CVEPS UC-NRLF B 3 33M S3fl FRANKLIN P. ADAMS OVERSET BOOKS BY FRANKLIN P. ADAMS AMONG Us MORTALS BY AND LARGE IN OTHER WORDS OVERSET SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN TOBOGGANING ON PARNASSUS WEIGHTS AND MEASURES OVERSET BY FRANKLIN P. ADAMS GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. First Edition To HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE WITHOUT WHOSE FRIENDLY AID AND COUNSEL EVERY LINE IN THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN 984698 OVERSET OVERSET M :r:j; EVERYTHING, good authority tells us, is lower in price. Even the $5 silk shirts are down to $8.50, reduced from $13.50. EVERY time we tell anybody to cheer up, things might be worse, we run away for fear we might be asked to specify how. ANOTHER promise we make is that, if elected mayor, we never shall write a letter or issue what is known as a State ment, beginning "My attention has been called." Nor shall we ever employ the cost- nothing and patronizing brand of flat tery. It is common with politicians. It is the kind that, if used in the preceding Overset paragraph, would have made it read: "If elected mayor of this great city." It is the kind of locution used by Mr. La Guardia, when he says "I intend to give the thinking Republicans an op portunity to -protest/ Designedly or unconsciously, that is supposed to make the non-thinking Republican think he is a thinking Republican. If a man de pendent on public favor, which is to say votes, had to rely on the thinking any bodies, he might as well decide to End It All. It s the non-thinking lads that our appeal, if any, is made to. Which reminds us of the adored Amer icans slogan : "A Paper for People Who Think." Who think what? Who think, our completion of the sentence runs, that the American is a paper they like to read. "READERS ask," writes Mr. Arthur Brisbane, "why do newspapers print so much about that miserable Stillman case?" Answer: "Because such cases are valuable in the present, frightening fools, enlightening the public, warning Overset women/ Our comment is, "Rot," re inforced by a pair of "Pishes!" News papers print so much about it because their editors think that is the kind of stuff people like to read. Wherein the editors are utterly and unassailably right. As to whether the publication of such cases does what is known as good, we have no conviction. Our opinion is that they serve as a warning to some and as a model for others. As age creeps upon us we are inclined more and more to the belief that the amount of good or harm done by anybody or anything is ridicu lously exaggerated. As HE ended his training, Dempsey whistled though what he whistled, if anything, the reporters didn t say; and Carpentier, at the close of his prepara tion, appeared untroubled. Putting two and two together, a trick that years of earnest journalism has taught us, we shrewdly arrive at the conclusion that both fighters are confident of the result. 3 Overset On Reading Sara Teasdale s "Shadow and Flame" My hungry heart is riding The savage waves and blue; Straining, it seeks the harbor The haven that is you. Angry the green-black billows; Too wild the course and long; Crashes my heart against the rocks, And breaks but into song. Excepting Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay s poetry, we like Miss Teasdale s better than that of anybody else now writing. Here is the Cinderella com plex; she s got the Teasdale, she s got the Teasdale, she s got the Sara Teas- dale Blues. IN THE December Smart Set one of the editors Mencken, probably con fessed his distaste for games of all sorts, as a participant and a spectator. Per haps that accounts for the method of much of Mr. Mencken s criticisms. For he is a frequent footfaulter, and often he 4 Overset should be penalized for holding and off side playing. A little of the game spirit doesn t hurt even a critic. WATCHING an aeroplane race, some of the spectators tell us, is more fun than watching a yacht race. The boredom endures less than an hour. THIS is our eighteenth pre-Christmas columnar period. A gayer and a wiser man, we realize that our exhortations to an indifferent universe to shop early never aroused one person to the rath purchase. As far as we are concerned, shop as late as you like, or and this is to prove to Upton Sinclair that the ad vertising department doesn t control us not at all. WHEN the Puritan Sabbath comes to make us more than merry, the conduct and behavior of artists at Sunday con certs may be of more critical momen- tousness than their performance. This is forecast by the attitude of the Pleas- 5 Overset antville Journal, which says: "Miss Welch s demure demeanor with the harp marked her as a master of the instru ment." During the Puritan Sunday Dinner the Blue Hungarian Band will play The Beautiful Blue Danube" and "The Blue Alsatian Mountain." "Any more of that stuff/ telephones the third assistant city editor, "gets the blue pencil." CANDOR of an unusual whiteness is Mr. Francis Hackett s, whose dedication in "The Invisible Censor" is: TO MY WIFE SIGNE TOKSVIG Whose lack of interest in this book has been my constant desperation. For years we have crusaded against the hypocrisy of the usual dedication. Perhaps Mr. Hackett s intrepidity will arouse an author to dedicate a book: 6 Overset TO MY DAUGHTERS SPENDA AND BLOWA but for whose extravagant idleness I should not have had to write this unworthy novel. Or TO MY WIFE In spite of whose irritability I got this book written. TICKETS to the Dempsey fight last night were priced $28.75, or almost as much as a private s monthly Army pay. The Uses of Advertisement A charm that delicately glows From all Van Raalte s silken hose. Advt. Tecla, Tecla, little pearls, Round the necks of lovely girls, Dim the diamonds in the sky (And the price is not so high). Needles and thimbles, needles and thimbles, When a girl marries she buys em at Gimbel s. As I walked through the garden gap, I met a man in a stylish cap; 7 Overset A stock in his hand and shoes on his feet, He bought them all from Rogers, Peet. Franklin Simon met a pieman Down in Union Square, Said Franklin Simon to the pieman, "We re slashing underwear." J. Q. How sleep the brave who lay their heads To nightly rest on Simmons Beds! Boundless are the possibilities. A lot of firms might combine, each paying a pro-rata share, thus: Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house built by the Thomp- son-Starrett Co. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ; The Onyx Stockings were hung by the Tap estry Brick chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas, published by The Century Co., soon would be there; The children were snuggled all safe in their Simmons Beds, While visions of Huyler s sugar plums danced through their heads, on which Packer s Tar Soap had been used; And mamma in her Sealpackerchief and I in my Dobbs cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter nap. . . . 8 Overset "GUESS who this is?" telephoned Dulcinea yesterday. "Right the very first time. Well, 1 was thinking that my kiddies always wear nighties cause they re so comfy/ Can you hear me? Oh, all rightie." WHATEVER you may think of young Mr. Garland s refusal of the million dol lar legacy and his reasons for the refusal, you cannot say that he is cowardly or ignoble. Yet when the stories were printed to the effect that he picked up those notions in Greenwich Village, the implication is that Greenwich Village is a place where unsound ideas are to be absorbed, and that the actual teaching of them is done in some Little Red Schoolhouse hard by Christopher Street. As a m. of f., an impressionable young man would be more likely to reject a legacy of a million dollars after a walk up Fifth Avenue than after a week of the Village s excitement or dullness, as the case may be. 9 Overset THERE were fewer papers in those days, but one can imagine the Moab Monitor asking Ruth, editorially, where she picked up those chimerical ideas about Thy People being My People, etc. And Patrick Henry undoubtedly got his notions about the desirability of Lib erty and Death from association with the Third and Fourth Families of Virginia. OF COURSE, what Mrs. Harding and Mrs. Wilson talked about at the White House has not been published. But as Mrs. Harding was leaving, Mrs. Wilson, "suddenly recollecting details of the White House organization she had for gotten to impart, invited her back, and they withdrew again to the White Room, where they talked for another twenty minutes." What these details were, the public never will know. But Mrs. Wilson may have said: "Oh, yes, I nearly forgot. You ll have trouble with the cold water faucet in the up stairs washbowl. It s been like that ever since the Fillmores lived here." 10 Overset "Mrs. Harding did not meet the Pres ident, who had retired to his study on the upper floor to read/ the account says. And Mrs. Wilson didn t disturb him. A jewel of a woman ! Most wives would have called up "Papa, come down quick. Comp ny. Mrs. Harding s here." We should like to print the exact words of colloquy between the Wilsons after Mrs. Harding left, particularly what Mrs. Wilson said when the Presi dent asked, "Well, what is she like?" THE Subway Sun ironically suggests that if the moon were made of green cheese, some folks would say it was the Interborough s fault. That we doubt; but we ll bet one sub way ticket to a copy of the Evening Telegram that if it were, the Inter- borough would charge an adequate rate for looking at it through a telescope. EAGERNESS, curiosity, and credulity are our chief characteristics; but we never have been able to read through an Overset article or a book entitled "The True Story of," The Real Facts About," or The Inside History of . . ." UNTIL Mr. H. G. Wells writes poetry and composes music, we shall go on be lieving that his versatility is an Over praised Institution. And until Mr. George Ade writes the novel that he says, in the American Magazine, he was about to write eighteen or twenty years ago, we shall think of him as a golf player who has shirked his duty to the public and to himself. OUR idea of erudition is being able to say, "Wells is all wrong about this." THE hodiernal ragtime songs, two Harvard boys say they believe, are too slangy. They should be deleted, they say, of their vulgarisms. Nonsense! One trouble with the old poets is that they weren t slangy enough. Words worth, for instance, might have grown wealthy if "Lucy" had read like this: 12 Overset She s a pippin, she s a bearcat, the girl I love And she lives Where? where? By the springs of Dove. She s a blue v-i-o-l-e-t By a mossy s-t-o-n-e; She s my Lucy, She s my Lucy, She s my L-u-c-y Gray! OUR quarrel to-day is with the edi torial gentleman to our left who could imagine, yesterday, nothing of less con sequence than the religious development of Mr. H. G. Wells. Almost any devel opment of Mr. H. G. Wells, to our no tion, is of cosmic momentousness; and there is no exaggerating the importance of the development that made him stop writing books like The History of Mr. Polly/ "Kipps," and The Wheels of Chance." If Wordsworth Had Written "Lucy" for the " Blue Book " New York, N.Y.to Dove Junction 18.1 0.0 Columbus Circle north on Broadway to Yonkers. 14.2 Yonkers, bear left on untrodden ways to Dove Springs. 13 Overset 17 . 8 Straight thru to Dove Junction, jog left. 18. 1 Dove Junction Cemetery, grave of Lucy Gray on right. Tea and Souvenir Postcards at the Lucy Gray Tea House You may break, you may shatter, the law if you d sire, But the price of good liquor goes higher n higher. OUR NOTION of an optimist is a man who, knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can t be any worse than the last one. THERE was a New Year s time when our resolution was made to waste less time during the ensuing year. But with the silvering years a trickling of wisdom has bubbled; and we know now, survey ing the centuries we have lived, that all we have on the credit side is the memory of wasted time. It s earnest effort that 14 Overset ages and corrodes; not wasted time. (Being the slightly rueful and partially insincere thoughts of one who has friv- oled since Friday afternoon, and found himself last night with no riper, more epoch-making thoughts than these.) INSOMNIAC though we be, whenever we read of somebody promising "a busi ness administration" we sink into a sound slumber. If business were run like politics it would collapse. In busi ness, when a man fills his job with con spicuous success to the people who put him into it, he holds the job as long as he continues to fill it that way . . . A Happy New Year, by the way, to Arthur Woods. Of course, there would be this about it. If a mayor, for instance, should hold office as long as the people, by a nine- tenths vote, were satisfied with him, there would always be that section of the press to charge that he was making good purely for political reasons. 15 Overset IF WE knew anyone engaged in writ ing a musical comedy we should sug gest that in the restaurant scene the woman, as women in restaurants do, take out their handy repair kits of paints, oils, and varnishes, and adjust their complexions. And that the men, dip ping shaving brushes into the water tumblers, go through the process of shaving. All we want for the suggestion is 40 per cent, of the royalties and 60 per cent, of the movie rights. "!N SOMETHING over five decades," philosophizes our favorite Marion, Ohio, newspaper, the Star, "we fail to recall where anybody ever boosted his own business or that of his community by dwelling on business depression." In something more than five minutes, which is a long time to give to any subject, we fail to recall one instance of anybody starting a business boom by playing a piccolo solo in a graveyard. Prices of most things are lower, but they are as high as possible, as they al- 16 Overset ways are. One of the principles of busi ness is to get the highest possible price, which is, in a universe that has other flaws, all right. The wrong thing is the hypocrisy of the sellers who pretend to lower prices because of altruism. IT is a good idea to leave politics out of the traction problem. Also out of the Department of Health, the Police De partment, and the Department of Street Cleaning. Why not out of the world, while we are about it? A world with out politics would give everybody more time for whatever he wants to do. A librettist who could get a manager to produce his stuff as written might do worse than try the theme of a Land Without Politics. Still, probably it would be only in a land without politics that such a libret tist might work; and then his theme would be trite. "I NEVER thought of taking a cocktail *7 Overset before Prohibition/ confided Dulcinea, "but now I take one whenever I am offered one. May never get another chance, you see." IF MR. SHAW or the successor of Sir William S. Gilbert would like a theme, there is the riot at the munition factory the day universal disarmament goes into effect. MR. EDISON observes that if between the ages of twelve and sixteen a man become "interested in a subject and enthusiastic he will become a high type of man. If not his mental machinery will atrophy gradually and he will be come a mental dead one." As our once profane President used to say, "Tut!" Between the ages of twelve and sixteen a youth is interested in athletics, stamp collecting, some kind of reading, Bud Fisher s cartoons, girls, and ice-cream sodas. And such boys grow up to be presidents, bankers, writers, musicians, actors, and chauffeurs. Anything, in 18 Overset brief, but inventors who express ideas on every subject; and paragraphers simi larly loquacious. "His criticism/ the World says, edi torially, of the late James G. Huneker, "was not only authoritative but it was constructive." It seems to us that if there ever was a critic who hated what is generally known as constructive criti cism, it was Huneker. The World says, too, "of his profes sional work as a critic it could be truth fully said that he set nothing down in malice." Huneker wrote with consider able malice; healthy malice, without which criticism is largely junk. And without which he never would have given the great service that made him a pioneer of the Anti-Bunk movement. "MANY are interested in spreading propaganda," our acuminous contem porary, B. L. T., observes, "but hardly anybody is interested in checking it." This office is. So many propaganda 19 Overset spreaders call here every afternoon and evening that we have a checkroom for just that purpose. THE President is going to the theater regularly again, but, beyond our joy that he is well enough to go, we have no sensation about it. We have watched Mr. Wilson at plays and at vaudeville shows, and no jest so poor as not to win the reverence of his laugh. The Presi dent s dramatic taste is, it seems to us, of a piece with Henry Ford s or Thomas A. Edison s literary predilections. That may be unfair to Mr. Wilson. When a man like Mr. Wilson an aloof man laughs in public, he may do it only to show what a thoroughly human fellow he is, as some ministers, when they meet strangers, often overdo pro fanity. WHEN Keats was twenty-three years of age he said he had "little knowledge and middling intellect." "It is true," he wrote, "that in the height of enthusiasm 20 Overset I have been cheated into some fine pas sages" (and that, to our notion, is one of them); "but that is not the thing." Also he thought that if he should die, he would leave no immortal work behind him nothing to make his friends proud of his memory; "but if I had time I would have made myself remembered." Probably time would not have added anything to Keats. We have ceased to fool ourself about time, environment, tranquillity, or climate. We never used to see a large clean desk in a quiet room that we didn t think, "If I only could work under such conditions, I might Put it Over." But we know now that there is no Synthetic Afflatus. Old Don Marquis and young Pro fessor Heywood Broun have been print ing their animadversions upon Age and Achievement. As readers of this Eiffel of Emptiness never miss a line written by these broad-visioned and -shouldered gentlemen, it is unnecessary to republish what they said. Both, in a word, thought that some day, when they were older, 21 Overset they would do the Big Stuff. Well, we recorded our thoughts De Senectute years ago, when Marquis and Broun were young and gracile, or ever Ambi tion had picked at the counterpane. There is a time (we think we said) when you say to yourself: This isn t good, but it isn t bad for a kid. At thirty perhaps I ll have something to say, and even if I haven t, I ll know how to say nothing .supremely well." Then many years elapsing while you still make excuses to yourself, on the ground of youth, for your ineptitude you look at the old stuff you did long years ago, and say: "Why can t I do as well as that now?" . . . And the truth probably is that the early stuff was bad because it was unripe, and the late stuff is bad because you haven t anything to say, and never will have anything to say. . . . Ho! hum! this snow is likely to make the tennis season late. DOUBT is hereby expressed as to whether Mr. Prince Freeling, prosecutor 22 Overset in the Hamon murder trial, was en tirely right when he said, "They had lovers quarrels, the usual result of illicit love/ Are they? Or are they one of the by-products? And how characterize the quarrels for this is an imperfect world that legal love is not free from? But there we go again dipping into subjects which ignorance, as Mr. Octavus Roy Cohen s heroes might say, is what we have nothing but of. AND now the Senate of the climatic ally fairest state in our geographically broad land has passed the Lusk-Clayton bill for motion picture censorship. The chances are that a board composed of persons without taste will pass upon the exhibitability of films not infrequently born in the imagination of producers also without taste. "It will be up to the board, for in stance," Senator Boylan says, "to stand ardize the screen kiss. How long should it last? Should it last a minute or only thirty seconds to pass muster?" A kiss, 23 Overset we are informed, is a local issue; its duration, our confiding informant adds, is relative: it may be zero or infinity. Query to censorship board: How long should it take to pass a given point? UTTERLY selfish is our hope that the movies continue to be called a menace. For the folks who used to talk about the Curse of Rum now talk about the Men ace of the Movies. And when the censor ship board takes the Sin out of the Cinema, there will be the newspapers to blame for the woes of the world. . . . The world, although some of our best friends are resident members of it, re minds us of the hang-over who says, "I should never have eaten those soft- boiled eggs last week." As WE see censorship it is a stupid giant traffic policeman answering "Yes" to "Am I my brother s copper?" He guards a one-way street and his sema phore has four signs, all marked "STOP." 24 Overset "To BE an editor was one of my ambi tions," wrote Andrew Carnegie in his autobiography. "Horace Greeley and the Tribune was my ideal of human tri umph." A lofty ambition, too. What we should like to know is what actually deflected his bark from its course. For our picture of Mr. Carnegie is a domi nating man, who got everything he had any ambition to get. " Eureka! " I cried. "Mr. Carnegie s autobiography says, Here s the goose that laid the golden egg/ " A free trans lation, we ll asseverate. THE recollection of most college grad uates is so hazy that they are hard put to it to differentiate between the fourth dimension and the fourth declension. WAR may be prohibited some day, but probably you ll always be able to get one on a doctor s prescription. HALF the world, it appears, is engaged in militantly objecting to the other half s 25 Overset bigotry. "All we want/ says one half, "is fair play." "But," says theother half, with justice, "you don t know fair play when you get it." And so the planet spins. WITH the plan to found a Socialist College we are in utter concord. We shouldn t mind accepting the chair, or stool, of journalism, for that matter. But we warn the faculty that as soon as the quarrel about fraternities begins, we resign. Probably if one man in the Socialist College eleven did more than the one- eleventh of the playing, the team d dis band. THE ART OF FASCINATING "WHICH of these two men," the adver tisement demands, "has learned the secret of fifteen minutes a day?" The advertisement is P. F. Collier & Son Company s. Gaze on the picture. A beautiful 26 Overset young woman is seated, between two men, at a table. Coffee has been served; and, though nobody is smoking, indica tions are that a pleasant time is being had. But, soft! Not by all. Beaming upon the young man to her right with a warm approval that another spark would make into candescent admiration and worship, the young woman, her lips slightly parted, sits; the young man at her right obviously is talking to her; the young man at her left, with what we take to be an envious look, observes his rival. He appears to be biting his nails, registering jealousy. He looks not un like the old pictures we used to see in the patent medicine advertisement la beled we believe, General Debility. So much for the picture. "Here," continues the advertisement, "are two men, equally good looking, equally well dressed. You see such men at every social gathering. One of them can talk of nothing beyond the mere day s news. The other brings to every subject a wealth of side-light and illus- 27 Overset tration that makes him listened to eagerly. He talks like a man who has traveled widely, though his only travels are a business man s trips. He knows something of history and biography, of the work of great scientists, and the writings of philosophers, poets, and dramatists." "The answer," the advertisement goes on but you know what it says. You know that it says you may have this man s Success for the asking; that if you became a bookworm that burrowed fifteen whole minutes a day in your books the Five-Foot Shelf, to be pre cise Beauty would beam upon you, too; you, too, would be a Masterful Man, a Conquering Hero. Remote be it from us to throw doubt upon the effect of an advertisement. Why, some of our best friends are adver tisers, and we wouldn t offend one of them for the solar system with Betelguese thrown in. But candor compels the ad mission that our answer to the ques tion quoted in the first sentence of this 28 Overset piece was wrong. In a word, we thought the discomfited looking man was the bookworm. To us he looked as though he were thinking, "How is it possible for that girl to listen to that incessant, ego tistic piffle? She appears interested. Is she? I ve seen em pretend to be fas cinated by what men were saying, when all the time their little brains if any were thinking of something else. I wish I could get away and get back to my Five-Foot Shelf. This is a sad evening. Won t he ever stop?" What the advertisement wants you to think he is saying is, "A murrain on his fatal gift of fascination! Him with his fine words and his book learning! I wish I had not squandered my time. How lightly, yet how confidently, he mentions Cavour, Columbus, Darwin, Epictetus, Emerson, Euripides! And next week, curse his acquisitiveness, he will have read up to F, perhaps G!" And also, according to the advertise ment, the Cultured (self) young man is speaking of just such things; and 29 Overset Beauty, enraptured, marvels that one head, handsome though it be, can hold all that knowledge. But our interpretation of the picture is this: It looks to us, as has been said, as if the disgruntled young man were the tome-hound. And, despairing of lead ing the talk to matters of history and biography, etc., he is listening to the handsome young man say to the Fairest of Her Sex, "And I said to him, Say, Mr. Swope, wh@ do you think you re talkin to? And I took my hat and walked out and left him flat. I m as good as he is. ... Say, what say to going over to Montmartre or the Palais Royal and having a couple of dances or six?" "I d love to," says Beauty, "if Mr. now Gazish will excuse us." "Oh," the bookworm according to our interpretation, not to Collier s would say, "Certainly. Sure. That s all right. I ought to be going home any way." That s what would have happened. 30 Overset We know. As Frank Bacon might say, we were a bookworm ourself once. THERE are those to whom it is im possible to tell news. They knew it all the time. And there are those who al ways have the Inside Stuff. In the second class is a wearisome acquaint ance, who, on being told that Betel- guese was 27,000,000 times as large as the sun, said, "I heard different." "WELL," said the office cynic, as he read that Mrs. Bourasse had received a present of a $26 bottle of perfume from Mr. Swarts and that she, in return, had bought him a pair of gold cuff links for $10, "she had a fairer sense of exchange than most of em." WELL, we have seen the Edison ques tionnaire and to us it seems a fair test. It is possible that a man who could answer not a single question would be a genius; and it is possible that a man who could answer every question cor- Overset rectly would be a futile person. But neither of those things is likely. As senility approaches, the infallibil ity of tests impresses us less. The only infallible tests are these: We ve never let a child of ours marry a person who encloses a pint envelope for the return of a gallon manuscript; and we ve never known a man that wore buttoned half shoes who amounted to a whoop in Gehenna. WIDE as our reading of all the box fighting news is, we have failed to see Mr. Dempsey s quoted opinions on Mr. Edison s questionnaire. We can imag ine nothing of less consequence than Mr. Dempsey s opinions on any non- arena subjects; which is why we con fess to astonishment at not seeing what he thinks about the Edison questions. "Yes/ is our reply to an advertise ment we read over a man s shoulder in the Subway last night "Are you afraid of your banker?" Also of the assistant 32 Overset receiving teller, the bank policeman, and the assistant paying teller. Once, summoning all our assurance, we asked the paying teller to let us have the money in clean fives or tens. "Are you willing to take these?" he asked, counting out soiled bills. "Yes," was our reply; and, although we give the bank, unhesitatingly, all our money, we never shall ask another favor of them. MANY a novel has sprung full-armed from an author s brain-waves with less than the following personal, from the Butte Miner: "Will the gentleman who picked up a lady who fell Tuesday morning on E. Granite St. by Hennessy s store please call at 17 E. Summit St.?" BROWN UNIVERSITY and the Univer sity of Oregon are among i/s of 1. that have banned, as the headline writers say, jazz dancing. But the headline, as any young S. of J. student knows, should have been "Cheek to Cheek Banned from Coast to Coast." 33 Overset CUSTOMARY diluted custard is dis pensed by the managers of both fighters to the effect that each hopes, for the sake of the sport, the other will be in the best of condition and put up a good fight. In a fight like this each probably hopes the other will sprain his entire system early in the first round. THERE are 150,710,620 of us in the United States, which must cheer the hearts of the manufacturers of automo bile pennants. WAGES, Labor says, have been re duced proportionally more than the wage-earner s living cost; and in the days of enormous wages, living costs were advanced proportionally more. It costs more to live than it should cost; it always has cost more than it should cost; and, while we never were one to take the sadness out of life, it has al ways appeared as it now appears, de spite to-day s prediction of Cloudy with Showers, worth it. 34 Overset ONE who lives adjacent to a Philadel phia school tells us that the children sing songs like The Love Nest" in the classroom, which recalls the first song we were forced by Miss Werkmeister, Room 22, Douglas School to sing. It was something like: In all the green world there is none so sweet As my little lamb with its nimble feet; His eyes are so bright, his wool so white; O, he is my darling, my heart s delight! But our favorite that year was: Where do all the daisies go? / know, / know. Underneath the snow they creep; Nod their little heads and sleep; In the Springtime out they peep That is where they go. In the Springtime out they peep That is where they go. What worried us the first day of school was how everybody but us in the room appeared to know the words and music of these songs. Was the world, we thought, frightened to dizziness, like that? Was everybody to know more 35 Overset than we? And that, Dr. Freud, is a fear we never have been able to over whelm. . . . The other children, we learned later, knew these songs be cause their older brothers and sisters had sung them. And yet it wasn t long after that first day that a youth named Hosmer Dor- land and we were kept in after school for having sung too loud. NOT one to sacrifice truth, or a friend, just to mint a phrase or epigram, is President Harding. After seeing Tilden and Williams play a set on the White House Court, "I enjoyed the very high- class tennis very much," he said. "Although," Rodney Bean writes in the Times, "he is a man of less vigorous physique than Colonel Roosevelt, Mr. Harding plays a fast game." We doubt it, and we doubt whether Mr. Harding even thinks he plays a fast game. Un less, as is possible, it doesn t take long to finish a set in which he is one of the players. 36 Overset PROBABLY, after all, the sale of Run- nymede will not be accomplished. Run- nymede, as Mr. Henry Ford may recall, is the field whereon Elizabeth Queen of Scots pawned her jewels in order that Copernicus might discover the law of gravitation. WHAT sort of place would the world be and there, Mr. H. G. Wells, is a subject fit to your hand if writers of every kind should disarm, for, say, ten years? All publications to discontinue; all writers to throw away pencils, pens, and typewriters. Of course it is interesting for about a minute, which is as long as most of us can endure sustained thinking to speculate as to what the world would be like under those conditions; but what interests us even more is an answer to What Sort of Place Is It Now? As DE VALERA says, the road to peace and understanding lies open. But it is a road so infrequently traveled that 37 Overset hopeful tourists, when they see it, un consciously detour. Rather though once on the road, the traveler wonders how he ever endured any other it seems as though the en trance to the road bore the sign "Use This Road At Your Own Peril." WE HAVE read all the things written, all of them in kindness, about the Len- glen default. It seems to us that she deserves little kindness. Her default was not even graceful; and, speaking as one whose trachea and larynx have been affected to such an extent that a tennis ball scarcely was visible, we know that no throat irritation makes it impossi ble to shake hands. Mile. Lenglen flubbed her chance to go down to a le gitimate defeat that would have en deared her to the gallery and to the rest of the country, a defeat that would have made friends for the France she pro fesses so to love. But she did flub the chance. And we 38 Overset doubt whether all the king s automobiles and all the king s chauffeurs can ever put together the shattered by her pieces of American admiration that were hers before Tuesday s match. That she lost is not sad; but it is sad that so great a player should be unable to lose. What the crowd at Forest Hills felt when the Lenglen default came was ex pressed by a woman sitting near us. "Well," she said, "that won t do much to undevastate France/ FREQUENTLY it is pointed out to a colyumist that he must, of necessity, en joy a vacation less than others, because the discrepancy between his work and no work at all is less marked is, in fact, so slight as to be indiscernible. The truth of which cannot be successfully denied. Wherever the holidaying colyumist goes he is assured that there is enough material in that town to keep him going for a year. And that he ought to meet Jim Gazookus, who says one comical 39 Overset thing after another. Concerning the town, it is true; there is enough stuff in any town to keep a commentator going for life. As to the loquacious and vaunted merry-andrew, there isn t a printable wheeze in a barrel of him. Besides, thrift is not one of our colum nar habits. In a month of errantry, all we recall is that H. W. Lobb, who owns a hotel in Germantown, Pa., ought to enter a doubles tournament paired with Robert W. Service. YESTERDAY S American carried an es say on comedy, whose last paragraph read: "And the fun-makers have their place in the world." Like most essays on this theme, it is patronizing and con descending. It seems to us that the writers of these essays are saying to themselves, "If I didn t have more im portant stuff to do, I d take an afternoon off and write a lot of funny stuff myself/ Now, the essayist can t get any informa tion about the subject, because he is re sistant and unyielding; and when he in- 40 Overset terviews somebody who has a reputation for spoken or written comedy, he doesn t quite trust him. "Good morning/ says the interviewer. "Good morning/ says the comedian. "That isn t so funny," the interviewer thinks to himself, "but there is probably some hidden meaning there, or a slap at me, or at somebody else. I wonder what he really meant by Good morning/ I must be careful what I say to this man." Autobiographical stuff, you say. In a measure. Slight as our reputation is, and founded as it is on the sandy soil of contributions, whenever we say "Yes" to the query "Busy?" it precipitates a storm of merriment that our elaborate and spontaneous jests do not unleash. As to the fun-makers having their place in the world, we are old and gray and full of sleep, and we are leaning to the opinion that nobody but the fun- makers has any place in the world. Which, we hasten to add, is at once a more tolerant and a more superior atti tude than it seems. We cannot speak Overset for other planets, but the resident mem bers of the human race haven t done much in their brief history to take them out of the fun-loving class. HAT/ conceded Dr. Frank Crane, quoted in the publisher s advertisements of "If Winter Comes," "is off to writer Hutchinson." Perhaps it is as well that the date of this handsome utterance is not known. There are enough legal holi days as it is. THERE is to be a course in hotel- keeping, if Albany adopts a measure conceived by some hotel men, at Cor nell University. Probably some things can be taught, but whether anybody can teach a hotel mail clerk to look the other way when you ask for mail; or teach a room clerk how to size up the person who asks for a $4 room, so as to know whether to let him have it for that or to charge him $6.50 those gifts are innate. Of course, some hotels have the room 42 Overset price placarded on the door a fine prac tice and others have a one-price-to-all rate. But ever so many persons feel that when the clerk says, "Something about $7?" and they say "No," he gives em the same room for $5. "MEN/ says Mr. W. L. George, "never ask women to talk about them selves." Which, if true, shows a high degree of efficiency. But it isn t true. They do ask wo men to talk about themselves. And women ask men to talk about them selves. Many an entangling alliance has been formed with nothing to begin with but "Now tell me about yourself." Women, our observation has been, lis ten more sedulously to men s recitals of self than men do to women s. Possibly that is so because women by training, necessity, or general love of approbation are Pleasers. . . . We often won der how many million women a day lis ten, or pretend to listen, to epics whose burden is, "And I says to the boss/Looka 43 Overset here, who do you think you re talkin to? " WHEN Mr. Will Hays becomes head of the film producers, he will be en dowed, we hope, with tyrannical powers. In which event he should make it a mis demeanor for a scenarist to use the in verted predicate in simple declarative sentences. "Comes to this peaceful val ley a human jackal" we can endure, but the other night at "Orphans of the Storm," when the words appeared "Pass the little years," all we could whisper was "Pass the prussic acid." SPEAKING, as we recently were, of ad vertising ideas we never were able to sell, years ago, fascinated by "Barking Dog Tobacco It Never Bites," we of fered slogans to other concerns, without success. Most of them we cannot re call, but there were : Just-Bef ore-Dawn Shoe Polish It s Darkest. Burnt-Child-Gasoline It Dreads the Fire. 44 Overset Time-and-Tide Elevators They Wait for No Man. Douglas Steaks Tender and True. Advertising slogans continue to hold our errant fancy. Why not head the column of obituaries, frexamp, "Read Em and Weep"? And why not the Kubla Khan Honey Dew Melon? Or for a dairy The Buttermilk of Para dise? Years ago, when the suffrage fight was on, this department suggested "Votes for Mennen s!" but nobody liked it. Nor for an o. f. razor "Ask the man who hones one." WELL, here s another of our incompar able ideas for advertisers. Picture: Young woman gazing enraptured at young man s alabaster buckskin shoes. "What makes them look so white, so white?" "A touch of " (This space for sale) IT is a malicious pleasure to think, riding up in the cool Subway, of the 45 Overset motorists driving home through traffic jams; and it is a malicious pleasure to muse, driving home through the fresh air, of the thousands standing up in the hot and sticky Subway. THERE are, according to recently pub lished figures, 10,000,000 feeble-minded persons in the United States. And there isn t a magazine or newspaper circula tion manager in the country that doesn t get a secret thrill out of that statistic. IT STRIKES us that the society news, dull to us, at any rate in the winter, is even less readable in summer and that it might be enlivened by rewriting, in verse, some of the society paragraphs. Yesterday s news, frexamp, might have been jollier reading with: Mr. and Mrs. Henry Meek Sleepy Hollow Country Club all the week. Miss Elizabeth Hobbs is spending July Up at Cooperstown, N. Y. Overset Among those leaving for Lake Bomoseen Are Mrs. Sally Farnham and Miss Neysa McMein. Returned from Paris, Mrs. Lydig Hoyt, Who says that Paris Has Quit Short Skoit. AN UNUSUALLY candid acquaintance of ours adds ten per cent, to his alimony payments, as, he says, luxury tax. WHETHER the President had a good time on his recent outing with Mr. Ford and Mr. Firestone and Mr. Edison we never shall know; our guess is that he didn t. As we picture his return Sun day night, he dashed up to Mrs. Hard ing with, "Well, mamma, it wasn t any fun. I wish I d stayed home with you." . . . HE SEEMED to feel that, like the Caucasian in the jingle, the native American stock was "played out." The Freeman. That jingle of Bret Harte s was written in the sonorous and dignified meter of Swinburne s "Atalanta in Calydon." 47 Overset What does the Freeman ask of a poet to graduate him from the jingle school? Calling anything that isn t a ponder ous piece of prosody a jingle is as typical of the reviewer s attitude as it is reve latory. Humorous verse, light verse, must be referred to as jingles, or "amus ing of its kind," or "good of its sort." What this sort of critic says to him self when he consciously or otherwise patronizes humorous writing is, "Any body, including, of course, myself, who wanted to take a few seconds off some afternoon could write light and humor ous stuff." ALTHOUGH we may be first, we should be last to suggest that Colonel George Harvey is doing his best for the cable companies. "I came to the Court of St. James s," said he in part, "utterly desti tute of the traditional weapons of diplo macy, but poorly equipped with the same candor, frankness, straightforwardness, sincerity, and consideration which have characterized," etc. Plain "candor" 48 Overset would have saved the A. P. a pretty penny on the cable tolls. "LONDON and Paris have for several years wanted me to transfer my mid night type of entertainment there, but I have turned a deaf ear to all their pleas, hoping that in the end the good Ameri can common sense of our forefathers would predominate, but the last few weeks have convinced me that personal liberty is as extinct as a dodo." Thus Mr. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. Al though Mr. Ziegfeld s father was born in Oldenburg, Germany, we know, we think, what he means by "our fore fathers." And he is right. If the Zieg feld of his day had put on the "Follies of 1620" at Plymouth, the rockbound coast wouldn t have been nearly so stern. IT is prophesied that in his speech here to-night President Harding is go ing to tell the retailers that prices must drop. The thing to do to-morrow, 49 Overset therefore, is to trade with only those re tailers who, fearful of presidential dis approval, will at once take his advice. "PERSONALLY/ adds Viscount North- cliffe, "I think Chick is writing too much/ Anybody who uses "person ally" is writing one word too much. IN THE season s prize non sequitur the Red Book in its advertisement says: "The praise of Dr. Frank Crane is praise indeed, for there is no more distin guished or widely read ethical guide and counselor in the world than he." NONE is so gullible as he who believes the stories about the fight being fixed, except him who knows that nothing is fuller of integrity than the fight game. OUR notion of a careful investigator is a man who verifies the declaration, printed after the name of a notary pub lic, "My commission expires March 30, 1923." 50 Overset Plot for novel: Such an investigator discovers, after years of verification, a notary public who has lied. He con fronts him with his crime. Quelque de nouement, as Moliere used to say to Al Woods. "!F WE were only dependent upon our selves for happiness," asserts Walter Trumbull in the homaged Herald, "this would be a gay old world." We hear different. Our happiness expert tells us that if we were dependent upon only our selves for happiness, it would be an un bearable world. It is, the expert adds, being dependent upon others for happi ness that makes it an endurable world, which is the best you can expect of any planet we ever established a voting resi dence in. OUR statistician has computed that of 18,417 men who wear buttoned half- shoes, 18,417, when talking to persons two feet from them, can be heard by per sons within a radius of 210 feet. Overset OURS is a sincere doubt as to whether the question "And what did you do dur ing the Great War?" might not embar rass, among others, God. ECONOMIC evolution will be a failure, Controller Crissinger says, unless all the people put their conscience into their business and their work. Then it will be a failure. Few are the people who are able or willing to put their con science (if any) into their business or their work. When a man is conscien tious about his business or his work and material reward is not evident, he, un less he is unusual, asks himself why he should do more work than he gets paid for. What keeps a lot of people from accomplishment is the widespread and human fear of being called a Soft Mark. And yet, though it may be hard to prove, we are willing to bet that more first-class achievement has been at tained by the Soft Marks than by the Dominant Magnetics. Nor can we trek along with Governor 52 Overset Allen when he speaks of "the un-Ameri can principle of putting as little as possi ble into life and taking as much as possi ble out of life." That principle, our opin ion is, is as American as it is un- American. To put nothing into life and get something out of life is considered a shrewd trade. But it is not possible; it contradicts the law of spiritual econom ics or physics that you can t get more out of life or a job than you put into it. IT HAS been found unconstitutional to forbid meetings such as were held in Mount Vernon the other night. Cer tainly there should be no limit on speech- making but the orator s ability and power to interest, arouse, or amuse his audience. If all orators unable to inter est, arouse, or amuse were jailed, the housing problem might be solved. IN THE old days when we were trying to convince the prospective policy-holder of the benefits of the tontine system, it 53 Overset was a current bromidiom that a man who couldn t do anything else solicited life insurance. Now, apparently, he be comes an anthologist. THERE are five places in town where copies of the complete text of the League of Nations Covenant may be obtained. Most of us will go to the polls thinking that if there had been six places we d surely have got a copy. "NOTHING surpasses the possibilities for service," Mr. Harding telegraphed the new Joseph Medill School of Journ alism, "that are vested in a great journal commanding the public confidence. That confidence is won through a soul in one s work and a good conscience in every utterance . . . The greatest achievement, an achievement entirely away from all personal ends, is to pro mote the public good." In these ideals of journalism we agree with Mr. Hard ing, but if we were on the staff of the Marion Star, we shouldn t allow adver- 54 Overset tisements of Cardui, Dreco, Aspironal, and other patent medicines without put ting up a frantic struggle. "We HAVE never seen the Dayton News or the Marion Star," confesses Jay E. House in the Philadelphia Public Ledger. "We should esteem it a favor if some friend would send us a copy of one or both. We are curious as to the kind the people of central Ohio are tak ing nowadays/ Well, if they are taking what is advertised in Gov. Cox s Dayton News of last Wednesday, they are taking Bro-Feren, Excelento (for kinky hair), Arvon, Phelactine, Laxa-Pirin, Leon ard s Ear Oil, Aspironal ("Better than whisky for Colds and Flu"), Tona-Vin, Tonsiline, Beecham s Pills, Foley Kid ney Pills, Mayr s Remedy, Vinol, Dreco, Vola-Sol, Mi-O-Na, Sorbol Quadruple, Hyomel, Chase s Blood and Nerve Tab lets, Eckman s Alterative, Acco, Vita- mon, Var-ne-sis, Lydia E. Pinkham s Vegetable Compound, and Stuart s Dys pepsia Tablets. If they are taking what 55 Overset is advertised in Senator Harding s Mar ion Star on Tuesday, they are taking Dreco, Mayr s Remedy, Lightning Hot Drops, Hypo-Cod, D. D. D. Bear Oil, Trusler s Rheumatic Tablets, Haelanol, Hyomel, Mi-O-Na, Vitamon, and Men- tho Sulphur. It is almost impossible to decide which of the two candidates whose chief con cern appears to be the health of the pub lic to vote for. Saying It With Flowers I AM not of the patronizing sort that doesn t read or affects not to read the boxing news, the Gossip of Filmland, the Frank Crane stuff, the syndicated "How to Keep Well" articles. I read them all and they do me good, for I take them seriously. In fact, I owe my clean limbed young Americanism chiefly to my adherence to advice that I read a few years ago in The Life of Jess Wil- lard." Mr. Willard advised me I al^ ways think the author is looking straight at me to do certain exercises daily, and 56 Overset every day since the morning I read that counsel I have done those strengthening exercises. Somebody told me, a few days after I began to emulate Mr. Wil- lard, that Mr. Willard didn t write those pieces at all, but that they were written by Mr. George Creel. It was like tell ing me there was no Santa Glaus. I think I cried a little, but I kept right on with the exercises, and now anybody that says a word against George Creel has me, with five or six years of unre mitting training, to fight. I take, as I said, the printed word seriously. A dealer myself in the printed word, it never occurs to me that anyone might read my own carefully chiseled phrases and say, "Yes, but is it true?" or, "Oh, well, I doubt it," or even, "What of it?" I am like Ernest in the old Ade fable, who had been Kicked in the Head by a Mule when young and Believed every thing he Read in the Sunday Papers. And so this evening my passion for truth makes me refrain from saying the 57 Overset other day, because it wasn t the other day, though it will be when this appears I read, among other things on the woman s page (and what I started out to say was that I am not of the patroniz ing sort that pretends not to read the woman s page) an "article," as they call them, by Dorothy Dix. It was en titled, "Do Women Want to Be Petted?" and, with my habit of answer ing every question, rhetorical or not, that is put to me, I said, "No," and added, with a revealing candor that I use in meditation, "At any rate, not by me." Well, I read this piece of Miss Dix s, which told of the sufferings and sacri fices of the average married woman. "The only thing that can repay her," I read, as I stood in the warm, well- lighted Subway train, speeding along through the night, after a jolly day spent in the joys of literary composition in a room full of reporter-pounded type writers and thrillingly noisy telegraph instruments, "is the tenderness of her 58 Overset husband. His kisses, warm with love, and not a chill peck of duty on the cheek, his murmured words of endearment, are the magic coin that settles the long score that a woman charges up against matri mony, and that makes her rich in happi ness." The woman" by this time the train had got to Fourteenth Street, and the crowd of eager, merry homegoers, ardent to arrive at their joyous apart ments, made reading difficult "who has looked from the lovely gown and soft furs in a show window to her own shabby frock, and known that she could afford nothing better because the chil dren had to have shoes and the coal was nearly out; the woman who has wrestled with pots and pans and the wash tub all day, while the baby howled and the other children fought, until her nerves were raw will she be soothed by her husband s treating her as an equal when he comes home at night, and conversing with her about the Federal Reserve bank and the railroad situation? I trow not." 59 Overset "But if" and this took me from Seventy-second Street to Cathedral Parkway "he puts his arms about her, and pats her on the shoulder, and says, There, there, now/ and tells her she is the dearest, bravest, most wonderful little woman in the world, and he just wishes he had the money to doll her up and show people that his little wifekins has got any of those living pictures backed off the screen, why, somehow, the tiredness goes out of her back, and the envy out of her soul, and the sun s come again in her heaven, and she is ready to go down on her knees and thank God for giving her such a husband, even if he isn t a money maker." I emerged from the Subway, and soft and glowing with the romance Miss Dix had suffused me with, 1 stopped at a florist s. "How much," I asked, "are those violets?" "Two dollars," he said, as who should say, "And what a privi lege to buy them at any price!" "I send them?" "No," 1 said. He wrapped them with the contemptuous 60 Overset air florists have for men who carry their offerings with them. They, I take it, are the transient trade. Your real wooer, it came over me in a flash, never brings his flowers. I entered the house with the airy tread of youth, adventurous and confident. The Little Woman, as I call her in my lighter moments, was seated at her desk writing checks struggling, I mused, with the problem of inelastic currency. "See," I said, pointing with modest triumph to the violets. "Where did you get them?" she asked. "At Papakopolos s," I said. "Well," she said and 1 have no doubt she was right "if you paid more than a dollar you got stuck. You al ways let a florist give you anything. Go and put them in the ice box." "There, there, now," I said, quoting Miss Dix. "You are the dearest, brav est, most wonderful little woman in the world. I just wish I had the money to doll you up and show people that my 61 Overset little wifekins has got any of those living pictures backed off the screen/ "Since when/ asked the Little Woman and she is the bravest, as Miss Dix says, 1. w. in the world "since when have living pictures gone into the movies, and is that where you go in the afternoon when I call the office at three and they say you ve left for the day? No wonder you never make any money. . . . Do you know why Wabash Pre ferred A and those other railroad stocks don t go up? It s partly because of the full-crew law and partly because of the Federal Reserve Board." Well, she had me there. I don t know much about the Federal Reserve, and my whole interest in the railroad situa tion is in whether a train I am on or am waiting for is on time or late. I get about a good deal, looking for what my admirers call Material for my Little Articles, and I meet lots of people. If I ever meet Miss Dix, I am going to introduce her to the Little Woman. 62 Overset PERHAPS somebody versed in psy chology can tell us why most persons, when you tell them you have lost some thing, deny, with considerable alibiing vehemence, having seen the lost object. Why is the concern over their own inno cence, which has not been impugned, greater than their sorrow over your loss? IT STRIKES us that there is consider able swank about things such as Lord Northcliffe is reported to have said to President Harding. Their conversation ran entirely, Lord Northcliffe said, to newspaper publishing. "He and I agreed," said Lord Northcliffe, "that the last hour before going to press was by far the most interesting in the daily life of a publisher." Probably it is; but where is the average publisher at that witching hour? Far from the madding local room s or composing room s igno ble strife. Not that it may not be the most interesting time in his day, but it generally is spent, thanks to the reporter, the copyreader, the night, managing, and 63 Overset city editors, and the make-up editor, in some even pleasanter spot than a news paper office. We know. We used to postpone writ ing our stuff until a few minutes before the paper went to press; that may be an interesting time, but, it occurs to us at the instant of trembling to press, it also is a terrifying one. "I WONDER sometimes," wondered the President at Lancaster, "if you appreci ate the indescribable charms of the sec tion in which you live." The answer, no matter what audience the President is addressing, and no matter where, is "No." Besides, if people appreciated the charms of the sections they lived in, the railroad situation might be even worse. "DON T sneeze into books," say the public library authorities. Cancel our order for those Russian novels. "WOMAN," says Miss Pauline Jacob- son in the San Francisco Bulletin, "is 64 Overset the conserver, the tender/ Woman the tender! Man the lifeboat! OUR favorite way of wasting time is trying to say something in praise of pa per towels. PRINCETON won the intercollegiate singing contest last night, but to-day s papers give small space to the story. If Princeton had won at football, there would have been columns and columns printed about it. Yet most men, after graduation, devote more time to singing than to football. . . . Which, like much of our reasoning, is false. Most men devote less time to murdering than to church-going, yet frequently a good murder story will crowd the report of a sermon off the front page. FEW are the plays produced, these highly personal days, not under the "personal" direction of somebody; mat ters having so-and-so s "personal" super vision are common. Yesterday, on 65 Overset Broadway near One Hundred and Eighth Street, we observed that permanent waves would have the "personal" at tention of the proprietor. It occurred to us to wonder whether The Conning Tower public realized, or, realizing, valued to the full, the deeply and intimately personal service that is their privilege. We personally rise every morning, and personally turn on the bath water. While the tub is filling do we have the papers read to us? No. We ourself go to the front door, bring in the milk, the cream, and the papers, and inspect per sonally the front, the editorial, and the sporting pages of three papers. After our personal bath, we tell Miriam tell her personally that we are ready for breakfast. From the first spoonful of grapefruit to the ultimate swallow of coffee, there is nothing impersonal about our breakfast. But it is only after breakfast that per sonal service to the public begins. Either we personally enter the Subway or go to 66 Overset the garage; if the latter, we personally start the car, personally yell for the ele vator nine times, personally put the car on to it, and drive, unchauffeured, down town. Entering the office, we personally look for Julius, the office boy, who has not come in yet. So we personally get our mail out of the box and open it, un assisted. Also we personally retrieve our waste basket, which has been stolen during the night. Personally we mark what contributions we are going to use mark them, with a personally filled fountain pen, CT min or nonp we carry them to the composing room, personally giving them to Mr. Clinton Ball, who generally gives them to Joe to set. Then we go upstairs and write, personally, what we think will be enough stuff to fill. In an hour or two, as timed by our per sonal watch, we go downstairs again and ask for a proof. In ten minutes Al gives us one. We go, ourself, to find a column rule, and measure up. If we are short, we add enough to fill, sometimes finding, personally, a paragraph or two 67 Overset on the overset galley, which we per sonally exhume and carry to the bane. For doing this, Mr. Ball or someone else hands us a personal remark. Then we emerge into the warm, im personal sunshine. "AMBASSADOR HARVEY will entertain a large party of compatriots/ cables the Herald, although it is conceivable that he may do nothing of the kind. SPEAKING of screen stars, there s the mosquito. AUTOMOBILES are getting so cheap that it hardly pays a motor thief for his time. OFFERED as a statistic: Ninety-two per cent, of the stuff told you in confi dence you couldn t get anybody else to listen to. THE esteemed American, in its cap sule five-column account of Peggy 68 Overset Joyce s past, says something about her penchant for fine feathers. Maybe it was the fine feathers that made her what she was. "SOMETIMES we fear/ fears Christo pher Morley in the Evening Post, "that the newspapers, in spite of the large at tention they pay to sport, do not show themselves very good sportsmen/ No, they infrequently are good sportsmen; but even so they are better than any other group we have intimate knowledge of. As to the large attention newspapers pay to sport, few of them do. Most of the papers we see have "sporting" pages top heavy with boxing, racing, and base ball news and comment. WE ARE in violent favor of a Write Your Own Obituary Drive. Including the headline. Our chief fear, when we see a careless motorist making for our headlights, is if we chance not to be alone that the headline will be "Famed 69 Overset Bard Joy Rides to Doom" or "Noted Wit in Death Pact." YEARS ago we envisaged our obituary headline as "Famed Bard s End Calm"; but now we foresee it as "Aged Net Star Dies on Court." "!F YOU want to get rich from writ ing," counsels the astute Mr. Don Mar quis, "write the sort of thing that is read by persons who move their lips when they are reading to themselves." No. Write the kind of stuff about which everybody says, "Of course it s terrible stuff, but it must be popular or they wouldn t print it." HER father says that Peggy Joyce, as a little girl, was always trying to please everybody; and our astonishment is great that she didn t grow up to be an unsuccessful journalist. THERE are seventy stanzas in the Uru guay national anthem, which fact may account for the Uruguay standing army. 70 Overset WE HAVE read all the dispatches from Denver, for the labor question is mo mentous; but we haven t seen a line about the A. F. or L/s attitude about quality or volume of work. IT S enough to confuse even so me thodical a person as ourself. Not only is this Milk Week, but also it is Zane Grey Week. The only thing to do is to quaff Mr. Grey s health in a beaker of well, say Grade C Milk. A gifted but modest author of our ac quaintance suggests that next week be Extra Heavy Cream Week and Henry Sydnor Harrison Week. "WHY in hell don t you keep still?" Mr. Charles W. Morse is quoted by the World as having said to newspapermen who asked him whether he had anything to say about the government s investiga tion of his shipbuilding for it. Whether any newspaperman replied to Mr. Morse s query the record fails to state, but one answer might have been to the Overset effect that it is the newspaperman s job, as a public servant, to print the news; and that he couldn t get the news by keeping still. Also it occurs to us that the news paperman meets only two classes: Those who want to know why he printed it and those who want to know why he didn t. And in the course of years the news paperman, who in an effort at honesty, prints many things and omits printing many things, loses many friendships friendships insecurely founded, perhaps, but friendships whose wabbly founda tions seem safe until they crumble. Our advice to young men about to enter jour nalism is to enter it if possible, for any other business or profession seems to us like shooting craps for no stakes. But to the youth we should add: "Any friends you must consider as so much velvet." WE ARE notoriously a good sailor, and the undulatory motion of a ship has found, finds, and shall find us unafraid; 72 Overset but when Mr. Roscoe Arbuckle says, "Why this great misfortune should have fallen upon me is a mystery that only God can and will some day reveal/ and "I have always rested my cause in a pro found belief in Divine Justice, and in confidence in the great heart and fair ness of the American people" when he says that, we know precisely how the less sturdy passengers on a rolling ship feel. OUR friends accuse us of nepotism. They say our policy is Uncle Sam and Anti-Wilson. ONE of the things we should like to live 500 years for is the pleasure we should derive from reading old news paper files. In 2016, for instance, we should look at the files for Sunday, Jan uary 23, 1916. "Child Labor Day!" somebody would say. "What was that?" And we should have to explain that a hundred years ago children were al- 73 Overset lowed to labor for a living; and the thing actually had to be stopped by law. BEFORE knowing what the Attorney General thinks about Debs, it is neces sary to know his definition of certain words. What is Mr. Daugherty s idea, for example, of usefulness? "I hope," he says, "he may direct his talents to a useful purpose/ Why not have said "to what I consider a useful purpose"? For surely the talents of Mr. Debs will be directed to what Mr. Debs calls a use ful purpose. And Mr. Daugherty speaks of Debs as "pursuing a theory erroneous in prin ciple." Is it? Has Mr. Daugherty a right to assert it is erroneous? Has Mr. Debs a right to say it is a correct theory? There are few words that mean the same thing to two persons; which is one of the things that makes writing a hard job. For even when a writer knows what he means, which is not always, and even when he says what he means, which is less frequently, no reader can go 74 Overset through a season with a perfect fielding average. DEATH seems to give them" Flor ence Woolston is writing in the New Re public about twelve-year-old boys "no sense of mystery and. awe. Gee ! a thou sand killed, to-day/ That Ace has got his/ Say, John Bowers was gassed and he s gone now. They look over the casualty lists as grown-ups might read lists of guests at a reception. It may be because youth cannot understand the tragedy and heartache back of the golden stars on the service flags, but I think it goes deeper than that." It does. But perhaps it is because youth, and youth alone, does understand the meaning of death that youth is casual about it. And perhaps it is we, who think of death as important, who do not under stand it. WITH all the world partisan, fairness is more than ever a question of defini tion. One man s notion of fairness is 75 Overset to consider a crook every man whose laundry bill is more than a dollar a week; and another man s idea of it is to consider a crook every man who ap pears to have no laundry bill at all. A fair-minded public should realize that fair-mindedness, these days, is impossi ble. As WE envisage Radicalism, if you go to sleep a Radical to-night you wake a Conservative to-morrow morning. Radi calism moves too fast; it passes you in the night. Therefore, if you want to remain a Radical, you cannot afford to sleep. You can t trust Radicalism out of your sight. That, perhaps, is why the poor Radical is so tired. But some of us need the sleep; and so we stretch ourselves on the Miraculous Mattress of Conservatism and let the silly Universe shift for its ungrateful old self. WHERE the brook of Youth and the river of Age meet is an interesting point. One arrives there when one is too old Overset to rush up to the net, and too young to take up the sedentary and ancient game of golf. A TYPICAL human being is one who feels no thrill of virtuous elation when he lends a probably worthless man, who he knows won t pay it back, $100 with out interest ; but who fairly exudes good ness when he buys a Victory Liberty Bond, for which he gets 4j4 per cent. WHETHER any studies are to be jet tisoned in order to shorten the West Point course one year is not evident. Greek, Latin, and English, three obso lescent languages, are generally the first to go. We hate to see Greek and Latin dropped from various curricula, but the chucking of English is unimportant. The use of it is purely academic and the study of it does the graduate no good in his terrific struggle to pay for a five- room apartment. At best, it gives him a taste for reading, and reading cuts into evenings that might be spent meeting 77 Overset people who will advance him in a busi ness way. OUR regrets for having studied Ger man instead of French are few. Our choice of German was made because it enabled us to get through at noon, as French was scheduled for 2 p. M. And getting through at noon enabled us to attend the excellent variety shows at the Olympic Theater and the Chicago Opera House, which began at 12:30 p. M. These were the days when Lady Sholto Douglas sang "The Daughter of Officer Porter," when Bobby Gaylor used to say, "Well, annyhow," when George M., of the Four Cohans, began the act with "If I don t say Rah! rah! rah! before breakfast every morning, I get nervous," when Williams and Walker sang "Oh I Don t Know, You re Not So Warm," when Johnny Carroll sang "Pat M alone Forgot That He Was Dead," and Carrie Scott, "Just a Plain American Girl Is Good Enough for Me," when the Russell Brothers used to say, "Take the 78 Overset cow out of the hammock!" and Johnny Ray said, "I ve been up sixteen flights of stairs and every door s a window." Oh, yes, and Helena iMora, the Female Bari tone, after singing "The Moth and the Flame," used to recite Ella Wheeler Wil- cox s poem ending, "And Salvator, Sal vator, Salvator won!" In the joyous days when vaudeville was a variety show there were other acts that quickened the beats of a young pulse. There were Billy Clifford and Maud Huth he used to wear a light tan coat with big pearl buttons, and the team cake-walked to "The Georgia Camp Meeting"; Barney Fagan and Henrietta Byron, who sang "My Gal s a High Born Lady"; Caron and Herbert, one of whom used to dive into the water painted on the back drop; Falke and Semon, who played on many instru ments and one of whom wore dozens of hats; Mazuz and Mazette, one of whom used to do a somersault while the other s back was turned, and when he said, "How d you like that?" the other would 79 Overset say, in a cracked voice, "Good!"; Smith and Cooke, the comical sharpshooters; and Binns and Binns, whom we recall with joy, but whose act we forget. Not to omit the daring and beautiful bare foot but voluminously beskirted Miss Mildred Howard De Gray. Pardon the tears of an old, old man, but those, as Japheth observed to Noah, were the happy days. THE mattress school of drama, re ferred to recently by Rabbi Wise, proba bly will hold commencement exercises soon. It was so a few years ago when it was the courtroom, instead of the bed room, drama. It is likely to be so al ways. At any rate, it has been so. The comic songs of twenty or twenty-five years ago had for their motif the awak ening effect of urban and roguish pur suits upon the bucolic maiden. There were "Oh, Uncle John, Isn t It Nice on Broadway?" "And Her Golden Hair Was Hanging Down Her Back," "She Never Saw the Streets of Cairo," and 80 Overset "Oh, Mr. Austin, Since I ve Been to Boston." And there were hundreds of serious songs about Rural Virtue and Metropolitan Vice. "FAIR AND WARMER; SOUTH ERLY WINDS" In an anti-administration newspaper As though this had not already been a season such as has not been under gone by red-blooded Americans since our nation shook off the yoke of tyranny, the latest announcement by the Administra tion s paid weather-bureau affronts the patriotism of all of us who have been led to believe that an American winter means a lack of insipid, mild, vacillat ing weather. "Southerly winds" indeed! This truckling to political influences is as re volting as it is obvious. How long this sort of thing is to continue unless some thing is done, we hesitate to predict. All honor to the patriotic, virile 81 Overset American Senators who have signed the protest against this added insult to our institutions. "FAIR AND WARMER; SOUTH ERLY WINDS." In a pro-administration newspaper This is a summary of the past achieve ments of the President; an earnest of even greater things to come. Never had we had so fine a winter. "It is impossi ble/ said the partisan detractors of the Administration. "There never has been a snowless winter." Did that daunt one to whom precedent is not to be revered merely because it is precedent? No. Like in other matters, he sees no reason for not doing a great, an apparently im possible thing merely because it never has been done. This is the spirit that won the war fairness and warmth. And the gentle zephyrs blowing from the Southland, which contributed so many of her brave 82 Overset sons to make the world safe for democ racy, are but an added tribute to an Administration which, weathering all storms, sees the harbor, shining fair and warm, near at hand. THE TRAIN TALKERS On the Washington to New York mid night train. A woman and a porter: "Upper 5." "Right here, ma am." "Any chance of getting a lower?" "No, ma am; all taken." "No chance of getting a lower?" "No, ma am; they re all taken." "No chance even after we get start ed?" "No, ma am." "That s what they told me at the ticket office." "Yes m." "I went early yesterday morning. Thought sure I d get a lower going early as that two days ahead. They told me they were all sold." 83 Overset "Yes m." "You don t think there d be a chance of getting a lower?" "No m." "You would think that going early as that would be time enough . . . What time do we get in?" "Six-fifty." "That s about let me see ten min utes before six no, seven yes, ten min utes to seven, isn t it?" "Yes m." "Do we have to get out then?" "No, ma am. You can stay in the car till seven-thirty." "Well, better wake me about seven." "Yes m." "Oh, porter!" "Yes m." "Better wake me at a quarter to seven. Then I won t have to hurry." "Yes m." "And if you hear of a lower, you ll let me know, won t you?" "Yes m." Overset BOOK REVIEWS Mary Olivier" by Mary Sinclair I Sunday . . . you wondered whether you d read the Sunday papers or "Mary Olivier." Maybe both. You were thirty-eight. Nobody could do good work till fifty. Or past fifty. When you were twenty-two and your work was as bad you said, "It isn t bad for a child." And now you were grown up. People died before thirty-eight. Chatterton. Keats. Stephen Crane. You never would do good work. You would always find excuses for not doing it. II Page 231. Page 232. Page 233. And so it went. Mary was always missing things. Somebody was always taking the joy out of her life. I wonder what Briggs s cartoon is. You looked. You read the whole pa- 85 Overset per. All of them . . . And then the book again. Ill The strange selfishness of women. That girl in "The Divine Fire." You remembered the scene where she helped him arrange the books. The soft pur ring kitten; with claws. And The Combined Maze." And Three Sis ters," that was good. And The Bel fry." And "The Tree of Heaven." You were reading that when you thought the Leviathan had been torpedoed. Mary s mother was the strongest. She squeezed Mary. IV Miss Sinclair can write. She tried to do a big job. You feel she tried too hard. Page 380. The End. V You must return the book to Mrs. Miller. 86 Overset "Lady Luck," by Hugh Wiley "Shoots- two bits. Fade me, does you crave action." "You s faded. Roll em, Wilecat." "Wham ! An I reads . . . six-ace. Shoots de package. De big nugget keeps de pikers out. Gallopers, see kin you clatter home to yo box-stall. Bam! And I reads . . . six-five. Shoots de dollar. Little cubes, show yo fo th dimension. I rolls a fo and a trey, or de winnin number. I got two dollars. Shoots fifty cents . . . and I reads six. Ps a sixie fm Dixie. Six is mah objective. Football dice, sco yo touch down . ; . an I reads fo -deuce. Shower down/ And so Wildcat Vitus Marsden, for it was he, with his fortune of two dollars and fifty cents, went forth to the nearest bookstore to buy Hugh Wiley s swell and elegant book, published yesterday and entitled "Lady Luck." 87 Overset "Sparks of Laughter No. 2" Stewart Anderson, Inc. READERS and friends and I hope that those words are as interchangeable as words were the night of the dinner party when the young lady was sitting next to the Bishop of X. It seems it was the first time she had been quite so close to such a dignitary, and her tongue was paralyzed. The silence between them became more and more embarrassing to her. At length some fruit was passed, and she snatched at the opportunity to open a conversation, and said, "Are you very fond of bananas?" The dear old prelate, a trifle deaf, thought she said "pyjamas," and after thinking for a mo ment, chin on hand, he answered, "My dear young lady, since you have asked me I will frankly state that I much pre fer the old-fashioned nightshirt." But seriously, dear readers, I am proud and pleased to have as my theme this morning a book that needs, if I may 88 Overset be allowed to say so, not my weak praise to place it among the most enjoyable books of the year, nay, of all time. "Lit erature," says Thomas A. Edison, "is a very good thing/* And humor, if I may be allowed to paraphrase the "Wizard s" sage observation, is also a very good thing. It lightens the rough pathways. I cannot dedicate, I cannot consecrate, I cannot hallow this great and I use that word advisedly leavener. It is a contagious thing, humor, like the father of the college student who met the col lege professor. "I am delighted to meet you/ said he, shaking hands warmly with the old professor, from whom, I may say, years of grubbing among books had not eliminated a keen sense of hu mor. "My son took algebra from you last year, you know." "Pardon me," said the professor, with a merry twinkle in his eye, "he was exposed to it, but he did not take it." I am having a good deal of trouble, in my stuttering way, getting to my sub ject. And speaking of stuttering, it 89 Overset seems that one day in the Police Court the Judge asked the prisoner his name. "F-f-f-f!" said the prisoner, swallow ing the atmosphere, and starting again. " F-f-f-f -f !" Swallowing still more atmos phere, he started again, "F-f-f-f-f!" "Officer! Officer!" exclaimed the Judge. "What is this man charged with?" "Be- gorra, Your Honor," said the officer, who was a son of the "Ould Sod," "an I think he be charged with sody wather." Well, readers, I think I am not over stating things very much this morning when I say that I never have enjoyed a book more than the little tome that is the subject of my little talk. In fact, so enthralled was I by it that I arrived here a little late. "Well, Mr. Adams," said Mr. Lambert to me, "you are a little late." "Yes," said I. "But better late than never." The book that I refer to is called "Sparks of Laughter No. 2." When I picked it up, to while away what I often call an "idle hour," I had no notion that it would so greatly influence me. 90 Overset Yesterday if anybody had told me that ever, even after years of application, I could learn the forensic art, I should have called that man and I hope the ladies will forgive me for a little plain speech a prevaricator. After reading the book, especially the part called "Sug gestions to Toastmasters" and "How to Tell a Funny Story," I feel that there is no audience I could not address with what our French brothers call savoir jaire. "Toastmastering," the first piece of advice concludes, "is an ornamental art. I have tried to show you some of its first principles. Use them and you will not go far wrong." So much for that. It was the chapter on "How to Tell a Funny Story" that made the deepest impression on me, an impression as deep as the political orator, who was somewhat given to exaggerat ing, made on Martin W. Littleton, the well-known New York lawyer. "This fellow/ said Mr. Littleton, "was ad dressing a meeting one night in my former home town, Dallas, Texas. He Overset complained bitterly in his address of a certain alleged abuse of power. Are we to take this lying down? he roared. No, old chap/ called a little man from a back seat, the reporters ll do that/ " Let me read you from this chapter "How to Tell a Funny Story." "Mem orize your stories. Get them down letter- perfect. Don t spoil your chance to earn a laugh by hesitating, stumbling, recall ing, apologizing. Let the story come trippingly on the tongue. Face your self in the mirror. Tell your stories to the man in the mirror. Satisfy him completely and then you may confi dently expect to satisfy a larger audi ence." Right here, dear readers, I want to say that I did that all last evening. I told stories, gazing at myself in the mirror, all yesterday afternoon. And my wife, who is my severest critic, hear ing the gales of merriment issuing from my room, called to me and said, "You must be having a good time in there." 92 Overset "I am," was my response. And, ladies and gentlemen, I was. And what is more, my friends, it was good, clean fun. "Suppose you are at a banquet table and are called upon without warning to speak on a subject of which you know little/ Mr. Anderson continues. "Self- deprecation would be appropriate, and if you did indeed speak to the purpose, so much greater your credit with your audience because you began so modestly. For example: Mr. Toastmaster and gentlemen, I am only so slightly familiar with the subject under discussion that I fear anything I might say would remind you of the man who recently was a Police Court prisoner and then the Police Court stuttering story. Or: Mr. Toastmaster and gentlemen, I am obliged to plead dark ignorance of the subject that has been so ably analyzed and illumined, and if I should attempt to add to what has been said I should certainly fail to set up an intelligent con tact with this audience, as did the young lady who for the first time in her life 93 Overset was seated, at a dinner, next to so high a dignitary as a Bishop/ and go on with the Bishop-pyjama story." But, dear readers, the hour is growing late and there are other and brighter men on this great paper yes, there are. I am afraid you are trying to flatter me who may have something to say to you. In conclusion, I am going to read you Mr. Anderson s sound advice, which, if you follow, it will not be long until you hear, as Mr. Anderson says/ George, tell us the story you told the other day at the club." But above all, says Mr. Anderson, a few minutes a day, and every day, in mirror exercise. "The power," he concludes, "to tell a story is profitable. I have told you how to ac quire this power but whether or not dollars and power and satisfaction shall result depends altogether upon your self." And now, dear readers, I will leave you, somewhat like the colored man who, gazing at the final half-inch of a cheap cigar he was smoking, said, "Veil, Ay 94 Overset tank Oi am g-g-g-gettin to de end of mah rope." NICKEL PLATONISM I On Knowledge Persons of the Dialogue: SOCRATES, who is the narrator of the dialogue; and SYMPADEMUS, a companion. SYMP. Now whither bound, Socrates? And yet I need not ask that question; for if you are bound for any place where I am not to be, your destination cannot matter to me; for I am desirous of ob taining wisdom from you. Nor is it otherwhere to be obtained. Soc. And so, Sympademus, if you had your wish, I should not proceed farther? That would be my desire, Socrates. A dozen eggs are twelve eggs, are they not? You phrase it accurately, Socrates. 95 Overset And two dozen eggs are twenty-four eggs? Assuredly. And two dozen hours are twenty-four hours? You utter much, Socrates, there. Do or do not twenty-four hours com pose a day? They do, Socrates, they do. Well, then, if I devoted an hour to you, and that augmented your wisdom, how wise would it make you if I devoted two hours to you? I should gain twice the wisdom. And in twenty-four hours? Twenty-four times. But if I devoted twenty-four hours to you, who else in the world would gain wisdom if, as you well say, wisdom is not otherwhere to be obtained? Nobody. Then you and I, Sympademus, would share all the wisdom there is in the world. Is wisdom or is its step-sister, knowledge useful or desirable for its possession alone? 96 Overset No more than money, if it could not purchase anything, would be. And is knowledge useful, or even ex istent, unless it be disseminated? That I cannot answer. Shall I answer it for you in an apo logue or myth, or shall I argue the ques tion? Slip me the myth, said Sympademus. Once upon a time, said Socrates, there was a man who had spent his budding and blooming years in studies of various kinds; and his particular and passionate interest was the study of the caesura in alcaic verses. He had not learned, he thought, all there was to be known of his subject, so he journeyed to the uni versity library to study it more deeply. But he had come from a far city, and the location of the library was not known to him. So he said to a guard upon the Subway. Where ought I de train for the university library? At 116th Street, said the guard. Now, Sympademus, which, in your opinion, takes more pains and ability to acquire: 97 Overset the student s knowledge relating to the ensure in alcaic verses, or the Subway guard s knowledge that the station at One Hundred and Sixteenth Street is in close proximity to the university library? Surely, Socrates, the knowledge about the caesura. But if the man who has the knowl edge about the caesura does naught with it but add to it, while the man who knows that the university library is near the One Hundred and Sixteenth Street station constantly is disseminating that information, which, do you say, is the more useful? Would you not say the Subway guard? Indeed, Socrates. Then may we not assume, Sympade- mus, that wisdom and knowledge are not wisdom and knowledge until they are disseminated and spread, and that in proportion as they are scattered, so is their usefulness to be determined? And that in proportion as they are withheld, so, also, is their uselessness adjudicated? You said a scrollful, Socrates. 98 Overset Then, Sympademus, I shall be on my way; for I have other matters to discuss with Alcibiades. Haply I shall meet with you again. II On Drinking Soc. You are come late to the city this morning, O son of Boobinias, and your eyelid quivers, like that of a man who has been casting dice long hours, and crying exhortations and supplica tions to the ivory cubes, such as Event uate, O thou seven! For mine infant has dearth of a pair of new sandals. SYMP. Nay, then, Socrates, you are in error if you deem me to have been gambling, for I did but while away the evening, and the night too, at a bar; or Demosthenes the orator would say, im bibing libations; and it may be that I was, at the end of it, slightly jingled. Of this you seem unashamed, Sym pademus. Why, Socrates, I am not ashamed of it soever. 99 Overset But if it had been said of you, by this one or that one, Sympademus was jingled yesternight, you would feel un ashamed? I should feel no shame at all. And if it had been said of you, Wow, but Sympademus had an epidermis full, or Sympademus was ossified, you would feel no shame? I should feel no shame whatever. And if it had been said of you, Sym pademus was drunk? Why, that, Socrates, as you know, would overwhelm me with shame, and cause me to have great distaste for my self. Yet your drinking is not, would you say, a question of nomenclature at all, is it, Sympademus? It is, Socrates, and it is not. For there is a potency and a charm in the names of drinks, which, were they named with no such euphuism, would have no appeal to me or to others at all. There is the Tom and Jerry, and the Sherry Cobbler, and the Flip, and the Mamie Taylor, and 100 Overset the Tom Collins, and the Santiago, and the Clover Club, and the Angels De light, and the Mint Julep, and the Alex ander, and the Perfect, and a thousand others, most of which I tasted last night, and all of which, if named but Alcohol which, in effect, they all are I should not have tasted. So that, as Aristo phanes says, rather derails your trains of thought. Hey? Not so, Sympademus. It but does clear the track of all obstructions. I do not hold there is no charm in the synonyms for Drink, and I acknowl edge the appeal in the mere names of deadly decoctions. But if you had termed the drinks of yesternight Al cohol, you would not have tasted them? Indubitably not. And if you had not tasted them, you would not have been drunk? Denial of that, O Socrates, were folly. Gainsaying you in that regard were plumbing the depths of nuttiness. Then, O Sympademus, though I am far from saying to you what I began to 10 1 Overset induct, as I had intended to discourse with you about politics, what do you say if we proceed to the house of Eukidios, who, although I am in his debt for twelve drachmas, will, I think, still hang me up for a split of hemlock juice. Ill On Professionalism in Sport Soc. Whence come you, Sympade- mus, with your golf clubs and your bag covered with plaid of the Lacedaemonian clan; and what have you been doing? Playing golf? SYMP. Foolish Interrogation No. 268. Deem you I have been shaving my beard with these implements? No, Sympademus, I do not. If I desire to know whither yonder trireme is bound, would I, do you believe, ask one of the oarsmen? I think you would. And if I craved the knowledge as to who won a game of baseball, would I not, if I had not seen the game, ask one 102 Overset who I thought had observed it? It is highly conceivable. Well, then, as I am desirous to know whether you have been playing golf, I put the question to you. And you, your reverence disintegrated by the comic sculpture of Goldbergias, thought to put the bee on me by your query? Indeed I did, O Socrates. Now my object in asking you was this: You have been playing golf, and not, I conjecture, for money? That is, you have not received money because of your prowess at the drive or your del icacy at the putt? Assuredly not. What is your profession, Sympade- mus? I am an insurance solicitor. Do you solicit policies on the lives of men you know, or on those of men you do not know? On those of men I know, and it is difficult enough for me to see those men ; the men I do not know tear up my very card when it is sent in to them. 103 Overset And did you ever write a policy on the life of a man you played golf with? But yesterday, Socrates, I wrote Apol- lodorus a 5,000 drachma 20-year endow ment, with annual dividends. The best policy, by Zeus, in all Hellas! Then you are a professional, Sympade- mus. Nay, I am an amateur, for I do not make any money selling golf supplies or giving instruction in the game. But if you sold a golf club, what would your profit be in that? Oh, perhaps an eikosipentarion or two. And your commission on a 5,000 drachma policy? That would be about 100 drachmas, not counting the renewals. But if you sold the golf club you would be a professional, whereas if you sold the policy to a friend you had made by playing golf, you would be an amateur? That is the notion, O Socrates. Now suppose I were a player of tennis, and I had a store of balls and rackets, 104 Overset and Willie Tilden bought a racket from me, what profit would I make? You would make one drachma, but you would be a professional. And if I were an insurance solicitor, and a good player of tennis, too, and I were in the final set with Willie Tilden, and there was a point I might get, might I not say to Willie, Will, if you give me a 50,000 drachma policy, I ll flub the ball into the net? Indeed you might, Socrates, and not do it in such a bold, obvious manner, either. But if I did that I should remain an amateur? Oh, indissolubly. Well, then, Sympademus, it seems to me there is a vast amount of hypocrisy about the ethics of sport and the sport of ethics. A sport, I hold, is as clean as the men who play it; and a man cannot be prevented, by rules, from making money out of his skill. Does not this talk about professionalism overcome you with lassitude? 105 Overset In addition to the weariness, Socrates, it gives me a shooting pain, localized and acute. Then, Sympademus, we are in accord. And now I will shoot you 18 holes, and if I win you may write me a 2,500 drachma policy, payable to Xanthippe. PROBABLY the esteemed medical pro- fesh feels the same way about the sur geon who removed his own appendix as the barbers do toward their patients when they say, with just enough contemp- tuousness, "Shave yourself, don t you?" GUILTIER than the feeling that comes when the barber says, "I see you shave yourself" is the sensation that brings the blush when the automobile repair man observes, "You drive this car yourself, don t you?" DIFFIDENCE was under discussion, One man confessed that it always makes him feel self-conscious and fearful that the elevator man will hit him, when he 1 06 Overset calls his floor. "Six, please," he whis pers, and if the elevator passes the floor he doesn t get out until it stops at some other floor, and then he walks back to the sixth. Another man said that his first night in a newspaper office he wanted a copy boy and he didn t dare shout "Copy!" lest everybody in the office would stop working. "I needn t have worried," he added. "I know now that nobody in a newspaper office pays any attention to that loud appeal not even the copy boys/ CHARLIE CASE is dead, and why he was not well enough known to have received more than the briefest of obituaries is among the things we do not understand. Case had been monologuing in vaudeville for perhaps twenty-five years; and his monologue was always, to us, funny and usually fresh. The last time we heard him was at Hammerstein s, and one of his stories was to the effect that he was a continuous sufferer from the injustice of typographical errors. "They always 107 Overset spell my name wrong," he complained. "Listen to this from the Chicago Trib une: The audience at the Palace The ater was convulsed with laughter at the greatest comedian of modern time. Chicago will always have a warm wel come for Walter C. Kelly/ " Case s songs were the best of his offer ings. Our favorite was: There was once a poor young man who was leaving his country home, And going to New York to look for work. He promised his old mother that he d shun all evil companions And never take a drink in all his life. When he got to New York he accepted a position in a quarry, And while there he made the acquaintance of some college students. He little thought that they were demons, for they wore the best of clothes, But clothes do not always make the gentle man. One night he met the fiends and they invited him to drink, But he thought of his promise and said "No." But they laughed and they jeered and they said he was a coward, Until finally he drank a glass of lager beer. 1 08 Overset When he saw what he had done he dashed the glass to the floor, And staggered to the door with delirium tremens, And while crazed with the liquor he met a Salvation Army lass, And savagely he broke her tambourine. All she said was "Heaven bless you," as she placed a mark upon his brow, With a kick she had learned before she had been saved. So, kind friends, take my advice and shun the fatal glass of beer, And don t go around breaking people s tam bourines. Tm awful popular," Case would say. "Here s a nice notice I got the other day: Charlie Case, the well-known com edian, is back in New York again, and we hope he remains for a long time/ . . . That s from the Pittsburgh Press." THE Reverend Bouck White was "dis* respectful" to the national emblem, and he got into trouble. But this is a broad land, as lands, from coast to coast, go. Miss Kay Laurell, for instance, who used the s. s. banner as her investiture 109 Overset in "The Follies of 1917," got nothing but applause; and Mr. James Buchanan Brady recently made the front page with the Atlantic City story that his newest bauble was an American flag of dia monds, rubies, and sapphires, costing $3,500. There are those who say that men like the Reverend Bouck White are in the altruistic game for the money they get out of it. Some of them are, perhaps, just as some capitalists are in the money- making game for the fun of it; but the Reverend Bouck White s income last year was about $450. And Upton Sin clair, in "The Price I Paid," in a recent Pearson s, says that for all the money he was accused of making out of socialism, he is down to a couple of 1912 suits of clothes, $10, and a little old last year s bicycle. A LINE in our otherwise neglected note book reads "Interchange. Sim."; and thirty-five minutes of attempting to re call the significance of the shorthand has no Overset resulted in remembering that it was jotted to remind us to write a brochure entitled "On the Interchangeability of Similes." Well, the idea is this : You see a field thinly covered with snow. Blades of grass stick up above the snow. What it suggests to you if your reactions are like ours is a beard protruding through a coast of shaving lather. That picture, in prose or poetry, is essentially comic and irreverent. But when you are shav ing and it occurs to you that your beard, showing through the lather, is like the grass peeping through the snow, you have dignified a commonplace thing; and made poetry, of a sort, out of prose. You are smoking in a quiet room. The smoke looks like the impalpable clouds trembling over the summit of a moun tain. You are gazing at the clouds over Long s Peak, say, and they remind you of the smoke of a genuine seed-havana cigar. . . . You see a beautiful young woman, and her neck and shoulders are of a milky whiteness; remove the cap Overset from a bottle of Grade A milk, and say you are reminded of Miss Justine John son s neck. . . . And so on, as we pre tenders say, trying to give the impres sion that if we only had space, we might put over a whale of an idea, when the truth is that we have even diluted the little one we had. Now that the history textbooks are under scrutiny, how, we rise in the name of the American Federation of Labor to inquire, about the Elementary Arithme tics? "If a man can do a piece of work in three days" What sort of capitalistic stuff is this for children to absorb? "If four union men, working seven hours a day, can do a piece of work in one day" is the way it should begin. And in the schools attended by laborers 7 children the problem should read, "How much, at $4 an hour, will they make?" And in the capitalists kids school it should end, "Why does it take the fellow three days to do it?" And it is time to investigate the teach- 1 12 Overset ing of Latin. Heedless were we of wo man until, for instance, we came to Sec. 18, Lesson I, Collar and Daniell s "First Latin Book/ It began, "Translate into Latin: 1. Where is the little girl? 2. Where are the little girls? 3. Are the girls small?" And Freud only knows what influence those searching queries had on a young and plastic mind. And how can we who were thrall to the vinous Latinity of "Collar and Dan- iell" ever revere, as we ought to, the Eighteenth Amendment when this is burned on the waxen tablets of adoles cent memory? "A girl gives a sailor some wine and water. The wine she carries in a pretty cup. He praises the pretty cup and the wine. The water he does not care for." Translate into Latin indeed! A lot of us translated it into life. IN MR. KEITH PRESTON S "Splinters" occurs his line to Miss Gather, "Singing Willa, git Willa! git Willa!" and all yesterday it zoomed through our head. And it occurred to us that a music critic, 113 Overset wearied of "Rigoletto" and "II Trova- tore," might sing: "Is it weakness of in tellect, Verdi? I cried"; but that was as far as we could go with it. "BRAINS, manufacturing ability, ad vertising judgment, and sales intelli gence there" Collier s Weekly is pointing "is the programme for Com petitive Nineteen Twenty-two. And if you like, you may tie them all together with that salutary dagger of words of Thoreau, who said: It is not enough to be busy. What are you busy about ? " It is not enough to be busy about to say that when we want to tie things to gether, one of the things we use least frequently is a dagger. But would the thing that Thoreau was busy about en dear him to, for example, the writer of that "For a Competitive Year" editor ial? What is Thoreau s message, as we of the Planet Boosters (Motto: "A Big ger Solar System for Next Year") say to the Walden Rotary Club? 114 Overset Now, Thoreau was a pencil maker. Did he concentrate on pencil-making? No. He kept diaries and wrote poetry. What sort of March to the Goal of Am bition is that? And what would the advertisers say if a magazine quoted a better known statement of Thoreau s? If we were an advertiser, we d cancel our contract with any magazine that re printed Thoreau s "Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only indispensable but pos itive hindrances to the elevation of man kind?" AT THE savings bank hangs a picture of a bread line and a line at the teller s window. "On which line will you be at 60?" it asks. The likelihood is that we shall be at the teller s window, with drawing enough to pay an income-tax instalment. And it is a more depress ing thought than the speculation upon being in the bread line at 60. Those who at 60 still are concerned with savings-bank deposits, are, it seems "5 Overset to us, the cautious and the fearful. Life has beaten the breadliners; but the sav ings-bank liners probably never even qualified to enter the fight. She Invite Him Into the House?" asks the advertisement for the "Book of Etiquette"; and explains the illustration thus: "They have just re turned from a dance. It is rather late, but the folks are still up. Should she invite him into the hourse or say good night to him at the door? Should he ask permission to go into the house with her? Should she ask him to call at some other time?" One answer crowds upon an other s heels, so fast they follow. First, we d never take seriously the law of eti quette laid down by anybody who, speaking of the not-yet-retired parents, says, "the folks are still up." What sort of girl has "folks"? Dear, dear! not to say Fie, fie! Second, if it s the kind of dance now current, the folks wouldn t still be up; they d be up already. And as to what she should do, no book ever 116 Overset published can help her. The questions are all local issues, depending on her and him. Our solution is that she ought to ask him in to breakfast. MAYBE the Stage is bad, and maybe the Church is good; and maybe the truth is somewhere between. We have seen dozens of poor shows and heard dozens of good sermons; but we usually feel re gret when the curtain falls on the last act, and relief when the benediction comes. "WILL some bright young man in your assemblage," asks F. A. S. Jr., "explain why Felix Fay and this here guy of The Blood of the Conquerors and all the gentlemen and ladies of the other books that meet with popular approval can carry on their affairs to our wildest ap plause; but Charles Garland (who is more Felix than Fay himself) is entered in the headlines as a nut, is greeted with a storm of hisses and held up everywhere to the scorn of a justly just populace?" First, because the craving for romance 117 Overset is universal; and if people, through cowardice or a color-blindness that causes them not to recognize romance when they see it, don t get it, they ll take it, through books or plays, vicar iously. Second, young Mr. Garland isn t condemned by everyone as a nut; for all we know, he may be the only right- thinking man in the world. Of course, a dead man or a character in fiction is allowed a lot of but that provokes a fraction of an idea. This is it : Shelley neglected his Harriet; Byron, they say, was a sinner. But, honestly, I m like a worker in crime If I got home late to dinner. Burns was a bear with a beaker; Poe raised particular hob. Let me but sin with a jigger of gin, Zippity zip! goes my job. Socrates had a Xanthippe; Wagner had words with his wife. I never joke at the conjugal yoke. . . . Gosh, it s a Puritan life! "FOUR-FIFTHS of the difficulties in the world," said Mr. Lloyd George, "come 118 Overset from suspicions." We didn t read that until yesterday morning, but we devoted the whole day to investigating the figures and found them almost correct. Eighty- one and two-tenths per cent, of the difficulties in the world come from sus picions. And ninety-seven per cent, of those suspicions are not baseless. It has been this Turret s contention that most of the world s woes might be avoided or at any rate alleviated by scrapping the suspicion that somebody, or everybody, is trying to put something over on you. Most persons would rather be overpaid than underpaid; and it is the fear of underpayment, of making a bad bargain in money, love, art that keeps up the supply of unprogress. And not so much the fear of being underpaid, perhaps, as the fear of having the fact of underpayment known. THE END 119 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. REC D LD AUG9 1963 LD 21-100m-9, 48(B399sl6)476 984698 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY