endorse Hegel's
+dictum of immaterial evolution?"
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Overgold. "How far, if at all, do we
+substantiate the Kantian hypothesis of the transcendental?"
+
+"Precisely," said de Vere eagerly. "And for what reasons
+[naming them] must we reject Spencer's theory of the
+unknowable?"
+
+"Entirely so," continued Mr. Overgold.  "And why, if at
+all, does Bergsonian illusionism differ from pure
+nothingness?"
+
+They both paused.
+
+Mr. Overgold had risen. There was great weariness in his
+manner.
+
+"It saddens one, does it not?" he said.
+
+He had picked up a bundle of Panama two per cent. gold
+bonds and was looking at them in contempt.
+
+"The emptiness of it all!" he muttered. He extended the
+bonds to de Vere.
+
+"Do you want them," he said, "or shall I throw them away?"
+
+"Give them to me," said de Vere quietly; "they are not
+worth the throwing."
+
+"No, no," said Mr. Overgold, speaking half to himself,
+as he replaced the bonds in his desk.  "It is a burden
+that I must carry alone. I have no right to ask any one
+to share it. But come," he continued, "I fear I am sadly
+lacking in the duties of international hospitality. I am
+forgetting what I owe to Anglo-American courtesy. I am
+neglecting the new obligations of our common Indo-Chinese
+policy. My motor is at the door. Pray let me take you to
+my house to lunch."
+
+De Vere assented readily, telephoned to the Belmont not
+to keep lunch waiting for him, and in a moment was speeding
+up the magnificent Riverside Drive towards Mr. Overgold's
+home.  On the way Mr. Overgold pointed out various objects
+of interest,--Grant's tomb, Lincoln's tomb, Edgar Allan
+Poe's grave, the ticket office of the New York Subway,
+and various other points of historic importance.
+
+On arriving at the house, de Vere was ushered up a flight
+of broad marble steps to a hall fitted on every side with
+almost priceless objets d'art and others, ushered to the
+cloak-room and out of it, butlered into the lunch-room
+and footmanned to a chair.
+
+As they entered, a lady already seated at the table turned
+to meet them.
+
+One glance was enough--plenty.
+
+It was she--the object of de Vere's impassioned quest.
+A rich lunch-gown was girdled about her with a
+twelve-o'clock band of pearls.
+
+She reached out her hand, smiling.
+
+"Dorothea," said the multimillionaire, "this is Mr. de
+Vere. Mr. de Vere--my wife."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Of this next chapter we need only say that the Blue Review
+(Adults Only) declares it to be the most daring and yet
+conscientious handling of the sex-problem ever attempted
+and done. The fact that the Congregational Times declares
+that this chapter will undermine the whole foundations
+of English Society and let it fall, we pass over: we hold
+certificates in writing from a great number of the Anglican
+clergy, to the effect that they have carefully read the
+entire novel and see nothing in it.
+
+. . . . . . .
+
+They stood looking at one another.
+
+"So you didn't know," she murmured.
+
+In a flash de Vere realised that she hadn't known that
+he didn't know and knew now that he knew.
+
+He found no words.
+
+The situation was a tense one. Nothing but the woman's
+innate tact could save it. Dorothea Overgold rose to it
+with the dignity of a queen.
+
+She turned to her husband.
+
+"Take your soup over to the window," she said, "and eat
+it there."
+
+The millionaire took his soup to the window and sat
+beneath a little palm tree, eating it.
+
+"You didn't know," she repeated.
+
+"No," said de Vere; "how could I?"
+
+"And yet," she went on, "you loved me, although you didn't
+know that I was married?"
+
+"Yes," answered de Vere simply. "I loved you, in spite
+of it."
+
+"How splendid!" she said.
+
+There was a moment's silence. Mr. Overgold had returned
+to the table, the empty plate in his hand. His wife turned
+to him again with the same unfailing tact.
+
+"Take your asparagus to the billiard-room," she said,
+"and eat it there."
+
+"Does he know, too?" asked de Vere.
+
+"Mr. Overgold?" she said carelessly. "I suppose he does.
+Eh apres, mon ami?"
+
+French? Another mystery! Where and how had she learned
+it? de Vere asked himself.  Not in France, certainly.
+
+"I fear that you are very young, amico mio," Dorothea
+went on carelessly. "After all, what is there wrong in
+it, piccolo pochito? To a man's mind perhaps--but to a
+woman, love is love."
+
+She beckoned to the butler.
+
+"Take Mr. Overgold a cutlet to the music-room," she
+said, "and give him his gorgonzola on the inkstand in
+the library."
+
+"And now," she went on, in that caressing way which seemed
+so natural to her, "don't let us think about it any more!
+After all, what is is, isn't it?"
+
+"I suppose it is," said de Vere, half convinced in spite
+of himself.
+
+"Or at any rate," said Dorothea, "nothing can at the same
+time both be and not be. But come," she broke off, gaily
+dipping a macaroon in a glass of creme de menthe and
+offering it to him with a pretty gesture of camaraderie,
+"don't let's be gloomy any more. I want to take you with
+me to the matinee."
+
+"Is he coming?" asked de Vere, pointing at Mr. Overgold's
+empty chair.
+
+"Silly boy," laughed Dorothea. "Of course John is coming.
+You surely don't want to buy the tickets yourself."
+
+. . . . . . .
+
+The days that followed brought a strange new life to de
+Vere.
+
+Dorothea was ever at his side. At the theatre, at the
+polo ground, in the park, everywhere they were together.
+And with them was Mr. Overgold.
+
+The three were always together. At times at the theatre
+Dorothea and de Vere would sit downstairs and Mr. Overgold
+in the gallery; at other times, de Vere and Mr. Overgold
+would sit in the gallery and Dorothea downstairs; at
+times one of them would sit in Row A, another in Row B,
+and a third in Row C; at other times two would sit in
+Row B and one in Row C; at the opera, at times, one of
+the three would sit listening, the others talking, at
+other times two listening and one talking, and at other
+times three talking and none listening.
+
+Thus the three formed together one of the most perplexing,
+maddening triangles that ever disturbed the society of
+the metropolis.
+
+. . . . . . .
+
+The denouement was bound to come.
+
+It came.
+
+It was late at night.
+
+De Vere was standing beside Dorothea in the brilliantly
+lighted hall of the Grand Palaver Hotel, where they had
+had supper. Mr. Overgold was busy for a moment at the
+cashier's desk.
+
+"Dorothea," de Vere whispered passionately, "I want to
+take you away, away from all this.  I want you."
+
+She turned and looked him full in the face.  Then she
+put her hand in his, smiling bravely.
+
+"I will come," she said.
+
+"Listen," he went on, "the Gloritania sails for England
+to-morrow at midnight. I have everything ready. Will you
+come?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I will"; and then passionately,
+"Dearest, I will follow you to England, to Liverpool, to
+the end of the earth."
+
+She paused in thought a moment and then added.
+
+"Come to the house just before midnight.  William, the
+second chauffeur (he is devoted to me), shall be at the
+door with the third car. The fourth footman will bring
+my things--I can rely on him; the fifth housemaid can
+have them all ready--she would never betray me. I will
+have the undergardener--the sixth--waiting at the iron
+gate to let you in; he would die rather than fail me."
+
+She paused again--then she went on.
+
+"There is only one thing, dearest, that I want to ask.
+It is not much. I hardly think you would refuse it at
+such an hour. May I bring my husband with me?"
+
+De Vere's face blanched.
+
+"Must you?" he said.
+
+"I think I must," said Dorothea. "You don't know how I've
+grown to value, to lean upon, him. At times I have felt
+as if I always wanted him to be near me; I like to feel
+wherever I am--at the play, at a restaurant, anywhere
+--that I can reach out and touch him.  I know," she
+continued, "that it's only a wild fancy and that others
+would laugh at it, but you can understand, can you
+not--carino caruso mio? And think, darling, in our new
+life, how busy he, too, will be--making money for all of
+us--in a new money market. It's just wonderful how he
+does it."
+
+A great light of renunciation lit up de Vere's face.
+
+"Bring him," he said.
+
+"I knew that you would say that," she murmured, "and
+listen, pochito pocket-edition, may I ask one thing more,
+one weeny thing? William, the second chauffeur--I think
+he would fade away if I were gone--may I bring him, too?
+Yes! O my darling, how can I repay you? And the second
+footman, and the third housemaid--if I were gone I fear
+that none of--"
+
+"Bring them all," said de Vere half bitterly; "we will
+all elope together."
+
+And as he spoke Mr. Overgold sauntered over from the
+cashier's desk, his open purse still in his hand, and
+joined them. There was a dreamy look upon his face.
+
+"I wonder," he murmured, "whether personality survives
+or whether it, too, when up against the irresistible,
+dissolves and resolves itself into a series of negative
+reactions?"
+
+De Vere's empty heart echoed the words.
+
+Then they passed out and the night swallowed them up.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+At a little before midnight on the next night, two motors
+filled with muffled human beings might have been perceived,
+or seen, moving noiselessly from Riverside Drive to the
+steamer wharf where lay the Gloritania.
+
+A night of intense darkness enveloped the Hudson. Outside
+the inside of the dockside a dense fog wrapped the Statue
+of Liberty. Beside the steamer customs officers and
+deportation officials moved silently to and fro in long
+black cloaks, carrying little deportation lanterns in
+their hands.
+
+To these Mr. Overgold presented in silence his deportation
+certificates, granting his party permission to leave the
+United States under the imbecility clause of the Interstate
+Commerce Act.
+
+No objection was raised.
+
+A few moments later the huge steamer was slipping away
+in the darkness.
+
+On its deck a little group of people, standing beside a
+pile of first-class cabin luggage, directed a last sad
+look through their heavy black disguise at the rapidly
+vanishing shore which they could not see.
+
+De Vere, who stood in the midst of them, clasping their
+hands, thus stood and gazed his last at America.
+
+"Spoof!" he said.
+
+(We admit that this final panorama, weird in its midnight
+mystery, and filling the mind of the reader with a sense
+of something like awe, is only appended to Spoof in order
+to coax him to read our forthcoming sequel, Spiff!)
+
+
+
+II.--The Reading Public. A Book Store Study
+
+"Wish to look about the store? Oh, oh, by all means,
+sir," he said.  Then as he rubbed his hands together in
+an urbane fashion he directed a piercing glance at me
+through his spectacles.
+
+"You'll find some things that might interest you," he
+said, "in the back of the store on the left. We have
+there a series of reprints--Universal Knowledge from
+Aristotle to Arthur Balfour--at seventeen cents. Or
+perhaps you might like to look over the Pantheon of Dead
+Authors at ten cents. Mr. Sparrow," he called, "just show
+this gentleman our classical reprints--the ten-cent
+series."
+
+With that he waved his hand to an assistant and dismissed
+me from his thought.
+
+In other words, he had divined me in a moment. There was
+no use in my having bought a sage-green fedora in Broadway,
+and a sporting tie done up crosswise with spots as big
+as nickels. These little adornments can never hide the
+soul within. I was a professor, and he knew it, or at
+least, as part of his business, he could divine it on
+the instant.
+
+The sales manager of the biggest book store for ten blocks
+cannot be deceived in a customer.  And he knew, of course,
+that, as a professor, I was no good. I had come to the
+store, as all professors go to book stores, just as a
+wasp comes to an open jar of marmalade. He knew that I
+would hang around for two hours, get in everybody's way,
+and finally buy a cheap reprint of the Dialogues of Plato,
+or the Prose Works of John Milton, or Locke on the Human
+Understanding, or some trash of that sort.
+
+As for real taste in literature--the ability to appreciate
+at its worth a dollar-fifty novel of last month, in a
+spring jacket with a tango frontispiece--I hadn't got it
+and he knew it.
+
+He despised me, of course. But it is a maxim of the book
+business that a professor standing up in a corner buried
+in a book looks well in a store. The real customers like
+it.
+
+So it was that even so up-to-date a manager as Mr. Sellyer
+tolerated my presence in a back corner of his store: and
+so it was that I had an opportunity of noting something
+of his methods with his real customers--methods so
+successful, I may say, that he is rightly looked upon by
+all the publishing business as one of the mainstays of
+literature in America.
+
+I had no intention of standing in the place and listening
+as a spy. In fact, to tell the truth, I had become
+immediately interested in a new translation of the Moral
+Discourses of Epictetus. The book was very neatly printed,
+quite well bound and was offered at eighteen cents; so
+that for the moment I was strongly tempted to buy it,
+though it seemed best to take a dip into it first.
+
+I had hardly read more than the first three chapters when
+my attention was diverted by a conversation going on in
+the front of the store.
+
+"You're quite sure it's his LATEST?" a fashionably dressed
+lady was saying to Mr. Sellyer.
+
+"Oh, yes, Mrs. Rasselyer," answered the manager. "I assure
+you this is his very latest.  In fact, they only came in
+yesterday."
+
+As he spoke, he indicated with his hand a huge pile of
+books, gayly jacketed in white and blue. I could make
+out the title in big gilt lettering--GOLDEN DREAMS.
+
+"Oh, yes," repeated Mr. Sellyer. "This is Mr. Slush's
+latest book. It's having a wonderful sale."
+
+"That's all right, then," said the lady. "You see, one
+sometimes gets taken in so: I came in here last week and
+took two that seemed very nice, and I never noticed till
+I got home that they were both old books, published, I
+think, six months ago."
+
+"Oh, dear me, Mrs. Rasselyer," said the manager in an
+apologetic tone, "I'm extremely sorry. Pray let us send
+for them and exchange them for you."
+
+"Oh, it does not matter," said the lady; "of course I
+didn't read them. I gave them to my maid. She probably
+wouldn't know the difference, anyway."
+
+"I suppose not," said Mr. Sellyer, with a condescending
+smile. "But of course, madam," he went on, falling into
+the easy chat of the fashionable bookman, "such mistakes
+are bound to happen sometimes. We had a very painful case
+only yesterday. One of our oldest customers came in in
+a great hurry to buy books to take on the steamer, and
+before we realised what he had done--selecting the books
+I suppose merely by the titles, as some gentlemen are
+apt to do--he had taken two of last year's books. We
+wired at once to the steamer, but I'm afraid it's too
+late."
+
+"But now, this book," said the lady, idly turning over
+the leaves, "is it good? What is it about?"
+
+"It's an extremely POWERFUL thing," said Mr. Sellyer,
+"in fact, MASTERLY. The critics are saying that it's
+perhaps THE most powerful book of the season. It has a--"
+and here Mr. Sellyer paused, and somehow his manner
+reminded me of my own when I am explaining to a university
+class something that I don't know myself--"It has
+a--a--POWER, so to speak--a very exceptional power; in
+fact, one may say without exaggeration it is the most
+POWERFUL book of the month. Indeed," he added, getting
+on to easier ground, "it's having a perfectly wonderful
+sale."
+
+"You seem to have a great many of them," said the lady.
+
+"Oh, we have to," answered the manager.  "There's a
+regular rush on the book. Indeed, you know it's a book
+that is bound to make a sensation. In fact, in certain
+quarters, they are saying that it's a book that ought
+not to--" And here Mr. Sellyer's voice became so low and
+ingratiating that I couldn't hear the rest of the sentence.
+
+"Oh, really!" said Mrs. Rasselyer. "Well, I think I'll
+take it then. One ought to see what these talked-of things
+are about, anyway."
+
+She had already begun to button her gloves, and to readjust
+her feather boa with which she had been knocking the
+Easter cards off the counter. Then she suddenly remembered
+something.
+
+"Oh, I was forgetting," she said. "Will you send something
+to the house for Mr. Rasselyer at the same time? He's
+going down to Virginia for the vacation. You know the
+kind of thing he likes, do you not?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly, madam," said the manager.  "Mr. Rasselyer
+generally reads works of--er--I think he buys mostly
+books on--er--"
+
+"Oh, travel and that sort of thing," said the lady.
+
+"Precisely. I think we have here," and he pointed to the
+counter on the left, "what Mr. Rasselyer wants."
+
+He indicated a row of handsome books--"Seven Weeks in
+the Sahara, seven dollars; Six Months in a Waggon,
+six-fifty net; Afternoons in an Oxcart, two volumes,
+four-thirty, with twenty off."
+
+"I think he has read those," said Mrs. Rasselyer.  "At
+least there are a good many at home that seem like that."
+
+"Oh, very possibly--but here, now, Among the Cannibals
+of Corfu--yes, that I think he has had--Among the--that,
+too, I think--but this I am certain he would like, just
+in this morning--Among the Monkeys of New Guinea--ten
+dollars, net."
+
+And with this Mr. Sellyer laid his hand on a pile of new
+books, apparently as numerous as the huge pile of Golden
+Dreams.
+
+"Among the Monkeys," he repeated, almost caressingly.
+
+"It seems rather expensive," said the lady.
+
+"Oh, very much so--a most expensive book," the manager
+repeated in a tone of enthusiasm.  "You see, Mrs. Rasselyer,
+it's the illustrations, actual photographs"--he ran the
+leaves over in his fingers--"of actual monkeys, taken
+with the camera--and the paper, you notice--in fact,
+madam, the book costs, the mere manufacture of it, nine
+dollars and ninety cents--of course we make no profit
+on it. But it's a book we like to handle."
+
+Everybody likes to be taken into the details of technical
+business; and of course everybody likes to know that a
+bookseller is losing money.  These, I realised, were two
+axioms in the methods of Mr. Sellyer.
+
+So very naturally Mrs. Rasselyer bought Among the Monkeys,
+and in another moment Mr. Sellyer was directing a clerk
+to write down an address on Fifth Avenue, and was bowing
+deeply as he showed the lady out of the door.
+
+As he turned back to his counter his manner seemed much
+changed.
+
+"That Monkey book," I heard him murmur to his assistant,
+"is going to be a pretty stiff proposition."
+
+But he had no time for further speculation.
+
+Another lady entered.
+
+This time even to an eye less trained than Mr. Sellyer's,
+the deep, expensive mourning and the pensive face proclaimed
+the sentimental widow.
+
+"Something new in fiction," repeated the manager, "yes,
+madam--here's a charming thing--Golden Dreams"--he hung
+lovingly on the words--"a very sweet story, singularly
+sweet; in fact, madam, the critics are saying it is the
+sweetest thing that Mr. Slush has done."
+
+"Is it good?" said the lady. I began to realise that all
+customers asked this.
+
+"A charming book," said the manager. "It's a love
+story--very simple and sweet, yet wonderfully charming.
+Indeed, the reviews say it's the most charming book of
+the month. My wife was reading it aloud only last night.
+She could hardly read for tears."
+
+"I suppose it's quite a safe book, is it?" asked the
+widow. "I want it for my little daughter."
+
+"Oh, quite safe," said Mr. Sellyer, with an almost parental
+tone, "in fact, written quite in the old style, like the
+dear old books of the past--quite like"--here Mr. Sellyer
+paused with a certain slight haze of doubt visible in
+his eye--"like Dickens and Fielding and Sterne and so
+on. We sell a great many to the clergy, madam."
+
+The lady bought Golden Dreams, received it wrapped up in
+green enamelled paper, and passed out.
+
+"Have you any good light reading for vacation time?"
+called out the next customer in a loud, breezy voice--he
+had the air of a stock broker starting on a holiday.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost broke into
+a laugh as he answered, "here's an excellent thing--Golden
+Dreams--quite the most humorous book of the season--simply
+screaming--my wife was reading it aloud only yesterday.
+She could hardly read for laughing."
+
+"What's the price, one dollar? One-fifty.  All right,
+wrap it up." There was a clink of money on the counter,
+and the customer was gone. I began to see exactly where
+professors and college people who want copies of Epictetus
+at 18 cents and sections of World Reprints of Literature
+at 12 cents a section come in, in the book trade.
+
+"Yes, Judge!" said the manager to the next customer, a
+huge, dignified personage in a wide-awake hat, "sea
+stories? Certainly. Excellent reading, no doubt, when
+the brain is overcharged as yours must be. Here is the
+very latest--Among the Monkeys of New Guinea, ten dollars,
+reduced to four-fifty. The manufacture alone costs
+six-eighty. We're selling it out. Thank you, Judge. Send
+it? Yes. Good morning."
+
+After that the customers came and went in a string. I
+noticed that though the store was filled with books--ten
+thousand of them, at a guess--Mr. Sellyer was apparently
+only selling two. Every woman who entered went away with
+Golden Dreams: every man was given a copy of the Monkeys
+of New Guinea. To one lady Golden Dreams was sold as
+exactly the reading for a holiday, to another as the very
+book to read AFTER a holiday; another bought it as a book
+for a rainy day, and a fourth as the right sort of reading
+for a fine day. The Monkeys was sold as a sea story, a
+land story, a story of the jungle, and a story of the
+mountains, and it was put at a price corresponding to
+Mr. Sellyer's estimate of the purchaser.
+
+At last after a busy two hours, the store grew empty for
+a moment.
+
+"Wilfred," said Mr. Sellyer, turning to his chief assistant,
+"I am going out to lunch. Keep those two books running
+as hard as you can.  We'll try them for another day and
+then cut them right out. And I'll drop round to Dockem
+& Discount, the publishers, and make a kick about them,
+and see what they'll do."
+
+I felt that I had lingered long enough. I drew near with
+the Epictetus in my hand.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Mr. Sellyer, professional again in a
+moment. "Epictetus? A charming thing. Eighteen cents.
+Thank you. Perhaps we have some other things there that
+might interest you. We have a few second-hand things in
+the alcove there that you might care to look at. There's
+an Aristotle, two volumes--a very fine thing--practically
+illegible, that you might like: and a Cicero came in
+yesterday--very choice--damaged by damp--and I think we
+have a Machiavelli, quite exceptional--practically torn
+to pieces, and the covers gone--a very rare old thing,
+sir, if you're an expert."
+
+"No, thanks," I said. And then from a curiosity that had
+been growing in me and that I couldn't resist, "That
+book--Golden Dreams," I said, "you seem to think it a
+very wonderful work?"
+
+Mr. Sellyer directed one of his shrewd glances at me. He
+knew I didn't want to buy the book, and perhaps, like
+lesser people, he had his off moments of confidence.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"A bad business," he said. "The publishers have unloaded
+the thing on us, and we have to do what we can. They're
+stuck with it, I understand, and they look to us to help
+them.  They're advertising it largely and may pull it
+off. Of course, there's just a chance. One can't tell.
+It's just possible we may get the church people down on
+it and if so we're all right. But short of that we'll
+never make it.  I imagine it's perfectly rotten."
+
+"Haven't you read it?" I asked.
+
+"Dear me, no!" said the manager. His air was that of a
+milkman who is offered a glass of his own milk. "A pretty
+time I'd have if I tried to READ the new books. It's
+quite enough to keep track of them without that."
+
+"But those people," I went on, deeply perplexed, "who
+bought the book. Won't they be disappointed?"
+
+Mr. Sellyer shook his head. "Oh, no," he said; "you see,
+they won't READ it. They never do."
+
+"But at any rate," I insisted, "your wife thought it a
+fine story."
+
+Mr. Sellyer smiled widely.
+
+"I am not married, sir," he said.
+
+
+
+AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB
+
+
+1.--The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So
+
+That is not really his name. I merely call him that from
+his manner of talking.
+
+His specialty is telling me short anecdotes of his
+professional life from day to day.
+
+They are told with wonderful dash and power, except for
+one slight omission, which is, that you never know what
+the doctor is talking about. Beyond this, his little
+stories are of unsurpassed interest--but let me illustrate.
+
+. . . . . . .
+
+He came into the semi-silence room of the club the other
+day and sat down beside me.
+
+"Have something or other?" he said.
+
+"No, thanks," I answered.
+
+"Smoke anything?" he asked.
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+The doctor turned to me. He evidently wanted to talk.
+
+"I've been having a rather peculiar experience," he said.
+"Man came to me the other day--three or four weeks ago--and
+said, 'Doctor, I feel out of sorts. I believe I've got
+so and so.' 'Ah,' I said, taking a look at him, 'been
+eating so and so, eh?' 'Yes,' he said.  'Very good,' I
+said, 'take so and so.'
+
+"Well, off the fellow went--I thought nothing of it--simply
+wrote such and such in my note-book, such and such a
+date, symptoms such and such--prescribed such and such,
+and so forth, you understand?"
+
+"Oh, yes, perfectly, doctor," I answered.
+
+"Very good. Three days later--a ring at the bell in the
+evening--my servant came to the surgery. 'Mr. So and So
+is here. Very anxious to see you.' 'All right!' I went
+down.  There he was, with every symptom of so and so
+written all over him--every symptom of it--this and this
+and this--"
+
+"Awful symptoms, doctor," I said, shaking my head.
+
+"Are they not?" he said, quite unaware that he hadn't
+named any. "There he was with every symptom, heart so
+and so, eyes so and so, pulse this--I looked at him right
+in the eye and I said--'Do you want me to tell you the
+truth?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Very good,' I answered, 'I will.
+You've got so and so.' He fell back as if shot. 'So and
+so!' he repeated, dazed. I went to the sideboard and
+poured him out a drink of such and such. 'Drink this,'
+I said. He drank it. 'Now,' I said, 'listen to what I
+say: You've got so and so. There's only one chance,' I
+said, 'you must limit your eating and drinking to such
+and such, you must sleep such and such, avoid every form
+of such and such--I'll give you a cordial, so many drops
+every so long, but mind you, unless you do so and so, it
+won't help you.' 'All right, very good.' Fellow promised.
+Off he went."
+
+The doctor paused a minute and then resumed:
+
+"Would you believe it--two nights later, I saw the
+fellow--after the theatre, in a restaurant--whole party
+of people--big plate of so and so in front of him--quart
+bottle of so and so on ice--such and such and so forth.
+I stepped over to him--tapped him on the shoulder:  'See
+here,' I said, 'if you won't obey my instructions, you
+can't expect me to treat you.' I walked out of the place."
+
+"And what happened to him?" I asked.
+
+"Died," said the doctor, in a satisfied tone.  "Died.
+I've just been filling in the certificate:  So and so,
+aged such and such, died of so and so!"
+
+"An awful disease," I murmured.
+
+
+
+2.--The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge
+
+"How are you, Podge?" I said, as I sat down in a leather
+armchair beside him.
+
+I only meant "How-do-you-do?" but he rolled his big eyes
+sideways at me in his flabby face (it was easier than
+moving his face) and he answered:
+
+"I'm not as well to-day as I was yesterday afternoon.
+Last week I was feeling pretty good part of the time,
+but yesterday about four o'clock the air turned humid,
+and I don't feel so well."
+
+"Have a cigarette?" I said.
+
+"No, thanks; I find they affect the bronchial toobes."
+
+"Whose?" I asked.
+
+"Mine," he answered.
+
+"Oh, yes," I said, and I lighted one. "So you find the
+weather trying," I continued cheerfully.
+
+"Yes, it's too humid. It's up to a saturation of sixty-six.
+I'm all right till it passes sixty-four. Yesterday
+afternoon it was only about sixty-one, and I felt fine.
+But after that it went up. I guess it must be a contraction
+of the epidermis pressing on some of the sebaceous glands,
+don't you?"
+
+"I'm sure it is," I said. "But why don't you just sleep
+it off till it's over?"
+
+"I don't like to sleep too much," he answered.  "I'm
+afraid of it developing into hypersomnia. There are cases
+where it's been known to grow into a sort of lethargy
+that pretty well stops all brain action altogether--"
+
+"That would be too bad," I murmured.  "What do you do to
+prevent it?"
+
+"I generally drink from half to three-quarters of a cup
+of black coffee, or nearly black, every morning at from
+eleven to five minutes past, so as to keep off hypersomnia.
+It's the best thing, the doctor says."
+
+"Aren't you afraid," I said, "of its keeping you awake?"
+
+"I am," answered Podge, and a spasm passed over his big
+yellow face. "I'm always afraid of insomnia. That's the
+worst thing of all. The other night I went to bed about
+half-past ten, or twenty-five minutes after,--I forget
+which,--and I simply couldn't sleep. I couldn't. I read
+a magazine story, and I still couldn't; and I read another,
+and still I couldn't sleep. It scared me bad."
+
+"Oh, pshaw," I said; "I don't think sleep matters as long
+as one eats properly and has a good appetite."
+
+He shook his head very dubiously. "I ate a plate of soup
+at lunch," he said, "and I feel it still."
+
+"You FEEL it!"
+
+"Yes," repeated Podge, rolling his eyes sideways in a
+pathetic fashion that he had, "I still feel it. I oughtn't
+to have eaten it. It was some sort of a bean soup, and
+of course it was full of nitrogen. I oughtn't to touch
+nitrogen," he added, shaking his head.
+
+"Not take any nitrogen?" I repeated.
+
+"No, the doctor--both doctors--have told me that. I can
+eat starches, and albumens, all right, but I have to keep
+right away from all carbons and nitrogens. I've been
+dieting that way for two years, except that now and again
+I take a little glucose or phosphates."
+
+"That must be a nice change," I said, cheerfully.
+
+"It is," he answered in a grateful sort of tone.
+
+There was a pause. I looked at his big twitching face,
+and listened to the heavy wheezing of his breath, and I
+felt sorry for him.
+
+"See here, Podge," I said, "I want to give you some good
+advice."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About your health."
+
+"Yes, yes, do," he said. Advice about his health was
+right in his line. He lived on it.
+
+"Well, then, cut out all this fool business of diet and
+drugs and nitrogen. Don't bother about anything of the
+sort. Forget it. Eat everything you want to, just when
+you want it. Drink all you like. Smoke all you can--and
+you'll feel a new man in a week."
+
+"Say, do you think so!" he panted, his eyes filled with
+a new light.
+
+"I know it," I answered. And as I left him I shook hands
+with a warm feeling about my heart of being a benefactor
+to the human race.
+
+Next day, sure enough, Podge's usual chair at the club
+was empty.
+
+"Out getting some decent exercise," I thought. "Thank
+Heaven!"
+
+Nor did he come the next day, nor the next, nor for a
+week.
+
+"Leading a rational life at last," I thought.  "Out in
+the open getting a little air and sunlight, instead of
+sitting here howling about his stomach."
+
+The day after that I saw Dr. Slyder in black clothes
+glide into the club in that peculiar manner of his, like
+an amateur undertaker.
+
+"Hullo, Slyder," I called to him, "you look as solemn as
+if you had been to a funeral."
+
+"I have," he said very quietly, and then added, "poor
+Podge!"
+
+"What about him?" I asked with sudden apprehension.
+
+"Why, he died on Tuesday," answered the doctor. "Hadn't
+you heard? Strangest case I've known in years. Came home
+suddenly one day, pitched all his medicines down the
+kitchen sink, ordered a couple of cases of champagne and
+two hundred havanas, and had his housekeeper cook a dinner
+like a Roman banquet! After being under treatment for
+two years! Lived, you know, on the narrowest margin
+conceivable. I told him and Silk told him--we all told
+him--his only chance was to keep away from every form of
+nitrogenous ultra-stimulants. I said to him often, 'Podge,
+if you touch heavy carbonized food, you're lost.'"
+
+"Dear me," I thought to myself, "there ARE such things
+after all!"
+
+"It was a marvel," continued Slyder, "that we kept him
+alive at all. And, of course"--here the doctor paused
+to ring the bell to order two Manhattan cocktails--"as
+soon as he touched alcohol he was done."
+
+So that was the end of the valetudinarianism of Mr. Podge.
+
+I have always considered that I killed him.
+
+But anyway, he was a nuisance at the club.
+
+
+
+3.--The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner
+
+There was no fault to be found with Mr. Yarner till he
+made his trip around the world.
+
+It was that, I think, which disturbed his brain and
+unfitted him for membership in the club.
+
+"Well," he would say, as he sat ponderously down with
+the air of a man opening an interesting conversation, "I
+was just figuring it out that eleven months ago to-day
+I was in Pekin."
+
+"That's odd," I said, "I was just reckoning that eleven
+days ago I was in Poughkeepsie."
+
+"They don't call it Pekin over there," he said. "It's
+sounded Pei-Chang."
+
+"I know," I said, "it's the same way with Poughkeepsie,
+they pronounce it P'Keepsie."
+
+"The Chinese," he went on musingly, "are a strange people."
+
+"So are the people in P'Keepsie," I added, "awfully
+strange."
+
+That kind of retort would sometimes stop him, but not
+always. He was especially dangerous if he was found with
+a newspaper in his hand; because that meant that some
+item of foreign intelligence had gone to his brain.
+
+Not that I should have objected to Yarner describing his
+travels. Any man who has bought a ticket round the world
+and paid for it, is entitled to that.
+
+But it was his manner of discussion that I considered
+unpermissible.
+
+Last week, for example, in an unguarded moment I fell a
+victim. I had been guilty of the imprudence--I forget in
+what connection--of speaking of lions. I realized at
+once that I had done wrong--lions, giraffes, elephants,
+rickshaws and natives of all brands, are topics to avoid
+in talking with a traveller.
+
+"Speaking of lions," began Yarner.
+
+He was right, of course; I HAD spoken of lions.
+
+"--I shall never forget," he went on (of course, I knew
+he never would), "a rather bad scrape I got into in the
+up-country of Uganda.  Imagine yourself in a wild, rolling
+country covered here and there with kwas along the sides
+of the nullahs."
+
+I did so.
+
+"Well," continued Yarner, "we were sitting in our tent
+one hot night--too hot to sleep--when all at once we
+heard, not ten feet in front of us, the most terrific
+roar that ever came from the throat of a lion."
+
+As he said this Yarner paused to take a gulp of bubbling
+whiskey and soda and looked at me so ferociously that I
+actually shivered.
+
+Then quite suddenly his manner cooled down in the strangest
+way, and his voice changed to a commonplace tone as he
+said,--
+
+"Perhaps I ought to explain that we hadn't come up to
+the up-country looking for big game.  In fact, we had
+been down in the down country with no idea of going higher
+than Mombasa.  Indeed, our going even to Mombasa itself
+was more or less an afterthought. Our first plan was to
+strike across from Aden to Singapore.  But our second
+plan was to strike direct from Colombo to Karuchi--"
+
+"And what was your THIRD plan?" I asked.
+
+"Our third plan," said Yarner deliberately, feeling that
+the talk was now getting really interesting, "let me see,
+our third plan was to cut across from Socotra to
+Tananarivo."
+
+"Oh, yes," I said.
+
+"However, all that was changed, and changed under the
+strangest circumstances.  We were sitting, Gallon and I,
+on the piazza of the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo--you
+know the Galle Face?"
+
+"No, I do not," I said very positively.
+
+"Very good. Well, I was sitting on the piazza watching
+a snake charmer who was seated, with a boa, immediately
+in front of me.
+
+"Poor Gallon was actually within two feet of the hideous
+reptile. All of a sudden the beast whirled itself into
+a coil, its eyes fastened with hideous malignity on poor
+Gallon, and with its head erect it emitted the most awful
+hiss I have heard proceed from the mouth of any living
+snake."
+
+Here Yarner paused and took a long, hissing drink of
+whiskey and soda: and then as the malignity died out of
+his face--
+
+"I should explain," he went on, very quietly, "that Gallon
+was not one of our original party.  We had come down to
+Colombo from Mongolia, going by the Pekin Hankow and the
+Nippon Yushen Keisha."
+
+"That, I suppose, is the best way?" I said.
+
+"Yes. And oddly enough but for the accident of Gallon
+joining us, we should have gone by the Amoy, Cochin,
+Singapore route, which was our first plan. In fact, but
+for Gallon we should hardly have got through China at
+all.  The Boxer insurrection had taken place only fourteen
+years before our visit, so you can imagine the awful
+state of the country.
+
+"Our meeting with Gallon was thus absolutely providential.
+Looking back on it, I think it perhaps saved our lives.
+We were in Mongolia (this, you understand, was before we
+reached China), and had spent the night at a small Yak
+about four versts from Kharbin, when all of a sudden,
+just outside the miserable hut that we were in, we heard
+a perfect fusillade of shots followed immediately afterwards
+by one of the most blood-curdling and terrifying screams
+I have ever imagined--"
+
+"Oh, yes," I said, "and that was how you met Gallon.
+Well, I must be off."
+
+And as I happened at that very moment to be rescued by
+an incoming friend, who took but little interest in lions,
+and even less in Yarner, I have still to learn why the
+lion howled so when it met Yarner. But surely the lion
+had reason enough.
+
+
+4.--The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer
+
+One generally saw old Mr. Doomer looking gloomily out of
+the windows of the library of the club. If not there, he
+was to be found staring sadly into the embers of a dying
+fire in a deserted sitting-room.
+
+His gloom always appeared out of place as he was one of
+the richest of the members.
+
+But the cause of it,--as I came to know,--was that he
+was perpetually concerned with thinking about the next
+world. In fact he spent his whole time brooding over it.
+
+I discovered this accidentally by happening to speak to
+him of the recent death of Podge, one of our fellow
+members.
+
+"Very sad," I said, "Podge's death."
+
+"Ah," returned Mr. Doomer, "very shocking.  He was quite
+unprepared to die."
+
+"Do you think so?" I said, "I'm awfully sorry to hear
+it."
+
+"Quite unprepared," he answered. "I had reason to know
+it as one of his executors,--everything is
+confusion,--nothing signed,--no proper power of
+attorney,--codicils drawn up in blank and never
+witnessed,--in short, sir, no sense apparently of the
+nearness of his death and of his duty to be prepared.
+
+"I suppose," I said, "poor Podge didn't realise that he
+was going to die."
+
+"Ah, that's just it," resumed Mr. Doomer with something
+like sternness, "a man OUGHT to realise it. Every man
+ought to feel that at any moment,--one can't tell when,--day
+or night,--he may be called upon to meet his,"--Mr.
+Doomer paused here as if seeking a phrase--"to meet his
+Financial Obligations, face to face. At any time, sir,
+he may be hurried before the Judge,--or rather his estate
+may be,--before the Judge of the probate court. It is
+a solemn thought, sir. And yet when I come here I see
+about me men laughing, talking, and playing billiards,
+as if there would never be a day when their estate would
+pass into the hands of their administrators and an account
+must be given of every cent."
+
+"But after all," I said, trying to fall in with his mood,
+"death and dissolution must come to all of us."
+
+"That's just it," he said solemnly. "They've dissolved
+the tobacco people, and they've dissolved the oil people
+and you can't tell whose turn it may be next."
+
+Mr. Doomer was silent a moment and then resumed, speaking
+in a tone of humility that was almost reverential.
+
+"And yet there is a certain preparedness for death, a
+certain fitness to die that we ought all to aim at. Any
+man can at least think solemnly of the Inheritance Tax,
+and reflect whether by a contract inter vivos drawn in
+blank he may not obtain redemption; any man if he thinks
+death is near may at least divest himself of his purely
+speculative securities and trust himself entirely to
+those gold bearing bonds of the great industrial
+corporations whose value will not readily diminish or
+pass away." Mr. Doomer was speaking with something like
+religious rapture.
+
+"And yet what does one see?" he continued.  "Men affected
+with fatal illness and men stricken in years occupied
+still with idle talk and amusements instead of reading
+the financial newspapers,--and at the last carried away
+with scarcely time perhaps to send for their brokers when
+it is already too late."
+
+"It is very sad," I said.
+
+"Very," he repeated, "and saddest of all, perhaps, is
+the sense of the irrevocability of death and the changes
+that must come after it."
+
+We were silent a moment.
+
+"You think of these things a great deal, Mr. Doomer?"
+I said.
+
+"I do," he answered. "It may be that it is something in
+my temperament, I suppose one would call it a sort of
+spiritual mindedness.  But I think of it all constantly.
+Often as I stand here beside the window and see these
+cars go by"--he indicated a passing street car--"I cannot
+but realise that the time will come when I am no longer
+a managing director and wonder whether they will keep on
+trying to hold the dividend down by improving the rolling
+stock or will declare profits to inflate the securities.
+These mysteries beyond the grave fascinate me, sir. Death
+is a mysterious thing.  Who for example will take my seat
+on the Exchange? What will happen to my majority control
+of the power company? I shudder to think of the changes
+that may happen after death in the assessment of my real
+estate."
+
+"Yes," I said, "it is all beyond our control, isn't it?"
+
+"Quite," answered Mr. Doomer; "especially of late years
+one feels that, all said and done, we are in the hands
+of a Higher Power, and that the State Legislature is
+after all supreme.  It gives one a sense of smallness.
+It makes one feel that in these days of drastic legislation
+with all one's efforts the individual is lost and absorbed
+in the controlling power of the state legislature. Consider
+the words that are used in the text of the Income Tax
+Case, Folio Two, or the text of the Trans-Missouri Freight
+Decision, and think of the revelation they contain."
+
+I left Mr. Doomer still standing beside the window, musing
+on the vanity of life and on things, such as the future
+control of freight rates, that lay beyond the grave.
+
+I noticed as I left him how broken and aged he had come
+to look. It seemed as if the chafings of the spirit were
+wearing the body that harboured it.
+
+It was about a month later that I learned of Mr. Doomer's
+death.
+
+Dr. Slyder told me of it in the club one afternoon, over
+two cocktails in the sitting-room.
+
+"A beautiful bedside," he said, "one of the most edifying
+that I have ever attended. I knew that Doomer was failing
+and of course the time came when I had to tell him.
+
+"'Mr. Doomer,' I said, 'all that I, all that any medical
+can do for you is done; you are going to die. I have to
+warn you that it is time for other ministrations than
+mine.'
+
+"'Very good,' he said faintly but firmly, 'send for my
+broker.'
+
+"They sent out and fetched Jarvis,--you know him I
+think,--most sympathetic man and yet most business-like--he
+does all the firm's business with the dying,--and we two
+sat beside Doomer holding him up while he signed stock
+transfers and blank certificates.
+
+"Once he paused and turned his eyes on Jarvis.  'Read me
+from the text of the State Inheritance Tax Statute,' he
+said. Jarvis took the book and read aloud very quietly
+and simply the part at the beginning--'Whenever and
+wheresoever it shall appear,' down to the words, 'shall
+be no longer a subject of judgment or appeal but shall
+remain in perpetual possession.'
+
+"Doomer listened with his eyes closed. The reading seemed
+to bring him great comfort.  When Jarvis ended he said
+with a sign, 'That covers it. I'll put my faith in that.'
+After that he was silent a moment and then said: 'I wish
+I had already crossed the river. Oh, to have already
+crossed the river and be safe on the other side.' We knew
+what he meant. He had always planned to move over to New
+Jersey.  The inheritance tax is so much more liberal.
+
+"Presently it was all done.
+
+"'There,' I said, 'it is finished now.'
+
+"'No,' he answered, 'there is still one thing.  Doctor,
+you've been very good to me. I should like to pay your
+account now without it being a charge on the estate. I
+will pay it as'--he paused for a moment and a fit of
+coughing seized him, but by an effort of will he found
+the power to say--'cash.'
+
+"I took the account from my pocket (I had it with me,
+fearing the worst), and we laid his cheque-book before
+him on the bed. Jarvis thinking him too faint to write
+tried to guide his hand as he filled in the sum. But he
+shook his head.
+
+"'The room is getting dim,' he said. 'I can see nothing
+but the figures.'
+
+"'Never mind,' said Jarvis,--much moved, 'that's enough.'
+
+"'Is it four hundred and thirty?' he asked faintly.
+
+"'Yes,' I said, and I could feel the tears rising in my
+eyes, 'and fifty cents.'
+
+"After signing the cheque his mind wandered for a moment
+and he fell to talking, with his eyes closed, of the new
+federal banking law, and of the prospect of the reserve
+associations being able to maintain an adequate gold
+supply.
+
+"Just at the last he rallied.
+
+"'I want,' he said in quite a firm voice, 'to do something
+for both of you before I die.'
+
+"'Yes, yes,' we said.
+
+"'You are both interested, are you not,' he murmured,
+'in City Traction?'
+
+"'Yes, yes,' we said. We knew of course that he was the
+managing director.
+
+"He looked at us faintly and tried to speak.
+
+"'Give him a cordial,' said Jarvis. But he found his
+voice.
+
+"'The value of that stock,' he said, 'is going to take
+a sudden--'
+
+"His voice grew faint.
+
+"'Yes, yes,' I whispered, bending over him (there were
+tears in both our eyes), 'tell me is it going up, or
+going down?'
+
+"'It is going'--he murmured,--then his eyes closed--'it
+is going--'
+
+"'Yes, yes,' I said, 'which?'
+
+"'It is going'--he repeated feebly and then, quite suddenly
+he fell back on the pillows and his soul passed. And we
+never knew which way it was going. It was very sad. Later
+on, of course, after he was dead, we knew, as everybody
+knew, that it went down."
+
+
+
+5.--The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot
+
+"Rather a cold day, isn't it?" I said as I entered the
+club.
+
+The man I addressed popped his head out from behind a
+newspaper and I saw it was old Mr. Apricot. So I was
+sorry that I had spoken.
+
+"Not so cold as the winter of 1866," he said, beaming
+with benevolence.
+
+He had an egg-shaped head, bald, with some white hair
+fluffed about the sides of it. He had a pink face with
+large blue eyes, behind his spectacles, benevolent to
+the verge of imbecility.
+
+"Was that a cold winter?" I asked.
+
+"Bitter cold," he said. "I have never told you, have I,
+of my early experiences in life?"
+
+"I think I have heard you mention them," I murmured, but
+he had already placed a detaining hand on my sleeve. "Sit
+down," he said.  Then he continued: "Yes, it was a cold
+winter.  I was going to say that it was the coldest I
+have ever experienced, but that might be an exaggeration.
+But it was certainly colder than any winter that YOU have
+ever seen, or that we ever have now, or are likely to
+have. In fact the winters NOW are a mere nothing,"--here
+Mr. Apricot looked toward the club window where the driven
+snow was beating in eddies against the panes,--"simply
+nothing. One doesn't feel them at all,"--here he turned
+his eyes towards the glowing fire that flamed in the open
+fireplace. "But when I was a boy things were very different.
+I have probably never mentioned to you, have I, the
+circumstances of my early life?"
+
+He had, many times. But he had turned upon me the full
+beam of his benevolent spectacles and I was too weak to
+interrupt.
+
+"My father," went on Mr. Apricot, settling back in his
+chair and speaking with a far-away look in his eyes, "had
+settled on the banks of the Wabash River--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I know it well," I interjected.
+
+"Not as it was THEN," said Mr. Apricot very quickly. "At
+present as you, or any other thoughtless tourist sees
+it, it appears a broad river pouring its vast flood in
+all directions.  At the time I speak of it was a mere
+stream scarcely more than a few feet in circumference.
+The life we led there was one of rugged isolation and of
+sturdy self-reliance and effort such as it is, of course,
+quite impossible for YOU, or any other member of this
+club to understand,--I may give you some idea of what
+I mean when I say that at that time there was no town
+nearer to Pittsburgh than Chicago, or to St. Paul than
+Minneapolis--"
+
+"Impossible!" I said.
+
+Mr. Apricot seemed not to notice the interruption.
+
+"There was no place nearer to Springfield than St. Louis,"
+he went on in a peculiar singsong voice, "and there was
+nothing nearer to Denver than San Francisco, nor to New
+Orleans than Rio Janeiro--"
+
+He seemed as if he would go on indefinitely.
+
+"You were speaking of your father?" I interrupted.
+
+"My father," said Mr. Apricot, "had settled on the banks,
+both banks, of the Wabash.  He was like so many other
+men of his time, a disbanded soldier, a veteran--"
+
+"Of the Mexican War or of the Civil War?" I asked.
+
+"Exactly," answered Mr. Apricot, hardly heeding the
+question,--"of the Mexican Civil War."
+
+"Was he under Lincoln?" I asked.
+
+"OVER Lincoln," corrected Mr. Apricot gravely. And he
+added,--"It is always strange to me the way in which the
+present generation regards Abraham Lincoln. To us, of
+course, at the time of which I speak, Lincoln was simply
+one of ourselves."
+
+"In 1866?" I asked.
+
+"This was 1856," said Mr. Apricot. "He came often to my
+father's cabin, sitting down with us to our humble meal
+of potatoes and whiskey (we lived with a simplicity which
+of course you could not possibly understand), and would
+spend the evening talking with my father over the
+interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.
+We children used to stand beside them listening open-mouthed
+beside the fire in our plain leather night-gowns. I shall
+never forget how I was thrilled when I first heard Lincoln
+lay down his famous theory of the territorial jurisdiction
+of Congress as affected by the Supreme Court decision of
+1857.  I was only nine years old at the time, but it
+thrilled me!"
+
+"Is it possible!" I exclaimed, "how ever could you
+understand it?"
+
+"Ah! my friend," said Mr. Apricot, almost sadly, "in
+THOSE days the youth of the United States were EDUCATED
+in the real sense of the word. We children followed the
+decisions of the Supreme Court with breathless interest.
+Our books were few but they were GOOD. We had nothing to
+read but the law reports, the agriculture reports, the
+weather bulletins and the almanacs. But we read them
+carefully from cover to cover. How few boys have the
+industry to do so now, and yet how many of our greatest
+men were educated on practically nothing else except the
+law reports and the almanacs.  Franklin, Jefferson,
+Jackson, Johnson,"--Mr. Apricot had relapsed into his
+sing-song voice, and his eye had a sort of misty perplexity
+in it as he went on,--"Harrison, Thomson, Peterson,
+Emerson--"
+
+I thought it better to stop him.
+
+"But you were speaking," I said, "of the winter of eighteen
+fifty-six."
+
+"Of eighteen forty-six," corrected Mr. Apricot.  "I shall
+never forget it. How distinctly I remember,--I was only
+a boy then, in fact a mere lad,--fighting my way to
+school. The snow lay in some places as deep as ten feet"--
+Mr. Apricot paused--"and in others twenty.  But we made
+our way to school in spite of it.  No boys of to-day,--nor,
+for the matter of that, even men such as you,--would
+think of attempting it. But we were keen, anxious to
+learn. Our school was our delight. Our teacher was our
+friend. Our books were our companions. We gladly trudged
+five miles to school every morning and seven miles back
+at night, did chores till midnight, studied algebra by
+candlelight"--here Mr. Apricot's voice had fallen into
+its characteristic sing-song, and his eyes were
+vacant--"rose before daylight, dressed by lamplight, fed
+the hogs by lantern-light, fetched the cows by twilight--"
+
+I thought it best to stop him.
+
+"But you did eventually get off the farm, did you not?"
+I asked.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "my opportunity presently came to me
+as it came in those days to any boy of industry and
+intelligence who knocked at the door of fortune till it
+opened.  I shall never forget how my first chance in life
+came to me. A man, an entire stranger, struck no doubt
+with the fact that I looked industrious and willing,
+offered me a dollar to drive a load of tan bark to the
+nearest market--"
+
+"Where was that?" I asked.
+
+"Minneapolis, seven hundred miles. But I did it. I shall
+never forget my feelings when I found myself in Minneapolis
+with one dollar in my pocket and with the world all before
+me."
+
+"What did you do?" I said.
+
+"First," said Mr. Apricot, "I laid out seventy-five cents
+for a suit of clothes (things were cheap in those days);
+for fifty cents I bought an overcoat, for twenty-five I
+got a hat, for ten cents a pair of boots, and with the
+rest of my money I took a room for a month with a Swedish
+family, paid a month's board with a German family, arranged
+to have my washing done by an Irish family, and--"
+
+"But surely, Mr. Apricot--" I began.
+
+But at this point the young man who is generally in
+attendance on old Mr. Apricot when he comes to the club,
+appeared on the scene.
+
+"I am afraid," he said to me aside as Mr. Apricot was
+gathering up his newspapers and his belongings, "that my
+uncle has been rather boring you with his reminiscences."
+
+"Not at all," I said, "he's been telling me all about
+his early life in his father's cabin on the Wabash--"
+
+"I was afraid so," said the young man. "Too bad. You see
+he wasn't really there at all."
+
+"Not there!" I said.
+
+"No. He only fancies that he was. He was brought up in
+New York, and has never been west of Philadelphia. In
+fact he has been very well to do all his life. But he
+found that it counted against him: it hurt him in politics.
+So he got into the way of talking about the Middle West
+and early days there, and sometimes he forgets that he
+wasn't there."
+
+"I see," I said.
+
+Meantime Mr. Apricot was ready.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye," he said very cheerily,--"A delightful
+chat. We must have another talk over old times soon. I
+must tell you about my first trip over the Plains at the
+time when I was surveying the line of the Union Pacific.
+You who travel nowadays in your Pullman coaches and
+observation cars can have no idea--"
+
+"Come along, uncle," said the young man.
+
+
+
+6.--The Last Man out of Europe
+
+He came into the club and shook hands with me as if he
+hadn't seen me for a year. In reality I had seen him only
+eleven months ago, and hadn't thought of him since.
+
+"How are you, Parkins?" I said in a guarded tone, for I
+saw at once that there was something special in his
+manner.
+
+"Have a cig?" he said as he sat down on the edge of an
+arm-chair, dangling his little boot.
+
+Any young man who calls a cigarette a "cig" I despise.
+"No, thanks," I said.
+
+"Try one," he went on, "they're Hungarian.  They're some
+I managed to bring through with me out of the war zone."
+
+As he said "war zone," his face twisted up into a sort
+of scowl of self-importance.
+
+I looked at Parkins more closely and I noticed that he
+had on some sort of foolish little coat, short in the
+back, and the kind of bow-tie that they wear in the
+Hungarian bands of the Sixth Avenue restaurants.
+
+Then I knew what the trouble was. He was the last man
+out of Europe, that is to say, the latest last man. There
+had been about fourteen others in the club that same
+afternoon. In fact they were sitting all over it in
+Italian suits and Viennese overcoats, striking German
+matches on the soles of Dutch boots. These were the "war
+zone" men and they had just got out "in the clothes they
+stood up in." Naturally they hated to change.
+
+So I knew all that this young man, Parkins, was going to
+say, and all about his adventures before he began.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we were caught right in the war zone.
+By Jove, I never want to go through again what I went
+through."
+
+With that, he sank back into the chair in the pose of a
+man musing in silence over the recollection of days of
+horror.
+
+I let him muse. In fact I determined to let him muse till
+he burst before I would ask him what he had been through.
+I knew it, anyway.
+
+Presently he decided to go on talking.
+
+"We were at Izzl," he said, "in the Carpathians, Loo
+Jones and I. We'd just made a walking tour from Izzl to
+Fryzzl and back again."
+
+"Why did you come back?" I asked.
+
+"Back where?"
+
+"Back to Izzl," I explained, "after you'd once got to
+Fryzzl. It seems unnecessary, but, never mind, go on."
+
+"That was in July," he continued. "There wasn't a sign
+of war, not a sign. We heard that Russia was beginning
+to mobilize," (at this word be blew a puff from his
+cigarette and then repeated "beginning to mobilize") "but
+we thought nothing of it."
+
+"Of course not," I said.
+
+"Then we heard that Hungary was calling out the Honveds,
+but we still thought nothing of it."
+
+"Certainly not," I said.
+
+"And then we heard--"
+
+"Yes, I know," I said, "you heard that Italy was calling
+out the Trombonari, and that Germany was calling in all
+the Landesgeschutzshaft."
+
+He looked at me.
+
+"How did you know that?" he said.
+
+"We heard it over here," I answered.
+
+"Well," he went on, "next thing we knew we heard that
+the Russians were at Fryzzl."
+
+"Great Heavens!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, at Fryzzl, not a hundred miles away.  The very
+place we'd been at only two weeks before."
+
+"Think of it!" I said. "If you'd been where you were two
+weeks after you were there, or if the Russians had been
+a hundred miles away from where they were, or even if
+Fryzzl had been a hundred miles nearer to Izzl--"
+
+We both shuddered.
+
+"It was a close call," said Parkins. "However, I said to
+Loo Jones, 'Loo, it's time to clear out.' And then, I
+tell you, our trouble began. First of all we couldn't
+get any money.  We went to the bank at Izzl and tried to
+get them to give us American dollars for Hungarian paper
+money; we had nothing else."
+
+"And wouldn't they?"
+
+"Absolutely refused. They said they hadn't any."
+
+"By George," I exclaimed. "Isn't war dreadful? What on
+earth did you do?"
+
+"Took a chance," said Parkins. "Went across to the railway
+station to buy our tickets with the Hungarian money."
+
+"Did you get them?" I said.
+
+"Yes," assented Parkins. "They said they'd sell us tickets.
+But they questioned us mighty closely; asked where we
+wanted to go to, what class we meant to travel by, how
+much luggage we had to register and so on. I tell you
+the fellow looked at us mighty closely."
+
+"Were you in those clothes?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," said Parkins, "but I guess he suspected we weren't
+Hungarians. You see, we couldn't either of us speak
+Hungarian. In fact we spoke nothing but English."
+
+"That would give him a clue," I said.
+
+"However," he went on, "he was civil enough in a way. We
+asked when was the next train to the sea coast, and he
+said there wasn't any."
+
+"No trains?" I repeated.
+
+"Not to the coast. The man said the reason was because
+there wasn't any railway to the coast. But he offered to
+sell us tickets to Vienna. We asked when the train would
+go and he said there wouldn't be one for two hours. So
+there we were waiting on that wretched little platform,--no
+place to sit down, no shade, unless one went into the
+waiting room itself,--for two mortal hours. And even then
+the train was an hour and a half late!"
+
+"An hour and a half late!" I repeated.
+
+"Yep!" said Parkins, "that's what things were like over
+there. So when we got on board the train we asked a man
+when it was due to get to Vienna, and he said he hadn't
+the faintest idea!"
+
+"Good heavens!"
+
+"Not the faintest idea. He told us to ask the conductor
+or one of the porters. No, sir, I'll never forget that
+journey through to Vienna,--nine mortal hours! Nothing
+to eat, not a bite, except just in the middle of the day
+when they managed to hitch on a dining-car for a while.
+And they warned everybody that the dining-car was only
+on for an hour and a half. Commandeered, I guess after
+that," added Parkins, puffing his cigarette.
+
+"Well," he continued, "we got to Vienna at last. I'll
+never forget the scene there, station full of people,
+trains coming and going, men, even women, buying tickets,
+big piles of luggage being shoved on trucks. It gave one
+a great idea of the reality of things."
+
+"It must have," I said.
+
+"Poor old Loo Jones was getting pretty well used up with
+it all. However, we determined to see it through somehow."
+
+"What did you do next?"
+
+"Tried again to get money: couldn't--they changed our
+Hungarian paper into Italian gold, but they refused to
+give us American money."
+
+"Hoarding it?" I hinted.
+
+"Exactly," said Parkins, "hoarding it all for the war.
+Well anyhow we got on a train for Italy and there our
+troubles began all over again:--train stopped at the
+frontier,--officials (fellows in Italian uniforms) went
+all through it, opening hand baggage--"
+
+"Not hand baggage!" I gasped.
+
+"Yes, sir, even the hand baggage. Opened it all, or a
+lot of it anyway, and scribbled chalk marks over it. Yes,
+and worse than that,--I saw them take two fellows and
+sling them clear off the train,--they slung them right
+out on to the platform."
+
+"What for?" I asked.
+
+"Heaven knows," said Parkins,--"they said they had no
+tickets. In war time you know, when they're mobilizing,
+they won't let a soul ride on a train without a ticket."
+
+"Infernal tyranny," I murmured.
+
+"Isn't it? However, we got to Genoa at last, only to find
+that not a single one of our trunks had come with us!"
+
+"Confiscated?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know," said Parkins, "the head baggage man (he
+wears a uniform, you know, in Italy just like a soldier)
+said it was because we'd forgotten to check them in
+Vienna. However there we were waiting for twenty-four
+hours with nothing but our valises."
+
+"Right at the station?" I asked.
+
+"No, at a hotel. We got the trunks later.  They telegraphed
+to Vienna for them and managed to get them through
+somehow,--in a baggage car, I believe."
+
+"And after that, I suppose, you had no more trouble."
+
+"Trouble," said Parkins, "I should say we had. Couldn't
+get a steamer! They said there was none sailing out of
+Genoa for New York for three days! All cancelled, I guess,
+or else rigged up as cruisers."
+
+"What on earth did you do?"
+
+"Stuck it out as best we could: stayed right there in
+the hotel. Poor old Jones was pretty well collapsed!
+Couldn't do anything but sleep and eat, and sit on the
+piazza of the hotel."
+
+"But you got your steamer at last?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he admitted, "we got it. But I never want to go
+through another voyage like that again, no sir!"
+
+"What was wrong with it?" I asked, "bad weather?"
+
+"No, calm, but a peculiar calm, glassy, with little
+ripples on the water,--uncanny sort of feeling."
+
+"What was wrong with the voyage?"
+
+"Oh, just the feeling of it,--everything under strict
+rule you know--no lights anywhere except just the electric
+lights,--smoking-room closed tight at eleven o'clock,--decks
+all washed down every night--officers up on the bridge
+all day looking out over the sea,--no, sir, I want no
+more of it. Poor old Loo Jones, I guess he's quite used
+up: he can't speak of it at all: just sits and broods,
+in fact I doubt..."
+
+At this moment Parkins's conversation was interrupted by
+the entry of two newcomers into the room. One of them
+had on a little Hungarian suit like the one Parkins wore,
+and was talking loudly as they came in.
+
+"Yes," he was saying, "we were caught there fair and
+square right in the war zone. We were at Izzl in the
+Carpathians, poor old Parkins and I--"
+
+We looked round.
+
+It was Loo Jones, describing his escape from Europe.
+
+
+
+7.--The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks
+
+They were sitting face to face at a lunch table at the
+club so near to me that I couldn't avoid hearing what
+they said. In any case they are both stout men with
+gurgling voices which carry.
+
+"What Kitchener ought to do,"--Jinks was saying in a loud
+voice.
+
+So I knew at once that he had the prevailing hallucination.
+He thought he was commanding armies in Europe.
+
+After which I watched him show with three bits of bread
+and two olives and a dessert knife the way in which the
+German army could be destroyed.
+
+Blinks looked at Jinks' diagram with a stern impassive
+face, modelled on the Sunday supplement photogravures of
+Lord Kitchener.
+
+"Your flank would be too much exposed," he said, pointing
+to Jinks' bread. He spoke with the hard taciturnity of
+a Joffre.
+
+"My reserves cover it," said Jinks, moving two pepper
+pots to the support of the bread.
+
+"Mind you," Jinks went on, "I don't say Kitchener WILL
+do this: I say this is what he OUGHT to do: it's exactly
+the tactics of Kuropatkin outside of Mukden and it's
+precisely the same turning movement that Grant used before
+Richmond."
+
+Blinks nodded gravely. Anybody who has seen the Grand
+Duke Nicholoevitch quietly accepting the advice of General
+Ruski under heavy artillery fire, will realize Blinks'
+manner to a nicety.
+
+And, oddly enough, neither of them, I am certain, has
+ever had any larger ideas about the history of the Civil
+War than what can be got from reading Uncle Tom's Cabin
+and seeing Gillette play Secret Service. But this is part
+of the mania. Jinks and Blinks had suddenly developed
+the hallucination that they knew the history of all wars
+by a sort of instinct.
+
+They rose soon after that, dusted off their waistcoats
+with their napkins and waddled heavily towards the door.
+I could hear them as they went talking eagerly of the
+need of keeping the troops in hard training. They were
+almost brutal in their severity. As they passed out of
+the door,--one at a time to avoid crowding,--they were
+still talking about it. Jinks was saying that our whole
+generation is overfed and soft. If he had his way he
+would take every man in the United States up to forty-
+seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and train him
+to a shadow. Blinks went further.  He said they should
+be trained hard up to fifty. He is fifty-one.
+
+After that I used to notice Jinks and Blinks always
+together in the club, and always carrying on the European
+War.
+
+I never knew which side they were on. They seemed to be
+on both. One day they commanded huge armies of Russians,
+and there was one week when Blinks and Jinks at the head
+of vast levies of Cossacks threatened to overrun the
+whole of Western Europe. It was dreadful to watch them
+burning churches and monasteries and to see Jinks throw
+whole convents full of white robed nuns into the flames
+like so much waste paper.
+
+For a time I feared they would obliterate civilization
+itself. Then suddenly Blinks decided that Jinks' Cossacks
+were no good, not properly trained. He converted himself
+on the spot into a Prussian Field Marshal, declared
+himself organised to a pitch of organisation of which
+Jinks could form no idea, and swept Jinks' army off the
+earth, without using any men at all, by sheer organisation.
+
+In this way they moved to and fro all winter over the
+map of Europe, carrying death and destruction everywhere
+and revelling in it.
+
+But I think I liked best the wild excitement of their
+naval battles.
+
+Jinks generally fancied himself a submarine and Blinks
+acted the part of a first-class battleship. Jinks would
+pop his periscope out of the water, take a look at Blinks
+merely for the fraction of a second, and then, like a
+flash, would dive under water again and start firing his
+torpedoes. He explained that he carried six.
+
+But he was never quick enough for Blinks.  One glimpse
+of his periscope miles and miles away was enough. Blinks
+landed him a contact shell in the side, sunk him with
+all hands, and then lined his yards with men and cheered.
+I have known Blinks sink Jinks at two miles, six miles--and
+once--in the club billiard room just after the battle of
+the Falkland Islands,--he got him fair and square at
+ten nautical miles.
+
+Jinks of course claimed that he was not sunk.  He had
+dived. He was two hundred feet under water quietly smiling
+at Blinks through his periscope. In fact the number of
+things that Jinks has learned to do through his periscope
+passes imagination.
+
+Whenever I see him looking across at Blinks with his eyes
+half closed and with a baffling, quizzical expression in
+them, I know that he is looking at him through his
+periscope.  Now is the time for Blinks to watch out. If
+he relaxes his vigilance for a moment he'll be torpedoed
+as he sits, and sent flying, whiskey and soda and all,
+through the roof of the club, while Jinks dives into the
+basement.
+
+Indeed it has come about of late, I don't know just how,
+that Jinks has more or less got command of the sea. A
+sort of tacit understanding has been reached that Blinks,
+whichever army he happens at the moment to command, is
+invincible on land. But Jinks, whether as a submarine or
+a battleship, controls the sea. No doubt this grew up in
+the natural evolution of their conversation. It makes
+things easier for both. Jinks even asks Blinks how many
+men there are in an army division, and what a sotnia of
+Cossacks is and what the Army Service Corps means. And
+Jinks in return has become a recognized expert in torpedoes
+and has taken to wearing a blue serge suit and referring
+to Lord Beresford as Charley.
+
+But what I noticed chiefly about the war mania of Jinks
+and Blinks was their splendid indifference to slaughter.
+They had gone into the war with a grim resolution to
+fight it out to a finish. If Blinks thought to terrify
+Jinks by threatening to burn London, he little knew his
+man. "All right," said Jinks, taking a fresh light for
+his cigar, "burn it! By doing so, you destroy, let us
+say, two million of my women and children? Very good. Am
+I injured by that? No. You merely stimulate me to
+recruiting."
+
+There was something awful in the grimness of the struggle
+as carried on by Blinks and Jinks.
+
+The rights of neutrals and non-combatants, Red Cross
+nurses, and regimental clergymen they laughed to scorn.
+As for moving-picture men and newspaper correspondents,
+Jinks and Blinks hanged them on every tree in Belgium
+and Poland.
+
+With combatants in this frame of mind the war I suppose
+might have lasted forever.
+
+But it came to an end accidentally,--fortuitously, as
+all great wars are apt to. And by accident also, I happened
+to see the end of it.
+
+It was late one evening. Jinks and Blinks were coming
+down the steps of the club, and as they came they were
+speaking with some vehemence on their favourite topic.
+
+"I tell you," Jinks was saying, "war is a great thing.
+We needed it, Blinks. We were all getting too soft, too
+scared of suffering and pain. We wilt at a bayonet charge,
+we shudder at the thought of wounds. Bah!" he continued,
+"what does it matter if a few hundred thousands of human
+beings are cut to pieces.  We need to get back again to
+the old Viking standard, the old pagan ideas of suffering--"
+
+And as he spoke he got it.
+
+The steps of the club were slippery with the evening's
+rain,--not so slippery as the frozen lakes of East Prussia
+or the hills where Jinks and Blinks had been campaigning
+all winter, but slippery enough for a stout man whose
+nation has neglected his training. As Jinks waved his
+stick in the air to illustrate the glory of a bayonet
+charge, he slipped and fell sideways on the stone steps.
+His shin bone smacked against the edge of the stone in
+a way that was pretty well up to the old Viking standard
+of such things. Blinks with the shock of the collision
+fell also,--backwards on the top step, his head striking
+first. He lay, to all appearance, as dead as the most
+insignificant casualty in Servia.
+
+I watched the waiters carrying them into the club, with
+that new field ambulance attitude towards pain which is
+getting so popular. They had evidently acquired precisely
+the old pagan attitude that Blinks and Jinks desired.
+
+And the evening after that I saw Blinks and Jinks, both
+more or less bandaged, sitting in a corner of the club
+beneath a rubber tree, making peace.
+
+Jinks was moving out of Montenegro and Blinks was foregoing
+all claims to Polish Prussia; Jinks was offering
+Alsace-Lorraine to Blinks, and Blinks in a fit of chivalrous
+enthusiasm was refusing to take it. They were disbanding
+troops, blowing up fortresses, sinking their warships
+and offering indemnities which they both refused to take.
+Then as they talked, Jinks leaned forward and said
+something to Blinks in a low voice,--a final proposal of
+terms evidently.
+
+Blinks nodded, and Jinks turned and beckoned to a waiter,
+with the words,--
+
+"One Scotch whiskey and soda, and one stein of Wurtemburger
+Bier--"
+
+And when I heard this, I knew that the war was over.
+
+
+
+8.--The Ground Floor
+
+I hadn't seen Ellesworth since our college days, twenty
+years before, at the time when he used to borrow two
+dollars and a half from the professor of Public Finance
+to tide him over the week end.
+
+Then quite suddenly he turned up at the club one day and
+had afternoon tea with me.
+
+His big clean shaven face had lost nothing of its
+impressiveness, and his spectacles had the same glittering
+magnetism as in the days when he used to get the college
+bursar to accept his note of hand for his fees.
+
+And he was still talking European politics just as he
+used to in the days of our earlier acquaintance.
+
+"Mark my words," he said across the little tea-table,
+with one of the most piercing glances I have ever seen,
+"the whole Balkan situation was only a beginning. We are
+on the eve of a great pan-Slavonic upheaval." And then
+he added, in a very quiet, casual tone: "By the way,
+could you let me have twenty-five dollars till to-morrow?"
+
+"A pan-Slavonic movement!" I ejaculated.  "Do you really
+think it possible? No, I couldn't."
+
+"You must remember," Ellesworth went on, "Russia means
+to reach out and take all she can get;" and he added,
+"how about fifteen till Friday?"
+
+"She may reach for it," I said, "but I doubt if she'll
+get anything. I'm sorry. I haven't got it."
+
+"You're forgetting the Bulgarian element," he continued,
+his animation just as eager as before. "The Slavs never
+forget what they owe to one another."
+
+Here Ellesworth drank a sip of tea and then said quietly,
+"Could you make it ten till Saturday at twelve?"
+
+I looked at him more closely. I noticed now his frayed
+cuffs and the dinginess of his over-brushed clothes. Not
+even the magnetism of his spectacles could conceal it.
+Perhaps I had been forgetting something, whether the
+Bulgarian element or not.
+
+I compromised at ten dollars till Saturday.
+
+"The Slav," said Ellesworth, as he pocketed the money,
+"is peculiar. He never forgets."
+
+"What are you doing now?" I asked him.  "Are you still
+in insurance?" I had a vague recollection of him as
+employed in that business.
+
+"No," he answered. "I gave it up. I didn't like the
+outlook. It was too narrow. The atmosphere cramped me.
+I want," he said, "a bigger horizon."
+
+"Quite so," I answered quietly. I had known men before
+who had lost their jobs. It is generally the cramping of
+the atmosphere that does it. Some of them can use up a
+tremendous lot of horizon.
+
+"At present," Ellesworth went on, "I am in finance. I'm
+promoting companies."
+
+"Oh, yes," I said. I had seen companies promoted before.
+
+"Just now," continued Ellesworth, "I'm working on a thing
+that I think will be rather a big thing. I shouldn't want
+it talked about outside, but it's a matter of taking hold
+of the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks,--practically
+amalgamating them--and perhaps combining with them the
+entire herring output, and the whole of the sardine catch
+of the Mediterranean.  If it goes through," he added, "I
+shall be in a position to let you in on the ground floor."
+
+I knew the ground floor of old. I have already many
+friends sitting on it; and others who have fallen through
+it into the basement.
+
+I said, "thank you," and he left me.
+
+"That was Ellesworth, wasn't it?" said a friend of mine
+who was near me. "Poor devil.  I knew him slightly,--always
+full of some new and wild idea of making money. He was
+talking to me the other day of the possibility of cornering
+all the huckleberry crop and making refined sugar. Isn't
+it amazing what fool ideas fellows like him are always
+putting up to business men?"
+
+We both laughed.
+
+After that I didn't see Ellesworth for some weeks.
+
+Then I met him in the club again. How he paid his fees
+there I do not know.
+
+This time he was seated among a litter of foreign newspapers
+with a cup of tea and a ten-cent package of cigarettes
+beside him.
+
+"Have one of these cigarettes," he said. "I get them
+specially. They are milder than what we have in the club
+here."
+
+They certainly were.
+
+"Note what I say," Ellesworth went on.  "The French
+Republic is going to gain from now on a stability that
+it never had." He seemed greatly excited about it. But
+his voice changed to a quiet tone as he added, "Could
+you, without inconvenience, let me have five dollars?"
+
+So I knew that the cod-fish and the sardines were still
+unamalgamated.
+
+"What about the fisheries thing?" I asked.  "Did it go
+through?"
+
+"The fisheries? No, I gave it up. I refused to go forward
+with it. The New York people concerned were too shy, too
+timid to tackle it. I finally had to put it to them very
+straight that they must either stop shilly-shallying and
+declare themselves, or the whole business was off."
+
+"Did they declare themselves?" I questioned.
+
+"They did," said Ellesworth, "but I don't regret it. I'm
+working now on a much bigger thing,--something with
+greater possibilities in it. When the right moment comes
+I'll let you in on the ground floor."
+
+I thanked him and we parted.
+
+The next time I saw Ellesworth he told me at once that
+he regarded Albania as unable to stand by itself. So I
+gave him five dollars on the spot and left him.
+
+A few days after that he called me up on the telephone
+to tell me that the whole of Asia Minor would have to be
+redistributed. The redistribution cost me five dollars
+more.
+
+Then I met him on the street, and he said that Persia
+was disintegrating, and took from me a dollar and a half.
+
+When I passed him next in the street he was very busy
+amalgamating Chinese tramways. It appeared that there
+was a ground floor in China, but I kept off it.
+
+Each time I saw Ellesworth he looked a little shabbier
+than the last. Then one day he called me up on the
+telephone, and made an appointment.
+
+His manner when I joined him was full of importance.
+
+"I want you at once," he said in a commanding tone, "to
+write me your cheque for a hundred dollars."
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+"I am now able," said Ellesworth, "to put you in on the
+ground floor of one of the biggest things in years."
+
+"Thanks," I said, "the ground floor is no place for me."
+
+"Don't misunderstand me," said Ellesworth.  "This is a
+big thing. It's an idea I've been working on for some
+time,--making refined sugar from the huckleberry crop.
+It's a certainty.  I can get you shares now at five
+dollars. They'll go to five hundred when we put them on
+the market,--and I can run you in for a block of stock
+for promotion services as well.  All you have to do is
+to give me right now a hundred dollars,--cash or your
+cheque,--and I can arrange the whole thing for you."
+
+I smiled.
+
+"My dear Ellesworth," I said, "I hope you won't mind if
+I give you a little bit of good advice. Why not drop all
+this idea of quick money? There's nothing in it. The
+business world has grown too shrewd for it. Take an
+ordinary decent job and stick to it. Let me use my
+influence," I added, "to try and get you into something
+with a steady salary, and with your brains you're bound
+to get on in time."
+
+Ellesworth looked pained. A "steady job" sounded to him
+like a "ground floor" to me.
+
+After that I saw nothing of him for weeks.  But I didn't
+forget him. I looked about and secured for him a job as
+a canvassing agent for a book firm at a salary of five
+dollars a week, and a commission of one-tenth of one per
+cent.
+
+I was waiting to tell him of his good luck, when I chanced
+to see him at the club again.
+
+But he looked transformed.
+
+He had on a long frock coat that reached nearly to his
+knees. He was leading a little procession of very heavy
+men in morning coats, upstairs towards the private luncheon
+rooms.  They moved like a funeral, puffing as they went.
+I had seen company directors before and I knew what they
+were at sight.
+
+"It's a small club and rather inconvenient," Ellesworth
+was saying, "and the horizon of some of its members rather
+narrow," here he nodded to me as he passed,--"but I can
+give you a fairly decent lunch."
+
+I watched them as they disappeared upstairs.
+
+"That's Ellesworth, isn't it?" said a man near me. It
+was the same man who had asked about him before.
+
+"Yes," I answered.
+
+"Giving a lunch to his directors, I suppose," said my
+friend; "lucky dog."
+
+"His directors?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, hadn't you heard? He's just cleaned up half a
+million or more,--some new scheme for making refined
+sugar out of huckleberries.  Isn't it amazing what shrewd
+ideas these big business men get hold of? They say they're
+unloading the stock at five hundred dollars. It only cost
+them about five to organize. If only one could get on to
+one of these things early enough, eh?"
+
+I assented sadly.
+
+And the next time I am offered a chance on the ground
+floor I am going to take it, even if it's only the barley
+floor of a brewery.
+
+It appears that there is such a place after all.
+
+
+
+9.--The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
+
+It is the hallucination of Mr. Butt's life that he lives
+to do good. At whatever cost of time or trouble to himself,
+he does it. Whether people appear to desire it or not,
+he insists on helping them along.
+
+His time, his company and his advice are at the service
+not only of those who seek them but of those who, in the
+mere appearances of things, are not asking for them.
+
+You may see the beaming face of Mr. Butt appear at the
+door of all those of his friends who are stricken with
+the minor troubles of life. Whenever Mr. Butt learns that
+any of his friends are moving house, buying furniture,
+selling furniture, looking for a maid, dismissing a maid,
+seeking a chauffeur, suing a plumber or buying a piano,--he
+is at their side in a moment.
+
+So when I met him one night in the cloak room of the club
+putting on his raincoat and his galoshes with a peculiar
+beaming look on his face, I knew that he was up to some
+sort of benevolence.
+
+"Come upstairs," I said, "and play billiards." I saw from
+his general appearance that it was a perfectly safe offer.
+
+"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt, "I only wish I could.
+I wish I had the time. I am sure it would cheer you up
+immensely if I could.  But I'm just going out."
+
+"Where are you off to?" I asked, for I knew he wanted me
+to say it.
+
+"I'm going out to see the Everleigh-Joneses,--you know
+them? no?--just come to the city, you know, moving into
+their new house, out on Seldom Avenue."
+
+"But," I said, "that's away out in the suburbs, is it
+not, a mile or so beyond the car tracks?"
+
+"Something like that," answered Mr. Butt.
+
+"And it's going on for ten o'clock and it's starting to
+rain--"
+
+"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Butt, cheerfully, adjusting his
+galoshes. "I never mind the rain,--does one good. As to
+their house. I've not been there yet but I can easily
+find it. I've a very simple system for finding a house
+at night by merely knocking at the doors in the neighborhood
+till I get it."
+
+"Isn't it rather late to go there?" I protested.
+
+"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt warmly, "I don't mind
+that a bit. The way I look at it is, here are these two
+young people, only married a few weeks, just moving into
+their new house, everything probably upside down, no one
+there but themselves, no one to cheer them up,"--he was
+wriggling into his raincoat as he spoke and working
+himself into a frenzy of benevolence,--"good gracious,
+I only learned at dinner time that they had come to town,
+or I'd have been out there days ago,--days ago--"
+
+And with that Mr. Butt went bursting forth into the rain,
+his face shining with good will under the street lamps.
+
+The next day I saw him again at the club at lunch time.
+
+"Well," I asked, "did you find the Joneses?"
+
+"I did," said Mr. Butt, "and by George I was glad that
+I'd gone--quite a lot of trouble to find the house (though
+I didn't mind that; I expected it)--had to knock at twenty
+houses at least to get it,--very dark and wet out there,
+--no street lights yet,--however I simply pounded at the
+doors until some one showed a light--at every house I
+called out the same things, 'Do you know where the
+Everleigh Joneses live?' They didn't. 'All right,' I
+said, 'go back to bed. Don't bother to come down.'
+
+"But I got to the right spot at last. I found the house
+all dark. Jones put his head out of an upper window.
+'Hullo,' I called out; 'it's Butt.' 'I'm awfully sorry,'
+he said, 'we've gone to bed.' 'My dear boy,' I called
+back, 'don't apologize at all. Throw me down the key and
+I'll wait while you dress. I don't mind a bit.'
+
+"Just think of it," continued Mr. Butt, "those two poor
+souls going to bed at half past ten, through sheer
+dullness! By George, I was glad I'd come. 'Now then,' I
+said to myself, 'let's cheer them up a little, let's make
+things a little brighter here.'
+
+"Well, down they came and we sat there on furniture cases
+and things and had a chat.  Mrs. Jones wanted to make me
+some coffee.  'My dear girl,' I said (I knew them both
+when they were children) 'I absolutely refuse. Let ME
+make it.' They protested. I insisted. I went at it,--kitchen
+all upset--had to open at least twenty tins to get the
+coffee. However, I made it at last. 'Now,' I said, 'drink
+it.' They said they had some an hour or so ago. 'Nonsense,'
+I said, 'drink it.' Well, we sat and chatted away till
+midnight. They were dull at first and I had to do all
+the talking. But I set myself to it. I can talk, you
+know, when I try.  Presently about midnight they seemed
+to brighten up a little. Jones looked at his watch.  'By
+Jove,' he said, in an animated way, 'it's after midnight.'
+I think he was pleased at the way the evening was going;
+after that we chatted away more comfortably. Every little
+while Jones would say, 'By Jove, it's half past twelve,'
+or 'it's one o'clock,' and so on.
+
+"I took care, of course, not to stay too late.  But when
+I left them I promised that I'd come back to-day to help
+straighten things up. They protested, but I insisted."
+
+That same day Mr. Butt went out to the suburbs and put
+the Joneses' furniture to rights.
+
+"I worked all afternoon," he told me afterwards,--"hard
+at it with my coat off--got the pictures up first--they'd
+been trying to put them up by themselves in the morning.
+I had to take down every one of them--not a single one
+right,--'Down they come,' I said, and went at it with a
+will."
+
+A few days later Mr. Butt gave me a further report. "Yes,"
+he said, "the furniture is all unpacked and straightened
+out but I don't like it. There's a lot of it I don't
+quite like. I half feel like advising Jones to sell it
+and get some more. But I don't want to do that till I'm
+quite certain about it."
+
+After that Mr. Butt seemed much occupied and I didn't
+see him at the club for some time.
+
+"How about the Everleigh-Joneses?" I asked. "Are they
+comfortable in their new house?"
+
+Mr. Butt shook his head. "It won't do," he said. "I was
+afraid of it from the first. I'm moving Jones in nearer
+to town. I've been out all morning looking for an apartment;
+when I get the right one I shall move him. I like an
+apartment far better than a house."
+
+So the Joneses in due course of time were moved. After
+that Mr. Butt was very busy selecting a piano, and advising
+them on wall paper and woodwork.
+
+They were hardly settled in their new home when fresh
+trouble came to them.
+
+"Have you heard about Everleigh-Jones?" said Mr. Butt
+one day with an anxious face.
+
+"No," I answered.
+
+"He's ill--some sort of fever--poor chap--been ill three
+days, and they never told me or sent for me--just like
+their grit--meant to fight it out alone. I'm going out
+there at once."
+
+From day to day I had reports from Mr. Butt of the
+progress of Jones's illness.
+
+"I sit with him every day," he said. "Poor chap,--he was
+very bad yesterday for a while,--mind wandered--quite
+delirious--I could hear him from the next room--seemed
+to think some one was hunting him--'Is that damn old fool
+gone,' I heard him say.
+
+"I went in and soothed him. 'There is no one here, my
+dear boy,' I said, 'no one, only Butt.' He turned over
+and groaned. Mrs.  Jones begged me to leave him. 'You
+look quite used up,' she said. 'Go out into the open
+air.' 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said, 'what DOES it matter
+about me?'"
+
+Eventually, thanks no doubt to Mr. Butt's assiduous care,
+Everleigh-Jones got well.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Butt to me a few weeks later, "Jones is
+all right again now, but his illness has been a long hard
+pull. I haven't had an evening to myself since it began.
+But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything I've
+done,--the gratitude of those two people--it's unbelievable
+--you ought to see it. Why do you know that dear little
+woman is so worried for fear that my strength has been
+overtaxed that she wants me to take a complete rest and
+go on a long trip somewhere--suggested first that I should
+go south. 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said laughing, 'that's
+the ONE place I will not go. Heat is the one thing I
+CAN'T stand.' She wasn't nonplussed for a moment.  'Then
+go north,' she said. 'Go up to Canada, or better still
+go to Labrador,'--and in a minute that kind little woman
+was hunting up railway maps to see how far north I could
+get by rail. 'After that,' she said, 'you can go on
+snowshoes.' She's found that there's a steamer to Ungava
+every spring and she wants me to run up there on one
+steamer and come back on the next."
+
+"It must be very gratifying," I said.
+
+"Oh, it is, it is," said Mr. Butt warmly. "It's well
+worth anything I do. It more than repays me. I'm alone
+in the world and my friends are all I have. I can't tell
+you how it goes to my heart when I think of all my friends,
+here in the club and in the town, always glad to see me,
+always protesting against my little kindnesses and yet
+never quite satisfied about anything unless they can get
+my advice and hear what I have to say.
+
+"Take Jones for instance," he continued--"do you know,
+really now as a fact,--the hall porter assures me of
+it,--every time Everleigh-Jones enters the club here
+the first thing he does is to sing out, 'Is Mr. Butt in
+the club?' It warms me to think of it." Mr. Butt paused,
+one would have said there were tears in his eyes. But if
+so the kindly beam of his spectacles shone through them
+like the sun through April rain. He left me and passed
+into the cloak room.
+
+He had just left the hall when a stranger entered, a
+narrow, meek man with a hunted face. He came in with a
+furtive step and looked about him apprehensively.
+
+"Is Mr. Butt in the club?" he whispered to the hall
+porter.
+
+"Yes, sir, he's just gone into the cloak room, sir, shall
+I--"
+
+But the man had turned and made a dive for the front door
+and had vanished.
+
+"Who is that?" I asked.
+
+"That's a new member, sir, Mr. Everleigh-Jones," said
+the hall porter.
+
+
+
+IV-Ram Spudd The New World Singer. Is He Divinely Inspired?
+Or Is He Not? At Any Rate We Discovered Him.
+
+[Footnote: Mr. Spudd was discovered by the author for
+the New York Life. He is already recognized as superior
+to Tennyson and second only, as a writer of imagination,
+to the Sultan of Turkey.]
+
+The discovery of a new poet is always a joy to the
+cultivated world.  It is therefore with the greatest
+pleasure that we are able to announce that we ourselves,
+acting quite independently and without aid from any of
+the English reviews of the day, have discovered one. In
+the person of Mr. Ram Spudd, of whose work we give
+specimens below, we feel that we reveal to our readers
+a genius of the first order. Unlike one of the most
+recently discovered English poets who is a Bengalee, and
+another who is a full-blooded Yak, Mr. Spudd is, we
+believe, a Navajo Indian. We believe this from the
+character of his verse.  Mr. Spudd himself we have not
+seen. But when he forwarded his poems to our office and
+offered with characteristic modesty to sell us his entire
+works for seventy-five cents, we felt in closing with
+his offer that we were dealing not only with a poet, but
+with one of nature's gentlemen.
+
+Mr. Spudd, we understand, has had no education. Other
+newly discovered poets have had, apparently, some. Mr.
+Spudd has had, evidently, none. We lay stress on this
+point.  Without it we claim it is impossible to understand
+his work.
+
+What we particularly like about Ram Spudd, and we do not
+say this because we discovered him but because we believe
+it and must say it, is that he belongs not to one school
+but to all of them. As a nature poet we doubt very much
+if he has his equal; as a psychologist, we are sure he
+has not. As a clear lucid thinker he is undoubtedly in
+the first rank; while as a mystic he is a long way in
+front of it. The specimens of Mr. Spudd's verse which we
+append herewith were selected, we are happy to assure
+our readers, purely at random from his work. We first
+blindfolded ourselves and then, standing with our feet
+in warm water and having one hand tied behind our back,
+we groped among the papers on our desk before us and
+selected for our purpose whatever specimens first came
+to hand.
+
+As we have said, or did we say it, it is perhaps as a
+nature poet that Ram Spudd excels.  Others of our modern
+school have carried the observation of natural objects
+to a high degree of very nice precision, but with Mr.
+Spudd the observation of nature becomes an almost scientific
+process. Nothing escapes him. The green of the grass he
+detects as in an instant. The sky is no sooner blue than
+he remarks it with unerring certainty. Every bird note,
+every bee call, is familiar to his trained ear. Perhaps
+we cannot do better than quote the opening lines of a
+singularly beautiful sample of Ram Spudd's genius which
+seems to us the last word in nature poetry. It is called,
+with characteristic daintiness--
+
+      SPRING THAW IN THE
+   AHUNTSIC WOODS, NEAR PASPEBIAC,
+      PASSAMOQUODDY COUNTY
+
+(We would like to say that, to our ears at least, there
+is a music in this title like the sound of falling water,
+or of chopped ice. But we must not interrupt ourselves.
+We now begin.  Listen.)
+
+ The thermometer is standing this morning at thirty-
+   three decimal one.
+ As a consequence it is freezing in the shade, but
+   it is thawing in the sun.
+ There is a certain amount of snow on the ground,
+   but of course not too much.
+ The air is what you would call humid, but not
+   disagreeable to the touch.
+ Where I am standing I find myself practically
+   surrounded by trees,
+ It is simply astonishing the number of the different
+   varieties one sees.
+ I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree
+   by seeing it glisten,
+ But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the
+   tree and listen,
+ And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of
+   mine perhaps,
+ But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees
+   by the sound of their saps.
+ After I have noticed all the trees, and named those
+   I know in words,
+ I stand quite still and look all round to see if
+   there are any birds,
+ And yesterday, close where I was standing, sitting
+   in some brush on the snow,
+ I saw what I was practically absolutely certain was
+   an early crow.
+ I sneaked up ever so close and was nearly beside
+   it, when say!
+ It turned and took one look at me, and flew away.
+
+But we should not wish our readers to think that Ram
+Spudd is always and only the contemplative poet of the
+softer aspects of nature.  Oh, by no means. There are
+times when waves of passion sweep over him in such
+prodigious volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble
+in the surf. Gusts of emotion blow over him with such
+violence as to hurl him pro and con with inconceivable
+fury. In such moods, if it were not for the relief offered
+by writing verse we really do not know what would happen
+to him. His verse written under the impulse of such
+emotions marks him as one of the greatest masters of
+passion, wild and yet restrained, objectionable and yet
+printable, that have appeared on this side of the Atlantic.
+We append herewith a portion, or half portion, of his
+little gem entitled
+
+   YOU
+
+   You!
+ With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,
+ And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!
+   You!
+ With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and
+   contracting chest,
+ Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and
+   dinner-jacket vest.
+      It is too much
+      Your touch
+      As such.
+      It and
+      Your hand,
+   Can you not understand?
+ Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair
+      Unnoticed fell.
+      I guard it
+      Well.
+      Yestere'en
+   From your tiara I have slid,
+      Unseen,
+      A single diamond,
+      And I keep it
+      Hid.
+ Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill
+      A quarter dollar,
+      And I have it
+      Still.
+
+But even those who know Ram Spudd as the poet of nature
+or of passion still only know a part of his genius. Some
+of his highest flights rise from an entirely different
+inspiration, and deal with the public affairs of the
+nation. They are in every sense comparable to the best
+work of the poets laureate of England dealing with similar
+themes. As soon as we had seen Ram Spudd's work of this
+kind, we cried, that is we said to our stenographer,
+"What a pity that in this republic we have no laureateship.
+Here is a man who might truly fill it." Of the poem of
+this kind we should wish to quote, if our limits of space
+did not prevent it, Mr. Spudd's exquisite
+
+   ODE ON THE REDUCTION OF THE
+      UNITED STATES TARIFF
+
+ It is a matter of the very gravest concern to at least
+   nine-tenths of the business interests in the
+   United States,
+ Whether an all-round reduction of the present tariff
+   either on an ad valorem or a specific basis
+ Could be effected without a serious disturbance of the
+   general industrial situation of the country.
+
+But, no, we must not quote any more. No we really mustn't.
+Yet we cannot refrain from inserting a reference to the
+latest of these laureate poems of Ram Spudd. It appears
+to us to be a matchless specimen of its class, and to
+settle once and for all the vexed question (though we
+ourselves never vexed it) of whether true poetry can deal
+with national occasions as they arise. It is entitled:
+
+   THE BANKER'S EUTHANASIA: OR,
+   THE FEDERAL RESERVE CURRENCY
+      ACT OF 1914,
+
+and, though we do not propose to reproduce it here, our
+distinct feeling is that it will take its rank beside
+Mr. Spudd's Elegy on the Interstate Commerce Act, and
+his Thoughts on the Proposal of a Uniform Pure Food Law.
+
+But our space does not allow us to present Ram Spudd in
+what is after all his greatest aspect, that of a profound
+psychologist, a questioner of the very meaning of life
+itself. His poem Death and Gloom, from which we must
+refrain from quoting at large, contains such striking
+passages as the following:
+
+   Why do I breathe, or do I?
+   What am I for, and whither do I go?
+   What skills it if I live, and if I die,
+      What boots it?
+
+Any one knowing Ram Spudd as we do will realize that
+these questions, especially the last, are practically
+unanswerable.
+
+
+
+V.--Aristocratic Anecdotes or Little Stories of Great
+People
+
+I have been much struck lately by the many excellent
+little anecdotes of celebrated people that have appeared
+in recent memoirs and found their way thence into the
+columns of the daily press. There is something about them
+so deliciously pointed, their humour is so exquisite,
+that I think we ought to have more of them. To this end
+I am trying to circulate on my own account a few anecdotes
+which seem somehow to have been overlooked.
+
+Here, for example, is an excellent thing which comes, if
+I remember rightly, from the vivacious Memoir of Lady
+Ranelagh de Chit Chat.
+
+
+ANECDOTE OF THE DUKE OF STRATHYTHAN
+
+Lady Ranelagh writes:
+
+ "The Duke of Strathythan (I am writing of course of the
+ seventeenth Duke, not of his present Grace) was, as
+ everybody knows, famous for his hospitality.  It was not
+ perhaps generally known that the Duke was as witty as he
+ was hospitable. I recall a most amusing incident that
+ happened the last time but two that I was staying at
+ Strathythan Towers. As we sat down to lunch (we were a
+ very small and intimate party, there being only forty-three
+ of us) the Duke, who was at the head of the table, looked
+ up from the roast of beef that he was carving, and running
+ his eye about the guests was heard to murmur, 'I'm afraid
+ there isn't enough beef to go round.'
+
+ "There was nothing to do, of course, but to roar with
+ laughter and the incident passed off with perfect savoir
+ faire."
+
+Here is another story which I think has not had all the
+publicity that it ought to. I found it in the book "Shot,
+Shell and Shrapnell or Sixty Years as a War Correspondent,"
+recently written by Mr. Maxim Catling whose exploits are
+familiar to all readers.
+
+
+ANECDOTE OF LORD KITCHENER
+
+ "I was standing," writes Mr. Maxim, "immediately between
+ Lord Kitchener and Lord Wolsley (with Lord Roberts a
+ little to the rear of us), and we were laughing and
+ chatting as we always did when the enemy were about to
+ open fire on us. Suddenly we found ourselves the object
+ of the most terrific hail of bullets. For a few moments
+ the air was black with them. As they went past I could
+ not refrain from exchanging a quiet smile with Lord
+ Kitchener, and another with Lord Wolsley. Indeed I have
+ never, except perhaps on twenty or thirty occasions,
+ found myself exposed to such an awful fusillade.
+
+ "Kitchener, who habitually uses an eye-glass (among his
+ friends), watched the bullets go singing by, and then,
+ with that inimitable sangfroid which he reserves for his
+ intimates, said,
+
+ "'I'm afraid if we stay here we may get hit.'
+
+ "We all moved away laughing heartily.
+
+ "To add to the joke, Lord Roberts' aide-de-camp was shot
+ in the pit of the stomach as we went."
+
+The next anecdote which I reproduce may be already too
+well known to my readers. The career of Baron Snorch
+filled so large a page in the history of European diplomacy
+that the publication of his recent memoirs was awaited
+with profound interest by half the chancelleries of
+Europe. (Even the other half were half excited over them.)
+The tangled skein in which the politics of Europe are
+enveloped was perhaps never better illustrated than in
+this fascinating volume. Even at the risk of repeating
+what is already familiar, I offer the following for what
+it is worth--or even less.
+
+
+NEW LIGHT ON THE LIFE OF CAVOUR
+
+ "I have always regarded Count Cavour," writes the Baron,
+ "as one of the most impenetrable diplomatists whom it
+ has been my lot to meet. I distinctly recall an incident
+ in connection with the famous Congress of Paris of 1856
+ which rises before my mind as vividly as if it were
+ yesterday. I was seated in one of the large salons of
+ the Elysee Palace (I often used to sit there) playing
+ vingt-et-un together with Count Cavour, the Duc de Magenta,
+ the Marquese di Casa Mombasa, the Conte di Piccolo Pochito
+ and others whose names I do not recollect. The stakes
+ had been, as usual, very high, and there was a large pile
+ of gold on the table. No one of us, however, paid any
+ attention to it, so absorbed were we all in the thought
+ of the momentous crises that were impending. At intervals
+ the Emperor Napoleon III passed in and out of the room,
+ and paused to say a word or two, with well-feigned
+ eloignement, to the players, who replied with such
+ degagement as they could.
+
+ "While the play was at its height a servant appeared with
+ a telegram on a silver tray. He handed it to Count Cavour.
+ The Count paused in his play, opened the telegram, read
+ it and then with the most inconceivable nonchalance, put
+ it in his pocket. We stared at him in amazement for a
+ moment, and then the Duc, with the infinite ease of a
+ trained diplomat, quietly resumed his play.
+
+ "Two days afterward, meeting Count Cavour at a reception
+ of the Empress Eugenie, I was able, unobserved, to whisper
+ in his ear, 'What was in the telegram?' 'Nothing of any
+ consequence,' he answered.  From that day to this I have
+ never known what it contained. My readers," concludes
+ Baron Snorch, "may believe this or not as they like, but
+ I give them my word that it is true.
+
+ "Probably they will not believe it."
+
+I cannot resist appending to these anecdotes a charming
+little story from that well-known book, "Sorrows of a
+Queen". The writer, Lady de Weary, was an English
+gentlewoman who was for many years Mistress of the Robes
+at one of the best known German courts. Her affection
+for her royal mistress is evident on every page of her
+memoirs.
+
+
+TENDERNESS OF A QUEEN
+
+Lady de W. writes:
+
+ "My dear mistress, the late Queen of Saxe-Covia-Slitz-
+ in-Mein, was of a most tender and sympathetic disposition.
+ The goodness of her heart broke forth on all occasions.
+ I well remember how one day, on seeing a cabman in the
+ Poodel Platz kicking his horse in the stomach, she stopped
+ in her walk and said, 'Oh, poor horse! if he goes on
+ kicking it like that he'll hurt it.'"
+
+I may say in conclusion that I think if people would only
+take a little more pains to resuscitate anecdotes of this
+sort, there might be a lot more of them found.
+
+
+
+VI.--Education Made Agreeable or the Diversions of a
+Professor
+
+A few days ago during a pause in one of my college lectures
+(my class being asleep) I sat reading Draper's "Intellectual
+Development of Europe".  Quite suddenly I came upon the
+following sentence:
+
+"Eratosthenes cast everything he wished to teach into
+poetry. By this means he made it attractive, and he was
+able to spread his system all over Asia Minor."
+
+This came to me with a shock of an intellectual discovery.
+I saw at once how I could spread my system, or parts of
+it, all over the United States and Canada. To make
+education attractive! There it is! To call in the help
+of poetry, of music, of grand opera, if need be, to aid
+in the teaching of the dry subjects of the college class
+room.
+
+I set to work at once on the project and already I have
+enough results to revolutionize education.
+
+In the first place I have compounded a blend of modern
+poetry and mathematics, which retains all the romance of
+the latter and loses none of the dry accuracy of the
+former. Here is an example:
+
+      The poem of
+   LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER
+      expressed as
+   A PROBLEM IN TRIGONOMETRY
+
+INTRODUCTION. A party of three persons, a Scotch nobleman,
+a young lady and an elderly boatman stand on the banks
+of a river (R), which, for private reasons, they desire
+to cross. Their only means of transport is a boat, of
+which the boatman, if squared, is able to row at a rate
+proportional to the square of the distance. The boat,
+however, has a leak (S), through which a quantity of
+water passes sufficient to sink it after traversing an
+indeterminate distance (D).  Given the square of the
+boatman and the mean situation of all concerned, to find
+whether the boat will pass the river safely or sink.
+
+   A chieftain to the Highlands bound
+      Cried "Boatman do not tarry!
+   And I'll give you a silver pound
+      To row me o'er the ferry."
+   Before them raged the angry tide
+   X**2 + Y from side to side.
+
+   Outspake the hardy Highland wight,
+      "I'll go, my chief, I'm ready;
+   It is not for your silver bright,
+      But for your winsome lady."
+   And yet he seemed to manifest
+      A certain hesitation;
+   His head was sunk upon his breast
+      In puzzled calculation.
+
+   "Suppose the river X + Y
+   And call the distance Q
+   Then dare we thus the gods defy
+   I think we dare, don't you?
+      Our floating power expressed in words
+      Is X + 47/3"
+
+   "Oh, haste thee, haste," the lady cries,
+   "Though tempests round us gather
+   I'll face the raging of the skies
+   But please cut out the Algebra."
+
+   The boat has left the stormy shore (S)
+   A stormy C before her
+   C1 C2 C3 C4
+   The tempest gathers o'er her
+      The thunder rolls, the lightning smites 'em
+      And the rain falls ad infinitum.
+
+   In vain the aged boatman strains,
+   His heaving sides reveal his pains;
+   The angry water gains apace
+   Both of his sides and half his base,
+      Till, as he sits, he seems to lose
+      The square of his hypotenuse.
+
+   The boat advanced to X + 2,
+   Lord Ullin reached the fixed point Q,--
+      Then the boat sank from human eye,
+   OY, OY**2, OGY.
+
+But this is only a sample of what can be done. I have
+realised that all our technical books are written and
+presented in too dry a fashion. They don't make the most
+of themselves.  Very often the situation implied is
+intensely sensational, and if set out after the fashion
+of an up-to-date newspaper, would be wonderfully effective.
+
+Here, for example, you have Euclid writing in a perfectly
+prosaic way all in small type such an item as the following:
+
+"A perpendicular is let fall on a line BC so as to bisect
+it at the point C etc., etc.," just as if it were the
+most ordinary occurrence in the world. Every newspaper
+man will see at once that it ought to be set up thus:
+
+      AWFUL CATASTROPHE
+   PERPENDICULAR FALLS HEADLONG
+      ON A GIVEN POINT
+
+   The Line at C said to be completely bisected
+   President of the Line makes Statement
+      etc., etc., etc.
+
+But I am not contenting myself with merely describing my
+system. I am putting it to the test. I am preparing a
+new and very special edition of my friend Professor Daniel
+Murray's work on the Calculus. This is a book little
+known to the general public. I suppose one may say without
+exaggeration that outside of the class room it is hardly
+read at all.
+
+Yet I venture to say that when my new edition is out it
+will be found on the tables of every cultivated home,
+and will be among the best sellers of the year. All that
+is needed is to give to this really monumental book the
+same chance that is given to every other work of fiction
+in the modern market.
+
+First of all I wrap it in what is called technically a
+jacket. This is of white enamelled paper, and on it is
+a picture of a girl, a very pretty girl, in a summer
+dress and sunbonnet sitting swinging on a bough of a
+cherry tree.  Across the cover in big black letters are
+the words:
+
+   THE CALCULUS
+
+and beneath them the legend "the most daring book of the
+day." This, you will observe, is perfectly true. The
+reviewers of the mathematical journals when this book
+first came out agreed that "Professor Murray's views on
+the Calculus were the most daring yet published." They
+said, too, that they hoped that the professor's unsound
+theories of infinitesimal rectitude would not remain
+unchallenged. Yet the public somehow missed it all, and
+one of the most profitable scandals in the publishing
+trade was missed for the lack of a little business
+enterprise.
+
+My new edition will give this book its first real chance.
+
+I admit that the inside has to be altered,--but not very
+much. The real basis of interest is there. The theories
+in the book are just as interesting as those raised in
+the modern novel.  All that is needed is to adopt the
+device, familiar in novels, of clothing the theories in
+personal form and putting the propositions advanced into
+the mouths of the characters, instead of leaving them as
+unsupported statements of the author. Take for example
+Dr.  Murray's beginning. It is very good,--any one will
+admit it,--fascinatingly clever, but it lacks heart.
+
+It runs:
+
+ If two magnitudes, one of which is determined by a straight
+ line and the other by a parabola approach one another,
+ the rectangle included by the revolution of each will be
+ equal to the sum of a series of indeterminate rectangles.
+
+Now this is,--quite frankly,--dull. The situation is
+there; the idea is good, and, whether one agrees or not,
+is at least as brilliantly original as even the best of
+our recent novels. But I find it necessary to alter the
+presentation of the plot a little bit. As I re-edit it
+the opening of the Calculus runs thus:
+
+ On a bright morning in June along a path gay with the
+ opening efflorescence of the hibiscus and entangled here
+ and there with the wild blossoms of the convolvulus,--two
+ magnitudes might have been seen approaching one another.
+ The one magnitude who held a tennis-racket in his hand,
+ carried himself with a beautiful erectness and moved
+ with a firmness such as would have led Professor Murray
+ to exclaim in despair--Let it be granted that A. B.
+ (for such was our hero's name) is a straight line. The
+ other magnitude, which drew near with a step at once
+ elusive and fascinating, revealed as she walked a figure
+ so exquisite in its every curve as to call from her
+ geometrical acquaintances the ecstatic exclamation, "Let
+ it be granted that M is a parabola."
+
+ The beautiful magnitude of whom we have last spoken,
+ bore on her arm as she walked, a tiny dog over which
+ her fair head was bent in endearing caresses; indeed
+ such was her attention to the dog Vi (his full name was
+ Velocity but he was called Vi for short) that her wayward
+ footsteps carried her not in a straight line but in a
+ direction so constantly changing as to lead that acute
+ observer, Professor Murray, to the conclusion that her
+ path could only be described by the amount of attraction
+ ascribable to Vi.
+
+ Guided thus along their respective paths, the two
+ magnitudes presently met with such suddenness that they
+ almost intersected.
+
+ "I beg your pardon," said the first magnitude very
+ rigidly.
+
+ "You ought to indeed," said the second rather sulkily,
+ "you've knocked Vi right out of my arms."
+
+ She looked round despairingly for the little dog which
+ seemed to have disappeared in the long grass.
+
+ "Won't you please pick him up?" she pleaded.
+
+ "Not exactly in my line, you know," answered the other
+ magnitude, "but I tell you what I'll do, if you'll stand
+ still, perfectly still where you are, and let me take
+ hold of your hand, I'll describe a circle!"
+
+ "Oh, aren't you clever!" cried the girl, clapping her
+ hands. "What a lovely idea! You describe a circle all
+ around me, and then we'll look at every weeny bit of it
+ and we'll be sure to find Vi--"
+
+ She reached out her hand to the other magnitude who
+ clasped it with an assumed intensity sufficient to retain
+ it.
+
+ At this moment a third magnitude broke on the scene:--a
+ huge oblong, angular figure, very difficult to describe,
+ came revolving towards them.
+
+ "M," it shouted, "Emily, what are you doing?"
+
+ "My goodness," said the second magnitude in alarm, "it's
+ MAMA."
+
+I may say that the second instalment of Dr.  Murray's
+fascinating romance will appear in the next number of
+the "Illuminated Bookworm", the great adult-juvenile
+vehicle of the newer thought in which these theories of
+education are expounded further.
+
+
+
+VII.--An Every-Day Experience
+
+He came across to me in the semi-silence room of the
+club.
+
+"I had a rather queer hand at bridge last night," he
+said.
+
+"Had you?" I answered, and picked up a newspaper.
+
+"Yes. It would have interested you, I think," he went
+on.
+
+"Would it?" I said, and moved to another chair.
+
+"It was like this," he continued, following me: "I held
+the king of hearts--"
+
+"Half a minute," I said; "I want to go and see what time
+it is." I went out and looked at the clock in the hall.
+I came back.
+
+"And the queen and the ten--" he was saying.
+
+"Excuse me just a second; I want to ring for a messenger."
+
+I did so. The waiter came and went.
+
+"And the nine and two small ones," he went on.
+
+"Two small what?" I asked.
+
+"Two small hearts," he said. "I don't remember which.
+Anyway, I remember very well indeed that I had the king
+and the queen and the jack, the nine, and two little
+ones."
+
+"Half a second," I said, "I want to mail a letter."
+
+When I came back to him, he was still murmuring:
+
+"My partner held the ace of clubs and the queen. The jack
+was out, but I didn't know where the king was--"
+
+"You didn't?" I said in contempt.
+
+"No," he repeated in surprise, and went on murmuring:
+
+"Diamonds had gone round once, and spades twice, and so
+I suspected that my partner was leading from weakness--"
+
+"I can well believe it," I said--"sheer weakness."
+
+"Well," he said, "on the sixth round the lead came to
+me. Now, what should I have done? Finessed for the ace,
+or led straight into my opponent--"
+
+"You want my advice," I said, "and you shall have it,
+openly and fairly. In such a case as you describe, where
+a man has led out at me repeatedly and with provocation,
+as I gather from what you say, though I myself do not
+play bridge, I should lead my whole hand at him.  I
+repeat, I do not play bridge. But in the circumstances,
+I should think it the only thing to do."
+
+
+
+VIII--Truthful Oratory, or What Our Speakers
+Ought to Say
+
+
+I
+
+TRUTHFUL SPEECH GIVING THE
+REAL THOUGHTS OF A DISTINGUISHED
+GUEST AT THE FIFTIETH
+ANNIVERSARY BANQUET
+OF A SOCIETY
+
+Mr. Chairman and gentlemen:  If there is one thing I
+abominate more than another, it is turning out on a cold
+night like this to eat a huge dinner of twelve courses
+and know that I have to make a speech on top of it.
+Gentlemen, I just feel stuffed.  That's the plain truth
+of it. By the time we had finished that fish, I could
+have gone home satisfied. Honestly I could. That's as
+much as I usually eat.  And by the time I had finished
+the rest of the food, I felt simply waterlogged, and I
+do still.  More than that. The knowledge that I had to
+make a speech congratulating this society of yours on
+its fiftieth anniversary haunted and racked me all through
+the meal. I am not, in plain truth, the ready and brilliant
+speaker you take me for. That is a pure myth. If you
+could see the desperate home scene that goes on in my
+family when I am working up a speech, your minds would
+be at rest on that point.
+
+I'll go further and be very frank with you.  How this
+society has lived for fifty years, I don't know. If all
+your dinners are like this, Heaven help you. I've only
+the vaguest idea of what this society is, anyway, and
+what it does. I tried to get a constitution this afternoon
+but failed. I am sure from some of the faces that I
+recognise around this table that there must be good
+business reasons of some sort for belonging to this
+society. There's money in it,--mark my words,--for some
+of you or you wouldn't be here. Of course I quite understand
+that the President and the officials seated here beside
+me come merely for the self-importance of it. That,
+gentlemen, is about their size. I realized that from
+their talk during the banquet. I don't want to speak
+bitterly, but the truth is they are SMALL men and it
+flatters them to sit here with two or three blue ribbons
+pinned on their coats. But as for me, I'm done with it.
+It will be fifty years, please heaven, before this event
+comes round again. I hope, I earnestly hope, that I shall
+be safely under the ground.
+
+
+II
+
+THE SPEECH THAT OUGHT TO BE
+MADE BY A STATE GOVERNOR
+AFTER VISITING THE FALL
+EXPOSITION OF AN AGRICULTURAL
+SOCIETY
+
+Well, gentlemen, this Annual Fall Fair of the Skedink
+County Agricultural Association has come round again. I
+don't mind telling you straight out that of all the
+disagreeable jobs that fall to me as Governor of this
+State, my visit to your Fall Fair is about the toughest.
+
+I want to tell you, gentlemen, right here and now, that
+I don't know anything about agriculture and I don't want
+to. My parents were rich enough to bring me up in the
+city in a rational way. I didn't have to do chores in
+order to go to the high school as some of those present
+have boasted that they did. My only wonder is that they
+ever got there at all.  They show no traces of it.
+
+This afternoon, gentlemen, you took me all round your
+live-stock exhibit. I walked past, and through, nearly
+a quarter of a mile of hogs.  What was it that they were
+called--Tamworths--Berkshires? I don't remember. But
+all I can say, gentlemen, is,--phew! Just that.  Some of
+you will understand readily enough.  That word sums up
+my whole idea of your agricultural show and I'm done with
+it.
+
+No, let me correct myself. There was just one feature of
+your agricultural exposition that met my warm approval.
+You were good enough to take me through the section of
+your exposition called your Midway Pleasance. Let me tell
+you, sirs, that there was more real merit in that than
+all the rest of the show put together. You apologized,
+if I remember rightly, for taking me into the large tent
+of the Syrian Dancing Girls. Oh, believe me, gentlemen,
+you needn't have. Syria is a country which commands my
+profoundest admiration.  Some day I mean to spend a
+vacation there.  And, believe me, gentlemen, when I do
+go,--and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am
+capable,--I should not wish to be accompanied by such a
+set of flatheads as the officials of your Agricultural
+Society.
+
+And now, gentlemen, as I have just received a fake
+telegram, by arrangement, calling me back to the capital
+of the State, I must leave this banquet at once. One word
+in conclusion:  if I had known as fully as I do now how
+it feels to drink half a bucket of sweet cider, I should
+certainly never have come.
+
+
+III
+
+TRUTHFUL SPEECH OF A DISTRICT
+POLITICIAN TO A LADIES' SUFFRAGE
+SOCIETY
+
+Ladies: My own earnest, heartfelt conviction is that you
+are a pack of cats. I use the word "cats" advisedly, and
+I mean every letter of it. I want to go on record before
+this gathering as being strongly and unalterably opposed
+to Woman Suffrage until you get it. After that I favour
+it. My reasons for opposing the suffrage are of a kind
+that you couldn't understand. But all men,--except the
+few that I see at this meeting,--understand them by
+instinct.
+
+As you may, however, succeed as a result of the fuss that
+you are making,--in getting votes, I have thought it best
+to come. Also,--I am free to confess,--I wanted to see
+what you looked like.
+
+On this last head I am disappointed. Personally I like
+women a good deal fatter than most of you are, and better
+looking. As I look around this gathering I see one or
+two of you that are not so bad, but on the whole not
+many. But my own strong personal predilection is and
+remains in favour of a woman who can cook, mend clothes,
+talk when I want her to, and give me the kind of admiration
+to which I am accustomed.
+
+Let me, however, say in conclusion that I am altogether
+in sympathy with your movement to this extent. If you
+ever DO get votes,--and the indications are that you will
+(blast you),--I want your votes, and I want all of them.
+
+
+
+IX.-Our Literary Bureau
+
+[Footnote: This literary bureau was started by the author
+in the New York Century. It leaped into such immediate
+prominence that it had to be closed at once.]
+
+ NOVELS READ TO ORDER
+    FIRST AID FOR THE
+       BUSY MILLIONAIRE
+
+ NO BRAINS NEEDED
+  NO TASTE REQUIRED
+   NOTHING BUT MONEY
+    SEND IT TO US
+
+We have lately been struck,--of course not dangerously,--by
+a new idea. A recent number of a well-known magazine
+contains an account of an American multimillionaire who,
+on account of the pressure of his brain power and the
+rush of his business, found it impossible to read the
+fiction of the day for himself.  He therefore caused his
+secretaries to look through any new and likely novel and
+make a rapid report on its contents, indicating for his
+personal perusal the specially interesting parts.
+
+Realizing the possibilities coiled up in this plan, we
+have opened a special agency or bureau for doing work of
+this sort. Any over-busy multimillionaire, or superman,
+who becomes our client may send us novels, essays, or
+books of any kind, and will receive a report explaining
+the plot and pointing out such parts as he may with
+propriety read. If he can once find time to send us a
+postcard, or a postal cablegram, night or day, we undertake
+to assume all the further effort of reading. Our terms
+for ordinary fiction are one dollar per chapter; for
+works of travel, 10 cents per mile; and for political or
+other essays, two cents per page, or ten dollars per
+idea, and for theological and controversial work, seven
+dollars and fifty cents per cubic yard extracted. Our
+clients are assured of prompt and immediate attention.
+
+Through the kindness of the Editor of the Century we are
+enabled to insert here a sample of our work. It was done
+to the order of a gentleman of means engaged in silver
+mining in Colorado, who wrote us that he was anxious to
+get "a holt" on modern fiction, but that he had no time
+actually to read it. On our assuring him that this was
+now unnecessary, he caused to be sent to us the monthly
+parts of a serial story, on which we duly reported as
+follows:
+
+
+JANUARY INSTALMENT
+
+   Theodolite Gulch,
+    The Dip, Canon County,
+     Colorado.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+We beg to inform you that the scene of the opening chapter
+of the Fortunes of Barbara Plynlimmon is laid in Wales.
+The scene is laid, however, very carelessly and hurriedly
+and we expect that it will shortly be removed. We cannot,
+therefore, recommend it to your perusal. As there is a
+very fine passage describing the Cambrian Hills by
+moonlight, we enclose herewith a condensed table showing
+the mean altitude of the moon for the month of December
+in the latitude of Wales. The character of Miss Plynlimmon
+we find to be developed in conversation with her
+grandmother, which we think you had better not read. Nor
+are we prepared to endorse your reading the speeches of
+the Welsh peasantry which we find in this chapter, but
+we forward herewith in place of them a short glossary of
+Welsh synonyms which may aid you in this connection.
+
+
+FEBRUARY INSTALMENT
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+We regret to state that we find nothing in the second
+chapter of the Fortunes of Barbara Plynlimmon which need
+be reported to you at length. We think it well, however,
+to apprise you of the arrival of a young Oxford student
+in the neighbourhood of Miss Plynlimmon's cottage, who
+is apparently a young man of means and refinement. We
+enclose a list of the principal Oxford Colleges.
+
+We may state that from the conversation and manner of
+this young gentleman there is no ground for any apprehension
+on your part. But if need arises we will report by cable
+to you instantly.
+
+The young gentleman in question meets Miss Plynlimmon at
+sunrise on the slopes of Snowdon. As the description of
+the meeting is very fine we send you a recent photograph
+of the sun.
+
+
+MARCH INSTALMENT
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+Our surmise was right. The scene of the story that we
+are digesting for you is changed. Miss Plynlimmon has
+gone to London. You will be gratified to learn that she
+has fallen heir to a fortune of 100,000 pounds, which we
+are happy to compute for you at $486,666 and 66 cents
+less exchange. On Miss Plynlimmon's arrival at Charing
+Cross Station, she is overwhelmed with that strange
+feeling of isolation felt in the surging crowds of a
+modern city. We therefore enclose a timetable showing
+the arrival and departure of all trains at Charing Cross.
+
+
+APRIL INSTALMENT
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+We beg to bring to your notice the fact that Miss Barbara
+Plynlimmon has by an arrangement made through her trustees
+become the inmate, on a pecuniary footing, in the household
+of a family of title.  We are happy to inform you that
+her first appearance at dinner in evening dress was most
+gratifying:  we can safely recommend you to read in this
+connection lines 4 and 5 and the first half of line 6 on
+page 1OO of the book as enclosed. We regret to say that
+the Marquis of Slush and his eldest son Viscount Fitzbuse
+(courtesy title) are both addicted to drink. They have
+been drinking throughout the chapter. We are pleased to
+state that apparently the second son, Lord Radnor of
+Slush, who is away from home is not so addicted. We send
+you under separate cover a bottle of Radnor water.
+
+
+MAY INSTALMENT
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+We regret to state that the affairs of Miss Barbara
+Plynlimmon are in a very unsatisfactory position. We
+enclose three pages of the novel with the urgent request
+that you will read them at once. The old Marquis of Slush
+has made approaches towards Miss Plynlimmon of such a
+scandalous nature that we think it best to ask you to
+read them in full. You will note also that young Viscount
+Slush who is tipsy through whole of pages 121-125, 128-133,
+and part of page 140, has designs upon her fortune. We
+are sorry to see also that the Marchioness of Buse under
+the guise of friendship has insured Miss Plynlimmon's
+life and means to do away with her. The sister of the
+Marchioness, the Lady Dowager, also wishes to do away
+with her. The second housemaid who is tempted by her
+jewellery is also planning to do away with her.  We feel
+that if this goes on she will be done away with.
+
+
+JUNE INSTALMENT
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+We beg to advise you that Viscount Fitz-buse, inflamed
+by the beauty and innocence of Miss Plynlimmon, has gone
+so far as to lay his finger on her (read page 170, lines
+6-7). She resisted his approaches. At the height of the
+struggle a young man, attired in the costume of a Welsh
+tourist, but wearing the stamp of an Oxford student, and
+yet carrying himself with the unmistakable hauteur (we
+knew it at once) of an aristocrat, burst, or bust, into
+the room. With one blow he felled Fitz-buse to the floor;
+with another he clasped the girl to his heart.
+
+"Barbara!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Radnor," she murmured.
+
+You will be pleased to learn that this is the second son
+of the Marquis, Viscount Radnor, just returned from a
+reading tour in Wales.
+
+P. S. We do not know what he read, so we enclose a file
+of Welsh newspapers to date.
+
+
+JULY INSTALMENT
+
+We regret to inform you that the Marquis of Slush has
+disinherited his son. We grieve to state that Viscount
+Radnor has sworn that he will never ask for Miss
+Plynlimmon's hand till he has a fortune equal to her own.
+Meantime, we are sorry to say, he proposes to work.
+
+
+AUGUST INSTALMENT
+
+The Viscount is seeking employment.
+
+
+SEPTEMBER INSTALMENT
+
+The Viscount is looking for work.
+
+
+OCTOBER INSTALMENT
+
+The Viscount is hunting for a job.
+
+
+NOVEMBER INSTALMENT
+
+We are most happy to inform you that Miss Plynlimmon has
+saved the situation. Determined to be worthy of the
+generous love of Viscount Radnor, she has arranged to
+convey her entire fortune to the old family lawyer who
+acts as her trustee. She will thus become as poor as the
+Viscount and they can marry.  The scene with the old
+lawyer who breaks into tears on receiving the fortune,
+swearing to hold and cherish it as his own is very
+touching. Meantime, as the Viscount is hunting for a job,
+we enclose a list of advertisements under the heading
+Help Wanted--Males.
+
+
+DECEMBER INSTALMENT
+
+You will be very gratified to learn that the fortunes of
+Miss Barbara Plynlimmon have come to a most pleasing
+termination. Her marriage with the Viscount Radnor was
+celebrated very quietly on page 231. (We enclose a list
+of the principal churches in London.) No one was present
+except the old family lawyer, who was moved to tears at
+the sight of the bright, trusting bride, and the clergyman
+who wept at the sight of the cheque given him by the
+Viscount.  After the ceremony the old trustee took Lord
+and Lady Radnor to a small wedding breakfast at an hotel
+(we enclose a list). During the breakfast a sudden
+faintness (for which we had been watching for ten pages)
+overcame him. He sank back in his chair, gasping. Lord
+and Lady Radnor rushed to him and sought in vain to
+tighten his necktie. He expired under their care, having
+just time to indicate in his pocket a will leaving them
+his entire wealth.
+
+This had hardly happened when a messenger brought news
+to the Viscount that his brother, Lord Fitz-buse had been
+killed in the hunting field, and that he (meaning him,
+himself) had now succeeded to the title. Lord and Lady
+Fitz-buse had hardly time to reach the town house of the
+family when they learned that owing to the sudden death
+of the old Marquis (also, we believe, in the hunting
+field), they had become the Marquis and the Marchioness
+of Slush.
+
+The Marquis and the Marchioness of Slush are still living
+in their ancestral home in London. Their lives are an
+example to all their tenantry in Piccadilly, the Strand
+and elsewhere.
+
+
+CONCLUDING NOTE
+
+Dear Mr. Gulch:
+
+We beg to acknowledge with many thanks your cheque for
+one thousand dollars.
+
+We regret to learn that you have not been able to find
+time to read our digest of the serial story placed with
+us at your order. But we note with pleasure that you
+propose to have the "essential points" of our digest
+"boiled down" by one of the business experts of your
+office.
+
+Awaiting your commands,
+
+We remain, etc., etc.
+
+
+
+X.--Speeding Up Business
+
+We were sitting at our editorial desk in our inner room,
+quietly writing up our week's poetry, when a stranger
+looked in upon us.
+
+He came in with a burst,--like the entry of the hero of
+western drama coming in out of a snowstorm. His manner
+was all excitement.  "Sit down," we said, in our grave,
+courteous way. "Sit down!" he exclaimed, "certainly not!
+Are you aware of the amount of time and energy that are
+being wasted in American business by the practice of
+perpetually sitting down and standing up again? Do you
+realize that every time you sit down and stand up you
+make a dead lift of"--he looked at us,--"two hundred
+and fifty pounds? Did you ever reflect that every time
+you sit down you have to get up again?" "Never," we said
+quietly, "we never thought of it." "You didn't!" he
+sneered. "No, you'd rather go on lifting 250 pounds
+through two feet,--an average of 500 foot-pounds,
+practically 62 kilowatts of wasted power. Do you know
+that by merely hitching a pulley to the back of your neck
+you could generate enough power to light your whole
+office?"
+
+We hung our heads. Simple as the thing was, we had never
+thought of it. "Very good," said the Stranger. "Now, all
+American business men are like you. They don't think,--do
+you understand me? They don't think."
+
+We realized the truth of it at once. We had never thought.
+Perhaps we didn't even know how.
+
+"Now, I tell you," continued our visitor, speaking rapidly
+and with a light of wild enthusiasm in his face, "I'm
+out for a new campaign,--efficiency in business--speeding
+things up--better organization."
+
+"But surely," we said, musingly, "we have seen something
+about this lately in the papers?" "Seen it, sir," he
+exclaimed, "I should say so.  It's everywhere. It's a
+new movement. It's in the air. Has it never struck you
+how a thing like this can be seen in the air?"
+
+Here again we were at fault. In all our lives we had
+never seen anything in the air. We had never even looked
+there. "Now," continued the Stranger, "I want your paper
+to help. I want you to join in. I want you to give
+publicity."
+
+"Assuredly," we said, with our old-fashioned politeness.
+"Anything which concerns the welfare, the progress, if
+one may so phrase it--" "Stop," said the visitor. "You
+talk too much.  You're prosy. Don't talk. Listen to me.
+Try and fix your mind on what I am about to say."
+
+We fixed it. The Stranger's manner became somewhat calmer.
+"I am heading," he said, "the new American efficiency
+movement.  I have sent our circulars to fifty thousand
+representative firms, explaining my methods. I am receiving
+ten thousand answers a day"--here he dragged a bundle
+of letters out of his pocket--"from Maine, from New
+Hampshire, from Vermont,"--"Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
+Connecticut," we murmured.
+
+"Exactly," he said; "from every State in the Union--from
+the Philippines, from Porto Rico, and last week I had
+one from Canada." "Marvellous," we said; "and may one
+ask what your new methods are?"
+
+"You may," he answered. "It's a proper question. It's a
+typical business question, fair, plain, clean, and even
+admitting of an answer.  The great art of answering
+questions," he continued, "is to answer at once without
+loss of time, friction or delay in moving from place to
+place. I'll answer it."
+
+"Do," we said.
+
+"I will," said the Stranger. "My method is first: to
+stimulate business to the highest point by infusing into
+it everywhere the spirit of generous rivalry, of wholesome
+competition; by inviting each and every worker to outdo
+each and every other."
+
+"And can they do it?" we asked, puzzled and yet fascinated.
+"Can they all do it?"
+
+"They do, and they can," said the Stranger.  "The proof
+of it is that they are doing it.  Listen. Here is an
+answer to my circular No. 6, Efficiency and Recompense,
+that came in this morning. It is from a steel firm.
+Listen." The Stranger picked out a letter and read it.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+Our firm is a Steel Corporation. We roll rails.  As soon
+as we read your circular on the Stimulus of Competition
+we saw that there were big things in it.  At once we sent
+one of our chief managers to the rolling, mill. He carried
+a paper bag in his hand. "Now boys," he said, "every man
+who rolls a rail gets a gum-drop." The effect was magical.
+The good fellows felt a new stimulus. They now roll out
+rails like dough.  Work is a joy to them. Every Saturday
+night the man who has rolled most gets a blue ribbon;
+the man who has rolled the next most, a green ribbon;
+the next most a yellow ribbon, and so on through the
+spectroscope.  The man who rolls least gets only a red
+ribbon.  It is a real pleasure to see the brave fellows
+clamouring for their ribbons. Our output, after defraying
+the entire cost of the ribbons and the gum-drops, has
+increased forty per cent. We intend to carry the scheme
+further by allowing all the men who get a hundred blue
+ribbons first, to exchange them for the Grand Efficiency
+Prize of the firm,--a pink ribbon.  This the winner will
+be entitled to wear whenever and wherever he sees fit to
+wear it.
+
+The stranger paused for breath.
+
+"Marvellous," we said. "There is no doubt the stimulus
+of keen competition--"
+
+"Shut up," he said impatiently. "Let me explain it further.
+Competition is only part of it. An item just as big that
+makes for efficiency is to take account of the little
+things. It's the little things that are never thought
+of."
+
+Here was another wonder! We realized that we had never
+thought of them. "Take an example," the Stranger continued.
+"I went into a hotel the other day. What did I see?
+Bell-boys being summoned upstairs every minute, and flying
+up in the elevators. Yes,--and every time they went up
+they had to come down again. I went up to the manager.
+I said, 'I can understand that when your guests ring for
+the bell-boys they have to go up. But why should they
+come down? Why not have them go up and never come down?'
+He caught the idea at once. That hotel is transformed.
+I have a letter from the manager stating that they find
+it fifty per cent. cheaper to hire new bell-boys instead
+of waiting for the old ones to come down."
+
+"These results," we said, "are certainly marvellous. "You
+are most assuredly to be congratulated on--"
+
+"You talk too much," said the Stranger.  "Don't do it.
+Learn to listen. If a young man comes to me for advice
+in business,--and they do in hundreds, lots of them,--almost
+in tears over their inefficiency,--I'd say, 'Young man,
+never talk, listen; answer, but don't speak.' But even
+all this is only part of the method.  Another side of it
+is technique."
+
+"Technique?" we said, pleased but puzzled.
+
+"Yes, the proper use of machine devices.  Take the building
+trade. I've revolutionized it. Till now all the bricks
+even for a high building were carried up to the mason in
+hods.  Madness! Think of the waste of it. By my method
+instead of carrying the bricks to the mason we take the
+mason to the brick,--lower him on a wire rope, give him
+a brick, and up he goes again. As soon as he wants another
+brick he calls down, 'I want a brick,' and down he comes
+like lightning."
+
+"This," we said, "is little short of--"
+
+"Cut it out. Even that is not all. Another thing bigger
+than any is organization. Half the business in this
+country is not organized.  As soon as I sent out my
+circular, No. 4, HAVE YOU ORGANIZED YOUR BUSINESS!  I
+got answers in thousands! Heart-broken, many of them.
+They had never thought of it! Here, for example, is a
+letter written by a plain man, a gardener, just an ordinary
+man, a plain man--"
+
+"Yes," we said, "quite so."
+
+"Well, here is what he writes:
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+As soon as I got your circular I read it all through
+from end to end, and I saw that all my failure in
+the past had come from my not being organized. I
+sat and thought a long while and I decided that I
+would organize myself. I went right in to the house
+and I said to my wife, "Jane, I'm going to organize
+myself." She said, "Oh, John!"--and not another
+word, but you should have seen the look on her face.
+So the next morning I got up early and began to
+organize myself. It was hard at first but I stuck to it.
+There were times when I felt as if I couldn't do it.
+It seemed too hard. But bit by bit I did it and now,
+thank God, I am organized. I wish all men like me
+could know the pleasure I feel in being organized."
+
+"Touching, isn't it?" said the Stranger.  "But I get lots
+of letters like that. Here's another, also from a man,
+a plain man, working on his own farm. Hear what he says:
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+As soon as I saw your circular on HOW TO SPEED UP THE
+EMPLOYEE I felt that it was a big thing. I don't have
+any hired help here to work with me, but only father. He
+cuts the wood and does odd chores about the place. So I
+realized that the best I could do was to try to speed up
+father. I started in to speed him up last Tuesday, and
+I wish you could see him. Before this he couldn't split
+a cord of wood without cutting a slice off his boots.
+Now he does it in half the time."
+
+"But there," the Stranger said, getting impatient even
+with his own reading, "I needn't read it all. It is the
+same thing all along the line. I've got the Method
+introduced into the Department Stores. Before this every
+customer who came in wasted time trying to find the
+counters. Now we install a patent springboard, with a
+mechanism like a catapault. As soon as a customer comes
+in an attendant puts him on the board, blindfolds him,
+and says, 'Where do you want to go?' 'Glove counter.'
+'Oh, all right.' He's fired at it through the air.  No
+time lost. Same with the railways.  They're installing
+the Method, too. Every engineer who breaks the record
+from New York to Buffalo gets a glass of milk. When he
+gets a hundred glasses he can exchange them for a glass
+of beer. So with the doctors. On the new method, instead
+of giving a patient one pill a day for fourteen days they
+give him fourteen pills in one day. Doctors, lawyers,
+everybody,--in time, sir," said the Stranger, in tones
+of rising excitement, "you'll see even the plumbers--"
+
+But just at this moment the door opened.  A sturdy-looking
+man in blue entered. The Stranger's voice was hushed at
+once. The excitement died out of his face. His manner
+all of a sudden was meekness itself.
+
+"I was just coming," he said.
+
+"That's right, sir," said the man; "better come along
+and not take up the gentleman's time."
+
+"Good-bye, then," said the Stranger, with meek affability,
+and he went out.
+
+The man in blue lingered behind for a moment.
+
+"A sad case, sir," he said, and he tapped his forehead.
+
+"You mean--" I asked.
+
+"Exactly. Cracked, sir. Quite cracked; but harmless. I'm
+engaged to look after him, but he gave me the slip
+downstairs."
+
+"He is under delusions?" we inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir. He's got it into his head that business in
+this country has all gone to pieces,--thinks it must be
+reorganized. He writes letters about it all day and sends
+them to the papers with imaginary names. You may have
+seen some of them. Good day, sir."
+
+We looked at our watch. We had lost just half an hour
+over the new efficiency. We turned back with a sigh to
+our old-fashioned task.
+
+
+
+XI.--Who Is Also Who. A Companion Volume
+to Who's Who
+
+Note by the editor: I do not quarrel with the contents
+of such valuable compendiums as "Who's Who," "Men and
+Women of the Time," etc., etc. But they leave out the
+really Representative People. The names that they include
+are so well known as to need no commentary, while those
+that they exclude are the very people one most wishes to
+read about.  My new book is not arranged alphabetically,
+that order having given great offence in certain social
+circles.
+
+Smith, J. Everyman: born Kenoka Springs; educ. Kenoka
+Springs; present residence, The Springs, Kenoka; address,
+Kenoka Springs Post-Office; after leaving school threw
+himself (Oct. 1881) into college study; thrown out of it
+(April 1882); decided to follow the law; followed it
+(1882); was left behind (1883); decided (1884) to abandon
+it; abandoned it; resolved (1885) to turn his energies
+to finance; turned them (1886); kept them turned (1887);
+unturned them (1888); was offered position (1889) as sole
+custodian of Mechanics' Institute, Kenoka Springs; decided
+(same date) to accept it; accepted it; is there now; will
+be till he dies.
+
+Flintlock, J. Percussion: aged 87; war veteran and
+pensioner; born, blank; educated, blank; at outbreak of
+Civil War sprang to arms; both sides; sprang Union first;
+entered beef contract department of army of U. S.; fought
+at Chicago, Omaha, and leading (beef) centres of operation
+during the thickest of the (beef) conflict; was under
+Hancock, Burnside, Meade, and Grant; fought with all of
+them; mentioned (very strongly) by all of them; entered
+Confederate Service (1864); attached (very much) to rum
+department of quarter-master's staff; mentioned in this
+connection (very warmly) in despatches of General Lee;
+mustered out, away out, of army; lost from sight, 1865-1895;
+placed on pension list with rank of general, 1895; has
+stayed on, 1895-1915; obtained (on 6th Avenue) war medals
+and service clasps; publications--"My Campaigns under
+Grant," "Battles I have Saved," "Feeding an Army,"
+"Stuffing the Public," etc., etc.; recreations, telling
+war stories; favorite amusement, showing war medals.
+
+Crook, W. Underhand: born, dash; parents, double dash;
+educated at technical school; on graduation turned his
+attention to the problem of mechanical timelocks and
+patent safes; entered Sing-Sing, 1890; resident there,
+1890-1893; Auburn, 1894, three months; various state
+institutions, 1895-1898; worked at profession, 1898-1899;
+Sing-Sing, 1900; professional work, 1901; Sing-Sing,
+1902; profession, 1903, Sing-Sing; profession, Sing-Sing,
+etc., etc.; life appointment, 1908; general favorite,
+musical, has never killed anybody.
+
+Gloomie, Dreary O'Leary: Scotch dialect comedian and
+humorist; well known in Scotland; has standing offer from
+Duke of Sutherland to put foot on estate.
+
+Muck, O. Absolute: novelist; of low German extraction;
+born Rotterdam; educated Muckendorf; escaped to America;
+long unrecognized; leaped into prominence by writing "The
+Social Gas-Pipe," a powerful indictment of modern society,
+written in revenge for not being invited to dinner; other
+works--"The Sewerage of the Sea-Side," an arraignment of
+Newport society, reflecting on some of his best friends;
+"Vice and Super-Vice," a telling denunciation of the New
+York police, written after they had arrested him; "White
+Ravens," an indictment of the clergy; "Black Crooks," an
+indictment of the publishers, etc., etc.; has arraigned
+and indicted nearly everybody.
+
+Whyner, Egbert Ethelwind: poet, at age of sixteen wrote
+a quatrain, "The Banquet of Nebuchadnezzar," and at once
+left school; followed it up in less than two years by a
+poem in six lines "America"; rested a year and then
+produced "Babylon, A Vision of Civilization," three lines;
+has written also "Herod, a Tragedy," four lines; "Revolt
+of Woman, "two lines, and "The Day of Judgement," one
+line.  Recreation, writing poetry.
+
+Adult, Hon. Underdone: address The Shrubbery, Hopton-
+under-Hyde, Rotherham-near-Pottersby, Potts, Hants,
+Hops, England (or words to that effect); organizer of
+the Boys' League of Pathfinders, Chief Commissioner of
+the Infant Crusaders, Grand Master of the Young Imbeciles;
+Major-General of the Girl Rangers, Chief of Staff of the
+Matron Mountain Climbers, etc.
+
+Zfwinski, X. Z.: Polish pianist; plays all night; address
+4,570 West 457 Street, Westside, Chicago West.
+
+
+
+XII.--Passionate Paragraphs
+
+(An extract from a recent (very recent) novel, illustrating
+the new beauties of language and ideas that are being
+rapidly developed by the twentieth century press.)
+
+His voice as he turned towards her was taut as a tie-line.
+
+"You don't love me!" he hoarsed, thick with agony. She
+had angled into a seat and sat sensing-rather-than-seeing
+him.
+
+For a time she silenced. Then presently as he still stood
+and enveloped her,--
+
+"Don't!" she thinned, her voice fining to a thread.
+
+"Answer me," he gloomed, still gazing into-and-through
+her.
+
+She half-heard half-didn't-hear him.
+
+Night was falling about them as they sat thus beside the
+river. A molten afterglow of iridescent saffron shot with
+incandescent carmine lit up the waters of the Hudson till
+they glowed like electrified uranium.
+
+For a while they both sat silent,--looming.
+
+"It had to be," she glumped.
+
+"Why, why?" he barked. "Why should it have had to have
+been or (more hopefully) even be to be? Surely you don't
+mean because of MONEY?"
+
+She shuddered into herself.
+
+The thing seemed to sting her (it hadn't really).
+
+"Money!" she almost-but-not-quite-moaned.  "You might
+have spared me that!"
+
+He sank down and grassed.
+
+And after they had sat thus for another half-hour grassing
+and growling and angling and sensing one another, it
+turned out that all that he was trying to say was to ask
+if she would marry him.
+
+And of course she said yes.
+
+
+
+XIII.--Weejee the Pet Dog. An Idyll of the Summer
+
+We were sitting on the verandah of the Sopley's summer
+cottage.
+
+"How lovely it is here," I said to my host and hostess,
+"and how still."
+
+It was at this moment that Weejee, the pet dog, took a
+sharp nip at the end of my tennis trousers.
+
+"Weejee!!" exclaimed his mistress with great emphasis,
+"BAD dog! how dare you, sir! BAD dog!"
+
+"I hope he hasn't hurt you," said my host.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing," I answered cheerfully.  "He hardly
+scratched me."
+
+"You know I don't think he means anything by it," said
+Mrs. Sopley.
+
+"Oh, I'm SURE he doesn't," I answered.
+
+Weejee was coming nearer to me again as I spoke.
+
+"WEEJEE!!" cried my hostess, "naughty dog, bad!"
+
+"Funny thing about that dog," said Sopley, "the way he
+KNOWS people. It's a sort of instinct. He knew right away
+that you were a stranger,--now, yesterday, when the
+butcher came, there was a new driver on the cart and
+Weejee knew it right away,--grabbed the man by the leg
+at once,--wouldn't let go. I called out to the man that
+it was all right or he might have done Weejee some harm."
+
+At this moment Weejee took the second nip at my other
+trouser leg. There was a short GUR-R-R and a slight
+mix-up.
+
+"Weejee! Weejee!" called Mrs. Sopley.  "How DARE you,
+sir! You're just a BAD dog!!  Go and lie down, sir. I'm
+so sorry. I think, you know, it's your white trousers.
+For some reason Weejee simply HATES white trousers. I do
+hope he hasn't torn them."
+
+"Oh, no," I said; "it's nothing only a slight tear."
+
+"Here, Weege, Weege," said Sopley, anxious to make a
+diversion and picking up a little chip of wood,--"chase
+it, fetch it out!" and he made the motions of throwing
+it into the lake.
+
+"Don't throw it too far, Charles," said his wife. "He
+doesn't swim awfully well," she continued, turning to
+me, "and I'm always afraid he might get out of his depth.
+Last week he was ever so nearly drowned. Mr. Van Toy
+was in swimming, and he had on a dark blue suit (dark
+blue seems simply to infuriate Weejee) and Weejee just
+dashed in after him. He don't MEAN anything, you know,
+it was only the SUIT made him angry,--he really likes
+Mr. Van Toy,--but just for a minute we were quite alarmed.
+If Mr. Van Toy hadn't carried Weejee in I think he might
+have been drowned.
+
+"By jove!" I said in a tone to indicate how appalled I
+was.
+
+"Let me throw the stick, Charles," continued Mrs. Sopley.
+"Now, Weejee, look Weejee--here, good dog--look! look
+now (sometimes Weejee simply won't do what one wants),
+here, Weejee; now, good dog!"
+
+Weejee had his tail sideways between his legs and was
+moving towards me again.
+
+"Hold on," said Sopley in a stern tone, "let me throw
+him in."
+
+"Do be careful, Charles," said his wife.
+
+Sopley picked Weejee up by the collar and carried him to
+the edge of the water--it was about six inches deep,--and
+threw him in,--with much the same force as, let us say,
+a pen is thrown into ink or a brush dipped into a pot of
+varnish.
+
+"That's enough; that's quite enough, Charles," exclaimed
+Mrs. Sopley. "I think he'd better not swim. The water in
+the evening is always a little cold. Good dog, good
+doggie, good Weejee!"
+
+Meantime "good Weejee" had come out of the water and was
+moving again towards me.
+
+"He goes straight to you," said my hostess.  "I think he
+must have taken a fancy to you."
+
+He had.
+
+To prove it, Weejee gave himself a rotary whirl like a
+twirled mop.
+
+"Oh, I'm SO sorry," said Mrs. Sopley. "I am. He's wetted
+you. Weejee, lie down, down, sir, good dog, bad dog, lie
+down!"
+
+"It's all right," I said. "I've another white suit in my
+valise."
+
+"But you must be wet through," said Mrs.  Sopley. "Perhaps
+we'd better go in. It's getting late, anyway, isn't it?"
+And then she added to her husband, "I don't think Weejee
+ought to sit out here now that he's wet."
+
+So we went in.
+
+"I think you'll find everything you need," said Sopley,
+as he showed me to my room, "and, by the way, don't mind
+if Weejee comes into your room at night. We like to let
+him run all over the house and he often sleeps on this
+bed."
+
+"All right," I said cheerfully, "I'll look after him."
+
+That night Weejee came.
+
+And when it was far on in the dead of night--so that even
+the lake and the trees were hushed in sleep, I took Weejee
+out and--but there is no need to give the details of it.
+
+And the Sopleys are still wondering where Weejee has gone
+to, and waiting for him to come back, because he is so
+clever at finding his way.
+
+But from where Weejee is, no one finds his way back.
+
+
+
+XIV.--Sidelights on the Supermen. An Interview with
+General Bernhardi.
+
+He came into my room in that modest, Prussian way that
+he has, clicking his heels together, his head very erect,
+his neck tightly gripped in his forty-two centimeter
+collar. He had on a Pickelhaube, or Prussian helmet,
+which he removed with a sweeping gesture and laid on the
+sofa.
+
+So I knew at once that it was General Bernhardi.
+
+In spite of his age he looked--I am bound to admit it--a
+fine figure of a man. There was a splendid fullness about
+his chest and shoulders, and a suggestion of rugged power
+all over him. I had not heard him on the stairs.  He
+seemed to appear suddenly beside me.
+
+"How did you get past the janitor?" I asked.  For it was
+late at night, and my room at college is three flights
+up the stairs.
+
+"The janitor," he answered carelessly, "I killed him."
+
+I gave a gasp.
+
+"His resistance," the general went on, "was very slight.
+Apparently in this country your janitors are unarmed."
+
+"You killed him?" I asked.
+
+"We Prussians," said Bernhardi, "when we wish an immediate
+access anywhere, always kill the janitor. It is quicker:
+and it makes for efficiency. It impresses them with a
+sense of our Furchtbarkeit. You have no word for that in
+English, I believe?"
+
+"Not outside of a livery stable," I answered.
+
+There was a pause. I was thinking of the janitor. It
+seemed in a sort of way--I admit that I have a sentimental
+streak in me--a deplorable thing.
+
+"Sit down," I said presently.
+
+"Thank you," answered the General, but remained standing.
+
+"All right," I said, "do it."
+
+"Thank you," he repeated, without moving.
+
+"I forgot," I said. "Perhaps you CAN'T sit down."
+
+"Not very well," he answered; "in fact, we Prussian
+officers"--here he drew himself up higher still--"never
+sit down. Our uniforms do not permit of it. This inspires
+us with a kind of Rastlosigkeit." Here his eyes glittered.
+
+"It must," I said.
+
+"In fact, with an Unsittlichkeit--an Unverschamtheit--with
+an Ein-fur-alle-mal-un-dur-chaus--"
+
+"Exactly," I said, for I saw that he was getting excited,
+"but pray tell me, General, to what do I owe the honour
+of this visit?"
+
+The General's manner changed at once.
+
+"Highly learned, and high-well-born-professor," he said,
+"I come to you as to a fellow author, known and honoured
+not merely in England, for that is nothing, but in Germany
+herself, and in Turkey, the very home of Culture."
+
+I knew that it was mere flattery. I knew that in this
+same way Lord Haldane had been so captivated as to come
+out of the Emperor's presence unable to say anything but
+"Sittlichkeit" for weeks; that good old John Burns had
+been betrayed by a single dinner at Potsdam, and that
+the Sultan of Turkey had been told that his Answers to
+Ultimatums were the wittiest things written since Kant's
+Critique of Pure Reason. Yet I was pleased in spite of
+myself.
+
+"What!" I exclaimed, "they know my works of humour in
+Germany?"
+
+"Do they know them?" said the General.  "Ach! Himmel!
+How they laugh. That work of yours (I think I see it on
+the shelf behind you), The Elements of Political Science,
+how the Kaiser has laughed over it! And the Crown Prince!
+It nearly killed him!"
+
+"I will send him the new edition," I said.  "But tell
+me, General, what is it that you want of me?"
+
+"It is about my own book," he answered.  "You have read
+it?"
+
+I pointed to a copy of Germany and the Next War, in its
+glaring yellow cover--the very hue of Furchtbarkeit--lying
+on the table.
+
+"You have read it? You have really read it?" asked the
+General with great animation.
+
+"No," I said, "I won't go so far as to say that. But I
+have TRIED to read it. And I talk about it as if I had
+read it."
+
+The General's face fell.
+
+"You are as the others," he said, "They buy the book,
+they lay it on the table, they talk of it at dinner,--they
+say 'Bernhardi has prophesied this, Bernhardi foresaw
+that,' but read it,--nevermore."
+
+"Still," I said, "you get the royalties."
+
+"They are cut off. The perfidious British Government will
+not allow the treacherous publisher to pay them. But that
+is not my complaint."
+
+"What is the matter, then?" I asked.
+
+"My book is misunderstood. You English readers have failed
+to grasp its intention. It is not meant as a book of
+strategy. It is what you call a work of humour. The book
+is to laugh. It is one big joke."
+
+"You don't say so!" I said in astonishment.
+
+"Assuredly," answered the General. "Here"--and with this
+he laid hold of the copy of the book before me and began
+rapidly turning over the leaves--"let me set it out
+asunder for you, the humour of it. Listen, though, to
+this, where I speak of Germany's historical mission on
+page 73,--'No nation on the face of the globe is so able
+to grasp and appropriate all the elements of culture as
+Germany is?' What do you say to that? Is it not a joke?
+Ach, Himmel, how our officers have laughed over that in
+Belgium!  With their booted feet on the mantelpiece as
+they read and with bottles of appropriated champagne
+beside them as they laugh."
+
+"You are right, General," I said, "you will forgive my
+not laughing out loud, but you are a great humorist."
+
+"Am I not? And listen further still, how I deal with the
+theme of the German character,--'Moral obligations such
+as no nation had ever yet made the standard of conduct,
+are laid down by the German philosophers.'"
+
+"Good," I said, "gloriously funny; read me some more."
+
+"This, then, you will like,--here I deal with the
+permissible rules of war. It is on page 236 that I am
+reading it. I wrote this chiefly to make laugh our naval
+men and our Zeppelin crews,--'A surprise attack, in order
+to be justified, must be made only on the armed forces
+of the state and not on its peaceful inhabitants.
+Otherwise the attack becomes a treacherous crime.' Eh,
+what?"
+
+Here the General broke into roars of laughter.
+
+"Wonderful," I said. "Your book ought to sell well in
+Scarborough and in Yarmouth.  Read some more."
+
+"I should like to read you what I say about neutrality,
+and how England is certain to violate our strategical
+right by an attack on Belgium and about the sharp measures
+that ought to be taken against neutral ships laden with
+contraband,--the passages are in Chapters VII and VIII,
+but for the moment I fail to lay the thumb on them."
+
+"Give me the book, General," I said. "Now that I understand
+what you meant by it, I think I can show you also some
+very funny passages in it. These things, for example,
+that you say about Canada and the colonies,--yes, here
+it is, page 148,--'In the event of war the loosely-joined
+British Empire will break into pieces, and the colonies
+will consult their own interests,'--excellently funny,--and
+this again,--'Canada will not permanently retain any
+trace of the English spirit,'--and this too,--'the Colonies
+can be completely ignored so far as the European theatre
+of war is concerned,'--and here again,--'Egypt and South
+Africa will at once revolt and break away from the empire,'
+--really, General, your ideas of the British Colonies
+are superbly funny. Mark Twain wasn't a circumstance on
+you."
+
+"Not at all," said Bernhardi, and his voice reverted to
+his habitual Prussian severity, "these are not jokes.
+They are facts. It is only through the folly of the
+Canadians in not reading my book that they are not more
+widely known. Even as it is they are exactly the views
+of your great leader Heinrich Bauratze--"
+
+"Who?" I said.
+
+"Heinrich Bauratze, your great Canadian leader--"
+
+"Leader of what?"
+
+"That I do not know," said Bernhardi. "Our intelligence
+office has not yet heard what he leads. But as soon as
+he leads anything we shall know it. Meantime we can see
+from his speeches that he has read my book. Ach! if only
+your other leaders in Canada,--Sir Robert Laurier, Sir
+Osler Sifton, Sir Williams Borden,--you smile, you do
+not realize that in Germany we have exact information of
+everything:  all that happens, we know it."
+
+Meantime I had been looking over the leaves of the book.
+
+"Here at least," I said, "is some splendidly humorous
+stuff,--this about the navy. 'The completion of the Kiel
+Canal,' you write in Chapter XII, 'is of great importance
+as it will enable our largest battleships to appear
+unexpectedly in the Baltic and in the North Sea!' Appear
+unexpectedly! If they only would!  How exquisitely
+absurd--"
+
+"Sir!" said the General. "That is not to laugh. You err
+yourself. That is Furchtbarkeit.  I did not say the book
+is all humour.  That would be false art. Part of it is
+humour and part is Furchbarkeit. That passage is specially
+designed to frighten Admiral Jellicoe. And he won't read
+it! Potztausand, he won't read it!"--repeated the general,
+his eyes flashing and his clenched fist striking in the
+air--"What sort of combatants are these of the British
+Navy who refuse to read our war-books? The Kaiser's
+Heligoland speech!  They never read a word of it. The
+Furchtbarkeit-Proklamation of August,--they never looked
+at it. The Reichstags-Rede with the printed picture of
+the Kaiser shaking hands with everybody,--they used it
+to wrap up sandwiches! What are they, then, Jellicoe and
+his men? They sit there in their ships and they read
+nothing! How can we get at them if they refuse to read?
+How can we frighten them away if they haven't culture
+enough to get frightened. Beim Himmel," shouted the
+General in great excitement--
+
+But what more he said can never be known.  For at this
+second a sudden catastrophe happened.
+
+In his frenzy of excitement the General struck with his
+fist at the table, missed it, lost his balance and fell
+over sideways right on the point of his Pickelhaube which
+he had laid on the sofa. There was a sudden sound as of
+the ripping of cloth and the bursting of pneumatic cushions
+and to my amazement the General collapsed on the sofa,
+his uniform suddenly punctured in a dozen places.
+
+"Schnapps," he cried, "fetch brandy."
+
+"Great Heavens! General," I said, "what has happened?"
+
+"My uniform!" he moaned, "it has burst!  Give me Schnapps!"
+
+He seemed to shrink visibly in size. His magnificent
+chest was gone. He was shrivelling into a tattered heap.
+He appeared as he lay there, a very allegory and
+illustration of Prussian Furchtbarkeit with the wind
+going out of it.
+
+"Fetch Schnapps,"--he moaned.
+
+"There are no Schnapps here," I said, "this is McGill
+University."
+
+"Then call the janitor," he said.
+
+"You killed him," I said.
+
+"I didn't. I was lying. I gave him a look that should
+have killed him, but I don't think it did. Rouse yourself
+from your chair, and call him--"
+
+"I will," I said, and started up from my seat.
+
+But as I did so, the form of General Bernhardi, which I
+could have sworn had been lying in a tattered heap on
+the sofa on the other side of the room, seemed suddenly
+to vanish from my eyes.
+
+There was nothing before me but the empty room with the
+fire burned low in the grate, and in front of me an open
+copy of Bernhardi's book.
+
+I must,--like many another reader,--have fallen asleep
+over it.
+
+
+
+XV.--The Survival of the Fittest
+
+A bell tinkled over the door of the little drug store as
+I entered it; which seemed strange in a lighted street
+of a great city.
+
+But the little store itself, dim even in the centre and
+dark in the corners was gloomy enough for a country
+crossroads.
+
+"I have to have the bell," said the man behind the counter,
+reading my thought, "I'm alone here just now."
+
+"A toothbrush?" he said in answer to my question. "Yes,
+I guess I've got some somewhere round here." He was
+stooping under and behind his counter and his voice came
+up from below. "I've got some somewhere--" And then as
+if talking to himself he murmured from behind a pile of
+cardboard boxes, "I saw some Tuesday."
+
+Had I gone across the street to the brilliant premises
+of the Cut Rate Pharmaceutical where they burn electric
+light by the meterfull I should no sooner have said "tooth
+brush," than one of the ten clerks in white hospital
+jackets would have poured a glittering assortment over
+the counter--prophylactic, lactic and every other sort.
+
+But I had turned in, I don't know why, to the little
+store across the way.
+
+"Here, I guess these must be tooth brushes," he said,
+reappearing at the level of the counter with a flat box
+in his hand. They must have been presumably, or have once
+been,--at some time long ago.
+
+"They're tooth brushes all right," he said, and started
+looking over them with an owner's interest.
+
+"What is the price of them?" I asked.
+
+"Well," the man said musingly, "I don't--jest--know. I
+guess it's written on them likely," and he began to look
+at the handles.
+
+Over at the Pharmaceutical across the way the words "what
+price?" would have precipitated a ready avalanche of
+figures.
+
+"This one seems to be seventy-five cents," he said and
+handed me one.
+
+"Is it a good tooth brush?" I asked.
+
+"It ought to be," he said, "you'd think, at that price."
+
+He had no shop talk, no patter whatever.
+
+Then he looked at the brush again, more closely.
+
+"I don't believe it IS seventy-five," he muttered, "I
+think it must be fifteen, don't you?"
+
+I took it from his hand and looked and said,--for it is
+well to take an occasional step towards the Kingdom of
+Heaven,--that I was certain it was seventy-five.
+
+"Well," said the man, "perhaps it is, my sight is not so
+good now. I've had too much to do here and the work's
+been using me up some."
+
+I noticed now as he said this how frail he looked as he
+bent over his counter wrapping up the tooth brush.
+
+"I've no sealing wax," he said, "or not handy."
+
+"That doesn't matter," I answered, "just put it in the
+paper."
+
+Over the way of course the tooth brush would have been
+done up almost instantaneously, in white enamel paper,
+sealed at the end and stamped with a label, as fast as
+the money paid for it went rattling along an automatic
+carrier to a cashier.
+
+"You've been very busy, eh?" I asked.
+
+"Well, not so much with customers," he said, "but with
+fixing up the place,"--here he glanced about him. Heaven
+only knows what he had fixed. There were no visible signs
+of it.
+
+"You see I've only been in here a couple of months. It
+was a pretty tough looking place when I came to it. But
+I've been getting things fixed. First thing I did I put
+those two carboys in the window with the lights behind
+them.  They show up fine, don't they?"
+
+"Fine!" I repeated; so fine indeed that the dim yellow
+light in them reached three or four feet from the jar.
+But for the streaming light from the great store across
+the street, the windows of the little shop would have
+been invisible.
+
+"It's a good location here," he said. Any one could have
+told him that it was the worst location within two miles.
+
+"I'll get it going presently," he went on.  "Of course
+it's uphill just at first. Being such a good location
+the rent is high. The first two weeks I was here I was
+losing five dollars a day. But I got those lights in the
+window and got the stock overhauled a little to make it
+attractive and last month I reckon I was only losing
+three dollars a day."
+
+"That's better," I said.
+
+"Oh, yes," he went on, and there was a clear glint of
+purpose in his eye that contrasted with his sunken cheeks.
+"I'll get it going. This last two weeks I'm not losing
+more than say two and a half a day or something like
+that? The custom is bound to come. You get a place fixed
+up and made attractive like this and people are sure to
+come sooner or later."
+
+What it was that was fixed up, and wherein lay the
+attractiveness I do not know. It could not be seen with
+the outward eye. Perhaps after two months' work of piling
+dusty boxes now this way, now that, and putting little
+candles behind the yellow carboys to try the effect, some
+inward vision came that lighted the place up with an
+attractiveness wanting even in the glass and marble
+glitter of the Pharmacy across the way.
+
+"Yes, sir," continued the man, "I mean to stay with it.
+I'll get things into shape here, fix it up a little more
+and soon I'll have it,"--here his face radiated with a
+vision of hope--"so that I won't lose a single cent."
+
+I looked at him in surprise. So humble an ambition it
+had never been my lot to encounter.
+
+"All that bothers me," he went on, "is my health. It's
+a nice business the drug business:  I like it, but it
+takes it out of you. You've got to be alert and keen all
+the time; thinking out plans to please the custom when
+it comes.  Often I don't sleep well nights for the rush
+of it."
+
+I looked about the little shop, as gloomy and sleepful
+as the mausoleum of an eastern king, and wondered by what
+alchemy of the mind the little druggist found it a very
+vortex of activity.
+
+"But I can fix my health," he returned--"I may have to
+get some one in here and go away for a spell. Perhaps
+I'll do it. The doctor was saying he thought I might take
+a spell off and think out a few more wrinkles while I'm
+away."
+
+At the word "doctor" I looked at him more warmly, and I
+saw then what was plain enough to see but for the dim
+light of the little place,--the thin flush on the cheek,
+the hopeful mind, the contrast of the will to live and
+the need to die, God's little irony on man, it was all
+there plain enough to read. The "spell" for which the
+little druggist was going is that which is written in
+letters of sorrow over the sunlit desolation of Arizona
+and the mountains of Colorado.
+
+A month went by before I passed that way again. I looked
+across at the little store and I read the story in its
+drawn blinds and the padlock on its door.
+
+The little druggist had gone away for a spell. And they
+told me, on enquiry, that his journey had been no further
+than to the cemetery behind the town where he lies now,
+musing, if he still can, on the law of the survival of
+the fittest in this well-adjusted world.
+
+And they say that the shock of the addition of his whole
+business to the great Pharmacy across the way scarcely
+disturbed a soda siphon.
+
+
+
+XVI--The First Newspaper. A Sort of Allegory
+
+How likes it you, Master Brenton?" said the brawny
+journeyman, spreading out the news sheet on a smooth
+oaken table where it lay under the light of a leaded
+window.
+
+"A marvellous fair sheet," murmured Brenton Caxton,
+seventh of the name, "let me but adjust my glasses and
+peruse it further lest haply there be still aught in it
+that smacks of error."
+
+"It needs not," said the journeyman, "'tis the fourth
+time already from the press."
+
+"Nay, nay," answered Master Brenton softly, as he adjusted
+his great horn-rimmed spectacles and bent his head over
+the broad damp news sheet before him. "Let us grudge no
+care in this. The venture is a new one and, meseems, a
+very parlous thing withal. 'Tis a venture that may easily
+fail and carry down our fortunes with it, but at least
+let it not be said that it failed for want of brains in
+the doing."
+
+"Fail quotha!" said a third man, who had not yet spoken,
+old, tall and sour of visage and wearing a printer's
+leather apron. He had moved over from the further side
+of the room where a little group of apprentices stood
+beside the wooden presses that occupied the corner, and
+he was looking over the shoulder of Master Brenton Caxton.
+
+"How can it do aught else? 'Tis a mad folly. Mark you,
+Master Brenton and Master Nick, I have said it from the
+first and let the blame be none of mine. 'Tis a mad thing
+you do here. See then," he went on, turning and waving
+his hand, "this vast room, these great presses, yonder
+benches and tools, all new, yonder vats of ink straight
+out of Flanders, how think you you can recover the cost
+of all this out of yonder poor sheets? Five and forty
+years have I followed this mystery of printing, ever
+since thy grandfather's day, Master Brenton, and never
+have I seen the like. What needed this great chamber when
+your grandfather and father were content with but a garret
+place, and yonder presses that can turn off four score
+copies in the compass of a single hour,--'Tis mad folly,
+I say."
+
+The moment was an interesting one. The speakers were in
+a great room with a tall ceiling traversed by blackened
+beams. From the street below there came dimly through
+the closed casements the sound of rumbling traffic and
+the street cries of the London of the seventeenth century.
+Two vast presses of such colossal size that their wooden
+levers would tax the strength of the stoutest apprentice,
+were ranged against the further wall. About the room,
+spread out on oaken chairs and wooden benches, were flat
+boxes filled with leaden type, freshly molten, and a
+great pile of paper, larger than a man could lift, stood
+in a corner.
+
+The first English newspaper in history was going to press.
+Those who in later ages,--editors, printers, and
+workers--have participated in the same scene, can form
+some idea of the hopes and fears, the doubts and the
+difficulties, with which the first newspaper was ushered
+into the world.
+
+Master Brenton Caxton turned upon the last speaker the
+undisturbed look of the eye that sees far across the
+present into the years to come.
+
+"Nay, Edward," he said, "you have laboured over much in
+the past and see not into the future. You think this
+chamber too great for our purpose? I tell you the time
+will come when not this room alone but three or four such
+will be needed for our task. Already I have it in my mind
+that I will divide even this room into portions, with
+walls shrewdly placed through its length and breadth, so
+that each that worketh shall sit as it were in his own
+chamber and there shall stand one at the door and whosoever
+cometh, to whatever part of our task his business
+appertains, he shall forthwith be brought to the room of
+him that hath charge of it. Cometh he with a madrigal or
+other light poesy that he would set out on the press, he
+shall find one that has charge of such matters and can
+discern their true value. Or, cometh he with news of
+aught that happens in the realm, so shall he be brought
+instant to the room of him that recordeth such events.
+Or, if so be, he would write a discourse on what seemeth
+him some wise conceit touching the public concerns, he
+shall find to his hand a convenient desk with ink and
+quills and all that he needeth to set it straightway on
+paper; thus shall there be a great abundance of written
+matter to our hand so that not many days shall elapse
+after one of our news sheets goes abroad before there be
+matter enough to fill another."
+
+"Days!" said the aged printer, "think you you can fill
+one of these news sheets in a few days! Where indeed if
+you search the whole realm will you find talk enough in
+a single week to fill out this great sheet half an ell
+wide!"
+
+"Ay, days indeed!" broke in Master Nicholas, the younger
+journeyman. "Master Brenton speaks truth, or less than
+truth. For not days indeed, but in the compass of a single
+day, I warrant you, shall we find the matter withal."
+Master Nicholas spoke with the same enthusiasm as his
+chief, but with less of the dreamer in his voice and eye,
+and with more swift eagerness of the practical man.
+
+"Fill it, indeed," he went on. "Why, Gad Zooks! man! who
+knoweth what happenings there are and what not till one
+essays the gathering of them! And should it chance that
+there is nothing of greater import, no boar hunt of his
+Majesty to record, nor the news of some great entertainment
+by one of the Lords of the Court, then will we put in
+lesser matter, aye whatever comes to hand, the talk of
+his Majesty's burgesses in the Parliament or any such
+things."
+
+"Hear him!" sneered the printer, "the talk of his Majesty's
+burgesses in Westminster, forsooth! And what clerk or
+learned person would care to read of such? Or think you
+that His Majesty's Chamberlain would long bear that such
+idle chatter should be bruited abroad.  If you can find
+no worthier thing for this our news sheet than the talk
+of the Burgesses, then shall it fail indeed. Had it been
+the speech of the King's great barons and the bishops
+'twere different. But dost fancy that the great barons
+would allow that their weighty discourses be reduced to
+common speech so that even the vulgar may read it and
+haply here and there fathom their very thought itself,--and
+the bishops, the great prelates, to submit their ideas
+to the vulgar hand of a common printer, framing them into
+mere sentences! 'Tis unthinkable that they would sanction
+it!"
+
+"Aye," murmured Caxton in his dreaming voice, "the time
+shall come, Master Edward, when they will not only sanction
+it but seek it."
+
+"Look you," broke in Master Nick, "let us have done with
+this talk? Whether there be enough happenings or not
+enough,"--and here he spoke with a kindling eye and looked
+about him at the little group of apprentices and printers,
+who had drawn near to listen, "if there be not enough,
+then will I MAKE THINGS HAPPEN.  What is easier than to
+tell of happenings forth of the realm of which no man
+can know,--some talk of the Grand Turk and the war that
+he makes, or some happenings in the New Land found by
+Master Columbus. Aye," he went on, warming to his words
+and not knowing that he embodied in himself the first
+birth on earth of the telegraphic editor,--"and why not.
+One day we write it out on our sheet 'The Grand Turk
+maketh disastrous war on the Bulgars of the North and
+hath burnt divers of their villages.' And that hath no
+sooner gone forth than we print another sheet saying,
+'It would seem that the villages be not burnt but only
+scorched, nor doth it appear that the Turk burnt them
+but that the Bulgars burnt divers villages of the Turk
+and are sitting now in his mosque in the city of Hadrian.'
+Then shall all men run to and fro and read the sheet and
+question and ask, 'Is it thus?' And, 'Is it thus?' and
+by very uncertainty of circumstances, they shall demand
+the more curiously to see the news sheet and read it."
+
+"Nay, nay, Master Nick," said Brenton, firmly, "that will
+I never allow. Let us make it to ourselves a maxim that
+all that shall be said in this news sheet, or 'news
+paper,' as my conceit would fain call it, for be it not
+made of paper (here a merry laugh of the apprentices
+greeted the quaint fancy of the Master), shall be of
+ascertained verity and fact indisputable.  Should the
+Grand Turk make war and should the rumour of it come to
+these isles, then will we say 'The Turk maketh war,' and
+should the Turk be at peace, then we will say 'The Turk
+it doth appear is now at peace.' And should no news come,
+then shall we say 'In good sooth we know not whether the
+Turk destroyeth the Bulgars or whether he doth not, for
+while some hold that he harasseth them sorely, others
+have it that he harasseth them not, whereby we are sore
+put to it to know whether there be war or peace, nor do
+we desire to vex the patience of those who read by any
+further discourse on the matter, other than to say that
+we ourselves are in doubt what be and what be not truth,
+nor will we any further speak of it other than this.'"
+
+Those about Caxton listened with awe to this speech. They
+did not,--they could not know,--that this was the birth
+of the Leading Article, but there was something in the
+strangely fascinating way in which their chief enlarged
+upon his own ignorance that foreshowed to the meanest
+intelligence the possibilities of the future.
+
+Nicholas shook his head.
+
+"'Tis a poor plan, Master Brenton," he said, "the folk
+wish news, give them the news. The more thou givest them,
+the better pleased they are and thus doth the news sheet
+move from hand to hand till it may be said (if I too may
+coin a phrase) to increase vastly its 'circulation'--"
+
+"In sooth," said Master Brenton, looking at Nicholas with
+a quiet expression that was not exempt from a certain
+slyness, "there I do hold thou art in the wrong, even as
+a matter of craft or policie. For it seems to me that if
+our paper speaketh first this and then that but hath no
+fixed certainty of truth, sooner or later will all its
+talk seem vain, and no man will heed it. But if it speak
+always the truth, then sooner or later shall all come to
+believe it and say of any happening, 'It standeth written
+in the paper, therefore it is so.' And here I charge you
+all that have any part in this new venture," continued
+Master Brenton, looking about the room at the listening
+faces and speaking with great seriousness, "let us lay
+it to our hearts that our maxim shall be truth and truth
+alone. Let no man set his hand to aught that shall go
+upon our presses save only that which is assured truth.
+In this way shall our venture ever be pleasing to the
+Most High, and I do verily believe,"--and here Caxton's
+voice sank lower as if he were thinking aloud,--"in the
+long run, it will be mighty good for our circulation."
+
+The speaker paused. Then turning to the broad sheet before
+him, he began to scan its columns with his eye. The others
+stood watching him as he read.
+
+"What is this, Master Edward," he queried presently,
+"here I see in this first induct, or column, as one names
+it, the word King fairly and truly spelled. Lower down
+it standeth Kyng, and yet further in the second induct
+Kynge, and in the last induct where there is talk of His
+Majesty's marvelous skill in the French game of palm or
+tennis, lo the word stands Quhyngge! How sayeth thou?"
+
+"Wouldst have it written always in but one and the same
+way?" asked the printer in astonishment.
+
+"Aye, truly," said Caxton.
+
+"With never any choice, or variation to suit the fancy
+of him who reads so that he who likes it written King
+may see it so, and yet also he who would prefer it written
+in a freer style, or Quhyngge, may also find it so and
+thus both be pleased."
+
+"That will I never have!" said Master Brenton firmly,
+"dost not remember, friend, the old tale in the fabula
+of Aesopus of him who would please all men. Here will I
+make another maxim for our newspaper. All men we cannot
+please, for in pleasing one belike we run counter to
+another. Let us set our hand to write always without
+fear. Let us seek favour with none. Always in our news
+sheet we will seek to speak dutifully and with all
+reverence of the King his Majesty: let us also speak with
+all respect and commendation of His Majesty's great
+prelates and nobles, for are they not the exalted of the
+land? Also I would have it that we say nothing harsh
+against our wealthy merchants and burgesses, for hath
+not the Lord prospered them in their substances. Yea,
+friends, let us speak ever well of the King, the clergy,
+the nobility and of all persons of wealth and substantial
+holdings. But beyond this"--here Brenton Coxton's eye
+flashed,--"let us speak with utter fearlessness of all
+men. So shall we be, if I may borrow a mighty good word
+from Tacitus his Annals, of a complete independence,
+hanging on to no man. In fact our venture shall be an
+independent newspaper."
+
+The listeners felt an instinctive awe at the words, and
+again a strange prescience of the future made itself felt
+in every mind. Here for the first time in history was
+being laid down that fine, fearless creed that has made
+the independent press what it is.
+
+Meantime Caxton continued to glance his eye over the news
+sheet, murmuring his comments on what he saw,--"Ah! vastly
+fine, Master Nicholas,--this of the sailing of His
+Majesty's ships for Spain,--and this, too, of the Doge
+of Venice, his death, 'tis brave reading and maketh a
+fair discourse. Here also this likes me, 'tis shrewdly
+devised," and here he placed his finger on a particular
+spot on the news sheet,--"here in speaking of the strange
+mishap of my Lord Arundel, thou useth a great S for
+strange, and setteth it in a line all by itself whereby
+the mind of him that reads is suddenly awakened, alarmed
+as it were by a bell in the night. 'Tis good. 'Tis well.
+But mark you, friend Nicholas, try it not too often, nor
+use your great letters too easily. In the case of my Lord
+Arundel, it is seemly, but for a mishap to a lesser
+person, let it stand in a more modest fashion."
+
+There was a pause. Then suddenly Caxton looked up again.
+
+"What manner of tale is this! What strange thing is here!
+In faith, Master Nicholas, whence hast thou so marvelous
+a thing! The whole world must know of it. Harken ye all
+to this!
+
+"'Let all men that be troubled of aches, spavins, rheums,
+boils, maladies of the spleen or humours of the blood,
+come forthwith to the sign of the Red Lantern in East
+Cheap. There shall they find one that hath a marvelous
+remedy for all such ailments, brought with great dangers
+and perils of the journey from a far distant land. This
+wonderous balm shall straightway make the sick to be well
+and the lame to walk. Rubbed on the eye it restoreth
+sight and applied to the ear it reviveth the hearing.
+'Tis the sole invention of Doctor Gustavus Friedman,
+sometime of Gottingen and brought by him hitherwards out
+of the sheer pity of his heart for them that be afflicted,
+nor shall any other fee be asked for it save only such
+a light and tender charge as shall defray the cost of
+Doctor Friedman his coming and going.'"
+
+Caxton paused and gazed at Master Nicholas in wonder.
+"Whence hadst thou this?"
+
+Master Nicholas smiled.
+
+"I had it of a chapman, or travelling doctor, who was
+most urgent that we set it forth straightway on the
+press."
+
+"And is it true?" asked Caxton; "thou hast it of a full
+surety of knowledge?"
+
+Nicholas laughed lightly.
+
+"True or false, I know not," he said, "but the fellow
+was so curious that we should print it that he gave me
+two golden laurels and a new sovereign on the sole
+understanding that we should set it forth in print."
+
+There was deep silence for a moment.
+
+"He PAYETH to have it printed!" said Caxton, deeply
+impressed.
+
+"Aye," said Master Nicholas, "he payeth and will pay
+more. The fellow hath other balms equally potent. All of
+these he would admonish, or shall I say advert, the
+public."
+
+"So," said Caxton, thoughtfully, "he wishes to make, if
+I may borrow a phrase of Albertus Magnus, an advertisement
+of his goods."
+
+"Even so," said Nicholas.
+
+"I see," said the Master, "he payeth us. We advert the
+goods. Forthwith all men buy them. Then hath he more
+money. He payeth us again. We advert the goods more and
+still he payeth us. That would seem to me, friend Nick,
+a mighty good busyness for us."
+
+"So it is," rejoined Nicholas, "and after him others will
+come to advert other wares until belike a large part of
+our news sheet,--who knows? the whole of it, perhaps,
+shall be made up in the merry guise of advertisements."
+
+Caxton sat silent in deep thought.
+
+"But Master Caxton"--cried the voice of a young apprentice,
+a mere child, as he seemed, with fair hair and blue eyes
+filled with the native candour of unsullied youth,--"is
+this tale true!"
+
+"What sayest thou, Warwick?" said the master printer,
+almost sternly.
+
+"Good master, is the tale of the wonderous balm true?"
+
+"Boy," said Caxton, "Master Nicholas, hath even said, we
+know not if it is true."
+
+"But didst thou not charge us," pleaded the boy, "that
+all that went under our hand into the press should be
+truth and truth alone?"
+
+"I did," said Caxton thoughtfully, "but I spoke perhaps
+somewhat in overhaste. I see that we must here distinguish.
+Whether this is true or not we cannot tell. But it is
+PAID FOR, and that lifts it, as who should say, out of
+the domain of truth. The very fact that it is paid for
+giveth it, as it were, a new form of merit, a verity
+altogether its own."
+
+"Ay, ay," said Nicholas, with a twinkle in his shrewd
+eyes, "entirely its own."
+
+"Indeed so," said Caxton, "and here let us make to
+ourselves another and a final maxim of guidance. All
+things that any man will pay for, these we will print,
+whether true or not, for that doth not concern us. But
+if one cometh here with any strange tale of a remedy or
+aught else and wishes us to make advertisement of it and
+hath no money to pay for it, then shall he be cast forth
+out of this officina, or office, if I may call it so,
+neck and crop into the street. Nay, I will have me one
+of great strength ever at the door ready for such castings."
+
+A murmur of approval went round the group.
+
+Caxton would have spoken further but at the moment the
+sound of a bell was heard booming in the street without.
+
+"'Tis the Great Bell," said Caxton, "ringing out the hour
+of noon. Quick, all of you to your task. Lay me the forms
+on the press and speed me the work. We start here a great
+adventure. Mark well the maxims I have given you, and
+God speed our task."
+
+And in another hour or so, the prentice boys of the master
+printer were calling in the streets the sale of the first
+English newspaper.
+
+
+
+XVII--In the Good Time After the War
+
+[Footnote: An extract from a London newspaper of 1916.]
+
+
+HOUSE OF COMMONS REPORT
+
+The Prime Minister in rising said that he thought the
+time had now come when the House might properly turn its
+attention again to domestic affairs. The foreign world
+was so tranquil that there was really nothing of importance
+which need be brought to the attention of the House.
+Members, however, would, perhaps, be glad to learn
+incidentally that a new and more comfortable cage had
+been supplied for the ex-German Emperor, and that the
+ex-Crown Prince was now showing distinct signs of
+intelligence, and was even able to eat quite quietly out
+of his keeper's hand. Members would be gratified to know
+that at last the Hohenzollern family were able to abstain
+from snapping at the hand that fed them. But he would
+now turn to the subject of Home Rule.
+
+Here the House was seen to yawn noticeably, and a general
+lack of interest was visible, especially among the
+Nationalist and Ulster members. A number of members were
+seen to rise as if about to move to the refreshment-
+room. Mr. John Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were seen
+walking arm in arm towards the door.
+
+The Prime Minister. "Will the members kindly keep their
+seats? We are about to hold a discussion on Home Rule.
+Members will surely recall that this form of discussion
+was one of our favourite exercises only a year or so ago.
+I trust that members have not lost interest in the
+subject." (General laughter among the members, and cries
+of "Cut it out!" "What is it?")
+
+The Prime Minister (with some asperity).  "Members are
+well aware what Home Rule meant. It was a plan--or rather
+it was a scheme--that is to say, it was an act of
+parliament, or I should say a bill, in fact, Mr. Speaker,
+I don't mind confessing that, not having my papers with
+me, I am unable to inform the House just what Home Rule
+was. I think, perhaps, the Ex-Minister of Munitions has
+a copy of last year's bill."
+
+Mr. Lloyd George rising, with evident signs of boredom.
+"The House will excuse me. I am tired. I have been out
+all day aeroplaning with Mr. Churchill and Mr. Bonar Law,
+with a view to inspect the new national training camp.
+I had the Home Rule Bill with me along with the Welsh
+Disestablishment Bill and the Land Bill, and I am afraid
+that I lost the whole bally lot of them; dropped them
+into the sea or something. I hope the Speaker will overlook
+the term 'bally.' It may not be parliamentary."
+
+Mr. Speaker (laughing). "Tut, tut, never mind a little
+thing like that. I am sure that after all that we have
+gone through together, the House is quite agreed that a
+little thing like parliamentary procedure doesn't matter."
+
+Mr. Lloyd George (humbly). "Still I am sorry for the
+term. I'd like to withdraw it. I separate or distinguish
+in any degree the men of Ulster from the men of Tipperary,
+and the heart of Belfast from the heart of Dublin." (Loud
+cheers.)
+
+Mr. Redmond (springing forward). "And I'll say this: Not
+I, nor any man of Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, or Connaught
+will ever set our hands or names to any bill that shall
+separate Ireland in any degree from the rest of the
+Empire. Work out, if you like, a new scheme of government.
+If the financial clauses are intricate, get one of your
+treasury clerks to solve them. If there's trouble in
+arranging your excise on your customs, settle it in any
+way you please. But it is too late now to separate England
+and Ireland. We've held the flag of the Empire in our
+hand. We mean to hold it in our grasp forever. We have
+seen its colours tinged a brighter red with the best of
+Ireland's blood, and that proud stain shall stay forever
+as the symbol of the unity of Irish and the English
+people."
+
+(Loud cheers ring through the House; several members rise
+in great excitement, all shouting and speaking together.)
+There is heard the voice of Mr. Angus McCluskey, Member
+for the Hebrides, calling--"And ye'll no forget Scotland,
+me lad, when you talk of unity! Do you mind the
+Forty-Second, and the London Scottish in the trenches of
+the Aisne? Wha carried the flag of the Empire then? Unity,
+ma friends, ye'll never break it. It may involve a wee
+bit sacrifice for Scotland financially speaking. I'll no
+say no to a reveesion of the monetairy terms, if ye
+suggest it,--but for unita--Scotland and the Empire, now
+and forever!"
+
+A great number of members have risen in their seats. Mr.
+Open Ap Owen Glendower is calling: "Aye and Wales! never
+forget Wales." Mr. Trevelyan Trendinning of Cornwall has
+started singing "And shall Trelawney Die?"--while the
+deep booming of "Rule Britannia" from five hundred throats
+ascends to the very rafters of the House.
+
+The Speaker laughing and calling for order, while two of
+the more elderly clerks are beating with the mace on the
+table,--"Gentlemen, gentlemen, I have a proposal to make.
+I have just learned that there is at the Alhambra in
+Leicester Square, a real fine moving picture show of the
+entrance of the Allies into Berlin.  Let's all go to it.
+We can leave a committee of the three youngest members
+to stay behind and draw up a new government for Ireland.
+Even they can't go wrong now as to what we want."
+
+Loud Cheers as the House empties, singing "It was a Long
+Way to Tipperary, but the way lay through Berlin."
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER
+LUNACY ***
\ No newline at end of file