IIP
 
 I've Been Thinking
 
 CAUT.
 
 Been Thinking 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JAMES POTT fcf COMPANY 
 
 1905
 
 Copyright, ipos, by 
 JAMES POTT & COMPANY 
 
 FOST Ixr*ESioN, SEPTEMBER, 1905
 
 TO MY BOYHOOD FRIEND
 
 Cynthia, Cynthia, I've Been Thinking"
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I WANTED a book that I could pick up if I 
 had five minutes to wait before she came 
 down stairs, or before the doctor called me into 
 his office, or that I could slip into my pocket to 
 read while on my way to pay that long postponed 
 visit to my suburban friend. 
 
 There were lots of stories but they were too 
 long. Just as I got to the exciting part she 
 would come down, or the doctor would say 
 "Step this way, please," or the conductor would 
 say "Hopeless. All out." 
 
 You see I didn't want the book to have any 
 settled line of talk in it at all. I wished it to 
 treat of the destruction of moths, the barbarity 
 of war, the training of children, the fascination 
 of automobiling, the sins of millionaires, the 
 virtues of beggars, the lure of the country and 
 the lures of the city.
 
 viii P r e f a c e 
 
 I didn't want it to take any topic too seriously, 
 and I didn't want to feel that because I laughed 
 at the first sketch I would have to laugh at the 
 second. I wanted it hit or miss all the way 
 through. 
 
 Not finding such a miscellaneous book in 
 any of the book stores I set to work to write one 
 myself, and now when I feel the need of advice 
 I take this book down and get many useful 
 hints about the care of children, millionaires, 
 servants, and moths. It's somewhat like lifting 
 one's self by one's boot straps (an unusually 
 impossible thing these days since boots have 
 gone out), but I don't have to take my own 
 advice, and I would advise you not to take it 
 either if it occasions the least inconvenience. 
 
 If you are a husband you will find many 
 cheerful hits at your wife. If you are a wife 
 you will find that I have polished off your 
 husband. If you are a money grabber or a 
 money grubber (variations of the same vile
 
 Preface ix 
 
 animal) you may enjoy the hits at spendthrifts, 
 and if you are a generous liver you may find to 
 your liking my shots at misers. 
 
 I have not scrupled to hit myself and these 
 stabs have cut deep, but I fear they will do me 
 no permanent good. You may not be benefited 
 either, but if the book does fill in that gap I 
 spoke of that comes before you hear the rustle 
 of her adorable skirts on the stairs, or if it 
 prevents your thinking of the doctor's call, or if 
 it enables you to bear up under your suburban 
 visit, I'll be more than satisfied. 
 
 CHAELES BATTELL Looms
 
 I've Been Thinking 
 
 r 
 
 THE other day I had been going on at a 
 pretty rapid rate, denouncing the ill-gotten 
 money of the American " robber barons," saying 
 that I would rather die poor but honest than be 
 as rich as I can't think of his name, but he 
 is respected by the unthinking everywhere. 
 
 Suddenly a man who is known from end to 
 end of the world came up to me yes, to me, 
 and asked me, how I was getting along. 
 
 Why, I almost gasped for breath. He is 
 worth millions, and I wondered how he could 
 have heard of me, who owe the dollar and a 
 quarter that I call my own. 
 
 Now, if ever anybody made his money sin-
 
 2 I've Been Thinking 
 
 fully he did. He stands high up among the 
 Standard Oil men and I yield to no one in 
 contempt for his methods, although I will admit 
 that his manners are perfect and he certainly 
 seems to know people outside of his world. 
 
 He congratulated me on a story of mine that 
 he had read. It was one satirizing plutocrats, 
 but he had missed the satire and had taken it 
 as a compliment. 
 
 Said he, "I wish to help people in all the 
 arts. I wish to seek out artists and give them 
 rolls of money. I want to find struggling musi- 
 cians and help them to an education. And I 
 particularly want to give you a house and lot 
 and some shares of railroad stock that will yield 
 you an income of ten thousand dollars a year." 
 
 Well, you may imagine I did not know what 
 to do. However the man may have come by 
 his money, he was certainly moved by kindly 
 feelings in wishing to share with me. 
 
 I hesitated and hemmed and hawed and
 
 I've Been Thinking 3 
 
 thought of my family and of the good uses to 
 which I might put the money. 
 
 And then I remembered that my ancestors 
 were Puritans, and that not one of them in all 
 the nine generations ever told a lie or did 
 anything wrong in any way whatsoever, and I 
 took a long breath and said, "Thy money perish 
 with thee. I'll have none of it." 
 
 And then I woke up. 
 
 WHAT would we have thought of that 
 mother who thirty or even fifteen years 
 ago allowed her children to play tag and spin 
 tops on the railroad track of a trunk line ? We 
 would have called her lacking in common sense. 
 But the world moves, and although mothers 
 still object to their children playing tag and 
 spinning tops on railroad tracks, steam cars 
 are now allowed on our highways and byways, 
 and whereas the railroad train runs on a sched-
 
 4 I've Been Thinking 
 
 ule, the modern steam car and its brothers the 
 electric car and the gasoline motor run at full 
 speed under no schedule, and they run where 
 children most do congregate. 
 
 And so used do we become to dangers that 
 we mothers I speak as a man sit at our 
 bedroom windows and calmly continue our 
 sewing as we watch Willy elude a machine run- 
 ning at twenty miles an hour, and Jenny calmly 
 step aside to allow the passage of a road-de- 
 vouring monster, painted red and "chugging" 
 in a manner unknown to our fathers, who did 
 not even know what "chugging" was. 
 
 Now, when air-ships are common and they 
 begin to fall from the sky, as they most cer- 
 tainly will in the hands of inexperienced aero- 
 nauts, the careful mother will at first make her 
 children play in the house or in some protected 
 playground, but after awhile she will realize 
 that this world is meant to be lived in, danger 
 or no danger, and she will merely say: " Willy,
 
 I've Been Thinking 5 
 
 if you hear a strange noise overhead look up and 
 dodge or I can't let you play out of doors." 
 
 And in learning to dodge a falling airship 
 and at the same time keep out of the path of a 
 hurtling motor-car, the children of the future 
 will get to be so nimble that the race as a whole 
 will be improved. It will be a fast race, in fact. 
 
 Which shows that everything is for the best. 
 
 IN the fiftieth year of the life of Jabez Holtite, 
 the multi-millionaire, the thought came to 
 him that it might be good for his soul if he gave 
 away in charity some of the money that he had 
 reached out and picked up right and left since 
 his "pickers and stealers" had been strong 
 enough to clutch. 
 
 Jabez had never troubled churches by his 
 presence and he did not know that there is an 
 injunction that you let not your left hand know 
 what your right hand doeth.
 
 6 I've Been Thinking 
 
 And yet in acquiring his wealth it must be 
 said that he had unwittingly carried out the 
 spirit of that precept, for many of the doings of 
 his right hand were of so questionable a nature 
 that he had kept his left hand in darkness for 
 very shame. But (to speak fair) if the right 
 hand had known of some of the deeds of the 
 left hand it would have blushed. Oh, they 
 were a good pair of hands, those hands of the 
 multi-millionaire ! Ever faithful to his material 
 interests had they been, but now he was afraid 
 that his chance of heaven would be meager if 
 they did not together act as almoners of course, 
 with a proper "barker" before them to trumpet 
 forth their good deeds to an admiring world. 
 
 So Jabez Holtite sent for a reporter and said 
 to him: "What is the best way to let the 
 world know that I am not merely an acquirer 
 of wealth, but that all my money-getting has 
 had but one object, the final giving away of all 
 my goods to the poor?"
 
 I've Been Thinking 7 
 
 The reporter said, "You might advertise 
 on our financial page to this effect: 'Jabez 
 Holtite, millionaire, wishes to divide his wealth 
 among the really deserving. Address him at 
 the Post-office, naming amount desired and 
 giving your oath to requite him by spreading 
 abroad the good report of his generosity.'" 
 
 Jabez looked troubled. "I am afraid that 
 would be too widespread in its effect," said he. 
 "I expect to live many years, and did not intend 
 to give you the impression that I wished to 
 divest myself of my means as a man divests 
 himself of his shirt at once. I thought I 
 would be willing to give something like a thou- 
 sand dollars to some well-known institution, 
 and I am willing perfectly willing to talk 
 about it to the extent of a column in your paper." 
 
 The reporter grew an inch. "Mr. Holtite," 
 said he, "if you are actually going to give a 
 thousand dollars to any sort of charitable insti- 
 tution, or even to a college, and will promise to
 
 8 I've Been Thinking 
 
 let no other newspaper hear of it before we 
 have a chance to give it publicity, we will be 
 glad to devote our whole first page to it because 
 it will be in the nature of absolutely startling 
 news. You have never given a cent to any one 
 in your life, as I understand it?" 
 
 "Never, unless I was sure that I would get 
 two cents in return," said Jabez, with a proud 
 smile. 
 
 "Then I suggest that you give your money 
 to some institution that is already heavily en- 
 dowed and that will thus be worthy of your 
 unexampled generosity." And the reporter 
 named such an institution. 
 
 Then he took down in great detail all the 
 facts in the life of Jabez as seen by the million- 
 aire himself, getting thereby a picture of the 
 man that no one else in the wide world would 
 have painted, and worth at least six columns to 
 the reporter, who had it all for the mere taking 
 it down in shorthand.
 
 I've Been Thinking 9 
 
 The reporter was of a grateful disposition 
 and, knowing that this interview would spell 
 success for him, he wished to make a return to 
 Jabez, and being not only grateful but also 
 waggish, the form of his return was as follows : 
 
 "Mr. Holtite," said he, "charity is charity, 
 and a good deed much blown about penetrates 
 to remote places and is put to the credit of the 
 doer of the deed; but if the good deed can be 
 made to bear immediate fruit, if your bread 
 comes back on the return wave, so to speak, 
 you will probably stand for a long time on the 
 beach chucking loaves into the sea." 
 
 "Go on," said Jabez; "I am listening." 
 
 "My idea is," said the reporter, "and I hope 
 you will take my frankness in the proper spirit, 
 that the public would as soon believe that 
 Roosevelt was a figure-head, or that William of 
 Germany was a puppet, as that you, Jabez 
 Holtite, would actually give away money, and 
 I think there are thousands in this great city
 
 io I've Been Thinking 
 
 who would gladly give a dollar apiece to see 
 you in the act." 
 
 "Ah, they know I am a wonder as an acquis- 
 itor," said Jabez, mentally hugging himself. 
 
 "Sure," said the reporter. "Now why not 
 hire Madison Square Garden, erect a platform 
 in the middle of the arena and give away a 
 thousand dollars every hour on the stroke of 
 the clock ? You might also give them a fifteen- 
 minute talk on how to become a millionaire on a 
 capital of two cents and an atrophied conscience. 
 You catch my point?" 
 
 ' ' Why, certainly, ' ' said Jabez. ' ' Young man, 
 you have a brilliant future." 
 
 The whole world knows the result. Madison 
 Square Garden was crowded every hour at a 
 dollar a head. 
 
 And every hour, at the stroke of the clock, 
 Jabez Holtite gave to well-known and influential 
 institutions a thousand dollars and a fifteen- 
 minute talk worth a thousand more to persons
 
 I've Been Thinking n 
 
 with the proper consciences, and he felt that it 
 was well worth giving when the gate receipts 
 were so large. 
 
 He came to think that it would have been 
 better for him if he had begun to give sooner in 
 life, and his mouth grew less hard solely from 
 the human feelings that surged up in his heart 
 every time he handed out a check for a thousand 
 dollars and realized that the Garden was packed 
 at a dollar per. 
 
 At the end of the week he had given away 
 $50,000 and had taken in $500,000, and then, 
 to show that his regeneration was genuine, he 
 hired the Garden for another week and doubled 
 the price of admission, doubling also his gift. 
 
 And to show that he was no ingrate he gave 
 the reporter a season pass and allowed him to 
 interview him every day. And at times he 
 could hear his own heart beat, and then he 
 knew that he had become generous. And his 
 reputation as a cheerful giver was almost as
 
 12 I've Been Thinking 
 
 great at the end of the second week as his former 
 reputation for meanness. 
 It all depends upon the way it's done. 
 
 IF you do not care to wreck your bark on the 
 breakers of divorce, see to it that Love stands 
 at the tiller when you go aboard. 
 
 "Love suffereth long and is kind." A very 
 pleasant fellow to have at the helm, you must 
 admit. 
 
 When you go down to the pier at which the 
 little boat is moored, you and she, be sure to it 
 that Love, the dear little fellow, is standing 
 somewhere near, and then do you call him up 
 and say, "I entrust my bark to your keeping. 
 We want to sail as long as the boat lasts and 
 we want you to guide us among pleasant places. 
 If storms come up we do not wish to evade 
 them, only see to it that we weather all gales ;
 
 I've Been Thinking 13 
 
 and whatever you do, see to it that we do not 
 strike on the rock of divorce." 
 
 And Love will shake his curly head and say 
 with a merry laugh: 
 
 "I have acted as helmsman to many a couple, 
 but never yet have I struck on the rock of 
 divorce. Now, over there is a well dressed 
 sailor named Gold. His boat is bigger than 
 this and is furnished better, but if I do say it, 
 he cannot mind helm as well as I, for many and 
 many a couple has he spilled out on either side 
 of the rock of divorce. Are you ready, sir? 
 Shall I cast off? 
 
 "Cast off, my hearty," say you. "We are 
 in for a long and perhaps an ad venturous voyage, 
 but with you and with her on board I'll be 
 bound it will be a happy one." 
 
 All of which is a pretty little allegory and I 
 made it up out of my own little head. 
 
 And it's true, every word of it.
 
 14 I've Been Thinking 
 
 "T ENCLOSE an interesting clipping that will 
 A appeal especially to you. Let me know 
 what you think of it." 
 
 And then she doesn't enclose it and the 
 recipient of her letter vainly hunts for it. 
 
 The non-enclosing habit follows the postal 
 route all over the world. 
 
 It can be carried to maddening extremes, as 
 when the young man who is stranded in the 
 West receives a loving letter from his mother, in 
 which, after telling him all the little inconse- 
 quences of his native village, she says, "I did 
 not know what to get you for your birthday and 
 so enclose a five-dollar bill." 
 
 Imagine the feelings of the poor tenderfoot, 
 down to his last cent, when he finds that she 
 has forgotten the enclosure. If only she had 
 forgotten the village gossip and remembered the 
 thing that would have made that particular 
 letter memorable.
 
 I've Been Thinking 15 
 
 In the same class as the non-enclosers are 
 those who say, "Of course, George will have 
 written you about the mysterious happenings in 
 the house of Cynthia Alendale. How do you 
 account for them?" 
 
 It is more than likely that if George has 
 written at all he will have said, "I suppose that 
 Emma has told you all about the blood-curdling 
 affair at Cynthia Alendale 's so I will not waste 
 your time by telling you about it. But wasn't 
 it awful? What are we coming to?" 
 
 If only George and Emma had assumed that 
 the other had not told a single thing about the 
 interesting affair! Here and there are people 
 who hate to receive letters, but most of us are 
 human (Heaven be praised!) and so in writing 
 put in all the human touches you can think of, 
 and don't assume that "the other fellow" has 
 written all the interesting news because you 
 may depend upon it he hasn't. 
 
 And remember to put in the enclosure
 
 1 6 I've Been Thinking 
 
 even if you forget to post the letter contain- 
 ing it. 
 
 I KNOW it is none of my business, but are 
 you going to let Jane grow up with that 
 unpleasant voice? 
 
 Haven't you read the praise of Southern 
 women's voices to some advantage ? 
 
 I don't suppose that Jane's speaking voice 
 could ever be made really melodious, although, 
 strange to say, her singing voice is not at all 
 unpleasant. 
 
 But you could eliminate that strident quality. 
 
 The other day I was sitting in the seaward 
 end of a ferryboat when Jane came in from the 
 slip. The boat was full and every one was 
 talking, but Jane's voice rose above all the others 
 and almost every one looked up. 
 
 I'll venture to say that most of them were 
 reminded of a beautiful macaw.
 
 I've Been Thinking 17 
 
 For there is no denying that Jane is a hand- 
 some girl. 
 
 And she's a bright girl and she says bright 
 things, but they are all screeched at you. 
 
 If Jane marries let her pick out a phlegmatic 
 man, unless she uses a file on that voice. It 
 would be cruelty to animals to let her marry a 
 sensitive soul, say a painter or a writer, because 
 to be shut up in the same cage day after day 
 with the most beautiful macaw imaginable 
 would be to have one's nerves de-insulated. 
 
 She may be disobedient and outgrow it; she 
 may be disrespectful and outgrow it. 
 
 But if your daughter has an unpleasant voice 
 she won't outgrow it unless you keep at her all 
 the time. 
 
 HAVE you ever heard about that business 
 man who in advertising his particular 
 brand of breakfast fodder increased the circula-
 
 1 8 I've Been Thinking 
 
 tion of the paper in which he advertised a 
 hundred -fold ? 
 
 Well, it was this way. His name was Wise, 
 and he had unlimited money to spend. He had 
 formerly owned a sawmill and he naturally 
 had a large quantity of sawdust on hand. It 
 struck him that if he could buy a low-priced 
 molasses, and could make an amalgam of 
 molasses and sawdust and advertise it as the 
 only nutritious food, good alike for brain, 
 brawn, cuticle, and hair, he could make a fortune 
 in a month or two. 
 
 So he called in an advertising man, and put 
 him on a princely salary at once, and said: 
 
 "Go ahead. Advertise Sord Ust in any 
 way you like, as long as you get the people's 
 attention." 
 
 Now, the advertising man was a genius and 
 he said to himself: "If I advertise this thing 
 a little in every paper people will only think a 
 little of it, but if I bend all my energies on one
 
 I've Been Thinking 19 
 
 paper, and that a very important one, and 
 advertise it there uniquely for a month or so, 
 the very oddity of the thing will attract atten- 
 tion." ' 
 
 So he went to the office of the Daily Howler 
 and said : 
 
 "I want to buy every page in your paper for 
 advertising purposes." 
 
 And the business manager told him it couldn't 
 be done. 
 
 So the advertising man showed him what a 
 large check he could write, and then the business 
 manager said it was possible, and the next day 
 Mr. Man had every page in the Daily Howler. 
 There was not a murder, not a bit of editorial 
 speculation, not a thing of any sort in the paper, 
 except the name and the date and the subscrip- 
 tion price. 
 
 And of course there was no advertisement. 
 And that piqued curiosity. 
 
 Well, this thing happened next day and the
 
 20 I've Been Thinking 
 
 next, and then on the editorial page was printed 
 in very small letters, 
 
 TRY SORD UST 
 
 Now you may well believe that subscribers 
 began to rush in, for here was a paper that 
 could be introduced into the most bigoted home 
 in the land. There were no tiresome politics 
 in it; no dreadful murders; nothing but Sord Ust. 
 
 Every one said it was the cleanest paper that 
 had ever been issued, and more and more people 
 subscribed to it. It got to be quite a fad. To 
 be sure, the subscribers did not know what was 
 going on in the world except by hearsay, but 
 they had that much more time for other things, 
 and they were, consequently, far happier, and, 
 reading about no murders or steamship trusts 
 or Presidential possibilities, they finally came 
 to the conclusion that the millennium was at 
 hand. 
 
 But, of course, the thing that made the most
 
 I've Been Thinking 21 
 
 impression on them was this Sord Ust. They 
 began to inquire for it in the stores and they 
 found that no one kept it. No one had ever 
 heard of it. It was impossible to buy a box of 
 it anywhere because the clever advertising man 
 had given orders to his employer to refuse to 
 sell it for at least six months. 
 
 People did not even know whether it was a 
 new kind of soap, or a breakfast food, or the 
 latest thing in stove polish. 
 
 What was the result ? Why, people were mad 
 to get it. They would have it. The very idea 
 that in a free country they were not allowed to 
 buy anything they wanted! Was this Maine 
 with a prohibitive law on something the people 
 really wanted? 
 
 And all this time the editor of the Daily 
 Howler kept on increasing his edition, and all 
 the time Mr. Wise went on buying sawdust and 
 cheap molasses until he had a whole county in 
 Northern New York heaped high with it and
 
 22 I've Been Thinking 
 
 five large mills hard at work compressing it 
 into cakes. 
 
 And at last, seemingly on account of the 
 pressure of public opinion, but really because 
 the advertising man said it was high time, Mr. 
 Wise put an advertisement on the first page of 
 the Daily Howler to the effect that Sord Ust 
 was a breakfast food, and that all you need do 
 to it was to pour a little hot milk on it; and if 
 your grocer wouldn't get it for you change your 
 grocer at once! 
 
 Was it a success? 
 
 Well, I guess. 
 
 Why, they had one long freight train stretch- 
 ing from the mills to New York, moving all the 
 time on a special track, and as fast as a car was 
 unloaded at the Manhattan end a car was filled 
 at the other end. 
 
 Motive power? Electricity, of course. 
 
 And the man became a millionaire ten times 
 over before the year was up and before the
 
 I've Been Thinking 23 
 
 Sord Ust had kicked up any racket in the insides 
 of the populace. 
 
 And now the advertising man began to adver- 
 tise in all the papers, and the Daily Howler 
 came before its millions of subscribers with 
 murders and editorials once more, and they, 
 after their long fast, were only too glad to learn 
 that the world was not as good as they had 
 suspected, and the Daily Howler was a bigger 
 success than ever. 
 
 But the editor had got the tip, and he didn't 
 use Sord Ust on his home menu. 
 
 And he's alive yet. 
 
 ARE you socially your husband's inferior or 
 his superior? 
 
 If you are his inferior he is probably too 
 much of a gentleman to have told you so, but 
 if you are his superior I am very much afraid 
 that you have let him know it.
 
 24 I've Been Thinking 
 
 But if you are and if you have, don't let it 
 rest at that. Try by all the means in your 
 power to lift him up to your social level. If 
 your table manners are better than his; if you 
 cannot eat a dinner without the use of from 
 two to three forks, while he is prone to get along 
 without any, try to educate him. If he won't 
 use three compromise on one. That will be a 
 beginning. 
 
 It will be a great pity if you let him drag 
 you down to his level. It is always a pity when 
 a man or a woman coasts from birth instead of 
 climbing from birth. Let your motto be, "Ever 
 upward." Don't you want to be superior 
 socially to anyone on earth? How can you 
 become so if you do not climb and drag your 
 husband along too? 
 
 Lift him up and teach your children to be a 
 little better than either of you. This will not 
 be hard, as they already feel they are that 
 is, if they are good Americans. If they are
 
 I've Been Thinking 25 
 
 Chinese they are becomingly humble and think 
 that the sun rises and sets in you and your 
 husband. But it is safe to say that your children 
 are not Chinese. They want to move on a 
 higher social plane than you moved, and on a 
 much higher plane than their father moves. 
 
 And when they have reached what they have 
 striven for, just use them to pull you and your 
 husband up and the end of your family will be 
 some Blue Book. 
 
 It's a great ambition. 
 
 I THINK it was Zangwill who said that, like 
 a poet, a gentleman was born, not made. 
 The same aphorism can be applied to the oppo- 
 site sex. A true lady is born, not made. 
 
 Being born a lady she can be improved by 
 education and by refining influences, but she 
 will not suddenly begin to be a lady, she will 
 always have been one ; while if she was not born
 
 26 I've Been Thinking 
 
 a lady no amount of education or refinement or 
 stimulating environment will make her a true 
 lady. 
 
 She may educate herself to become a very 
 passable imitation of a lady by cultivating her 
 sense of her obligations to her brothers and 
 sisters in this world. 
 
 She may act the part so often and so well that 
 after a time she will convince people that she 
 is a lady ; but if she only takes the trouble to be 
 born one, if she will only choose for her ancestors 
 kindly, unselfish people, she will be apt to start 
 her life with the chief requisites, and then, no 
 matter what her education may or may not be, 
 her heart will every day incline her to ladylike 
 actions and people will say when she dies, "She 
 was a true woman if ever there was one." 
 
 And to be a true woman is to be the best 
 possible kind of lady.
 
 I've Been Thinking 27 
 
 I HEARD a beautiful story the other day 
 about an afflicted father, a loving daughter, 
 and a piano. 
 
 It seems that the father had long wished his 
 daughter to become a proficient performer on 
 the piano, and the daughter, distrusting her 
 own capabilities, had made up her mind that 
 she could never play well enough to make her 
 devotion of hours and hours of practise worth 
 while. 
 
 Suddenly, and almost without warning, her 
 father was stricken with blindness, and then the 
 daughter, taking a leaf out of Dickens, deter- 
 mined to play Dot to his Caleb, and with that 
 in view she bought a piano player on the instal- 
 ment plan. 
 
 Her father had been away for some weeks 
 when the automatic player came to the house, 
 and upon his return she said to him: "Father, 
 dear, would you like to hear some music?"
 
 28 I've Been Thinking 
 
 And her father said, "I would indeed, 
 daughter, if you can play some for me. I 
 want to see if you have improved during my 
 absence." 
 
 So the old gentleman sat himself down on 
 the sofa and turned his ear toward the piano, 
 and the daughter put a Hungarian Rhapsody 
 by Liszt in its place and started the mechanism. 
 
 When she came to an end her father called 
 her to him and kissed her upon her forehead 
 and patted her cheek and said: "What a dear 
 little thing it is and how much it loves to please 
 its papa. Paderewski might interpret it differ- 
 ently but he could not play it any faster." 
 
 And while the daughter's pride and her con- 
 science were having it out between them, her 
 father said: "Daughter, I too have a surprise." 
 
 He turned toward her and continued. "While 
 in New York I visited an oculist and I can now 
 see as well as I ever could. How much do you 
 have to pay a month for the thing?"
 
 I've Been Thinking 29 
 
 HE was a coward. No man save himself 
 knew it for he had been fortunate 
 enough to keep the knowledge of it from others. 
 But he knew that he was a coward. 
 
 He admired bravery in other men. He read 
 tales of heroes with keen pleasure and he wished 
 that the gods had given him the quality of cour- 
 age. But he was nevertheless a coward. 
 
 When the Spanish war broke out he saw his 
 friends go to the front and he envied them. 
 They will do brave deeds and be admired of 
 men, thought he, but I who am a coward must 
 stay at home with the women. 
 
 And he loved a girl and was loved in return 
 by her. And she did not know that he was a 
 coward. But well he knew that he was. 
 
 And as the weeks went by and much fighting 
 had been done and yet he had not offered up 
 his manhood for the cause his sweetheart grew 
 impatient and asked him what kept him at
 
 30 I've Been Thinking 
 
 home. And he could not answer her. For he 
 would not admit that he was a coward save to 
 himself. 
 
 Then as she importuned him to go he weighed 
 his chances. If I go, said he, I may not see 
 actual service, but she cannot twit me with cow- 
 ardice. I will risk it for my soul's peace. 
 
 And he enlisted. And for many months 
 fortune favored him and he saw no active ser- 
 vice. But yet his knees shook daily when he 
 thought of the possibilities of the future. 
 
 And at last he was ordered into battle, and 
 because his moral cowardice outweighed his 
 physical fear and he feared ridicule more than 
 he feared danger he exposed himself to the fire 
 of the enemy. And he was unharmed, but his 
 fellows said, he is a brave man. 
 
 And his first battle was his last also, for the 
 war ended on that day and he went home. 
 And the papers and his comrades spoke of 
 his bravery, and his sweetheart accepted him
 
 I've Been Thinking 31 
 
 at his reputed valuation and they were mar- 
 ried. 
 
 But his life was embittered, for he hated hy- 
 pocrisy and in his heart of hearts he knew that 
 he was still a coward. 
 
 HAVE you a meek husband? 
 Don't bullyrag him. 
 
 Remember that even if you did omit the 
 "honor and obey" clause in the marriage service 
 you were made partners, and as he probably 
 suggested the partnership in the first place he 
 has some rights. 
 
 If you must bullyrag him be sure that you 
 do it in the quiet (or tumult) of your own home. 
 This baiting of a husband in public, while it 
 may afford food for laughter on the part of the 
 groundlings, can but make the judicious grieve. 
 
 A large woman leading around a small puppy 
 is always a ridiculous sight.
 
 32 I've Been Thinking 
 
 If you make a puppy of your husband and 
 accompany him out of evenings, remember that 
 some of the after-laughter will be expended 
 upon you. 
 
 If he is a puppy feed him well, treat him 
 kindly and perhaps he will become a jolly 
 dog. 
 
 But do not live a comic supplement life with 
 him, because the comic paper habit is so general 
 in this country and the types are so firmly 
 grounded in the minds of even the young that 
 you will be recognized at sight, and depend 
 upon it, all the sympathy will go out to the 
 (under) dog. 
 
 Perhaps you are intellectual and your husband 
 is not. Don't twit him with your college 
 education. 
 
 When you come right down to it, if he never 
 went to college, you have forgotten most of 
 what you learned there, and so you are not in 
 a position to snub him as unmercifully as you do.
 
 I've Been Thinking 33 
 
 No doubt your mind was disciplined by the 
 very things you have forgotten, but remember 
 that, "while it is excellent to have a giant's 
 strength it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." 
 Lead your husband up. Don't beat him down. 
 
 HAVE you an allowance? 
 If your husband is a salaried man he 
 ought to give you an allowance, because it is to 
 be supposed that you do your share of the work 
 that goes to the making of home and you are 
 therefore a partner in the concern. 
 
 If your husband is an artist or a musician or 
 a writer and is dependent on his skill in dis- 
 posing of his work, that is to say, if he is without 
 a regular salary, you can hardly expect him to 
 give you an allowance ; but you should make no 
 bones of asking him for what you need, because, 
 again, you are partners. 
 
 Your husband is not a little tin god on wheels.
 
 34 I've Been Thinking 
 
 His money is your money, and you may 
 depend upon it that if you were earning and 
 he was housekeeping he would cheerfully and 
 promptly ask you for money as he needed it. 
 
 I have known wives who asked as a favor 
 what was theirs by right. 
 
 Of course if you are merely the fine lady with 
 no responsibilities; if you are a member of this 
 and of that club and spend your time in writing 
 papers on the bringing up of other people's 
 children while your own are brought up with 
 a round turn (eventually), you have no right to 
 ask your husband for money. You are no 
 longer a partner in the concern. He is the 
 whole thing and he may do as he pleases with 
 his hard earned money. 
 
 Or if you are extravagant and for your sins 
 your husband has kept a tight hand on the 
 purse, I have nothing to say. It is not pleasant 
 to see money laboriously earned gaily dispersed, 
 as if the fact of spending it generated more.
 
 I've Been Thinking 35 
 
 But if you know that you are healthily 
 economical, and if your husband is doing well, 
 why, ask him this evening when he comes home. 
 Wait until he has dined (and see that the dinner 
 is a good one). Then when he is smoking his 
 cigar just tell him how you were admitted into 
 the partnership when you were married to him, 
 and that hereafter he will please see to it that 
 you have a decent allowance. 
 
 Of course you must dress up your request in 
 what diplomatic robes are at your command. 
 Don't use a "stand and deliver" attitude or he 
 may call in the constabulary. 
 
 But if he allows the allowance don't thank 
 me, rather laugh at yourself for not having had 
 spirit enough to ask it before. 
 
 It's yours by right.
 
 36 I've Been Thinking 
 
 MRS. WORTHING, Mrs. Gregory 
 Worthing, said to me the other day: 
 
 "I cannot understand why it is that so 
 many mothers think their ducks are swans. 
 Now there's Mrs. Brown, always boasting 
 about the rapid progress that her Dorothy 
 has made in music, and my Ethel who did 
 not begin until a term later plays a great deal 
 better. 
 
 "Different mothers boast of different things," 
 she went on, "but almost all but myself boast 
 about something in their children, and for my 
 part I think the children in this place are very 
 ordinary. Gregory carries himself very much 
 better than most children, because I insisted 
 upon his going in to New York to take dancing 
 lessons when he was not eight, but the average 
 boy of to-day is awfully slouchy. And yet I 
 heard Mrs. Harrison talking about her son 
 Arthur being as straight as an Indian and that
 
 I've Been Thinking 37 
 
 he got it from his father. Fancy, that under- 
 sized little John Harrison! 
 
 "And Mrs. Winslow says that Barbara sews 
 remarkably well for a girl of ten, and she is 
 always showing me the last thing she has done. 
 Why, Ethel sewed well naturally. I never 
 taught her a stitch, but she does all my towel 
 hemming now. But I never would think of 
 boasting of it. 
 
 "And the other day I happened to say that 
 Gregory had quite a correct ear, and that now 
 that his voice had changed he sang better 
 than any of the boys in the choir, and that 
 was enough for Mrs. Demock. She began, 
 and she talked and talked about the beauty 
 of Clement's voice, and said that he took after 
 her. Absolute conceit, and yet she never imag- 
 ined for a moment that I noticed it. Now, 
 with Gregory, his singing comes perfectly 
 natural, because I have always sung, and in 
 fact when I was a girl I used to be always
 
 38 I've Been Thinking 
 
 asked to sing in company, but when I married 
 I gave it up." 
 
 When I remembered that to my unprejudiced 
 eyes Gregory was a good-natured hobbledehoy 
 and Ethel a kind-hearted but hopelessly com- 
 monplace child, I couldn't help wondering with 
 Mrs. Worthing why it is that so many mothers 
 think their ducks are swans. 
 
 IF there is a boy that I admire in the suburb 
 in which I live, which suburb is in Connec- 
 ticut, by the way, it is Tom Bingham. He is 
 tall and sturdy and good tempered and a favor- 
 ite with boys and girls; he has a well developed 
 sense of humor and I never meet him but I 
 find that we two have a good deal in common, 
 in spite of our fifty years' disparity. 
 
 The other evening I went into town in the 
 same car with his mother and father and I had
 
 I've Been Thinking 39 
 
 quite a chat with Mrs. Bingham, who is very 
 different from Mrs. Worthing. 
 
 Our subject was children, and I confessed to 
 her that I was clean discouraged about my boy 
 Harry; that it did seem as if all my talking and 
 advice and splendid example since he was born 
 had been thrown away on him, and that he 
 seemed more thoughtless and hopeless every 
 day. 
 
 "Why, I'm perfectly astonished to hear you 
 say so," she said. "I was telling Mr. Bingham 
 only last night that if there was a manly, well 
 brought up boy in the place it was your Harry, 
 and he agreed with me. Dear me ! if you had 
 such a chap as Tom to bring up you might well 
 despair. I sometimes wonder whether we'll 
 ever get any credit for having tried to bring him 
 up in the way he should go." 
 
 "Why, Mrs. Bingham, surely you are jok- 
 ing," said I. "Your son Tom is the one boy 
 in town that I think is a credit to his parents.
 
 40 I've Been Thinking 
 
 He always lifts his cap when he meets me; the 
 other day I saw him helping the washerwoman 
 over a bad place on the icy pavement, and I 
 know that he is a great favorite with the other 
 boys and girls, too. I don't believe you 
 know your boy Tom at all." 
 
 And then it came over me like a thunder 
 clap, "Do I know my boy Harry? Does he 
 show off his best points at home?" 
 
 And it struck me that perhaps Mrs. Bingham 
 and I were better off in our sons than either of 
 us imagined. 
 
 I ONCE knew a millionaire who always car- 
 ried his money around with him in bills. 
 There were some dollar bills, more ten-dollar 
 bills, and many hundred and thousand-dollar 
 bills. He always carried them in a suit case 
 with an ordinary lock and key, and he told me
 
 I've Been Thinking 41 
 
 that he was happy just because he had the 
 actual money. 
 
 His brother hardly ever handled money at 
 all. He was a millionaire, too, but he did all 
 his business with checks and seldom had 
 more than twenty dollars on his person, and 
 he was miserable and dyspeptic. 
 
 I understood the feeling of the moneyed 
 millionaire better than that of the checked 
 one. The first man was not a miser; he was 
 simply a grown-up child, with a child's de- 
 light in actually seeing the money that he had 
 earned by the sweat of his brow, most of it at 
 a dollar a day. Don't stop to figure out how 
 many days he had worked, or I won't wait. 
 
 Now, of course, there are persons of imagina- 
 tion who can go through life using checks and 
 feeling rich, but it takes a good deal of imagi- 
 nation to do so, and for me the pretty green 
 ten-dollar bill means ten times as much as 
 the check for ten dollars.
 
 42 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Of course, checks have their uses, and I 
 use them myself. When a bill for some prosaic 
 thing, like repairs to the coal chute, comes in 
 I send out a check in payment, but if I am 
 buying a book that I have long coveted, you 
 may be sure that I hand out real money for it. 
 The book represents something tangible, and 
 I will not insult the book dealer by sending 
 him a cold, unfeeling check. 
 
 If I wanted to bring happiness to a widow 
 whose husband had died leaving her desti- 
 tute, do you think that I would send her a 
 check for a thousand dollars? If you do, 
 you don't know me. 
 
 If I were going to do the thing at all I would 
 go to her house with one thousand crisp dollar 
 bills, and I would receive her thanks for each 
 one. But it is a queer thing about gratitude. 
 Her thanks for the first bill would be heart- 
 felt, but by the time I had reached the first 
 hundred she would have grown tired of thank-
 
 I've Been Thinking 43 
 
 ing me, and I verily believe that before I had 
 handed in the last bill she would have asked 
 me if I couldn't be a little more expeditious. 
 Thus usage dulls the senses. 
 
 On the other hand, do you suppose that if 
 I were sued for a thousand dollars I would pay 
 the complainant in good green money? No, a 
 thousand times no. I would purposely buy the 
 smallest blank check that I could find, and in 
 my most minute chirography, and with an auto- 
 graph that was barely good, I would sign it, and 
 thus I would feel that I was getting off cheap. 
 
 In some things most of us are intensely 
 mean, and among the expenditures that offend 
 men's souls are those paid into a railroad com- 
 pany's grasping maw. I hold myself no better 
 than the rest, and, if possible, I always travel 
 in company with another, and before we start 
 out I give him money to cover the expenses, 
 and then he buys the tickets and I feel that I 
 have not spent so much.
 
 44 I've Been Thinking 
 
 But in buying stationery, and books, and 
 pictures, I never think of intrusting the busi- 
 ness to another. Let me pick out my own 
 paper, find my own book, be my own judge of 
 the picture, and, when they are ready to de- 
 liver, let me pay the bill myself in coin of the 
 realm. 
 
 Your plumber should always receive a 
 check, but the man who entertains you should 
 get good gold, even if it is only fifty cents' 
 worth. 
 
 One objection I have to royalties is that 
 they always come in the form of a check 
 when they come at all. One time, though, 
 my publisher varied it; instead of sending a 
 check he sent a bill. You see I had given at 
 least ten copies of the book at Christmas time, 
 and, of course, the balance was in his favor. 
 Do you know, I really enjoyed the thing for a 
 change. 
 
 By the way, that receiving of royalties, even
 
 I've Been Thinking 45 
 
 if they are paid in check form, is a very good 
 game. You sell your stories for so much, and 
 then, when they are all printed, you are in- 
 duced to make a book of them. Well, you 
 have already been paid for them, so that you 
 stand to gain, whatever happens. It may be 
 only ten dollars that will come to you, but it 
 may be ten thousand, and the joy of looking 
 forward to royalty day is one that cannot be 
 expressed in words. You do not hear much 
 about the sale of your book; your friends say 
 nothing about it, but perhaps they are keeping 
 its phenomenal success a secret from you. 
 You live in the country, and you never see the 
 Bookman, so you do not know what the six 
 best sellers are, but you have your suspicions. 
 At last the fateful day arrives, the familiar 
 envelope of your publisher comes to you by 
 mail, and as you open it a check flutters out. 
 You remember the stories of du Maurier and 
 "Trilby," and how his publishers sent him
 
 46 I've Been Thinking 
 
 several thousands over and above the contract 
 agreement. 
 
 To be sure, it is only a check, and not money, 
 but, after all, any bank will convert a check 
 into money if you are known, and your book 
 has doubtless made you known through the 
 wide world. 
 
 You pick up the check and close your eyes, 
 until you are holding it right in front of them. 
 "The Second National Bank of New York. 
 Pay to the order of yourself $47.50. Harp, 
 Scrib. & Co." 
 
 It isn't quite what you thought it would be. 
 The book is not one of the six yet. Still, 
 after the first disappointment is over, you re- 
 flect that it is all clear gain, and you go to the 
 bank and have it converted into new dollar 
 bills, and then you go down to the bookstore 
 and you buy thirty odd books that you have 
 wanted for years. 
 
 No, you don't. You know very well you
 
 I've Been Thinking 47 
 
 don't, for the same mail that brought the 
 check brought its antithesis in the form of a 
 bill from the gentleman who raised the price 
 of beef on you, and the other gentleman who 
 charged you eight dollars a ton for coal, and 
 like a good little man you sit down and you 
 write out two checks which take up forty-two 
 of the dollars. 
 
 But take my advice, and get the better of 
 fortune by taking the five-fifty that is left 
 and your wife and going into town for a 
 jamboree. Remember that a jamboree, small 
 though it be, remains in the memory long after 
 the memory of a paid bill has left you. 
 
 Pay the bills, but save enough out of the 
 cost of your clothes for a little jamboree. 
 Clothes warm the body, but jamborees warm 
 the cockles of the heart, and a man who neglects 
 the cockles of the heart to put Jaeger under- 
 wear on his lusty limbs has failed in his duty 
 toward himself and his better half.
 
 48 I've Been Thinking 
 
 " /CHILDREN aren't as respectful as they 
 
 \^>l were when I was a child." 
 
 How can you say that and keep a straight 
 face? 
 
 Don't you remember hearing your Uncle 
 John say that very thing when you were about 
 eight? He had come down from Maine to 
 visit you, and while you liked him, you felt a 
 little free with him and said something that 
 brought forth his remark. 
 
 And if the truth might be got at, Uncle 
 John had a similar experience when he was 
 a boy. His uncle went up to Maine from 
 Boston to visit and your Uncle John made 
 some flippant remark that caused him to say 
 that the disrespect of modern children (re- 
 member that it is always modern times to the 
 man who is speaking even when you get back 
 to the days of Rehoboam) he said that the 
 disrespect of modern children was something
 
 I've Been Thinking 49 
 
 awful. Why, when he was a boy, children 
 were brought up to be silent utterly for- 
 getting that his father flogged him for dis- 
 respect, 'way back before Warren fell at Bunker 
 Hill, and while he was flogging him he deplored 
 the evil days on which they had fallen. It had 
 been so different when he was a boy. Children 
 then were always respectful. 
 
 In fact this remark translated into different 
 languages goes back to the time of Adam and 
 he, for manifest reasons, could not make it. 
 
 But he is the only one who couldn't and 
 didn't. 
 
 THE editor was getting up his Christmas 
 issue, or, to be more exact, he was 
 thinking of getting it up, and as he lolled lazily 
 in his hammock and watched the shadows of 
 the July clouds chasing each other over the 
 distant hills he wondered whether he could not
 
 50 I've Been Thinking 
 
 strike a new note in Christmas issues some- 
 thing that would appeal to every man, woman, 
 and child in the land and cause them to tumble 
 over each other in their eagerness to buy his 
 magazine. 
 
 The shadows lengthened in the grass, the 
 hum of the insects lost the help of the bees, 
 who had ceased their work and gone to rest, 
 and from the house within came the tinkle of 
 a silvery bell that told him supper was served. 
 
 But he did not move, and at last his wife 
 came to the door and, fanning her face with 
 her apron, said: "John, everything is getting 
 hot from standing. Do come in." 
 
 He bounded from his hammock. 
 
 "I have it, Mary, dear! I have it! I will 
 have a Christmas issue that will leave all others 
 in the rear. It will be the first of its kind, and 
 I fully expect our sales to be increased a hun- 
 dred-fold." 
 
 And then he told her of his scheme.
 
 I've Been Thinking 51 
 
 "We will bring out the magazine on Christ- 
 mas Eve, and from beginning to end there 
 will not be a single mention of Christmas 
 except on the cover." 
 
 "Well, but people will be expecting Christ- 
 mas stuff." 
 
 "What! Expecting? Yes; they will be ex- 
 pecting it. You're right; and that's where 
 we'll win. They won't get it. They will have 
 had Christmas issues from early in November, 
 and when they realize that they can spend the 
 25th of December reading a magazine that has 
 absolutely no hint of an overworked holiday 
 in it they will buy it and send it to their friends 
 all over the world. Fold me to your bosom, 
 little wife, for I have at last hit on a money- 
 maker!" 
 
 His little wife folded him to her bosom, but 
 it was such warm weather that he asked her 
 to unfold him, and she unfolded him right 
 away, because the way they preserved har-
 
 52 I've Been Thinking 
 
 mony in the family was by minding each other 
 at once, always. 
 
 Next day he went to the hot city and told 
 his associates of his plan and they were 
 aghast. 
 
 "W-h-a-t!" said they. "Nothing about little 
 tots and their stockings? Not a word as to 
 the origin of the Christmas legend? Nothing 
 about the genial, jovial old saint ? No Dickens 
 story rehashed? No peace and good-will by 
 the yard? Not a yule log nor a reference to 
 mistletoe and the old maid aunt ? Why, Puffer, 
 you're daffy!" 
 
 But if Puffer was daffy he was also editor, 
 and what he said went. 
 
 Oh, how happy the typesetters were when 
 they learned that they would have to spell 
 Christmas but once ! 
 
 And if they were happy, think how more 
 than happy the poets were who were told that 
 no stuff would be accepted that hinted at the
 
 I've Been Thinking 53 
 
 glad season, and that stockings were barred, 
 whatever their pattern. 
 
 And the sketch and story writers. They 
 came to Mr. Puffer with tears in their eyes 
 and said to him: "You have saved our lives. 
 Now we can write with enthusiasm. We had 
 begun to hate Santa Claus and we hated to 
 hate him, for he is such a nice old fellow; but 
 we have had to ring so many changes on him 
 that the sight of a snowy beard and ruddy 
 cheeks makes us pessimistic." 
 
 And the artists. Really it was hard to stop 
 the artists from drawing chimneys and rein- 
 deers. The announcement that a Christmas 
 number was on the stocks had always meant so 
 many prancing deer and so many barefooted, 
 nightgowned tots, and more than one artist 
 turned in pictures of midsummer sheep warm- 
 ing their fleeces at yule logs instead of gambol- 
 ing on sunny hillsides. 
 
 And the public. Well, it was even as Mr.
 
 54 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Puffer had prophesied. At first they would 
 not believe that there was such a magazine, 
 and so they bought it to make sure. And it 
 was full of stories about every day in the year 
 but Christmas, and the cover had clover and 
 clematis on it, and little naked boys in swim- 
 ming under a summer sky. Oh, it was a great 
 success, and for seven days the printing of it 
 went on, and when New Year's Day came 
 Mr. Puffer got a six months' leave of ab- 
 sence and went with his wife to travel in 
 foreign lands, and when they returned they 
 found out that every editor in America had 
 taken a leaf out of Mr. Puffer's book and was 
 going to bring out a Christmas-less Christmas 
 number. 
 
 So Mr. Puffer laid low and said nothing 
 to his brother editors, but, being now a very 
 rich man, he invited a large number of writers 
 and artists up to his summer place, and told 
 them to write when they pleased and draw
 
 I've Been Thinking 55 
 
 when they pleased, but to try to bend their 
 energies to the making up of the only Christ- 
 mas magazine in America. 
 
 And taking it that way in the middle of sum- 
 mer in a delightful place, they found they could 
 think of Christmas without distaste, and they 
 set to and planned the best Christmas number 
 that had ever been thought of. 
 
 And now the public prints contained no 
 mention of Christmas, and people began to 
 sort of yearn for the pretty stories and the 
 wintry yule-loggy pictures, and by the time 
 Christmas Day came they were positively 
 hungry for them. 
 
 And that is why Mr. Puffer's Christmas 
 issue, full of Christmas stories and pictures, 
 beat all records. Its circulation was only 
 five or six short of sixteen millions. 
 
 And Mr. Puffer made so much money that 
 he and his wife have been traveling ever since, 
 and they always spend Christmas in the city
 
 56 I've Been Thinking 
 
 where St. Nicholas was born, and they hang 
 up their stockings and go through the motions 
 and emotions, because there's a good deal in 
 that Christmas spirit, if you don't get too 
 much of it. 
 
 THERE are mornings that invite women 
 who live in or near the country to go 
 out and take a walk. 
 
 Those are the very mornings when stockings 
 need to be darned or shelves need to be dusted 
 or perhaps floors need to be swept. 
 
 Now there is no question but that a plain 
 duty lies before these women thus early in the 
 morning. 
 
 Will the woman go out and breathe the morn- 
 ing air and fill her eyes with nature's paintings 
 or will she resolutely sit down to her darning 
 or stand up to her dusting and sweeping? 
 
 Woman, learn to do your whole duty in this
 
 I've Been Thinking 57 
 
 matter. Do not be swayed by foolish prompt- 
 ings; do not say, "It will not make any differ- 
 ence if I do it just this once. I can do the 
 other thing later." 
 
 It will make a great deal of difference. It 
 will make a difference to your children and 
 to your husband. It may be their stockings 
 that you are darning or his desk that you are 
 dusting. It makes a great deal of difference 
 whether you do your duty or not every morn- 
 ing. 
 
 When you rise from the breakfast table 
 and see the basket of undarned stockings, or 
 notice that you can write your name in the 
 dust that has accumulated since the furnace 
 was last shaken, when you see these things 
 and then look out of the window, and the 
 birds and the air and the scene invite you to 
 take a walk along pleasant paths, do your 
 duty by your husband and your children and 
 yourself. Take the walk.
 
 58 I've Been Thinking 
 
 CHILD Papa, what is a New Yorker? 
 Papa My child, a New Yorker is 
 one who lives in New York who has his 
 residence there. A New Yorker may be a 
 Chinaman from Pell Street, or a Polish Jew 
 from Rivington Street, or a Syrian from Wash- 
 ington Street, or an Italian, from the Italian 
 quarter, or a Greek or Jap or Swede or any 
 nationality at all, provided he lives in New 
 York City. 
 
 Child Well, suppose a Russian lives in 
 Brooklyn. 
 
 Papa He is a New Yorker. 
 
 Child Well, if a Portuguese lived in the 
 Bronx ? 
 
 Papa He would be a New Yorker. Of 
 course, my child, in a large sense, all inhabi- 
 tants of the State of New York are New Yorkers, 
 but, generally speaking, by the term New 
 Yorker is meant one who lives in the city of New
 
 I've Been Thinking 59 
 
 York, and that is why a Chinaman out on 
 Staten Island is a New Yorker. 
 
 Child Papa, does a man have to be a 
 foreigner in order to live in New York? 
 
 Papa What a question, my child. Of 
 course not. There are many living in New 
 York whose native language is English. 
 
 Child Oh, they were born there ? 
 
 Papa Not necessarily. Some were born 
 in Great Britain and Ireland and some in the 
 British possessions, but they all speak Eng- 
 lish and they live in New York and are New 
 Yorkers. 
 
 Child Then if I understand you aright, 
 my dear father, a man who lives in New York 
 and who speaks English must have been born 
 either in Great Britain, Ireland, or somewhere 
 in the British possessions. 
 
 Papa Not at all. There are native Ameri- 
 cans who speak English and who live in New 
 York.
 
 60 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Child And where are they from ? 
 
 Papa Some were born in New England, 
 some on the Pacific coast, some in the Middle 
 West, and some in the South. 
 
 Child Then they are the real New Yorkers. 
 
 Papa Not necessarily. Any man who lives 
 in New York for any length of time becomes a 
 New Yorker, no matter where he may have 
 been born. When he travels he registers from 
 New York. 
 
 Child Is it in the air? 
 
 Papa It is in the air. The Westerner de- 
 spises New York until he has made a fortune, 
 and then he comes to New York to spend it, 
 and after that he is a New Yorker. The 
 Southerner who has come to New York to 
 live may say that he was born in the South, and 
 if he doesn't his tongue will do it for him, but 
 he glories in being a citizen of New York. 
 The New Englander feels that he has honored 
 New York by coming to it and that without
 
 I've Been Thinking 61 
 
 him New York would not amount to much, 
 but he, too, signs his name in the register as 
 from New York. 
 
 Child How about the Jerseyman, papa ? 
 
 Papa The Jerseyman is an altogether 
 different proposition. Six Jerseymen out of 
 ten do business in New York, and of those six 
 five were born in Brooklyn when she was just 
 Brooklyn. The Jerseyman is not, strictly 
 speaking, a New Yorker. If New York is in 
 disgrace he thanks his stars that he spends his 
 nights in another State, but if New York wins 
 a point he pats himself on the back and says: 
 - "I'm here most of my waking time." The 
 Jerseyman also is sorely tempted to sign his 
 name as from New York when he is out in 
 Chicago, for instance, and when he is in Europe 
 he does do it. 
 
 Child Well, papa, you have told me about 
 foreigners who were New Yorkers, and about 
 English-speaking people who were New Yorkers,
 
 62 I've Been Thinking 
 
 and about Americans who were New Yorkers, 
 but I want to know if there couldn't be a more 
 perfect kind of New Yorker than any of these 
 one who was born in New York and who 
 spoke English? 
 
 Papa Why, yes, my child; there are 
 thousands born in New York who speak Eng- 
 lish. They are hard and fast New Yorkers. 
 Their parents were Germans and Italians and 
 Frenchmen and Jews and Greeks, but they 
 were born in New York and they speak Eng- 
 lish. 
 
 Child Then, papa, they are the real New 
 Yorkers, aren't they? 
 
 Papa Well, I believe that they are con- 
 sidered to be the most patriotic New Yorkers 
 because their New Yorkism is so new; but, 
 my child, in this city of which we are speak- 
 ing, this city of nearly four million inhabitants, 
 there is a little class, without much influence, 
 to be sure, but still self-respecting and respected
 
 I've Been Thinking 63 
 
 by others, a mere handful, it is true, but a very 
 intelligent handful. 
 
 Child And who are they, papa ? 
 
 Papa They, my child, are the native 
 American New Yorkers, whose parents and 
 grandparents and great-grandparents, to the 
 third and fourth generation, were born and 
 brought up in New York. 
 
 Child And who always spoke English ? 
 
 Papa Well, no. They spoke Dutch origi- 
 nally, but they have spoken English longer than 
 the majority of the rest. Those are the real 
 New Yorkers. 
 
 Child I never heard of them. Where do 
 they keep themselves ? 
 
 Papa One of them is the President of the 
 United States. 
 
 Child Oh, yes, of course. So he is a 
 Simon-pure New Yorker ? 
 
 Papa Well, no; come to think of it, he isn't, 
 because I believe his mother was a Southerner.
 
 64 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Child Well, do the Simon-pure New 
 Yorkers sign their names as from New York? 
 
 Papa Yes, my boy, they do, and they 
 would like to be able to sign in a special colored 
 ink to make it more emphatic. 
 
 Child Well, papa, I suppose that if they 
 could have kept out the foreigners and the 
 English-speaking aliens and the Yankees and 
 the Southerners and the Westerners, and just 
 left New York for the real born and bred New 
 Yorkers, New York would be even greater 
 than it is? 
 
 Papa No, no, my boy. No city ever gets 
 to the top of the pile unaided. It is because 
 of all these people who have come in to show 
 New York how to misgovern itself that she is 
 the greatest city on the Western Hemisphere 
 and is destined to be the greatest city that the 
 sun ever shone upon. 
 
 Child And what will become of the real 
 New York New Yorkers?
 
 I've Been Thinking 65 
 
 Papa They will disappear after a while. 
 Child Why, papa? 
 
 Papa Because it is getting to be the 
 fashion to be born in the country. 
 Child Oh! 
 
 NOW is the time of year when, as Chaucer 
 said, "longen folk to gon on pilgrimages" 
 and these good Americans go abroad and 
 visit strange lands. 
 
 And some of them never forget that they are 
 good Americans, but proclaim it wherever they 
 go so that the foreigner laughs in his sleeve 
 and says "There are those boastful Americans 
 again. Methinks they do protest too much." 
 
 If you are sure deep down in your heart that 
 on the whole you belong to a country that is a 
 leetle the best on earth, you will do well to say 
 nothing about it while you are abroad. 
 
 Just act so well that perfection of manners
 
 66 I've Been Thinking 
 
 will come in time to mean something distinc- 
 tively American, and then, when the foreigner 
 sees a sober, well behaved, kindly man walking 
 along the streets of his town he will say, "Ah, 
 it is easy to see he is an American. There 
 are no people in all the world as fine as they 
 not even my own countrymen." 
 
 I OFTEN wonder what would happen if 
 some of the ladies who unblushingly meet 
 our gaze in the advertising sections of our best 
 magazines, and who dress no more warmly in 
 winter than in summer, were to invade the 
 body of their respective publications. 
 
 I think that there would be a general rush 
 for the tall timber on the part of the self- 
 respecting heroes and heroines and general 
 utility men and women of the stories, because 
 the standard of proper dressing is very different 
 in the first hundred pages of the magazine
 
 I've Been Thinking 67 
 
 from what it is in the remaining two hundred 
 and fifty. 
 
 In the matter of language I think that the 
 general average is higher in the advertising 
 sections, because dialect is practically un- 
 known there, but the way the ladies (don't) 
 dress would be enough to cause a flutter in 
 the pages of the most unconventional story 
 that one could find in a reputable magazine. 
 
 No one ever seems to be shocked at seeing 
 ladies walking around in the advertising sec- 
 tions in patent underwear, and perhaps no 
 one ought to be shocked unless it is bachelors 
 but suppose you read in a serial of Howells' 
 that "Anna Hamlin was in no danger from 
 pneumonia because she always wore common- 
 sense wearing apparel underneath that which 
 is visible to the outer world" (see how carefully 
 one has to express himself in the body of a 
 magazine ?) and a picture of Miss Hamlin were 
 inserted at that place, one taken from the
 
 68 I've Been Thinking 
 
 advertising section and with which the whole 
 reading public is familiar. What a chorus of 
 indignant protests would go up from outraged 
 readers at the vulgarization of the magazine. 
 
 I tell you that circumstances will continue 
 to alter cases whenever they can that's 
 what circumstances are for; and if an im- 
 pudent young hussy strays in from the adver- 
 tising pages and dares to stand for Anna 
 Hamlin she will be shown her place at once 
 because the American public will not stand 
 for anything vulgar. 
 
 No, indeed! 
 
 What would happen if another leading 
 novelist said in the course of his serial "that 
 Grace Hastings attributed her good health 
 to the fact that she always took a cold bath 
 every morning," and the art editor in order to 
 save expense put in that familiar cut of a lady 
 bathing in the Jinkins' Portable Celluloid 
 Bath Tub?
 
 I've Been Thinking 69 
 
 Why, Anthony Comstock would foam at 
 the mouth. And rightly so. But we are all 
 so grateful at the absence of dialect in the 
 advertising sections of our magazines that we 
 let that lady stand in her tub throughout the 
 twelve months without uttering a word of 
 protest. 
 
 When I was a child I was taught that it was 
 not nice to speak about corsets. If I had to 
 mention them I must call them bodices or 
 stays or I forget what the third alternative 
 was. I know I used to go out into the back- 
 yard and holler "corsets" just because I 
 thought it was pretty awful. 
 
 But our advertising men have changed all 
 that. They not only talk about corsets, but 
 they show us pictures of them, and, to go still 
 further, they show us pictures of them in use. 
 
 The old convention as to the mention of 
 corsets has also disappeared from fiction and 
 one might easily come across such a sentence
 
 yo I've Been Thinking 
 
 as this: "Miss Postlethwaite had a wasp-like 
 waist and there were not wanting those who 
 said her corsets caused her agony." 
 
 But what would happen if a picture of Miss 
 Postlethwaite' s boudoir were shown with rouge 
 et noir (for the cheeks and eyebrows) on her 
 bureau and she herself fitted into one of Hug- 
 gem's papier-mache corsets? 
 
 I know I'd stop my subscription at once. 
 
 Suppose, for an instant, that an artist were 
 told to go to the Metropolitan Opera House 
 and draw a picture of the Four Hundred in 
 their boxes, six in a box, making something 
 like sixty-seven boxes with the lids off. 
 Suppose that instead of drawing them in proper 
 evening dress a dress requiring 85 degrees 
 Fahr. he used a lot of pictures from the 
 advertising section and put them in Jigger 
 flannels, would he keep his position on the 
 staff a moment? No, of course not. That 
 would be a case where to put on more clothes
 
 I've Been Thinking 71 
 
 would be to spoil the picture, and no one would 
 recognize the Four Hundred at an opera with 
 arctic habiliments upon them. An artist must 
 be true to nature and he must not be vulgar. 
 Nothing is more confusing to a person's sense 
 of propriety than to turn quickly from the 
 advertising section to the body of the maga- 
 zine and back again as I have seen persons do. 
 The mental picture of the young lady who is 
 braving the weather for the sake of showing 
 that a bath tub can be ornamental as well as 
 useful is transferred to the bucolic New Eng- 
 land story and we Anglo-Saxons are shocked. 
 There is no other name for it. It is very 
 demoralizing to turn the pages rapidly back 
 and forth. One should read the stories first 
 and take comfort in the thought that no decent 
 editor will allow any artist to picture any kind 
 of vestiture that would not go at Asbury Park. 
 Then let him brace himself and turn the leaves 
 that lead to the tropic ladies. It is still Anglo-
 
 72 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Saxon, but it is advertising, and the conven- 
 tions are different in that world. 
 
 A friend of mine who has no regard for 
 people's feelings actually cut out a number of 
 the advertisements in the back of a magazine 
 that has led us on to a higher civilization for 
 fifty years or more, and when I saw he had 
 done it I applauded him. I said "Good, old 
 man; they're better out." But the graceless 
 chap with diabolical ingenuity fitted each 
 flannel lady and each custodian of the bath 
 into drawing-rooms devised by the staff artists 
 of that magazine and I blushed for a good half 
 hour. We Americans will not stand for semi- 
 nudity in the wrong place. It's all very well 
 at the opera or at a ball or a swagger dinner, 
 but in the body of a reputable magazine the 
 day will never come when it will be considered 
 respectable. And the advertisers themselves 
 will be the first to agree with me. 
 
 Back to your celluloid tub, oh, lady of the
 
 I've Been Thinking 73 
 
 bath! We who are reading the serials will 
 not look upon you. 
 
 MY dear young mother, will you pardon 
 me if I address a few words to you 
 upon the subject of Theodore ? I have noticed 
 for some time how vigilant has been your care 
 for the manly little fellow. You will not let 
 him play with Tommy Perkins in the summer 
 because Tommy says "Gosh!" You have for- 
 bidden him to associate in the slightest degree 
 with Eddy Conway because Eddy smokes 
 cigarettes, and you have threatened to have 
 his father chastise him if he has anything to 
 do with Aleck Saunders because Aleck swears 
 like a trooper in Flanders. 
 
 You have done all these things in order that 
 Theodore's language may be free from the 
 tares that might otherwise choke it; but have 
 you been careful in all things? Have you seen
 
 74 I've Been Thinking 
 
 to it that the records of the talking machine 
 that you bought for his delectation are up to 
 your own high standard of grammar and cul- 
 ture ? I trow not. 
 
 A phonograph need not be vulgar if its early 
 associates are of the proper kind, but I notice 
 that many of them are vulgar. One gets the 
 impression that they have copied the speech 
 of coarse and uncultivated men. Phonographs 
 have absolutely no creative ability, but they 
 are, within certain limitations, absolute mimics 
 and they have the knack of picking up the 
 phrases of men whom you would never think 
 of admitting to your drawing-room. 
 
 You were horrified the other day at the 
 notion of letting dear Theodore go to one of 
 the most respectable of continuous shows, but 
 the new record that came to him that after- 
 noon had mimicked word for word a mono- 
 logue that never would have been allowed 
 upon the boards of that theater. His little
 
 I've Been Thinking 75 
 
 friends Aloysius and Van Sutphen and Salton- 
 stall use an English remarkable for its purity 
 of inflection and intonation, but that phono- 
 graph record has a diction unspeakably vul- 
 gar. It is not alone the thing it says, but the 
 nasty way it says it, that makes it a poor com- 
 panion for Theodore. 
 
 Pardon me, my dear young mother, but I 
 can't help laughing at you just a little. You 
 take Theodore to the symphony concerts that 
 he may cultivate his musical taste, but I never 
 hear him whistling any movement from Bee- 
 thoven's, Schubert's or Schumann's symphonies. 
 Yet that inexpressible street song that emerged 
 from the phonograph last week was his in a 
 half hour, both words, music and vulgarity. 
 I believe that Mrs. Perkins would have spanked 
 Tommy if he had sung it in her presence, 
 although she does tolerate his "Gosh!" 
 
 I really can't blame the talking machine. 
 It has no conscience ; it has no pride of ancestry
 
 j6 I've Been Thinking 
 
 to keep it in the right way. It has simply a 
 waxlike receptive capacity and absolutely no 
 sense of selection. If it heard good songs and 
 refined speeches it would undoubtedly repeat 
 them, but as its associates are for the most 
 part vulgar it is small wonder that with its 
 remarkable imitative faculty it should pick up 
 many words, phrases, ideas, and kit motiven 
 that are objectionable. The fault is not with 
 the phonograph; it lies with you, and it is to 
 me inexpressibly droll to see you shielding 
 Theodore from those pestilent fellows, Tommy, 
 Eddy and Aleck, while you admit to the in- 
 timacy of your house those records that suc- 
 cessfully imitate the tough whine, the illiterate 
 grammatical construction and the at times 
 disgustingly vulgar witticisms of the cheaper 
 stage. 
 
 I am not standing up for Tommy Perkins 
 or Eddy Conway or Aleck Saunders, but 
 Theodore might imitate some of their good
 
 I've Been Thinking 77 
 
 points at the same time that he learned to say 
 "Gosh!" or to smoke corn-silk cigarettes. It 
 is also possible to break up a tendency to swear 
 and one may reason a boy out of the habit of 
 acting as a chimney while incinerating corn 
 silk. 
 
 But the tough accent once acquired is almost 
 ineradicable, and I cannot conceive any good 
 coming from Theodore's association with the 
 uncanny voice which says, "Loidies an' gen'l'- 
 mun, de udder day I wouldn' have went to de 
 t'eater on'y I chanst to meet a young dame on 
 der street," etc. 
 
 A man is known by the cylinders he keeps. 
 
 ARE you dowdy? 
 If you are not, don't read this at all, 
 but if you are, take my advice and secure a 
 full-length photograph of yourself and study 
 it. What may have escaped your attention
 
 78 I've Been Thinking 
 
 in your own small mirror will be brought home 
 to you in a portrait. Ask your friends if you 
 are dowdy, and if they hesitate, even for a 
 moment, in answering you, you are. 
 
 Having found out that you are dowdy, the 
 next thing to do is to stop being dowdy. 
 
 If you are married, stop it because your 
 husband doesn't like it. 
 
 If you are single, stop it because the young 
 men of your acquaintance don't like it. 
 
 I can't tell the difference between a bolero 
 and a polonaise: I am not an expert in femi- 
 nine sartorial terminology, but I can tell a 
 dowdy woman a block off and so can every 
 other American man. 
 
 It is just as much an affront to your family 
 to be a dowdy as it is to serve uninteresting 
 dinners. Let your food be plain if need be, 
 but let it be something that attracts the atten- 
 tion of the tongue and causes it to telegraph 
 pleasant news to the stomach.
 
 I've Been Thinking 79 
 
 So though your clothes be plain and inex- 
 pensive, make them interesting. If you have 
 been married for some time and have always 
 been dowdy, you will be surprised to see how 
 the change in your get-up will affect your hus- 
 band. He will begin to take notice and will 
 tell you you're growing young again. 
 
 Get together in this, oh women, and the 
 dowdy will become as extinct as the dodo. 
 
 " TT was the night before Christmas." How 
 JL easy to write those words. How much 
 literature has been started by that phrase ! 
 but it didn't all turn out to be literature. Yes, 
 that phrase was a good starter; it is the loco- 
 motive that draws a long and ofttimes heavy 
 train of thought along ways covered with ice 
 and snow, past the homes of the rich and poor; 
 and the inevitable destination of each train is 
 Merry Christmas.
 
 8o I've Been Thinking 
 
 It is easy to get up steam and start your 
 train along the rails rails at the heartless- 
 ness of the rich; rails at the insincerity that 
 accompanies the giving of presents; rails at 
 the helpless condition of the poor, with so 
 much money locked up in safes. You can get 
 along on the rails all right for a time. But 
 after the engine has gone a few feet particu- 
 larly if it be verse you are writing the wheels 
 revolve on the slippery track (and in your head) 
 and it sometimes takes a heap of sand to get 
 her a-going again. 
 
 You are approaching a crossing now. It is 
 time to ring the bell. "Ring, happy bells, 
 across the snow." Your Christmas story 
 wouldn't be the real thing if you didn't work 
 that in. It is now about time to stop and let 
 your hero or heroine, or both, get aboard. 
 And while the train waits pluck a few holly 
 berries and mistletoe, for these are indispen- 
 sable.
 
 I've Been Thinking 81 
 
 Now you're off again. Is your hero going 
 to be rich or poor? If poor, make him bare- 
 foot and have him wonder what he'll hang up 
 in lieu of stockings for the visit of old Kris 
 Kringle be sure to call him by that quaint 
 title at least once. If he be rich, clothe him 
 in golf stockings, and it will puzzle the old 
 saint how to fill them. 
 
 The train is slowing up again. It is here 
 that the consumptive mother and the rich and 
 surly uncle come aboard. Make the old man 
 a Gradgrind. Buy a copy of Christmas Carols 
 from the train boy, so you'll be able to get the 
 right atmosphere for your story. Also open 
 the window and let in a whiff of frosty air. 
 
 You'd better stop pretty soon for refresh- 
 ments. Whether you're going to feed your 
 characters on stale fish-balls and candle-ends 
 or on a regular turkey dinner, a meal of some 
 kind is absolutely necessary. 
 
 The journey hasn't been so bad thus far,
 
 82 I've Been Thinking 
 
 and you needn't make it much longer. Re- 
 member that the engineer and the reader are 
 human and let up on them. 
 
 If your hero be poor make it all right with 
 him, just as those bells are ushering in the 
 dawn of Christmas; if he be rich, give him the 
 usual change of heart, and from habitual and 
 ingrained niggardliness and rasping ill-temper 
 metamorphose him into a genial old philan- 
 thropist it'll go, in a Christmas story. 
 
 Drop a few turkeys and cranberries on the 
 poor consumptive's bed; let some kind-hearted 
 old Hebrew in the sock business donate a 
 dozen of the useful articles to the poor little 
 barefoot boy, fill 'em up with candies and the 
 usual outfit, and then have the brakeman stick 
 his head in at the car-door and yell "Merry 
 Christmas. Last stop!"
 
 I've Been Thinking 83 
 
 DOES it worry you to have your husband 
 bring some men home to dinner? I 
 mean do you feel afraid that your guest will 
 notice that you have a misfit set of tableware 
 and that your maid is not well trained? 
 
 Recollect that if your guest notices those 
 things to your detriment he is not worthy of you. 
 
 You are just as good as the best person who 
 could possibly visit you. If you're not it's 
 your own fault. 
 
 Do the best you can with your service, be 
 sure to have your food well cooked and pala- 
 tably seasoned, and then treat your guest as 
 simply as you know how. 
 
 If he acts as if he were better than you he 
 surely is not as good as you. If he accepts 
 your hospitality in the same spirit in which 
 you offer it, he is all right and you'd better 
 have him out again. 
 
 But it is not worth while for either you or
 
 84 I've Been Thinking 
 
 your husband to bother with people who can- 
 not accept your ways of living. 
 
 If the man who is coming out awes you be- 
 cause he is rich, try to remember some ancestor 
 of yours who made the world better worth living 
 in. If your guest awes you because of his cul- 
 ture, remember that you are trying to make life 
 worth living to your husband and your children 
 (perhaps you're not, but you really ought to). 
 
 But if the man who is coming awes you 
 because of his blue blood, remember that kind 
 hearts are more than coronets and tell him his 
 grandmother was a monkey. It'll break the ice. 
 
 SOME one with a taste for figures was telling 
 me the other day that since the formation 
 of the United States somewhere back in the 
 century before the last, only twenty-six Ameri- 
 cans have become President and not a single 
 foreigner.
 
 I've Been Thinking 85 
 
 Doesn't this fact put parents and teachers 
 in rather an unenviable position as regards sin- 
 cerity? Here we have to-day at least ten 
 million innocent children in this broad land of 
 ours, and nearly every one has been told that he 
 has a chance to become President if he will only 
 regard his book and be a good boy and do more 
 right than wrong. 
 
 For my part, I think we ought to take our 
 children aside and tell them frankly that they 
 have mighty little chance. Think of a bright 
 boy toiling on at school, avoiding athletics and 
 burning the midnight oil and his brain as well 
 for there's as much consumption of brain as 
 there is of midnight oil in these nocturnal 
 studyings think of him pushing on in every 
 State in the Union hoping for the Presidency, 
 while we know that for the next fifty years we 
 can't expect to put more than five of the children 
 of to-day into the great position. 
 
 For my part I'd say to my child: "Rollo,
 
 86 I've Been Thinking 
 
 there's the Presidency. It's a lottery. No man 
 ever knew from the beginning that he was going 
 to get it. Washington was real surprised, Hayes 
 had his doubts even after election day, and 
 Roosevelt often goes off by himself and says, 
 'Is it really possible that the former cowboy 
 and literary man, the hero of thousands of 
 young men, is President of this mighty people 
 and might be yet again if he were to allow 
 his name to be used?' But, as I say, my 
 boy, it's a lottery, and this country of ours is 
 opposed to lotteries officially. 
 
 "Emerson," I would say, continuing the con- 
 versation for you understand that this is a 
 hypothetical case and that therefore the boy 
 has got to stand still and listen "Emerson 
 said, 'Hitch your wagon to a star,' but you may 
 make a mistake and hitch it to a comet and 
 then, where is your wagon? 
 
 "There are plenty of likelier horses, my son, 
 and in these days of automobiles it isn't neces-
 
 I've Been Thinking 87 
 
 sary to hitch your wagon to anything. Just 
 make up your mind where you want to go, be 
 sure you have motive power enough to get there, 
 and then turn on the current. But put the 
 Presidency out of your mind once and for all." 
 
 The Presidency I am not talking to my 
 son now, but just to you, dear reader the son 
 escaped after all, hypothetical though he was 
 the Presidency is, as a general rule, equiva- 
 lent to a life sentence. Few there be who 
 survive its term of office many years. There 
 have been solid exceptions, but as a general 
 thing when a man has passed through four 
 years of hand-shaking and politician-shaking 
 he is willing to wrap the drapery of his couch 
 around him as Bryant did at the age of nineteen. 
 Bryant lived for some seventy years after, but 
 no former President ever did. Not one. 
 
 And on the other hand Bryant never became 
 President. There's Bryant who could and who 
 did write "Thanatopsis" at the age of nineteen,
 
 88 I've Been Thinking 
 
 and he's the only man in the history of the 
 United States who ever wrote it, and he never 
 became President, never in his life. And there's 
 Andrew Johnson, who at the same age could 
 neither read nor write, and he became President. 
 Of course it's a lottery, and I'm opposed to 
 lotteries on principle. 
 
 There came a day in my own life when I 
 gave up all thought of being President. I said 
 to myself: "It will be hard work to get the 
 attention of the public in this thing. Many will 
 not know who I am or where I came from, and 
 perhaps if I do get the nomination on the inde- 
 pendent prohibition or labor ticket I will wake 
 up the day after election and find that some 
 totally different person has won the prize, and 
 I'll be extremely mortified and absolutely put 
 to it to pay my legitimate election expenses 
 to say nothing of the illegitimate ones." 
 
 So I put this possible honor from me. 
 Heavens! it wasn't that I did not appreciate
 
 I've Been Thinking 89 
 
 the honor. A man has a right to feel proud 
 when millions of his fellow citizens, many of 
 them unable to read or write or think, elect him 
 to the proudest position in the gift of any nation. 
 I weighed the whole thing pro and con and 
 then I said, deliberately and firmly, "No, sir, 
 I am going to lead Wagner's simple life. I'm 
 going to get simpler and simpler and perhaps 
 I'll die contented." 
 
 Fellow citizens, there comes a time to all of 
 us who have an eye on the Presidency when 
 we must make up our mind to give up the 
 contest or else accept the inevitable with calm 
 steadfastness. I simply couldn't bear to be 
 defeated for the Presidency. Do you suppose 
 that I could read in the papers that I was 
 snowed under in every State in the Union, and 
 then calmly take a poem and try to sell it to 
 an editor? No, sir! I'd use back streets for 
 the rest of my life and write under a pen name. 
 Cincinnatus hadn't been defeated for Senator
 
 90 I've Been Thinking 
 
 when he went back to the plough. The honor 
 of election is great, but the mortification of 
 defeat is greater. 
 
 Look at Horace Greeley. He wasn't content 
 to be the Nestor of American journalism; he 
 must try to be President. Said he'd rather be 
 President than write. 
 
 The result was too lamentable to jest about. 
 I was a mere boy at the time, but it saved me 
 from the Presidency. It was the turning of 
 the ways. Like Rutherford B. Hayes, I went 
 into the egg business; but unlike him or 
 maybe it would be more accurate to say that 
 like him I never was President de jure. But 
 that is a bygone. Twenty years ago if I had 
 said that many people would have frothed at 
 the mouth. Many people still froth at the 
 mouth, but the froth is apropos of other matters. 
 Significant name that froth. 
 
 No, fellow countrymen, let us be contented. 
 It is not likely that over twenty, at the outside,
 
 I've Been Thinking 91 
 
 of those Americans who are now living will ever 
 add luster to the Presidential chair or even 
 sit in it. Let the rest of us go about our business 
 with contentment, and every four years let us 
 elevate one of the twenty with a good grace, and 
 for four years thereafter let every man mind his 
 own business and see that he has a business 
 to mind and this country will stride forward 
 as it has not yet stridden or is it strode ? 
 
 ARE you fond of looking up your gene- 
 alogy? 
 
 It's a good thing to be fond of, believe me, 
 only don't let it stop at the mere getting of 
 names and dates. 
 
 You believe that Theodore and Dorothea 
 ought to study history at school. History is 
 the account of the doings of races and it is very 
 valuable. But the study of history in your 
 own family cannot fail to be stimulating.
 
 92 I've Been Thinking 
 
 If you learn that Great-grandfather Smith 
 was a murderer or a sheep stealer you can take 
 great comfort in the thought that neither 
 Theodore nor Dorothea shows any inclination 
 to follow in his footsteps, and your optimism 
 receives an impetus. 
 
 If, on the contrary, you find that Great- 
 grandfather Smith was much beloved by his 
 neighbors and tried to do his duty as the Lord 
 gave him light, why there you have a good 
 reason why Theodore and Dorothea should 
 strive to be worthy descendents of such an 
 ancestor. 
 
 It will be interesting to learn that that 
 peculiar trick of holding her head on one side 
 that Dorothea has was a peculiarity of Great- 
 grandmother Robinson, and that Theodore's 
 one-sided smile was remarked in Great-grand- 
 father Brown as far back as 1793 in a diary 
 kept by his schoolmate, Darius Woodruff. 
 
 And if Cousin John bends his elbow too
 
 I've Been Thinking 93 
 
 often you may be less hard on him when you 
 learn that Great-grandfather Jones could out- 
 drink any man in Suffolk County and that his 
 father was a "three-bottle man." 
 
 If you yourself are selfish and you read in a 
 letter written just before the battle of Lexing- 
 ton that your great-great-grandfather was noted 
 for his unselfishness you have an incentive to 
 shape your life something like his. 
 
 If, on the other hand, you find out in some 
 old record that your maternal great-great- 
 grandfather was the most selfish man who 
 ever rode a farm wagon into Boston it is surely 
 high time that your family stopped being 
 selfish. 
 
 Oh, yes, the minute study of family histories 
 is diverting, stimulating, useful and shock- 
 ing.
 
 94 I've Been Thinking 
 
 DO you intend to become an essayist, 
 gentle writer? Then learn the art of 
 apt and apposite quotation. Quotations are 
 not more desirable to a stock-broker than they 
 should be to you. Cultivate Bartlett. 
 
 To plant in the bare sands of an arid imag- 
 ination the borrowed flowers of the successful 
 gardeners of literature is to prepare a parterre 
 that shall please even the critical. For when 
 a man not variously learned comes on a pas- 
 sage that he has himself read hi the original 
 setting, his vanity is tickled. 
 
 Tickle your reader's vanity often enough, 
 and he is yours and will sound your praises. 
 "A nightingale dies for shame if another bird 
 sings better," but you who are not a nightingale 
 might die for shame if it were not for the sing- 
 ing of that large chorus of English birds that 
 make your songs possible. "Homer himself 
 must beg if he wants means," and if Homer
 
 I've Been Thinking 95 
 
 begs, who are you that says, "to beg I am 
 ashamed" ? See only that you beg at the right 
 gates, and you shall enjoy a borrowed richness 
 that in the minds of many passes for a home- 
 made garment of great value. 
 
 "Some books are to be tasted, others to be 
 swallowed," and others quoted. "Reading 
 maketh a full man," not only that, but "out 
 of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," 
 and he who has read much and remembered 
 much can write well. 
 
 "Discretion of speech is more than elo- 
 quence," and the most discreet man is the man 
 who knows where to borrow to advantage. 
 There be those who write original essays of 
 which the best that may be said is, "It is his 
 own." Better far the essay that glitters and 
 sparkles with a thousand gems niched from 
 the world's great lapidaries. 
 
 "Brevity is the soul of wit," but it does not 
 follow that every postal card contains an epi-
 
 96 I've Been Thinking 
 
 gram. The safest way to insure wit in your 
 essay is to pick it where you find it, and ten 
 chances to one that will not be in your own 
 brain. Better the wit of others than no wit 
 at all which might be a proverb, but is not. 
 
 Shakespeare has well said, "There is nothing 
 either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." 
 If this but applied to your essay, O writer! 
 what an excellent thing it w r ould be! But it 
 lies not within your gray matter to compass it. 
 Again, with the bard, you say, "I must become 
 a borrower," and you walk down the pleasant 
 gardens, plucking here and there a flower of 
 fancy until your little essay stuns the eye with 
 color. "Here's richness!" 
 
 Nothing that you can say but has been well 
 said before; therefore quote it, fusing it, if you 
 will, with your poor thought to decrystallize it 
 and make it seem a new thing. 
 
 "Here are a few of the unpleasant'st words 
 that ever blotted paper." Do not use them,
 
 I've Been Thinking 97 
 
 then. Make your essay light, graceful, full of 
 the whipped cream of human kindness. 
 
 "Silence is the perfectest herald of joy," 
 says Will again, but had he kept silence, what 
 joy the Anglo-Saxon race had missed, and 
 how weak in quotation had been thy essay! 
 Has not this same Shakespeare said, "What's 
 mine is yours?" Therefore, do not scruple to 
 take it if it will "make light where darkness 
 reigned." 
 
 "Who would write well must first have 
 loved." There you are. It is not "nominated 
 in the bond" what you must have loved; 
 therefore it may as well be books as any other 
 thing. You have loved books, you have gath- 
 ered of their honey; now let it drop from off 
 your stylus and sweeten this essay over which 
 you labor. 
 
 A sixteenth-century writer says, "They lard 
 their lean books with the fat of others' works." 
 There you have an old precedent, so fear not.
 
 98 I've Been Thinking 
 
 You are in good company. You do but take 
 what others have taken before. Quote you 
 never so well, you do but requote, and it may 
 be that he from whom you quote lifted his 
 thought from a richer than he. It is well said 
 that "a dwarf, standing on the shoulders of a 
 giant, may see further than a giant himself," 
 and if he can see further it stands to reason 
 that he can be seen further. Your borrowed 
 plumes will make you a marked man; that is, 
 one who is "read, marked, learned, and in- 
 wardly digested." 
 
 "We can say nothing but what hath been 
 said." Why attempt the impossible, then? 
 "I would help others out of a fellow-feeling." 
 I have been thought-dry myself. I dare say 
 that there were mornings when John Milton 
 said: "I had rather than forty shillings I had 
 never begun 'Paradise Lost.' I have keyed 
 it so high that it splits my throat to sing it." 
 
 "Angling is somewhat like poetry men
 
 I've Been Thinking 99 
 
 are to be born so." So angle that ye obtain 
 the prize. Fish in other men's streams and a 
 full basket will surely reward your persever- 
 ance. And when you have spread your wares 
 in the market place, not one in ten will care 
 who owned the fish originally. You will re- 
 ceive the credit even if you pepper your work 
 all over with quotation marks. 
 
 Emerson says, "The passages of Shake- 
 speare that we most prize were never quoted 
 until this century." Do you not see that it was 
 not what Shakespeare himself said that men 
 valued? It was not until his jewels flashed in 
 other men's bosoms that we perceived their 
 luster. Therefore quote, for in so doing you 
 will be rendering the bard a service. 
 
 Some one has said, "He that I am reading 
 seems always to have the most force." Re- 
 member that, O gentle essayist! Do not 
 scruple to help thyself, and having done so, 
 to "take thy pen and write down quickly."
 
 ioo I've Been Thinking 
 
 "It is hard for an empty bag to stand up- 
 right," but thanks to your incursions into the 
 fields of literature, your bag is full. Let it 
 stand. 
 
 YOUR boy stands in awe of you. 
 That's a pretty bad state of affairs, if 
 you don't mind plain talk. 
 
 Who are you, anyway, that he should stand 
 in awe of you? 
 
 Weren't you a boy once? Isn't there a 
 little remnant of boy somewhere in your heart 
 yet? 
 
 I don't say that he ought not to respect you. 
 I hope you respect him, but just remember that 
 it is only a matter of twenty-five years that 
 separates you. He came to this globe later 
 than you, but he is doing the same act and you 
 are really only brothers if you'd only look at it 
 in that way.
 
 I've Been Thinking 101 
 
 Get next to your boy. 
 
 Put him next to you. 
 
 If he stands in awe of you it may be never- 
 theless that he doesn't love you and it's a heap 
 sight better for a boy to love his father than 
 to think that his father is a little tin god on 
 wheels. 
 
 Because you're not one. You may have 
 the tin and you may have the wheels, but 
 there is mighty little that's godlike about you, 
 more's the pity. 
 
 So just lay away that awful frown and learn 
 to throw cart-wheels in the back yard and for- 
 get that you are so important. 
 
 Because on my word you are not important. 
 We'd swing through space just as steadily 
 with you off the map as we do now. And the 
 boy, while he might look solemn, wouldn't 
 feel half as bad as he would if you Brothered 
 him a little more. 
 
 Take a shy at it.
 
 102 I've Been Thinking 
 
 WHY is it that the importance of tags 
 is so often undervalued? How are 
 we to know whether a thing is good or not if 
 we don't know who did it? How are we to 
 know whether a man is to be treated with dis- 
 tinguished consideration and respect if he has 
 no tag? 
 
 Let us put it in concrete form. Let us sup- 
 pose a room full of men and women assembled 
 for a musicale. They have come to be enter- 
 tained by music which they presume is up to a 
 certain standard, for they have some faith in 
 the judgment of their hostess, whom we will 
 call Mrs. Bushel; but it happens that she does 
 not understand human nature, and she care- 
 lessly neglects to place a label on the young 
 man who sits down to play, and what is the 
 result ? Why, he is rewarded with half-hearted 
 applause. And he himself neglects to say that 
 the piece he is playing is a well-known thing
 
 I've Been Thinking 103 
 
 of Grieg's, and the audience is doubly handi- 
 capped. They see he plays well, but they do 
 not wish to be led away by false enthusiasms. 
 Yet, as it happens, this young man is a great 
 pianist, and not only that, but a man who in 
 Dresden is beloved by the ladies a second 
 Paderewski. Imagine the chagrin of some of 
 his auditors when they hear him the next 
 evening at Mrs. Lionhunter's. She under- 
 stands the value of tags. She buys them by 
 the dozen at her stationer's. She goes around 
 in her gushing, compelling way, and says: 
 "Oh, I'm so glad you've come. Whom do 
 you suppose I have captured for to-night? 
 Albrecht Musikheim, the wonderful pianist 
 from the Dresden Conservatory. He has played 
 but once in this country, and then it was more 
 of a rehearsal than anything else; at that 
 impossible Mrs. Bushel's, who would extin- 
 guish Etna if she came near it. I have asked 
 him to play that adorable thing of Grieg's
 
 104 I've Been Thinking 
 
 that he composed for King Oscar. You have 
 never heard piano-playing until to-night." 
 
 And then when the audience is assembled 
 and quiet she leads Herr Musikheim in on 
 stilts and all in the room are immediately 
 swayed by his magnetism, and prepared to 
 accept him before he touches the piano. Even 
 you who heard him last night remember that 
 you thought he was remarkable, although you 
 forgot to say so. 
 
 He knows that his tag is on to-night, and 
 he plays better for the knowledge. And you 
 know that the piece he is playing is famous, 
 and by Grieg at that, and you immediately 
 predict his success in this country. But let 
 me tell you, it will take plenty of tags and a 
 good deal of ability, too, for some of these 
 newspaper critics are really discerning. I say 
 some of them are really discerning, and one 
 or two claim that they can dispense with tags. 
 I wonder!
 
 I've Been Thinking 105 
 
 Years ago the magazines did not tag their 
 articles unless they were by men who had been 
 tagged for years, men like Anthony Trollope 
 and Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. 
 What was the result? Why, people had no 
 opinion of American literature, but read Eng- 
 lish books in preference to those written by 
 Americans. Then some magazine started the 
 fashion of tagging: literary journals sprang up 
 to puff those tagged, and it acted as a direct 
 stimulus on the writers, and also enabled the 
 readers to express intelligent opinions. 
 
 To-day, if we read an essay by Howells we 
 know it is good; we feel that we are right in 
 liking it, and we say so. But if the same essay 
 were signed X. X. Smith, while we might be 
 pleased at it, we would not go around saying, 
 "Oh, have you read the essay of a man named 
 Smith in the Aroma?" because it is rather ridic- 
 ulous to enthuse over an unknown man. 
 
 Now and then the ordinary run of mortals
 
 io6 I've Been Thinking 
 
 enjoys the huge farce that is enacted when a 
 number of art critics dispute as to whether a 
 newly discovered picture is by one of the old 
 Dutch masters or not. The picture has swal- 
 lowed its tag, and they are all at sea. There 
 are two sides to the question, and equally 
 eminent critics take opposing sides. 
 
 Is it an old but hideous daub by some stroll- 
 ing Haarlem sign-painter, or is it one of the 
 best examples extant of Ruysdael? The ques- 
 tion is not an easy one, and experts have to be 
 called in. If it is by an unknown and crude 
 sign-painter it naturally possesses only such 
 value as clings to an antique of any sort, but if 
 it is one of the best examples extant of the 
 great Ruysdael there are a dozen millionaires 
 who are willing to pay thousands for it. 
 
 It is a pretty question, and it furnishes em- 
 ployment for the experts. But it shows the 
 necessity for tags, and I dare say that some- 
 where in the vast unknown Ruysdael and the
 
 I've Been Thinking 107 
 
 itinerant painter are splitting their sides over 
 the discussion. Only it is a little humiliating 
 to Ruysdael that his picture is not its 
 own tag. 
 
 A MAN said to me the other day that he 
 thought it was time that people stopped 
 "knocking" men who had made their millions; 
 that a by-product of the making of vast fortunes 
 was the development of our country and that 
 the multi-millionaire was a benefactor of the 
 race. 
 
 Now it seems to me that one of the joys of 
 life would be gone if a fellow couldn't have his 
 fling at the man who has corralled more of 
 the root of all evil than he himself has been 
 permitted to win. 
 
 When Mr. Smith, who has had hard work to 
 scratch $2,000 a year out of this hard old earth 
 of ours, reflects that at any rate he has always
 
 io8 I've Been Thinking 
 
 been honest, it is a distinct pleasure to him to 
 hear that old Goldbaggs, who is worth fifty 
 million, made $49,999,999-99 by unscrupulous 
 methods and that the odd cent was given him. 
 
 It is a pleasure to a generous-minded man to 
 feel that if he had always looked out for num- 
 ber one, if he had never allowed personal con- 
 siderations to come between him and the 
 coveted dollar, he too would be, if not a fifty- 
 millionaire, at least very rich. 
 
 Surely a man who has landed his fortune is 
 not so thin skinned and lacking in blood that 
 he will begrudge a poor devil the fun of taunt- 
 ing him with his dishonesty. 
 
 If I genially hope that some of these wicked 
 plutocrats may end their days behind prison 
 bars, it does not hasten that day for them, 
 while it does give me a warm glow around the 
 cockles of my heart to harbor such a wish, for 
 I feel that it is echoed by thousands of poor 
 fellows like myself who have been prevented
 
 I've Been Thinking 109 
 
 by honesty or other reasons from amass- 
 ing a fortune. 
 
 THE editor of the paper was an agnostic. 
 Fifty years ago he would have been 
 called an infidel, but we have softened our 
 speech in some ways. Now, although he was 
 an agnostic and really knew nothing of a future 
 life, he was the editor of a live paper and he 
 had to observe the times and seasons; there- 
 fore, when by the calendar he saw that Easter 
 was near at hand, he determined to get up an 
 Easter number, sparing no expense to make it 
 something that would appeal alike to art lovers 
 and to the multitude. 
 
 But, although the editor was an agnostic, 
 it is not to be understood that he was a bad 
 man. This is not a fable, where everything is 
 told in symbols, and where all the characters 
 are types. He was a good man, a kindly man,
 
 no I've Been Thinking 
 
 and if men get into heaven by good deeds alone 
 (and there are those who say they do) this 
 agnostic was certain of a happy immortality. 
 Can you imagine a more pleasant surprise 
 than for a man to die an agnostic, after a well 
 spent life, and to awake a celestial being, 
 knowing for a fact what he had all his life 
 doubted ? 
 
 Among his corps of writers there was a 
 young Hindoo with one of those names that 
 rouse laughter among the unthinking. In the 
 office, where he was cordially liked, he was 
 called "Dan" for short, and that name will do 
 as well as his own. He was a word poet, and 
 he handled the English tongue with an ease 
 that many an American envied. 
 
 The Hindoo was also a good man, although 
 that is neither here nor there. He could pro- 
 ject himself into a subject until his whole being 
 was saturated with it, and he had written a 
 Russian story that more than one Russian
 
 I've Been Thinking m 
 
 expert attributed to Turgenieff. He could do 
 anything in words and he could weave you a 
 story of the Norse mythology and set it forth 
 in a dress of brighter colors than would have 
 been possible to a man of Scandinavian imagina- 
 tion. So when the editor was casting about 
 for the proper person to write him an Easter 
 allegory he turned naturally to "Dan." And 
 he sent for him and said to him quite seriously: 
 "I want you to write me an allegory about 
 the Resurrection. I want something that will 
 appeal to church people. Nothing theatrical, 
 but simple and human. You understand?" 
 
 "I understand," said this young Hindoo, 
 and then he went to an art gallery and looked 
 at those pictures that would help him, and after 
 that he went to his lodgings and cast himself 
 upon the floor and gave his imagination free 
 play for an hour, and then rose and wrote the 
 allegory in an hour and then wrote it once 
 again ; and after that he let it alone, for he knew
 
 n2 I've Been Thinking 
 
 that every added touch would take something 
 of spontaneity from it. 
 
 So he brought it to the editor, who read 
 it through and said quite seriously: "Almost 
 thou persuadest me to be a Christian." 
 
 The allegory having been written, it remained 
 to have it illustrated, and now for once the 
 editor had some thought of the fitness of things, 
 and he said to himself, "I must get a Christian 
 to illustrate this," and he called his artists in 
 and said to each one in turn, "Are you a 
 Christian?" 
 
 And it was astonishing the answers he re- 
 ceived. Most of the men growled out a nega- 
 tive; some blushed and said nothing, but none 
 gave an affirmative answer until he came to a 
 young Catholic, who said modestly, but in a 
 manly tone, "I hope so, sir." 
 
 "Well, Michael, you won't be able to illus- 
 trate this story, as it is entirely out of your 
 line. I want a picture of the Resurrection,
 
 I've Been Thinking 113 
 
 and the public would think it sacrilege if your 
 pen, which is always associated with comic 
 work, should do this." 
 
 "I guess they would, sir," said Michael. 
 
 "Well, then, I'll have to get one of you men 
 that aren't Christians to do it." 
 
 Then one of the artists spoke up and said : 
 
 "Well, we may not be Christians, but we 
 aren't anything else. That is, we used to go 
 to church when we were kids." 
 
 "That's so," assented several. 
 
 "But," said the editor, "I don't think any 
 one of you can do the kind of work that will 
 fit the story that 'Dan' has turned in. It's 
 too good for so ephemeral a thing as a news- 
 paper and it ought to go into a magazine and 
 be illustrated by an Elihu Vedder or some other 
 great symbolist meaning no disrespect to 
 you boys." 
 
 "Ignace Borowski can do it, Mr. Paine," 
 said one of the artists. "He won't draw news-
 
 ii4 I ve Been Thinking 
 
 paper pictures forever. He's as ambitious as 
 they make 'em, and he's a crackerjack of a 
 man for that symbol business." 
 
 All the other artists assented to this, and 
 when Borowski, who had been at home with a 
 cold, came to the office next day the agnostic 
 gave him the Resurrection allegory by the 
 Hindoo, and told him to read it through and 
 do his prettiest in the way of illustrating it. 
 
 Now, Borowski was a Polish Hebrew, who 
 had come to this country with his parents when 
 he was four years old. But he had a knowl- 
 edge of English literature that is vouchsafed 
 to few Americans of nineteen, and he had that 
 wonderful temperament that is found so often 
 among the Polish Hebrews. He was an artist 
 to his finger tips. He had steeped himself in 
 the best examples of art to be found in this 
 country, having gained admittance to many 
 private galleries through the good offices of a 
 millionaire compatriot, and added to that he
 
 I've Been Thinking 115 
 
 had condensed into twelve months' study the 
 work of a three years' course in art instruction, 
 and, as the boys said, he was not long for a 
 newspaper office. 
 
 He read the allegory that noon and his sym- 
 pathetic soul recognized a kindred spirit in 
 the work of the Hindoo, and by afternoon he 
 was hard at work on the illustration, having 
 obtained permission to do the work at home, 
 where he would be free from all distracting 
 influences. 
 
 He felt he had lived a lifetime when his 
 fellow artists saw his work. They were gen- 
 erous in their praise. There was no jealous 
 feeling at all. These Americans were honestly 
 proud of their Hebrew brother, and the praise 
 of one's fellow craftsmen outweighs a whole 
 theaterful of others. 
 
 And now comes the conclusion of the whole 
 matter. The story was unsigned, the picture 
 had nothing but initials, and the great public
 
 n6 I've Been Thinking 
 
 did not know that the editor was an agnostic; 
 but the day after the publication of this agnostic- 
 Hindoo-Hebrew story of the Resurrection ad- 
 miring letters began to come in from the 
 Christian public, and more than one confessed 
 that the beautiful allegory and the spiritual 
 picture had been in the nature of an uplift. 
 But let this letter tell its story. 
 
 "To THE EDITOR OF : 
 
 "Dear Sir, I am not much on doctrines 
 or forms, but I recognize Christianity and 
 brotherly love when I see them, and I want 
 to tell you how much good that allegory and 
 its accompanying picture did me. No man 
 who was not good could have done either story 
 or picture, and I wish you had printed the 
 names of the author and artist. That page 
 represented real Christianity, and I want to 
 thank you for it. 
 
 "ONE WHO HAD DOUBTED."
 
 I've Been Thinking 117 
 
 "They do His will," said the thoughtful 
 man who had known. 
 
 IT is only a question of time when every- 
 body will have an automobile. And when 
 everybody owns an automobile there will be 
 little need for horses and the breed will begin 
 to die out. 
 
 And when the breed begins to die out, it 
 follows as a matter of course that horses will 
 become more valuable. 
 
 And after another while to own a horse will 
 be a badge of exclusiveness. And as by that 
 time the possession of automobiles by every 
 Tom, Dick, and Harry will have made them too 
 plebeian a method of locomotion for the well- 
 to-do, horses will come into increasing favor 
 and will be used all over the country by the rich. 
 
 And as there are more rich people every 
 year in this blessed country, so consequently
 
 u8 I've Been Thinking 
 
 there will be more horses until at last the social 
 climbers will aspire to have horses also. 
 
 And by that time an enterprising proletariat 
 here and there will have found out that there 
 is a joy to be obtained from the handling of a 
 horse that is not yielded by the mastery of 
 insensate steel, and when that time comes the 
 automobile will be doomed, all automobiles will 
 be converted into junk, and the neighing of 
 horses shall be heard in the land. Selah. 
 
 A PLUTOCRAT, an aristocrat, a scien- 
 tist, and a pugilist found themselves 
 traveling together. They were all of a size, 
 each one was inclined to be arrogant, and 
 while they were outwardly polite to each other 
 there was not a man among them who did not 
 look down upon the other three. 
 
 And a proletariat walked afar off, beneath 
 the contempt of any one of them.
 
 I've Been Thinking 119 
 
 In the course of their journeyings the four 
 entered into a great building devoted to trade 
 and full of men of business, who as soon as 
 they saw the plutocrat began bowing to him 
 and asked him to come and take the highest 
 seat. "For," said they, "you began with one 
 cent and now you have a thousand millions." 
 
 The aristocrat sniffed, the scientist sneered, 
 and the pugilist snorted, but there was no doubt 
 of it that if every dog has his day the plutocrat 
 was now having his. 
 
 But the proletariat walked afar off, beneath 
 the contempt of any one of them. 
 
 After a season they left the hall of the men 
 of trade and traveled to an antique Colonial 
 mansion, which they entered. And here the 
 aristocrat took precedence, and, while the 
 other three were treated with civility, it was he 
 to whom the honors were paid. "For," said 
 one, "his line runs back for many generations, 
 traced in the bluest blood."
 
 120 I've Been Thinking 
 
 And the plutocrat said: "Why, i -can buy 
 him out." 
 
 And they bowed the plutocrat out. 
 
 The pugilist jeered audibly at the family pre- 
 tensions and he also was asked to go outside. 
 
 The scientist sneered to himself, but he was 
 suffered to remain, for an ancestor of the 
 aristocrat had been a patron of a scientist of 
 the fifteenth century, and there was a tradi- 
 tion in the family that it was quite the proper 
 thing to condescend to science. 
 
 Now the scientist was plainly bored at the 
 rigid etiquette and ceremony of the place, 
 and after a time he rejoined his companions, 
 who were waiting outside, and in a little while 
 the aristocrat came out also, being of a restless 
 temperament and loving travel. 
 
 But the proletariat walked afar off, beneath 
 the contempt of any one of them. 
 
 It so happened that in their travels they 
 came to a university and all four entered it.
 
 I've Been Thinking 121 
 
 And now it was the scientist who was honored 
 and was invited to a chair, the chair of learn- 
 ing. Whereat the pugilist openly scoffed. 
 
 And he went out with undergraduate help. 
 
 For in those days pugilism had not been 
 recognized as one of the fine arts. 
 
 And the plutocrat said: "What's the mat- 
 ter with my giving a million dollars to this 
 institution? I guess my name will then last 
 as long as that of the scientist." 
 
 But he was not a good guesser. 
 
 The aristocrat said: "I understand the 
 reason for these honors to our good friend the 
 scientist. What a pity the fellow has not 
 blood as well as brains." 
 
 And the proletariat walked afar off, beneath 
 the contempt of any one of them. 
 
 After a time they took up their travels again 
 and came to a great stadium where games and 
 trials of strength were in progress. And it 
 was free to all in honor of the birthday of the
 
 122 I've Been Thinking 
 
 ruler of that country. Yes, even the proletariat 
 was there! 
 
 The pugilist had begun to swagger as soon 
 as he had come in sight of the stadium, and 
 when the multitude saw him they let forth 
 great cheers, and said, "Make way for the 
 only champion!" And he took a seat of honor, 
 glad that his three companions had lived to 
 see this day. 
 
 But the scientist drew back in disgust and 
 marveled that the world should worship 
 brawn. 
 
 As for the plutocrat, he said, "I could give 
 every man in this crowd a thousand dollars 
 and never notice it." 
 
 But he didn't do it. 
 
 The aristocrat was once more in his element, 
 and he proceeded to patronize the pugilist and 
 took him off to introduce him to some of his 
 titled friends. For it is known that for ages 
 the Bluebloods have patronized sport.
 
 I've Been Thinking 123 
 
 On a sudden a great outcry arose In the 
 stadium. Smoke was seen, and cries of fire 
 were heard, and men rushed hither and thither, 
 and the crowd swayed backward and forward, 
 seized with a panic that each moment grew 
 more wild. And in the thick of the crush was 
 the proletariat, who was as poor as the pugilist 
 and as innocent of muscle as the scientist and 
 as destitute of blood as the plutocrat and as 
 weak of intellect as the aristocrat. 
 
 But being a brave man he stood his ground 
 undaunted and called upon the crowd to stop 
 its mad rushing, and his voice was charged 
 with magnetism, so that the crowd obeyed him 
 and a great disaster was averted. But he 
 himself was crushed to death. 
 
 That night the other four were summoned 
 hence also, and it came to pass that all five 
 stood before the Gate of St. Peter, who asked 
 each one in turn to give an account of him- 
 self.
 
 124 I' ve Been Thinking 
 
 Said the pugilist, "I've knocked out more 
 men than any prize fighter who ever lived." 
 
 "Stand aside," said St. Peter, sternly, look- 
 ing toward the nethermost regions. 
 
 "I," said the scientist, "gave my whole life 
 to the propagation of the theory that an apple 
 cannot rise from the grass to a tree on account of 
 the law of gravitation." 
 
 "How did that benefit humanity?" asked 
 St. Peter. 
 
 "I was not thinking of humanity," said the 
 scientist. 
 
 "Stand aside," said St. Peter. 
 
 The aristocrat advanced with beribboned 
 cap in hand and, bowing, said: 
 
 "There is no doubt that I will be admitted. 
 I am Percival Blueblood, patron of learning 
 and the fancy and a gentleman. Please direct 
 me to the bath." 
 
 "Stand aside," said St. Peter. 
 
 Then the plutocrat advanced and said :
 
 I've Been Thinking 125 
 
 "I am the richest man in the world and I 
 want an extra commodious suite. I have done 
 a great deal of good with my money since I 
 turned fifty." 
 
 "How many people blessed you for the way 
 you made your money in the first place?" 
 asked St. Peter. 
 
 "Well, to tell the exact truth as a man 
 ought to do at such a time as this I was 
 cursed not a little in my early years, but I gave 
 a hundred thou " 
 
 "Stand aside," said St. Peter. 
 
 Last of all came the proletariat, who said : 
 
 "What are the qualifications, St. Peter?" 
 
 And St. Peter said : 
 
 "How far can you trace your ancestry back?" 
 
 "I do not know of a certainty who my father 
 was." 
 
 "Umph!" said St. Peter. "How much wis- 
 dom have you absorbed?" 
 
 "I never went to school."
 
 126 I've Been Thinking 
 
 "Worse and worse," said St. Peter. "How 
 many men have you knocked out in the arena 
 or in business?" 
 
 "I am afraid I never knocked any one out. 
 I tried to keep within my rights and meddled 
 with no one. I lacked initiative, I am afraid." 
 
 "Umph!" said St. Peter. "Well, how much 
 money have you given to the poor?" 
 
 "I had none to give. I tried to make it up 
 by" 
 
 St. Peter interrupted him: "How about 
 that time you quelled the panic at the stadium ? " 
 
 "Oh, that wasn't anything! Any one would 
 have done that." 
 
 "How is that?" said St. Peter, addressing 
 the four who had been told to stand aside. 
 
 "He was worth a hundred men that day," 
 said the plutocrat, unable to express himself 
 save in terms of comparative values. 
 
 "He showed a self-sacrifice worthy of a 
 scientist," said the man of learning.
 
 I've Been Thinking 127 
 
 "He acted like a thoroughbred," said the 
 aristocrat. 
 
 "He was a man all right," said the pugilist, 
 holding out his hand to the pauper. 
 
 "Come in," said St. Peter to the proletariat, 
 who left his companions and entered in. 
 
 "We might as well continue our journey 
 together," said the aristocrat, with a shrug of 
 his shoulders. 
 
 SHOULD a man give up his seat in a car 
 to a woman ? 
 
 If a woman has the same rights as a man 
 (and she should have) the man need not give 
 up his seat, because if a man has the same 
 rights as a woman (and he should have) it does 
 not follow that she should give up her seat to a 
 man who was standing. 
 
 But the question involved is not one of 
 rights but of chivalry, and by common con-
 
 128 I've Been Thinking 
 
 sent of ourselves, the scrambling, pushing, 
 money-getting Americans are the most chival- 
 rous nation on earth in their attitude toward 
 woman. 
 
 I do not always give up my seat to a stand- 
 ing woman, but I will confess here and now 
 that when I do not I feel all through my journey, 
 or as long as she is standing in front of me, that 
 I am a particularly small and unattractive 
 breed of worm. Sometimes this humiliation 
 on my part results in my getting up tardily and 
 offering her my seat; sometimes I fight it out 
 with myself and say, "Sit still, you worm, you 
 have a right to this seat and if you do get up 
 and give it to this woman you know perfectly 
 well that you will have a 'holier than thou' 
 feeling toward every other sedentary man in 
 the car, and it is better to be a rude worm than 
 a polite prig." 
 
 And so I go on sitting, but I am not comfort- 
 able, and I don't suppose any true-blue Ameri-
 
 I've Been Thinking 129 
 
 can is comfortable if he is sitting while a woman 
 stands in front of him. 
 For in the last analysis we are chivalrous. 
 
 I HAVE come to the conclusion that when 
 I'm in a department store I am invisible. 
 Now, you know when a man goes up to the 
 handkerchief department and says in fairly 
 strong tones, "Please let me look at your 
 slightly soiled Irish linen real gentlemen's 
 handkerchiefs at thirty cents a dozen marked 
 down from three dollars on account of stock 
 taking," and the young woman addressed looks 
 right through him to the lady behind him and 
 asks her what she wants, it stands to reason that 
 the man must be invisible. It has happened 
 to me and it really gave me an uncanny feeling. 
 I hate to go into a crowd in a department store 
 for fear that I will become invisible, and then 
 maybe a pickpocket will go through me.
 
 130 I've Been Thinking 
 
 But to drop foolish persiflage, there's another 
 reason why I feel that I'm invisible in a depart- 
 ment store, and that is because the young 
 worn the young ladies talk right along 
 as if they didn't see me even if I cough and 
 stand on my tiptoes. Now, if I was looking 
 right at a certain space and suddenly a cough 
 came out of that space, and yet I saw no man, 
 I'd stop talking and begin to shiver, although 
 I'm not superstitious; but these salesladies are 
 evidently quite used to hearing coughs come 
 from invisible men, for they go right on, only 
 pausing to take breath, and sometimes I blush 
 in my invisibility by the way, I'd dearly 
 love to see an invisible blush wonder what 
 color it is I say I blush because their talk 
 is not only so intimate, but often so acrimonious. 
 
 Now, they say you won't hear acrimonious 
 talk at the higher priced places, but you 
 know how it is. Times aren't what they were a 
 year or two ago, and if I can get good handker-
 
 I've Been Thinking 131 
 
 chiefs for the washing at six cents apiece what's 
 the use of going to a Fifth avenue store where 
 one hears nothing but the most high-bred talk 
 and pays for it when he buys his handkerchiefs ? 
 
 Besides, in some of those higher priced shops 
 there is an ah* of hauteur, a sort of French 
 aristocracy atmosphere that chills me so that I 
 forget what I came for and am glad to escape to 
 the more democratic street. There's no feel- 
 ing of universal er sisterhood at those 
 swell places. The young ladies young prin- 
 cesses, I should say glide around noiselessly 
 and use the broad a, and their tones are so 
 chilly that it seems almost an insult to ask 
 them for twenty-five-cent socks. And, besides, 
 they always charge fifty cents for them in those 
 places. 
 
 No, in the present state of the market, and 
 considering my bringing up, give me cheaper 
 places, even if I do become invisible in them. 
 
 Now, the other day, I went into a store to
 
 132 I've Been Thinking 
 
 get a pair of mittens my hands get real cold 
 in the winter, and I find that mittens are much 
 warmer than gloves. They say that you can 
 dress in almost anything in New York and not 
 attract notice, but when I put on a silk hat 
 and a sack coat over a cardigan jacket 
 warmest thing in the world a cardigan jacket, 
 and only a dollar and a half if you look for 
 bargains and then draw on my brown and 
 orange worsted mittens and walk up on the 
 dollar side of Fifth Avenue, I always feel that I 
 am no longer invisible. Lucky that I don't 
 care. I'd rather be comfortable than fashion- 
 able. 
 
 The other day I was reading Herbert 
 Spencer's "Philosophy of Style" when a 
 writer dies I always read just enough of him 
 to be able to talk understandingly about him, 
 and make people think I know a heap about 
 him it's so handy at teas, you know. Well, 
 as I was saying, I was reading Spencer's
 
 I've Been Thinking 133 
 
 "Philosophy of Style," in a pocket edition, and 
 I went in to see a broker friend down in Wall 
 Street, one of those pink-of-fashion men, you 
 know, and as he was busy I sat down and read 
 Spencer. When he came out he saw the book, 
 and reaching out he took it from me and read 
 the title, "Philosophy of Style." 
 
 He looked at my high hat and my cardigan 
 jacket and my mittens, and then he said: 
 "Very appropriate. Is there a chapter on 
 gum shoes?" glancing at my easy rubbers. 
 
 Well, of course, I didn't mind. I said to 
 him good-naturedly: "Well, Jack, you go 
 in for money and clothes, but as for me, give 
 me comfort and brains." 
 
 "You have the comfort all right," said he. 
 
 But I'm jestproof. Good heavens! there 
 is no man living but has his foible, and if it 
 pleases Jack to laugh at mine why, let him. 
 If I went in for being a glass of fashion and a 
 mold of form I would only make myself
 
 134 I've Been Thinking 
 
 ridiculous and be uncomfortable into the bar- 
 gain; so I say, "Why not let 'em know you 
 don't think you're a leader of fashion?" and 
 I dress accordingly. And if you'll try those 
 mittens you'll be a good deal warmer. They 
 beat castor gloves all hollow and they're only 
 one-tenth of the price. Twelve and a half cents 
 for each mitten. 
 
 I tell you that just as soon as you get to the 
 point where you don't care whether you make 
 a guy of yourself or not you find that you can 
 put money in the bank even on your slender 
 salary. That is, you can if you don't have to 
 blow it in on bread for the children. This 
 bread for the children is what is keeping thou- 
 sands of men in the straight and narrow way. 
 There'd be more drunkards and more merry- 
 making of all kinds if it wasn't for this eternal 
 bread-buying. 
 
 This talk of college is foolishness. Let a 
 young man begin by supporting the old man,
 
 I've Been Thinking 135 
 
 and when he has supplied him with the luxuries 
 that the father went without in order that the 
 boy might have bread, and incidentally has 
 learned a great deal more of the world than 
 they teach at most colleges, then let him take 
 a term or two at Harvard so as to give him 
 the ability to move easily about in one of 
 those high-priced stores among the princesses. 
 But the knowledge of the world should come 
 first along with the daily roll for the old gen- 
 tleman. 
 
 And if after reading this any one can see 
 through me it proves what I started out to 
 prove that I'm invisible. 
 
 A CERTAIN enormously wealthy Par- 
 venu, who thought he had a love for 
 art, but who bought by name and fame only, 
 expended $20,000 for which he secured five 
 small, but fine, examples of the Barbizon
 
 136 I've Been Thinking 
 
 school. And as soon as the French pictures 
 were hung in his drawing-room there ap- 
 peared to him out of the Everywhere a man 
 who said: 
 
 "You have five magnificent paintings for 
 which you paid magnificent prices. It will 
 doubtless console the painters, who are wan- 
 dering in Shadowland, to know that the work 
 that would hardly buy them bread when they 
 were upon earth will now keep an art dealer 
 in plenty for a lifetime. But why have you 
 not bought beautiful American pictures? You 
 are not French. It is true that art has no 
 nationality, but you should foster the art of 
 the men who live under the same flag as you, 
 even as you profess to protect the interests of 
 your workingmen." 
 
 And the Parvenu said: "I am an Ameri- 
 can of the Americans and believe in American 
 engines and American pluck and American 
 brains, but those French make a business of
 
 I've Been Thinking 137 
 
 art, and I am told that American artists are 
 merely imitators." 
 
 "Fool!" said the ghostly visitor. "Look!" 
 
 And a vision appeared before the Parvenu 
 and he saw a lover of art clad in the peculiar 
 fashion of fifty years hence. And he was buy- 
 ing five small American pictures, for which he 
 willingly paid $50,000. 
 
 And when the Parvenu saw the prices they 
 had fetched he said: "When were those painted 
 and by whom, for they must be beautiful to 
 be worth so much." 
 
 "Beautiful were they before ever a price was 
 set on them," said the ghostly visitor. "Beau- 
 tiful also were these, for which you have ex- 
 pended a fortune, when their creators finished 
 them and sold them for a handful of francs to 
 keep the pot boiling. These pictures that you 
 see being bought fifty years hence are the 
 works of American contemporaries of yours. 
 To-day they are picking up a living in the
 
 138 I've Been Thinking 
 
 West, in New York, in New England, and are 
 thankful to keep body and soul together that 
 they may work at the art they love. Fancy 
 what they would think if a millionaire of 
 feeling, having eyes to see and an under- 
 standing to appreciate the poetry of their land- 
 scapes, should pay generous prices for these 
 painted poems that are going for little more 
 than the cost of the paint that is in them. 
 For then, my friend, these artists would not 
 need to wait until they reached Shadowland 
 before they heard that their names had be- 
 come famous." 
 
 "Lord, give me eyes to see," said the Par- 
 venu, as the vision vanished. 
 
 IN some recent magazine stories the thing 
 that counts seems to be not so much what 
 the people do and say as where and how they 
 say it.
 
 I've Been Thinking 139 
 
 Let us discover two characters in the parlor, 
 and open the conversation in this way: 
 
 Charles Darcey rose to his feet and gazed 
 first at Marie and then at a steel engraving. 
 
 Marie's eyes followed his, and then went 
 beyond and back of him to a French mirror. 
 It was at least a minute before Charles spoke, 
 and in that time his hazel eyes traveled around 
 and took in seven chairs, the armchair, the 
 sofa, the desk, and the curtains. 
 
 Nor were her eyes idle, even though she did 
 not speak. She looked at the handsome Turkish 
 rug, at the cartridge paper on the wall it 
 was a robin' s-egg blue at the chandelier and 
 then at him. 
 
 "I don't know what to say," said he at last, 
 casting his eyes upon the Japanese rug. 
 
 "Why have you called, then?" said she, 
 opening a magazine with nervous fingers and 
 reading some of the advertisements. 
 
 "I came," said he, as he played with a silver
 
 140 I've Been Thinking 
 
 paper-cutter that had been secured at a bar- 
 gain sale, "to say good-by." 
 
 "Good-by?" she said in questioning tones, 
 rising and sniffing a Marechal Niel rose that 
 was stuck in his button-hole. 
 
 He looked intently at an etching by Field 
 which hung over the desk. It depicted a 
 sylvan scene in the depths of winter; but he 
 did not think of that. "Yes, good-by," he 
 said, dropping the paper-cutter inadvertently. 
 
 It fell with a tinkling sound upon the marble 
 center-table and thence to the India rug. The 
 sound roused Marie. 
 
 "Well, then I suppose we must part." 
 
 "Your supposition is the right one," said he, 
 taking up a ten-cent monthly. 
 
 She picked up a copy of the latest novel and 
 opened at the last chapter. It might have had 
 a significance, but if it had it escaped her. A 
 fly flew in at the window and settled on her 
 cheek, but she did not notice it.
 
 I've Been Thinking 141 
 
 Charles leaned forward and brushed the 
 fly from her delicate cheek. He had ceased to 
 care for her, but he was not above doing her a 
 common courtesy. He read a short poem in the 
 ten-cent monthly. At last he said, "You have 
 not answered me." 
 
 "I did not know that you had asked me 
 anything," she replied, turning her head so 
 as to see the little oil painting of a flock 
 of sheep, which her father had won at a 
 raffle. 
 
 "Oh, Marie, don't you understand me?" 
 he cried in tones of anguish, as he stepped to 
 the mirror and tied his cravat. 
 
 Marie was silent. She did not understand 
 him. She hated herself for it, and tapped the 
 Smyrna rug with her foot as she had seen 
 actresses do under stress of feeling. 
 
 Charles rose and walked to the door. He 
 turned and looked over the shoulder of his 
 pepper-and-salt suit. All was at an end.
 
 142 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Marie picked up a magazine and looked at 
 the pictures. 
 
 There was a sound of a closing door. Marie 
 was alone with the book and magazines, the 
 paper-cutter, the seven chairs, the armchair, 
 the sofa, the center-table, the mirror, the desk, 
 the lace curtains, the pictures, and the Syrian 
 rug. 
 
 The lunch bell rang. 
 
 She hastened to the dining-room. 
 
 JUST a heart-to-heart talk upon the twin 
 subjects of servants and murders. One 
 naturally leads to the other. 
 
 And, at the start, I want to say that I totally 
 disapprove of servants as a subject of con- 
 versation. The trials of housekeepers should 
 be a tabooed topic. And I will say the same 
 of murder trials. 
 For myself, I make it a point never to read
 
 I've Been Thinking 143 
 
 about murders. I can get all I want from the 
 headlines. To be sure, there are exceptions 
 to every rule; there was Robin Graves, who 
 murdered his great-grandmother on a dare 
 from his fellow medical students. I didn't 
 read anything about it, but I heard people 
 discussing it, and it had elements of interest 
 in it. And I always thought that Probyn- 
 Clew case far from dull. You may remember 
 that Probyn sent Clew a poisoned caramel on 
 the very day that Clew sent Probyn a poisoned 
 peppermint, and the papers were full of it. 
 I gathered enough to enable me to hold my end 
 up when I encountered a person with bad 
 enough taste to discuss the subject. It was 
 deplorable the way people harped on that case. 
 Then take the affair of the landlady who 
 murdered all her boarders because they resented 
 a raise in the price of board. What a mine of 
 wealth that was to the reporters! My paper 
 had six columns a day for twenty days, and I
 
 i44 I' ve Been Thinking 
 
 just had to read that because there was nothing 
 else, but politics, in the paper; but I felt that 
 it was no subject for a person of any refinement. 
 Yet I knew one man who makes quite a pre- 
 tense of being up in the English classics, and 
 he knew every point in the trial. I could not 
 trip him up on a single bit of evidence. That 
 experience just about destroyed my faith in 
 humanity. My brother said that I talked of 
 nothing else but that trial, and he was quite 
 right. I was completely absorbed in trying 
 to find some person who knew nothing of it. 
 And at last I did find an old lady who never 
 reads the papers. She had not even heard 
 about it. She wanted to discuss one of Fiske's 
 books on evolution, but I said, "See here, Mrs. 
 Delancey, you're a rara avis. You're the 
 first person I've met who has not heard about 
 this unique series of murders, and I'm just 
 going to tell you the whole story so that you 
 may see for yourself what it is that fills people's
 
 I've Been Thinking 145 
 
 minds in these degenerate days." And so I 
 told her the whole story and she listened 
 breathless; this cultivated woman was posi- 
 tively as interested as if she had been a police- 
 man, off (or on) duty, and discussing shop 
 with a brother officer. Oh, I was sickened. 
 
 After a while she wanted to shift off to evo- 
 lution so that she wouldn't dream of the horrible 
 murders, but I looked at my watch and saw 
 that I had a train to catch, and again Fiske 
 was side-tracked. Fiske, with his lucidity and 
 logic and sweet reasonableness, was side-tracked 
 for a horrible murder. 
 
 Just as I was coming away I asked my hostess, 
 casually, if she remembered the Bond Street 
 murder, and she did remember that, for her 
 father lived on the very same block at the 
 time it was committed. I actually missed my 
 train because I sat down to hear her talk about 
 it. It was like a bit out of Ainsworth. I was 
 not born when it happened, and she was but
 
 146 I've Been Thinking 
 
 a girl, but her father had the bad habit of dis- 
 cussing such things in the presence of his 
 children, and it had made such an impression 
 upon her infant mind that here she was re- 
 tailing it to me. As a bit of local history con- 
 temporaneous with the days of Irving and 
 Cooper, it had a certain value; and that is 
 what appealed to me. 
 
 But to return to servants. There is abso- 
 lutely no excuse for talking about the Bridgets 
 and Christinas and Maries and Dinahs that 
 come and go. 
 
 Mind you, I am not narrow-minded; there 
 are circumstances that alter cases. If there 
 is a servant who excites your interest in hu- 
 manity, it is allowable to talk about her. Now 
 we had a maid for a couple of days last week 
 who had evidently seen better days and many 
 of them. The way she broke crockery showed 
 that she did not do it with malice prepense, 
 nor yet out of sheer carelessness as an ordinary
 
 I've Been Thinking 147 
 
 maid would have done. She had evidently 
 been used to being waited upon and had no 
 manual dexterity whatever. In fact she told 
 me that she had never lived out before. Her 
 name was Mamie Brannigan. 
 
 We had one girl who refused to go when her 
 day was up. She was absolutely worthless 
 as a cook, but she liked her room, and she 
 wanted to board with us. My mother wanted 
 me to eject her forcibly, but I am not a 
 bouncer and she was. Anyway, I felt it 
 was a sort of compliment to our house that 
 she wanted to stay, and so we allowed her 
 to keep the room. She paid board and we 
 handed her money over as wages to her suc- 
 cessors. 
 
 Servants are queer any way you look at 
 them; but this everlasting talking about them, 
 when we are surrounded by art and literature 
 and the good deeds of philanthropists, makes 
 me wonder what we are coming to. I think
 
 148 I've Been Thinking 
 
 that men are almost as bad as women in this 
 matter. A man is just as likely to be interested 
 in our case of the servant-boarder as a woman 
 is, and I never go out anywhere where there 
 are some strangers present, but I am asked to 
 tell about her, and that always starts the ser- 
 vant question; and I am generally asked to 
 take the floor, because we have had such queer 
 experiences. 
 
 I have time for only one more anecdote, 
 but I must tell that. Summer before last 
 mother got a treasure of a cook. She could 
 cook, she was respectful and respectable, she 
 didn't break and she was honest, but 
 
 Well, her "but" was that she would not go 
 to the mountains. Now we take a furnished 
 house in the mountains every summer, but we 
 can't get a servant up there, and Nadjezda 
 (she's a Pole) could not be induced to go. So 
 we went without her, and she lived in our city 
 house on half wages all summer long and
 
 I've Been Thinking 149 
 
 cooked for herself, while mother went to the 
 mountains and cooked for herself. Still, it 
 was a sort of comfort to think that somewhere 
 we had a capable cook cooking. 
 
 I sometimes wish that some of the incapable 
 ones could be cooking somewhere. 
 
 YOU were thinking yesterday, my good 
 woman, that you were a little better than 
 the lady who called on you although she has 
 more money than you. 
 
 But are you really better than she? 
 
 Your husband is a salaried man and her 
 husband is an oil magnate. 
 
 Of course that does not necessarily make 
 her any better than you, because we all know 
 that your husband had a college education and 
 her husband was a day laborer. 
 
 But why should your husband's education 
 or her husband's wealth have anything to do
 
 150 I've Been Thinking 
 
 with you or her? Let us cut the husbands 
 out of the proposition. 
 
 Well, then, she has more money than you. 
 
 Does that make you any better than she? 
 Is the lack of money an unmixed blessing 
 carrying with it social superiority? 
 
 She (with a certain touch of vulgarity, owing 
 to her ancestors, which you have not, thanks 
 to your ancestors) has a much kinder heart 
 than you have. 
 
 She honestly tries to be herself in spite of the 
 money she has, while you have social amibitions 
 that cause you to be snobbish. 
 
 You think you are better than she. 
 
 She never thinks about social status. 
 
 You feel bitter toward her because her hus- 
 band is immensely wealthy. 
 
 She feels well disposed toward you because 
 she thinks both you and your husband are 
 clever and with her, clever has a better 
 meaning than the commonly accepted one.
 
 I've Been Thinking 151 
 
 No, in spite of her money and her position 
 she is more of a woman than you are in spite 
 of your blood and your husband's education. 
 
 CLEON told me the other day that being 
 of a mind to own sets of Balzac and 
 Shakespeare, neither of which he happened to 
 have in his bachelor apartments, he dropped a 
 line to a well-known publisher and the next 
 day the delivery wagon stopped at his door, 
 the books were handed out, his man took 
 them in, and that was the end of it. Oh, no, 
 not quite the end; when he settles his bills for 
 the quarter he will pay for his books. 
 
 Now I dare say that Cleon will get some 
 good from his books because he is really fond 
 of reading when it doesn't interfere with his 
 golf. And he purchased handsome editions, 
 fresh from the binder's, spick-span and flawless, 
 with never a dog's ear or a crease in the leather.
 
 152 I've Been Thinking 
 
 But he had no fun out of the buying. He saw 
 an advertisement, he sent in an order, and 
 almost by magic the books were on his table. 
 Yet think of the price he pays for them ! Two 
 hundred good dollars. 
 
 Yesterday I had some money to spend. I 
 say I had money to spend. Don't think for a 
 moment that money that buys shoes and sacks 
 and sheetings and socks is money spent. If 
 that were the case I could be said to spend 
 money every day of my life, for my children 
 will walk on their feet, and they demand pro- 
 tection from the elements no matter how high 
 may be the price of cloth. No, the money I 
 had yesterday was a gift to be actually spent as 
 foolishly as I might devise. 
 
 Like Cleon, I too wanted books, for your 
 circulating library is only a temporary assuager 
 of literary hunger and one book owned is 
 worth three "taken out." But ten dollars will 
 not carry one as far as will two hundred unless
 
 I've Been Thinking 153 
 
 care is taken and discrimination is used. So 
 I went, not to a store where they deal in books 
 fresh from the mint, but to a shop devoted 
 primarily to the cause of dry goods where they 
 were having a "hurt book" sale, and if you 
 will believe me, the very first thing that assailed 
 my eye was a set of Shakespeare that looked 
 hurt beyond any book physician's aid. Limp 
 leather bindings that abused their prerogative; 
 the box in which they were huddling together, 
 slit and cracked and broken. How often hands 
 had seized those coverings! They looked as 
 if they had been the "vade mecum" of a book- 
 lover for a score of years. And my Shake- 
 speare at home is all crowded into one volume, 
 so that "The Tempest" rages about the ears 
 of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and 
 "Hamlet," with scant regard for royal rights, 
 treads on the toes of poor "King Lear." 
 
 I opened one of the volumes and found to 
 my surprise that the pages were immaculate.
 
 154 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Not a word had been read! There were 
 Shakespeare's wit and poetry and splendor and 
 melody and humanity untouched by any save 
 a cursory eye. I asked the maiden, who, 
 temporarily divorced from the ribbon and lace 
 counter, was giving her attention to the world 
 of letters, what the set was worth. 
 
 "Five dollars" was the answer that fell on 
 my hungry ears. And I had seen the same set 
 advertised for fifteen! Twelve green-backed 
 volumes there were, and they might be mine 
 for five greenbacks. Never leaped sword from 
 scabbard sooner than leaped my money from 
 its pocket. I looked over my shoulder, fear- 
 ing that some other book-lover would grab the 
 box of books away from me and claim them. 
 I examined them carefully as a mother does 
 her boy when he comes crying into the house 
 after a fall, and I found that they looked more 
 hurt than they were. They were really more 
 frightened than hurt. Incessant pawing by
 
 I've Been Thinking 155 
 
 unfriendly hands is an awful ordeal to which 
 to subject a book full of kindly instincts, as 
 all of Shakespeare's books always are. But 
 they had fallen on friendly hands at last, and 
 hereafter they shall be handled with the respect 
 due their contents. 
 
 And right here let me thank the kind people 
 who treated Shakespeare so cavalierly. This 
 may sound inconsistent; but are not my thanks 
 due those who caused the bard to depreciate 
 two-thirds in money value? 
 
 I can see them, typical shoppers, out for 
 bargains in scrim and Hamburg edgings, 
 making a hurried visit to the book counter in 
 hope of getting a complete and unabridged set 
 of Mary J. Holmes's works. And they stumbled 
 on Shakespeare. Of course they had heard of 
 him before. Cheap shoppers are not so igno- 
 rant as you imagine, lofty reader. They had 
 often heard of him before, but they supposed 
 that writing plays for Henry Irving to produce
 
 156 I've Been Thinking 
 
 kept him too busy to do anything in the book 
 line. Curious to see what sort of books he 
 had written, they tumbled them out of the box 
 and tested the limpness of the covers until 
 those verdant leathers were hopelessly crippled 
 and doomed to limp forever. They dropped 
 them on the floor because the bindings were so 
 curiously slippery so unlike the bindings of 
 Mary J. Then they picked them up by those 
 same covers as one lifts a rabbit by its ears, and 
 then they looked inside. The interior bore a 
 striking resemblance to poetry, but there 
 seemed to be a paucity of rhyme; and if it was 
 conversation it was terribly broken up by 
 abbreviated names. Back into the box they 
 were hustled to await the coming of another 
 shopper with peaked face, glittering eye, and 
 hurried step, and hour by hour the value of 
 that set of Shakespeare as leather and paper 
 sank low and lower still, until one third of its 
 worth was all that was left to it. In another
 
 I've Been Thinking 157 
 
 week I might have had it for the asking, per- 
 haps. But you shoppers, you did not hurt the 
 thought in the book nor were the typography 
 and the margins joggled awry by your con- 
 temptuous hands. I can sink back across the 
 arms of my easiest chair and find as much of 
 Shakespeare's divine essence as Cleon shall 
 find in his hundred-dollar edition. 
 
 Therefore, I thank you, careless shoppers. 
 When the glad season comes that reckless 
 shoppers turn their thoughts to books, come 
 out, ye bargainers, and depreciate a com- 
 plete set of "The Tatler" for me. Only spare 
 the integrity of the leaves. If you but let the 
 leafage rival that of Vallombrosa I care not 
 how you smut the covers, for there are deter- 
 gents that shall kill all germs. 
 
 When I had secured my Shakespeare, I 
 thought that there might peradventure be a 
 set of Scott for a song. I saw an "Ivanhoe" 
 here and a "Redgauntlet" there and a "Lady
 
 158 I've Been Thinking 
 
 of the Lake" hard by, and I asked the maiden, 
 late of the lace department, whether they had 
 Scott's works complete. She walked up and 
 down and cast a searching eye over the mass 
 of books. 
 
 "No," said she, finally, with an omniscient 
 smile, "there's nothing left but his poems and 
 the Waverley Novels." 
 
 A crippled Shakespeare, with reasoning powers 
 still intact, might seem to be enough of a bar- 
 gain for one day, but at another table I found 
 scores of essayists on dress parade and waiting 
 to be transferred when it should suit the will of 
 some random purchaser. They were massed in 
 a solid phalanx, for they had been so unattract- 
 ive to the rushing shoppers that they had scarce 
 given them a toss. There was nothing limp 
 about them. There they stood, undismayed, 
 ready for friend or foe, pipeclayed and sol- 
 dierly, with "shining morning faces." And 
 nineteen cents would buy their discharge!
 
 I've Been Thinking 159 
 
 What do you think, you thoughtless persons 
 who spend a hundred dollars for a week at the 
 Rangeley Lakes what do you think of "A 
 Week on the Concord" for nineteen cents? 
 And while you can do no more than catch some 
 fish that will fade in a few days I can catch and 
 keep forever thoughts as quaint and as homely 
 as Thoreau was himself. 
 
 O Cleon, you with your plethoric purse have 
 never learned the delights of working for your 
 money's worth. You spent two hundred dol- 
 lars without the fun of picking and choosing, 
 while I, for less than ten, have picked up a 
 library of good fellows; and enjoyed the search 
 withal. 
 
 The book-hurting shoppers did not toss and 
 gore Balzac, for the very name seemed to them 
 something "scientific," and they passed him 
 by as if they had been so many Levites. Their 
 unjust discrimination against him was my loss, 
 for I still lack a Balzac. Next year it would
 
 160 I've Been Thinking 
 
 pay you to dip into the Frenchman a little, ye 
 scrim-hunting ladies. He is easily handled 
 and although in the department-store edition 
 his covers are not limp, you can bring down his 
 price appreciably if you follow bargain-sale 
 tactics. And when you have bepawed him and 
 rejected him as worse than rubbish, will you 
 kindly drop me a postal that I may go to see 
 whether he has been let down to my stature ? 
 
 But for one afternoon's browsing, credit me 
 with Macaulay's " Literary Essays," Carlyle's 
 "Sartor Resartus," Loti's "Iceland Fisher- 
 man," Emerson's "English Traits," Curtis's 
 "Prue and I," Thoreau's "Walden" and his 
 "Week on the Concord," and Shakespeare on 
 crutches, and there is still some virtue in the 
 ten dollars. Cleon, I wouldn't change places 
 with you unless, together with your generous 
 balance at the banker's, I could keep my ability 
 to tire out a dollar.
 
 I've Been Thinking 161 
 
 DO you want to know why the maid left 
 after the third hot night? I may be 
 mistaken, but if you will take me up to the 
 room she occupied I may be able to find a clue, 
 and there is certainly nothing about me that 
 resembles Sherlock Holmes. 
 
 What a large closet! 
 
 No? Not a closet? The maid's room? 
 
 Oh, la, la! (As they say in France.) 
 
 Do you remember the Black Hole of Calcutta ? 
 
 Poor maid! 
 
 And what an apology for a window. And 
 how hot the tin roof makes the room even this 
 cool day. 
 
 Wasn't it awful the way some people treated 
 slaves ? 
 
 Makes me simply shudder to read the 
 accounts. 
 
 So your maid stayed through the third hot 
 night ?
 
 1 62 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Courageous girl! 
 
 I would have left after the first night's ex- 
 perience. 
 
 It was hot on your own floor with all the win- 
 dows open and a direct draft over the bed. 
 
 But think of that room. 
 
 "Elizabeth or the Exiles of Siberia!" 
 
 Only they were cold. 
 
 And both you and your husband pillars of 
 the church. 
 
 You might install an electric fan. 
 
 That would help. 
 
 Three nights in a hot-box! 
 
 Pjewi 
 
 TTTHEN a man's label is on he has no 
 V T idea what people really think of him. 
 I know of a pianist in New York who has a 
 label that's worth a good deal to him. Why, 
 with his label on he can make at least twenty-
 
 I've Been Thinking 163 
 
 five thousand dollars a year, and socially he is 
 a lion with his label on, mind you. 
 
 He is such a compeller of tone that he can 
 make women weep when they know who 
 he is and Paderewski himself is said to have 
 said that there is no one he would rather hear 
 play than this same bald head for he hap- 
 pens to be that rara avis, a bald-headed pianist. 
 
 Zabritski, who was born within a stone's 
 throw of the New York Academy of Music, of 
 New England parents, is the soul of good- 
 nature, and, except when he is on a concert 
 tour, he hasn't a particle of big head. He once 
 told me that when he is on a concert tour he 
 finds that a certain amount of big-headedness 
 is expected of him by his audiences in order to 
 convince them that he is the real goods, and so 
 sometimes he refuses to play on a piano after 
 he has sat down to it and makes the audience 
 wait until a better one is brought up from the 
 local warerooms.
 
 164 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Of course the papers next day call him a 
 crank, but they admit that he is a man of 
 tenacity of purpose, and that is a beloved 
 American trait, so he scores a hit whenever he 
 is cranky that way. But the crankiness is all 
 assumed and he often laughs about it among 
 his friends and says, for the matter of that, one 
 piano is as bad as another when one is playing 
 off the main line. 
 
 All this is when he has his label on. Now 
 I'll tell you about something that happened 
 when his label was off and he was just an ordi- 
 nary person. 
 
 There was a struggling basso by the name 
 of Brown, who was desirous of effecting an 
 entrance into society to the extent of being en- 
 gaged to sing at swagger and noisy receptions 
 of the elite the kind who pronounce it 
 "elight" -and one day he came to Zabritski, 
 whom he had known for years, with a woful 
 tale about his fear of losing an engagement to
 
 I've Been Thinking 165 
 
 sing at the house of a rich lard lady on account 
 of his accompanist having sprained his wrist, 
 and would Zabritski go incog and play for 
 him? 
 
 And of course Zabritski would, just as will- 
 ingly as he would have done it when he had 
 some hair and was struggling himself, and so 
 little basso Brown departed in fine spirits. 
 
 Now it happened that the great Zabritski 
 arrived first at the home of the rich lard lady 
 who was a newly richer, by the way and 
 he gave her to understand that he was only a 
 poor worm of an accompanist, and at that her 
 manner, which had been non-committal, changed 
 to frigidity and she sent him haughtily into an 
 ante-room off the main hall to await the arrival 
 of Brown. Zabritski's sense of humor is often 
 his salvation, and he who is used to being It 
 in the center of a drawing-room, with ladies 
 falling all over one another in their efforts to 
 shake the hand that was taught by Liszt, went
 
 1 66 I've Been Thinking 
 
 meekly into the anteroom and shivered in a 
 draft while he waited. 
 
 After a time the newly rich lard lady left her 
 chattering guests and came in and spoke to 
 him; in fact she scolded him rather hard be- 
 cause the basso was late, and Zabritski, with a 
 beautiful assumption of servility, said: "I'm 
 very sorry, madam, but this is the time for us 
 poor artists to make hay, and my friend, Mon- 
 sieur Brown, is singing at a reception at the 
 Countess Sagoni's. He sings but one number 
 and will be here soon. I hope you will excuse 
 me for taking up room here until he comes." 
 
 Now all this was innocent fiction, for the 
 little basso was not singing at the Countess 
 Sagoni's, although he would have loved to. 
 He was merely behind time. 
 
 But the lard lady pricked up her ears at 
 mention of the Countess's name, as she belonged 
 to a real aristocracy, centuries old, which 
 ripened on the shores of the Adriatic, and the
 
 I've Been Thinking 167 
 
 newly richer would have given her tiara to be 
 one of the favored few who attended her really 
 musical musicales. 
 
 Her tone toward Zabritski softened, and she 
 told him that he could come in and sit down 
 behind the grand piano if he found it too cold 
 in the anteroom. Zabritski had never sat be- 
 hind a grand piano in his life, and as he is 
 fond of new sensations he accepted her invita- 
 tion and hid himself from the chattering throng, 
 and at last Brown came in and sang to Za- 
 britski' s accompaniment, and several times his 
 voice could be heard above the conversation, 
 although there were nearly a hundred talking 
 and he was the only one singing. 
 
 After the music was all finished the little 
 basso and his humble friend, Zabritski, went 
 away without a word from the lard lady, be- 
 cause she was talking a blue streak to an aris- 
 tocrat from above Fifty-ninth Street, who was 
 as freshly aristocratic as a newly minted coin,
 
 1 68 I've Been Thinking 
 
 and for the same reason she belonged to the 
 coinage of 1903. 
 
 But the butler gave Brown twenty-five dollars 
 in three bills as he went out, and so he was 
 happy for he needed the money. 
 
 Time works miracles, and some time later 
 the lard lady gave an evening concert, and 
 having by rare good luck met the Countess 
 Sagoni, she invited her, and the Countess 
 Sagoni, having a fondness for freaks, accepted 
 the invitation. One must relax sometimes. 
 
 The rich lard lady had a number of singers 
 who waited in the anteroom, but her piece 
 de resistance was no less a lion than that great 
 Hungarian pianist (born in Irving place), Ignace 
 Zabritski. She had engaged him through Herr 
 Wolfram Waldvogel, and I happen to know 
 that he was to receive five hundred dollars for 
 playing once. 
 
 Now if she had had a memory for faces she 
 would have recognized him as soon as he came
 
 I've Been Thinking 169 
 
 in and yet I don't know. You see Herr 
 Waldvogel, who is a real German gentleman, 
 blond, six feet tall, and with the manners of an 
 Austrian noble, came with Zabritski, and he 
 presented him to the lard lady with tremendous 
 impressiveness, and Zabritski put on his most 
 exclusive air and seemed about to die of ennui 
 on the spot, and that fetched the lard lady all 
 right (if you will pardon such a free use of 
 English). 
 
 But the thing that settled it was when the 
 Countess Sagoni went up to Zabritski, whom 
 she knew very well, and chatted most bohe- 
 mianly with him in very choice Italian. After 
 that every one in the room was hauled up and 
 presented to him, and then he sat down and 
 played a pathetic thing by Tschaikowsky, 
 and many people who knew it was pathetic 
 were moved to tears right in the midst of 
 their conversation and after it was all over 
 the lard lady shook hands with Zabritski most
 
 170 I've Been Thinking 
 
 effusively and asked him if he knew any other 
 artists of "dear old Hungary" who could do a 
 turn. She also said she adored "talent." 
 And Zabritski remembered his sense of humor 
 just in time and told her he had a compatriot 
 named Braunski, who had a glorious bass 
 voice, and he thought he could get him to sing 
 for two hundred dollars as a great favor, al- 
 though he was simply visiting this country 
 and was doing nothing of a professional 
 kind. 
 
 Of course you know that when the little 
 basso came to the house he had his label on 
 (the wrong label, naturally, as Brown, or 
 Braunski, the basso, was born near Gowanus 
 Canal, over in Brooklyn). 
 
 But the lard lady made much of him, you 
 can bet your sesterces, and the Countess Sagoni, 
 who knew a good voice when she heard it, no 
 matter where a man had happened to be born, 
 had him sing at one of her Sundays, and that
 
 I've Been Thinking 171 
 
 was the beginning of his present successful 
 career. 
 Oh, these labels! 
 
 THE first pair of shoes. A very impor- 
 tant addition to the wardrobe of life in 
 spite of their insignificant size. The shoes that 
 come afterward are thrown aside or given away 
 or are worn all to pieces and are less provoca- 
 tive of sentiment than two weather-beaten shoes 
 that have served their turn to boy or man. 
 But the first shoes are often kept by the mother 
 of the little one who put them on, sometimes 
 to show them to him when he is big enough 
 to appreciate that at one time his feet were as 
 diminutive; sometimes to awaken memories 
 of little feet that finished their earthly pil- 
 grimage too sorrowfully soon. 
 
 But it is not to the mother alone that the 
 first pair of shoes is important. At the time
 
 172 I've Been Thinking 
 
 of their acquisition they are omnipresent to 
 the consciousness of their baby owner. 
 
 The first pair of trousers fill not so wide a 
 place in the mental horizon. By the time one 
 arrives at his first trousers he has tasted of a 
 good many felicities and can compare one 
 thing with another. He may have known 
 and remembered disappointments and life is 
 not with him an entirely roseate dream; he has 
 had fights with the neighbor's boy and per- 
 haps did not always come off victorious, and 
 while the trousers are, of course, fore tastes 
 of heaven, still his eyes have been opened 
 to some of the disillusionments of early boy- 
 hood. 
 
 But the first pair of shoes perhaps I should 
 say the first consciousness of a pair of shoes 
 comes when the owner is not yet three and 
 brings with it absolute and undiluted felicity. 
 
 From time to time mother goes away from 
 the house and when Toddlekins asks where
 
 I've Been Thinking 173 
 
 she is the reply is, "Mama has gone to town. 
 She'll come back soon." 
 
 He runs to the window and climbs up on a 
 chair and looks toward the point where the 
 hill drops suddenly and there is nothing to be 
 seen but clouds and blue sky. Toddlekins 
 knows that somewhere below the blue sky 
 mama is riding after old Jack to "Tottiton." 
 "Tottiton" is as near as Toddlekins can come 
 to pronouncing the name of the village to which 
 mother has gone to do her Saturday shopping, 
 but Tottiton is as near to the name as is neces- 
 sary. All children have their Tottitons, places 
 of delight from which mamas come back 
 bearing wonderful packages that may contain 
 nothing but things for the kitchen, but that 
 once in a while hold red and white candies 
 called "pepnit." 
 
 So Toddlekins looks out of the window for 
 mama until he is tired, and then he lies down 
 on the sitting-room floor and goes into a dream-
 
 174 I've Been Thinking 
 
 less sleep from which the rattle of wheels 
 awakens him, and he runs to the front window 
 and there is mama with her basket full of 
 bundles. 
 
 "What for Toddy, mama? What for 
 Toddy?" 
 
 "Oh, I've brought some tea and some oat- 
 meal and some onions. Want them?" 
 
 He is reaching up inquisitive hands to poke 
 a hole in a package in order to find out whether 
 it is only tea and oatmeal or whether it is be- 
 loved "pepnits." 
 
 "Don't touch, Toddlekins. Come out into 
 the kitchen and if you're a good boy mama 
 will give you something very nice." 
 
 "Pepnits, mama?" 
 
 "Better than pepnits," says mama, who 
 has two older children and who knows what is 
 better than pepnits. 
 
 Out into the kitchen trots Toddlekins, 
 wondering what there is on this great earth
 
 I've Been Thinking 175 
 
 that stretches 'way down to Tottiton better 
 than pepnits. 
 
 The prosaic oatmeal and tea and onions and 
 many other packages are laid upon the kitchen 
 table, and but one package remains in the basket, 
 and it does not look to Toddlekins like pepnits. 
 The color of the paper is different. 
 
 It is summer time and Toddlekins has been 
 going barefoot ever since he can remember 
 ever since April in fact. Before that he wore 
 little home-made shoes, but he does not remem- 
 ber those. 
 
 All too slowly mama removes the string 
 and opens the paper, and there are two shoes 
 like sister Alice's only smaller. 
 
 "Shoes for you, Toddikins." 
 
 Flop on the floor he goes as if he had slipped 
 on ice, and tries to put the shoes on backward, 
 upside down, any way but the right way. 
 
 "Here, dear, mama will put them on." 
 
 "Dey has buttons, mama," says Toddle-
 
 176 I've Been Thinking 
 
 kins, his eyes winking with excitement. He 
 struggles to get up and walk in them before 
 the shoes are fairly on, let alone being buttoned. 
 
 Stockings? Not to-day. Mama knows his 
 impatience. This is just for delight, and if he 
 had not another stitch on him he would be 
 fully clothed and willing to go anywhere with 
 anybody. His shoes have made him fearless 
 and reckless. 
 
 "Sit still, Toddles. I can't put them on with 
 you wiggling." 
 
 "Want to stand up and show Alice." 
 
 Of course he does. If the world were to 
 him as big as it really is he would march around 
 its entire circumference on a journey just to 
 tell every one in it the all-important, the tre- 
 mendous fact that he, Toddlekins Maffews, 
 has a pair of new shoes. 
 
 At last he is up and the shoes are accom- 
 plished facts. Two shiny black encasements 
 that are far brighter than the sun or anything
 
 I've Been Thinking 177 
 
 he has ever seen. Why, he can see nothing 
 else. He is all new shoes. 
 
 Alice comes into the kitchen. 
 
 "I dot new shoes, Alice," says Toddlekins. 
 
 11 Oh, doesn't he look cunning, mama. You 
 dear baby." 
 
 "I'm not a baby. I'm big boy, mos' as big 
 as Arfur." 
 
 A noise is heard outside and Arthur comes 
 in. Perhaps Toddlekins exaggerated a little, 
 for Arthur is ten and well grown for his age, 
 and Toddlekins is not yet three. 
 
 "See my new shoes, Arfur." 
 
 "Kid," says Arthur, contemptuously, mean- 
 ing no pun. 
 
 "Don't laugh at him, Arthur," says his 
 mother. "He's a very big boy and he has a 
 beautiful pair of shoes." 
 
 Indeed they are beautiful. Pepnits are totally 
 forgotten in the joy of this gift. He marches 
 around the kitchen in them and then he jumps
 
 178 I've Been Thinking 
 
 around it in them and then he hops around. 
 They make a very grown-up sound. The 
 affectionate little fellow suddenly realizes that 
 "muvver" brought them, and he runs to em- 
 brace her, trips over the shoes, and falls on his 
 face. 
 
 His lips begin to pucker. One word of 
 sympathy from mama or Alice and the flood 
 gates would open. But the word does not 
 come. Mama knows better. He is now a 
 "big boy" and she says, "Big boys with new 
 shoes don't cry, do they?" 
 
 He jumps up and in prodigious tones he says, 
 "No, big boys don't cry. I show grammer 
 my shoes." And then he climbs up-stairs, pat- 
 ting each step with what is to him a rafter-shak- 
 ing tread and quite sure that he will frighten 
 grandma half to death. He calls to her be- 
 fore he reaches her door: 
 
 "Grammer, it's Tot'kins." 
 
 "My mercy me!" says grandma from
 
 I've Been Thinking 179 
 
 within her pleasant room. "I thought it was 
 bears and robbers." 
 
 How proud he feels. For of course he be- 
 lieves her. Those new shoes coming up the 
 stairs did sound kind of like bears and robbers. 
 He bursts into a merry laugh. 
 
 "New shoes, grammer. I'm big boy now." 
 
 "Well, I never did in all my born days," says 
 grandma, looking over her spectacles at them. 
 
 "Are those real buttons on them, Totsy?" 
 
 "Umh, umh. Muwer brought 'em from 
 Tottiton. An' I'm to have stockings." 
 
 "Well, I should hope so. Shoes without 
 stockings would be only half dressed. Still the 
 shoes are the main thing, aren't they?" 
 
 "Mmm." 
 
 "Where you going, Totsy." For he has 
 turned and is marching out with what is pretty 
 near to a military stride, his eyes on the shiny 
 black shoes that make walking so easy. It 
 wouldn't be very hard to fly with such shoes on.
 
 180 I've Been Thinking 
 
 "Totsy, where are you going?" 
 "Show my shoes to ve minister." 
 Mr. Hardin is the nearest neighbor of the 
 Matthews and he lives about a quarter of a 
 mile away. 
 
 "Oh, I wouldn't go out doors with my new 
 shoes. Keep them fresh for Sunday." 
 
 Toddlekins says nothing. Young as he is 
 he has learned that when one says nothing but 
 goes and does something, at any rate it is done 
 even though there be consequences. Now Rev. 
 Mr. Hardin is one of the nicest men in the 
 world, and it is no more than right that Toddle- 
 kins should let him know what honors have 
 been showered upon his feet. Of course he 
 must go and show the new shoes to the nice 
 man. " Muwer " would want him to go. 
 But it won't be necessary to bother her by 
 asking. He'll tell hjsr when he comes back. 
 
 Hello, there are drawbacks to everything. 
 One can steal out of the house in one's bare
 
 I've Been Thinking 181 
 
 feet and go on forbidden walks without attract- 
 ing any attention, but these beautiful, shiny, 
 black new shoes are saying with every step, 
 "We're running away." 
 
 He tries tiptoes, but at the most critical 
 juncture he stumbles over himself as he did in 
 the kitchen, and falls. But he does not cry 
 and he is up in an instant and goes down 
 the front stairs because there is a carpet there. 
 Really, new shoes have a powerfully stimu- 
 lating effect on the brain. Toddlekins is doing 
 a vast amount of thinking for a three-year- 
 old. I tell you that when one has his first 
 shoes on his feet it gives him a new under- 
 standing. 
 
 He finally escapes without being observed 
 and trudges away through the dusty road to 
 the minister's house. The black shoes are 
 not as black now and he stops to wipe them off 
 on his little white sleeve. Ah, that is better 
 for the shoes.
 
 1 82 I've Been Thinking 
 
 Forward again with his eyes on the magnetic 
 shoes, and if Joel Holton were not a careful 
 driver he would have been run over, for the baby 
 never saw the horse approaching for absorp- 
 tion in his shoes. 
 
 He hears the hail of welcome from good- 
 natured and fat Joel and he says, "I got new 
 shoes," and in his efforts to show both at once 
 he sits down hard. But a hard sit-down is a 
 very ordinary way of reaching earth to a three- 
 year-old. He is up and on and arrives at the 
 parsonage just exactly in time to set flight to a 
 very valuable train of thought in the mind of 
 the good minister who is hard at work at his 
 sermon. 
 
 " Mr. Hardin ! Mr. Hardin ! " shouts Toddle- 
 kins outside his study door. 
 
 "Hello, what you want?" says the minister, 
 with just a shade of irritation in his voice. 
 His own children are never allowed to disturb 
 him.
 
 I've Been Thinking 183 
 
 "I have new shoes," said Toddlekins, still 
 outside the door. 
 
 The boy tries in vain to turn the knob and 
 the minister opens the door for him, his brow 
 wrinkled at the interruption. But when he 
 sees Toddlekins and the new shoes his mind is 
 carried to a far distant day when there was 
 another baby who stood before him and who 
 showed him shoes, and his eyes dim and his 
 tones grow soft as he stoops down and pats the 
 little tow head and says: 
 
 "You don't mean to tell me that you have 
 new shoes?" 
 
 The boy nods his head eloquently, his breast 
 heaving with excitement. He has astonished 
 the minister. 
 
 "Well, seems to me those are very fine shoes. 
 And how black they are." 
 
 The boy stoops down and polishes them again 
 with his sleeve. His sleeves are no longer white. 
 
 "I came froo de road," he explains.
 
 184 I've Been Thinking 
 
 "And all alone. What a big boy! Well, 
 you go out and ask Martha for a doughnut and 
 then go back to mother. And be sure to come 
 to-morrow to church with those nice black 
 shoes and listen to my church talk that I am 
 writing now. Do you remember when you 
 said you wondered why they let me talk in 
 church when they wouldn't let you?" 
 
 "That was when I was a little boy." 
 
 "Exactly, nearly a month ago, before you 
 had new shoes. Well, they certainly are fine. 
 You be sure to show them to Martha and be 
 sure to get the doughnut." 
 
 Be sure to show the shoes to Martha, indeed. 
 Toddlekins might forget the doughnut, but 
 nothing could put the shoes out of his thoughts. 
 It will be a very sleepy and tired boy who goes 
 to bed that night (with his shoes still on by 
 special permission) and those same little black 
 shoes with the shiny buttons will have carried 
 him over many a mile indoors and out, but
 
 I've Been Thinking 185 
 
 though he live to be a hundred he will never 
 again come on a day so full of triumphs and 
 happinesses. 
 
 THE Reader of Novels was wont to judge 
 of a man's character by a few sharply 
 defined actions set forth by the novelist, and 
 the woman who scolded her children in the 
 first, fifth, and seventh chapters was, of course, 
 a vixen. So also the man who spoke ungram- 
 matically each time he made his appearance in 
 the book was a man of low social position, and 
 the fellow who refused to make Christmas 
 presents was an incurably mean man. 
 
 Having become used to these snap judgments 
 of his fellows by a constant reading of novels, 
 the Reader flattered himself that he could 
 judge of a man's character by the first thing he 
 said or by the first thing that was said of him 
 by his neighbor.
 
 1 86 I've Been Thinking 
 
 And it so happened that the Reader of Novels 
 found himself in a strange place that did not 
 seem to be on this earth at all, and a man with a 
 noble brow and a weak chin and a strong 
 mouth and near-set and lustrous eyes and a 
 large nose and generous ears and large feet and 
 small hands and a bull neck stood near by, 
 and one who looked like a judge was talking 
 about him and naming his characteristics. 
 
 "He was often cross to his wife," said the 
 judge. 
 
 "Ah, a male scold," said the Reader of 
 Novels, readily. 
 
 "He was very fond of children." 
 
 "What's that?" said the Reader of Novels, 
 scenting something incongruous. 
 
 "One time his heart was set to murder his 
 brother and only his brother's flight prevented 
 his death." 
 
 "A thug," said the Reader of Novels, always 
 to himself.
 
 I've Been Thinking 187 
 
 "He denied himself all that makes life worth 
 living in order to make the last days of his 
 mother comfortable, and moved by a good 
 impulse he divided the estate with his brother 
 although it had all been left to him." 
 
 "The same man ? " said the Reader of Novels, 
 dumbfounded. 
 
 "He did a despicably mean act in business 
 and was never sorry for it." 
 
 "Ah, I thought so," said the Reader of 
 Novels. "His true character is coming out." 
 
 "He told a vulgar story to a friend and 
 both laughed at the undoubted humor of 
 it." 
 
 "Ah, ha!" said the Reader of Novels. "He 
 is being drawn a little truer to life." 
 
 "He was deeply moved by a spiritual poem 
 and appreciated it so sincerely that he wrote it 
 out and carried it with him, and finally learned 
 it by heart and tried to govern his life accord- 
 ing to its precepts."
 
 1 88 I've Been Thinking 
 
 "The deuce he did!" said the Reader of 
 Novels, incredulously. 
 
 "He told another vulgar story." 
 
 "He'd better have given up shamming," 
 said the Reader of Novels. 
 
 "He drank more than was good for him 
 and was seen in a condition of inebriety by 
 young people who had respected him as a 
 governor of the church." 
 
 "Of course," said the Reader of Novels. 
 "He is getting truer and truer to his charac- 
 ter." 
 
 "He established a club to which young men 
 were welcome and at which no intoxicating 
 liquors were sold, and said in all sincerity that 
 he believed immoderate drinking to be a 
 curse." 
 
 "The hypocrite," said the Reader of Novels. 
 
 "He voted the Republican ticket." 
 
 "Good," said the Reader of Novels, who 
 was a Vermonter.
 
 I've Been Thinking 189 
 
 "He voted the Democratic ticket." 
 
 "Turncoat," said the Reader of Novels. 
 
 "He gave generously of his means to help 
 a poor man who had been buffeted by the world, 
 and spoke well of him when to do so exposed 
 him to contumely." 
 
 "Who was this, anyhow?" said the Reader 
 of Novels, more and more puzzled. 
 
 "He said malignant things behind a man's 
 back, things that worked the man's downfall, 
 although he never knew that." 
 
 "Pity he didn't. He would have exulted," 
 said the Reader of Novels. 
 
 "He reproached a man in all sincerity for 
 saying like things of another behind his back, 
 and had a poor opinion of that backbiter from 
 that time on." 
 
 "This is beyond me," said the Reader of 
 Novels. 
 
 "He refused night after night to give up his 
 seat in the cars to poor tired women, and at
 
 190 I've Been Thinking 
 
 last gave his life to save a poor wretched Mag- 
 dalen from death by fire." 
 
 At this point the Reader of Novels addressed 
 the judge, and said. 
 "What was this person, anyway?" 
 "He was a human being," said the judge, 
 gravely. "There are many such." 
 
 " QEVEN Miles to Smith's Shoe Store." So 
 O reads the half obliterated legend upon 
 the mile-post opposite my door in the country. 
 It is ten years since in proud fresh paint it 
 first invited my gaze, and what a comforter 
 and guide and warning it has been in that 
 time! Smith's shoe store is in a provincial 
 town. Smith's shoe store is presumably dark 
 and dismal and smells of leather and new 
 rubber overshoes and patent insoles, and it 
 probably backs upon a dirty, turgid stream 
 that supplies some half dozen mills that
 
 I've Been Thinking 191 
 
 might better go thirsty than taste of its oily 
 waters. 
 
 Often when things have gone wrong with me, 
 the clouds seeming to have neither end nor be- 
 ginning, I have looked out at the little sign and 
 have realized that whatever else might happen 
 I was still seven miles away from Smith's shoe 
 store. 
 
 The mile-post stands amid a clump of brakes; 
 black alders shield it from the morning sun, 
 and a sweetbrier bush has scratched at its 
 paint for seven summers; in the distance one 
 sees purple mountains and near at hand are 
 fragrant meadows and inviting woods and an 
 irresolute brook and half ruined stone walls 
 on whose mossy rocks the robins sing in the 
 morning, and I have seen many a humorous 
 bobolink pause and seem to read the sign and 
 then fly away from Smith's shoe store, singing 
 mockingly. 
 
 Smith's shoe store will always be a sealed
 
 192 I've Been Thinking 
 
 book to me, thanks to the sign. I have re- 
 ceived a friendly warning and I know where 
 not to go. My feet may need shoes from time 
 to time, but they will never come from Smith's 
 emporium. I want to feel that the worst has 
 not happened for me; that Smith's is still a 
 terra incognita. 
 
 Once I went driving aimlessly and turning 
 a corner I came on a sister mile-post that read 
 "One Mile to Smith's Shoe Store." The road 
 was narrow and it was risky turning, but almost 
 in a panic I pointed my horse's nose in the way 
 it should go and drove back at a rattling pace 
 any pace is a rattling one with me for I need 
 a new wagon. How cheering it was when I 
 had ridden some thirty minutes to come to 
 another mile-post that read "Two Miles to 
 Smith's Shoe Store"! And as I passed each 
 one in turn I felt like breaking out into a song 
 of thanksgiving, for the road led me higher and 
 higher and new glories of scenery were dis-
 
 I've Been Thinking 193 
 
 covered as Smith's fell back farther and farther, 
 and at last I came to my silent comforter and 
 was assured in characters still legible that it 
 was "Seven Miles to Smith's." Never again 
 did I take that particular drive. 
 
 There are Smith's shoe stores scattered 
 throughout our lives. Happy we, if it is pos- 
 sible to keep the seven-mile guide-post in front 
 of our eyes and feel that whatever other evils 
 may befall, two good leagues of road lie be- 
 tween us and Smith's. 
 
 PROFESSOR ERASMUS SVELTHETT 
 of St. Jacob's University has written a 
 very learned brochure in which he sets forth an 
 interesting theory; namely, that the reason that 
 children of to-day are so much more quiet at 
 the breakfast-table than boys and girls used 
 to be is because they have plenty to read, while 
 the children of bygone generations, with nothing
 
 194 I've Been Thinking 
 
 to do save eat, had perforce to join in the con- 
 versation or become ennuyes. 
 
 There is certainly much to be said in favor 
 of this theory. Children of the present time 
 never obtain the balance of conversation, nor do 
 they ever have to be reprimanded for interrupt- 
 ing or for saying untoward things at the wrong 
 moment although it is a question whether 
 the right moment for untoward things ever 
 comes. 
 
 But even if this fascinating breakfast-litera- 
 ture did not keep the children quiet there would 
 be no question of its stimulative action upon 
 their minds. 
 
 We who look back over the lapse of years to 
 our own childhood recall that there were no 
 Maltuminparvo breakfast-foods with copious 
 directions for use, and chatty paragraphs printed 
 in various-sized type on the yellow box. To 
 be sure, those of us who lived too far away 
 from great centers to be able to buy our con-
 
 I've Been Thinking 195 
 
 densed milk fresh every day from the itin- 
 erant white wagon were accustomed to the 
 circular cans with their Gail-burdened litera- 
 ture in various languages, but in those days 
 Gail Hamilton reigned supreme even in the 
 nursery, and her epigrammatic writings spoiled 
 us for the more labored effusions of the other 
 Gail. Then, too, the cans being circular, 
 mother had to keep turning them around if 
 little Willy wanted to read, and this was almost 
 as bad as being interrupted. 
 
 But now all is changed. If papa is taciturn ; 
 if mama has a headache and does not care to 
 talk, little William, who has long since learned 
 how to read, sits at the matutinal repast and 
 quietly imbibes useful information of many 
 kinds. All silently the knowledge is borne in 
 on him that " Energy scose is the fuel-food of 
 life. Better a pewter plate and Energyscose 
 than a golden platter and nought but a stalled 
 ox thereon."
 
 196 I've Been Thinking 
 
 If he tire of reading about the virtues of 
 Energyscose he may turn his eyes to the corn- 
 tassel colored box on the right and learn that 
 " Gripe-knots are unlike any other food prepa- 
 ration. Being entirely digested they naturally 
 wean a strong man from coffee, and can be 
 eaten without practise by teething babies. 
 They contain nothing that will give the stomach 
 the slightest trouble, and persons who have used 
 our food for years do not need their stomachs 
 at all. They are made of devitalized chestnut 
 sawdust, and it is possible to eat them without 
 the use of sugar or cream" or anesthetics. 
 "Properly compressed they can be used by the 
 children as building-blocks, and can then be 
 reduced to a powder and taken once every 
 two hours, when they give one all the effect of 
 having eaten without its foolish pleasures." 
 
 When William has read, and one side is 
 thoroughly digested for the literature is not 
 predigested, like the contents of the box
 
 I've Been Thinking 197 
 
 mama will turn it around, and he may read in- 
 spiriting letters from invalids who lost their 
 sense of taste years ago and who have enjoyed 
 Gripe-knots ever since; or else on the third 
 side he may learn how to make simple, innocu- 
 ous desserts of bran. 
 
 Really literary families seldom content them- 
 selves with one lettered box of patent food, and 
 some cultivated Bostonians have as many as 
 five or six brands, of various shades of yellow 
 and brown, merely that Alcibiades Beacon, 
 tired of reading about Cornena and its stimu- 
 lative properties, may turn to the box of Wheat- 
 oast or Puttyjim's Oathusk, or the box of 
 Noegud with its entertaining anecdote to the 
 effect that "a lady in Seattle, who had not been 
 able to take a step for fourteen years, ate a 
 single box of Noegud and immediately took 
 steps to keep it constantly in the larder" and 
 away from the breakfast-table. Or his little 
 mind, unable to cope with his father's argu-
 
 198 I've Been Thinking 
 
 ments to prove Aguinaldo a bigger man than 
 Washington, turns with relief to the statement 
 that "Mrs. Bentley, of Shogticocoa, Minnesota, 
 was unable to take anything solid without 
 facial paralysis. She ate one box of Noegud 
 and now says that she would rather eat solid 
 rock than be without it." Mark the subtle 
 sarcasm of her remark. It is dollars to dough- 
 nuts that Alcibiades, Bostonian though he be, 
 does not see that if she would not be without 
 it she would not have it within her. 
 
 Some may carp at the colors of the packages; 
 some may even wish that the food could be put 
 in china receptacles and the literature set be- 
 side each plate in "individual" pamphlets, but 
 no one can say that there are not many aids to 
 conversation among the elders and much of an 
 improving nature to children in the unob- 
 trusive and absolutely veracious writings of the 
 food-companies.
 
 I've Been Thinking 199 
 
 ARE you in the habit of sending your 
 husband to dry-goods stores to match 
 things ? 
 
 If you live in the country or the suburbs and 
 your husband's office is in the city there is 
 some excuse for it, but if you live in the city 
 and make the poor man do such work as that 
 you ought to have married some one else. 
 
 His brain is not your brain. To him shades 
 and textures and shapes are as nothing. 
 
 Either he will be conscientious and get the 
 girl at the counter to try to make the exact 
 match, and failing in that will come home with- 
 out the spools upon which you are depending 
 for your morning's work, or else being careless 
 he will get something that could not by any 
 possibility be made to do. 
 
 In either case you will judge him from a 
 woman's view point and he will make but a 
 sorry showing.
 
 200 I've Been Thinking 
 
 The best way is to write down plainly just 
 what you want him to get and reduce him to 
 mere ignorant errand-boy status. 
 
 Then he, a man who perhaps dominates 
 political assemblies or sits high in church 
 councils or delivers valuable legal opinions, 
 shuffles into the store, meek-eyed and diffident, 
 and going up to the spool counter (after wander- 
 ing all over the store looking for it) says, " Give 
 me some of that," and pointing at the paper 
 shoves it at the young saleswoman. And she 
 looks at him with pitying eyes as a poor fool 
 and, reading the directions, hands out the 
 goods. 
 
 He goes home with them and ten to one they 
 are wrong, but he is safe. 
 
 His wife can say nothing because he was 
 merely the shover of a message, not a thinking 
 being with two halves to his brain. 
 
 But the best way to do is to go yourself and 
 thus save your husband from encounters that
 
 I've Been Thinking 201 
 
 cannot fail to reduce his exalted opinion of 
 himself. 
 
 SOME wedded couples never quarrel at all I 
 I have heard people who had lived together 
 for eighty or ninety or a hundred years say: 
 
 "We have never let a hard word pass between 
 us," and I have thought it must have seemed 
 like a hundred and fifty years. 
 
 Some couples never quarrel in public and 
 they are supposed to get along beautifully and 
 are noted among their neighbors as being de- 
 voted. I haven't a doubt that they are devoted. 
 But if they are devoted I haven't a doubt but 
 that they have their healthy little tiffs every 
 now and then. 
 
 Now it seems to me that in a suburban com- 
 munity where gossip is kindly and there is 
 "nothing doing," it would be a good thing if 
 married couples would quarrel in public every
 
 202 I've Been Thinking 
 
 now and then. That is supposing they quarrel 
 picturesquely. I know people so dull that even 
 a quarrel in their hands would not attract the 
 attention of a bystander. 
 
 But if a fairly young husband and wife have 
 the gift of stinging repartee and they feel that 
 they have been on good terms too long it would 
 be a boon to their neighbors if they would call 
 them up by telephone and say, "Come around 
 at once. Jenny and I are boiling over." 
 
 Depend upon it, all who called themselves 
 friends would come instanter and would take up 
 comfortable situations where they could hear 
 the verbal set-to without difficulty. 
 
 Then let Jenny say something she will regret 
 and let Jack follow it up with a caustic retort 
 and the fun would have begun. 
 
 In such a case as this, if Jack is afraid of 
 going too far he can have a trusted friend call 
 time on him, or if he fears that the vituperative 
 powers of Jenny are likely to lead her far afield
 
 I've Been Thinking 203 
 
 he can have the same friend call time on her; 
 but do let the battle go on until every one feels 
 mentally stimulated. 
 
 And when the last guest has gone Jenny can 
 fall weeping on Jack's neck and say she never 
 meant a word of it. 
 
 The only trouble is that she did mean it. 
 
 That's what cuts. 
 
 THE other day you said you wished little 
 Ethel was grown up ; that you were tired 
 of the anxieties that come to the mother of a 
 three-year-old. 
 
 My goodness, woman, you know not what 
 you wish. 
 
 There was a mother had a little boy of three, 
 a tiny, prattling, affectionate, tiring child, and 
 many times she said, "Oh, if he could only 
 grow up in a minute. There is so much to do 
 for him and I may not do it right, and there is
 
 204 I've Been Thinking 
 
 no telling what sickness may come to him. I 
 wish he was eighteen." 
 
 As she spoke she heard the flutter of wings 
 and a presence seemed to leave the room, and 
 the boy who had been playing out of doors, 
 trying to guide a big hoe with his baby hands, 
 came running into the house. And his step 
 was heavy. 
 
 She looked up and saw an awkward, homely, 
 cocksure boy in place of the rosy, loquacious, 
 loving child. 
 
 "Who are you?" said she, seeing in him a 
 likeness to his father, yet not knowing her own 
 son. 
 
 " I am your boy. I have skipped all the years 
 of childhood. I have left unsaid the wise little 
 sayings that would have comforted you. I 
 have left undone the things that you would 
 have held in remembrance. I have given up 
 my early, trusting love for you, for now I am 
 almost a man and I do not need love."
 
 I've Been Thinking 205 
 
 And the mother cried out in horror for she 
 did not wish to believe that this hobbledehoy 
 was her little boy. 
 
 And, sobbing, she leaned her head on the 
 table, and in a few moments she woke up and 
 saw her little boy coming in at the door lugging 
 the muddy hoe behind him. 
 
 And she hugged him to her, hoe and all, and 
 said, "Live your life with me and grow from 
 babyhood to boyhood, for I want to live it all 
 with you." 
 
 OF course an afternoon tea is not to be 
 taken seriously, and I hold that any 
 kind of conversation goes, as long as it is 
 properly vacuous and irrelevant. 
 
 One meets many kinds at afternoon teas 
 the bored, the bashful, the intense, and once 
 in a while the interesting, but for pure delight 
 there is nothing quite equals the gusher. She
 
 206 I've Been Thinking 
 
 is generally very pretty. Nature insists upon 
 compensations. 
 
 When you meet a real gusher one born 
 to gush you can just throw all bounds of 
 probability aside and say the first thing that 
 comes into your head, sure that it will meet 
 with an appreciative burst of enthusiasm, for 
 your true gusher is nothing if she is not enthu- 
 siastic. There are those who listen to every- 
 thing you say and punctuate it with "Yes-s-s, 
 yes-s-s, yes-s-s," until the sibilance gets on 
 your nerves; but the attention of the Simon- 
 pure gusher is purely subconscious. She could 
 not repeat a thing of what you have told her a 
 half minute after hearing it. Her real attention 
 is on something else all the while perhaps 
 on the gowns of her neighbors, perhaps on the 
 reflection of her pretty face but never on the 
 conversation. And why should it be? Is a 
 tea a place for the exercise of concentration? 
 Perish the thought.
 
 I've Been Thinking 207 
 
 You are presented to her as "Mr. Mmmm," 
 and she is "delighted," and smiles so ravish- 
 ingly that you wish you were twenty years 
 younger. You do not yet know that she is a 
 gusher. But her first remark labels her. Just 
 to test her, for there is something in the ani- 
 mation of her face and the farawayness of the 
 eye that makes you suspect her sincerity, you 
 say: 
 
 "I happen to have six children " 
 
 "Oh, how perfectly dee-ar! How old are 
 they?" 
 
 She scans the gown of a woman who has 
 just entered the room and, being quite sure 
 that she is engaged in a mental valuation of it, 
 you say: 
 
 "They're all of them six." 
 
 "Oh, how lovely!" Her unseeing eyes look 
 you in the face. " Just the right age to be com- 
 panions." 
 
 "Yes, all but one."
 
 2 o8 I've Been Thinking 
 
 The eye has wandered to another gown, but 
 the sympathetic voice says: 
 
 "Oh, what api-i-ty!" 
 
 "Yes, isn't it? But he's quite healthy." 
 
 It's a game now fair game and you're 
 glad you came to the tea! 
 
 "Healthy, you say? How nice. It's per- 
 fectly lovely to be healthy. Do you live in 
 the country?" 
 
 "Not exactly the country. We live in Madi- 
 son Square, under the trees." 
 
 "Oh, how perfectly idyllic!" 
 
 "Yes; we have all the advantages of the 
 city and the delights of the country. I got a 
 permit from the Board of Education to put 
 up a little bungalow alongside the Worth monu- 
 ment, and the children bathe in the fountain 
 every morning when the weather is cold 
 enough." 
 
 "Oh, how charming! How many children 
 have you?"
 
 I've Been Thinking 209 
 
 "Only seven. The oldest is five and the 
 youngest is six." 
 
 "Just the interesting age. Don't you think 
 children fascinating?" 
 
 Again the roaming eye and the vivacious 
 smile. 
 
 "Yes, indeed. My oldest he's fourteen 
 and quite original. He says that when he 
 grows up he doesn't know what he'll be." 
 
 "Really? How cute!" 
 
 "Yes, he says it every morning, a half hour 
 before breakfast." 
 
 "Fancy! How old did you say he was?" 
 
 "Just seventeen, but perfectly girlike and 
 masculine." 
 
 She nods her head, bows to an acquaintance 
 in a distant part of the room, and murmurs in 
 musical, sympathetic tones: 
 
 "That's an adorable age." 
 
 "What, thirteen?" 
 
 "Yes. Did you say it was a girl?"
 
 210 I've Been Thinking 
 
 "Yes, his name's Ethel. He's a great help 
 to her mother." 
 
 "Little darling." 
 
 "Yes; I tell them there may be city advan- 
 tages, but I think they're much better off where 
 they are." 
 
 "Where did you say you were?" 
 
 "On the Connecticut shore. You see, hav- 
 ing only the one child, Mrs. Smith is very 
 anxious that it should grow up healthy" 
 (absent-minded nods indicative of full atten- 
 tion), "and so little Ronald never comes to 
 the city at all. He plays with the fisherman's 
 child and gets great drafts of fresh air." 
 
 "Oh, how perfectly entrancing! You're quite 
 a poet." 
 
 "No; I'm a painter." 
 
 Now she is really attentive. She thought 
 you were just an ordinary beast, and she finds 
 that you may be a lion. Smith? Perhaps 
 you're Hopkinson Smith.
 
 I've Been Thinking 211 
 
 "Oh, do you paint? How perfectly ador- 
 able ! What do you paint landscapes or 
 portraits?" 
 
 Again the eye wanders and she inventories a 
 dress, and you say : 
 
 "Oils." 
 
 "Do you ever allow visitors to come to your 
 studio?" 
 
 "Why, I never prevent them, but I'm so 
 afraid it will bore them that I never ask them." 
 
 "Oh, how could anybody be bored at any- 
 thing?" 
 
 "But every one hasn't your enthusiasm. 
 My studio is in the top of the Madison Square 
 tower, and I never see a soul from week's end 
 to week's end." 
 
 "Oh, then you're not married." 
 
 "Dear, no: a man who is wedded to his art 
 mustn't commit bigamy." 
 
 "Oh, how clever. So you're a bachelor?" 
 
 "Yes, but I have my wife for a chaperon,
 
 212 I've Been Thinking 
 
 and I'd be delighted to have you come and take 
 tea with us some Saturday from six until three." 
 "Perfectly delighted!" Her eye now catches 
 sight of an acquaintance just coming in, and 
 as you prepare to leave her you say : 
 
 "Hope you don't mind a little artistic un- 
 conventionality. We always have beer at our 
 teas served with sugar and lemons, the Russian 
 fashion." 
 
 "Oh, I think it's much better than cream. 
 I adore unconventionally." 
 '/You're very glad you met me, I'm sure." 
 "Awfully good of you to say so." 
 Anything goes at an afternoon tea. But it's 
 better not to go.
 
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