As the trim figure in a neatly fitted sack suit arose to greet me with an odd mixture in his manner of ancient courtesy and the modern “glad hand,” my face must have betrayed my surprise at his unexpected appearance for he exclaimed: “Astonished, eh? Most earth folk are. Seem to expect to see the shade of Don Quixote de la Mancha togged out in his old cast-iron clothes and helmet with a sword for a walking stick. They fail to make allowance for the fact that we shades progress, just like you people down below. We try to be as up-to-date as possible. I suppose you thought, too, you were going to interview a harmless lunatic and listen amusedly to his rambling conversation and perhaps have the fun of joshing him a bit. Well, I’m happy to say I’ve got over my delusions, or illusions or whatever they were. And shall I tell you what cured me? Why, watching the antics and performances of some of you down on earth. My motto is thoroughness. I want to do every job up in the most complete style. I will either be the champion, the record-holder, the biggest in the bunch or else nothing at all. I may once have been in a fair way to becoming the world’s most inspired idiot and champion all-round, catch-as-catch-can professional ‘regulator,’ but I’m now a has-been, a second-rater. There’s too much competition. I’m ashamed of myself. I throw up my hands and quit. Do you understand me?”
“Well, not entirely, Don Quixote. What modern competitors or successors have you got?”
“Do you have to ask that?” he replied. “Why, I can get materialized and take a run below and in five minutes see more fellows crazier than I ever was than I can count. Or I can just stay up here and read the newspapers. I was reading only this morning of a bill that’s going to be introduced in the Maine Legislature to prohibit women from wearing high-heeled shoes. They used to call me a fool reformer, but I never was quite so idiotic as to try to reform women’s dress in the slightest particular. Trying to dictate feminine fashions would be just about as sensible as attempting to sweep back the ocean. The next thing they know somebody will be trying to tack an amendment on to the Constitution forbidding women to wear furs in summer and low shoes and open-work waists in winter. I see one writer calls the anti-high-heels measure ‘Quixotic.’ That shows all he knows about me. I was accused of being slightly off at one time, but nobody ever charged me with utter imbecility. And I see that some other professional set-’em-all-rights are going to put the ban on tobacco—if they can. They’ll have some hard sledding. But I was glad to observe that a judge had the sense to turn down an application for a charter from an anti-tobacco association. The society’s announced object was to make the growing, manufacture, sale and use of tobacco illegal. I held my breath until I found what the judge did.
“And what did the judge do? Opening a fresh box of Havanas, he carefully selected a long, slender, chocolate-colored panatela, with a red and gold waistband, cut off the end with his gold-mounted clipper, fished a match out of his vest pocket, struck it on the ink-stand, applied the blaze to the end of the cigar, blew a fragrant cloud of incense to the ceiling in worship of the spirit of justice and perfect impartiality, gave a great big sigh of measureless content, and then proceeded to write an opinion on the subject that did my heart good to read. In dignified, judicial terms he affectionately advised the anti-tobacconists to go soak their venerable heads; he reminded them that the most admirable and wholly beneficial occupation of the human species is minding its own business; and intimated that so long as the court should continue to enjoy unimpaired intellectual vigor and be in full possession of all its faculties, it would never authorize a movement to regulate the personal conduct of rational adult beings by organized idiocy.
“It was an elegant set-back for the chronic busybodies, but I haven’t much hope it will be permanent. Mark my words, those fellows are only getting ready to break out in some new place. If they can’t prohibit tobacco they’ll attack chewing gum or ice cream soda. One of these days I expect to pick up the paper and read: ‘New Sundae Law Proposed. Association Opposed to Ice Cream Soda in Any Form Applies for Charter.’ I may have made a few mistakes that time when I was supposed to be a little off my balance, but I never made the same mistake twice. I tilted at those old windmills, as they turned out to be, but I didn’t respond to an encore. Some of your modern reformers are continually butting their heads against stone walls, and if their heads weren’t so thick they couldn’t get away with it.
“Folks laugh at that account of my exploits and adventures, but they don’t stop to notice that there are lots of fellows running around loose who are ten times funnier than Don Quixote ever was. For instance, I understand you have a good many Congressmen-at-large. There are societies already comprising some fifty-seven and one-half varieties of butters-in, advocating all kinds of reforms, including the prohibiting of flowers from growing on Sunday. The first thing we know they’ll be having each new Congress decide whether men shall wear their hair pompadour or brushed down (if they have any), rule on the question of visible suspenders in summer and settle the length of moustaches, coats, sermons, stockings, lawns, skirts, soft drinks and hatpins. And of course there’ll be a law compelling all persons to wear long faces.
“Now, I may have been a bit erratic at one time, but I never got up a Society for the Prevention of Public Enjoyment. The trouble with lots of your reformers is, that not satisfied with being ‘off’ themselves, they want to drive other folks crazy. They’re doing it. Take that proposed state anti-snoring law out in Oklahoma. It’s going to declare any person a public nuisance who keeps other folks awake at night with solos by his nasal organ. But nobody dreams of interfering with the scoundrel who dashes along the street in his automobile at two A. M. with his muffler cut-out. I see you’re surprised at my keeping tab on things down below. There’s a reason. It gratifies me to realize that if I were back on earth I should have no trouble procuring a certificate of perfect sanity after the way so many folks are behaving. I see one man was paid $300,000 for pounding another man who got $200,000 for letting him do it. And the very persons who contributed to that fund kick the loudest about the high cost of living. And yet they used to call me unsound! Puck said a mouthful when he remarked: ‘What fools these mortals be.’ The world is a place of perpetual change, and yet lots of women continue cheerfully to give up two dollars a curl for a ‘permanent’ Marcel wave. Foolish men are less concerned with how many miles they can get out of a gallon than with how many smiles they can get out of a quart.
“But what showed me more clearly than anything else whither you earth folks are drifting was a sign, on my last trip, outside a butcher’s: ‘Tongue, 48 cents a pound; brains, 33 cents.’ If tongue is getting to be worth so much more than brains, then I’m glad I shuffled off when I did.”
And as I volplaned back to earth I wondered also why our topsy-turvy world ever considered Don Quixote loco.