The Hohenzollerns in America

Chapter 8

1.--The Art of Conversation

I--HOW TO INTRODUCE TWO PEOPLE TO ONE ANOTHER

Nothing is more important in introducing two people to

each other than to employ a fitting form of words. The

more usually recognized forms are easily learned and

committed to memory and may be utilized as occasion

requires. I pass over such rudimentary formulas as "Ed,

shake hands with Jim Taylor," or, "Boys, this is Pete,

the new hand; Pete, get hold of the end of that cant-hook."

In fact, we are speaking only of polite society as graced

by the fair s*x, the only kind that we need care about.

The Third Avenue Procedure

A very neat and convenient form is that in vogue in Third

Avenue circles, New York, as, for instance, at a

fifty-cents-a-head dance (ladies free) in the hall of

the Royal Knights of Benevolence.

"Miss Summerside, meet Mr. O'Hara," after which Miss

Summerside says very distinctly, "Mr. O'Hara," and Mr.

O'Hara says with equal clearness "Miss Summerside." In

this circle a mark of exquisite breeding is found in the

request to have the name repeated. "I don't quite catch

the name!" says Mr. O'Hara critically; then he catches

it and repeats it--"Miss Summerside."

"Catching the name" is a necessary part of this social

encounter. If not caught the first time it must be put

over again. The peculiar merit of this introduction is

that it lets Miss Summerside understand clearly that Mr.

O'Hara never heard of her before. That helps to keep her

in her place.

In superior circles, however, introduction becomes more

elaborate, more flattering, more unctuous. It reaches

its acme in what everyone recognizes at once as

The Clerical Method

This is what would be instinctively used in Anglican

circles--as, for example, by the Episcopal Bishop of Boof

in introducing a Canon of the Church to one of the "lady

workers" of the congregation (meaning a lady too rich to

work) who is expected to endow a crib in the Diocesan

Home for Episcopal Cripples. A certain quantity of soul

has to be infused into this introduction. Anybody who

has ever heard it can fill in the proper accentuation,

which must be very rich and deep.

"Oh, Mrs. Putitover, MAY I introduce my very dear old

friend, Canon Cutitout? The Canon, Mrs. Putitover, is

one of my DEAREST friends. Mrs. Putitover, my dear Canon,

is quite one of our most enthusiastic workers."

After which outburst of soul the Bishop is able to add,

"Will you excuse me, I'm afraid I simply MUST run."

Personally, I have never known or met a Bishop in society

in any other situation than just about to run. Where they

run to, I do not know. But I think I understand what they

run from.

The Lounge Room of the Club

Equally high in the social scale but done quite differently

is the Club Introduction. It is done by a club man who,

for the life of him, can't remember the names of either

of the two club men whom he is introducing, and who each,

for the life of him, can't think of the name of the man

they are being introduced by. It runs--

"Oh, I say, I beg your pardon--I thought, of course, you

two fellows knew one another perfectly well--let me

introduce--urr----wurr----"

Later on, after three whiskey-and-sodas, each of the

three finds out the names of the other two, surreptitiously

from the hall porter. But it makes no difference. They

forget them again anyway. Now let us move up higher, in

fact, very high. Let us approach the real thing.

Introduction to H.E. the Viceroy of India, K.C.B.,

K.C.S.I., S.O.S.

The most exalted form of introduction is seen in the

presentation of Mr. Tomkins, American tourist, to H.E.

the Viceroy of India. An aide-de-camp in uniform at the

foot of a grand staircase shouts, "Mr. Tomkins!" An

aide-de-camp at the top (one minute later) calls "Mr.

Thompson"; another aide, four feet further on, calls "Mr.

Torps."

Then a military secretary, standing close to His Excellency,

takes Mr. Tomkins by the neck and bends him down toward

the floor and says very clearly and distinctly, "Mr.

Torpentine." Then he throws him out by the neck into the

crowd beyond and calls for another. The thing is done.

Mr. Tomkins wipes the perspiration from his hair with

his handkerchief and goes back at full speed to the Hoogli

Hotel, Calcutta, eager for stationery to write at once

to Ohio and say that he knows the Viceroy.

The Office Introduction, One-sided

This introduction comes into our office, slipping past

whoever keeps the door with a packet of books under its

arm. It says--

"Ledd me introduze myself. The book proposition vidge I

am introduzing is one vidge ve are now pudding on the

market..."

Then, of two things, one--

Either a crash of glass is heard as the speaker is hurled

through the skylight, or he walks out twenty minutes

later, bowing profusely as he goes, and leaving us gazing

in remorse at a signed document entitling us to receive

the "Masterpieces of American Poetry" in sixty volumes.

On the Stage

Everything on the stage is done far better than in real

life. This is true of introductions. There is a warmth,

a soul, in the stage introduction not known in the chilly

atmosphere of everyday society. Let me quote as an example

of a stage introduction the formula used, in the best

melodramatic art, in the kitchen-living-room (stove right

centre) of the New England farm.

"Neighbour Jephson's son, this is my little gal, as good

and sweet a little gal, as mindful of her old father, as

you'll find in all New England. Neighbour Jephson's son,

she's been my all in all to me, this little gal, since

I laid her mother in the ground five Christmases ago--"

The speaker is slightly overcome and leans against a

cardboard clock for strength: he recovers and goes

on--"Hope, this is Neighbour Jephson's son, new back from

over the seas, as fine a lad, gal, if he's like the folk

that went before him, as ever followed the sea. Hope,

your hand. My boy, your hand. See to his comfort, Hope,

while I go and read the Good Book a spell in the barnyard."

The Indian Formula

Many people, tired of the empty phrases of society, look

back wistfully to the simple direct speech of savage

life. Such persons will find useful the usual form of

introduction (the shorter form) prevalent among our North

American Indians (at least as gathered from the best

literary model):

"Friends and comrades who are worthy,

See and look with all your eyesight,

Listen with your sense of hearing,

Gather with your apprehension--

Bow your heads, O trees, and hearken.

Hush thy rustling, corn, and listen;

Turn thine ear and give attention;

Ripples of the running water,

Pause a moment in your channels--

Here I bring you,--Hiawatha."

The last line of this can be changed to suit the particular

case. It can just as easily read, at the end, "Here is

Henry Edward Eastwood," or, "Here is Hal McGiverin,

Junior," or anything else. All names fit the sense. That,

in fact, was the wonderful art of Longfellow--the sense

being independent of the words.

The Platform Introduction

Here is a form of introduction cruelly familiar to those

who know it. It is used by the sour-looking villain

facetiously called in newspaper reports the "genial

chairman" of the meeting. While he is saying it the victim

in his little chair on the platform is a target for the

eyes of a thousand people who are wondering why he wears

odd socks.

"The next speaker, ladies and gentlemen, is one who needs

no introduction to this gathering. His name" (here the

chairman consults a little card) "is one that has become

a household word. His achievements in" (here the chairman

looks at his card again, studies it, turns it upside down

and adds) "in many directions are familiar to all of

you." There is a feeble attempt at applause and the

chairman then lifts his hand and says in a plain

business-like tone--"Will those of the audience who are

leaving kindly step as lightly as possible." He is about

to sit down, but then adds as a pleasant afterthought

for the speaker to brood over--"I may say, while I am on

my feet, that next week our society is to have a REAL

treat in hearing--et cetera and so forth--"

II--HOW TO OPEN A CONVERSATION

After the ceremony of introduction is completed the next

thing to consider is the proper way to open a conversation.

The beginning of conversation is really the hardest part.

It is the social equivalent to "going over the top." It

may best be studied in the setting and surroundings of

the Evening Reception, where people stand upright and

agonise, balancing a dish of ice-cream. Here conversation

reaches its highest pitch of social importance. One must

talk or die. Something may be done to stave it off a

little by vigorous eating. But the food at such affairs

is limited. There comes a point when it is absolutely

necessary to say something.

The beginning, as I say, is the hardest problem. Other

communities solve it better than we do.

The Chinese System

In China conversation, between strangers after introduction,

is always opened by the question, "And how old are YOU?"

This strikes me as singularly apt and sensible. Here is

the one thing that is common ground between any two

people, high or low, rich or poor--how far are you on

your pilgrimage in life?

The Penetentiary Method

Compare with the Chinese method the grim, but very

significant formula that is employed (I believe it is a

literal fact) in the exercise yards of the American

penitentiaries. "What have YOU brought?" asks the San

Quentin or Sing Sing convict of the new arrival, meaning,

"And how long is your sentence?" There is the same human

touch about this, the same common ground of interest, as

in the Chinese formula.

Polite Society

But in our polite society we have as yet found no better

method than beginning with a sort of medical diagnosis--"How

do you do?" This admits of no answer. Convention forbids

us to reply in detail that we are feeling if anything

slightly lower than last week, but that though our

temperature has risen from ninety-one-fifty to

ninety-one-seventy-five, our respiration is still normal.

Still worse is the weather as an opening topic. For it

either begins and ends as abruptly as the medical diagnosis,

or it leads the two talkers on into a long and miserable

discussion of the weather of yesterday, of the day before

yesterday, of last month, of last year and the last fifty

years.

Let one beware, however, of a conversation that begins

too easily.

The Mutual Friends' Opening

This can be seen at any evening reception, as when the

hostess introduces two people who are supposed to have

some special link to unite them at once with an

instantaneous snap, as when, for instance, they both come

from the same town.

"Let me introduce Mr. Sedley," said the hostess. "I think

you and Mr. Sedley are from the same town, Miss Smiles.

Miss Smiles, Mr. Sedley."

Off they go at a gallop. "I'm so delighted to meet you,"

says Mr. Sedley. "It's good to hear from anybody who

comes from our little town." (If he's a rollicking

humourist, Mr. Sedley calls it his little old "burg.")

"Oh, yes," answers Miss Smiles. "I'm from Winnipeg too.

I was so anxious to meet you to ask if you knew the

McGowans. They're my greatest friends at home."

"The--who?" asks Mr. Sedley.

"The McGowans--on Selkirk Avenue."

"No-o, I don't think I do. I know the Prices on Selkirk

Avenue. Of course you know them."

"The Prices? No, I don't believe I do--I don't think I

ever heard of the Prices. You don't mean the Pearsons?

I know them very well."

"No, I don't know the Pearsons. The Prices live just near

the reservoir."

"No, then I'm sure I don't know them. The Pearsons live

close to the college."

"Close to the College? Is it near the William Kennedys?"

"I don't think I know the William Kennedys."

This is the way the conversation goes on for ten minutes.

Both Mr. Sedley and Miss Smiles are getting desperate.

Their faces are fixed. Their sentences are reduced to--

"Do you know the Petersons?"

"No. Do you know the Appleby's?"

"No. Do you know the Willie Johnsons?"

"No."

Then at last comes a rift in the clouds. One of them

happens to mention Beverley Dixon. The other is able to

cry exultingly--

"Beverley Dixon? Oh, yes, rather. At least, I don't KNOW

him, but I used often to hear the Applebys speak of him."

And the other exclaims with equal delight--

"I don't know him very well either, but I used to hear

the Willie Johnsons talk about him all the time."

They are saved.

Half an hour after they are still standing there talking

of Beverly Dixon.

The Etiquette Book

Personally I have suffered so much from inability to

begin a conversation that not long ago I took the extreme

step of buying a book on the subject. I regret to say

that I got but little light or help from it. It was

written by the Comtesse de Z--. According to the preface

the Comtesse had "moved in the highest circles of all

the European capitals." If so, let her go on moving there.

I for one, after trying her book, shall never stop her.

This is how the Comtesse solves the problem of opening

a conversation:

"In commencing a conversation, the greatest care should

be devoted to the selection of a topic, good taste

demanding that one should sedulously avoid any subject

of which one's vis-a-vis may be in ignorance. Nor are

the mere words alone to be considered. In the art of

conversation much depends upon manner. The true

conversationalist must, in opening, invest himself with

an atmosphere of interest and solicitude. He must, as we

say in French, be prepared to payer les rais de la

conversation. In short, he must 'give himself an air.'"

There! Go and do it if you can. I admit that I can't. I

have no idea what the French phrase above means, but I

know that personally I cannot "invest myself with an

atmosphere of interest." I might manage about two per

cent on five hundred dollars. But what is that in these

days of plutocracy?

At any rate I tried the Comtesse's directions at a

reception last week, on being introduced to an unknown

lady. And they failed. I cut out nearly all the last

part, and confined myself merely to the proposed selection

of a topic, endeavouring to pick it with as much care as

if I were selecting a golf club out of a bag. Naturally

I had to confine myself to the few topics that I know

about, and on which I can be quite interesting if I get

started.

"Do you know any mathematics?" I asked.

"No," said the lady.

This was too bad. I could have shown her some good puzzles

about the squares of the prime numbers up to forty-one.

I paused and gave myself more air.

"How are you," I asked, "on hydrostatics?"

"I beg your pardon," she said. Evidently she was ignorant

again.

"Have you ever studied the principles of aerial navigation?"

I asked.

"No," She answered.

I was pausing again and trying to invest myself with an

air of further interest, when another man was introduced

to her, quite evidently, from his appearance, a vapid

jackass without one tenth of the brain calibre that I

have.

"Oh, how do you do?" he said. "I say, I've just heard

that Harvard beat Princeton this afternoon. Great, isn't it?"

In two minutes they were talking like old friends. How

do these silly asses do it?

When Dressed Hogs are Dull

An equally unsuccessful type of conversation, often

overheard at receptions, is where one of the two parties

to it is too surly, too stupid, or too self-important

and too rich to talk, and the other labours in vain.

The surly one is, let us say, a middle-aged, thick-set

man of the type that anybody recognizes under the name

Money Hog. This kind of person, as viewed standing in

his dress suit, mannerless and stupid, too rich to have

to talk and too dull to know how to, always recalls to

my mind the head-line of the market reports in the

newspapers, "Dressed Hogs are Dull."

The other party to the conversation is a winsome and

agreeable woman, trying her best to do her social duty.

But, tenez, as the Comtesse of Z---- would say, I can

exactly illustrate the position and attitude of the two

of them from a recollection of my childhood. I remember

that in one of my nursery books of forty years ago there

was a picture entitled "The Lady in Love With A Swine."

A willowy lady in a shimmering gown leaned over the rail

of a tessellated pig-sty, in which an impossibly clean

hog stood in an attitude of ill-mannered immobility. With

the picture was the rhyming legend,

There was a Lady in love with a swine,

"Honey," said she, "will you be mine?

I'll build you a silver sty

And in it you shall lie."

"Honk!" said He.

There was something, as I recall it, in the sweet

willingness of the Lady that was singularly appealing,

and contrasted with the dull mannerless passivity of the

swine.

In each of the little stanzas that followed, the pretty

advances of the Lady were rebuffed by a surly and

monosyllabic "honk" from the hog.

Here is the social counterpart of the scene in the

picture-book. Mr. Grunt, capitalist, is standing in his

tessellated sty,--the tessellated sty being represented

by the hardwood floor of a fashionable drawing-room. His

face is just the same as the face of the pig in the

picture-book. The willowy lady, in the same shimmering

clothes and with the same pretty expression of eagerness,

is beside him.

"Oh, Mr. Grunt," she is saying, "how interesting it must

be to be in your place and feel such tremendous power.

Our hostess was just telling me that you own practically

all the shoemaking machinery factories--it IS shoe-making

machinery, isn't it?--east of Pennsylvania."

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

"Shoe-making machinery," goes on the willowy lady (she

really knows nothing and cares less about it) "must be

absolutely fascinating, is it not?"

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

"But still you must find it sometimes a dreadful strain,

do you not? I mean, so much brain work, and that sort of

thing."

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

"I should love so much to see one of your factories. They

must be so interesting."

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt. Then he turns and moves away

sideways. Into his little piggy eyes has come a fear that

the lady is going to ask him to subscribe to something,

or wants a block of his common stock, or his name on a

board of directors. So he leaves her. Yet if he had known

it she is probably as rich as he is, or richer, and hasn't

the faintest interest in his factories, and never intends

to go near one. Only she is fit to move and converse in

polite society and Mr. Grunt is not.

2.--Heroes and Heroines

"What are you reading?" I asked the other day of a blue-eyed

boy of ten curled up among the sofa cushions.

He held out the book for me to see.

"Dauntless Ned among the Cannibals," he answered.

"Is it exciting?" I enquired.

"Not very," said the child in a matter-of-fact tone. "But

it's not bad."

I took the book from him and read aloud at the opened page.

"In a compact mass the gigantic savages rushed upon our

hero, shrieking with rage and brandishing their huge

clubs. Ned stood his ground fearlessly, his back to a

banana tree. With a sweep of his cutlass he severed the

head of the leading savage from his body, while with a

back stroke of his dirk he stabbed another to the heart.

But resistance against such odds was vain. By sheer weight

of numbers, Ned was borne to the ground. His arms were

then pinioned with stout ropes made of the fibres of the

boobooda tree. With shrieks of exultation the savages

dragged our hero to an opening in the woods where a huge

fire was burning, over which was suspended an enormous

caldron of bubbling oil. 'Boil him, boil him,' yelled

the savages, now wrought to the point of frenzy."

"That seems fairly exciting, isn't it?" I said.

"Oh, he won't get boiled," said the little boy. "He's

the hero."

So I knew that the child has already taken his first

steps in the disillusionment of fiction.

Of course he was quite right as to Ned. This wonderful

youth, the hero with whom we all begin an acquaintance

with books, passes unhurt through a thousand perils.

Cannibals, Apache Indians, war, battles, shipwrecks,

leave him quite unscathed. At the most Ned gets a flesh

wound which is healed, in exactly one paragraph, by that

wonderful drug called a "simple."

But the most amazing thing about this particular hero,

the boy Ned, is the way in which he turns up in all the

great battles and leading events of the world.

It was Ned, for example, who at the critical moment at

Gettysburg turned in his saddle to General Meade and said

quietly, "General, the day is ours." "If it is," answered

Meade, as he folded his field glass, "you alone, Ned,

have saved it."

In the same way Ned was present at the crossing of the

Delaware with Washington. Thus:--

"'What do you see, Ned?' said Washington, as they peered

from the leading boat into the driving snow.

"'Ice,' said Ned. 'My boy,' said the Great American

General, and a tear froze upon his face as he spoke, 'you

have saved us all.'"

Here is Ned at Runningmede when King John with his pen

in hand was about to sign the Magna Carta.

"For a moment the King paused irresolute, the uplifted

quill in his hand, while his crafty, furtive eyes indicated

that he might yet break his plighted faith with the

assembled barons.

"Ned laid his mailed hand upon the parchment.

"'Sign it,' he said sternly, 'or take the consequences.'

"The King signed.

"'Ned,' said the Baron de Bohun, as he removed his iron

vizor from his bronze face, 'thou hast this day saved

all England.'"

In the stories of our boyhood in which Ned figured, there

was no such thing as a heroine, or practically none. At

best she was brought in as an afterthought. It was

announced on page three hundred and one that at the close

of Ned's desperate adventures in the West Indies he

married the beautiful daughter of Don Diego, the Spanish

governor of Portobello; or else, at the end of the great

war with Napoleon, that he married a beautiful and

accomplished French girl whose parents had perished in

the Revolution.

Ned generally married away from home. In fact his marriages

were intended to cement the nations, torn asunder by

Ned's military career. But sometimes he returned to his

native town, all sunburned, scarred and bronzed from

battle (the bronzing effect of being in battle is always

noted): he had changed from a boy to a man: that is, from

a boy of fifteen to a man of sixteen. In such a case Ned

marries in his own home town. It is done after this

fashion:

"But who is this who advances smiling to greet him as he

crosses the familiar threshold of the dear old house?

Can this tall, beautiful girl be Gwendoline, the

child-playmate of his boyhood?"

Well, can it? I ask it of every experienced reader--can

it or can it not?

Ned had his day, in the boyhood of each of us. We presently

passed him by. I am speaking, of course, of those of us

who are of maturer years and can look back upon thirty

or forty years of fiction reading. "Ned," flourishes

still, I understand, among the children of today. But

now he flies in aeroplanes, and dives in submarines, and

gives his invaluable military advice to General Joffre

and General Pershing.

But with the oncoming of adolescent years something softer

was needed than Ned with his howling cannibals and his

fusillade of revolver shots.

So the "Ned" of the Adventure Books was supplanted by

the Romantic Heroine of the Victorian Age and the

Long-winded Immaculate who accompanied her as the Hero.

I do not know when these two first opened their twin

career. Whether Fenimore Cooper or Walter Scott began

them, I cannot say. But they had an undisputed run on

two continents for half a century.

This Heroine was a sylph. Her chiefest charm lay in her

physical feebleness. She was generally presented to us

in some such words as these:

"Let us now introduce to our readers the fair Madeline

of Rokewood. Slender and graceful and of a form so fragile

that her frame scarce fitted to fulfil its bodily

functions...she appeared rather as one of those ethereal

beings of the air who might visit for a brief moment this

terrestrial scene, than one of its earthly inhabitants.

Her large, wondering eyes looked upon the beholder in

childlike innocence."

Sounds simple, doesn't it? One might suspect there was

something wrong with the girl's brain. But listen to

this:--

"The mind of Madeline, elegantly formed by the devoted

labours of the venerable Abbe, her tutor, was of a degree

of culture rarely found in one so young. Though scarce

eighteen summers had flown over her head at the time when

we introduce her to our readers, she was intimately

conversant with the French, Italian, Spanish, and Provencal

tongues. The abundant pages of history, both ancient and

modern, sacred and profane, had been opened for her by

her devoted instructor. In music she played with exquisite

grace and accuracy upon both the spinet and the harpsichord,

while her voice, though lacking something in compass,

was sweet and melodious to a degree."

From such a list of accomplishments it is clear that

Madeline could have matriculated, even at the Harvard

Law School, with five minutes preparation. Is it any

wonder that there was a wild rush for Madeline? In fact,

right after the opening description of the Heroine, there

follows an ominous sentence such as this:--

"It was this exquisite being whose person Lord Rip de

Viperous, a man whose reputation had shamed even the most

licentious court of the age, and had led to his banishment

from the presence of the king, had sworn to get within

his power."

Personally I don't blame Lord Rip a particle; it must

have been very rough on him to have been banished from

the presence of the king--enough to inflame a man to do

anything.

With two such characters in the story, the scene was set

and the plot and adventures followed as a matter of

course. Lord Rip de Viperous pursued the Heroine. But at

every step he is frustrated. He decoys Madeline to a

ruined tower at midnight, her innocence being such and

the gaps left in her education by the Abbe being so wide,

that she is unaware of the danger of ruined towers after

ten thirty P.M. In fact, "tempted by the exquisite clarity

and fulness of the moon, which magnificent orb at this

season spread its widest effulgence over all nature, she

accepts the invitation of her would-be-betrayer to gather

upon the battlements of the ruined keep the strawberries

which grew there in wild profusion."

But at the critical moment, Lord de Viperous is balked.

At the very instant when he is about to seize her in his

arms, Madeline turns upon him and says in such icy tones,

"Titled villain that you are, unhand me," that the man

is "cowed." He slinks down the ruined stairway "cowed."

And at every later turn, at each renewed attempt, Madeline

"cows" him in like fashion.

Moreover while Lord de Viperous is being thus cowed by

Madeline the Heroine, he is also being "dogged" by the

Hero. This counterpart of Madeline who shared her popularity

for fifty years can best be described as the Long-winded

Immaculate Hero. Entirely blameless in his morals, and

utterly virtuous in his conduct, he possessed at least

one means of defending himself. He could make speeches.

This he did on all occasions. With these speeches he

"dogged" Lord de Viperous. Here is the style of them:--

"'My Lord,' said Markham..." (incidentally let it be

explained that this particular brand of hero was always

known by his surname and his surname was always Markham)

--"'My lord, the sentiments that you express and the

demeanour which you have evinced are so greatly at variance

with the title that you bear and the lineage of which

you spring that no authority that you can exercise and

no threats that you are able to command shall deter me

from expressing that for which, however poor and inadequate

my powers of speech, all these of whom and for what I am

what I am, shall answer to it for the integrity of that,

which, whether or not, is at least as it is. My lord, I

have done. Or shall I speak more plainly still?'"

Is it to be wondered that after this harangue Lord Rip

sank into a chair, a hideous convulsion upon his face,

murmuring--"It is enough."

But successful as they were as Hero and Heroine, Markham

and Madeline presently passed off the scene. Where they

went to, I do not know. Perhaps Markham got elected in

the legislature of Massachusetts. At any rate they

disappeared from fiction.

There followed in place of Madeline, the athletic sunburned

heroine with the tennis racket. She was generally called

Kate Middleton, or some such plain, straightforward

designation. She wore strong walking boots and leather

leggings. She ate beef steak. She shot with a rifle. For

a while this Boots and Beef Heroine (of the middle

nineties) made a tremendous hit. She climbed crags in

the Rockies. She threw steers in Colorado with a lariat.

She came out strong in sea scenes and shipwrecks, and on

sinking steamers, where she "cowed" the trembling stewards

and "dogged" the mutinous sailors in the same fashion

that Madeline used to "cow" and "dog" Lord Rip de Viperous.

With the Boots and Beef Heroine went as her running mate

the out-of-doors man, whose face had been tanned and

whose muscles had been hardened into tempered steel in

wild rides over the Pampas of Patagonia, and who had

learned every art and craft of savage life by living

among the wild Hoodoos of the Himalayas. This

Air-and-Grass-man, as he may be called, is generally

supposed to write the story... He was "I" all through.

And he had an irritating modesty in speaking of his own

prowess. Instead of saying straight out that he was the

strongest and bravest man in the world, he implied it

indirectly on every page.

Here, for example, is a typical scene in which "I" and

Kate figure in a desperate adventure in the Rocky Mountains,

pursued by Indians.

"We are about to descend on a single cord from the summit

of a lofty crag, our sole chance of escape (and a

frightfully small chance at that) from the roving band

of Apaches.

"With my eye I measured the fearsome descent below us.

"'Hold fast to the line, Miss Middleton,' I said as I

set my foot against a projecting rock. (Please note that

the Air-and-Grass Hero in these stories always calls the

Heroine Miss Middleton right up to the very end.)

"The noble girl seized the knotted end of the buckskin

line. 'All right, Mr. Smith,' she said with quiet

confidence.

"I braced myself for the effort. My muscles like tempered

steel responded to the strain. I lowered a hundred fathoms

of the line. I could already hear the voice of Kate far

down the cliff.

"Don't let go the line, Miss Middleton,' I called. (Here

was an excellent piece of advice.)

"The girl's clear voice floated up to me... 'All right,

Mr. Smith,' she called, 'I won't.'"

Of course they landed safely at the foot of the cliff,

after the manner of all heroes and heroines. And here

it is that Kate in her turn comes out strong, at the

evening encampment, frying bacon over a blazing fire of

pine branches, while the firelight illuminates her leather

leggings and her rough but picturesque costume.

The circumstances might seem a little daring and improper.

But the reader knows that it is all right, because the

hero and heroine always call one another Miss Middleton

and Mr. Smith.

Not till right at the end, when they are just getting

back again to the confines of civilization, do they depart

from this.

Here is the scene that happens... The hero and heroine

are on the platform of the way-side depot where they are

to part... Kate to return to the luxurious home of her

aunt, Mrs. van der Kyper of New York, and the Air-and-Grass

Man to start for the pampas of Patagonia to hunt the

hoopoo. The Air-and-Grass Man is about to say goodbye.

Then... "'Kate,' I said, as I held the noble girl's gloved

hand in mine a moment. She looked me in the face with

the full, frank, fearless gaze of a sister.

"'Yes?' she answered.

"'Kate,' I repeated, 'do you know what I was thinking of

when I held the line while you were half way down the

cliff?'

"'No,' she murmured, while a flush suffused her cheek.

"'I was thinking, Kate,' I said, 'that if the rope broke

I should be very sorry.'

"'Edward!' she exclaimed.

"I clasped her in my arms.

"'Shall I make a confession,' said Kate, looking up

timidly, half an hour later, as I tenderly unclasped the

noble girl from my encircling arms, ...'I was thinking

the same thing too.'"

So Kate and Edward had their day and then, as Tennyson

says, they "passed," or as less cultivated people put

it, "they were passed up in the air."

As the years went by they failed to please. Kate was a

great improvement upon Madeline. But she wouldn't do.

The truth was, if one may state it openly, Kate wasn't

TOUGH enough. In fact she wasn't tough at all. She turned

out to be in reality just as proper and just as virtuous

as Madeline.

So, too, with the Air-and-Grass Hero. For all of his

tempered muscles and his lariat and his Winchester rifle,

he was presently exposed as a fraud. He was just as

Long-winded and just as Immaculate as the Victorian Hero

that he displaced.

What the public really wants and has always wanted in

its books is wickedness. Fiction was recognised in its

infancy as being a work of the devil.

So the popular novel, despairing of real wickedness among

the cannibals, and in the ruined tower at midnight, and

on the open-air of the prairies, shifted its scenes again.

It came indoors. It came back to the city. And it gave

us the new crop of heroes and heroines and the scenes

and settings with which the fiction of to-day has replaced

the Heroes and Heroines of Yesterday. The Lure of the

City is its theme. It pursues its course to the music of

the ukalele, in the strident racket of the midnight

cabaret. Here move the Harvard graduate in his dinner

jacket, drunk at one in the morning. Here is the hard

face of Big Business scowling at its desk; and here the

glittering Heroine of the hour in her dress of shimmering

sequins, making such tepid creatures as Madeline and Kate

look like the small change out of a twenty-five cent

shinplaster.

3.--The Discovery of America;

Being Done into Moving Pictures and Out Again

"No greater power for education," said President Shurman

the other day, "has come among us during the last forty

years than the moving picture."

I am not certain that it was President Shurman. And he

may not have said it the other day. Nor do I feel absolutely

sure that he referred to the LAST forty years. Indeed

now that I come to think of it, I don't believe it WAS

Shurman. In fact it may have been ex-President Eliot. Or

was it, perhaps, President Hadley of Yale? Or did I say

it myself? Judging by the accuracy and force of the

language, I think I must have. I doubt if Shurman or

Hadley could have put it quite so neatly. There's a touch

about it that I recognise.

But let that pass. At any rate it is something that

everybody is saying and thinking. All our educators have

turned their brains towards the possibility of utilising

moving pictures for the purpose of education. It is being

freely said that history and geography, and even arithmetic,

instead of being taught by the slow and painful process

of books and memory, can be imparted through the eye.

I had no sooner heard of this idea than I became impassioned

to put it into practice. I have therefore prepared, or

am preparing, a film, especially designed for the elementary

classes of our schools to narrate the story of the

discovery of America.

This I should like the reader to sit and see with me, in

the eye of his imagination. But let me first give the

plain, unvarnished account of the discovery of America

as I took it from one of our school histories.

"Christopher Columbus, otherwise Christoforo Colombo,

the celebrated discoverer of America, was born of poor

but honest parents in the Italian city of Genoa. His

mother, Teresa Colombo, seems to have been a woman of

great piety and intelligence. Of his father, Bartolomeo

Colombo, nothing is recorded. From his earliest youth

the boy Christopher developed a passion for mathematics,

astronomy, geodesy, and the other sciences of the

day..."

But, no,--stop! I am going too fast. The reader will get

it better if we turn it into pictures bit by bit as we

go on. Let the reader therefore imagine himself seated

before the curtain in the lighted theatre. All ready?

Very good. Let the music begin--Star Spangled Banner,

please--flip off the lights. Now then.

DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

AUTHORIZED

BY THE BOARD OF CENSORS OF

NEW YORK STATE

There we are. That gives the child the correct historical

background right away. Now what goes on next? Let me see.

Ah, yes, of course. We throw an announcement on the

screen, thus.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.. Mr. Quinn

Here the face of Mr. Quinn (in a bowler hat) is thrown

on the screen and fades out again.

We follow him up with

SPIRIT OF AMERICA.. Miss E. Dickenson

Now, we are ready to begin in earnest. Let us make the

scenario together. First idea to be expressed:

"Christopher Columbus was the son of poor but honest parents."

This might seem difficult to a beginner, but to those of

us who frequent the movies it is nothing. The reel spins

and we see--a narrow room--(it is always narrow in the

movies)--to indicate straitened circumstances--cardboard

furniture--high chairs with carved backs--two cardboard

beams across the ceiling (all this means the Middle

Ages)--a long dinner table--all the little Columbuses

seated at it--Teresa Colombo cutting bread at one end of

it--gives a slice to each, one slice (that means poverty

in the movies)--Teresa rolls her eyes up--all the little

children put their hands together and say grace (this

registers honesty). The thing is done. Let us turn back

to the history book and see what is to be put in next.

"...The father of Christopher, Bartolomeo Colombo, was

a man of no especial talent of whom nothing is recorded."

That's easy. First we announce him on the screen:

BARTOLOMEO COLOMBO.. Mr. Henderson

Then we stick him on the film on a corner of the room,

leaning up against the cardboard clock and looking at

the children. This attitude in the movies always indicates

a secondary character of no importance. His business is

to look at the others and to indicate forgetfulness of

self, incompetence, unimportance, vacuity, simplicity.

Note how this differs from the attitudes of important

characters. If a movie character--one of importance--is

plotting or scheming, he seats himself at a little round

table, drums on it with his fingers, and half closes one

eye. If he is being talked to, or having a letter or

document or telegram read to him, he stands "facing full"

and working his features up and down to indicate emotion

sweeping over them. If he is being "exposed" (which is

done by pointing fingers at him), he hunches up like a

snake in an angle of the room with both eyes half shut

and his mouth set as if he had just eaten a lemon. But

if he has none of these things to express and is only in

the scene as a background for the others, then he goes

over and leans in an easy attitude against the tall

cardboard clock.

That then is the place for Bartolomeo Colombo. To the

clock with him.

Now what comes next?

"...The young Christopher developed at an early age a

passion for study, and especially for astronomy, geometry,

geodesy, and the exact science of the day."

Quite easy. On spins the film. Young Christopher in a

garret room (all movie study is done in garrets). The

cardboard ceiling slopes within six inches of his head.

This shows that the boy never rises from his books. He

can't. On a table in front of him is a little globe and

a pair of compasses. Christopher spins the globe round.

Then he makes two circles with the compasses, one after

the other, very carefully. This is the recognised movie

symbol for mathematical research.

So there we have Christopher--poor, honest, studious,

full of circles.

Now to the book again.

"...The young Columbus received his education at the

monastery of the Franciscan monks at Genoa. Here he spent

seven years."

Yes, but we can put that on the screen in seven seconds.

Turn on the film.

Movie Monastery--exterior, done in grey cardboard--ding,

dong, ding, dong (man in the orchestra with triangle and

stick)--procession of movie friars--faces more like thugs,

but never mind--they are friars because they walk two

and two in a procession, singing out of hymn books.

Now for the book again.

"...Fra Giacomo, the prior of the monastery, delighted

with the boy's progress, encourages his studies."

Wait a minute.

FRA GIACOMO... Mr. Edward Sims

Mr. Sims's face, clean-shaved under a round hat fades in and out.

Then the picture goes on. Movie monastery interior--young

Christopher, still at a table with compasses--benevolent friar

bending over him--Christopher turns the compasses and looks up

with a what-do-you-know-about-that look--astonishment and delight

of friar (registered by opening his eyes like a bull frog). All

this shows study, progress, application. The friars are delighted

with the boy.

"...Christopher, after seven years of study, reaches the

firm conviction that the world is round."

Picture. Christopher--with his globe--jumps up from

table--passes his fingers round and round the

globe--registers the joy of invention--seats himself at

table and draws circles with his compasses furiously. He

fades out.

"...Fired with his discovery Christopher sets out from

the monastery."

Stop a minute, this is a little hard. Fired. How can we

show Christopher "fired." We can't. Perhaps he'll be

fired if the film is no good, but we must omit it just

now.

"He sets out."

One second only for this. Monastery door (double cardboard

with iron across it)--Christopher leaving--carries a

wallet to mean distance. Fra Giacomo blessing him--fade

out.

"...For eighteen years Columbus vainly travelled through

the world on foot offering his discovery at the courts

of Europe, in vain, though asking nothing in return for

it except a fleet of ships, two hundred men and provisions

for two years."

To anybody not used to scenarios this looks a large order.

Eighteen years seems difficult to put on the screen. In

reality this is exactly where the trained movie man sees

his chance. Here he can put in anything and everything

that he likes, bringing in, in a slightly mediaeval form,

all his favourite movie scenes.

Thus, for example, here we have first the good old midnight

cabaret supper scene--thinly disguised as the court of

the King of Sardinia. To turn a cabaret into a court the

movie men merely exchange their Fifth Avenue evening

dress for short coats and knee breeches, heavily wadded

and quilted, and wear large wigs. Quilted pants and wigs

register courtiers, the courtiers of anybody--Charlemagne,

Queen Elizabeth, Peter the Great, Louis Quatorze, anybody

and everybody who ever had courtiers. Just as men with

bare legs mean Romans, men in pea-jackets mean detectives,

and young men drunk in evening dress Harvard graduates.

The ladies at the court of Sardinia wear huge paper frills

round their necks. Otherwise it is the cabaret scene with

the familiar little tables, and the ukaleles going like

mad in one corner, and black sarsaparilla being poured

foaming into the glasses.

In this scene Columbus moves up and down, twirling his

little globe and looking appealingly in their faces. All

laugh at him. His part is just the same as that of the

poor little girl trying to sell up-state violets in the

midnight cabaret.

The Court of Sardinia fades and the film shows Columbus

vainly soliciting financial aid from Lorenzo the

Magnificent.

Stop one minute, please.

LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT... Mr. L. Evans

This scene again is old and familiar. It is the well-known

interior representing the Grinding Capitalist, or the

Bitter Banker refusing aid to the boy genius who has

invented a patent pea-rake. The only change is that

Lorenzo wears a huge wig, has no telephone, and handles

a large quill pen (to register Middle Ages) which he

wiggles furiously up and down on a piece of parchment.

So the eighteen years, with scenes of this sort turn out

the easiest part of the whole show.

But let us to the book again.

"...After eighteen years Columbus, now past the prime of

life, is presented at the Court of Queen Isabella of

Spain."

Just half a moment.

QUEEN ISABELLA.. Miss Janet Briggs

There will be very probably at this point a slight applause

from the back of the hall. Miss Briggs was here last

week, or her astral body was--as Maggie of the Cattle

Ranges. The impression that she made is passed on to

Isabella.

"The Queen and her consort, King Ferdinand of Aragon..."

Stop, stick him on the film.

FERDINAND OF ARAGON.. Mr. Edward Giles

(Large wig, flat velvet cap and square whiskers--same

make-up as for Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Ferdinand of Bohemia,

or any of the Ferdinands.)

"...were immediately seized with enthusiasm for the

marvellous discovery of the Genoese adventurer."

Picture. Columbus hands his globe to Isabella and his

compasses to Ferdinand. They register delight and

astonishment. The Queen turns the globe round and round

and holds it up to Ferdinand. Both indicate with their

faces, well-what-do-you-know-about-this. Ferdinand makes

a circle with the compasses on a table--the courtiers,

fickle creatures, crowd around. They are still dressed

as in Sardinia eighteen years ago. In fact, one recognises

quite a lot of them. When Ferdinand draws the circle they

fall back in wild astonishment, gesticulating frantically.

What they mean is, "It's a circle, it's a circle."

"The King and Queen at once place three ships at the

disposal of Columbus."

On with the picture. The harbour of the port of Palos--

ships bobbing up and down (it is really the oyster boats

in Baltimore Bay but it looks just like Palos, or near

enough). Notice Queen Isabella on the right, at the top

of a flight of steps, extending her hand and looking at

Columbus. Her gesture means, "Pick a ship, any ship you

like, any colour." Just as if she were saying, "Pick a

card, any card you like."

We turn again to the history.

"...Christopher Columbus, now arrived at the height of

his desire, sets out upon his memorable voyage accompanied

by a hundred companions in three caravels, the Pinta,

the Nina and the Espiritu Santo."

Ah, here we have the movie work--the real thing. Cardboard

caravel tossing on black water--seen first right close

to us--we are almost on board of it. Notice the movie

sailors with black whiskers and bare feet (bare feet in

the movies always means a sailor, and black whiskers mean

Spaniards). Now we see the caravel a little way out--whoop!

How she bobs up and down! They give her that jolt (it's

done with the machine itself) to mean danger. There are

all three caravels--Hoop--er--oo! See them go up and

down--stormy night coming all right. See the sun setting

in the west, over the water? They're heading straight

for it. Good-night Columbus--take care of yourself out

there in the blackness.

"During the voyage Columbus remained continually on deck.

Sleeping at the prow, his face towards the new world, he

saw already in his dreams the accomplishment of his

hopes."

On goes the picture. Christopher in the prow of the

caravel (in the movies a prow is made by putting two

little board fences together and propping up a bowsprit

lengthwise over them). Columbus sits up, peers intently

into the darkness, his hand to his brow--registers a

look. Do I see America? No. Lies down, shuts his eyes

and falls into an instantaneous movie sleep. His face

fades out slowly to music, which means that he is going

to dream. Then on the screen the announcement is shown:

SPIRIT OF AMERICA... Miss E. Dickenson

and here we have Miss Dickenson floating in the air above

Columbus. She wears nothing except mosquito netting, but

she has got on enough of it to get past the censor of

the State of New York. Just enough, apparently.

Miss E. Dickenson is joined by a whole troop of Miss Dickensons

all in white mosquito netting. They go through a series of

beautiful evolutions, floating over the sleeping figure of

Columbus. The dance they do is meant to typify, or rather to

signify,--as a matter of fact we needn't worry much about what

it signified. It is an allegory, done in white mosquito netting.

That is generally held to be quite enough. Let us go back to

the book--

"After a storm-tossed voyage of three months..."

Wait a bit. Turn on the picture again and toss the caravels

up and down.

"...during which the food supply threatened to fail..."

Put that on the screen, please. Columbus surrounded by

ten sailors, dividing up a potato.

"...the caravels arrived in safety at the beautiful island

of San Salvador. Columbus, bearing the banner of Spain,

stepped first ashore. Surrounded by a wondering crowd of

savages he prostrated himself upon the beach and kissed

the soil of the New World that he had discovered."

All this is so easy that it's too easy. It runs into

pictures of itself. Anybody, accustomed to the movies,

can see Columbus with his banner and the movie savages

hopping up and down around him. Movie savages are gay,

gladsome creatures anyway, and hopping up and down is

their chief mode of expressing themselves. Add to them

a sandy beach, with palm trees waving visibly in the wind

(it is always windy in the movies) and the thing is done.

Just one further picture is needed to complete the film.

"Columbus who returned to Europe to lay at the feet of

the Spanish sovereigns the world he had discovered, fell

presently under the disfavour of the court, and died in

poverty and obscurity, a victim of the ingratitude of

princes."

Last picture. Columbus dying under the poignant

circumstances known only in the movies--a garret

room--ceiling lower than ever--a truckle bed, narrow

enough to kill him if all else failed--Teresa Colombo

his aged mother alone at his bedside--she offers him

medicine in a long spoon--(this shows, if nothing else

would, that the man is ill)--he shakes his head--puts

out his hand and rests it on the little globe--reaches

feebly for his compasses--can't manage it--rolls up his

eyes and fades.

The music plays softly and the inexorable film, like

the reel of life itself, spins on, announcing

At this theatre

All next week

MAGGIE MAY

and

WALTER CURRAN

in

IS IT WORTH IT

And after that I can imagine the audience dispersing,

and the now educated children going off to their homes

and one saying as he enters--

"Gee, I seen a great picture show at school to-day."

"Yes?" says his mother, "and what was it?"

"Oh, it was all about a gink that went round the cabarets

trying to sell an invention what he'd got but nobody

wouldn't look at it till at last one dame gave him three

oyster boats, see? and so he and a lot of other guys

loaded them up and hiked off across the ocean."

"And where did he go to?"

"Africa. And he and the other guys had a great stand in

with the natives and he'd have sold his invention all

right but one old dame got him alone in a hut and poisoned

him and took it off him."

That, I think, is about the way the film would run. When

it is finished I must get President Shurman, or whoever

it was, to come and see it.

4.--Politics from Within

To avoid all error as to the point of view, let me say

in commencing that I am a Liberal Conservative, or, if

you will, a Conservative Liberal with a strong dash of

sympathy with the Socialist idea, a friend of Labour,

and a believer in Progressive Radicalism. I do not desire

office but would take a seat in the Canadian Senate at

five minutes notice.

I believe there are ever so many people of exactly this

way of thinking.

Let me say further than in writing of "politics" I am

only dealing with the lights and shadows that flicker

over the surface, and am not trying to discuss, still

less to decry, the deep and vital issues that lie below.

Yet I will say that vital though the issues may be below

the surface, there is more clap-trap, insincerity and

humbug on the surface of politics than over any equal

area on the face of any institution.

The candidate, as such, is a humbug. The voters, as

voters--not as fathers, brothers or sons--are humbugs.

The committees are humbugs. And the speeches to the extent

of about ninety per cent are pure buncombe. But, oddly

enough, out of the silly babel of talk that accompanies

popular government, we get, after all, pretty good

government--infinitely better than the government of an

autocratic king. Between democracy and despotic kingship

lies all the difference between genial humbug and black

sin.

For the candidate for popular office I have nothing but

sympathy and sorrow. It has been my fortune to walk round

at the heels of half a dozen of them in different little

Canadian towns, watching the candidate try in vain to

brighten up his face at the glad sight of a party voter.

One, in particular, I remember. Nature had meant him to

be a sour man, a hard man, a man with but little joy in

the company of his fellows. Fate had made him a candidate

for the House of Commons. So he was doing his best to

belie his nature.

"Hullo, William!" he would call out as a man passed

driving a horse and buggy, "got the little sorrel out

for a spin, eh?"

Then he would turn to me and say in a low rasping voice--

"There goes about the biggest skunk in this whole

constituency."

A few minutes later he would wave his hand over a little

hedge in friendly salutation to a man working in a garden.

"Hullo, Jasper! That's a fine lot of corn you've got

there."

Jasper replied in a growl. And when we were well past

the house the candidate would say between his teeth--

"That's about the meanest whelp in the riding."

Our conversation all down the street was of that pattern.

"Good morning, Edward! Giving the potatoes a dose of

Paris green, eh?"

And in an undertone--

"I wish to Heaven he'd take a dose of it himself."

And so on from house to house.

I counted up, from one end of the street to the other,

that there were living in it seven skunks, fourteen low

whelps, eight mean hounds and two dirty skinflints. And

all of these merely among the Conservative voters. It

made me wish to be a Liberal. Especially as the Liberal

voters, by the law of the perversity of human affairs,

always seemed to be the finer lot. As they were NOT voting

for our candidate, they were able to meet him in a fair

and friendly way, whereas William and Jasper and Edward

and our "bunch" were always surly and hardly deigned to

give more than a growl in answer to the candidate's

greeting, without even looking up at him.

But a Liberal voter would stop him in the street and

shake hands and say in a frank, cordial way.

"Mr. Grouch, I'm sorry indeed that I can't vote for you,

and I'd like to be able to wish you success, but of course

you know I'm on the other side and always have been and

can't change now."

Whereupon the Candidate would say. "That's all right,

John, I don't expect you to. I can respect a man's

convictions all right, I guess."

So they would part excellent friends, the Candidate saying

as we moved off:

"That man, John Winter, is one of the straightest men in

this whole county."

Then he would add--

"Now we'll just go into this house for a minute. There's

a dirty pup in here that's one of our supporters."

My opinion of our own supporters went lower every day,

and my opinion of the Liberal voters higher, till it so

happened that I went one day to an old friend of mine

who was working on the Liberal side. I asked him how he

liked it.

"Oh, well enough!" he said, "as a sort of game. But in

this constituency you've got all the decent voters; our

voters are the lowest bunch of skunks I ever struck."

Just then a man passed in a buggy, and looked sourly at

my friend the Liberal worker.

"Hullo, John!" he called, with a manufactured hilarity,

"got the little mare out for a turn, eh?"

John grunted.

"There's one of them," said my friend, "the lowest pup

in this county, John Winter."

"Come along," said the Candidate to me one morning, "I

want you to meet my committee."

"You'll find them," he said confidingly, as we started

down the street towards the committee rooms, "an awful

bunch of mutts."

"Too bad," I said, "what's wrong with them?"

"Oh, I don't know--they're just a pack of simps. They

don't seem to have any PUNCH in them. The one you'll meet

first is the chairman--he's about the worst dub of the

lot; I never saw a man with so little force in my life.

He's got no magnetism, that's what's wrong with him--no

magnetism."

A few minutes later the Candidate was introducing me to

a roomful of heavy looking Committee men. Committee men

in politics, I notice, have always a heavy bovine look.

They are generally in a sort of daze, or doped from

smoking free cigars.

"Now I want to introduce you first," said the Candidate,

"to our chairman, Mr. Frog. Mr. Frog is our old battle

horse in this constituency. And this is our campaign

secretary Mr. Bughouse, and Mr. Dope, and Mr. Mudd, et

cetera."

Those may not have been their names.

It is merely what the names sounded like when one was

looking into their faces.

The Candidate introduced them all as battle horses, battle

axes, battle leaders, standard bearers, flag-holders,

and so forth. If he had introduced them as hat-racks or

cigar holders, it would have been nearer the mark.

Presently the Candidate went out and I was left with the

battle-axes.

"What do you think of our chances?" I asked.

The battle-axes shook their heads with dubious looks.

"Pretty raw deal," said the Chairman, "the Convention

wishing HIM on us." He pointed with his thumb over his

shoulder to indicate the departed Candidate.

"What's wrong with him?" I asked.

Mr. Frog shook his head again.

"No PUNCH," he said.

"None at all," agreed all the battle horses.

"I'll tell you," said the Campaign secretary, Mr. Bughouse,

a voluble man, with wandering eyes--"the trouble is he

has no magnetism, no personal magnetism."

"I see," I said.

"Now, you take this man, Shortis, that the Liberals have

got hold of," continued Mr. Bughouse, "he's full of

MAGNETISM. He appeals."

All the other Committee men nodded.

"That's so," they murmured, "magnetism, Our man hasn't

a darned ounce of it."

"I met Shortis the other night in the street," went on

Mr. Bughouse, "and he said, 'Come on up to my room in

the hotel.' 'Oh,' I said, 'I can't very well.' 'Nonsense,'

he said, 'You're on the other side but what does that

matter?' Well, we went up to his room, and there he had

whiskey, and gin, and lager,--everything. 'Now,' he says,

'name your drink--what is it?' There he was, right in

his room, breaking the law without caring a darn about

it. Well, you know the voters like that kind of thing.

It appeals to them."

"Well," said another of the Committee men,--I think it

was the one called Mr. Dope, "I wouldn't mind that so

much. But the chief trouble about our man, to my mind,

is that he can't speak."

"He can't?" I exclaimed.

All the Committee shook their heads.

"Not for sour apples!" asserted Mr. Dope positively.

"Now, in this riding that won't do. Our people here are

used to first class speaking, they expect it. I suppose

there has been better speaking in this Constituency than

anywhere else in the whole dominion. Not lately, perhaps;

not in the last few elections. But I can remember, and

so can some of the boys here, the election when Sir John

A. spoke here, when the old Mackenzie government went

out."

He looked around at the circle. Several nodded.

"Remember it as well," assented Mr. Mudd, "as if it were

yesterday."

"Well, sir," continued Mr. Dope, "I'll never forget Sir

John A. speaking here in the Odd Fellows' Hall, eh?"

The Committee men nodded and gurgled in corroboration.

"My! but he was PLASTERED. We had him over at Pete

Robinson's hotel all afternoon, and I tell you he was

plastered for fair. We ALL were. I remember I was so

pickled myself I could hardly help Sir John up the steps

of the platform. So were you, Mudd, do you remember?"

"I certainly was!" said Mr. Mudd proudly. Committee men

who would scorn to drink lager beer in 1919, take a great

pride, I have observed, in having been pickled in 1878.

"Yes, sir," continued Mr. Dope, "you certainly were

pickled. I remember just as well as anything, when they

opened the doors and let the crowd in: all the boys had

been bowling up and were pretty well soused. You never

saw such a crowd. Old Dr. Greenway (boys, you remember

the old Doc) was in the chair, and he was pretty well

spifflocated. Well, sir, Sir John A. got up in that hall

and he made the finest, most moving speech I ever listened

to. Do you remember when he called old Trelawney an

ash-barrel? And when he made that appeal for a union of

hearts and said that the sight of McGuire (the Liberal

candidate) made him sick? I tell you those were great

days. You don't get speaking like that now; and you don't

get audiences like that now either. Not the same calibre."

All the Committee shook their heads.

"Well, anyway, boys," said the Chairman, as he lighted

a fresh cigar, "to-morrow will decide, one way or the

other. We've certainly worked hard enough,"--here he

passed the box of cigars round to the others--"I haven't

been in bed before two any night since the work started."

"Neither have I," said another of the workers. "I was

just saying to the wife when I got up this morning that

I begin to feel as if I never wanted to see the sight of

a card again."

"Well, I don't regret the work," said the Secretary, "so

long as we carry the riding. You see," he added in

explanation to me, "we're up against a pretty hard

proposition here. This riding really is Liberal: they've

got the majority of voters though we HAVE once or twice

swung it Conservative. But whether we can carry it with

a man like Grouch is hard to say. One thing is certain,

boys, if he DOES carry it, he doesn't owe it to himself."

All the battle horses agreed on this. A little after that

we dispersed.

And twenty-four hours later the vote was taken and to my

intense surprise the riding was carried by Grouch the

Conservative candidate.

I say, to MY surprise. But apparently not to anybody else.

For it appeared this (was in conversations after the

election) that Grouch was a man of extraordinary magnetism.

He had, so they said, "punch." Shortis, the Liberal, it

seemed, lacked punch absolutely. Even his own supporters

admitted that he had no personality whatever. Some wondered

how he had the nerve to run.

But my own theory of how the election was carried is

quite different.

I feel certain that all the Conservative voters despised

their candidate so much that they voted Liberal. And all

the Liberals voted Conservative.

That carried the riding.

Meantime Grouch left the constituency by the first train

next day for Ottawa. Except for paying taxes on his house,

he will not be back in the town till they dissolve

parliament again.

5.--The Lost Illusions of Mr. Sims

In the club to which I belong, in a quiet corner where

the sunlight falls in sideways, there may be seen sitting

of an afternoon my good friend of thirty years' standing,

Mr. Edward Sims. Being somewhat afflicted with gout, he

generally sits with one foot up on a chair. On a brass

table beside him are such things as Mr. Sims needs. But

they are few. Wealthy as he is, the needs of Mr. Sims

reach scarcely further than Martini cocktails and Egyptian

cigarettes. Such poor comforts as these, brought by a

deferential waiter, with, let us say, a folded newspaper

at five o'clock, suffice for all his wants. Here sits

Mr. Sims till the shadows fall in the street outside,

when a limousine motor trundles up to the club and rolls

him home.

And here of an afternoon Mr. Sims talks to me of his

college days when he was young. The last thirty years of

his life have moved in so gentle a current upon so smooth

a surface that they have been without adventure. It is

the stormy period of his youth that preoccupies my friend

as he sits looking from the window of the club at the

waving leaves in the summer time and the driving snow in

the winter.

I am of that habit of mind that makes me prone to listen.

And for this, perhaps, Mr. Sims selects me as the recipient

of the stories of his college days. It is, it seems, the

fixed belief of my good friend that when he was young he

belonged at college to a particularly nefarious crowd or

group that exists in his mind under the name of the "old

gang." The same association, or corporate body or whatever

it should be called, is also designated by Mr. Sims, the

"old crowd," or more simply and affectionately "the boys."

In the recollection of my good friend this "old gang"

were of a devilishness since lost off the earth. Work

they wouldn't. Sleep they despised. While indoors they

played poker in a blue haze of tobacco smoke with beer

in jugs and mugs all round them. All night they were out

of doors on the sidewalk with linked arms, singing songs

in chorus and jeering at the city police.

Yet in spite of life such as this, which might appear to

an outsider wearing to the intellect, the "old gang" as

recollected by Mr. Sims were of a mental brilliancy that

eclipses everything previous or subsequent. McGregor of

the Class of '85 graduated with a gold medal in Philosophy

after drinking twelve bottles of lager before sitting

down to his final examination. Ned Purvis, the football

half-back, went straight from the football field after

a hard game with his ankle out of joint, drank half a

bottle of Bourbon Rye and then wrote an examination in

Greek poetry that drew tears from the President of the

college.

Mr. Sims is perhaps all the more prone to talk of these

early days insomuch that, since his youth, life, in the

mere material sense, has used him all too kindly. At an

early age, indeed at about the very time of his graduation,

Mr. Sims came into money,--not money in the large and

frenzied sense of a speculative fortune, begetting care

and breeding anxiety, but in the warm and comfortable

inheritance of a family brewery, about as old and as

well-established as the Constitution of the United States.

In this brewery, even to-day, Mr. Sims, I believe, spends

a certain part, though no great part, of his time. He is

carried to it, I understand, in his limousine in the

sunnier hours of the morning; for an hour or so each day

he moves about among the warm smell of the barley and

the quiet hum of the machinery murmuring among its dust.

There is, too, somewhere in the upper part of the city

a huge, silent residence, where a noiseless butler adjusts

Mr. Sims's leg on a chair and serves him his dinner in

isolated luxury.

But the residence, and the brewery, and with them the

current of Mr. Sims's life move of themselves.

Thus has care passed Mr. Sims by, leaving him stranded

in a club chair with his heavy foot and stick beside him.

Mr. Sims is a bachelor. Nor is he likely now to marry:

but this through no lack of veneration or respect for

the s*x. It arises, apparently, from the fact that when

Mr. Sims was young, during his college days, the beauty

and charm of the girls who dwelt in his college town was

such as to render all later women mere feeble suggestions

of what might have been. There was, as there always is,

one girl in particular. I have not heard my friend speak

much of her. But I gather that Kate Dashaway was the kind

of girl who might have made a fit mate even for the sort

of intellectual giant that flourished at Mr. Sims's college.

She was not only beautiful. All the girls remembered by

Mr. Sims were that. But she was in addition "a good head"

and "a good sport," two of the highest qualities that, in

Mr. Sims's view, can crown the female s*x. She had, he

said, no "nonsense" about her, by which term Mr. Sims

indicated religion. She drank lager beer, played tennis as

well as any man in the college, and smoked cigarettes a

whole generation in advance of the age.

Mr. Sims, so I gather, never proposed to her, nor came

within a measurable distance of doing so. A man so prone,

as is my friend, to spend his time in modest admiration

of the prowess of others is apt to lag behind. Miss

Dashaway remains to Mr. Sims, as all else does, a retrospect

and a regret.

But the chief peculiarities of the old gang--as they

exist in the mind of Mr. Sims--is the awful fate that

has overwhelmed them. It is not merely that they are

scattered to the four corners of the continent. That

might have been expected. But, apparently, the most awful

moral ruin has fallen upon them. That, at least, is the

abiding belief of Mr. Sims.

"Do you ever hear anything of McGregor now?" I ask him

sometimes.

"No," he says, shaking his head quietly. "I understand

he went all to the devil."

"How was that?"

"Booze," says Mr. Sims. There is a quiet finality about

the word that ends all discussion.

"Poor old Curly!" says Mr. Sims, in speaking of another

of his classmates. "I guess he's pretty well down and

out these days."

"What's the trouble?" I say.

Mr. Sims moves his eyes sideways as he sits. It is easier

than moving his head.

"Booze," he says.

Even apparent success in life does not save Mr. Sims's

friends.

"I see," I said one day, "that they have just made Arthur

Stewart a Chief Justice out west."

"Poor old Artie," murmured Mr. Sims. "He'll have a hard

time holding it down. I imagine he's pretty well tanked

up all the time these days."

When Mr. Sims has not heard of any of his associates for

a certain lapse of years, he decides to himself that they

are down and out. It is a form of writing them off. There

is a melancholy satisfaction in it. As the years go by

Mr. Sims is coming to regard himself and a few others as

the lonely survivors of a great flood. All the rest,

brilliant as they once were, are presumed to be "boozed,"

"tanked," "burnt out," "bust-up," and otherwise consumed.

After having heard for so many years the reminiscences

of my good friend about the old gang, it seemed almost

incredible that one of them should step into actual living

being before my eyes. Yet so it happened.

I found Mr. Sims at the club one day, about to lunch

there, a thing contrary to his wont. And with him was a

friend, a sallow, insignificant man in the middle fifties,

with ragged, sandy hair, wearing thin.

"Shake hands with Tommy Vidal," said Mr. Sims proudly.

If he had said, "Shake hands with Aristotle," he couldn't

have spoken with greater pride.

This then was Tommy Vidal, the intellectual giant of whom

I had heard a hundred times. Tommy had, at college, so

Mr. Sims had often assured me, the brightest mind known

since the age of Pericles. He took the prize in Latin

poetry absolutely "without opening a book." Latin to

Tommy Vidal had been, by a kind of natural gift, born in

him. In Latin he was "a whale." Indeed in everything. He

had passed his graduation examination with first class

honours; "plastered." He had to be held in his seat, so

it was recorded, while he wrote.

Tommy, it seemed, had just "blown in" to town that morning.

It was characteristic of Mr. Sims's idea of the old gang

that the only way in which any of them were supposed to

enter a town was to "blow in."

"When did you say you 'blew in,' Tommy?" he asked about

half a dozen times during our lunch. In reality, the

reckless, devil-may-care fellow Vidal had "blown in" to

bring his second daughter to a boarding school--a thing

no doubt contemplated months ahead. But Mr. Sims insisted

in regarding Tommy's movements as purely fortuitous, the

sport of chance. He varied his question by asking "When

do you expect to 'blow out' Tommy?" Tommy's answers he

forgot at once.

We sat and talked after lunch, and it pained me to notice

that Tommy Vidal was restless and anxious to get away.

Mr. Sims offered him cigars, thick as ropes and black as

night, but he refused them. It appeared that he had long

since given up smoking. It affected his eyes, he said.

The deferential waiter brought brandy and curacoa in long

thin glasses. But Mr. Vidal shook his head. He hadn't

had a drink, he said, for twenty years. He found it

affected his hearing. Coffee, too, he refused. It affected,

so it seemed, his sense of smell. He sat beside us, ill

at ease, and anxious, as I could see, to get back to his

second daughter and her schoolmistresses. Mr. Sims, who

is geniality itself in his heart, but has no great powers

in conversation, would ask Tommy if he remembered how he

acted as Antigone in the college play, and was "plastered"

from the second act on. Mr. Vidal had no recollection of

it, but wondered if there was any good book-store in town

where he could buy his daughter an Algebra. He rose when

he decently could and left us. As Mr. Sims saw it, he

"blew out."

Mr. Sims is kindliness itself in his judgments. He passed

no word of censure on his departed friend. But a week or

so later he mentioned to me in conversation that Tommy

Vidal had "turned into a kind of stiff." The vocabulary

of Mr. Sims holds no term of deeper condemnation than

the word "stiff." To be a "stiff" is the last form of

degradation.

It is strange that when a thing happens once, it forthwith

happens twice or even more. For years no member of the

"old gang" had come in touch with Mr. Sims. Yet the visit

of Tommy Vidal was followed at no great distance of time

by the "blowing in" of Ned Purvis.

"Well, well!" said Mr. Sims, as he opened one afternoon

a telegram that the deferential waiter brought upon a

tray. "This beats all! Old Ned Purvis wires that he's,

going to blow in to town to-night at seven."

Forthwith Mr. Sims fell to ordering dinner for the three

of us in a private room, with enough of an assortment of

gin cocktails and Scotch highballs to run a distillery,

and enough Vichy water and imported soda for a bath. "I

know old Ned!" he said as he added item after item to

the list.

At seven o'clock the waiter whispered, as in deep

confidence, that there was a gentleman below for Mr.

Sims.

It so happened that on that evening my friend's foot was

in bad shape, and rested on a chair. At his request I

went from the lounge room of the club downstairs to

welcome the new arrival.

Purvis I knew all about. My friend had spoken of him a

thousand times. He had played half-back on the football

team--a big hulking brute of a fellow. In fact, he was,

as pictured by Mr. Sims, a perfect colossus. And he played

football--as did all Mr. Sims's college chums--"plastered."

"Old Ned," so Mr. Sims would relate, "was pretty well

'soused' when the game started: but we put a hose at him

at half-time and got him into pretty good shape." All

men in any keen athletic contest, as remembered by Mr.

Sims, were pretty well "tanked up." For the lighter,

nimbler games such as tennis, they were reported

"spifflocated" and in that shape performed prodigies of

agility.

"You'll know Ned," said Mr. Sims, "by his big shoulders."

I went downstairs.

The reception room below was empty, except for one man,

a little, gentle-looking man with spectacles. He wore

black clothes with a waistcoat reaching to the throat,

a white tie and a collar buttoned on backwards. Ned Purvis

was a clergyman! His great hulking shoulders had gone

the way of all my good friend's reminiscences.

I brought him upstairs.

For a moment, in the half light of the room, Mr. Sims

was still deceived.

"Well, Ned!" he began heartily, with a struggle to rise

from his chair--then he saw the collar and tie of the

Rev. Mr. Purvis, and the full horror of the thing dawned

upon him. Nor did the three gin cocktails, which Mr. Sims

had had stationed ready for the reunion, greatly help

its geniality. Yet it had been a maxim, in the recollections

of Mr. Sims, that when any of the boys blew in anywhere

the bringing of drinks must be instantaneous and uproarious.

Our dinner that night was very quiet.

Mr. Purvis drank only water. That, with a little salad,

made his meal. He had a meeting to address that evening

at eight, a meeting of women--"dear women" he called

them--who had recently affiliated their society with the

work that some of the dear women in Mr. Purvis's own town

were carrying on. The work, as described, boded no good

for breweries. Mr. Purvis's wife, so it seemed, was with

him and would also "take the platform."

As best we could we made conversation.

"I didn't know that you were married," said Mr. Sims.

"Yes," said Mr. Purvis, "married, and with five dear boys

and three dear girls." The eight of them, he told us,

were a great blessing. So, too, was his wife--a great

social worker, it seemed, in the cause of women's rights

and a marvellous platform speaker in the temperance

crusade.

"By the way, Mr. Sims," said Mr. Purvis (they had called

one another "Mr." after the first five minutes), "you

may remember my wife. I think perhaps you knew her in

our college days. She was a Miss Dashaway."

Mr. Sims bowed his head over his plate, as another of

his lost illusions vanished into thin air.

After Mr. Purvis had gone, my friend spoke out his

mind--once and once only, and more in regret than anger.

"I'm afraid," he said, "that old Ned has turned into a

SISSY."

It was only to be expected that the visits of later

friends--the "boys" who happened to "blow in"--were

disappointments. Art Hamilton, who came next, and who

had been one of the most brilliant men of the Class of

'86 had turned somehow into a "complete mutt." Jake Todd,

who used to write so brilliantly in the college paper,

as recollected by Mr. Sims, was now the editor of a big

New York daily. Good things might have been expected of

him, but it transpired that he had undergone "wizening

of the brain." In fact, a number of Mr. Sims's former

friends had suffered from this cruel disease, consisting

apparently of a shrinkage or contraction of the cerebellum.

Mr. Sims spoke little of his disappointments. But I knew

that he thought much about them. They set him wondering.

There were changes here that to the thoughtful mind called

for investigation.

So I was not surprised when he informed me that it was

his intention to visit "the old place" and have a look

at it. The "old place," called also the "old shop,"

indicated, as I knew, Mr. Sims's college, the original

scene of the exploits of the old gang. In the thirty

years since he had graduated, though separated from it

only by two hundred miles, Mr. Sims had never revisited

it. So is it always with the most faithful of the sons

of learning. The illumination of the inner eye is better

than the crude light of reality. College reunions are

but for the noisy lip service of the shallow and the

interested. The deeper affection glows in the absent

heart.

My friend invited me to "come along." We would, he said,

"blow in" upon the place and have a look at it.

It was in the fullness of the spring time that we went,

when the leaves are out on the college campus, and when

Commencement draws near, and when all the college, even

the students, are busy.

Mr. Sims, I noted when I joined him at the train, was

dressed as for the occasion. He wore a round straw hat

with a coloured ribbon, and light grey suit, and a necktie

with the garish colours of the college itself. Thus

dressed, he leaned as lightly as his foot allowed him

upon a yellow stick, and dreamed himself again an

undergraduate.

I had thought the purpose of his visit a mere curiosity

bred in his disappointment. It appeared that I was wrong.

On the train Mr. Sims unfolded to me that his idea in

"blowing in" upon his college was one of benefaction. He

had it in his mind, he said, to do something for the "old

place," no less a thing than to endow a chair. He explained

to me, modestly as was his wont, the origin of his idea.

The brewing business, it appeared, was rapidly reaching

a stage when it would have to be wound up. The movement

of prohibition would necessitate, said Mr. Sims, the

closing of the plant. The prospect, in the financial

sense, occasioned my friend but little excitement. I was

given to understand that prohibition, in the case of Mr.

Sims's brewery, had long since been "written off" or

"written up" or at least written somewhere where it didn't

matter. And the movement itself Mr. Sims does not regard

as permanent. Prohibition, he says, is bound to be washed

out by a "turn of the tide"; in fact, he speaks of this

returning wave of moral regeneration much as Martin Luther

might have spoken of the Protestant Reformation. But for

the time being the brewery will close. Mr. Sims had

thought deeply, it seemed, about putting his surplus

funds into the manufacture of commercial alcohol, itself

a noble profession. For some time his mind has wavered

between that and endowing a chair of philosophy. There

is, and always has been, a sort of natural connection

between the drinking of beer and deep quiet thought. Mr.

Sims, as a brewer, felt that philosophy was the proper

thing.

We left the train, walked through the little town and

entered the university gates.

"Gee!" said Mr. Sims, pausing a moment and leaning on

his stick, "were the gates only as big as that?"

We began to walk up the avenue.

"I thought there were more trees to it than these," said

Mr. Sims.

"Yes," I answered. "You often said that the avenue was

a quarter of a mile long."

"So the thing used to be," he murmured.

Then Mr. Sims looked at the campus. "A dinky looking

little spot," he said.

"Didn't you say," I asked, "that the Arts Building was

built of white marble?"

"Always thought it was," he answered. "Looks like rough

cast from here, doesn't it."

"We'll have to go in and see the President, I suppose,"

continued Mr. Sims. He said it with regret. Something of

his undergraduate soul had returned to his body. Although

he had never seen the President (this one) in his life,

and had only read of his appointment some five years

before in the newspapers, Mr. Sims was afraid of him.

"Now, I tell you," he went on. "We'll just make a break

in and then a quick get-away. Don't let's get anchored

in there, see? If the old fellow gets talking, he'll go

on for ever. I remember the way it used to be when a

fellow had to go in to see Prexy in my time. The old guy

would start mooning away and quoting Latin and keep us

there half the morning."

At this moment two shabby-looking, insignificant men who

had evidently come out from one of the buildings, passed

us on the sidewalk.

"I wonder who those guys are," said Mr. Sims. "Look like

bums, don't they?"

I shook my head. Some instinct told me that they were

professors. But I didn't say so.

My friend continued his instructions.

"When the President asks us to lunch," he said, "I'll

say that we're lunching with a friend down town, see?

Then we'll make a break and get out. If he says he wants

to introduce us to the Faculty or anything like that,

then you say that we have to get the twelve-thirty to

New York, see? I'm not going to say anything about a

chair in philosophy to-day. I want to read it up first

some night so as to be able to talk about it."

To all of this I agreed.

From a janitor we inquired where to find the President.

"In the Administration Building, eh?" said Mr. Sims.

"That's a new one on me. The building on the right, eh?

Thank you."

"See the President?" said a young lady in an ante-office.

"I'm not sure whether you can see him just now. Have you

an appointment?"

Mr. Sims drew out a card. "Give him that" he said. On

the card he had scribbled "Graduate of 1887."

In a few minutes we were shown into another room where

there was a young man, evidently the President's secretary,

and a number of people waiting.

"Will you kindly sit down," murmured the young man, in

a consulting-room voice, "and wait? The President is

engaged just now."

We waited. Through the inner door leading to the President

people went and came. Mr. Sims, speaking in whispers,

continued to caution me on the quickness of our get-away.

Presently the young man touched him on the shoulder.

"The President will see you now," he whispered.

We entered the room. The "old guy" rose to meet us, Mr.

Sims's card in his hand. But he was not old. He was at

least ten years younger than either of us. He was, in

fact, what Mr. Sims and I would almost have called a boy.

In dress and manner he looked as spruce and busy as the

sales manager of a shoe factory.

"Delighted to see you, gentlemen," he said, shaking hands

effusively. "We are always pleased to see our old graduates,

Mr. Samson--No, I beg pardon, Mr. Sims--class of '97, I

see--No, I beg your pardon, Class of '67, I read it

wrongly--"

I heard Mr. Sims murmuring something that seemed to

contain the words "a look around."

"Yes, yes, exactly," said the President. "A look round,

you'll find a great deal to interest you in looking about

the place, I'm sure, Mr. Samson, great changes. I'm

extremely sorry I can't offer to take you round myself,"

here he snapped a gold watch open and shut, "the truth

is I have to catch the twelve-thirty to New York--so

sorry."

Then he shook our hands again, very warmly.

In another moment we were outside the door. The get-away

was accomplished.

We walked out of the building and towards the avenue.

As we passed the portals of the Arts Building, a noisy,

rackety crowd of boys--evidently, to our eyes, schoolboys

--came out, jostling and shouting. They swarmed past us,

accidentally, no doubt, body-checking Mr. Sims, whose

straw hat was knocked off and rolled on the sidewalk.

A janitor picked it up for him as the crowd of boys

passed.

"What pack of young bums are those?" asked Mr. Sims.

"You oughtn't to let young roughs like that come into

the buildings. Are they here from some school or something?"

"No sir," said the janitor. "They're students."

"Students?" repeated Mr. Sims. "And what are they shouting

like that for?"

"There's a notice up that their professor is ill, and so

the class is cancelled, sir."

"Class!" said Mr. Sims. "Are those a class?"

"Yes, sir," said the janitor. "That's the Senior Class

in Philosophy."

Mr. Sims said nothing. He seemed to limp more than his

custom as we passed down the avenue.

On the way home on the train he talked much of crude

alcohol and the possibilities of its commercial manufacture.

So far as I know, his only benefaction up to date has

been the two dollars that he gave to a hackman to drive

us away from the college.

6.--Fetching the Doctor: From Recollections of

Childhood in the Canadian Countryside

We lived far back in the country, such as it used to be

in Canada, before the days of telephones and motor cars,

with long lonely roads and snake fences buried in deep

snow, and with cedar swamps where the sleighs could hardly

pass two abreast. Here and there, on a winter night, one

saw the light in a farm house, distant and dim.

Over it all was a great silence such as people who live

in the cities can never know.

And on us, as on the other families of that lonely

countryside, there sometimes fell the sudden alarm of

illness, and the hurrying drive through the snow at night

to fetch the doctor from the village, seven miles away.

My elder brother and I--there was a long tribe of us, as

with all country families--would hitch up the horse by

the light of the stable lantern, eager with haste and

sick with fear, counting the time till the doctor could

be there.

Then out into the driving snow, urging the horse that

knew by instinct that something was amiss, and so mile

after mile, till we rounded the corner into the single

street of the silent village.

Late, late at night it was--eleven o'clock, perhaps--and

the village dark and deep in sleep, except where the

light showed red against the blinds of the "Surgery" of

the doctor's rough-cast house behind the spruce trees.

"Doctor," we cried, as we burst in, "hurry and come.

Jim's ill--"

I can see him still as he sat there in his surgery, the

burly doctor, rugged and strong for all the sixty winters

that he carried. There he sat playing chess--always he

seemed to be playing chess--with his son, a medical

student, burly and rugged already as himself.

"Shut the door, shut the door!" he called. "Come in,

boys; here, let me brush that snow off you--it's my move

Charlie, remember--now, what the devil's the matter?"

Then we would pant out our hurried exclamations, both

together.

"Bah!" he growled, "ill nothing! Mere belly ache, I

guess."

That was his term, his favorite word, for an undiagnosed

disease--"belly ache." They call it supergastral aesthesia

now. In a city house, it sounds better. Yet how we hung

upon the doctor's good old Saxon term, yearning and hoping

that it might be that.

But even as he growled the doctor had taken down a lantern

from a hook, thrown on a huge, battered fur coat that

doubled his size, and was putting medicines--a very

shopful it seemed--into a leather case.

"Your horse is done up," he said. "We'll put my mare in.

Come and give me a hand, Charlie."

He was his own hostler and stable-man, he and his burly

son. Yet how quickly and quietly he moved, the lantern

swinging on his arm, as he buckled the straps. "What kind

of a damn fool tug is this you've got?" he would say.

Then, in a moment, as it seemed, out into the wind and

snow again, the great figure of the doctor almost filling

the seat of the cutter, the two of us crushed in beside

him, with responsibility, the unbearable burden, gone

from us, and renewed comfort in our hearts.

Little is said on the way: our heads are bent against

the storm: the long stride of the doctor's mare eats up

the flying road.

Then as we near the farm house and see the light in the

sick-room window, fear clutches our hearts again.

"You boys unhitch," says the doctor. "I'll go right in."

Presently, when we enter the house, we find that he is

in the sick-room--the door closed. No word of comfort

has come forth. He has sent out for hot blankets. The

stoves are to be kept burning. We must sit up. We may be

needed. That is all.

And there in that still room through the long night, he

fights single-handed against Death. Behind him is no

human help, no consultation, no wisdom of the colleges

to call in; only his own unaided strength, and his own

firm purpose and that strange instinct in the fight for

a flickering life, that some higher power than that of

colleges has planted deep within his soul.

So we watch through the night hours, in dull misery and

fear, a phantom at the window pane: so must we wait till

the slow morning shows dim and pale at the windows.

Then he comes out from the room. His face is furrowed

with the fatigue of his long vigil. But as he speaks the

tone of his voice is as that of one who has fought and

conquered.

"There--he'll do now. Give him this when he wakes."

Then a great joy sweeps over us as the phantom flees

away, and we shudder back into the warm sunshine of life,

while the sound of the doctor's retreating sleighbells

makes music to our ears.

And once it was not so. The morning dawned and he did

not come from the darkened room: only there came to our

listening ears at times the sound of a sob or moan, and

the doctor's voice, firm and low, but with all hope gone

from it.

And when at last he came, his face seemed old and sad as

we had never seen it. He paused a moment on the threshold

and we heard him say, "I have done all that I can." Then

he beckoned us into the darkened room, and, for the first

time, we knew Death.

All that is forty years ago.

They tell me that, since then, the practice of medicine

has been vastly improved. There are specialists now, I

understand, for every conceivable illness and for every

subdivision of it. If I fall ill, there is a whole battery

of modern science to be turned upon me in a moment. There

are X-rays ready to penetrate me in all directions. I

may have any and every treatment--hypnotic, therapeutic

or thaumaturgic--for which I am able to pay.

But, oh, my friends, when it shall come to be my lot to

be ill and stricken--in the last and real sense, with

the Great Fear upon me, and the Dark Phantom at the

pane--then let some one go, fast and eager--though it be

only in the paths of an expiring memory--fast and eager,

through the driving snow to bring him to my bedside. Let

me hear the sound of his hurrying sleighbells as he comes,

and his strong voice without the door--and, if that may

not be, then let me seem at least to feel the clasp of

his firm hand to guide me without fear to the Land of

Shadows, where he has gone before.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.