XXXIV—ANIMAL STORIES - I
How Georgie Dog Gets the Rubbers on the Guest Room Bed
Old Mother Nature gathered all her little pupils about her for the daily lesson in "How the Animals Do the Things They Do." Every day Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus came to Mother Nature's school, and there learned all about the useless feats performed by their brother and sister animals.
"Today," said Mother Nature, "we shall find out how it is that Georgie Dog manages to get the muddy rubbers from the hall closet, up the stairs, and onto the nice white bedspread in the guest room. You must be sure to listen carefully and pay strict attention to what Georgie Dog says. Only, don't take too much of it seriously, for Georgie is an awful liar."
And, sure enough, in came Georgie Dog, wagging his entire torso in a paroxysm of camaradarie, although [pg 175]everyone knew that he had no use for Waldo Lizard.
"Tell us, Georgie," said Mother Nature, "how do you do your clever work of rubber-dragging? We would like so much to know. Wouldn't we, children?"
"No, Mother Nature!" came the instant response from the children.
So Georgie Dog began.
"Well, I'll tell you; it's this way," he said, snapping at a fly. "You have to be very niftig about it. First of all, I lie by the door of the hall closet until I see a nice pair of muddy rubbers kicked into it."
"How muddy ought they to be?" asked Edna Elephant, although little enough use she would have for the information.
"I am glad that you asked that question," replied Georgie. "Personally; I like to have mud on them about the consistency of gurry—that is, not too wet—because then it will all drip off on the way upstairs, and not so dry that it scrapes off on the carpet. For we must save it all for the bedspread, you know.
"As soon as the rubbers are safely in the hall closet, I make a great deal of todo about going into the other room, in order to give the impression [pg 176]that there is nothing interesting enough in the hall to keep me there. A good, loud yawn helps to disarm any suspicion of undue excitement. I sometimes even chew a bit of fringe on the sofa and take a scolding for it—anything to draw attention from the rubbers. Then, when everyone is at dinner, I sneak out and drag them forth."
"And how do you manage to take them both at once?" piped up Lawrence Walrus.
"I am glad that you asked that question," said Georgie, "because I was trying to avoid it. You can never guess what the answer is. It is very difficult to take two at a time, and so we usually have to take one and then go back and get the other. I had a cousin once who knew a grip which could be worked on the backs of overshoes, by means of which he could drag two at a time, but he was an exceptionally fine dragger. He once took a pair of rubber boots from the barn into the front room, where a wedding was taking place, and put them on the bride's train. Of course, not one dog in a million could hope to do that.
"Once upstairs, it is quite easy getting them into the guest room, unless the door happens to be shut. Then what do you think I do? I go around through the bath-room window onto the roof, and walk around to the sleeping porch, and climb down [pg 177]into the guest room that way. It is a lot of trouble, but I think that you will agree with me that the results are worth it.
"Climbing up on the bed with the rubbers in my mouth is difficult, but it doesn't make any difference if some of the mud comes off on the side of the bedspread. In fact, it all helps in the final effect. I usually try to smear them around when I get them at last on the spread, and if I can leave one of them on the pillow, I feel that it's a pretty fine little old world, after all. This done, and I am off."
And Georgie Dog suddenly disappeared in official pursuit of an automobile going eighty-five miles an hour.
"So now," said Mother Nature to her little pupils, "we have heard all about Georgie Dog's work. To-morrow we may listen to Lillian Mosquito tell how she makes her voice carry across a room."[pg 178]
ANIMAL STORIES—
How Lillian Mosquito Projects Her Voice
All the children came crowding around Mother Nature one cold, raw afternoon in summer, crying in unison:
"Oh, Mother Nature, you promised us that you would tell us how Lillian Mosquito projects her voice! You promised that you would tell us how Lillian Mosquito projects her voice!"
"So I did! So I did!" said Mother Nature, laying down an oak, the leaves of which she was tipping with scarlet for the fall trade. "And so I will! So I will!"
At which Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus jumped with imitation joy, for they had hoped to have an afternoon off.
Mother Nature led them across the fields to the piazza of a clubhouse on which there was an exposed ankle belonging to one of the members. There, as she had expected, they found Lillian Mosquito having tea.
"Lillian," called Mother Nature, "come off a minute. I have some little friends here who would like to know how it is that you manage to hum in [pg 179]such a manner as to give the impression of being just outside the ear of a person in bed, when actually you are across the room."
"Will you kindly repeat the question?" said Lillian flying over to the railing.
"We want to know," said Mother Nature, "how it is that very often, when you have been fairly caught, it turns out that you have escaped without injury."
"I would prefer to answer the question as it was first put," said Lillian.
So Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus, seeing that there was no way out, cried:
"Yes, yes, Lillian, do tell us."
"First of all, you must know," began Lillian Mosquito, "that my chief duty is to annoy. Whatever else I do, however many bites I total in the course of the evening, I do not consider that I have 'made good' unless I have caused a great deal of annoyance while doing it. A bite, quietly executed and not discovered by the victim until morning, does me no good. It is my duty, and my pleasure, to play with him before biting, as you have often heard a cat plays with a mouse, tormenting him with apprehension and making him struggle to defend himself.... If I am using too long words for you, please stop me."[pg 180]
"Stop!" cried Waldo Lizard, reaching for his hat, with the idea of possibly getting to the ball park by the fifth inning.
But he was prevented from leaving by kindly old Mother Nature, who stepped on him with her kindly old heel, and Lillian Mosquito continued:
"I must therefore, you see, be able to use my little voice with great skill. Of course, the first thing to do is to make my victim think that I am nearer to him than I really am. To do this, I sit quite still, let us say, on the footboard of the bed, and, beginning to hum in a very, very low tone of voice, increase the volume and raise the pitch gradually, thereby giving the effect of approaching the pillow.
"The man in bed thinks that he hears me coming toward his head, and I can often see him, waiting with clenched teeth until he thinks that I am near enough to swat. Sometimes I strike a quick little grace-note, as if I were right above him and about to make a landing. It is great fun at such times to see him suddenly strike himself over the ear (they always think that I am right at their ear), and then feel carefully between his finger tips to see if he has caught me. Then, too, there is always the pleasure of thinking that perhaps he has hurt himself quite badly by the blow. I have often known victims of mine to deafen themselves permanently [pg 181]by jarring their eardrums in their wild attempts to catch me."
"What fun! What fun!" cried Edna Elephant. "I must try it myself just as soon as ever I get home."
"It is often a good plan to make believe that you have been caught after one of the swats," continued Lillian Mosquito, "and to keep quiet for a while. It makes him cocky. He thinks that he has demonstrated the superiority of man over the rest of the animals. Then he rolls over and starts to sleep. This is the time to begin work on him again. After he has slapped himself all over the face and head, and after he has put on the light and made a search of the room and then gone back to bed to think up some new words, that is the time when I usually bring the climax about.
"Gradually approaching him from the right, I hum loudly at his ear. Then, suddenly becoming quiet, I fly silently and quickly around to his neck. Just as he hits himself on the ear, I bite his neck and fly away. And, voilà, there you are!"
"How true that is!" said Mother Nature. "Voilà, there we are!... Come, children, let us go now, for we must be up bright and early to-morrow to learn how Lois Hen scratches up the beets and Swiss chard in the gentlemen's gardens."[pg 182]
XXXV—THE TARIFF UNMASKED
Let us get this tariff thing cleared up, once and for all. An explanation is due the American people, and obviously this is the place to make it.
Viewing the whole thing, schedule by schedule, we find it indefensible. In Schedule A alone the list of necessities on which the tax is to be raised includes Persian berries, extract of nutgalls and isinglass. Take isinglass alone. With prices shooting up in this market, what is to become of our picture post-cards? Where once for a nickel you could get a picture of the Woolworth Building ablaze with lights with the sun setting and the moon rising in the background, under the proposed tariff it will easily set you back fifteen cents. This is all very well for the rich who can get their picture post-cards at wholesale, but how are the poor to get their art?
The only justifiable increase in this schedule is on "blues, in pulp, dried, etc." If this will serve to reduce the amount of "Those [pg 183]Lonesome-Onesome-Wonesome Blues" and "I've Got the Left-All-Alone-in-The-Magazine-Reading-Room-of-the-Public-Library Blues" with which our popular song market has been flooded for the past five years, we could almost bring ourselves to vote for the entire tariff bill as it stands.
Schedule B
Here we find a tremendous increase in the tax on grindstones. Householders and travelers in general do not appreciate what this means. It means that, next year, when you are returning from Europe, you will have to pay a duty on those Dutch grindstones that you always bring back to the cousins, a duty which will make the importation of more than three prohibitive. This will lead to an orgy of grindstone smuggling, making it necessary for hitherto respectable people to become law-breakers by concealing grindstones about their clothing and in the trays of their trunks. Think this over.
Schedule C
Right at the start of this list we find charcoal bars being boosted. Have our children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without Hershey's charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride through the country-side than a [pg 184]band of gypsum encamped by the road with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff insists on raising the tax on gypsum?
Schedule D
A way to evade the injustice of this schedule is in the matter of marble slabs. "Marble slabs, rubbed" are going to cost more to import than "marble slabs, unrubbed." What we are planning to do in this office is to get in a quantity of unrubbed marble slabs and then rub them ourselves. A coarse, dry towel is very good for rubbing, they say.
Any further discussion of the details of this iniquitous tariff would only enrage us to a point of incoherence. Perhaps a short list of some of the things you will have to do without under the new arrangement will serve to enrage you also:
Senegal gum, buchu leaves, lava tips for burners, magic lantern strips, spiegeleisen nut washers, butchers' skewers and gun wads.
XXXVI—"TAKE ALONG A BOOK"
There seems to be a concerted effort, manifest in the "Take Along a Book" drive, to induce vacationists to slip at least one volume into the trunk before getting Daddy to jump on it.
This is a fine idea, for there is always a space between the end of the tennis-racquet and the box of soap in which the shoe-whitening is liable to tip over unless you jam a book in with it. Any book will do.
It is usually a book that you have been meaning to read all Spring, one that you have got so used to lying about to people who have asked you if you have read it that you have almost kidded yourself into believing that you really have read it. You picture yourself out in the hammock or down on the rocks, with a pillow under your head and pipe or a box of candy near at hand, just devouring page after page of it. The only thing that worries you is what you will read when you have finished that. "Oh, well," you think, "there will probably be some books in the town library. Maybe I can get [pg 188]Gibbon there. This summer will be a good time to read Gibbon through."
Your trunk doesn't reach the cottage until four days after you arrive, owing to the ferry-pilots' strike. You don't get it unpacked down as far as the layer in which the book is until you have been there a week.
Then the book is taken out and put on the table. In transit it has tried to eat its way through a pair of tramping-boots, with the result that one corner and the first twenty pages have become dog-eared, but that won't interfere with its being read.
Several other things do interfere, however. The nice weather, for instance. You start out from your room in the morning and somehow or other never get back to it except when you are in a hurry to get ready for meals or for bed. You try to read in bed one night, but you can't seem to fix your sun-burned shoulders in a comfortable position.
You take the book down to luncheon and leave it at the table. And you don't miss it for three days. When you find it again it has large blisters on page 35 where some water was dropped on it.
Then Mrs. Beatty, who lives in Montclair in the winter time (no matter where you go for the summer, you always meet some people who live in Montclair in the winter), borrows the book, as she has [pg 189]heard so much about it. Two weeks later she brings it back, and explains that Prince got hold of it one afternoon and chewed just a little of the back off, but says that she doesn't think it will be noticed when the book is in the bookcase.
Back to the table in the bedroom it goes and is used to keep unanswered post-cards in. It also is convenient as a backing for cards which you yourself are writing. And the flyleaf makes an excellent place for a bridge-score if there isn't any other paper handy.
When it comes time to pack up for home, you shake the sand from among the leaves and save out the book to be read on the train. And you leave it in the automobile that takes you to the station.
But for all that, "take along a book." It might rain all summer.[pg 190]
XXXVII—CONFESSIONS OF A CHESS CHAMPION
With the opening of the baseball season, the sporting urge stirs in one's blood and we turn to such books as "My Chess Career," by J.R. Capablanca. Mr. Capablanca, I gather from his text, plays chess very well. Wherein he unquestionably has something on me.
His book is a combination of autobiography and pictorial examples of difficult games he has participated in and won. I could understand the autobiographical part perfectly, but although I have seen chess diagrams in the evening papers for years, I never have been able to become nervous over one. It has always seemed to me that when you have seen one diagram of a chessboard you have seen them all. Therefore, I can give only a superficial review of the technical parts of Mr. Capablanca's book.
His personal reminiscences, however, are full of poignant episodes. For instance, let us take an [pg 191]incident which occurred in his early boyhood when he found out what sort of man his father really was—a sombre event in the life of any boy, much more so for the boy Capablanca.
"I was born in Havana, the capital of the Island of Cuba," he says, "the 19th of November, 1888. I was not yet five years old when by accident I came into my father's private office and found him playing with another gentleman. I had never seen a game of chess before; the pieces interested me and I went the next day to see them play again. The third day, as I looked on, my father, a very poor beginner, moved a Knight from a white square to another white square. His opponent, apparently not a better player, did not notice it. My father won, and I proceeded to call him a cheat and to laugh."
Imagine the feelings of a young boy entering his father's private office and seeing a man whom he had been brought up to love and to revere moving a Knight from one white square to another. It is a wonder that the boy had the courage to grow up at all with a start in life like that.
But he did grow up, and at the age of eight, in spite of the advice of doctors, he was a frequent visitor at the Havana Chess Club. As he says in [pg 192]describing this period of his career, "Soon Don Celso Golmayo, the strongest player there, was unable to give me a rook." So you can see how good he was. Don Celso couldn't give him a rook. And if Don Celso couldn't, who on earth could?
In his introduction, Mr. Capablanca (I wish that I could get it out of my head that Mr. Capablanca is possibly a relation of the Casablanca boy who did the right thing by the burning deck. They are, of course, two entirely different people)—in his introduction, Mr. Capablanca says:
"Conceit I consider a foolish thing; but more foolish still is that false modesty that vainly attempts to conceal that which all facts tend to prove."
It is this straining to overcome a foolish, false modesty which leads him to say, in connection with his matches with members of the Manhattan Chess Club. "As one by one I mowed them down without the loss of a single game, my superiority became apparent." Or, in speaking of his "endings" (a term we chess experts use to designate the last part of our game), to murmur modestly: "The endings I already played very well, and to my mind had attained the high standard for which they were in the future to be well known." Mr. Capablanca will have to watch that false modesty of his. It will get him into trouble some day.[pg 193]
Although this column makes no pretense of carrying sporting news, it seems only right to print a part of the running story of the big game between Capablanca and Dr. O.S. Bernstein in the San Sebastian tournament of 1911. Capablanca wore the white, while Dr. Bernstein upheld the honor of the black.
The tense moment of the game had been reached. Capablanca has the ball on Dr. Bernstein's 3-yard line on the second down, with a minute and a half to play. The stands are wild. Cries of "Hold 'em, Bernstein!" and "Touchdown, Capablanca!" ring out on the frosty November air.
Brave voices are singing the fighting song entitled "Capablanca's Day" which runs as follows:
"Oh, sweep, sweep across the board,
With your castles, queens, and pawns;
We are with you, all Havana's horde,
Till the sun of victory dawns;
Then it's fight, fight, FIGHT!
To your last white knight,
For the truth must win alway,
And our hearts beat true
Old "J.R." for you
On Capa-blanca's Day."
[pg 194]"Up to this point the game had proceeded along the lines generally recommended by the masters," writes Capablanca. "The last move, however, is a slight deviation from the regular course, which brings this Knight back to B in order to leave open the diagonal for the Q, and besides is more in accordance with the defensive nature of the game. Much more could be said as to the reasons that make Kt - B the preferred move of most masters.... Of course, lest there be some misapprehension, let me state that the move Kt - B is made in conjunction with K R - K, which comes first."
It is lucky that Mr. Casablanca made that explanation, for I was being seized with just that misapprehension which he feared. (Mr. Capablanca, I mean.)
Below is the box-score by innings:
| 1. P - K4. | P - K4. |
| 2. Kt - QB3. | Kt - QB3. |
| 3. P - B4. | P x P. |
| 4. Kt - B3. | P - K Kt4. |
XXXVIII—"RIP VAN WINKLE"
After all, there is nothing like a good folk-opera for wholesome fun, and the boy who can turn out a rollicking folk-opera for old and young is Percy MacKaye. His latest is a riot from start to finish. You can buy it in book form, published by Knopf. Just ask for "Rip Van Winkle" and spend the evening falling out of your chair. (You wake up just as soon as you fall and are all ready again for a fresh start.)
Of course it is a little rough in spots, but you know what Percy MacKaye is when he gets loose on a folk-opera. It is good, clean Rabelaisian fun, such as was in "Washington, the Man Who Made Us." I always felt that it was very prudish of the police to stop that play just as it was commencing its run. Or maybe it wasn't the police that stopped it. Something did, I remember.
But "Rip Van Winkle" has much more zip to it than "Washington" had. In the first place, the lyrics are better. They have more of a lilt to them than the lines of the earlier work had. Here is the [pg 196]song hit of the first act, sung by the Goose Girl. Try this over on your piano:
Kaaterskill, Kaaterskill,
Cloud on the Kaaterskill!
Will it be fair, or lower?
Silver rings
On my pond I see;
And my gander he
Shook both his white wings
Like a sunshine shower.
I venture to say that Irving Berlin himself couldn't have done anything catchier than that by way of a lyric. Or this little snatch of a refrain sung by the old women of the town:
Nay, nay, nay!
A sunshine shower
Won't last a half an hour.
The trouble with most lyrics is that they are written by song-writers who have had no education. Mr. MacKaye's college training shows itself in every line of the opera. There is a subtlety of rhyme-scheme, a delicacy of meter, and, above all, an originality of thought and expression which promises much for the school of university-bred lyricists. [pg 197]Here, for instance, is a lyric which Joe McCarthy could never have written:
Up spoke Nancy, spanking Nancy,
Says, "My feet are far too dancy, Dancy O!
So foot-on-the-grass,
Foot-on-the-grass,
Foot-on-the-grass is my fancy, O!"
Of course this is a folk-opera. And you can get away with a great deal of that "dancy-o" stuff when you call it a folk-opera. You can throw it all back on the old folk at home and they can't say a word.
But even the local wits of Rip Van Winkle's time would have repudiated the comedy lines which Mr. MacKaye gives Rip to say in which "Katy-did" and "Katy-didn't" figure prominently as the nub, followed, before you have time to stop laughing, by one about "whip poor Will" (whippoorwill—get it?). If "Rip Van Winkle" is ever produced again, Ed Wynn should be cast as Rip. He would eat that line alive.
Ed Wynn, by the way, might do wonders by the opera if he could get the rights to produce it in his own way. Let Mr. MacKaye's name stay on the programme, but give Ed Wynn the white card to do [pg 198]as he might see fit with the book. For instance, one of Mr. MacKaye's characters is named "Dirck Spuytenduyvil." Let him stand as he is, but give him two cousins, "Mynheer Yonkers" and "Jan One Hundred and Eighty-third Street." The three of them could do a comedy tumbling act. There is practically no end to the features that could be introduced to tone the thing up.
The basic idea of "Rip Van Winkle" would lend itself admirably to Broadway treatment, for Mr. MacKaye has taken liberties, with the legend and introduced the topical idea of a Magic Flask, containing home-made hootch. Hendrick Hudson, the Captain of the Catskill Bowling Team, is the lucky possessor of the doctor's prescription and formula, and it is in order to take a trial spin with the brew that Rip first goes up to the mountain. Here are Hendrick's very words of invitation:
You'll be right welcome. I will let you taste
A wonder drink we brew aboard the Half Moon.
Whoever drinks the Magic Flask thereof
Forgets all lapse of time
And wanders ever in the fairy season
Of youth and spring.
Come join me in the mountains
At mid of night
And there I promise you the Magic Flask.
[pg 199]And so at mid of night Rip fell for the promise of wandering "in the fairy season," as so many have done at the invitation of a man who has "made a little something at home which you couldn't tell from the real stuff." Rip got out of it easily. He simply went to sleep for twenty years. You ought to see a man I know.
There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading of "Rip Van Winkle" may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.[pg 200]
XXXIX—LITERARY LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENT
With Scant Apology to the Book Section of the New York Times.
"OLD BLACK TILLIE"
H.G.L.—When I was a little girl, my nurse, used to recite a poem something like the following (as near as I can remember). I wonder if anyone can give me the missing lines?
"Old Black Tillie lived in the dell,
Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!
Something, something, something like a lot of hell,
Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!
She wasn't very something and she wasn't very fat
But—"
"VICTOR HUGO'S DEATH"
M.K.C.—Is it true that Victor Hugo did not die but is still living in a little shack in Colorado?[pg 201]
"I'M SORRY THAT I SPELT THE WORD"
J.R.A.—Can anyone help me out by furnishing the last three words to the following stanza which I learned in school and of which I have forgotten the last three words, thereby driving myself crazy?
"'I'm sorry that I spelt the word,
I hate to go above you,
Because—' the brown eyes lower fell,
'Because, you see, —-- —-- —--.'"
"GOD'S IN HIS HEAVEN"
J.A.E.—Where did Mark Twain write the following?
"God's in his heaven:
All's right with the world."
"THE GOLDEN WEDDING"
K.L.F.—Who wrote the following and what does it mean?
"Oh, de golden wedding,
Oh, de golden wedding,
Oh, de golden wedding,
De golden, golden wedding!"
ANSWERS
"WHEN GRANDMA WAS A GIRL"
LUTHER F. NEAM, Flushing, L.I.—The poem asked for by "E.J.K." was recited at a Free Soil riot in Ashburg, Kansas, in July, 1850. It was entitled, "And That's the Way They Did It When Grandma Was a Girl," and was written by Bishop Leander B. Rizzard. The last line runs:
"And that's they way they did it, when Grandma was a girl."
Others who answered this query were: Lillian W. East, of Albany; Martin B. Forsch, New York City, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Nahant.[pg 203]
"LET US THEN BE UP AND DOING"
Roger F. Nilkette, Presto, N.J.—Replying to the query in your last issue concerning the origin of the lines:
"Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."
I remember hearing these lines read at a gathering in the Second Baptist Church of Presto, N.J., when I was a young man, by the Reverend Harley N. Ankle. It was said at the time among his parishioners that he himself wrote them and on being questioned on the matter he did not deny it, simply smiling and saying, "I'm glad if you liked them." They were henceforth known in Presto as "Dr. Ankle's verse" and were set to music and sung at his funeral.
"THE DECEMBER BRIDE, OR OLD ROBIN"
Charles B. Rennit, Boston, N.H.—The whole poem wanted by "H.J.O." is as follows, and appeared in Hostetter's Annual in 1843.[pg 204]
1
"'Twas in the bleak December that I took her for my bride;
How well do I remember how she fluttered by my side;
My Nellie dear, it was not long before you up and died,
And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning.
2
"Oh, do not tell me of the charms of maidens far and near,
Their charming ways and manners I do not care to hear,
For Lucy dear was to me so very, very dear,
And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning.
3
"Then it's merrily, merrily, merrily, whoa!
To the old gray church they come and go,
Some to be married and some to be buried,
And old Robin has gone for the mail."
"THE OLD KING'S JOKE"
F.J. BRUFF, Hammick, Conn.—In a recent issue of your paper, Lillian F. Grothman asked for the [pg 205]remainder of a poem which began: "The King of Sweden made a joke, ha, ha!"
I can furnish all of this poem, having written it myself, for which I was expelled from St. Domino's School in 1895. If Miss Grothman will meet me in the green room at the Biltmore for tea on Wednesday next at 4:30, she will be supplied with the missing words.[pg 206]
XL—"DARKWATER"
We have so many, many problems in America. Books are constantly being written offering solutions for them, but still they persist.
There are volumes on auction bridge, family budgets and mind-training. A great many people have ideas on what should be done to relieve the country of certain undesirable persons who have displayed a lack of sympathy with American institutions. (As if American institutions needed sympathy!) And some of the more generous-minded among us are writing books showing our duty to the struggling young nationalities of Europe. It is bewildering to be confronted by all these problems, each demanding intelligent solution.
Little wonder, then, that we have no time for writing books on the one problem which is exclusively our own. With so many wrongs in the world to be righted, who can blame us for overlooking the one tragic wrong which lies at our door? With so many heathen to whom the word of God must be [pg 207]brought and so many wild revolutionists in whom must be instilled a respect for law and order, is it strange that we should ourselves sometimes lump the word of God and the principles of law and order together under the head of "sentimentality" and shrug our shoulders? Justice in the abstract is our aim—any American will tell you that—so why haggle over details and insist on justice for the negro?
But W.E.B. Du Bois does insist on justice for the negro, and in his book "Darkwater" (Harcourt, Brace & Co.) his voice rings out in a bitter warning through the complacent quiet which usually reigns around this problem of America. Mr. Du Bois seems to forget that we have the affairs of a great many people to attend to and persists in calling our attention to this affair of our own. And what is worse, in the minds of all well-bred persons he does not do it at all politely. He seems to be quite distressed about something.
Maybe it is because he finds himself, a man of superior mind and of sensitive spirit who is a graduate of Harvard, a professor and a sincere worker for the betterment of mankind, relegated to an inferior order by many men and women who are obviously his inferiors, simply because he happens [pg 208]to differ from them in the color of his skin. Maybe it is because he sees the people of his own race who have not had his advantages (if a negro may ever be said to have received an advantage) being crowded into an ignominious spiritual serfdom equally as bad as the physical serfdom from which they were so recently freed. Maybe it is because of these things that Mr. Du Bois seems overwrought.
Or perhaps it is because he reads each day of how jealous we are, as a Nation, of the sanctity of our Constitution, how we revere it and draw a flashing sword against its detractors, and then sees this very Constitution being flouted as a matter of course in those districts where the amendment giving the negroes a right to vote is popularly considered one of the five funniest jokes in the world.
Perhaps he hears candidates for office insisting on a reign of law or a plea for order above all things, by some sentimentalist or other, or public speakers advising those who have not respect for American institutions to go back whence they came, and then sees whole sections of the country violating every principle of law and order and mocking American institutions for the sake of teaching a "nigger" his place.[pg 209]
Perhaps during the war he heard of the bloody crimes of our enemies, and saw preachers and editors and statesmen stand aghast at the barbaric atrocities which won for the German the name of Hun, and then looked toward his own people and saw them being burned, disembowelled and tortured with a civic unanimity and tacit legal sanction which made the word Hun sound weak.
Perhaps he has heard it boasted that in America every man who is honest, industrious and intelligent has a good chance to win out, and has seen honest, industrious and intelligent men whose skins are black stopped short by a wall so high and so thick that all they can do, on having reached that far, is to bow their heads and go slowly back.
Any one of these reasons should have been sufficient for having written "Darkwater."
It is unfortunate that Mr. Du Bois should have raised this question of our own responsibility just at this time when we were showing off so nicely. It may remind some one that instead of taking over a protectorate of Armenia we might better take over a protectorate of the State of Georgia, which yearly leads the proud list of lynchers. But then, there will not be enough people who see Mr. Du Bois's book to cause any great national movement, so we are quite sure, for the time being, of being able to [pg 210]devote our energies to the solution of our other problems.
Don't forget, therefore, to write your Congressman about a universal daylight-saving bill, and give a little thought, if you can, to the question of the vehicular tunnel.[pg 211]
XLI—THE NEW TIME-TABLE
The new time-table of the New York Central Railroad (New York Central Railroad, Harlem Division. Form 113. Corrected to March 28, 1922) is an attractive folder, done in black and white, for the suburban trade. It slips neatly into the pocket, where it easily becomes lost among letters and bills, appearing again only when you have procured another.
So much for its physical features. Of the text matter it is difficult to write without passion. No more disheartening work has been put on the market this season.
In an attempt to evade the Daylight-Saving Law the New York Central has kept its clocks at what is called "Eastern Standard Time," meaning that it is standard on East 42d Street between Vanderbilt and Lexington Avenues. Practically everywhere else in New York the clocks are an hour ahead.
It is this "Eastern Standard Time" that gives the time-table its distinctive flavor. Each train has been demoted one hour, and then, for fear that it [pg 212]would be too easy to understand this, an extra three or four minutes have been thrown in or taken out, just, so that no mistake can help being made.
In order to read the new time-table understandingly the following procedure is now necessary:
Take a room in some quiet family hotel where the noise from the street is reduced to minimum. Place the time-table on the writing-desk and sit in front of it, holding a pencil in the right hand and a watch (Eastern Christian Time) in the left. Then decide on the time you think you would like to reach home. Let us say that you usually have dinner at 7. You would, if you could do just what you wanted, reach Valhalla at 6:30. Very well. It takes about an hour from the Grand Central Terminal to Valhalla. How about a train leaving around 5:30?
Look at the time-table for a train which leaves about 2:45 (Eastern Standard Time). Write down, "2:45" on a piece of paper. Add 150. Subtract the number of stations that Valhalla is above White Plains. Sharpen your pencil and bind up your cut finger and subtract the number you first thought of, and the result will show the number of Presidents of the United States who have been assassinated while in office. Then go over to the Grand Central [pg 213]Terminal and ask one of the information clerks what you want to know.
"Listen, Ed! This is how it goes!"
They will be glad to see you, for during the last three days they have been actually hungering for the sight of a human face. Sometimes it has seemed to them that the silence and loneliness there behind the information counter would drive them mad. If some one—any one—would only come and speak to them! That is why one of them is over in the corner chewing up time-tables into small balls and playing marbles with them. He has gone mad from loneliness. The other clerk, the one who is looking at the tip of his nose and mumbling Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, has only a few more minutes before he too succumbs.
And that low, rumbling sound, what is that? It comes from the crowd of commuters standing in front of the gate of what used to be the 5:56. Let us draw near and hear what they are discussing. Why, it is the new time-table, of all things!
"Listen, Ed. This is how it goes. This train that goes at 4:25 according to this time-table is really the old 5:20. See? What you do is add an hour"—
"Aw, what kind of talk is that? Add an hour to your grandmother! You subtract an hour from [pg 214]the time as given here. This is Eastern Standard Time. See, it says right here: 'The time shown in this folder is Eastern Standard Time, one hour slower than Daylight-Saving Time.' See? One hour slower. You subtract."
"Here, you guys are both way off. I just asked one of the trainmen. The 5:56 has gone. It went at 4:20. The next train that we get is the 6:20 which goes at 5:19. Look, see here. It says 5:19 on the time-table but that means that by your watch it is 6:19"—
"By my watch it is not 6:19. My watch I set by the clock in the station this morning when I came in"—
"Well, the clock in the station is wrong. That is, the clock in the station is an hour ahead of all the other clocks."
"An hour ahead? An hour behind, you mean."
"The clock in the station is an hour ahead. I know what I'm talking about."
"Now listen, Jo. Didn't you see in the paper Monday morning"—
"Yaas, I saw in the paper Monday morning, and it said that"—
"Look, Gus. By my watch—look, Gus—listen, Gus—by my watch"—[pg 215]
"Aw, you and your watch! What's that got to do with it?"
"Now looka here. On this time-table it says"—
"Lissen, Eddie"—
Whatever else its publishers may say about it, the new New York Central time-table bids fair to be the most-talked-of publication of the season.[pg 216]