VIOONBEAMS
FROM THE
_ARGER LUNACY
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S° STEPHEN LEACOCK
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.-. MOONBEAMS .'.
FROM THE LARGER LUNACY
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
BEHIND THE BEYOND
NONSENSE NOVELS
LITERARY LAPSES
SUNSHINE SKETCHES
ARCADIAN
ADVENTURES WITH
THE IDLE RICH
THE MARIONETTES'
CALENDAR AND
ENGAGEMENT BOOK
1916
With Drawings by A. H. Fish
MOONBEAMS
FROM THE
LARGER LUNACY
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
AUTHOR OF "nonsense NOVELS," "aRCADIAN ADVENTURES WITH
THE IDLE RICH," "BEHIND THE BEYOND," ETC.
TORONTO: S. B. GUNDY
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXV
Copyright, 191 5.
By John Lane Company
^^VDIVA^
PS
LDEC141955 j|3^
'rv OF TO?^
1030439
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
PREFACE
The prudent husbandman, after having taken from
his field all the straw that is there, rakes it over with
a wooden rake and gets as much again. The wise
child, after the lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons
from the bottom of it and squeezes them into a still
larger brew. So does the sagacious author, after hav-
ing sold his material to the magazines and been paid
for it, clap it into book-covers and give it another
squeeze. But in the present case the author is of a
nice conscience and anxious to place responsibility
where it is due. He therefore wishes to make all
proper acknowledgments to the editors of Vanity
Fair, The American Magazine, The Popular Magazine,
Life, Puck, The Century, Methuen's Annual, and all
others who are in any way implicated in the making
of this book.
Stephen Leacock.
McGill University,
Montreal.
Oct. I, 1915.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I Spoof: A Thousand-Guinea Novel ... ii
II The Reading Public 20
III Afternoon Adventures at My Club . . 53
I — The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So . . 55
2— The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge . 59
3 — The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner . 66
4— The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer . 7 2
5— The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot . 82
6— The Last Man Out of Europe ... 91
7— The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr.
Blinks 102
8— The Ground Floor 112
9— The Hallucination of Mr. Butt . . 122
IV Ram Spudd i35
V Aristocratic Anecdotes 147
VI Education Made Agreeable . . . . iS5
VII An Every-Day Experience 167
VIII Truthful Oratory i73
IX Our Literary Bureau .... • • • 183
X Speeding Up Business i95
XI Who Is Also Who 209
7
Contents
Chapter
XII Passionate Paragraphs . .
XIII Weejee the Pet Dog . . .
XIV Sidelights on the Supermen
XV The Survival of the Fittest
XVI The First Newspaper . .
XVII In the Good Time After the War
Page
217
221
229
243
253
27s
SPOOF. A SAMPLE OF A
THOUSAND-GUINEA NOVEL
/. — Spoof. A Thousand' Guinea
Novel, New t Fascinating- !
Perplexing" I
CHAPTER I
READERS are requested to note that
this novel has taken our special prize
of a cheque for a thousand guineas.
This alone guarantees for all intelli-
gent readers a palpitating interest in every line
of it. Among the thousands of MSS. which
reached us — many of them coming In carts
early in the morning, and moving in a dense
phalanx, Indistinguishable from the Covent
Garden Market waggons; others pouring down
our coal-chute during the working hours of
the day; and others again being slipped sur-
reptitiously Into our letter-box by pale, timid
girls, scarcely more than children, after night-
fall (In fact many of them came In their night-
gowns),— this manuscript alone was the sole
II
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
one — in fact the only one — to receive the
prize of a cheque of a thousand guineas. To
other competitors we may have given, Inad-
vertently perhaps, a bag of sovereigns or a
string of pearls, but to this story alone is
awarded the first prize by the unanimous deci-
sion of our judges.
When we say that the latter body included
two members of the Cabinet, two Lords of the
Admiralty, and two bishops, with power in
case of dispute to send all the MSS. to the Czar
of Russia, our readers will breathe a sigh of
relief to learn that the decision was instant
and unanimous. Each one of them, in reply
to our telegram, answered immediately
SPOOF.
This novel represents the last word In up-
to-date fiction. It is well known that the mod-
ern novel has got far beyond the point of mere
story-telling. The childish attempt to interest
the reader has long since been abandoned by
all the best writers. They refuse to do it.
The modern novel must convey a message, or
else it must paint a picture, or remove a veil,
12
A Sample of a Thousand-Guinea Novel
or open a new chapter in human psychology'.
Otherwise it is no good. SPOOF does all of
these things. The reader rises from its perusal
perplexed, troubled, and yet so filled with in-
formation that rising itself is a difficulty.
We cannot, for obvious reasons, insert the
whole of the first chapter. But the portion
here presented was praised by The Saturday
Afternoon Rez'iew as giving one of the most
graphic and at the same time realistic pictures
of America ever written in fiction.
Of the characters whom our readers are to
imagine seated on the deck — on one of the
many decks (all connected by elevators) — of
the Gloritania, one word may be said. Vere de
Lancy is (as the reviewers have under oath
declared) a typical young Englishman of the
upper class. He Is nephew to the Duke of
, but of this fact no one on the ship, except
the captain, the purser, the steward, and the
passengers are, or is, aware.
In order entirely to conceal his identity, Vere
de Lancy is travelling under the assumed name
of Lancy de Vere. In order the better to hide
13
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
the object of his journey, Lancy de Vere (as
we shall now call him, though our readers will
be able at any moment to turn his name back-
wards) has given it to be understood that he
Is travelling merely as a gentleman anxious to
see America. This naturally baffles all those
in contact with him.
The girl at his side — ^but perhaps we may
best let her speak for herself.
Somehow as they sat together on the deck
of the great steamer in the afterglow of the
sunken sun, listening to the throbbing of the
propeller (a rare sound which neither of them
of course had ever heard before), de Vere
felt that he must speak to her. Something of
the mystery of the girl fascinated him. What
was she doing here alone with no one but her
mother and her maid, on the bosom of the
Atlantic? Why was she here? Why was she
not somewhere else? The thing puzzled, per-
plexed him. It would not let him alone. It
fastened upon his brain. Somehow he felt
14
A Sample of a Thousand-Guinea Novel
that if he tried to drive it away, it might nip
him in the ankle.
In the end he spoke.
"And you, too," he said, leaning over her
deck-chair, "are going to America?"
He had suspected this ever since the boat
left Liverpool. Now at length he framed his
growing conviction into words.
"Yes," she assented, and then timidly, "it is
3,213 miles wide, is it not?"
"Yes," he said, "and 1,781 miles deep! It
reaches from the forty-ninth parallel to the
Gulf of Mexico."
"Oh," cried the girl, "what a vivid picture !
I seem to see it."
"Its major axis," he went on, his voice sink-
ing almost to a caress, "is formed by the Rocky
Mountains, which are practically a prolonga-
tion of the Cordilleran Range. It is drained,"
he continued
"How splendid!" said the girl.
"Yes, is it not? It is drained by the Mis-
sissippi, by the St. Lawrence, and — dare I say
it? — by the Upper Colorado."
15
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Somehow his hand had found hers in the
half gloaming, but she did not check him.
**Go on," she said very simply; "I think I
ought to hear it."
"The great central plain of the interior," he
continued, "is formed by a vast alluvial deposit
carried down as silt by the Mississippi. East
of this the range of the Alleghanies, nowhere
more than eight thousand feet In height, forms
a secondary or subordinate axis from which
the watershed falls to the Atlantic."
He was speaking very quietly but earnestly.
No man had ever spoken to her like this be-
fore.
"What a wonderful picture!" she murmured
half to herself, half aloud, and half not aloud
and half not to herself.
"Through the whole of it," de Vere went on,
"there run railways, most of them from east to
west, though a few run from west to east.
The Pennsylvania system alone has twenty-one
thousand miles of track."
"Twenty-one thousand miles," she repeated;
i6
A Sample of a Thotisand-Gmnea Novel
already she felt her will strangely subordinate
to his.
He was holding her hand firmly clasped in
his and looking into her face.
"Dare I tell you," he whispered, "how many
employees it has?"
"Yes," she gasped, unable to resist.
"A hundred and fourteen thousand," he
said.
There was silence. They were both think-
ing. Presently she spoke, timidly.
"Are there any cities there?"
"Cities!" he said enthusiastically, "ah, yes!
let me try to give you a word-picture of them.
Vast cities — with tall buildings, reaching to the
very sky. Why, for instance, the new Wool-
worth Building in New York "
"Yes, yes," she broke in quickly, "how high
is it?"
"Seven hundred and fifty feet."
The girl turned and faced him.
"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it. Some
other time, perhaps, but not now."
17
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
She had risen and was gathering up her
wraps. "And you," she said, "why are you
going to America?"
"Why?" he answered. "Because I want to
see, to know, to learn. And when I have
learned and seen and known, I want other peo-
ple to see and to learn and to know. I want
to write it all down, all the vast palpitating
picture of it. Ah! if I only could — I want to
see" (and here he passed his hand through his
hair as if trying to remember) "something of
the relations of labour and capital, of the ex-
traordinary development of industrial machin-
ery, of the new and intricate organisation of
corporation finance, and in particular I want to
try to analyse — no one has ever done it yet — <
the men who guide and drive It all. I want to
set down the psychology of the multimillion-
aire!"
He paused. The girl stood irresolute. She
was thinking (apparently, for if not, why stand
there?).
"Perhaps," she faltered, "I could help you."
"You I"
i8
A Sample of a Thousand-Ghiinea Novel
"Yes, I might." She hesitated. "I — I — come
from America."
"You I" said de Vere in astonishment.
"With a face and voice like yours! It is im-
possible!"
The boldness of the compliment held her
speechless for a moment.
"I do," she said; "my people lived just out-
side of Cohoes."
"They couldn't have," he said passionately.
"I shouldn't speak to you like this," the girl
went on, "but it's because I feel from what you
have said that you know and love America.
And I think I can help you."
"You mean," he said, divining her idea, "that
you can help me to meet a multimiUionaire?"
"Yes," she answered, still hesitating.
"You know one?"
"Yes," still hesitating, "I know oneJ'
She seemed about to say more, her lips had
already opened, when suddenly the dull raucous
blast of the foghorn (they used a raucous one
on this ship on purpose) cut the night air. Wet
fog rolled in about them, wetting everything.
19
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
The girl shivered,
"I must go," she said; "good night."
For a moment de Vere was about to detain
her. The wild thought leaped to his mind to
ask her her name or at least her mother's.
With a powerful effort he checked himself.
"Good night," he said.
She was gone.
CHAPTER II
Limits of space forbid the insertion of the
whole of this chapter. Its opening con-
tains one of the most vivid word-pictures of
the Inside of an i\merlcan customs house ever
pictured In words. From the customs wharf
de Vere is driven in a taxi to the Belmont.
Here he engages a room; here, too, he sleeps;
here also, though cautiously at first, he eats.
All this is so admirably described that only
those who have driven In a taxi to an hotel
and slept there can hope to appreciate It,
Limits of space also forbid our describing In
20
A Sample of a Thousand-Chinea Novel
full de Vere's vain quest in New York of the
beautiful creature whom he had met on the
steamer and whom he had lost from sight in the
aigrette department of the customs house. A
thousand times he cursed his folly in not having
asked her name.
Meanwhile no word comes from her, till
suddenly, mysteriously, unexpectedly, on the
fourth day a note is handed to de Vere by the
Third Assistant Head Waiter of the Belmont.
It is addressed in a lady's hand. He tears it
open. It contains only the written words,
"Call on Mr. J. Superman Oversold. He is a
multimillionaire. He expects you^
To leap into a taxi (from the third story
of the Belmont) was the work of a moment.
To drive to the office of Mr. Overgold was less.
The portion of the novel which follows is per-
haps the most notable part of it. It is this
part of the chapter which the Hibbert Journal
declares to be the best piece of psychological
analysis that appears in any novel of the sea-
son. We reproduce it here.
21
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Exactly, exactly," said de Vere, writing
rapidly in his note-book as he sat in one of
the deep leather armchairs of the luxurious of-
fice of Mr. Overgold. "So you sometimes feel
as if the whole thing were not worth while."
"I do," said Mr. Overgold. "I can't help
asking myself what it all means. Is life, after
all, merely a series of immaterial phenomena,
self-developing and based solely on sensation
and reaction, or is it something else?"
He paused for a moment to sign a cheque
for $10,000 and throw it out of the window,
and then went on, speaking still with the terse
brevity of a man of business.
"Is sensation everywhere or is there percep-
tion too? On what grounds, if any, may the
hypothesis of a self-explanatory consciousness
be rejected? In how far are we warranted in
supposing that innate ideas are Inconsistent
with pure materialism?"
De Vere listened, fascinated. Fortunately
for himself, he was a University man, fresh
from the examination halls of his Alma Mater.
He was able to respond at once.
22
A Sample of a Thousand-Guinea Novel
"I think," he said modestly, "I grasp your
thought. You mean — to what extent are we
prepared to endorse Hegel's dictum of imma-
terial evolution?"
"Exactly," said Mr. Overgold. "How far,
If at all, do we substantiate the Kantian hy-
pothesis of the transcendental?"
"Precisely," said de Vere eagerly. "And for
what reasons [naming them] must we reject
Spencer's theory of the unknowable?"
"Entirely so," continued Mr. Overgold.
"And why, if at all, does Bergsonian illusion-
ism differ from pure nothingness?"
They both paused.
Mr. Overgold had risen. There was great
weariness in his manner.
"It saddens one, does it not?" he said.
He had picked up a bundle of Panama two
per cent, gold bonds and was looking at them
in contempt.
"The emptiness of It all !" he muttered. He
extended the bonds to de Vere.
"Do you want them," he said, "or shall I
throw them away?"
23
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Give them to me," said de Vere quietly;
"they are not worth the throwing,"
"No, no," said Mr. Overgold, speaking half
to himself, as he replaced the bonds in his desk.
"It is a burden that I must carry alone. I have
no right to ask any one to share it. But come,"
he continued, "I fear I am sadly lacking in the
duties of international hospitality. I am for-
getting what I owe to Anglo-American cour-
tesy. I am neglecting the new obligations of
our common Indo-Chinese policy. My motor
is at the door. Pray let me take you to my
house to lunch."
De Vere assented readily, telephoned to the
Behnont not to keep lunch waiting for him, and
in a moment was speeding up the magnificent
Riverside Drive towards Mr. Overgold's home.
On the way Mr. Overgold pointed out various
objects of interest, — Grant's tomb, Lincoln's
tomb, Edgar Allan Poe's grave, the ticket of-
fice of the New York Subway, and various
other points of historic importance.
On arriving at the house, de Vere was ush-
ered up a flight of broad marble steps to a
24
A Sample of a Thousand-Guinea Novel
hall fitted on every side with almost priceless
objets d'art and others, ushered to the cloak-
room and out of It, butlered into the lunch-
room and footmanned to a chair.
As they entered, a lady already seated at
the table turned to meet them.
One glance was enough — plenty.
It was she — the object of de Vere's impas-
sioned quest. A rich lunch-gown was girdled
about her with a twelve-o'clock band of pearls.
She reached out her hand, smiling.
"Dorothea," said the multimillionaire, "this
Is Mr. de Vere. Mr. de Vere — my wife."
CHAPTER III
Of this next chapter we need only say that
the Blue Review (Adults Only) declares It to
be the most daring and yet conscientious han-
dling of the sex-problem ever attempted and
done. The fact that the Congregational Times
declares that this chapter will undermine the
whole foundations of English Society and let
It fall, we pass over: we hold certificates In
25
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
writing from a great number of the Anglican
clergy, to the effect that they have carefully
read the entire novel and see nothing in it.
They stood looking at one another.
"So you didn't know," she murmured.
In a flash de Vere realised that she hadn't
known that he didn't know and knew now that
he knew.
He found no words.
The situation was a tense one. Nothing but
the woman's Innate tact could save it. Doro-
thea Overgold rose to it with the dignity of a
queen.
She turned to her husband.
"Take your soup over to the window," she
said, "and eat It there."
The millionaire took his soup to the window
and sat beneath a little palm tree, eating It.
"You didn't know," she repeated.
"No," said de Vere; "how could I?"
"And yet," she went on, "you loved me,
although you didn't know that I was mar-,
ried?"
26
A Sample of a Thousand-Guinea Novel
"Yes," answered de Vere simply. "I loved
you, in spite of it."
"How splendid!" she said.
There was a moment's silence. Mr, Over-
gold had returned to the table, the empty plate
in his hand. His wife turned to him again
with the same unfaihng tact.
"Take your asparagus to the billiard-room,"
she said, "and eat it there."
"Does he know, too?" asked de Vere.
"Mr. Overgold?" she said carelessly. "I
suppose he does. Eh apres, mon ami?"
French? Another mystery! Where and
how had she learned it? de Vere asked himself.
Not in France, certainly.
"I fear that you are very young, amico mio,"
Dorothea went on carelessly. "After all, what
Is there wrong in it, piccolo pochito? To a
man's mind perhaps — but to a woman, love is
love."
She beckoned to the butler.
"Take Mr. Overgold a cutlet to the music-
room," she said, "and give him his gorgonzola
on the inkstand in the library."
27
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"And now," she went on, In that caressing
way which seemed so natural to her, "don't let
us think about It any more! After all, what
is is, Isn't it?"
"I suppose It Is," said de Vere, half con-
vinced in spite of himself.
"Or at any rate," said Dorothea, "nothing
can at the same time both be and not be. But
come," she broke off, gaily dipping a macaroon
in a glass of crhne de menthe and offering it to
him with a pretty gesture of camaraderie,
"don't let's be gloomy any more. I want to
take you with me to the matinee."
"Is he coming?" asked de Vere, pointing at
Mr. Overgold's empty chair.
"Silly boy," laughed Dorothea. "Of course
John is coming. You surely don't want to buy
the tickets yourself."
The days that followed brought a strange
new life to de Vere.
Dorothea was ever at his side. At the thea-
tre, at the polo ground. In the park, every-
28
A Sample of a Thousmid-Guinea Novel
where they were together. And with them was
Mr. Overgold.
The three were always together. At times
at the theatre Dorothea and de Vere would sit
downstairs and Mr. Overgold in the gallery;
at other times, de Vere and Mr. Overgold
would sit in the gallery and Dorothea down-
stairs; at times one of them would sit in Row
A, another in Row B, and a third in Row C ; at
other times two would sit in Row B and one in
Row C; at the opera, at times, one of the three
would sit listening, the others talking, at other
times two listening and one talking, and at
other times three talking and none listening.
Thus the three formed together one of the
most perplexing, maddening triangles that ever
disturbed the society of the metropolis.
The denouement was bound to come.
It came.
It was late at night.
De Vere was standing beside Dorothea in
the brilliantly lighted hall of the Grand Pala-
29
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
ver Hotel, where they had had supper. Mr.
Overgold was busy for a moment at the cash-
ier's desk.
"Dorothea," de Vere whispered passionately,
"I want to take you away, away from all this.
I want you."
She turned and looked him full in the face.
Then she put her hand in his, smiling bravely.
"I will come," she said.
"Listen," he went on, "the Gloritania sails
for England to-morrow at midnight. I have
everything ready. Will you come?"
"Yes," she answered, "I will"; and then pas-
sionately, "Dearest, I will follow you to Eng-
land, to Liverpool, to the end of the earth."
She paused in thought a moment and then
added.
"Come to the house just before midnight.
William, the second chauffeur (he is devoted
to me), shall be at the door with the third
car. The fourth footman will bring my things
— I can rely on him; the fifth housemaid can
have them all ready — she would never betray
me. I will have the undergardener — the sixth
30
A Sample of a Thousand-Guinea Novel
— ^waiting at the Iron gate to let you in; he
would die rather than fail me."
She paused again — then she went on.
"There is only one thing, dearest, that I
want to ask. It is not much. I hardly think
you would refuse it at such an hour. May I
bring my husband with me?"
De Vere's face blanched.
"Must you?" he said.
"I think I must," said Dorothea. "You
don't know how I've grown to value, to lean
upon, him. At times I have felt as if I always
wanted him to be near me; I like to feel wher-
ever I am — at the play, at a restaurant, any-
where— that I can reach out and touch him.
I know," she continued, "that it's only a wild
fancy and that others would laugh at it, but
you can understand, can you not — carino CU'
ruso miof And think, darling, in our new life,
how busy he, too, will be — making money for
all of us — in a new money market. It's just
wonderful how he does it."
A great light of renunciation lit up de Vere*s
face.
31
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Bring him," he said.
"I knew that you would say that," she mur-
mured, "and listen, pochito pocket-edition, may
I ask one thing more, one weeny thing? Wil-
liam, the second chauffeur — I think he would
fade away if I were gone — may I bring him,
too ? Yes ! O my darling, how can I repay
you? And the second footman, and the third
housemaid — if I were gone I fear that none
of "
"Bring them all," said de Vera half bitterly;
"we will all elope together."
And as he spoke Mr. Overgold sauntered
over from the cashier's desk, his open purse
still In his hand, and joined them. There was
a dreamy look upon his face.
"I wonder," he murmured, "whether per-
sonality survives or whether it, too, when up
against the irresistible, dissolves and resolves
itself Into a series of negative reactions?"
De Vere's empty heart echoed the words.
Then they passed out and the night swal-
lowed them up.
32
A Sample of a Thousand-Guinea Novel
CHAPTER IV
At a little before midnight on the next night,
two motors filled with mufiled human beings
might have been perceived, or seen, moving
noiselessly from Riverside Drive to the steamer
wharf where lay the Glorttania.
A night of intense darkness enveloped the
Hudson. Outside the inside of the dockside a
defense fog wrapped the Statue of Liberty. Be-
side the steamer customs officers and deporta-
tion officials moved silently to and fro in long
black cloaks, carrying little deportation lan-
terns in their hands.
To these Mr. Overgold presented in silence
his deportation certificates, granting his party
permission to leave the United States under
the imbecility clause of the Interstate Com-
merce Act.
No objection was raised.
A few moments later the huge steamer was
slipping away in the darkness.
On its deck a little group of people, standing
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
beside a pile of first-class cabin luggage, di-
rected a last sad look through their heavy black
disguise at the rapidly vanishing shore which
they could not see.
De Vere, who stood in the midst of them,
clasping their hands, thus stood and gazed his
last at America.
''Spoof !" he said.
(We admit that this final panorama, weird
in Its midnight mystery, and filling the mind
of the reader with a sense of something like
awe, Is only appended to Spoof in order to coax
him to read our forthcoming sequel, Spiff I)
34
THE READING PUBLIC
II.— The Reading' Public. A Book
Store Study
WISH to look about the store? Oh,
oh, by all means, sir," he said.
Then as he rubbed his hands
together In an urbane fashion he
directed a piercing glance at me through his
spectacles-
"You'll find some things that might interest
you," he said, "in the back of the store on the
left. We have there a series of reprints —
Universal Knowledge from Aristotle to Arthur
Balfour — at seventeen cents. Or perhaps you
might like to look over the Pantheon of Dead
Authors at ten cents. Mr. Sparrow," he
called, "just show this gentleman our classical
reprints — the ten-cent series."
With that he waved his hand to an assistant
and dismissed me from his thought.
In other words, he had divined me in a mo-
37
Moonbeams from the Largei' Lunacy
ment. There was no use In my having bought
a sage-green fedora in Broadway, and a sport-
ing tie done up crosswise with spots as big as
nickels. These little adornments can never hide
the soul within. I was a professor, and he
knew it, or at least, as part of his business, he
could divine it on the Instant.
The sales manager of the biggest book store
for ten blocks cannot be deceived In a customer.
And he knew, of course, that, as a professor,
I was no good. I had come to the store, as
all professors go to book stores, just as a wasp
comes to an open jar of marmalade. He knew
that I would hang around for two hours, get
In everybody's way, and finally buy a cheap re-
print of the Dialogues of Plato, or the Prose
JVorks of John Milton, or Locke on the Hu-
man Understanding, or some trash of that
sort.
As for real taste In literature — the ability
to appreciate at Its worth a dollar-fifty novel
of last month, In a spring jacket with a tango
frontispiece — I hadn't got it and he knew it.
He despised me, of course. But it is ^
38
The Beading Public
maxim of the book business that a professor
standing up In a corner burled In a book looks
well in a store. The real customers like it.
So it was that even so up-to-date a manager
as Mr, Sellyer tolerated my presence in a back
corner of his store : and so it was that I had
an opportunity of noting something of his meth-
ods with his real customers — methods so suc-
cessful, I may say, that he is rightly looked
upon by all the publishing business as one of
the mainstays of literature in America.
I had no Intention of standing in the place
and listening as a spy. In fact, to tell the
truth, I had become Immediately Interested In
a new translation of the Moral Discourses of
Epictetus. The book was very neatly printed,
quite well bound and was offered at eighteen
cents; so that for the moment I was strongly
tempted to buy It, though It seemed best to
take a dip into it first.
I had hardly read more than the first three
chapters when my attention was diverted by a
conversation going on in the front of the store.
"You're quite sure it's his latest?" a fash-
39
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
ionably dressed lady was saying to Mr. Sell-
yer.
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Rasselyer," answered the
manager. "I assure you this is his very latest.
In fact, they only came in yesterday."
As he spoke, he indicated with his hand a
huge pile of books, gayly jacketed in white and
blue. I could make out the title in big gilt
lettering— GOLDEA^ DREAMS.
"Oh, yes," repeated Mr. Sellyer. "This is
Mr. Slush's latest book. It's having a won-
derful sale."
"That's all right, then," said the lady. "You
see, one sometimes gets taken in so : I came in
here last week and took two that seemed very
nice, and I never noticed till I got home that
they were both old books, published, I think,
six months ago."
"Oh, dear me, Mrs. Rasselyer," said the
manager in an apologetic tone, "I'm extremely
sorry. Pray let us send for them and exchange
them for you."
"Oh, it does not matter," said the lady; "of
course I didn't read them. I gave them to my
40
The Reading Public
maid. She probably wouldn't know the differ-
ence, anyway."
"I suppose not," said Mr. Sellyer, with a
condescending smile. "But of course, ma-
dam," he went on, falling into the easy chat of
the fashionable bookman, "such mistakes are
bound to happen sometimes. We had a very
painful case only yesterday. One of our oldest
customers came in in a great hurry to buy
books to take on the steamer, and before we
realised what he had done — selecting the books
I suppose merely by the titles, as some gentle-
men are apt to do — he had taken two of last
year's books. We wired at once to the steamer,
but I'm afraid it's too late."
"But now, this book," said the lady, idly
turning over the leaves, "is it good? What is
it about?"
"It's an extremely -powerful thing," said Mr.
Sellyer, "in fact, masterly. The critics are say-
ing that it's perhaps the most powerful book
of the season. It has a " and here Mr.
Sellyer paused, and somehow his manner re-
minded me of my own when I am explaining
41
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
to a university class something that I don't
know myself — "It has a — a — power, so to
speak — a very exceptional power; in fact, one
may say without exaggeration it is the most
powerful book of the month. Indeed," he
added, getting on to easier ground, "it's having
a perfectly wonderful sale."
"You seem to have a great many of them,"
said the lady.
"Oh, we have to," answered the manager.
"There's a regular rush on the book. Indeed,
you know it's a book that is bound to make a
sensation. In fact, in certain quarters, they
are saying that it's a book that ought not
to " And here Mr. Sellyer's voice became
so low and ingratiating that I couldn't hear
the rest of the sentence.
"Oh, really!" said Mrs. Rasselyer. "Well,
I think I'll take it then. One ought to see
what these talked-of things are about, any-
way."
She had already begun to button her gloves,
and to readjust her feather boa with which she
had been knocking the Easter cards off the
42
The Reading Public
counter. Then she suddenly remembered some-
thing.
"Oh, I was forgetting," she said. "Will you
send something to the house for Mr. Rasselyer
at the same time? He's going down to Vir-
ginia for the vacation. You know the kind
of thing he likes, do you not?"
"Oh, perfectly, madam," said the manager.
"Mr. Rasselyer generally reads works of — er
— I think he buys mostly books on — er "
"Oh, travel and that sort of thing," said the
lady.
"Precisely. I think we have here," and he
pointed to the counter on the left, "what Mr.
Rasselyer wants."
He Indicated a row of handsome books —
"Seven Weeks in the Sahara, seven dollars;
Six Months in a Waggon, six-fifty net ; After-
noons in an Oxcart, two volumes, four-thirty,
with twenty off."
"I think he has read those," said Mrs. Ras-
selyer. "At least there are a good many at
home that seem like that."
"Oh, very possibly — but here, now. Among
43
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
the Cannibals of Corfu- — ^yes, that I think he
has had — Among the — that, too, I think — but
this I am certain he would like, just In this
morning — Among the Monkeys of New Guinea
— ten dollars, net."
And with this Mr. Sellyer laid his hand on a
pile of new books, apparently as numerous as
the huge pile of Golden Dreams.
"Among the Monkeys" he repeated, almost
caressingly.
"It seems rather expensive," said the lady.
"Oh, very much so — a most expensive book,"
the manager repeated in a tone of enthusiasm.
"You see, Mrs. Rasselyer, It's the Illustrations,
actual photographs" — he ran the leaves over
In his fingers — "of actual monkeys, taken with
the camera — and the paper, you notice — In
fact, madam, the book costs, the mere manu-
facture of It, nine dollars and ninety cents —
of course we make no profit on It. But It's a
book we like to handle."
Everybody likes to be taken Into the details
of technical business ; and of course everybody
likes to know that a bookseller is losing money.
44
The Beading Public
These, I realised, were two axioms in the meth-
ods of Mr. Sellyer.
So very naturally Mrs. Rasselyer bought
Among the Monkeys, and in another moment
Mr. Sellyer was directing a clerk to write down
an address on Fifth Avenue, and was bowing
deeply as he showed the lady out of the door.
As he turned back to his counter his manner
seemed much changed.
"That Monkey book," I heard him murmur
to his assistant, "is going to be a pretty stiff
proposition."
But he had no time for further speculation.
Another lady entered.
This time even to an eye less trained than
Mr. Sellyer's, the deep, expensive mourning
and the pensive face proclaimed the sentimental
widow.
"Something new in fiction," repeated the
manager, "yes, madam — here's a charming
thing — Golden Dreams'' — he hung lovingly on
the words — "a very sweet story, singularly
sweet; in fact, madam, the critics are saying it
is the sweetest thing that Mr. Slush has done."
45
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Is it good?" said the lady. I began to real-
ise that all customers asked this.
"A charming book," said the manager. "It's
a love story — very simple and sweet, yet won-
derfully charming. Indeed, the reviews say it's
the most charming book of the month. My
wife was reading it aloud only last night. She
could hardly read for tears."
"I suppose it's quite a safe book, is it?"
asked the widow. "I want it for my little
daughter."
"Oh, quite safe," said Mr. Sellyer, with an
almost parental tone, "in fact, written quite in
the old style, like the dear old books of the
past — quite like" — here Mr. Sellyer paused
with a certain slight haze of doubt visible in
his eye — "like Dickens and Fielding and
Sterne and so on. We sell a great many to the
clergy, madam."
The lady bought Golden Dreams, received
it wrapped up in green enamelled paper, and
passed out.
"Have you any good light reading for vaca-
tion time?" called out the next customer in a
46
The Reading Public
loud, breezy voice — he had the air of a stock
broker starting on a holiday.
"Yes," said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost
broke Into a laugh as he answered, "here's an
excellent thing — Golden Dreams — quite the
most humorous book of the season — simply
screaming — my wife was reading It aloud only
yesterday. She could hardly read for laugh-
Ing."
"What's the price, one dollar? One-fifty.
All right, wrap It up." There was a clink of
money on the counter, and the customer was
gone. I began to see exactly where professors
and college people who want copies of Epic-
tetus at 1 8 cents and sections of World Re-
prints of Literature at 12 cents a section come
In, in the book trade.
"Yes, Judge !" said the manager to the next
customer, a huge, dignified personage in a wide-
awake hat, "sea stories? Certainly. Excel-
lent reading, no doubt, when the brain is over-
charged as yours must be. Here is the very
latest — Among the Monkeys of New Guinea,
ten dollars, reduced to four-fifty. The manu-
47
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
facture alone costs six-eighty. We're selling it
out. Thank you, Judge. Send it? Yes. Good
morning."
After that the customers came and went in
a string. I noticed that though the store was
filled with books — ten thousand of them, at a
guess — Mr. Sellyer was apparently only selling
two. Every woman who entered went away
with Golden Dreams: every man was given a
copy of the Monkeys of New Guinea. To one
lady Golden Dreams was sold as exactly the
reading for a holiday, to another as the very
book to read after a holiday; another bought
it as a book for a rainy day, and a fourth as
the right sort of reading for a fine day. The
Monkeys was sold as a sea story, a land story,
a story of the jungle, and a story of the moun-
tains, and it was put at a price corresponding
to Mr. Sellyer's estimate of the purchaser.
At last after a busy two hours, the store
grew empty for a moment.
"Wilfred," said Mr. Sellyer, turning to his
chief assistant, "I am going out to lunch. Keep
those two books running as hard as you can.
48
The Reading Public
We'll try them for another day and then cut
them right out. And I'll drop round to
Dockem & Discount, the publishers, and make
a kick about them, and see what they'll
do."
I felt that I had lingered long enough. I
drew near with the Epictetus in my hand.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Sellyer, professional
again in a moment. "Epictetus? A charming
thing. Eighteen cents. Thank you. Perhaps
we have some other things there that might
interest you. We have a few second-hand
things in the alcove there that you might care
to look at. There's an Aristotle, two volumes
— a very fine thing — practically illegible, that
you might like : and a Cicero came in yesterday
— very choice — damaged by damp — and I
think we have a Machiavelli, quite exceptional
— practically torn to pieces, and the covers
gone — a very rare old thing, sir, if you're an
expert."
"No, thanks," I said. And then from a cu-
riosity that had been growing in me and
that I couldn't resist, "That book — Golden
49
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Dreams," I said, "you seem to think it a very
wonderful work?"
Mr. Sellyer directed one of his shrewd
glances at me. He knew I didn't want to buy
the book, and perhaps, like lesser people, he
had his off moments of confidence.
He shook" his head.
*'A bad business," he said. "The publishers
have unloaded the thing on us, and we have to
do what we can. They're stuck with It, I un-
derstand, and they look to us to help them.
They're advertising It largely and may pull it
off. Of course, there's just a chance. One
can't tell. It's just possible we may get the
church people down on it and if so we're all
right. But short of that we'll never make It.
I imagine it's perfectly rotten."
"Haven't you read it?" I asked.
"Dear me, no!" said the manager. His air
was that of a milkman who is offered a glass
of his own milk. "A pretty time Td have if I
tried to read the new books. It's quite enough
to keep track of them without that."
"But those people," I went on, deeply per-
50
The Reading Public
plexed, "who bought the book. Won't they
be disappointed?"
Mr. Sellyer shook his head. "Oh, no," he
said; "you see, they won't read it. They never
do."
"But at any rate," I insisted, "your wife
thought it a fine story."
Mr. Sellyer smiled widely.
"I am not married, sir," he said.
51
AFTERNOON ADVEN-
TURES AT MY CLUB
l.—The Anecdotes of
Dr. So and So
THAT Is not really his name. I merely
call him that from his manner of
talking.
His specialty is telling me short
anecdotes of his professional life from day to
day.
They are told with wonderful dash and
power, except for one slight omission, which is,
that you never know what the doctor is talk-
ing about. Beyond this, his little stories are
of unsurpassed interest — but let me illustrate.
He came into the semi-silence room of the
club the other day and sat down beside me.
"Have something or other?" he said.
"No, thanks," I answered.
"Smoke anything?" he asked.
"No, thanks."
55
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
The doctor turned to me. He evidently
wanted to talk.
"I've been having a rather peculiar experi-
ence," he said. "Man came to me the other
day — three or four weeks ago — and said,
'Doctor, I feel out of sorts. I believe I've got
so and so.' *Ah,' I said, taking a look at him,
'been eating so and so, eh?' 'Yes,' he said.
'Very good,' I said, 'take so and so.'
"Well, off the fellow went — I thought noth-
ing of it — simply wrote such and such in my
note-book, such and such a date, symptoms such
and such — prescribed such and such, and so
forth, you understand?"
"Oh, yes, perfectly, doctor," I answered. .
"Very good. Three days later — a ring at
the bell In the evening — my servant came to
the surgery. 'Mr. So and So Is here. Very
anxious to see you.' 'AH right!' I went down.
There he was, with every symptom of so and
so written all over him — every symptom of it
— this and this and this "
"Awful symptoms, doctor," I said, shaking
my head.
S6
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
"Are they not?" he said, quite unaware that
he hadn't named any. "There he was with
every symptom, heart so and so, eyes so and
so, pulse this — I looked at him right in the
eye and I said — 'Do you want me to tell you
the truth?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Very good,' I an-
swered, 'I will. You've got so and so.' He
fell back as if shot. 'So and so !' he repeated,
dazed. I went to the sideboard and poured
him out a drink of such and such. 'Drink this,'
I said. He drank it. 'Now,' I said, 'listen to
what I say: You've got so and so. There's
only one chance,' I said, 'you must limit your
eating and drinking to such and such, you
must sleep such and such, avoid every form of
such and such — I'll give you a cordial, so many
drops every so long, but mind you, unless you
do so and so, it won't help you,' 'All right,
very good.' Fellow promised. Off he went"
The doctor paused a minute and then re-
sumed :
"Would you believe it — two nights later, I
saw the fellow — after the theatre, in a restau-
rant— ^whole party of people — big plate of so
57
3Ioonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
and so In front of him — quart bottle of so and
so on ice — such and such and so forth. I
stepped over to him — tapped him on the shoul-
der: 'See here,' I said, 'if you won't obey
my instructions, you can't expect me to treat
you.' I walked out of the place.'*
"And what happened to him?" I asked.
"Died," said the doctor. In a satisfied tone.
"Died. I've just been filling in the certificate:
So and so, aged such and such, died of so and
sol"
"An awful disease," I murmured.
58
2,—The Shattered Health of
Mr, Podge
HOW are you, Podge?" I said, as I
sat down In a leather armchair be-
side him.
I only meant "How-do-you-do?"
but he rolled his big eyes sideways at me In his
flabby face (it was easier than moving his face)
and he answered:
"I'm not as well to-day as I was yesterday
afternoon. Last week I was feeling pretty
good part of the time, but yesterday about four
o'clock the air turned humid, and I don't feel
so well."
"Have a cigarette?" I said.
"No, thanks ; I find they affect the bronchial
toobes."
"Whose?" I asked.
"Mine," he answered.
"Oh, yes," I said, and I lighted one. "So
59
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
you find the weather trying," I continued cheer-
fully.
"Yes, it's too humid. It's up to a satura-
tion of sixty-six. I'm all right till it passes
sixty-four. Yesterday afternoon it was only
about sixty-one, and I felt fine. But after that
it went up. I guess it must be a contraction of
the epidermis pressing on some of the seba-
ceous glands, don't you?"
"I'm sure it is," I said. "But why don't
you just sleep it off till it's over?"
"I don't like to sleep too much," he an-
swered. "I'm afraid of it developing into
hypersomnia. There are cases where it's been
known to grow into a sort of lethargy that
pretty well stops all brain action alto-
gether "
"That would be too bad," I murmured.
"What do you do to prevent it?"
"I generally drink from half to three-quar-
ters of a cup of black coffee, or nearly black,
every morning at from eleven to five minutes
past, so as to keep off hypersomnia. It's the
best thing, the doctor says."
60
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
"Aren't you afraid," I said, "of its keeping
you 'awake?"
"I am," answered Podge, and a spasm
passed over his big yellow face. "I'm always
afraid of insomnia. That's the worst thing of
all. The other night I went to bed about half-
past ten, or twenty-five minutes after, — I for-
get which, — and I simply couldn't sleep. I
couldn't. I read a magazine story, and I still
couldn't; and I read another, and still I couldn't
sleep. It scared me bad."
"Oh, pshaw," I said; "I don't think sleep
matters as long as one eats properly and has
a good appetite."
He shook his head very dubiously. "I ate
a plate of soup at lunch," he said, "and I feel
it still."
"You feel it!"
"Yes," repeated Podge, rolling his eyes side-
ways in a pathetic fashion that he had, "I still
feel it. I oughtn't to have eaten it. It was
some sort of a bean soup, and of course it was
full of nitrogen. I oughtn't to touch nitrogen,"
he added, shaking his head.
6i
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Not take any nitrogen?" I repeated.
"No, the doctor — both doctors — have told
me that. I can eat starches, and albumens, all
right, but I have to keep right away from all,
carbons and nitrogens. I've been dieting that
way for two years, except that now and again
I take a little glucose or phosphates."
"That must be a nice change," I said, cheer-
fully.
"It is," he answered in a grateful sort of
tone.
There was a pause. I looked at his big
twitching face, and listened to the heavy wheez-
ing of his breath, and I felt sorry for him.
"See here. Podge," I said, "I want to give
you some good advice."
"About what?"
"About your health."
"Yes, yes, do," he said. Advice about his
health was right in his line. He lived on it.
"Well, then, cut out all this fool business
of diet and drugs and nitrogen. Don't bother
about anything of the sort. Forget it. Eat
everything you want to, just when you want
62
Afternoon Adventures at My Cluh
it. Drink all you like. Smoke all you can —
and you'll feel a new man in a week."
"Say, do you think so!" he panted, his eyes
filled with a new light.
"I know It," I answered. And as I left him
I shook hands with a warm feeling about my
heart of being a benefactor to the human race.
Next day, sure enough, Podge's usual chair
at the club was empty.
"Out getting some decent exercise," I
thought. "Thank Heaven!"
Nor did he come the next day, nor the next,
nor for a week.
"Leading a rational life at last," I thought.
"Out in the open getting a little air and sun-
light. Instead of sitting here howling about his
stomach."
The day after that I saw Dr. Slyder in black
clothes glide into the club in that . -eculiar man-
ner of his, like an amateur undertaker.
"Hullo, Slyder," I called to him, "you look
as solemn as if you had been to a funeral."
"I have," he said very quietly, and then
added, "poor Podge!"
63
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"What about him?" I asked with sudden
apprehension.
"Why, he died on Tuesday," answered the
doctor. "Hadn't you heard? Strangest case
IVe known in years. Came home suddenly
one day, pitched all his medicines down the
kitchen sink, ordered a couple of cases of
champagne and two hundred havanas, and had
his housekeeper cook a dinner like a Roman
banquet! After being under treatment for
two years I Lived, you know, on the narrow-
est margin conceivable. I told him and Silk
told him — we all told him — his only chance was
to keep away from every form of nitrogenous
ultra-stimulants. I said to him often, 'Podge,
if you touch heavy carbonized food, you're
lost' "
"Dear me," I thought to myself, "there are
such things after all!"
"It was a marvel," continued Slyder, "that
we kept him alive at all. And, of course" —
here the doctor paused to ring the bell to order
two Manhattan cocktails — "as soon as he
touched alcohol he was done."
64
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
So that was the end of the valetudinarian-
ism of Mr. Podge.
I have always considered that I killed him.
But anyway, he was a nuisance at the rlub.
6s
S.—The Amazing Travels of
Mr. Yarner
THERE was no fault to be found with
Mr. Yarner till he made his trip
around the world.
It was that, I think, which dis-
turbed his brain and unfitted him for member-
ship in the club.
"Well," he would say, as he sat ponderously
down with the air of a man opening an inter-
esting conversation, "I was just figuring it out
that eleven months ago to-day I was in Pekin."
"That's odd," I said, "I was just reckoning
that eleven days ago I was in Poughkeepsie."
"They don't call It Pekin over there," he
said. "It's sounded Pel-Chang."
"I know," I said, "it's the same way with
Poughkeepsie, they pronounce it P'Keepsie."
66
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
"The Chinese," he went on musingly, "are
a strange people."
"So are the people in P'KeepsIe," I added,
"awfully strange."
That kind of retort would sometimes stop
him, but not always. He was especially dan-
gerous If he was found with a newspaper in his
hand; because that meant that some item of
foreign intelligence had gone to his brain.
Not that I should have objected to Yarner
describing his travels. Any man who has
bought a ticket round the world and paid for
it, is entitled to that.
But it was his manner of discussion that I
considered unpermisslble.
Last week, for example. In an unguarded
moment I fell a victim. I had been guilty
of the imprudence — I forget in what connec-
tion— of speaking of lions. I realized at once
that I had done wrong — lions, giraffes, ele-
phants, rickshaws and natives of all brands,
are topics to avoid in talking with a trav-
eller.
"Speaking of lions," began Yarner.
67
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
He was right, of course; I had spoken of
lions.
" — I shall never forget," he went on (of
course, I knew he never would), "a rather bad
scrape I got into In the up-country of Uganda.
Imagine yourself In a wild, rolling country
covered here and there with kwas along the
sides of the nullahs."
I did so.
"Well," continued Yarner, "we were sitting
in our tent one hot night — too hot to sleep —
when all at once we heard, not ten feet in front
of us, the most terrific roar that ever came
from the throat of a Hon."
As he said this Yarner paused to take a gulp
of bubbling whiskey and soda and looked at
me so ferociously that I actually shivered.
Then quite suddenly his manner cooled down
In the strangest way, and his voice changed to
a commonplace tone as he said, —
"Perhaps I ought to explain that we hadn't
come up to the up-country looking for big game.
In fact, we had been down in the down country
with no idea of going higher than Mombasa.
68
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
Indeed, our going even to Mombasa itself was
more or less an afterthought. Our first plan
was to strike across from Aden to Singapore.
But our second plan was to strike direct from
Colombo to KaruchI — "
"And what was your third plan?" I asked.
"Our third plan," said Yarner deliberately,
feeling that the talk was now getting really
Interesting, "let me see, our third plan was to
cut across from Socotra to Tananarlvo."
"Oh, yes," I said.
"However, all that was changed, and
changed under the strangest circumstances.
We were sitting, Gallon and I, on the piazza
of the Galle Face Hotel In Colombo — ^you
know the Galle Face ?"
"No, I do not," I said very positively.
"Very good. Well, I was sitting on the
piazza watching a snake charmer who was
seated, with a boa, Immediately In front of
me.
"Poor Gallon was actually within two feet of
the hideous reptile. All of a sudden the beast
whirled Itself Into a coil, Its eyes fastened with
69
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
hideous malignity on poor Gallon, and with Its
head erect it emitted the most awful hiss I
have heard proceed from the mouth of any
living snake,"
Here Yarner paused and took a long, hiss-
ing drink of whiskey and soda: and then as
the malignity died out of his face — ■
"I should explain," he went on, very quietly,
"that Gallon was not one of our original party.
We had come down to Colombo from Mon-
golia, going by the Pekin Hankow and the
Nippon Yushen Keisha."
"That, I suppose, is the best way?" I said.
"Yes. And oddly enough but for the acci-
dent of Gallon joining us, we should have gone
by the Amoy, Cochin, Singapore route, which
was our first plan. In fact, but for Gallon we
should hardly have got through China at all.
The Boxer Insurrection had taken place only
fourteen years before our visit, so you can
imagine the awful state of the country.
"Our meeting with Gallon was thus abso-
lutely providential. Looking back on it, I think
it perhaps saved our lives, We were in Mon-
70
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
golla (this, you understand, was before we
reached China), and had spent the night at a
small Yak about four versts from Kharbin,
when all of a sudden, just outside the miser-
able hut that we were in, we heard a perfect
fusillade of shots followed immediately after-
wards by one of the most blood-curdling and
terrifying screams I have ever imagined — "
"Oh, yes," I said, "and that was how you
met Gallon. Well, I must be off."
And as I happened at that very moment to
be rescued by an incoming friend, who took
but little Interest in lions, and even less in Yar-
ner, I have still to learn why the lion howled so
when it met Yarner. But surely the lion had
reason enough.
7r
4. — The Spiritual Outlook of
Mr. Doomer
ONE generally saw old Mr. Doomer
looking gloomily out of the win-
dows of the library of the club. If
not there, he was to be found star-
ing sadly into the embers of a dying fire in a
deserted sitting-room.
His gloom always appeared out of place as
he was one of the richest of the members.
But the cause of it, — as I came to know,- —
was that he was perpetually concerned with
thinking about the next world. In fact he
spent his whole time brooding over it.
I discovered this accidentally by happening
to speak to him of the recent death of Podge,
one of our fellow members.
"Very sad," I said, "Podge's death."
"Ah," returned Mr. Doomer, "very shock-
ing. He was quite unprepared to die."
72
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
"Do you think so?" I said, "I'm awfully
sorry to hear it."
"Quite unprepared," he answered. "I had
reason to know it as one of his executors, —
everything is confusion, — nothing signed, — no
proper power of attorney, — codicils drawn up
in blank and never witnessed, — in short, sir,
no sense apparently of the nearness of his death
and of his duty to be prepared.
"I suppose," I said, "poor Podge didn't re-
alise that he was going to die."
"Ah, that's just it," resumed Mr. Doomer
with something like sternness, "a man ought
to realise it. Every man ought to feel that at
any moment, — one can't tell when, — day or
night, — he may be called upon to meet his," — ■
Mr. Doomer paused here as if seeking a phrase
— "to meet his Financial Obligations, face to
face. At any time, sir, he may be hurried be-
fore the Judge, — or rather his estate may be,
— before the Judge of the probate court. It
is a solemn thought, sir. And yet when I come
here I see about me men laughing, talking, and
playing billiards, as if there would never be a
73
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
day when their estate would pass into the hands
of their administrators and an account must be
given of every cent."
"But after all," I said, trying to fall in with
his mood, "death and dissolution must come to
all of us."
"That's just It," he said solemnly. "They've
dissolved the tobacco people, and they've dis-
solved the oil people and you can't tell whose
turn it may be next."
Mr. Doomer was silent a moment and then
resumed, speaking in a tone of humility that
was almost reverential.
"And yet there is a certain preparedness for
death, a certain fitness to die that we ought all
to aim at. Any man can at least think sol-
emnly of the Inheritance Tax, and reflect
whether by a contract inter vivos drawn in
blank he may not obtain redemption; any man
If he thinks death is near may at least divest
himself of his purely speculative securities and
trust himself entirely to those gold bearing
bonds of the great industrial corporations
whose value will not readily diminish or pass
74
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
away." Mr. Doomer was speaking with some-
thing like religious rapture.
"And yet what does one see?" he continued.
"Men affected with fatal illness and men
stricken in years occupied still with idle talk
and amusements instead of reading the financial
newspapers, — and at the last carried away with
scarcely time perhaps to send for their brokers
when it is already too late."
"It is very sad," I said.
"Very," he repeated, "and saddest of all,
perhaps, is the sense of the irrevocability of
death and the changes that must come after
It."
We were silent a moment.
"You think of these things a great deal, Mr.
Doomer?" I said.
"I do," he answered. "It may be that It is
something in my temperament, I suppose one
would call it a sort of spiritual mindedness.
But I think of it all constantly. Often as I
stand here beside the window and see these
cars go by" — he Indicated a passing street car
— "I cannot but realise that the time will come
75
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
when I am no longer a managing director and
wonder whether they will keep on trying to
hold the dividend down by improving the roll-
ing stock or will declare profits to inflate the
securities. These mysteries beyond the grave
fascinate me, sir. Death is a mysterious thing.
Who for example will take my seat on the Ex-
change? What will happen to my majority
control of the power company? I shudder to
think of the changes that may happen after
death in the assessment of my real estate."
"Yes," I said, "it is all beyond our control,
isn't it?"
"Quite," answered Mr. Doomer; "especially
of late years one feels that, aU said and done,
we are in the hands of a Higher Power, and
that the State Legislature is after all supreme.
It gives one a sense of smallness. It makes one
feel that in these days of drastic legislation
with all one's efforts the individual is lost and
absorbed in the controlling power of the state
legislature. Consider the words that are used
In the text of the Income Tax Case, Folio Two,
or the text of the Trans-Missouri Freight De-
76
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
cision, and think of the revelation they con-
tain."
I left Mr. Doomer still standing beside the
window, musing on the vanity of life and on
things, such as the future control of freight
rates, that lay beyond the grave.
I noticed as I left him how broken and aged
he had come to look. It seemed as if the chaf-
ings of the spirit were wearing the body that
harboured it.
It was about a month later that I learned of
Mr. Boomer's death.
Dr. Slyder told me of it in the club one af-
ternoon, over two cocktails In the sitting-room.
"A beautiful bedside," he said, "one of the
most edifying that I have ever attended. I
knew that Doomer was failing and of course
the time came when I had to tell him.
" 'Mr. Doomer,' I said, *all that I, all that
any medical can do for you is done; you are
going to die. I have to warn you that it is
time for other ministrations than mine.'
77
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
" 'Very good,' he said faintly but firmly,
'send for my broker.*
"They sent out and fetched Jarvis, — ^you
know him I think, — most sympathetic man and
yet most business-like — he does all the firm's
business with the dying, — and we two sat be-
side Doomer holding him up while he signed
stock transfers and blank certificates.
"Once he paused and turned his eyes on Jar-
vis. 'Read me from the text of the State In-
heritance Tax Statute,' he said. Jarvis took
the book and read aloud very quietly and simply
the part at the beginning — 'Whenever and
wheresoever it shall appear,' down to the
words, 'shall be no longer a subject of judg-
ment or appeal but shall remain In perpetual
possession.'
"Doomer listened with his eyes closed. The
reading seemed to bring him great comfort.
When Jarvis ended he said with a sign, 'That
covers It. I'll put my faith In that' After that
he was silent a moment and then said: 'I wish
I had already crossed the river. Oh, to have
already crossed the river and be safe on the
78
Afternoon Adventures at My Cluh
other side.' We knew what he meant. He had
always planned to move over to New Jersey.
The inheritance tax is so much more liberal.
"Presently it was all done.
" 'There,' I said, 'it is finished now.'
" 'No,' he answered, 'there is still one thing.
Doctor, you've been very good to me. I should
like to pay your account now without it being
a charge on the estate. I will pay it as' — he
paused for a moment and a jfit of coughing
seized him, but by an effort of will he found
the power to say — 'cash.'
"I took the account from my pocket (I had
it with me, fearing the worst), and we laid his
cheque-book before him on the bed. Jarvis
thinking him too faint to write tried to guide
his hand as he filled in the sum. But he shook
his head.
" 'The room is getting dim,' iie said. *I
can see nothing but the figures.'
" 'Never mind,' said Jarvis, — much moved,
*that's enough.'
" *Is it four hundred and thirty?' he asked
faintly.
79
Moonbeams front the Larger Lunacy
" *Yes,' I said, and I could feel the tears ris-
ing in my eyes, 'and fifty cents.'
"After signing the cheque his mind wandered
for a moment and he fell to talking, with his
eyes closed, of the new federal banking law,
and of the prospect of the reserve associations
being able to maintain an adequate gold supply.
"Just at the last he rallied.
*' 'I want,' he said in quite a firm voice, 'to
do something for both of you before I die.'
" 'Yes, yes,' we said.
" 'You are both interested, are you not,' he
murmured, 'in City Traction?'
" 'Yes, yes,' we said. We knew of course
that he was the managing director.
"He looked at us faintly and tried to speak.
" 'Give him a cordial,' said Jarvis. But he
found his voice.
" 'The value of that stock,' he said, 'is going
to take a sudden '
"His voice grew faint.
" 'Yes, yes,' I whispered, bending over him
(there were tears in both our eyes), 'tell me
is it going up, or going down?'
80
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
" 'It is going' — he murmured, — then his
eyes closed — 'it is going '
"Tes, yes,' I said, 'which?'
" 'It is going' — he repeated feebly and then,
quite suddenly he fell back on the pillows and
his soul passed. And we never knew which
way it was going. It was very sad. Later on,
of course, after he was dead, we knew, as
everybody knew, that it went down."
5. — The Reminiscences of
Mr. Apricot
RATHER a cold day, isn't it?" I said
as I entered the club.
The man I addressed popped his
head out from behind a newspaper
and I saw it was old Mr. Apricot. So I was
sorry that I had spoken.
"Not so cold as the winter of 1866," he said,
beaming with benevolence.
He had an egg-shaped head, bald, with some
white hair fluffed about the sides of it. He had
a pink face with large blue eyes, behind his
spectacles, benevolent to the verge of imbe-
cility.
"Was that a cold winter?" I asked.
"Bitter cold," he said. "I have never told
you, have I, of my early experiences in life?"
"I think I have heard you mention them," I
murmured, but he had already placed a detain-
82
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
ing hand on my sleeve. "Sit down," he said.
Then he continued: "Yes, it was a cold win-
ter. I was going to say that it was the coldest
I have ever experienced, but that might be an
exaggeration. But it was certainly colder than
any winter that you have ever seen, or that we
ever have now, or are likely to have. In fact
the winters now are a mere nothing," — here
Mr. Apricot looked toward the club window
where the driven snow was beating in eddies
against the panes, — "simply nothing. One
doesn't feel them at all," — here he turned his
eyes towards the glowing fire that flamed in
the open fireplace. "But when I was a boy
things were very different. I have probably
never mentioned to you, have I, the circum-
stances of my early hfe?"
He had, many times. But he had turned
upon me the full beam of his benevolent spec-
tacles and I was too weak to interrupt.
"My father," went on Mr. Apricot, settling
back in his chair and speaking with a far-away
look in his eyes, "had settled on the banks of
the Wabash River "
83
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Oh, yes, I know it well," I interjected.
"Not as it was then," said Mr. Apricot very
quickly. "At present as you, or any other
thoughtless tourist sees it, it appears a broad
river pouring its vast flood in all directions.
At the time I speak of it was a mere stream
scarcely more than a few feet in circumference.
The life we led there was one of rugged isola-
tion and of sturdy self-reliance and effort such
as it is, of course, quite impossible for you, or
any other member of this club to understand, — -
I may give you some idea of what I mean when
I say that at that time there was no town nearer
to Pittsburg than Chicago, or to St. Paul than
Minneapolis "
"Impossible!" I said.
Mr. Apricot seemed not to notice the inter-
ruption.
"There was no place nearer to Springfield
than St. Louis," he went on in a peculiar sing-
song voice, "and there was nothing nearer to
Denver than San Francisco, nor to New Or-
leans than Rio Janeiro "
He seemed as if he would go on indefinitely.
84
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
"You were speaking of your father?" I in-
terrupted.
"My father," said Mr. Apricot, "had set-
tled on the banks, both banks, of the Wabash.
He was like so many other men of his time, a
disbanded soldier, a veteran "
"Of the Mexican War or of the Civil War?"
I asked.
"Exactly," answered Mr. Apricot, hardly
heeding the question, — "of the Mexican Civil
War."
"Was he under Lincoln?" I asked.
^'Over Lincoln," corrected Mr. Apricot
gravely. And he added, — "It Is always
strange to me the way in which the present
generation regards Abraham Lincoln. To us,
of course, at the time of which I speak, Lincoln
was simply one of ourselves."
"In 1866?" I asked.
"This was 1856," said Mr. Apricot. "He
came often to my father's cabin, sitting down
with us to our humble meal of potatoes and
whiskey (we lived with a simplicity which of
course you could not possibly understand) , and
85
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunucy
would spend the evening talking with my father
over the interpretation of the Constitution of
the United States. We children used to stand
beside them listening open-mouthed beside the
fire in our plain leather nightgowns. I shall
never forget how I was thrilled when I first
heard Lincoln lay down his famous theory of
the territorial jurisdiction of Congress as af-
fected by the Supreme Court decision of 1857.
I was only nine years old at the time, but it
thrilled me!"
"Is it possible!" I exclaimed, "how ever could
you understand it?"
"Ah! my friend," said Mr. Apricot, almost
sadly, "in tJiose days the youth of the United
States were educated in the real sense of the
word. We children followed the decisions of
the Supreme Court with breathless interest.
Our books were few but they were good. We
had nothing to read but the law reports, the
agriculture reports, the weather bulletins and
the almanacs. But we read them carefully from
cover to cover. How few boys have the in-
dustry to do so now, and yet how many of our
86
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
greatest men were educated on. practically noth-
ing else except the law reports and the alma-
nacs. Franklin, Jefferson, Jackson, Johnson,"
— Mr. Apricot had relapsed into his sing-song
voice, and his eye had a sort of misty perplex-
ity in it as he went on, — "Harrison, Thomson,
Peterson, Emerson ^"
I thought it better to stop him.
"But you were speaking," I said, "of the
winter of eighteen fifty-six."
"Of eighteen forty-six," corrected Mr. Apri-
cot. "I shall never forget it. How distinctly
I remember, — I was only a boy then, in fact a
mere lad, — fighting my way to school. The
snow lay in some places as deep as ten feet" —
Mr. Apricot paused — "and in others twenty.
But we made our way to school in spite of it.
No boys of to-day, — nor, for the matter of
that, even men such as you, — would think of
attempting it. But we were keen, anxious to
learn. Our school was our delight. Our
teacher was our friend. Our books were our
companions. We gladly trudged five miles to
school every morning and seven miles back at
87
Moonbeams from the Larger JLunacy
night, did chores till midnight, studied algebra
by candlelight" — here Mr. Apricot's voice had
fallen into its characteristic sing-song, and his
eyes were vacant — "rose before daylight,
dressed by lamplight, fed the hogs by lantern-
light, fetched the cows by twilight "
I thought it best to stop him.
"But you did eventually get off the farm,
did you not?" I asked.
"Yes," he answered, "my opportunity pres-
ently came to me as it came in those days to
any boy of industry and intelligence who
knocked at the door of fortune till it opened.
I shall never forget how my first chance in
life came to me. A man, an entire stranger,
struck no doubt with the fact that I looked in-
dustrious and willing, offered me a dollar to
drive a load of tan bark to the nearest mar-
ket "
"Where was that?" I asked.
"Minneapolis, seven hundred miles. But I
did it. I shall never forget my feelings when I
found myself in Minneapolis with one dollar in
my pocket and with the world all before me."
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
"What did you do?" I said.
"First," said Mr. Apricot, "I laid out sev-
•enty-five cents for a suit of clothes (things were
cheap In those days) ; for fifty cents I bought
an overcoat, for twenty-five I got a hat, for
ten cents a pair of boots, and with the rest of
my money I took a room for a month with a
Swedish family, paid a month's board with a
German family, arranged to have my washing
done by an Irish family, and "
"But surely, Mr. Apricot " I began.
But at this point the young man who Is gen-
erally In attendance on old Mr. Apricot when
he comes to the club, appeared on the scene.
"I am afraid," he said to me aside as Mr.
Apricot was gathering up his newspapers and
his belongings, "that my uncle has been rather
boring you with his reminiscences."
"Not at all," I said, "he's been telling me
all about his early life In his father's cabin on
the Wabash "
"I was afraid so," said the young man. "Too
bad. You see he wasn't really there at all."
89
Moonhea7ns from the Larger Lunacy
"Not there!" I said.
"No. He only fancies that he was. He was
brought up in New York, and has never been
west of Philadelphia. In fact he has been very
well to do all his life. But he found that it
counted against him: it hurt him in politics.
So he got into the way of talking about the
Middle West and early days there, and some-
times he forgets that he wasn't there."
"I see," I said.
Meantime Mr. Apricot was ready.
"Good-bye, good-bye," he said very cheerily,
— "A delightful chat. We must have another
talk over old times soon. I must tell you about
my first trip over the Plains at the time when I
was surveying the line of the Union Pacific.
You who travel nowadays in your Pullman
coaches and observation cars can have no
idea "
Come along, uncle," said the young man.
90
Q.—The Last Man out of
Europe
HE came into the club and shook hands
with me as if he hadn't seen me
for a year. In reality I had seen
him only eleven months ago, and
hadn't thought of him since.
"How are you, Parkins?" I said in a
guarded tone, for I saw at once that there was
something special in his manner.
"Have a cig?" he said as he sat down on
the edge of an arm-chair, dangling his Httle
boot.
Any young man who calls a cigarette a "cig"
I despise. "No, thanks," I said.
"Try one," he went on, "they're Hungarian.
They're some I managed to bring through with
me out of the war zone."
As he said "war zone," his face twisted up
into a sort of scowl of self-importance.
91
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
I looked at Parkins more closely and I no-
ticed that he had on some sort of foolish little
coat, short In the back, and the kind of bow-tie
that they wear In the Hungarian bands of the
Sixth Avenue restaurants.
Then I knew what the trouble was. He was
the last man out of Europe, that Is to say, the
latest last man. There had been about four-
teen others In the club that same afternoon. In
fact they were sitting all over It In Italian suits
and Viennese overcoats, striking German
matches on the soles of Dutch boots. These
were the "war zone" men and they. had just
got out "In the clothes they stood up In." Nat-
urally they hated to change.
So I knew all that this young man. Parkins,
was going to say, and all about his adventures
before he began.
"Yes," he said, "we were caught right In the
war zone. By Jove, I never want to go
through again what I went through."
With that, he sank back Into the chair In
the pose of a man musing In silence over the
recollection of days of horror.
92
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
I let him muse. In fact I determined to let
him muse till he burst before I would ask him
what he had been through. I knew it, anyway.
Presently he decided to go on talking.
"We were at Izzl," he said, "in the Car-
pathians, Loo Jones and I. We'd just made a
walking tour from Izzl to Fryzzl and back
again."
"Why did you come back?" I asked.
"Back where?"
"Back to Izzl," I explained, "after you'd
once got to Fryzzl. It seems unnecessary, but,
never mind, go on."
"That was in July," he continued. "There
wasn't a sign of war, not a sign. We heard
that Russia was beginning to mobilize," (at
this'word be blew a puff from his cigarette and
then repeated "beginning to mobilize") "but
we thought nothing of it."
"Of course not," I said.
"Then we heard that Hungary was calling
out the Honveds, but we still thought nothing
of it."
"Certainly not," I said.
93
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"And then we heard-
"Yes, I know," I said, "you heard that Italy
was calling out the Trombonari, and that Ger-
many was calling In all the Landesgeschiitz-
shaft."
He looked at me.
"How did you know that?" he said.
"We heard It over here," I answered.
"Well," he went on, "next thing we knew we
heard that the Russians were at Fryzzl."
"Great Heavens!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, at Fryzzl, not a hundred miles away.
The very place we'd been at only two weeks
before."
"Think of It !" I said. "If you'd been where
you were two weeks after you were there, or
If the Russians had been a hundred miles away
from where they were, or even If Fryzzl had
been a hundred miles nearer to Izzl "
We both shuddered.
"It was a close call," said Parkins. "How-
ever, I said to Loo Jones, 'Loo, It's time to
clear out.' And then, I tell you, our trouble
began. First of all we couldn't get any money.
94
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
We went to the bank at Izzl and tried to get
them to give us American dollars for Hun-
garian paper money; we had nothing else."
"And wouldn't they?"
"Absolutely refused. They said they hadn't
any."
"By George," I exclaimed. "Isn't war
dreadful? What on earth did you do?"
"Took a chance," said Parkins. "Went
across to the railway station to buy our tickets
with the Hungarian money."
"Did you get them?" I said.
"Yes," assented Parkins. "They said they'd
sell us tickets. But they questioned us mighty
closely; asked where we wanted to go to, what
class we meant to travel by, how much luggage
we had to register and so on. I tell you the
fellow looked at us mighty closely."
"Were you in those clothes?" I asked.
"Yes," said Parkins, "but I guess he sus-
pected we weren't Hungarians. You see, we
couldn't either of us speak Hungarian. In fact
we spoke nothing but English."
"That would give him a clue," I said.
95
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"However," he went on, "he was civil*
enough in a way. We asked when was the
next train to the sea coast, and he said there
wasn't any."
"No trains?" I repeated.
"Not to the coast. The man said the rea-
son was because there wasn't any railway to
the coast. But he offered to sell us tickets to
Vienna. We asked when the train would go
and he said there wouldn't be one for two
hours. So there we were waiting on that
wretched little platform, — no place to sit down,
no shade, unless one went into the waiting room
itself, — for two mortal hours. And even then
the train was an hour and a half late!"
"An hour and a half late !" I repeated.
"Yep!" said Parkins, "that's what things:
were like over there. So when we got on board
the train we asked a man when it was due to
get to Vienna, and he said he hadn't the faint-
est idea!"
"Good heavens!"
"Not the faintest idea. He told us to ask
the conductor or one of the porters. No, sir,,
96
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
I'll never forget that journey through to
Vienna, — nine mortal hours ! Nothing to eat,
not a bite, except just in the middle of the day
when they managed to hitch on a dining-car
for a while. And they warned everybody that
the dining-car was only on for an hour and a
half. Commandeered, I guess after that,"
added Parkins, puffing his cigarette.
"Well," he continued, "we got to Vienna at
last. I'll never forget the scene there, station
full of people, trains coming and going, men,
even women, buying tickets, big piles of lug-
gage being shoved on trucks. It gave one a
great idea of the reality of things."
"It must have," I said.
"Poor old Loo Jones was getting pretty well
used up with it all. However, we determined
to see it through somehow."
"What did you do next?"
"Tried again to get money: couldn't — they
changed our Hungarian paper into Italian gold,
but they refused to give us American money."
"Hoarding it?" I hinted.
"Exactly," said Parkins, "hoarding it all
97
3Ioonbeams from the Large?' Lunacy
for the war. Well anyhow we got on a train
for Italy and there our troubles began all over
again : — train stopped at the frontier, — officials
(fellows in Italian uniforms) went all through
it, opening hand baggage "
"Not hand baggage!" I gasped.
"Yes, sir, even the hand baggage. Opened
it all, or a lot of it anyway, and scribbled chalk
marks over it. Yes, and worse than that, — I
saw them take two fellows and sling them clear
off the train, — they slung them right out on to
the platform."
"What for?" I asked.
"Heaven knows," said Parkins, — "they said
they had no tickets. In war time you know,
when they're mobilizing, they won't let a soul
ride on a train without a ticket."
"Infernal tyranny," I murmured.
"Isn't it? However, we got to Genoa at
last, only to find that not a single one of our
trunks had come with usl"
"Confiscated?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Parkins, "the head bag-
gage man (he wears a uniform, you know, in
98
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
Italy just like a soldier) said it was because
we'd forgotten to check them in Vienna. How-
ever there we were waiting for twenty-four
hours with nothing but our valises."
"Right at the station?" I asked.
"No, at a hotel. We got the trunks later.
They telegraphed to Vienna for them and man-
aged to get them through somehow, — In a
baggage car, I believe."
"And after that, I suppose, you had no more
trouble."
"Trouble," said Parkins, "I should say we
had. Couldn't get a steamer! They said there
was none sailing out of Genoa for New York
for three days ! All cancelled, I guess, or else
rigged up as cruisers."
"What on earth did you do?"
"Stuck It out as best we could: stayed right
there In the hotel. Poor old Jones was pretty
well collapsed ! Couldn't do anything but sleep
and eat, and sit on the piazza of the hotel."
"But you got your steamer at last?" I
asked.
"Yes," he admitted, "we got It. But I never
99
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
want to go through another v^oyage like that
again, no sir!"
"What was wrong with It?" I asked, "bad
weather?"
"No, cahn, but a peculiar calm, glassy, with
little ripples on the water, — uncanny sort of
feeling."
"What was wrong with the voyage?"
"Oh, just the feeling of it, — ever^-thlng un-
der strict rule you know — no lights anywhere
except just the electric lights, — smoking-room
closed tight at eleven o'clock, — decks all
washed down every night — officers up on the
bridge all day looking out over the sea, — no,
sir, I want no more of It. Poor old Loo Jones,
I guess he's quite used up : he can't speak of
It at aU: just sits and broods, In fact I
doubt . . ."
At this moment Parkins's conversation was
Interrupted by the entry of two newcomers into
the room. One of them had on a little Hun-
garian suit like the one Parkins wore, and was
talking loudly as they came In.
100
A':. ■■'. Adzentures at 3/:
lOI
l.—The War Mania of Mr, Jinks
and Mr. Blinks
THEY were sitting face to face at a
lunch table at the club so near to
me that I couldn't avoid hearing
what they said. In any case they
are both stout men with gurgling voices which
carry.
"What Kitchener ought to do," — Jinks was
saying in a loud voice.
So I knew at once that he had the prevaihng
hallucination. He thought he was command-
ing armies in Europe.
After which I watched him show with three
bits of bread and two olives and a dessert knife
the vv^ay in which the German army could be
destroyed.
Blinks looked at Jinks' diagram with a stern
102
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
impassive face, modelled on the Sunday sup-
plement photogravures of Lord Kitchener.
"Your flank would be too much exposed,"
he said, pointing to Jinks' bread. He spoke
with the hard taciturnity of a Joffre.
"My reserves cover it," said Jinks, moving
two pepper pots to the support of the bread.
"Mind you," Jinks went on, "I don't say
Kitchener will do this: I say this is what he
ought to do: it's exactly the tactics of Kuro-
patkin outside of Mukden and it's precisely the
same turning movement that Grant used be-
fore Richmond."
Blinks nodded gravely. Anybody who has
seen the Grand Duke Nicholoevitch quietly ac-
cepting the advice of General Ruski under
heavy artillery fire, will realize Blinks' manner
to a nicety.
And, oddly enough, neither of them, I am
certain, has ever had any larger ideas about
the history of the Civil War than what can be
got from reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and
seeing Gillette play Secret Service. But this
Is part of the mania. Jinks and Blinks had
103
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
suddenly developed the hallucination that they
knew the history of all wars by a sort of in-
stinct.
They rose soon after that, dusted off their
waistcoats with their napkins and waddled
heavily towards the door. I could hear them
as they went talking eagerly of the need of
keeping the troops in hard training. They were
almost brutal in their severity. As they passed
out of the door, — one at a time to avoid crowd-
ing,— they were still talking about it. Jinks
was saying that our whole generation is over-
fed and soft. If he had his way he would take
every man in the United States up to forty-
seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and
train him to a shadow. Blinks went further.
He said they should be trained hard up to
fifty. He is fifty-one.
After that I used to notice Jinks and Blinks
always together in the club, and always carry-
ing on the European War.
I never knew which side they were on. They
seemed to be on both. One day they com-
manded huge armies of Russians, and there
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Afternoon Adventures at My Club
was one week when Blinks and Jinks at the
head of vast levies of Cossacks threatened to
overrun the whole of Western Europe. It was
dreadful to watch them burning churches and
monasteries and to see Jinks throw whole con-
vents full of white robed nuns into the flames
like so much waste paper.
For a time I feared they would obliterate
civilization Itself. Then suddenly Blinks de-
cided that Jinks' Cossacks were no good, not
properly trained. He converted himself on the
spot into a Prussian Field Marshal, declared
himself organised to a pitch of organisation of
which Jinks could form no idea, and swept
Jinks' army off the earth, without using any
men at all, by sheer organisation.
In this way they moved to and fro all winter
over the map of Europe, carrying death and
destruction everywhere and revelling in it.
But I think I liked best the wild excitement
of their naval battles.
Jinks generally fancied himself a submarine
and Blinks acted the part of a first-class battle-
ship. Jinks would pop his periscope out of the
105
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
water, take a look at Blinks merely for the
fraction of a second, and then, like a flash,
would dive under water again and start firing
his torpedoes. He explained that he carried
six.
But he was never quick enough for Blinks.
One glimpse of his periscope miles and miles
away was enough. Blinks landed him a contact
shell in the side, sunk him with all hands, and
then lined his yards with men and cheered.
I have known Blinks sink Jinks at two miles,
six miles — and once — in the club billiard room
just after the battle of the Falkland Islands, —
he got him fair and square at ten nautical miles.
Jinks of course claimed that he was not sunk.
He had dived. He was two hundred feet un-
der water quietly smiling at Blinks through his
periscope. In fact the number of things that
Jinks has learned to do through his periscope
passes Imagination.
Whenever I see him looking across at
Blinks with his eyes half closed and with a
baffling, quizzical expression In them, I know
that he is looking at him through his periscope.
io6
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
Now is the time for Blinks to watch out. If he
relaxes his vigilance for a moment he'll be tor-
pedoed as he sits, and sent flying, whiskey and
soda and all, through the roof of the club,
while Jinks dives into the basement.
Indeed it has come about of late, I don't
know just how, that Jinks has more or less got
command of the sea. A sort of tacit under-
standing has been reached that Blinks, which-
ever army he happens at the moment to com-
mand, is invincible on land. But Jinks, whether
as a submarine or a battleship, controls the
sea. No doubt this grew up in the natural
evolution of their conversation. It makes
things easier for both. Jinks even asks Blinks
how many men there are in an army division,
and what a sotnia of Cossacks is and what the
Army Service Corps means. And Jinks in re-
turn has become a recognized expert in tor-
pedoes and has taken to wearing a blue serge
suit and referring to Lord Beresford as
Charley.
But what I noticed chiefly about the war
mania of Jinks and Blinks was their splendid
107
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
indifference to slaughter. They had gone into
tne war with a grim resolution to fight it out
to a finish. If Blinks thought to terrify Jinks
by threatening to burn London, he little knew
his man. "All right," said Jinks, taking a
fresh light for his cigar, "burn it! By doing
so, you destroy, let us say, two million of my
women and children? Very good. Am I In-
jured by that? No. You merely stimulate me
to recruiting."
There was something awful in the grimness
of the struggle as carried on by Blinks and
Jinks.
The rights of neutrals and non-combatants,
Red Cross nurses, and regimental clergymen
they laughed to scorn. As for moving-picture
men and newspaper correspondents. Jinks and
Blinks hanged them on every tree in Belgium
and Poland.
With combatants in this frame of mind the
war I suppose might have lasted forever.
But it came to an end accidentally, — for-
tuitously, as all great wars are apt to. And by
accident also, I happened to see the end of it.
io8
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
It was late one evening. Jinks and Blinks
were coming down the steps of the club, and as
they came they were speaking with some ve-
hemence on their favourite topic.
"I tell you," Jinks was saying, "war is a
great thing. We needed it, Blinks. We were
all getting too soft, too scared of suffering and
pain. We wilt at a bayonet charge, we shud-
der at the thought of wounds. Bah!" he con-
tinued, "what does It matter if a few hundred
thousands of human beings are cut to pieces.
We need to get back again to the old Viking
standard, the old pagan ideas of suffering "
And as he spoke he got it.
The steps of the club were slippery with the
evening's rain, — not so slippery as the frozen
lakes of East Prussia or the hills where Jinks
and Blinks had been campaigning all winter,
but slippery enough for a stout man whose na-
tion has neglected his training. As Jinks waved
his stick In the air to Illustrate the glory of a
bayonet charge, he slipped and fell sideways on
the stone steps. His shin bone smacked against
the edge of the stone In a way that was pretty
109
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
well up to the old Viking standard of such
things. Blinks with the shock of the collision
fell also, — backwards on the top step, his head
striking first. He lay, to all appearance, as
dead as the most insignificant casualty in
Servia.
I watched the waiters carrying them Into the
club, with that new field ambulance attitude to-
wards pain which is getting so popular. They
had evidently acquired precisely the old pagan
attitude that Blinks and Jinks desired.
And the evening after that I saw Blinks and
Jinks, both more or less bandaged, sitting in a
corner of the club beneath a rubber tree, mak-
ing peace.
Jinks was moving out of Montenegro and
Blinks was foregoing all claims to Polish Prus-
sia; Jinks was offering Alsace-Lorraine to
Blinks, and Blinks in a fit of chivalrous enthusi-
asm was refusing to take it. They were dis-
banding troops, blowing up fortresses, sinking
their warships and offering indemnities which
they both refused to take. Then as they talked.
Jinks leaned forward and said something to
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Afternoon Adventures at My Club
Blinks In a low voice, — a final proposal of
terms evidently.
Blinks nodded, and Jinks turned and beck-
oned to a waiter, with the words, —
"One Scotch whiskey and soda, and one stein
of Wiirtemburger Bier "
And when I heard this, I knew that the war
was over.
Ill
S.—The Ground Floor
I HADN'T seen Ellesworth since our col-
lege days, twenty years before, at the
time when he used to borrow two dol-
lars and a half from the professor of
Public Finance to tide him over the week end.
Then quite suddenly he turned up at the
club one day and had afternoon tea with me.
His big clean shaven face had lost nothing
of its impressiveness, and his spectacles had
the same glittering magnetism as in the days
when he used to get the college bursar to ac-
cept his note of hand for his fees.
And he was still talking European politics
just as he used to in the days of our earlier
acquaintance.
"Mark my words," he said across the little
tea-table, with one of the most piercing glances
I have ever seen, "the whole Balkan situation
was only a beginning. We are on the eve of a
112
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
great pan-Slavonic upheaval." And then he
added, in a very quiet, casual tone: "By the
way, could you let me have twenty-five dollars
till to-morrow?"
"A pan-Slavonic movement!" I ejaculated.
"Do you really think it possible? No, I
couldn't."
"You must remember," Ellesworth went on,
"Russia means to reach out and take all she
can get;" and he added, "how about fifteen till
Friday?"
"She may reach for it," I said, "but I doubt
if she'll get anything. I'm sorry. I haven't
got it."
"You're forgetting the Bulgarian element,"
he continued, his animation just as eager as
before. "The Slavs never forget what they
owe to one another."
Here Ellesworth drank a sip of tea and then
said quietly, "Could you make it ten till Satur-
day at twelve?"
I looked at him more closely. I noticed now
his frayed cuffs and the dinginess of his over-
brushed clothes. Not even the magnetism of
113
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
his spectacles could conceal It. Perhaps I had
been forgetting something, whether the Bul-
garian element or not.
I compromised at ten dollars till Saturday.
"The Slav," said Ellesworth, as he pocketed
the money, "is peculiar. He never forgets."
"What are you doing now?" I asked him.
"Are you still in insurance?" I had a vague
recollection of him as employed in that busi-
ness.
"No," he answered. "I gave it up. I didn't
like the outlook. It was too narrow. The at-
mosphere cramped me. I want," he said, "a
bigger horizon."
"Quite so," I answered quietly. I had known
men before who had lost their jobs. It is gen-
erally the cramping of the atmosphere that does
it. Some of them can use up a tremendous lot
of horizon.
"At present," Ellesworth went on, "I am in
finance. I'm promoting companies."
"Oh, yes," I said. I had seen companies
promoted before.
"Just now," continued Ellesworth, "I'm
114
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
working on a thing that I think will be rather
a big thing. I shouldn't want it talked about
outside, but it's a matter of taking hold of the
cod fisheries of the Grand Banks, — practically
amalgamating them — and perhaps combining
with them the entire herring output, and the
whole of the sardine catch of the Mediterra-
nean. If it goes through," he added, "I shall
be in a position to let you in on the ground
floor."
I knew the ground floor of old. I have al-
ready many friends sitting on it; and others
who have fallen through it into the basement.
I said, "thank you," and he left me.
"That was Ellesworth, wasn't it?" said a
friend of mine who was near me. "Poor devil.
I knew him slightly, — 'always full of some new
and wild idea of making money. He was talk-
ing to me the other day of the possibility of
cornering all the huckleberry crop and making
refined sugar. Isn't it amazing what fool Ideas
fellows like him are always putting up to busi-
ness men?"
We both laughed.
115
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
After that I didn't see Ellesworth for some
weeks.
Then I met him in the club again. How he
paid his fees there I do not know.
This time he was seated among a litter of
foreign newspapers with a cup of tea and a ten-
cent package of cigarettes beside him.
"Have one of these cigarettes," he said. "I
get them specially. They are milder than what
we have in the club here."
They certainly were.
"Note what I say," Ellesworth went on.
"The French Republic is going to gain from
now on a stability that it never had." He
seemed greatly excited about It. But his voice
changed to a quiet tone as he added, "Could
you, without inconvenience, let me have five
dollars?"
So I knew that the cod-fish and the sardines
were still unamalgamated.
"What about the fisheries thing?" I asked.
"Did it go through?"
"The fisheries? No, I gave it up. I re-
fused to go forward with it. The New York
ii6
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
people concerned were too shy, too timid to
tackle it. I finally had to put it to them very
straight that they must either stop shilly-shally-
ing and declare themselves, or the whole busi-
ness was off."
"Did they declare themselves?" I ques-
tioned.
"They did," said EUesworth, "but I don't
regret It. I'm working now on a much bigger
thing, — something with greater possibilities in
it. When the right moment comes I'll let you
in on the ground floor."
I thanked him and we parted.
The next time I saw EUesworth he told me
at once that he regarded Albania as unable to
stand by Itself. So I gave him five dollars on
the spot and left him.
A few days after that he called me up on the
telephone to tell me that the whole of Asia
Minor would have to be redistributed. The
redistribution cost me five dollars more.
Then I met him on the street, and he said
that Persia was disintegrating, and took from
me a dollar and a half.
117
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
When I passed him next in the street he was
very busy amalgamating Chinese tramways. It
appeared that there was a ground floor in
China, but I kept off it.
Each time I saw Ellesworth he looked a
little shabbier than the last. Then one day he
called me up on the telephone, and made an
appointment.
His manner when I joined him was full of
importance.
"I want you at once," he said in a command-
ing tone, "to write me your cheque for a hun-
dred dollars."
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I am now able," said Ellesworth, "to put
you in on the ground floor of one of the biggest
things in years."
"Thanks," I said, "the ground floor is no
place for me."
"Don't misunderstand me," said Ellesworth.
"This is a big thing. It's an idea I've been
working on for some time, — making refined
sugar from the huckleberry crop. It's a cer-
tainty. I can get you shares now at five dol-
ii8
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
lars. They'll go to five hundred when we put
them on the market, — and I can run you In for
a block of stock for promotion services as well.
All you have to do is to give me right now a
hundred dollars, — cash or your cheque, — and I
can arrange the whole thing for you."
I smiled.
"My dear Ellesworth," I said, "I hope you
won't mind if I give you a little bit of good ad-
vice. Why not drop all this idea of quick
money? There's nothing in it. The business
world has grown too shrewd for it. Take an
ordinary decent job and stick to it. Let me use
my Influence," I added, "to try and get you into
something with a steady salary, and with your
brains you're bound to get on in time."
Ellesworth looked pained. A "steady job"
sounded to him like a "ground floor" to me.
After that I saw nothing of him for weeks.
But I didn't forget him. I looked about and
secured for him a job as a canvassing agent for
a book firm at a salary of five dollars a
week, and a commission of one-tenth of one
per cent.
119
Moonbeams from the Larger Liunacy
I was waiting to tell him of his good luck,
when I chanced to see him at the club again.
But he looked transformed.
He had on a long frock coat that reached
nearly to his knees. He was leading a little
procession of very heavy men in morning coats,
upstairs towards the private luncheon rooms.
They moved like a funeral, puffing as they
went. I had seen company directors before and
I knew what they were at sight.
"It's a small club and rather inconvenient,"
Ellesworth was saying, "and the horizon of
some of its members rather narrow," here he
nodded to me as he passed, — "but I can give
you a fairly decent lunch."
I watched them as they disappeared upstairs.
"That's Ellesworth, isn't it?" said a man
near me. It was the same man who had asked
about him before.
"Yes," I answered.
"Giving a lunch to his directors, I suppose,"
said my friend; "lucky dog."
"His directors?" I asked.
"Yes, hadn't you heard? He's just cleaned
120
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
up half a million or more, — some new scheme
for making refined sugar out of huckleberries.
Isn't It amazing what shrewd Ideas these big
business men get hold of? They say they're
unloading the stock at five hundred dollars. It
only cost them about five to organize. If only
one could get on to one of these things early
enough, eh?"
I assented sadly.
And the next time I am offered a chance on
the ground floor I am going to take It, even if
it's only the barley floor of a brewery.
It appears that there is such a place after all.
121
9.— The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
IT is the hallucination of Mr. Butt's life
that he lives to do good. At whatever
cost of time or trouble to himself, he
does it. Whether people appear to de-
sire it or not, he insists on helping them along.
His time, his company and his advice are at
the service not only of those who seek them
but of those who, in the mere appearances of
things, are not asking for them.
You may see the beaming face of Mr. Butt
appear at the door of all those of his friends
who are stricken with the minor troubles of
life. Whenever Mr. Butt learns that any of
his friends are moving house, buying furni-
ture, selling furniture, looking for a maid, dis-
missing a maid, seeking a chauffeur, suing a
plumber or buying a piano, — he is at their side
in a moment.
122
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
So when I met him one night in the cloak
room of the club putting on his raincoat and
his galoshes with a peculiar beaming look on
his face, I knew that he was up to some sort of
benevolence.
"Come upstairs," I said, "and play billiards."
I saw from his general appearance that it was
a perfectly safe offer.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt, "I only
wish I could. I wish I had the time. I am
sure It would cheer you up immensely if I could.
But I'm just going out."
"Where are you off to?" I asked, for I knew
he wanted me to say it.
"I'm going out to see the Everleigh-Joneses,
— you know them? no? — just come to the city,
you know, moving Into their new house, out on
Seldom Avenue."
"But," I said, "that's away o'lt in the sub-
urbs, Is It not, a mile or so beyond the car
tracks?"
"Something like that," answered Mr. Butt.
"And it's going on for ten o'clock and it's
starting to rain "
123
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Butt, cheerfully, ad-
justing his galoshes. "I never mind the rain,
— does one good. As to their house. I've not
been there yet but I can easily find It. I've a
very simple system for finding a house at night
by merely knocking at the doors in the neigh-
borhood till I get It."
"Isn't it rather late to go there?" I pro-
tested.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt warmly,
"I don't mind that a bit. The way I look at It
Is, here are these two young people, only mar-
ried a few weeks, just moving into their new
house, everything probably upside down, no
one there but themselves, no one to cheer them
up," — he was wriggling into his raincoat as
he spoke and working himself Into a frenzy of
benevolence, — "good gracious, I only learned
at dinner time that they had come to town, or
I'd have been out there days ago, — days
ago "
And with that Mr. Butt went bursting forth
into the rain, his face shining with good will
under the street lamps.
124
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
The next day I saw him again at the club at
lunch time.
"Well," I asked, "did you find the Joneses?"
"I did," said Mr. Butt, "and by George I
was glad that I'd gone — quite a lot of trouble
to find the house (though I didn't mind that;
I expected it) — had to knock at twenty houses
at least to get it, — very dark and wet out there,
— no street lights yet, — however I simply
pounded at the doors until some one showed a
light — at every house I called out the same
things, 'Do you know where the Everleigh
Joneses live?' They didn't. 'AH right,' I said,
'go back to bed. Don't bother to come down.'
"But I got to the right spot at last. I found
the house all dark. Jones put his head out of
an upper window. 'Hullo,' I called out; 'it's
Butt.' 'I'm awfully sorry,' he said, 'we've gone
to bed.' 'My dear boy,' I called back, 'don't
apologize at all. Throw me down the key
and I'll wait while you dress. I don't mind
a bit'
"Just think of it," continued Mr. Butt,
"those two poor souls going to bed at half past
125
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
ten, through sheer dullness I By George, I
was glad I'd come. 'Now then,' I said to my-
self, 'let's cheer them up a little, let's make
things a little brighter here.'
"Well, down they came and we sat there on
furniture cases and things and had a chat.
Mrs. Jones wanted to make me some coffee.
'My dear girl,' I said (I knew them both when
they were children) 'I absolutely refuse. Let
me make it.' They protested. I Insisted. I
went at It, — ^kitchen all upset — had to open at
least twenty tins to get the coffee. However, I
made It at last. 'Now,' I said, 'drink It.' They
said they had some an hour or so ago. 'Non-
sense,' I said, 'drink It' Well, we sat and
chatted away till midnight. They were dull at
first and I had to do all the talking. But I set
myself to It. I can talk, you know, when I try.
Presently about midnight they seemed to
brighten up a little. Jones looked at his watch.
'By Jove,' he said. In an animated way, 'It's
after midnight.' I think he was pleased at the
way the evening was going; after that we
chatted away more comfortably. Every little
126
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
while Jones would say, 'By Jove, It's half past
twelve,' or 'It's one o'clock,' and so on.
"I took care, of course, not to stay too late.
But when I left them I promised that I'd come
back to-day to help straighten things up. They
protested, but I Insisted."
That same day Mr. Butt went out to the sub-
urbs and put the Joneses' furniture to rights.
"I worked all afternoon," he told me after-
wards,— "hard at It with my coat off — got the
pictures up first — they'd been trying to put
them up by themselves In the morning. I had
to take down every one of them — not a single
one right, — 'Down they come,' I said, and went
at It with a will."
A few days later Mr. Butt gave me a further
report. "Yes," he said, "the furniture Is all
unpacked and straightened out but I don't like
It. There's a lot of It I don't quitt like. I half
feel like advising Jones to sell It and get some
more. But I don't want to do that till I'm
quite certain about It."
After that Mr. Butt seemed much occupied
and I didn't see him at the club for some time.
127
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"How about the Everleigh- Joneses?" I
asked. "Are they comfortable in their new
house?"
Mr. Butt shook his head. "It won't do," he
said. "I was afraid of it from the first. I'm
moving Jones in nearer to town. I've been out
all morning looking for an apartment; when I
get the right one I shall move him. I like an
apartment far better than a house."
So the Joneses in due course of time were
moved. After that Mr. Butt was very busy
selecting a piano, and advising them on wall
paper and woodwork.
They were hardly settled in their new home
when fresh trouble came to them.
"Have you heard about Everleigh- Jones?"
said Mr. Butt one day with an anxious face.
"No," I answered.
"He's ill — some sort of fever — ^poor chap —
been ill three days, and they never told me or
sent for me — just like their grit — ^meant to
fight It out alone. I'm going out there at
128
Afternoon Adventures at 3£y Club
From day to day I had reports from Mr.
Butt of the progress of Jones's illness.
"I sit with him every day," he said. "Poor
chap, — he was very bad yesterday for a while,
— ^mlnd wandered — quite delirious — ^I could
hear him from the next room — seemed to think
some one was hunting him — 'Is that damn old
fool gone,' I heard him say.
"I went In and soothed him. 'There Is no
one here, my dear boy,' I said, 'no one, only
Butt.* He turned over and groaned. Mrs.
Jones begged me to leave him. 'You look quite
used up,' she said. 'Go out Into the open air.'
'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said, 'what does it
matter about me?' "
Eventually, thanks no doubt to Mr. Butt's
assiduous care, Everleigh-Jones got well.
"Yes," said Mr. Butt to me a few weeks
later, "Jones Is all right again now, but his ill-
ness has been a long hard pull. I haven't had
an evening to myself since it began. But I'm
paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything
I've done, — the gratitude of those two people
129
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
■■ — it's unbelievable — ^you ought to see it. Why
do you know that dear little woman is so wor-
ried for fear that my strength has been over-
taxed that she wants me to take a complete
rest and go on a long trip somewhere — sug-
gested first that I should go south. 'My dear
Mrs. JoneSj' I said laughing, 'that's the one
place I will not go. Heat is the one thing I
can't stand.' She wasn't nonplussed for a mo-
ment. 'Then go north,' she said. 'Go up to
Canada, or better still go to Labrador,' — and
in a minute that kind little woman was hunting
up railway maps to see how far north I could
get by rail. 'After that,' she said, 'you can go
on snowshoes.' She's found that there's a
steamer to Ungava every spring and she wants
me to run up there on one steamer and come
back on the next."
"It must be very gratifying," I said.
"Oh, it is, it is," said Mr. Butt warmly. "It's
well worth anything I do. It more than repays
me. I'm alone in the world and my friends
are all I have. I can't tell you how it goes to
my heart when I think of all my friends, here
130
Afternoon Adventures at My Club
m the club and in the town, always glad to see
me, always protesting against my little kind-
nesses and yet never quite satisfied about any-
thing unless they can get my advice and hear
what I have to say.
"Take Jones for instance," he continued —
"do you know, really now as a fact, — the hall
porter assures me of it, — every time Everleigh-
Jones enters the club here the first thing he
does is to sing out, *Is Mr. Butt in the club?'
It warms me to think of it." Mr. Butt paused,
one would have said there were tears in his
eyes. But if so the kindly beam of his spec-
tacles shone through them like the sun through
April rain. He left me and passed into the
cloak room.
He had just left the hall when a stranger
entered, a narrow, meek man with a hunted
face. He came in with a furtive step and
looked about him apprehensively.
"Is Mr. Butt in the club?" he whispered to
the hall porter.
"Yes, sir, he's just gone into the cloak room,
sir, shall I "
131
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
But the man had turned and made a dive for
the front door and had vanished.
"Who Is that?" I asked.
"That's a new member, sir, Mr. Everleigh-
Jones," said the hall porter.
132
RAM SPUDD THE
NEW WORLD SINGER
IV— Ram Spudd The New World
Singer. Is He Divinely
Inspired? Or Is He Not?
At Any Rate We Discov-
ered Him*
THE discovery of a new poet Is al-
ways a joy to the cultivated world.
It Is therefore with the greatest
pleasure that we are able to an-
nounce that we ourselves, acting quite Inde-
pendently and without aid from any of the
English reviews of the day, have discovered
one. In the person of Mr. Ram Spudd, of
whose work we give specimens lelow, we feel
that we reveal to our readers a genius of the
first order. Unlike one of the most recently
* Mr. Spudd was discovered by the author for the
New York Life. He is already recognized as superior
to Tennyson and second only, as a writer of imagina-
tion, to the Suhan of Turkey.
^2S
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
discovered English poets who is a Bengalee,
and another who is a full-blooded Yak, Mr.
Spudd is, we believe, a Navajo Indian. We
believe this from the character of his verse.
Mr. Spudd himself we have not seen. But
when he forwarded his poems to our office and
offered with characteristic modesty to sell us
his entire works for seventy-five cents, we felt
in closing with his offer that we were dealing
not only with a poet, but with one of nature's
gentlemen.
Mr. Spudd, we understand, has had no edu-
cation. Other newly discovered poets have
had, apparently, some. Mr, Spudd has had,
evidently, none. We lay stress on this point.
Without it we claim it is impossible to under-
stand his work.
What we particularly like about Ram Spudd,
and we do not say this because we discovered
him but because we believe it and must say it,
Is that he belongs not to one school but to all
of them. As a nature poet we doubt very much
if he has his equal; as a psychologist, we are
sure he has not. As a clear lucid thinker he is
136
Ram Spudd the New World Singer
undoubtedly In the first rank; while as a mystic
he Is a long way In front of It. The specimens
of Mr. Spudd's verse which we append here-
with were selected, we are happy to assure our
readers, purely at random from his work. We
first blindfolded ourselves and then, standing
with our feet In warm water and having one
hand tied behind our back, we groped among
the papers on our desk before us and selected
for our purpose whatever specimens first came
to hand.
As we have said, or did we say it, it is per-
haps as a nature poet that Ram Spudd excels.
Others of our modern school have carried the
observation of natural objects to a high degree
of very nice precision, but with Mr. Spudd the
observation of nature becomes an almost scien-
tific process. Nothing escapes him. The green
of the grass he detects as in an Instant The
sky Is no sooner blue than he remarks it with
unerring certainty. Every bird note, every bee
call, Is familiar to his trained ear. Perhaps
we cannot do better than quote the opening lines
of a singularly beautiful sample of Ram Spudd's
137
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
genius which seems to us the last word in na-
ture poetry. It is called, with characteristic
daintiness —
SPRING THAW IN THE
AHUNTSIC WOODS, NEAR PASPEBIAC,
PASSAMOQUODDY COUNTY
(We would like to say that, to our ears at
least, there Is a music in this title like the sound
of falling water, or of chopped ice. But we
must not interrupt ourselves. We now begin.
Listen.)
The thermometer is standing this morning at thirty-
three decimal one.
As a consequence it is freezing in the shade, but it is
thawing in the sun.
There is a certain amount of snow on the ground,
but of course not too much.
The air is what you would call humid, but not dis-
agreeable to the touch.
Where I am standing I find myself practically sur-
rounded by trees.
It is simply astonishing the number of the different
varieties one sees.
I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree by
seeing it glisten,
138
Ram Spudd the New World Singer
But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the tree
and listen,
And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of mine
perhaps,
But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees
by the sound of their saps.
After I have noticed all the trees, and named those I
know in words,
I stand quite still and look all round to see if there
are any birds,
And yesterday, close where I was standing, sitting in
some brush on the snow,
I saw what I was practically absolutely certain was an
early crow.
I sneaked up ever so close and was nearly beside it,
when say!
It turned and took one look at me, and flew away.
But we should not wish our readers to think
that Ram Spudd Is always and only the con-
templative poet of the softer aspects of nature.
Oh, by no means. There are times when waves
of passion sweep over him in such prodigious
volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble
in the surf. Gusts of emotion blow over him
with such violence as to hurl him pro and con
with inconceivable fury. In such moods, if it
were not for the relief offered by writing verse
139
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
we really do not know what would happen to
him. His verse written under the impulse of
such emotions marks him as one of the great-
est masters of passion, wild and yet restrained,
objectionable and yet printable, that have ap-
peared on this side of the Atlantic. We ap-
pend herewith a portion, or half portion, of
his little gem entitled
YOU
You!
With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,
And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!
You!
With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and
contracting chest,
Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and
dinner-jacket vest.
It is too much
Your touch
As such.
It and
Your hand,
Can you not understand?
Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair
Unnoticed fell.
I guard it
140
Ram Sjmdd the New World Singer
Well.
Yestere'en
From your tiara I have slid,
Unseen,
A single diamond,
And I keep it
Hid.
Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill
A quarter dollar,
And I have it
Still.
But even those who know Ram Spudd as the
poet of nature or of passion still only know a
part of his genius. Some of his highest flights
rise from an entirely different Inspiration, and
deal with the public affairs of the nation. They
are in every sense comparable to the best work
of the poets laureate of England dealing with
similar themes. As soon as we had seen Ram
Spudd's work of this kind, we cried, that Is we
said to our stenographer, "What a pity that in
this republic we have no laureateshlp. Here is
a man who might truly fill It." Of the poem of
this kind we should wish to quote, If our limits
of space did not prevent It, Mr. Spudd's ex-
quisite
141
Moonbeams from the Larger JLunacy
ODE ON THE REDUCTION OF THE
UNITED STATES TARIFF
It is a matter of the very gravest concern to at least
nine-tenths of the business interests in the
United States,
Whether an all-round reduction of the present tariff
either on an ad valorem or a specific basis
Could be effected without a serious disturbance of the
general industrial situation of the country.
But, no, we must not quote any more. No we
really mustn't. Yet we cannot refrain from
inserting a reference to the latest of these laure-
ate poems of Ram Spudd. It appears to us to
be a matchless specimen of Its class, and to
settle once and for all the vexed question
(though we ourselves never vexed it) of
whether true poetry can deal with national oc-
casions as they arise. It Is entitled:
THE BANKER'S EUTHANASIA: OR,
THE FEDERAL RESERVE CURRENCY
ACT OF 1914,
and, though we do not propose to reproduce it
here, our distinct feeling is that It will take its
142
Bam Spudd the New World Singer
rank beside Mr. Spudd's Elegy on the Inter-
state Commerce Act, and his Thoughts on the
Proposal of a Uniform Pure Food Law.
But our space does not allow us to present
Ram Spudd in what is after all his greatest
aspect, that of a profound psychologist, a ques-
tioner of the very meaning of life itself. His
poem Death and Gloom, from which we must
refrain from quoting at large, contains such
striking passages as the following:
Why do I breathe, or do I?
What am I for, and whither do I go?
What skills it if I live, and if I die,
What boots it?
Any one knowing Ram Spudd as we do will
realize that these questions, especially the last,
are practically unanswerable.
143
ARISTOCRATIC
ANECDOTES
V. — Aristocratic Anecdotes or Lit-
tle Stories of Great People
I HAVE been much struck lately by the
many excellent little anecdotes of cele-
brated people that have appeared In re-
cent memoirs and found their way thence
Into the columns of the daily press. There is
something about them so deliciously pointed,
their humour is so exquisite, that I think we
ought to have more of them. To this end I am
trying to circulate on my own account a few
anecdotes which seem somehow to have been
overlooked.
Here, for example, is an excellent thing
which comes, If I remember rightly, from the
vivacious Memoir of Lady Ranelagh de Chit
Chat.
ANECDOTE OF THE DUKE OF
STRATHYTHAN
Lady Ranelagh writes: "The Duke of Stra-
thythan (I am writing of course of the seven-
147
McHS'r.bc'ams from thi: Liirgcr Lunaci/
teenth Duke, not of his present Grace) was. as
everybody knows, famous for his hospitality.
It was not perhaps generally known that the
Duke was as witty as he was hospitable. I re-
call a most amusing incident that happened the
last time but two that I was staying at Strathy-
than Towers. As we sat down to lunch (we
were a very small and Intimate party, there
being only forty-three of us) the Duke, who
was at the head of the table, looked up from
the roast of beef that he was caning, and nm-
ning his eye about the guests was heard to
murmur. 'I'm afraid there isn't enough beef to
go round/
'There was nothing to do, of course, but to
roar with laughter and the incident passed off
with perfect sj'^o'ir faire."
Here is another story which I think has not
had all the publicity that it ought to. I found
it in die book Shot, Shell and Shrapnell or Sixty
Years as a TTar Correspondent, recently writ-
ten by Mr. Maxim Gatling whose exploits are
familiar to all readers.
14S
A ri^io-crLZtL- A fk\\:V'fc>?
JXECDOTE OF LORD KITCHIXER
•1 W.-: 5:-i-- IV
diatciv be:::- 1-i x
(wrdi Lc-i R : ~
irc were 1 ; :
tfac cncEuv '>
we foand oc:
of t>ullet& F
dian. A? t~
^--
anodicr
cept per:
sdf eaqv- : ^
his frier- ,
then, t^
SMT«S fo: ^ -
career of Baiv >
in the history of h
publkatioa of '" ^
•--aders. Tr.
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
with profound interest by half the chancelleries
of Europe. (Even the other half were half
excited over them.) The tangled skein in
which the politics of Europe are enveloped was
perhaps never better illustrated than in this
fascinating volume. Even at the risk of re-
peating what is already familiar, I offer the
following for what it is worth — or even less.
NEW LIGHT ON THE LIFE OF
C A FOUR
"I have always regarded Count Cavour," writes the
Baron, "as one of the most impenetrable diplomatists
whom it has been my lot to meet. I distinctly recall
an incident in connection with the famous Congress
of Paris of 1856 which rises before my mind as
vividly as if it were yesterday. I was seated in one
of the large salons of the Elysee Palace (I often
used to sit there) playing vingt-et-un together with
Count Cavour, the Due de Magenta, the Marquese
di Casa Mombasa, the Conte di Piccolo Pochito and
others whose names I do not recollect. The stakes had
been, as usual, very high, and there was a large pile
of gold on the table. No one of us, however, paid any
attention to it, so absorbed were we all in the thought
of the momentous crises that were impending. At in-
tervals the Emperor Napoleon III passed in and out of
the room, and paused to say a word or two, with
150
Aristocratic Anecdotes
well-feigned eloignement, to the players, who replied
with such degagement as they could.
"While the play was at its height a servant ap-
peared with a telegram on a silver tray. He handed
it to Count Cavour. The Count paused in his play,
opened the telegram, read it and then with the most
inconceivable nonchalance, put it in his pocket. We
stared at him in amazement for a moment, and then
the Due, with the infinite ease of a trained diplomat,
quietly resumed his play.
"Two days afterward, meeting Count Cavour at a
reception of the Empress Eugenie, I was able, un-
observed, to whisper in his ear, 'WTiat was in the tele-
gram?' 'Nothing of any consequence,' he answered.
From that day to this I have never known what it
contained. My readers," concludes Baron Snorch,
"may believe this or not as they like, but I give them
my word that it is true.
"Probably they will not believe it."
I cannot resist appending to these anecdotes
a charming little story from that well-known
book, Sorrows of a Queen. The writer, Lady
de Weary, was an English gentlewoman who
was for many years Mistress of the Robes at
one of the best known German courts. Her af-
fection for her royal mistress is evident on
every page of her memoirs.
151
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
TENDERNESS OF A QUEEN
Lady de W. writes :
"My dear mistress, the late Queen of Saxe-Covla-
Slitz-in-Mein, was of a most tender and sympathetic
disposition. The goodness of her heart broke forth
on all occasions. I well remember how one day, on
seeing a cabman in the Poodel Platz kicking his horse
in the stomach, she stopped in her walk and said, 'Oh,
poor horse! if he goes on kicking it like that he'll
hurt it.' "
I may say In conclusion that I think If people
would only take a little more pains to resuscU
tate anecdotes of this sort, there might be a
lot more of them found.
152
EDUCATION MADE
AGREEABLE
VL— Education Made Agreeable
or the Diversions of a Pro-
fessor
A FEW days ago during a pause in one
of my college lectures (my class be-
ing asleep) I sat reading Draper's
Intellectual Development of Europe.
Quite suddenly I came upon the following sen-
tence :
"Eratosthenes cast everything he wished to
teach Into poetry. By this means he made it
attractive, and he was able to spread his sys-
tem all over Asia Minor."
This came to me with a shock of an Intel-
lectual discovery. I saw at once how I could
spread my system, or parts of It, all over the
United States and Canada. To make educa-
tion attractive! There It Is I To call in the
help of poetry, of music, of grand opera, if
155
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
need be, to aid in the teaching of the dry sub-
jects of the college class room.
I set to work at once on the project and al-
ready I have enough results to revolutionize
education.
In the first place I have compounded a blend
of modern poetry and mathematics, which re-
tains all the romance of the latter and loses
none of the dry accuracy of the former. Here
is an example :
The poem of
LORD VLLIN'S DAUGHTER
expressed as
A PROBLEM IN TRIGONOMETRY
Introduction. A party of three persons, a Scotch
nobleman, a young lady and an elderly boatman stand
on the banks of a river (R), which, for private rea-
sons, they desire to cross. Their only means of trans-
port is a boat, of which the boatman, if squared, is
able to row at a rate proportional to the square of
the distance. The boat, hovi^ever, has a leak (S),
through which a quantity of water passes sufficient to
sink it after traversing an indeterminate distance (D).
Given the square of the boatman and the mean situa-
tion of all concerned, to find whether the boat will
pass the river safely or sink.
156
Education Made Agreeable
A chieftain to the Highlands bound
Cried "Boatman do not tarry!
And I'll give you a silver pound
To row me o'er the ferry."
Before them raged the angry tide
X^-|-Y from side to side.
Outspake the hardy Highland wight,
"I'll go, my chief, I'm ready;
It is not for your silver bright,
But for your winsome lady."
And yet he seemed to manifest
A certain hesitation ;
His head was sunk upon his breast
In puzzled calculation.
"Suppose the river X + Y
And call the distance Q
Then dare we thus the gods defy
I think we dare, don't you?
Our floating power expressed in words
IsX + 47"
"Oh, haste thee, haste," the lady cries,
"Though tempests round us gather
I'll face the raging o£ the skies
But please cut out the Algebra."
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
The boat has left the stormy shore (S)
A stormy C before her
c c c c
The tempest gathers o'er her
The thunder rolls, the lightning smites 'em
And the rain falls ad infinitum.
In vain the aged boatman strains,
His heaving sides reveal his pains;
The angry water gains apace
Both of his sides and half his base,
Till, as he sits, he seems to lose
The square of his h5'potenuse.
The boat advanced to X -|- 2,
Lord Ullin reached the fixed point Q, —
Then the boat sank from human eye,
OY, OY 2, OGY.
But this is only a sample of what can be
done. I have realised that all our technical
books are written and presented in too dry a
fashion. They don't make the most of them-
selves. Very often the situation implied is In-
tensely sensational, and if set out after the
fashion of an up-to-date newspaper, would be
wonderfully effective.
Here, for example, you have Euclid writing
158
Education Made Agreeable
In a perfectly prosaic way all in small type such
an item as the following:
"A perpendicular Is let fall on a line BC so
as to bisect It at the point C etc., etc.," just as
if it were the most ordinary occurrence In the
world. Every newspaper man will see at once
that it ought to be set up thus :
AWFUL CATASTROPHE
PERPENDICULAR FALLS HEADLONG
ON A GIVEN POINT
The Line at C said to be completely bisected
President of the Line makes Statement
etc., etc., etc.
But I am not contenting myself with merely
describing my system. I am putting it to the
test. I am preparing a new and very special
edition of my friend Professor Daniel Mur-
ray's work on the Calculus. This is a book
little known to the general public. I suppose
one may say without exaggeration that outside
of the class room it is hardly read at all.
Yet I venture to say that when my new edi-
tion is out it will be found on the tables of
159
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
every cultivated home, and will be among the
best sellers of the year. All that is needed is
to give to this really monumental book the
same chance that is given to every other work
of fiction in the modern market.
First of all I wrap it in what is called techni-
cally a jacket. This is of white enamelled
paper, and on it is a picture of a girl, a very
pretty girl, in a summer dress and sunbonnet
sitting swinging on a bough of a cherry tree.
Across the cover in big black letters are the
words :
THE CALCULUS
and beneath them the legend "the most daring
book of the day." This, you will observe, is
perfectly true. The reviewers of the mathe-
matical journals when this book first came out
agreed that "Professor Murray's views on the
Calculus were the most daring yet published."
They said, too, that they hoped that the pro-
fessor's unsound theories of infinitesimal recti-
tude would not remain unchallenged. Yet the
public somehow missed it all, and one of the
1 60
Education Made Agreeable
most profitable scandals In the publishing trade
was missed for the lack of a little business en-
terprise.
My new edition will give this book Its first
real chance.
I admit that the inside has to be altered, —
but not very much. The real basis of Interest
is there. The theories in the book are just as
interesting as those raised In the modern novel.
Ail that is needed is to adopt the device, fa-
miliar in novels, of clothing the theories in
personal form and putting the propositions ad-
vanced into the mouths of the characters, in-
stead of leaving them as unsupported state-
ments of the author. Take for example Dr.
Murray's beginning. It Is very good, — any
one will admit it, — fascinatingly clever, but it
lacks heart.
It runs :
If two magnitudes, one of which is determined by
a straight line and the other by a parabola approach
one another, the rectangle included by the revolution
of each will be equal to the sum of a series of inde-
terminate rectangles.
i6i
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Now this is,^ — quite frankly, — dull. The
situation is there ; the idea is good, and, whether
one agrees or not, is at least as brilliantly origi-
nal as even the best of our recent novels. But
I find it necessary to alter the presentation of
the plot a little bit. As I re-edit it the opening
of the Calculus runs thus:
On a bright morning in June along a path gay with
the opening efflorescence of the hibiscus and entangled
here and there with the wild blossoms of the convolvu-
lus,— two magnitudes might have been seen approaching
one another. The one magnitude who held a tennis-
racket in his hand, carried himself with a beautiful
erectness and moved with a firmness such as would
have led Professor Murray to exclaim in despair —
Let it be granted that A. B. (for such was our hero's
name) is a straight line. The other magnitude, which
drew near with a step at once elusive and fascinating,
revealed as she walked a figure so exquisite in its every
curve as to call from her geometrical acquaintances the
ecstatic exclamation, "Let it be granted that M is a
parabola."
The beautiful magnitude of whom we have last
spoken, bore on her arm as she walked, a tiny dog
over which her fair head was bent in endearing ca-
resses; indeed such was her attention to the dog Vt
(his full name was Velocity but he was called Vi for
short) that her wayward footsteps carried her not in a
162
Education Made Agreeable
straight line but in a direction so constantly changing
as to lead that acute observer, Professor Murray, to
the conclusion that her path could only be described
by the amount of attraction ascribable to Vi.
Guided thus along their respective paths, the tw^o
magnitudes presently met w^ith such suddenness that
they almost intersected.
"I beg your pardon," said the first magnitude very
rigidly.
"You ought to indeed," said the second rather sulk-
ily, "you've knocked Vi right out of my arms."
She looked round despairingly for the little dog
which seemed to have disappeared in the long grass.
"Won't you please pick him up?" she pleaded.
"Not exactly in my line, you know," answered the
other magnitude, "but I tell you what I'll do, if
you'll stand still, perfectly still where you are, and let
me take hold of your hand, I'll describe a circle!"
"Oh, aren't you clever!" cried the girl, clapping
her hands. "What a lovely idea! You describe a
circle all around me, and then we'll look at every
weeny bit of it and we'll be sure to f nd Vi "
She reached out her hand to the other magnitude
who clasped it with an assumed intensity sufficient to
retain it.
At this moment a third magnitude broke on the
scene: — a huge oblong, angular figure, very difficult
to describe, came revolving towards them.
"M," it shouted, "Emily, what are you doing?"
163
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"My goodness," said the second magnitude in
alarm, "it's MAM A."
I may say that the second instalment of D^.
Murray's fascinating romance will appear in.
the next number of the Illuminated Bookworm,
the great adult-juvenile vehicle of the newer
thought In which these theories of education are
expounded further.
164
AN E VERY-DAY
EXPERIENCE
VII. — An Every- Day Experience
HE came across to me in the semi-
silence room of the club.
"I had a rather queer hand at
bridge last night," he said,
"Had you?" I answered, and picked up a
newspaper.
"Yes. It would have interested you, I
think," he went on.
"Would it?" I said, and moved to another
chair.
"It was like this," he continued, following
me: "I held the king of hearts "
"Half a minute," I said; "I want to go and
see what time it is." I went out and looked
at the clock in the hall. I came back.
"And the queen and the ten " he was
saying.
"Excuse me just a second; I want to ring for
a messenger."
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Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
I did so. The waiter came and went.
"And the nine and two small ones," he went
on.
"Two small what?" I asked.
"Two small hearts," he said. "I don't re-
member which. Anyway, I remember very
well indeed that I had the king and the queen
and the jack, the nine, and two httle ones."
"Half a second," I said, "I want to mail a
letter."
When I came back to him, he was still mur-
muring :
"My partner held the ace of clubs and the
queen. The jack was out, but I didn't know
where the king was "
"You didn't?" I said in contempt.
"No," he repeated in surprise, and went on
murmuring :
"Diamonds had gone round once, and spades
twice, and so I suspected that my partner was
leading from weakness "
"I can well believe It," I said — "sheer weak-
ness."
"Well," he said, "on the sixth round the
i68
An Every -Day Experience
lead came to me. Now, what should I have
done? Finessed for the ace, or led straight
Into my opponent "
"You want my advice," I said, "and you
shall have It, openly and fairly. In such a case
as you describe, where a man has led out at
me repeatedly and with provocation, as I gather
from what you say, though I myself do not play
bridge, I should lead my whole hand at him.
I repeat, I do not play bridge. But in the cir-
cumstances, I should think It the only thing to
do."
169
TRUTHFUL ORATORY
VIII.— Truthful Oratory, or What
Our Speakers Oug'ht to Say
TRUTHFUL SPEECH GIVING THE
REAL THOUGHTS OF A DISTIN-
GUISHED GUEST AT THE FIF-
TIETH ANNIVERSARY BAN-
QUET OF A SOCIETY
MR. Chairman and Gentlemen:
If there Is one thing I abomi-
nate more than another, it is
turning out on a cold night like
this to eat a huge dinner of twelve courses and
know that I have to make a speech on top of it.
Gentlemen, I just feel stuffed. That's the plain
truth of it. By the time we had finished that
fish, I could have gone home satisfied. Hon-
estly I could. That's as much as I usually eat.
And by the time I had finished the rest of the
173
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
food, I felt simply waterlogged, and I do still.
More than that. The knowledge that I had to
make a speech congratulating this society of
yours on Its fiftieth anniversary haunted and
racked me all through the meal. I am not. In
plain truth, the ready and briUiant speaker you
take me for. That is a pure myth. If you
could see the desperate home scene that goes
on in my family when I am working up a
speech, your minds would be at rest on that
point.
I'll go further and be very frank with you.
How this society has lived for fifty years, I
don't know. If all your dinners are like this,
Heaven help you. I've only the vaguest idea
of what this society is, anyway, and what It
does. I tried to get a constitution this after-
noon but failed. I am sure from some of the
faces that I recognise around this table that
there must be good business reasons of some
sort for belonging to this society. There's
money In It, — mark my words, — for some of
you or you wouldn't be here. Of course I
quite understand that the President and the
174
Truthful Oratory
officials seated here beside me come merely for
the self-importance of It. That, gentlemen, is
about their size. I realized that from their
talk during the banquet. I don't want to speak
bitterly, but the truth is they are small men
and it flatters them to sit here with two or
three blue ribbons pinned on their coats. But
as for me, I'm done with it. It will be fifty
years, please heaven, before this event comes
round again. I hope, I earnestly hope, that I
shall be safely under the ground.
II
THE SPEECH THAT OUGHT TO BE
MADE BY A STATE GOVERNOR
AFTER VISITING THE FALL EX-
POSITION OF AN AGRICUL-
TURAL SOCIETY
Well, gentlemen, this Annual Fall Fair of
the Skedink County Agricultural Association
has come round again. I don't mind telling
you straight out that of ail the disagreeable
jobs that fall to me as Governor of this State,
175
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
my visit to your Fall Fair is about the tough-
est.
I want to tell you, gentlemen, right here
and now, that I don't know anything about ag-
riculture and I don't want to. My parents
were rich enough to bring me up in the city
in a rational way. I didn't have to do chores
In order to go to the high school as some of
those present have boasted that they did. My
only wonder is that they ever got there at all.
They show no traces of it.
This afternoon, gentlemen, you took me all
round your live-stock exhibit. I walked past,
and through, nearly a quarter of a mile of hogs.
What was it that they were called — Tam-
worths — Berkshires? I don't remember. But
all I can say, gentlemen, is, — phew! Just that.
Some of you will understand readily enough.
That word sums up my whole idea of your
agricultural show and I'm done with it.
No, let me correct myself. There was just
one feature of your agricultural exposition that
met my warm approval. You were good
enough to take me through the section of your
176
Truthful Oratory
exposition called your Midway Pleasance. Let
me tell you, sirs, that there was more real merit
in that than all the rest of the show put to-
gether. You apologized, if I remember
rightly, for taking me into the large tent of the
Syrian Dancing Girls. Oh, believe me, gentle-
men, you needn't have. Syria is a country
which commands my profoundest admiration.
Some day I mean to spend a vacation there.
And, believe me, gentlemen, when I do go, —
and I say this with all the emphasis of which
I am capable, — I should not wish to be accom-
panied by such a set of flatheads as the officials
of your Agricultural Society.
And now, gentlemen, as I have just received
a fake telegram, by arrangement, calling me
back to the capital of the State, I must leave
this banquet at once. One word in conclusion :
if I had known as fully as I do now how it
feels to drink half a bucket of sweet cider, I
should certainly never have come.
177
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
III
TRUTHFUL SPEECH OF A DISTRICT
POLITICIAN TO A LADIES' SUF-
FRAGE SOCIETY
Ladies: My own earnest, heartfelt con-
viction is that you are a pack of cats. I use
the word "cats" advisedly, and I mean every
letter of It. I want to go on record before
this gathering as being strongly and unalter-
ably opposed to Woman Suffrage until you get
It. After that I favour It. My reasons for
opposing the suffrage are of a kind that you
couldn't understand. But all men, — except
the few that I see at this meeting, — understand
them by Instinct.
As you may, however, succeed as a result
of the fuss that you are making, — In getting
votes, I have thought It best to come. Also, —
I am free to confess, — I wanted to see what
you looked hke.
On this last head I am disappointed. Per-
sonally I like women a good deal fatter than
178
Truthful Oratory
most of you are, and better looking. As I
look around this gathering I see one or two of
you that are not so bad, but on the whole not
many. But my own strong personal predilec-
tion is and remains in favour of a woman who
can cook, mend clothes, talk when I want her
to, and give me the kind of admiration to
which I am accustomed.
Let me, however, say in conclusion that I am
altogether in sympathy with your movement to
this extent. If you ever do get votes, — and
the indications are that you will (blast you), —
I want your votes, and I want all of them.
179
OUR LITER A R Y BUREA U
/JT. — Our Literary Bureau^
NOVELS READ TO ORDER
FIRST AID FOR THE
BUSY MILLIONAIRE
No BRAINS NEEDED
No TASTE REQUIRED
Nothing but money
Send it to us
WE have lately been struck, — of
course not dangerously, — by a
new idea. A recent number of a
well-known magazine contains an
account of an American multimillionaire who,
on account of the pressure of his brain power
and the rush of his business, found it impossi-
ble to read the fiction of the day for himself.
He therefore caused his secretaries to look
* This literary bureau was started by the author in
the New York Century, It leaped into such imme-
diate prominence that it had to be closed at once.
183
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
through any new and likely novel and make a
rapid report on its contents, indicating for his
personal perusal the specially Interesting parts.
Realizing the possibilities colled up in this
plan, we have opened a special agency or bu-
reau for doing work of this sort. Any over-
busy multimillionaire, or superman, who be-
comes our client may send us novels, essays,
or books of any kind, and will receive a report
explaining the plot and pointing out such parts
as he may with propriety read. If he can once
find time to send us a postcard, or a postal
cablegram, night or day, we undertake to as-
sume all the further effort of reading. Our
terms for ordinary fiction are one dollar per
chapter; for works of travel, lo cents per mile;
and for political or other essays, two cents per
page, or ten dollars per Idea, and for theo-
logical and controversial work, seven dollars
and fifty cents per cubic yard extracted. Our
clients are assured of prompt and immediate
attention.
Through the kindness of the Editor of the
Century we are enabled to insert here a sample
184
Our Literary Bureau
of our work. It was done to the order of a
gentleman of means engaged in silver mining
in Colorado, who wrote us that he was anxious
to get "a holt" on modern fiction, but that he
had no time actually to read it. On our assur-
ing him that this was now unnecessary, he
caused to be sent to us the monthly parts of a
serial story, on which we duly reported as fol-
lows:
JANUARY INSTALMENT
Theodolite Gulchj
The Dip, Canon County,
Colorado.
Dear Sir:
We beg to inform you that the scene of the opening
chapter of the Fortunes of Barbara Plynlimmon is laid
in Wales. The scene is laid, however, very carelessly
and hurriedly and we expect that it will shortly be
removed. We cannot, therefore, recommend it to your
perusal. As there is a very fine passage describing
the Cambrian Hills by moonlight, we enclose herewith
a condensed table showing the mean altitude of the
moon for the month of December in the latitude of
Wales. The character of Miss Plynlimmon we find to
be developed in conversation with her grandmother,
which we think you had better not read. Nor are we
185
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
prepared to endorse your reading the speeches of the
Welsh peasantry which we find in this chapter, but
we forward herewith in place of them a short glossary
of Welsh synonyms which may aid you in this con-
nection.
FEBRUARY INSTALMENX
Dear Sir:
We regret to state that we find nothing in the
second chapter of the Fortunes of Barbara Plynlim-
mon which need be reported to you at length. We
think it well, however, to apprise you of the arrival of
a young Oxford student in the neighbourhood of Miss
Plynlimmon's cottage, who is apparently a young man
of means and refinement. We enclose a list of the
principal Oxford Colleges.
We may state that from the conversation and man-
ner of this young gentleman there is no ground for
any apprehension on your part. But if need arises
we will report by cable to you instantly.
The young gentleman in question meets Miss Plyn-
limmon at sunrise on the slopes of Snowdon. As the
description of the meeting is very fine we send you a
recent photograph of the sun.
MARCH INSTALMENT
Dear Sir:
Our surmise was right. The scene of the story
that we are digesting for you is changed. Miss Plyn-
l86
Our Literary Bureau
limmon has gone to London. You will be gratified to
learn that she has fallen heir to a fortune of £100,000,
which we are happy to compute for you at $486,666
and 66 cents less exchange. On Miss Plynlimmon's
arrival at Charing Cross Station, she is overwhelmed
with that strange feeling of isolation felt in the surg-
ing crowds of a modern city. We therefore enclose
a timetable showing the arrival and departure of all
trains at Charing Cross.
APRIL INSTALMENT
Dear Sir:
We beg to bring to your notice the fact that Miss
Barbara Plynlimmon has by an arrangement made
through her trustees become the inmate, on a pe-
cuniary footing, in the household of a family of title.
We are happy to inform you that her first appear-
ance at dinner in evening dress was most gratifying:
we can safely recommend you to read in this connec-
tion lines 4 and 5 and the first half of line 6 on page
100 of the book as enclosed. We regret to say that
the Marquis of Slush and his eldest son Viscount Fitz-
buse (courtesy title) are both addicted to drink. They
have been drinking throughout the chapter. We are
pleased to state that apparently the second son, Lord
Radnor of Slush, who is away from home is not so
addicted. We send you under separate cover a bottle
of Radnor water.
187
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
' MAY INSTALMENT
Dear Sir:
We regret to state that the affairs of Miss Barbara
Plynlimmon are in a very unsatisfactory position. We
enclose three pages of the novel with the urgent re-
quest that you will read them at once. The old
Marquis of Slush has made approaches towards Miss
Plynlimmon of such a scandalous nature that we think
it best to ask you to read them in full. You will
note also that young Viscount Slush who is tipsy
through whole of pages 121-125, 128-133, and part of
page 140, has designs upon her fortune. We are
sorry to see also that the Marchioness of Buse under
the guise of friendship has insured Miss Plynlimmon's
life and means to do away with her. The sister of the
Marchioness, the Lady Dowager, also wishes to do
away with her. The second housem.aid who is tempted
by her jewellery is also planning to do away with her.
We feel that if this goes on she will be done away
with.
JUNE INSTALMENT
Dear Sir:
We beg to advise you that Viscount Fitz-buse, in-
flamed by the beauty and innocence of Miss Plynlim-
mon, has gone so far as to lay his finger on her (read
page 170, lines 6-7). She resisted his approaches. At
the height of the struggle a young man, attired in the
188
Our Literary Bureau
costume of a Welsh tourist, but wearing the stamp
of an Oxford student, and yet carrying himself with
the unmistakable hauteur (we knew it at once) of
an aristocrat, burst, or bust, into the room. With
one blow he felled Fitz-buse to the floor; with an-
other he clasped the girl to his heart.
"Barbara!" he exclaimed.
"Radnor," she murmured.
You will be pleased to learn that this is the second
son of the Marquis, Viscount Radnor, just returned
from a reading tour in Wales.
P. S. We do not know what he read, so we en-
close a file of Welsh newspapers to date.
JULY INSTALMENT
We regret to inform you that the Marquis of
Slush has disinherited his son. We grieve to state
that Viscount Radnor has sworn that he will never
ask for Miss Plynlimmon's hand till he has a for-
tune equal to her own. Meantime, we are sorry to
say, he proposes to work.
AUGUST INSTALMENT
The Viscount is seeking employment.
SEPTEMBER INSTALMENT
The Viscount is looking for work.
189
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
OCTOBER INSTALMENT
Tte Viscount Is hunting for a job.
NOVEMBER INSTALMENT
We are most happy to inform you that Miss Plyn-
limmon has saved the situation. Determined to be
worthy of the generous love of Viscount Radnor, she
has arranged to convey her entire fortune to the old
family lawyer who acts as her trustee. She will thus
become as poor as the Viscount and they can marry.
The scene with the old lawyer who breaks into tears
on receiving the fortune, swearing to hold and cherish
it as his own is very touching. Meantime, as the
Viscount is hunting for a job, we enclose a list of
advertisements under the heading Help Wanted —
Males.
DECEMBER INSTALMENT
You will be very gratified to learn that the for-
tunes of Miss Barbara Plynlimmon have come to a
most pleasing termination. Her marriage with the
Viscount Radnor was celebrated very quietly on page
231. (We enclose a list of the principal churches in
London.) No one was present except the old family
lawyer, who was moved to tears at the sight of the
bright, trusting bride, and the clergyman who wept
at the sight of the cheque given him by the Viscount.
After the ceremony the old trustee took Lord and
190
Our Literary Bureau
Lady Radnor to a small wedding breakfast at an hotel
(we enclose a list). During the breakfast a sudden
faintness (for which we had been watching for ten
pages) overcame him. He sank back in his chair,
gasping. Lord and Lady Radnor rushed to him and
sought in vain to tighten his necktie. He expired
under their care, having just time to indicate in his
pocket a will leaving them his entire wealth.
This had hardly happened when a messenger
brought news to the Viscount that his brother, Lord
Fitz-buse had been killed in the hunting field, and
that he (meaning him, himself) had now succeeded
to the title. Lord and Lady Fitz-buse had hardly
time to reach the town house of the family when they
learned that owing to the sudden death of the old
Marquis (also, we believe, in the hunting field), they
had become the Marquis and the Marchioness of
Slush.
The Marquis and the Marchioness of Slush are still
living in their ancestral home in London. Their lives
are an example to all their tenantry in Piccadilly, the
Strand and elsewhere.
CONCLUDING NOTE
Dear Mr. Gulch:
We beg to acknowledge with many thanks your
cheque for one thousand dollars.
We regret to learn that you have not been able to
find time to read our digest of the serial story placed
191
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
with us at your order. But we note with pleasure
that you propose to have the "essential points" of our
digest "boiled down" by one of the business experts of
your office,
Awaiting your commands,
We remain, etc., etc
192
SPEEDING UP BUSINESS
X, —Speeding Up Business
WE were sitting at our editorial desk
in our inner room, quietly writing
up our week's poetry, when a
stranger looked in upon us.
He came In with a burst, — like the entry of
the hero of western drama coming in out of a
snowstorm. His manner was all excitement.
"Sit down," we said, in our grave, courteous
way. "Sit down!" he exclaimed, "certainly
not! Are you aware of the amount of time
and energy that are being wasted in American
business by the practice of perpetually sitting
down and standing up again? Do you realize
that every time you sit down and stand up
you make a dead lift of" — he looked at us, — ■
"two hundred and fifty pounds? Did you ever
reflect that every time you sit down you have
to get up again?" "Never," we said quietly,
"we never thought of it." "You didn't!" he
195
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
sneered. "No, you'd rather go on lifting 250
pounds through two feet, — an average of 500
foot-pounds, practically 62 kilowatts of wasted
power. Do you know that by merely hitching
a pulley to the back of your neck you could
generate enough power to light your whole of-
fice?"
We hung our heads. Simple as the thing
was, we had never thought of It. "Very good,"
said the Stranger. "Now, all American busi-
ness men are like you. They don't think, — do
you understand me? They don't think."
We realized the truth of it at once. We
had never thought. Perhaps we didn't even
know how.
"Now, I tell you," continued our visitor,
speaking rapidly and with a light of wild en-
thusiasm in his face, "I'm out for a new cam-
paign,— efficiency in business — speeding things
up — ^better organization."
"But surely," we said, musingly, "we have
seen something about this lately in the papers?"
"Seen it, sir," he exclaimed, "I should say so.
It's everywhere. It's a new movement. It's
196
Speeding Up Business
in the air. Has it never struck you how a thing
like this can be seen in the air?"
Here again we were at fault. In all our
lives we had never seen anything in the air. We
had never even looked there. "Now," con-
tinued the Stranger, "I want your paper to
help. I want you to join in. I want you to
give publicity."
"Assuredly," we said, with our old-fashioned
politeness. "Anything which concerns the wel-
fare, the progress, if one may so phrase it "
"Stop," said the visitor. "You talk too much.
You're prosy. Don't talk. Listen to me. Try
and fix your mind on what I am about to say."
We fixed it. The Stranger's manner be-
came somewhat calmer. "I am heading," he
said, "the new American efl^iciency movement.
I have sent our circulars to fifty thousand rep-
resentative firms, explaining my methods. I
am receiving ten thousand answers a day" — •
here he dragged a bundle of letters out of his
pocket— "from Maine, from New Hampshire,
from Vermont," "Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut," we murmured.
197
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Exactly," he said; ''from every State in
the Union — from the Philippines, from Porto
Rico, and last week I had one from Canada."
"Marvellous," we said; "and may one ask
what your new methods are?"
"You may," he answered. "It's a proper
question. It's a typical business question, fair,
plain, clean, and even admitting of an answer.
The great art of answering questions," he con-
tinued, "is to answer at once without loss of
time, friction or delay in moving from place
to place. I'll answer it."
"Do," we said.
"I will," said the Stranger. "My method is
first: to stimulate business to the highest point
by infusing into it everywhere the spirit of
generous rivalry, of wholesome competition;
by inviting each and every worker to outdo each
and every other."
"And can they do it?" we asked, puzzled
and yet fascinated. "Can they all do it?"
"They do, and they can," said the Stranger.
"The proof of it is that they are doing it. Lis-
ten. Here is an answer to my circular No. 6,
198
Speeding Up Business
Efficiency and Recompense, that came in this
morning. It Is from a steel firm. Listen."
The Stranger picked out a letter and read it.
Dear Sir:
Our firm is a Steel Corporation. We roll rails-
As soon as we read your circular on the Stimulus of:
Competition we saw that there were big things in it..
At once we sent one of our chief managers to the rolling
mill. He carried a paper bag in his hand. "Now
boys," he said, "every man who rolls a rail gets a
gum-drop." The effect was magical. The good fellows
felt a new stimulus. They now roll out rails like dough.
Work is a joy to them. Ever>' Saturday night the man
who has rolled most gets a blue ribbon ; the man who
has rolled the next most, a green ribbon; the next
most a yellow ribbon, and so on through the spectro-
scope. The man who rolls least gets only a red rib-
bon. It is a real pleasure to see the brave fellows
clamouring for their ribbons. Our output, after de-
fraying the entire cost of the ribbons and the gum-
drops, has increased forty per cent. We intend to carry
the scheme further by allowing all the men who get a
hundred blue ribbons first, to exchange them for the
Grand Efficiency Prize of the firm, — a pink ribbon.
This the wanner will be entitled to wear whenever and
wherever he sees fit to wear it.
The stranger paused for breath.
199
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Marvellous," we said. "There is no doubt
the stimulus of keen competition "
"Shut up," he said impatiently. "Let me
explain it further. Competition is only part of
it. An item just as big that makes for efficiency
is to take account of the little things. It's the
little things that are never thought of."
Here was another wonder! We realized
that we had never thought of them. "Take an
example," the Stranger continued. "I went
Into a hotel the other day. What did I see?
Bell-boys being summoned upstairs every min-
ute, and flying up in the elevators. Yes, — and
every time they went up they had to come down
again. I went up to the manager. I said, T
can understand that when your guests ring for
the bell-boys they have to go up. But why
should they come down? Why not have them
go up and never come down?' He caught the
Idea at once. That hotel is transformed. I
have a letter from the manager stating that
they find it fifty per cent, cheaper to hire new
bell-boys instead of waiting for the old ones to
come down."
200
Speeding Up Business
"These results," we said, "are certainly mar-
vellous. "You are most assuredly to be con-
gratulated on "
"You talk too much," said the Stranger.
"Don't do it. Learn to listen. If a young man
comes to me for advice in business, — and they
do in hundreds, lots of them, — almost in tears
over their inefficiency, — Fd say, 'Young man,
never talk, listen; answer, but don't speak.'
But even all this is only part of the method.
Another side of it is technique."
"Technique?" we said, pleased but puz-
zled.
"Yes, the proper use of machine devices.
Take the building trade. Tve revolutionized
it. Till now all the bricks even for a high
building were carried up to the mason in hods.
Madness! Think of the waste of it. By my
method instead of carrying the bricks to the
mason we take the mason to the brick, — lower
him on a wire rope, give him a brick, and up
he goes again. As soon as he wants another
brick he calls down, T want a brick,' and down
he comes like lightning."
201
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"This," we said, "Is little short of-
"Cut it out. Even that Is not all. Another
thing bigger than any Is organization. Half
the business in this country Is not organized.
As soon as I sent out my circular. No. 4,
HAVE YOU ORGANIZED YOUR BUSI-
NESS I I got answers In thousands ! Heart-
broken, many of them. They had never
thought of It! Here, for example, Is a letter
written by a plain man, a gardener, just an
ordinary man, a plain man "
"Yes," we said, "quite so."
"Well, here Is what he writes:
Dear Sir:
As soon as I got your circular I read it all through
from end to end, and I saw that all my failure in
the past had come from my not being organized. I
sat and thought a long while and I decided that I
would organize myself. I went right in to the house
and I said to my wife, "Jane, I'm going to organize
myself." She said, "Oh, John!" — and not another
word, but you should have seen the look on her face.
So the next morning I got up early and began to or-
ganize myself. It was hard at first but I stuck to it.
There were times when I felt as if I couldn't do it.
It seemed too hard. But bit by bit I did it and now,
202
Speeding Up Business
thank God, I am organized. I wish all men like me
could know the pleasure I feel in being organized.
"Touching, Isn't It?" said the Stranger.
"But I get lots of letters like that. Here's an-
other, also from a man, a plain man, working
on his own farm. Hear what he says:
Dear Sir:
As soon as I saw your circular on HOW TO
SPEED UP THE EMPLOYEE I felt that it was
a big thing. I don't have any hired help here to
work with me, but only father. He cuts the wood
and does odd chores about the place. So I realized
that the best I could do was to try to speed up
father. I started in to speed him up last Tuesday, and
I wish you could see him. Before this he couldn't
split a cord of wood without cutting a slice off his
boots. Now he does it in half the time.
"But there," the Stranger said, getting Im-
patient even with his own reading, "I needn't
read It all. It Is the same thing all along the
line. I've got the Method introduced into the
Department Stores. Before this every cus-
tomer who came in wasted time trying to find
the counters. Now we Install a patent spring-
203
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
board, with a mechanism like a catapault. As
soon as a customer comes in an attendant puts
him on the board, blindfolds him, and says,
'Where do you want to go?' 'Glove counter.'
'Oh, all right.' He's fired at It through the air.
No time lost. Same with the railways.
They're installing the Method, too. Every en-
gineer who breaks the record from New York
to Buffalo gets a glass of milk. When he gets
a hundred glasses he can exchange them for a
glass of beer. So with the doctors. On the
new method. Instead of giving a patient one
pill a day for fourteen days they give him four-
teen pills in one day. Doctors, lawyers, every-
body,— in time, sir," said the Stranger, in tones
of rising excitement, "you'll see even the plumb-
ers "
But just at this moment the door opened.
A sturdy-looking man in blue entered. The
Stranger's voice was hushed at once. The ex-
citement died out of his face. His manner all
of a sudden was meekness itself.
"I was just coming," he said.
"That's right, sir," said the man; "better
204
Speeding Up Biisiness
come along and not take up the gentleman's
time."
"Good-bye, then," said the Stranger, with
meek affability, and he went out.
The man in blue lingered behind for a mo-
ment.
"A sad case, sir," he said, and he tapped his
forehead.
"You mean " I asked.
"Exactly. Cracked, sir. Quite cracked; but
harmless. I'm engaged to look after him, but
he gave me the slip downstairs."
"He is under delusions?" we inquired.
"Yes, sir. He's got it into his head that
business in this country has all gone to pieces,
— thinks it must be reorganized. He writes
letters about it all day and sends them to the
papers with imaginary names. You may have
seen some of them. Good day, sir.''
We looked at our watch. We had lost just
half an hour over the new efficiency. We
turned back with a sigh to our old-fashioned
task.
205
WHO IS ALSO WHO
A NEW POCKET
DICTIONARY
XL- Who Is Also Who. A Com-
panion Volume to Who's Who
Note by the Editor: / do not quarrel
with the contents of such valuable compen-
diums as ''Who's Who," ''Men and Women
of the Time," etc., etc. But they leave out the
really Representative People. The names that
they include are so well known as to need no
commentary, while those that they exclude are
the very people one most wishes to read about.
My new hook is not arranged alphabetically,
that order having given great offence in certain
social circles.
SMITH, J. Everyman: born Kenoka
Springs; educ. Kenoka Springs; pres-
ent residence, The Springs, Kenoka;
address, Kenoka Springs Post-Office;
after leaving school threw himself (Oct. 1881)
into college study; thrown out of it (April
209
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
1882) ; decided to follow the law; followed it
(1882); was left behind (1883); decided
(1884) to abandon it; abandoned it; resolved
(1885) to turn his energies to finance; turned
them (1886); kept them turned (1887)"; un-
turned them (1888); was offered position
(1889) as sole custodian of Mechanics' Insti-
tute, Kenoka Springs; decided (same date) to
accept it; accepted it; is there now; will be till
he dies.
Flintlock, J. Percussion: aged 87; war
veteran and pensioner; born, blank; educated,
blank; at outbreak of Civil War sprang to
arms; both sides; sprang Union first; entered
beef contract department of army of U. S. ;
fought at Chicago, Omaha, and leading (beef)
centres of operation during the thickest of the
(beef) conflict; was under Hancock, Burnside,
Meade, and Grant; fought with all of them;
mentioned (very strongly) by all of them;
entered Confederate Service (1864) ; attached
(very much) to rum department of quarter-
master's staff; mentioned in this connection
(very warmly) in despatches of General Lee;
210
Who Is Also Who
mustered out, away out, of army; lost from
sight, 1 865-1 895; placed on pension list with
rank of general, 1895; has stayed on, 1895-
19 1 5; obtained (on 6th Avenue) war medals
and service clasps; publications — "My Cam-
paigns under Grant," "Battles I have Saved,"
"Feeding an Army," "Stuffing the Public," etc.,
etc.; recreations, telling war stories; favorite
amusement, showing war medals.
Crook, W. Underhand: born, dash; par-
ents, double dash; educated at technical school;
on graduation turned his attention to the prob-
lem of mechanical timelocks and patent safes;
entered Sing-Sing, 1890; resident there, 1890-
1893; Auburn, 1894, three months; various
state institutions, 1 895-1 898; worked at pro-
fession, 1 898-1 899; Sing-Sing, 1900; profes-
sional work, 1 901; Sing-Sing, 1902; profes-
sion, 1903, Sing-Sing; profession, Sing-Sing,
etc., etc.; life appointment, 1908; general fa-
vorite, musical, has never killed anybody.
Gloomie, Dreary O'Leary : Scotch dialect
comedian and humorist; well known in Scot-
211
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
land; has standing offer from Duke of Suther-
land to put foot on estate.
Muck, O. Absolute: novelist; of low Ger-
man extraction; born Rotterdam; educated
Muckendorf; escaped to America; long unrec-
ognized; leaped into prominence by writing
"The Social Gas-Pipe," a powerful indictment
of modern society, written In revenge for not
being invited to dinner; other works — "The
Sewerage of the Sea-Side," an arraignment of
Newport society, reflecting on some of his best
friends; "Vice and Super-Vice," a telling de-
nunciation of the New York police, written af-
ter they had arrested him; "White Ravens,"
an Indictment of the clergy; "Black Crooks," an
indictment of the publishers, etc., etc.; has
arraigned and indicted nearly everybody.
Whyner, Egbert Ethelwind: poet, at
age of sixteen wrote a quatrain, "The Banquet
of Nebuchadnezzar," and at once left school;
followed it up in less than two years by a poem
in six lines "America"; rested a year and then
produced "Babylon, A Vision of Civilization,"
three lines; has written also "Herod, a Trag-
212
Who Is Also Who
edy," four lines; "Revolt of Woman," two
lines, and "The Day of Judgement," one line.
Recreation, writing poetry.
Adult, Hon. Underdone: address The
Shrubbery, Hopton-under-Hyde, Rotherham-
near-Pottersby, Potts, Hants, Hops, England
(or words to that effect) ; organizer of the
Boys' League of Pathfinders, Chief Commis-
sioner of the Infant Crusaders, Grand Master
of the Young Imbeciles; Major-General of the
Girl Rangers, Chief of Staff of the Matron
Mountain Climbers, etc.
Zfwinski, X. Z. : Polish pianist; plays all
night; address 4,570 West 457 Street, West-
side, Chicago West.
213
PASSIONATE
PARAGRAPHS
XII.— Passionate Paragraphs
{An extract from a recent {very recent)
novel, illustrating the new beauties of lan-
guage and ideas that are being rapidly devel-
oped by the twentieth century press.)
HIS voice as he turned towards her was
taut as a tie-line.
"You don't love me!" he
hoarsed, thick with agony. She
had angled into a seat and sat sensing-rather-
than-seeing him.
For a time she silenced. Then presently as
he still stood and enveloped her, —
"Don't!" she thinned, her voice fining to a
thread.
"Answer me," he gloomed, still gazing into-
and-through her.
She half-heard half-didn't-hear him.
Night was falling about them as they sat thus
217
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
beside the river. A molten afterglow of Ir-
idescent saffron shot with Incandescent car-
mine lit up the waters of the Hudson till they
glowed like electrified uranium.
For a while they both sat silent, — looming.
"It had to be," she glumped.
"Why, why?" he barked. "Why should It
have had to have been or (more hopefully)
even be to be? Surely you don't mean because
of money f*
She shuddered into herself.
The thing seemed to sting her (It hadn't
really).
"Money!" she almost-but-not-qulte-moaned.
"You might have spared me that!"
He sank down and grassed.
And after they had sat thus for another half-
hour grassing and growling and angling and
sensing one another, it turned out that all that
he was trying to say was to ask If she would
marry him.
And of course she said yes.
218
WEEJEE THE PET DOG
Xlll.— Weejee the Pet Dog. An
Idyll of the Summer
WE were sitting on the verandah of
the Sopley's summer cottage.
"How lovely it is here," I said
to my host and hostess, "and
how still."
It was at this moment that Weejee, the pet
dog, took a sharp nip at the end of my tennis
trousers.
"Weejee ! !" exclaimed his mistress with great
emphasis, ''bad dog! how dare you, sir I bad
dog!"
"I hope he hasn't hurt you," said my host.
"Oh, it's nothing," I answered cheerfully.
"He hardly scratched me."
"You know I don't think he means anything
by it," said Mrs. Sopley.
"Oh, I'm sure he doesn't," I answered.
221
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Weejee was coming nearer to me again as I
spoke.
"PFeejee/f" cried my hostess, "naughty dog,
bad!"
"Funny thing about that dog," said Sopley,
"the way he knows people. It's a sort of in-
stinct. He knew right away that you were a
stranger, — now, yesterday, when the butcher
came, there was a new driver on the cart and
Weejee knew it right away, — grabbed the man
by the leg at once, — wouldn't let go. I called out
to the man that it was all right or he might have
done Weejee some harm."
At this moment Weejee took the second nip
at my other trouser leg. There was a short
gur-r-r and a slight mix-up.
"Weejee! Weejee!" called Mrs. Sopley.
"How dare you, sir! You're just a bad dog! !
Go and lie down, sir. I'm so sorry. I think,
you know, it's your white trousers. For some
reason Weejee simply hates white trousers. I
do hope he hasn't torn them."
"Oh, no," I said; "it's nothing only a slight
tear."
222
Weejee the Pet Dog
"Here, Weege, Weege," said Sopley, anx-
ious to make a diversion and picking up a little
chip of wood, — "chase it, fetch it out!" and
he made the motions of throwing it into the
lake.
"Don't throw it too far, Charles," said his
wife. "He doesn't swim awfully well," she
continued, turning to me, "and I'm always
afraid he might get out of his depth. Last
week he was ever so nearly drowned. Mr.
Van Toy was in swimming, and he had on a
dark blue suit (dark blue seems simply to in-
furiate Weejee) and Weejee just dashed in
after him. He don't mean anything, you know,
it was only the suit made him angry, — he really
likes Mr. Van Toy, — but just for a minute we
were quite alarmed. If Mr. Van Toy hadn't
carried Weejee in I think he might have been
drowned.
"By jove!" I said in a tone to indicate how
appalled I was.
"Let me throw the stick, Charles," continued
Mrs. Sopley. "Now, Weejee, look Weejee —
here, good dog — look! look now (sometimes
223
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Weejee simply won't do what one wants) , here,
Weejee; now, good dog!"
Weejee had his tall sideways between his
legs and was moving towards me again.
"Hold on," said Sopley In a stern tone, "let
me throw him In."
"Do be careful, Charles," said his wife.
Sopley picked Weejee up by the collar and
carried him to the edge of the water — It was
about six inches deep, — and threw him In, —
with much the same force as, let us say, a pen
Is thrown Into ink or a brush dipped Into a pot
of varnish.
"That's enough; that's quite enough,
Charles," exclaimed Mrs. Sopley. "I thi'nk
he'd better not swim. The water in the even-
ing is always a little cold. Good dog, good
doggie, good Weejee!"
Meantime "good Weejee" had come out of
the water and was moving again towards me.
"He goes straight to you," said my hostess.
"I think he must have taken a fancy to
you."
He had.
224
Weejee the Pet Dog
To prove it, Weejee gave himself a rotary
whirl like a twirled mop.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Sopley. "I
am. He's wetted you. Weejee, lie down,
down, sir, good dog, bad dog, lie down I'*
"It's all right," I said. "I've another white
suit in my valise."
"But you must be wet through," said Mrs.
Sopley. "Perhaps we'd better go in. It's get-
ting late, anyway, isn't it?" And then she
added to her husband, "I don't think Weejee
ought to sit out here now that he's wet."
So we went in.
"I think you'll find everything you need,"
said Sopley, as he showed me to my room,
"and, by the way, don't mind if Weejee comes
into your room at night. We like to let him
run all over the house and he often sleeps on
this bed."
"All right," I said cheerfully, "I'll look after
him."
That night Weejee came.
And when it was far on in the dead of
night — so that even the lake and the trees were
225
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
hushed in sleep, I took Weejee out and — but
there Is no need to give the details of it.
And the Sopleys are still wondering where
Weejee has gone to, and waiting for him to
come back, because he is so clever at finding
his way.
But from where Weejee is, no one finds his
way back.
226
SIDELIGHTS ON THE
SUPERMEN
XIV. — Sidelights on the Supermen.
An Interview with General
Bernhardi,
HE came into my room in that modest,
Prussian way that he has, clicking
his heels together, his head very
erect, his neck tightly gripped in
his forty-two centimeter collar. He had on a
Pickelhaube, or Prussian helmet, which he re-
moved with a sweeping gesture and laid on the
sofa.
So I knew at once that it was General Bern-
hardi.
In spite of his age he looked — I am bound
to admit It — a fine figure of a man. There was
a splendid fullness about his chest and shoul-
ders, and a suggestion of rugged power all
over him. I had not heard him on the stairs.
He seemed to appear suddenly beside me.
"How did you get past the janitor?" I asked.
229
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
For It was late at night, and my room at col-
lege is three flights up the stairs.
"The janitor," he answered carelessly, "I
killed him."
I gave a gasp.
"His resistance," the general went on, "was
very slight. Apparently in this country your
janitors are unarmed."
"You killed him?" I asked.
"We Prussians," said Bernhardi, "when we
wish an immediate access anywhere, always kill
the janitor. It is quicker: and it makes for
efficiency. It Impresses them with a sense of
our Furchtbarkeit. You have no word for that
In English, I beheve?"
"Not outside of a livery stable," I answered.
There was a pause. I was thinking of the
janitor. It seemed In a sort of way — I admit
that I have a sentimental streak In me — a de-
plorable thing.
"Sit down," I said presently.
"Thank you," answered the General, but
remained standing.
"All right," I said, "do It."
230
Sidelights on the Supermen
"Thank you," he repeated, without moving.
"I forgot," I said. "Perhaps you can't sit
down."
"Not very well," he answered; "In fact, we
Prussian officers" — here he drew himself up
higher still — "never sit down. Our uniforms
do not permit of It. This inspires us with a
kind of Rastlosigkeit." Here his eyes glit-
tered.
"It must," I said.
"In fact, with an Unslttlichkeit — an Unver-
schamtheit — with an Eln-fiir-alle-mal-un-dur-
chaus — "
"Exactly," I said, for I saw that he was get-
ting excited, "but pray tell me. General, to what
do I owe the honour of this visit?"
The General's manner changed at once.
"Highly learned, and hlgh-well-born-profes-
sor," he said, "I come to you as to a fellow au-
thor, known and honoured not merely In Eng-
land, for that Is nothing, but In Germany her-
self, and In Turkey, the very home of Cul-
ture."
I knew that It was mere flattery. I knew
231
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
that in this same way Lord Haldane had been
so captivated as to come out of the Emperor's
presence unable to say anything but *'Sittlich-
keit'* for weeks; that good old John Bums had
been betrayed by a single dinner at Potsdam,
and that the Sultan of Turkey had been told
that his Answers to Ultimatums were the wit-
tiest things written since Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason. Yet I was pleased in spite of
myself.
*'WhatI" I exclaimed, "they know my works
of humour In Germany?"
"Do they know them?" said the General.
*'Ach! Himmel! How they laugh. That
work of yours (I think I see It on the shelf
behind you), The 'Elements of Political Sci-
ence, how the Kaiser has laughed over It 1 And
the Crown Prince I It nearly killed him I"
"I will send him the new edition," I said.
"But tell me. General, what Is It that you want
of me?"
"It is about my own book," he answered.
"You have read it?"
I pointed to a copy of Germany and the Next
232
Sidelights on the Supermen
War, in its glaring yellow cover — the very hue
of Furchtbarkeit — lying on the table,
"You have read it? You have really read
it?" asked the General with great animation.
"No," I said, "I won't go so far as to say
thato But I have tried to read it. And I talk
about it as if I had read it."
The General's face fell.
"You are as the others," he said. "They
buy the book, they lay it on the table, they talk
of it at dinner, — they say 'Bernhardi has
prophesied this, Bernhardi foresaw that,' but
read it, — nevermore."
"Still," I said, "you get the royalties."
"They are cut off. The perfidious British
Government will not allow the treacherous pub-
lisher to pay them. But that is not my com-
plaint."
"What is the matter, then?" I asked.
"My book is misunderstood. You English
readers have failed to grasp its intention. It
is not meant as a book of strategy. It is what
you call a work of humour. The book is to
laugh. It is one big joke."
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"You don't say so!" I said In astonish-
ment.
"Assuredly," answered the General. "Here"
— and with this he laid hold of the copy of the
book before me and began rapidly turning over
the leaves — "let me set It out asunder for you,
the humour of It. Listen, though, to this, where
I speak of Germany's historical mission on page
73, — 'No nation on the face of the globe is so
able to grasp and appropriate all the elements
of culture as Germany Is?' What do you say
to that? Is It not a joke? Ach, Himmel, how
our officers have laughed over that In Belgium !
With their booted feet on the mantelpiece as
they read and with bottles of appropriated
champagne beside them as they laugh."
"You are right, General," I said, "you will
forgive my not laughing out loud, but you are
a great humorist."
"Am I not? And listen further still, how I
deal with the theme of the German character,
— 'Moral obligations such as no nation had
ever yet made the standard of conduct, are laid
down by the German philosophers.' "
234
Sidelights on the Supermen
"Good," I said, "gloriously funny; read me
some more."
"This, then, you will like,- — here I deal with
the permissible rules of war. It is on page
236 that I am reading it. I wrote this chiefly
to make laugh our naval men and our Zeppehn
crews, — 'A surprise attack, in order to be justi-
fied, must be made only on the armed forces of
the state and not on its peaceful inhabitants.
Otherwise the attack becomes a treacherous
crime.* Eh, what?"
Here the General broke into roars of
laughter.
"Wonderful," I said. "Your book ought
to sell well in Scarborough and in Yarmouth.
Read some more."
"I should like to read you what I say about
neutrality, and how England is certain to vio-
late our strategical right by an attack on Bel-
gium and about the sharp measures that ought
to be taken against neutral ships laden with
contraband, — the passages are in Chapters VII
and VIII, but for the moment I fail to lay the
thumb on them."
235
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"Give me the book, General," I said. "Now
that I understand what you meant by it, I think
I can show you also some very funny passages
In it. These things, for example, that you say
about Canada and the colonies, — ^yes, here it
is, page 148, — 'In the event of war the loosely-
joined British Empire will break into pieces,
and the colonies will consult their own inter-
ests,'— excellently funny, — and this again, —
'Canada will not permanently retain any trace
of the English spirit,' — and this too, — 'the Col-
onies can be completely ignored so far as the
European theatre of war is concerned,' — and
here again, — 'Egypt and South Africa will at
once revolt and break away from the empire,'
— really, General, your ideas of the British
Colonies are superbly funny. Mark Twain
wasn't a circumstance on you."
"Not at all," said Bernhardi, and his voice
reverted to his habitual Prussian severity,
"these are not jokes. They are facts. It is
only through the folly of the Canadians in not
reading my book that they are not more widely
236
Sidelights on the Supermen
known. Even as it is they are exactly the views
of your great leader Heinrich Bauratze •''
"Who?" I said.
"Heinrich Bauratze, your great Canadian
leader "
"Leader of what?"
"That I do not know," said Bemhardi. "Our
intelligence office has not yet heard what he
leads. But as soon as he leads anything we
shall know it. Meantime we can see from his
speeches that he has read my book. Ach! if
only your other leaders in Canada, — Sir Rob-
ert Laurier, Sir Osier Sifton, Sir Williams Bor-
den,— ^you smile, you do not realize that in
Germany we have exact information of every-
thing: all that happens, we know it."
Meantime I had been looking over the leaves
of the book.
"Here at least," I said, "is some splendidly
humorous stuff, — this about the navy. 'The
completion of the Kiel Canal,' you write in
Chapter XII, 'is of great importance as it will
enable our largest battleships to appear unex-
237
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
pectedly in the Baltic and in the North Sea!'
Appear unexpectedly! If they only would!
How exquisitely absurd "
"Sir!" said the General. "That is not to
laugh. You err yourself. That is Furcht-
barkeit. I did not say the book is all hu-
mour. That would be false art. Part of it is
humour and part is Furchbarkeit. That pas-
sage is specially designed to frighten Admiral
Jellicoe. And he won't read it! Potztau-
sand, he won't read it!" — repeated the general,
his eyes flashing and his clenched fist striking
In the air — "What sort of combatants are these
of the British Navy who refuse to read our
war-books? The Kaiser's Heligoland speech!
They never read a word of it. The Furcht-
barkeit-Proklamation of August, — they never
looked at it. The Reichstags-Rede with the
printed picture of the Kaiser shaking hands
with everybody, — they used it to wrap up
sandwiches ! What are they, then, Jellicoe and
his men? They sit there in their ships and
they read nothing! How can we get at them
if they refuse to read? How can we frighten
238
Sidelights on the Supermen
them away if they haven't culture enough to
get frightened. Beim Himmel," shouted the
General in great excitement
But what more he said can never be known.
For at this second a sudden catastrophe hap-
pened.
In his frenzy of excitement the General
struck with his fist at the table, missed it, lost
his balance and fell over sideways right on
the point of his Pickelhaube which he had laid
on the sofa. There was a sudden sound as of
the ripping of cloth and the bursting of pneu-
matic cushions and to my amazement the Gen-
eral collapsed on the sofa, his uniform sud-
denly punctured in a dozen places.
"Schnapps," he cried, "fetch brandy."
"Great Heavens! General," I said, "what
has happened?"
"My uniform!" he moaned, "it has burst!
Give me Schnapps!"
He seemed to shrink visibly in size. His
magnificent chest was gone. He was shrivel-
ling into a tattered heap. He appeared as he
lay there, a very allegory and illustration of
239
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Prussian Furchtbarkelt with the wind going
out of It.
"Fetch Schnapps," — he moaned.
"There are no Schnapps here," I said, "this
is McGIll University."
"Then call the janitor," he said.
"You killed him," I said.
"I didn't. I was lying. I gave him a look
that should have killed him, but I don't think
it did. Rouse yourself from your chair, and
call him "
"I will," I said, and started up from my
seat.
But as I did so, the form of General Bern-
hardl, which I could have sworn had been ly-
ing in a tattered heap on the sofa on the other
side of the room, seemed suddenly to vanish
from my eyes.
There was nothing before me but the empty
room with the fire burned low in the grate, and
in front of me an open copy of Bernhardl's
book.
I must, — like many another reader, — have
fallen asleep over it.
240
THE SURVIVAL OF THE
FITTEST
XV. — The Survival of the Fittest
A BELL tinkled over the door of the
little drug store as I entered it;
which seemed strange in a lighted
street of a great city.
But the little store itself, dim even in the
centre and dark in the corners was gloomy
enough for a country crossroads.
"I have to have the bell," said the man be-
hind the counter, reading my thought, "I'm
alone here just now."
"A toothbrush?" he said in answer to my
question. "Yes, I guess I've got some some-
where round here." He was stooping under
and behind his counter and his voice came up
from below. "I've got some somewhere "
And then as if talking to himself he murmured
from behind a pile of cardboard boxes, "I saw
some Tuesday."
Had I gone across the street to the brilliant
243
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
premises of the Cut Rate Pharmaceutical where
they burn electric light by the meterfull I
should no sooner have said "tooth brush," than
one of the ten clerks in white hospital jackets
would have poured a glittering assortment over
the counter — prophylactic, lactic and every
other sort.
But I had turned in, I don't know why, to
the little store across the way.
"Here, I guess these must be tooth brushes,"
he said, reappearing at the level of the counter
with a flat box in his hand. They must have
been presumably, or have once been, — at some
time long ago.
"They're tooth brushes all right," he said,
and started looking over them with an owner's
interest.
"What is the price of them?" I asked.
"Well," the man said musingly, "I don't
— jest — ^know. I guess it's written on them
likely," and he began to look at the handles.
Over at the Pharmaceutical across the way
the words "what price?" would have precipi-
tated a ready avalanche of figures.
244
The Survival of the Fittest
"This one seems to be seventy-five cents," he
said and handed me one.
"Is it a good tooth brush?" I asked.
"It ought to be," he said, "you'd think, at
that price."
He had no shop talk, no patter whatever.
Then he looked at the brush again, more
closely.
"I don't believe It is seventy-five," he mut-
tered, "I think it must be fifteen, don't
you?"
I took It from his hand and looked and said,
— for it Is well to take an occasional step to-
wards the Kingdom of Heaven, — that I was
certain it was seventy-five.
"Well," said the man, "perhaps It Is, my
sight Is not so good now. I've had too much
to do here and the work's been using me up
some."
I noticed now as he said this how frail he
looked as he bent over his counter wrapping up
the tooth brush.
"I've no sealing wax," he said, "or not
handy."
245
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"That doesn't matter," I answered, "just
put it in the paper."
Over the way of course the tooth brush
would have been done up almost Instantane-
ously, In white enamel paper, sealed at the end
and stamped with a label, as fast as the money
paid for it went rattling along an automatic
carrier to a cashier.
"You've been very busy, eh?" I asked.
"Well, not so much with customers," he said,
"but with fixing up the place," — here he glanced
about him. Heaven only knows what he had
fixed. There were no visible signs of it.
"You see I've only been in here a couple of
months. It was a pretty tough looking place
when I came to it. But I've been getting things
fixed. First thing I did I put those two carboys
in the window with the lights behind them.
They show up fine, don't they?"
"Fine!" I repeated; so fine Indeed that the
dim yellow light in them reached three or four
feet from the jar. But for the streaming light
from the great store across the street, the win-
246
The Survival of the Fittest
dows of the little shop would have been in-
visible.
"It's a good location here," he said. Any
one could have told him that it was the worst
location within two miles.
"I'll get it going presently," he went on.
**0f course it's uphill just at first. Being such
a good location the rent is high. The first two
weeks I was here I was losing five dollars a
day. But I got those lights in the window and
got the stock overhauled a little to make it at-
tractive and last month I reckon I was only
losing three dollars a day."
"That's better," I said.
"Oh, yes," he went on, and there was a clear
glint of purpose in his eye that contrasted with
his sunken cheeks. "I'll get it going. This last
two weeks I'm not losing more than say two
and a half a day or something like Lhat? The
custom is bound to come. You get a place
fixed up and made attractive like this and peo-
ple are sure to come sooner or later."
What it was that was fixed up, and wherein
lay the attractiveness I do not know. It could
247
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
not be seen with the outward eye. Perhaps
after two months' work of piling dusty boxes
now this way, now that, and putting Httle can-
dles behind the yellow carboys to try the effect,
some inward vision came that lighted the place
up with an attractiveness wanting even in the
glass and marble glitter of the Pharmacy across
the way.
"Yes, sir," continued the man, "I mean to
stay with It. PU get things into shape here,
fix it up a little more and soon Pll have It," —
here his face radiated with a vision of hope —
"so that I won't lose a single cent."
I looked at him in surprise. So humble an
ambition It had never been my lot to encounter.
"All that bothers me," he went on, "is my
health. It's a nice business the drug business :
I like It, but it takes It out of you. You've got
to be alert and keen all the time; thinking out
plans to please the custom when it comes.
Often I don't sleep well nights for the rush
of It."
I looked about the little shop, as gloomy and
sleepful as the mausoleum of an eastern king,
248
The Survival of the Fittest
and wondered by what alchemy of the mind the
little druggist found It a very vortex of ac-
tivity.
"But I can fix my health," he returned — "I
may have to get some one in here and go away
for a spell. Perhaps I'll do it. The doctor
was saying he thought I might take a spell off
and think out a few more wrinkles while I'm
away."
At the word "doctor" I looked at him more
warmly, and I saw then what was plain enough
to see but for the dim light of the little place,
— the thin flush on the cheek, the hopeful
mind, the contrast of the will to live and the
need to die, God's little irony on man, it was
all there plain enough to read. The "spell"
for which the little druggist was going is that
which is written in letters of sorrow over the
sunlit desolation of Arizona and the mountains
of Colorado.
• ••••••
A month went by before I passed that way
again. I looked across at the little store and
249
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
I read the story in its drawn blinds and the
padlock on its door.
The little druggist had gone away for a
spell. And they told me, on enquiry, that his
journey had been no further than to the ceme-
tery behind the town where he lies now, mus-
ing, if he still can, on the law of the survival of
the fittest in this well-adjusted world.
And they say that the shock of the addition
of his whole business to the great Pharmacy
across the way scarcely disturbed a soda siphon.
250
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER
/
XVI,— The First Newspaper, A
Sort of Allegory
HOW likes it you, Master Brenton?"
said the brawny journeyman,
spreading out the news sheet on a
smooth oaken table where it lay
under the light of a leaded window.
"A marvellous fair sheet," murmured Bren-
ton Caxton, seventh of the name, "let me but
adjust my glasses and peruse it further lest
haply there be still aught in it that smacks of
error."
"It needs not," said the journeyman, " 'tis
the fourth time already from the press."
"Nay, nay," answered Master Brenton
softly, as he adjusted his great horn-rimmed
spectacles and bent his head over the broad
damp news sheet before him. "Let us grudge
no care in this. The venture is a new one and,
meseems, a very parlous thing withal. 'Tis a
253
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
venture that may easily fall and carry down our
fortunes with it, but at least let it not be said
that it failed for want of brains in the doing."
"Fail quotha!" said a third man, who had
not yet spoken, old, tall and sour of visage and
wearing a printer's leather apron. He had
moved over from the further side of the room
where a little group of apprentices stood be-
side the wooden presses that occupied the cor-
ner, and he was looking over the shoulder of
Master Brenton Caxton.
"How can it do aught else? 'Tis a mad
folly. Mark you. Master Brenton and Master
Nick, I have said it from the first and let the
blame be none of mine. 'Tis a mad thing you
do here. See then," he went on, turning and
waving his hand, "this vast room, these great
presses, yonder benches and tools, all new, yon-
der vats of ink straight out of Flanders, how
think you you can recover the cost of all this
out of yonder poor sheets? Five and forty
years have I followed this mystery of printing,
ever since thy grandfather's day. Master Bren-
ton, and never have I seen the like. What
254
The First Newspaper
needed this great chamber when your grand-
father and father were content with but a gar-
ret place, and yonder presses that can turn off
four score copies in the compass of a single
hour, — 'Tis mad folly, I say."
The moment was an interesting one. The
speakers were In a great room with a tall ceil-
ing traversed by blackened beams. From the
street below there came dimly through the
closed casements the sound of rumbling traffic
and the street cries of the London of the sev-
enteenth century. Two vast presses of such
colossal size that their 'wooden levers would
tax the strength of the stoutest apprentice, were
ranged against the further wall. About the
room, spread out on oaken chairs and wooden
benches, were flat boxes filled with leaden type,
freshly molten, and a great pile of paper, larger
than a man could lift, stood in a corner.
The first English newspaper in history was
going to press. Those who in later ages, —
editors, printers, and workers — have participa-
ted in the same scene, can form some Idea of
the hopes and fears, the doubts and the dlfficul-
255
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
ties, with which the first newspaper was ush-
ered into the world.
Master Brenton Caxton turned upon the last
speaker the undisturbed look of the eye that
sees far across the present into the years to
come.
"Nay, Edward," he said, "you have laboured
over much in the past and see not into the fu-
ture. You think this chamber too great for
our purpose? I tell you the time will come
when not this room alone but three or four
such will be needed for our task. Already I
have it in my mind that I will divide even this
room into portions, with walls shrewdly placed
through its length and breadth, so that each
that worketh shall sit as it were in his own
chamber and there shall stand one at the door
and whosoever cometh, to whatever part of
our task his business appertains, he shall forth-
with be brought to the room of him that hath
charge of it. Cometh he with a madrigal or
other light poesy that he would set out on the
press, he shall find one that has charge of such
matters and can discern their true value. Or,
256
The First Newspaper
Cometh he with news of aught that happens in
the realm, so shall he be brought instant to the
room of him that recordeth such events. Or, if
so be, he would write a discourse on what seem-
eth him some wise conceit touching the public
concerns, he shall find to his hand a convenient
desk with ink and quills and all that he needeth
to set it straightway on paper; thus shall there
be a great abundance of written matter to our
hand so that not many days shall elapse after
one of our news sheets goes abroad before
there be matter enough to fill another."
"Days!" said the aged printer, "think you
you can fill one of these news sheets in a few
days! Where indeed if you search the whole
realm will you find talk enough in a single week
to fill out this great sheet half an ell wide !"
"Ay, days indeed!" broke in Master Nicho-
las, the younger journeyman. "Master Bren-
ton speaks truth, or less than truth. For not
days indeed, but in the compass of a single day,
I warrant you, shall we find the matter withal."
Master Nicholas spoke with the same enthusi-
asm as his chief, but with less of the dreamer
257
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
in his voice and eye, and with more swift eager-
ness of the practical man.
"Fill it, indeed," he went on. "Why, Gad
Zooks! man! who knoweth what happenings
there are and what not till one essays the gath-
ering of them! And should it chance that
there is nothing of greater import, no boar
hunt of his Majesty to record, nor the news of
some great entertainment by one of the Lords
of the Court, then will we put in lesser matter,
aye whatever comes to hand, the talk of his
Majesty's burgesses in the Parliament or any
such things."
"Hear him!" sneered the printer, "the talk
of his Majesty's burgesses in Westminster, for-
sooth! And what clerk or learned person
would care to read of such? Or think you that
His Majesty's Chamberlain would long bear
that such idle chatter should be bruited abroad.
If you can find no worthier thing for this our
news sheet than the talk of the Burgesses, then
shall it fail indeed. Had it been the speech of
the King's great barons and the bishops 'twere
different. But dost fancy that the great bar-
258
The First Newspaper
ons would allow that their weighty discourses
be reduced to common speech so that even the
vulgar may read it and haply here and there
fathom their very thought itself, — and the bish-
ops, the great prelates, to submit their ideas
to the vulgar hand of a common printer, fram-
ing them into mere sentences ! 'Tis unthinkable
that they would sanction It!"
"Aye," murmured Caxton in his dreaming
voice, "the time shall come, Master Edward,
when they will not only sanction it but seek it."
"Look you," broke in Master Nick, "let us
have done with this talk? Whether there be
enough happenings or not enough," — and here
he spoke with a kindling eye and looked about
him at the little group of apprentices and print-
ers, who had drawn near to listen, "if there be
not enough, then will I make things happen.
What is easier than to tell of happenmgs forth
of the realm of which no man can know, — some
talk of the Grand Turk and the war that he
makes, or some happenings in the New Land
found by Master Columbus. Aye," he went
on, warming to his words and not knowing
259
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
that he embodied in himself the first birth on
earth of the telegraphic editor, — "and why not-
One day we^ write it out on our sheet 'The
Grand Turk maketh disastrous war on the Bul-
gars of the North and hath burnt divers of
their villages.' And that hath no sooner gone
forth than we print another sheet saying, 'It
would seem that the villages be not burnt but
only scorched, nor doth it appear that the Turk
burnt them but that the Bulgars burnt divers
villages of the Turk and are sitting now in his
mosque in the city of Hadrian.' Then shall all
men run to and fro and read the sheet and ques-
tion and ask, 'Is it thus?' And, 'Is it thus?
and by very uncertainty of circumstances, they
shall demand the more curiously to see tlie
news sheet and read it."
"Nay, nay. Master Nick," said Brenton,
firmly, "that will I never allow. Let us make
it to ourselves a maxim that all that shall be
said in this news sheet, or 'news paper,' as my
conceit would fain call it, for be it not made of
paper (here a merry laugh of the apprentices
greeted the quaint fancy of the Master) , shall
260
The First NewspaiJer
be of ascertained verity and fact indisputable.
Should the Grand Turk make war and should
the rumour of it come to these isles, then will
we say 'The Turk maketh war,' and should the
Turk be at peace, then we will say 'The Turk
it doth appear is now at peace.' And should
no news come, then shall we say 'In good sooth
we know not whether the Turk destroyeth the
Bulgars or whether he doth not, for while some
hold that he harasseth them sorely, others have
it that he harasseth them not, whereby we are
sore put to it to know whether there be war or
peace, nor do we desire to vex the patience of
those who read by any further discourse on the
matter, other than to say that we ourselves are
in doubt what be and what be not truth, nor
mil we any further speak of it other than
this.' "
Those about Caxton listened with awe to
this speech. They did not, — they could not
know, — that this was the birth of the Leading
Article, but there was something in the
strangely fascinating way in which their chief
enlarged upon his own ignorance that fore-
261
Moonbeams f?'om the Larger Lunacy
showed to the meanest intelligence the possi-
bilities of the future.
Nicholas shook his head.
" 'TIs a poor plan, Master Brenton," he said,
"the folk wish news, give them the news. The
more thou givest them, the better pleased they
are and thus doth the news sheet move from
hand to hand till it may be said (if I too may
coin a phrase) to increase vastly its 'circula-
tion' "
"In sooth," said Master Brenton, looking at
Nicholas with a quiet expression that was not
exempt from a certain slyness, "there I do hold
thou art in the wrong, even as a matter of craft
or policie. For it seems to me that if our paper
speaketh first this and then that but hath no
fixed certainty of truth, sooner or later will all
its talk seem vain, and no man will heed it. But
if it speak always the truth, then sooner or later
shall all come to believe it and say of any hap-
pening, *It standeth written in the paper, there-
fore it is so.' And here I charge you all that
have any part in this new venture," continued
Master Brenton, looking about the room at the
262
The First Newspaper
listening faces and speaking with great serious-
ness, "let us lay it to our hearts that our maxim
shall be truth and truth alone. Let no
man set his hand to aught that shall go upon
our presses save only that which Is assured
truth. In this way shall our venture ever be
pleasing to the Most High, and I do verily be-
lieve,"— and here Caxton's voice sank lower
as If he were thinking aloud, — "in the long run,
it will be mighty good for our circulation."
The speaker paused. Then turning to the
broad sheet before him, he began to scan Its
columns with his eye. The others stood watch-
ing him as he read.
"What Is this. Master Edward," he queried
presently, "here I see in this first induct, or col-
umn, as one names It, the word King fairly and
truly spelled. Lower down It standeth Kyng,
and yet further In the second Induct Kynge, and
in the last induct where there is talk of His
Majesty's marvelous skill in the French game
of palm or tennis, lo the word stands
Quhynggel How sayeth thou ?"
"Wouldst have it written always In but one
263
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
and the same way?" asked the printer in aston-
ishment.
"Aye, truly," said Caxton.
"With never any choice, or variation to suit
the fancy of him who reads so that he who likes
it written King may see it so, and yet also he
who would prefer it written in a freer style, or
Quhyngge, may also find it so and thus both be
pleased."
"That will I never have!" said Master
Brenton firmly, "dost not remember, friend, the
old tale in the fabula of ^sopus of him who
would please all men. Here will I make an-
other maxim for our newspaper. All men we
cannot please, for in pleasing one belike we run
counter to another. Let us set our hand to
write always without fear. Let us seek favour
with none. Always in our news sheet we will
seek to speak dutifully and with all reverence
of the King his Majesty: let us also speak with
all respect and commendation of His Majesty's
great prelates and nobles, for are they not the
exalted of the land? Also I would have it that
we say nothing harsh against our wealthy mer-
264
The First Newspaper
chants and burgesses, for hath not the Lord
prospered them in their substances. Yea,
friends, let us speak ever well of the King, the
clergy, the nobihty and of all persons of wealth
and substantial holdings. But beyond this" —
here Brenton Coxton's eye flashed, — ;*'let u$
speak with utter fearlessness of all men. So
shall we be, if I may borrow a mighty good
word from Tacitus his Annals, of a complete
independence, hanging on to no man. In fact
our venture shall be an independent news-
paper."
The listeners felt an Instinctive awe at the
words, and again a strange prescience of the
future made itself felt in every mind. Here for
the first time in history was being laid down
that fine, fearless creed that has made the inde-
pendent press what it is.
Meantime Caxton continued to glance his eye
over the news sheet, murmuring his comments
on what he saw, — "Ah! vastly fine. Master
Nicholas, — this of the sailing of His Majesty's
ships for Spain, — and this, too, of the Doge of
Venice, his death, 'tis brave reading and maketh
265
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
a fair discourse. Here also this likes me, 'tis
shrewdly devised," and here he placed his finger
on a particular spot on the news sheet, — "here
in speaking of the strange mishap of my Lord
Arundel, thou useth a great S for strange, and
setteth it in a line all by itself whereby the mind
of him that reads is suddenly awakened,
alarmed as it were by a bell in the night. 'Tis
good. 'Tis well. But mark you, friend Nicho-
las, try it not too often, nor use your great let-
ters too easily. In the case of my Lord Arun-
del, it is seemly, but for a mishap to a lesser
person, let it stand in a more modest fashion."
There was a pause. Then suddenly Caxton
looked up again.
"What manner of tale Is this ! What strange
thing is here! In faith. Master Nicholas,
whence hast thou so marvelous a thing I The
whole world must know of it. Harken ye all
to this I
" 'Let all men that be troubled of aches, spav-
ins, rheums, boils, maladies of the spleen or
humours of the blood, come forthwith to the
sign of the Red Lantern in East Cheap. There
266
Tfie First Newspaper
shall they find one that hath a marvelous rem-
edy for all such ailments, brought with great
dangers and perils of the journey from a far
distant land. This wonderous balm shall
straightway make the sick to be well and the
lame to walk. Rubbed on the eye it restoreth
sight and applied to the ear it reviveth the hear-
ing. 'Tis the sole invention of Doctor Gusta-
vus Friedman, sometime of Gottingen and
brought by him hitherwards out of the sheer
pity of his heart for them that be afflicted, nor
shall any other fee be asked for it save only
such a light and tender charge as shall defray
the cost of Doctor Friedman his coming and
going.' "
Caxton paused and gazed at Master Nicho-
las in wonder. "Whence hadst thou this?"
Master Nicholas smiled.
"I had it of a chapman, or travelling doctor,
who was most urgent that we set it forth
straightway on the press."
"And is It true?" asked Caxton; "thou hast
it of a full surety of knowledge?"
Nicholas laughed lightly.
267
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
"True or false, I know not," he said, "but
the fellow was so curious that we should print
it that he gave me two golden laurels and a
new sovereign on the sole understanding that
we should set it forth in print."
There was deep silence for a moment.
"He payeth to have it printed!" said Cax-
ton, deeply impressed.
"Aye," said Master Nicholas, "he payeth
and will pay more. The fellow hath other
balms equally potent. All of these he would
admonish, or shall I say advert, the public."
"So," said Caxton, thoughtfully, "he wishes
to make, if I may borrow a phrase of Albertus
Magnus, an advertisement of his goods."
"Even so," said Nicholas.
"I see," said the Master, "he payeth us. We
advert the goods. Forthwith all men buy
them. Then hath he more money. He payeth
us again. We advert the goods more and still
he payeth us. That would seem to me, friend
Nick, a mighty good busyness for us."
"So it is," rejoined Nicholas, "and after him
others will come to advert other wares until
268
The First Newspaper
belike a large part of our news sheet, — who
knows? the whole of It, perhaps, shall be made
up in the merry guise of advertisements."
Caxton sat silent In deep thought.
"But Master Caxton" — cried the voice of a
young apprentice, a mere child, as he seemed,
with fair hair and blue eyes filled with the na-
tive candour of unsullied youth, — "is this tale
truel"
"What sayest thou, Warwick?" said the mas-
ter printer, almost sternly.
"Good master, is the tale of the wonderous
balm true?"
"Boy," said Caxton, "Master Nicholas, hath
even said, we know not if it is true."
"But didst thou not charge us," pleaded the
boy, "that all that went under our hand into
the press should be truth and truth alone?"
"I did," said Caxton thoughtfully, "but I
spoke perhaps somewhat in overhaste. I see
that we must here distinguish. Whether this is
true or not we cannot tell. But it is paid for,
and that lifts it, as who should say, out of the
domain of truth. The very fact that it is paid
269
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
for giveth It, as it were, a new form of merit, a
verity altogether its own."
"Ay, ay," said Nicholas, with a twinkle in
his shrewd eyes, "entirely its own."
"Indeed so," said Caxton, "and here let us
make to ourselves another and a final maxim
of guidance. All things that any man will pay
for, these we will print, whether true or not,
for that doth not concern us. But if one Com-
eth here with any strange tale of a remedy or
aught else and wishes us to make advertisement
of it and hath no money to pay for it, then
shall he be cast forth out of this officina, or of-
fice, if I may call it so, neck and crop into the
street. Nay, I will have me one of great
strength ever at the door ready for such cast-
ings."
A murmur of approval went round the
group.
Caxton would have spoken further but at
the moment the sound of a bell was heard
booming in the street without.
" 'Tis the Great Bell," said Caxton, "ringing
out the hour of noon. Quick, all of you to
270
The First Newspaper
your task. Lay me the forms on the press and
speed me the work. We start here a great ad-
venture. Mark well the maxims I have given
you, and God speed our task."
And in another hour or so, the prentice boys
of the master printer were calling in the streets
the sale of the first English newspaper.
271
IN THE GOOD TIME
AFTER THE WAR
XVII,— In the Good Time After
the War*
HOUSE OF COMMONS REPORT
^ I \HE Prime Minister in rising said that
I he thought the time had now cxDme
JL when the House might properly
turn its attention again to domestic
affairs* The foreign world was so tranquil
that there was really nothing of importance
which need be brought to the attention of thq
House. Members, however, would, perhaps,
be glad to learn incidentally that a new and
more comfortable cage had been supplied for
the ex-German Emperor, and that the ex-Crown
Prince was now showing distinct signs of intel-
ligence, and was even able to eat quite quietly
out of his keeper's hand. Members would be
gratified to know that at last the Hohenzollern
family were able to abstain from snapping at
*An extract from a London newspaper of 1916.
275
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
the hand that fed them. But he would now
turn to the subject of Home Rule.
Here the House was seen to yawn notice-
ably, and a general lack of Interest was visible,
especially among the Nationalist and Ulster
members. A number of members were seen to
rise as If about to move to the refreshment-
room. Mr. John Redmond and Sir Edward
Carson were seen walking arm In arm towards
the door.
The Prime Minister. "Will the members
kindly keep their seats? We are about to hold
a discussion on Home Rule. Members will
surely recall that this form of discussion was
one of our favourite exercises only a year or so
ago. I trust that members have not lost inter-
est In the subject." {General laughter among
the members, and cries of "Cut it out!" "What
isitf)
The Prim^e Minister (with some asperity).
"Members are well aware what Home Rule
meant. It was a plan — or rather it was a
scheme — that is to say, it was an act of parha-
ment, or I should say a bill, In fact, Mr.
276
In the Good Time After the War
Speaker, I don't mind confessing that, not hav-
ing my papers with me, I am unable to inform
the House just what Home Rule was. I think,
perhaps, the Ex-Minister of Munitions has a
copy of last year's bill."
Mr. Lloyd George rising, with evident signs
of boredom. "The House will excuse me. I
am tired. I have been out all day aeroplaning
with Mr. Churchill and Mr. Bonar Law, with
a view to inspect the new national training
camp. I had the Home Rule Bill with me
along with the Welsh Disestablishment Bill
and the Land Bill, and I am afraid that I lost
the whole bally lot of them ; dropped them into
the sea or something. I hope the Speaker will
overlook the term 'bally.' It may not be par-
liamentary."
Mr. Speaker {laughing) . "Tut, tut, never
mind a little thing like that. I an; sure that
after all that we have gone through together,
the House is quite agreed that a little thing like
parliamentary procedure doesn't matter."
Mr. Lloyd George {humbly). "Still I am
sorry for the term. I'd like to withdraw It. I
277
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
am afraid I used, — I mean in the old days, —
to be a little bit too harsh in my speech, too
cutting."
Chorus of Tory members. "No, no, never."
Mr. Lloyd George. "It is kind of the mem-
bers on the opposite side of the House —
{cries of 'order' 'order'). I beg the House's
pardon, I had forgotten that under the new
rule all the members sit together as they please.
But I was going to say that, as to this business
of Home Rule, I think the Speaker should ask
Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson what
they think about it. Personally I don't care an
army button about it either way."
Sir Edward Carson {turning to Mr. Red-
mond). "Will you speak first, John?"
Mr. Redmond. "No, no, my dear Edward,
you speak. I much prefer to listen to you.
You've got a way of talking that I could never
hope to imitate. I could listen to you all day."
Sir Edward. "My dear old fellow I Talk
of my oratory! Do you think I shall ever for-
get, or any other Irishman ever forget, that
speech you made in August of 19 14, when you
278
In the Good Time After the War
said that, the man who would lift his hand
against the British Empire must deal first with
the united people of Ireland?"
He clasps his hand. There is a moment of
general emotion which is saved by the
Speaker saying: ''Will all the members kindly
rise and sing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary'f"
The Speaker {after the song). "Sir Ed-
ward, I think you had better say something.
The House expects it."
.Sir Edward Carson. "In that case, Mr.
Speaker, I want to say just this : I don't care
and none of my constituents or supporters care,
whether w^e have a Home Rule Parliament in
Ireland or not. But after what I've seen, and
what I've heard of the Irish Nationalists in
the war; when I think of them In that first
struggle of the Retreat; when I see them as they
lined the trenches in Belgium, defiant of hard-
ship, reckless of danger, heedless of life itself,
so that the flag of the Empire might move but
one yard further against the foe, then, I say
this, that neither I nor any Irishman will con-
sent to any measure of government that shall
279
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
separate or distinguish in any degree the men
ojf Ulster from the men of Tipperary, and the
heart of Belfast from the heart of Dublin."
'{Loud cheers.)
Mr. Redmond {springing forward). "And
I'll say this: Not I, nor any man of Ireland,
Dublin, Belfast, or Connaught will ever set
our hands or names to any bill that shall sepa-
rate Ireland in any degree from the rest of the
Empire. Work out, if you like, a new scheme
of government. If the financial clauses are in-
tricate, get one of your treasury clerks to solve
them. If there's trouble in arranging your ex-
cise on your customs, settle it in any way you
please. But it is too late now to separate Eng-
land and Ireland. We've held the flag of the
Empire in our hand. We mean to hold it in
our grasp forever. We have seen its colours
tinged a brighter red with the best of Ireland's
blood, and that proud stain shall stay forever
as the symbol of the unity of Irish and the
English people."
{Loud cheers ring through the House; sev-
eral members rise in great excitement, all
280
In the Good Time After the War
shouting and speaking together.) There is
heard the voice of Mr, Angus McCluskey,
Member for the Hebrides, calling — "And ye'll
no forget Scotland, me lad, when you talk of
unity ! Do you mind the Forty-Second, and the
London Scottish in the trenches of the Aisne?
Wha carried the flag of the Empire then?
Unity, ma friends, ye'll never break it. It may
involve a wee bit sacrifice for Scotland finan-
cially speaking. I'll no say no to a reveesion
of the monetairy terms, if ye suggest it, — but
for unita — Scotland and the Empire, now and
forever!"
A great number of members have risen in
their seats. Mr. Open Ap Owen Glendower is
calling: "Aye and Wales! never forget Wales."
Mr. Trevelyan Trendinning of Cornwall has
started singing "And shall Trelawney Die?" —
while the deep booming of "Rule Britannia"
from five hundred throats ascends to the very
rafters of the House.
The Speaker laughing and calling for order,
while two of the more elderly clerks are beat-
ing with the mace on the table, — "Gentlemen,
281
3Ioonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
gentlemen, I have a proposal to make. I have
just learned that there is at the Alhambra In
Leicester Square, a real fine moving picture
show of the entrance of the Allies Into Berlin.
Let's all go to It. We can leave a committee of
the three youngest members to stay behind and
draw up a new government for Ireland. Even
they can't go wrong now as to what we want."
Loud Cheers as the House empties, singing
"It was a Long Way to TIpperary, but the way
lay through Berlin."
THE END
282
Arcadian Adventures
With the Idle Rich
BY
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Author of "Nonsena* Novela," "Sunshine Sketches,** eto«
12mo Cloth SI £5 net
"Mr. Leacock is always worth our while. He is a sharp-
sighted, laughing philosopher." — New York Tribune.
"Whoever reads it must laugh, particularly if he reads it aloud."
— Boston Evening Transcript.
"He is able to analyse subjects that loom large in our public
life and to illuminate the weak points in them with flashes of
satire which are the more telling in that they are entirely good-
natured. . . The characters are deliciously conceived. "
— New York Evening Post.
"Crisp conversation and paragraphs jammed with American
sarcasm of the gilt-edged variety. . . Mr. Leacock penetrates the
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gent proletarian who treats himself to these adventures."
— Chicago Evening Post.
"Every one of the sketches is clever, humorous, but never
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— Buffalo Express.
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JOHN LANE COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK
BOOKS BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
BEHIND THE BEYOND
AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
ILLUSTRATED BY A. H. FISH
"In Mr. Stephen Leacock we have a humorist of very marked
individuahty. His new book, ' Behind the Beyond, ' is undeniably
mirth-provoking. Dull must be the soul who does not find some-
thing to laugh at in the five sketches called ' Familiar Incidents '
— visits to the photographer, the dentist, the barber, and so on. "
— Boston Transcript.
"Out of apparently very abundant experience of life both off
and on the stage, Mr. Leacock has presented an uncommonly
clever satire on the modern problem play and some short stories
of familiar happenings that are treated with a delightful sense of
humor. " — Baltimore Sun.
NONSENSE NOVELS
"A knack of story telling, a gift of caricature, and a full sense
of humor are displayed in these ten nonsense novels. "
— Washington Star.
"Even the most loyal admirers of Sherlock Holmes and his
marvelous feats of induction and deduction will hardly grudge
a smile of appreciation to Stephen Leacock. " — New York Sun.
"Mr. Leacock bids fair to rival the immortal Lewis Carroll
in combining the irreconcilable — exact science with perfect humor
— and making the amusement better the instruction. "
— Pall Mall Gazette.
LITERARY LAPSES
"This book deserves a wide reading, for it is spontaneous,
fresh, and unforced." — Chicago Tribune.
"Philosophic humor, amusing and bubbling over with the
froth of a delightful, good-natured cynicism."
— Philadelphia Public Ledger.
"Mr. Stephen Leacock is not only that very rare thing, a
humorist, but that still rarer thing, a humorist in high spirits.
A collection of good things which will entertain any human
being who appreciates the humor of high spirits. The sketch
entitled ' How to be a Doctor ' no really serious medical student
can afford to be without." — Onlooker {London).
SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A
LITTLE TOWN
"Himaor, unspoiled by irony, satire, or even the gentlest
raillery, characterizes this book. And few books are more
suitably entitled, for these sketches do shed inio the cracks
and crannies of the heart glorious simshine, the companion of
pure mirth. " — Chicago Record-Herald.
"Mr. Leacock's fun is always good-natured, and therefore
doubly enjoyable. " — New York Times.
"We caimot recall a more laughable book. " — Pall Mall Gazette.
'By all odds the most beautiful periodical
printed." — New York Tribune.
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1915
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