Frenzied Fiction

“Can you indicate,” we continued, “what method you follow in beginning one of your novels?”

“I always begin,” said Ethelinda Afterthought, “with a study.”

“A study?” we queried.

“Yes. I mean a study of actual facts. Take, for example, my Leaves from the Life of a Steam Laundrywoman—more tea?”

“No, no,” we said.

“Well, to make that book I first worked two years in a laundry.”

“Two years!” we exclaimed. “And why?”

“To get the atmosphere.”

“The steam?” we questioned.

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Afterthought, “I did that separately. I took a course in steam at a technical school.”

“Is it possible?” we said, our heart beginning to sing again. “Was all that necessary?”

“I don’t see how one could do it otherwise. The story opens, as no doubt you remember—tea?—in the boiler room of the laundry.”

“Yes,” we said, moving our leg—“no, thank you.”

“So you see the only possible point d’appui was to begin with a description of the inside of the boiler.”

We nodded.

“A masterly thing,” we said.

“My wife,” interrupted the Great Novelist, who was sitting with the head of a huge Danish hound in his lap, sharing his buttered toast with the dog while he adjusted a set of trout flies, “is a great worker.”

“Do you always work on that method?” we asked.

“Always,” she answered. “For Frederica of the Factory I spent six months in a knitting mill. For Marguerite of the Mud Flats I made special studies for months and months.”

“Of what sort?” we asked.

“In mud. Learning to model it. You see for a story of that sort the first thing needed is a thorough knowledge of mud—all kinds of it.”

“And what are you doing next?” we inquired.

“My next book,” said the Lady Novelist, “is to be a study—tea?—of the pickle industry—perfectly new ground.”

“A fascinating field,” we murmured.

“And quite new. Several of our writers have done the slaughter-house, and in England a good deal has been done in jam. But so far no one has done pickles. I should like, if I could,” added Ethelinda Afterthought, with the graceful modesty that is characteristic of her, “to make it the first of a series of pickle novels, showing, don’t you know, the whole pickle district, and perhaps following a family of pickle workers for four or five generations.”

“Four or five!” we said enthusiastically. “Make it ten! And have you any plan for work beyond that?”

“Oh, yes indeed,” laughed the Lady Novelist. “I am always planning ahead. What I want to do after that is a study of the inside of a penitentiary.”

“Of the inside?” we said, with a shudder.

“Yes. To do it, of course, I shall go to jail for two or three years!”

“But how can you get in?” we asked, thrilled at the quiet determination of the frail woman before us.

“I shall demand it as a right,” she answered quietly. “I shall go to the authorities, at the head of a band of enthusiastic women, and demand that I shall be sent to jail. Surely after the work I have done, that much is coming to me.”

“It certainly is,” we said warmly.

We rose to go.

Both the novelists shook hands with us with great cordiality. Mr. Afterthought walked as far as the front door with us and showed us a short cut past the beehives that could take us directly through the bull pasture to the main road.

We walked away in the gathering darkness of evening very quietly. We made up our mind as we went that novel writing is not for us. We must reach the penitentiary in some other way.

But we thought it well to set down our interview as a guide to others.

IX. The New Education

“So you’re going back to college in a fortnight,” I said to the Bright Young Thing on the veranda of the summer hotel. “Aren’t you sorry?”

“In a way I am,” she said, “but in another sense I’m glad to go back. One can’t loaf all the time.”

She looked up from her rocking-chair over her Red Cross knitting with great earnestness.

How full of purpose these modern students are, I thought to myself. In my time we used to go back to college as to a treadmill.

“I know that,” I said, “but what I mean is that college, after all, is a pretty hard grind. Things like mathematics and Greek are no joke, are they? In my day, as I remember it, we used to think spherical trigonometry about the hardest stuff of the lot.”

She looked dubious.

“I didn’t elect mathematics,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, “I see. So you don’t have to take it. And what have you elected?”

“For this coming half semester—that’s six weeks, you know—I’ve elected Social Endeavour.”

“Ah,” I said, “that’s since my day, what is it?”

“Oh, it’s awfully interesting. It’s the study of conditions.”

“What kind of conditions?” I asked.

“All conditions. Perhaps I can’t explain it properly. But I have the prospectus of it indoors if you’d like to see it. We take up Society.”

“And what do you do with it?”

“Analyse it,” she said.

“But it must mean reading a tremendous lot of books.”

“No,” she answered. “We don’t use books in this course. It’s all Laboratory Work.”

“Now I am mystified,” I said. “What do you mean by Laboratory Work?”

“Well,” answered the girl student with a thoughtful look upon her face, “you see, we are supposed to break society up into its elements.”

“In six weeks?”

“Some of the girls do it in six weeks. Some put in a whole semester and take twelve weeks at it.”

“So as to break up pretty thoroughly?” I said.

“Yes,” she assented. “But most of the girls think six weeks is enough.”

“That ought to pulverize it pretty completely. But how do you go at it?”

“Well,” the girl said, “it’s all done with Laboratory Work. We take, for instance, department stores. I think that is the first thing we do, we take up the department store.”

“And what do you do with it?”

“We study it as a Social Germ.”

“Ah,” I said, “as a Social Germ.”

“Yes,” said the girl, delighted to see that I was beginning to understand, “as a Germ. All the work is done in the concrete. The class goes down with the professor to the department store itself—”

“And then—”

“Then they walk all through it, observing.”

“But have none of them ever been in a departmental store before?”

“Oh, of course, but, you see, we go as Observers.”

“Ah, now, I understand. You mean you don’t buy anything and so you are able to watch everything?”

“No,” she said, “it’s not that. We do buy things. That’s part of it. Most of the girls like to buy little knick-knacks, and anyway it gives them a good chance to do their shopping while they’re there. But while they are there they are observing. Then afterwards they make charts.”

“Charts of what?” I asked.

“Charts of the employes; they’re used to show the brain movement involved.”

“Do you find much?”

“Well,” she said hesitatingly, “the idea is to reduce all the employes to a Curve.”

“To a Curve?” I exclaimed, “an In or an Out.”

“No, no, not exactly that. Didn’t you use Curves when you were at college?”

“Never,” I said.

“Oh, well, nowadays nearly everything, you know, is done into a Curve. We put them on the board.”

“And what is this particular Curve of the employe used for?” I asked.

“Why,” said the student, “the idea is that from the Curve we can get the Norm of the employe.”

“Get his Norm?” I asked.

“Yes, get the Norm. That stands for the Root Form of the employe as a social factor.”

“And what can you do with that?”

“Oh, when we have that we can tell what the employe would do under any and every circumstance. At least that’s the idea—though I’m really only quoting,” she added, breaking off in a diffident way, “from what Miss Thinker, the professor of Social Endeavour, says. She’s really fine. She’s making a general chart of the female employes of one of the biggest stores to show what percentage in case of fire would jump out of the window and what percentage would run to the fire escape.”

“It’s a wonderful course,” I said. “We had nothing like it when I went to college. And does it only take in departmental stores?”

“No,” said the girl, “the laboratory work includes for this semester ice-cream parlours as well.”

“What do you do with them?”

“We take them up as Social Cells, Nuclei, I think the professor calls them.”

“And how do you go at them?” I asked.

“Why, the girls go to them in little laboratory groups and study them.”

“They eat ice-cream in them?”

“They have to,” she said, “to make it concrete. But while they are doing it they are considering the ice-cream parlour merely as a section of social protoplasm.”

“Does the professor go?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, she heads each group. Professor Thinker never spares herself from work.”

“Dear me,” I said, “you must be kept very busy. And is Social Endeavour all that you are going to do?”

“No,” she answered, “I’m electing a half-course in Nature Work as well.”

“Nature Work? Well! Well! That, I suppose, means cramming up a lot of biology and zoology, does it not?”

“No,” said the girl, “it’s not exactly done with books. I believe it is all done by Field Work.”

“Field Work?”

“Yes. Field Work four times a week and an Excursion every Saturday.”

“And what do you do in the Field Work?”

“The girls,” she answered, “go out in groups anywhere out of doors, and make a Nature Study of anything they see.”

“How do they do that?” I asked.

“Why, they look at it. Suppose, for example, they come to a stream or a pond or anything—”

“Yes—”

“Well, they look at it.”

“Had they never done that before?” I asked.

“Ah, but they look at it as a Nature Unit. Each girl must take forty units in the course. I think we only do one unit each day we go out.”

“It must,” I said, “be pretty fatiguing work, and what about the Excursion?”

“That’s every Saturday. We go out with Miss Stalk, the professor of Ambulation.”

“And where do you go?”

“Oh, anywhere. One day we go perhaps for a trip on a steamer and another Saturday somewhere in motors, and so on.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Field Work. The aim of the course—I’m afraid I’m quoting Miss Stalk but I don’t mind, she’s really fine—is to break nature into its elements—”

“I see—”

“So as to view it as the external structure of Society and make deductions from it.”

“Have you made any?” I asked.

“Oh, no”—she laughed—“I’m only starting the work this term. But, of course, I shall have to. Each girl makes at least one deduction at the end of the course. Some of the seniors make two or three. But you have to make one.”

“It’s a great course,” I said. “No wonder you are going to be busy; and, as you say, how much better than loafing round here doing nothing.”

“Isn’t it?” said the girl student with enthusiasm in her eyes. “It gives one such a sense of purpose, such a feeling of doing something.”

“It must,” I answered.

“Oh, goodness,” she exclaimed, “there’s the lunch bell. I must skip and get ready.”

She was just vanishing from my side when the Burly Male Student, who was also staying in the hotel, came puffing up after his five-mile run. He was getting himself into trim for enlistment, so he told me. He noted the retreating form of the college girl as he sat down.

“I’ve just been talking to her,” I said, “about her college work. She seems to be studying a queer lot of stuff—Social Endeavour and all that!”

“Awful piffle,” said the young man. “But the girls naturally run to all that sort of rot, you know.”

“Now, your work,” I went on, “is no doubt very different. I mean what you were taking before the war came along. I suppose you fellows have an awful dose of mathematics and philology and so on just as I did in my college days?”

Something like a blush came across the face of the handsome youth.

“Well, no,” he said, “I didn’t co-opt mathematics. At our college, you know, we co-opt two majors and two minors.”

“I see,” I said, “and what were you co-opting?”

“I co-opted Turkish, Music, and Religion,” he answered.

“Oh, yes,” I said with a sort of reverential respect, “fitting yourself for a position of choir-master in a Turkish cathedral, no doubt.”

“No, no,” he said, “I’m going into insurance; but, you see, those subjects fitted in better than anything else.”

“Fitted in?”

“Yes. Turkish comes at nine, music at ten and religion at eleven. So they make a good combination; they leave a man free to—”

“To develop his mind,” I said. “We used to find in my college days that lectures interfered with it badly. But now, Turkish, that must be an interesting language, eh?”

“Search me!” said the student. “All you have to do is answer the roll and go out. Forty roll-calls give you one Turkish unit—but, say, I must get on, I’ve got to change. So long.”

I could not help reflecting, as the young man left me, on the great changes that have come over our college education. It was a relief to me later in the day to talk with a quiet, sombre man, himself a graduate student in philosophy, on this topic. He agreed with me that the old strenuous studies seem to be very largely abandoned.

I looked at the sombre man with respect.

“Now your work,” I said, “is very different from what these young people are doing—hard, solid, definite effort. What a relief it must be to you to get a brief vacation up here. I couldn’t help thinking to-day, as I watched you moving round doing nothing, how fine it must feel for you to come up here after your hard work and put in a month of out-and-out loafing.”

“Loafing!” he said indignantly. “I’m not loafing. I’m putting in a half summer course in Introspection. That’s why I’m here. I get credit for two majors for my time here.”

“Ah,” I said, as gently as I could, “you get credit here.”

He left me. I am still pondering over our new education. Meantime I think I shall enter my little boy’s name on the books of Tuskegee College where the education is still old-fashioned.

X. The Errors of Santa Claus

It was Christmas Eve.

The Browns, who lived in the adjoining house, had been dining with the Joneses.

Brown and Jones were sitting over wine and walnuts at the table. The others had gone upstairs.

“What are you giving to your boy for Christmas?” asked Brown.

“A train,” said Jones, “new kind of thing—automatic.”

“Let’s have a look at it,” said Brown.

Jones fetched a parcel from the sideboard and began unwrapping it.

“Ingenious thing, isn’t it?” he said. “Goes on its own rails. Queer how kids love to play with trains, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” assented Brown. “How are the rails fixed?”

“Wait, I’ll show you,” said Jones. “Just help me to shove these dinner things aside and roll back the cloth. There! See! You lay the rails like that and fasten them at the ends, so—”

“Oh, yes, I catch on, makes a grade, doesn’t it? Just the thing to amuse a child, isn’t it? I got Willy a toy aeroplane.”

“I know, they’re great. I got Edwin one on his birthday. But I thought I’d get him a train this time. I told him Santa Claus was going to bring him something altogether new this time. Edwin, of course, believes in Santa Claus absolutely. Say, look at this locomotive, would you? It has a spring coiled up inside the fire box.”

“Wind her up,” said Brown with great interest. “Let’s see her go.”

“All right,” said Jones. “Just pile up two or three plates or something to lean the end of the rails on. There, notice the way it buzzes before it starts. Isn’t that a great thing for a kid, eh?”

“Yes,” said Brown. “And say, see this little string to pull the whistle! By Gad, it toots, eh? Just like real?”

“Now then, Brown,” Jones went on, “you hitch on those cars and I’ll start her. I’ll be engineer, eh!”

Half an hour later Brown and Jones were still playing trains on the dining-room table.

But their wives upstairs in the drawing-room hardly noticed their absence. They were too much interested.

“Oh, I think it’s perfectly sweet,” said Mrs. Brown. “Just the loveliest doll I’ve seen in years. I must get one like it for Ulvina. Won’t Clarisse be perfectly enchanted?”

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Jones, “and then she’ll have all the fun of arranging the dresses. Children love that so much. Look, there are three little dresses with the doll, aren’t they cute? All cut out and ready to stitch together.”

“Oh, how perfectly lovely!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown. “I think the mauve one would suit the doll best, don’t you, with such golden hair? Only don’t you think it would make it much nicer to turn back the collar, so, and to put a little band—so?”

“What a good idea!” said Mrs. Jones. “Do let’s try it. Just wait, I’ll get a needle in a minute. I’ll tell Clarisse that Santa Claus sewed it himself. The child believes in Santa Claus absolutely.”

And half an hour later Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Brown were so busy stitching dolls’ clothes that they could not hear the roaring of the little train up and down the dining table, and had no idea what the four children were doing.

Nor did the children miss their mothers.

“Dandy, aren’t they?” Edwin Jones was saying to little Willie Brown, as they sat in Edwin’s bedroom. “A hundred in a box, with cork tips, and see, an amber mouthpiece that fits into a little case at the side. Good present for Dad, eh?”

“Fine!” said Willie appreciatively. “I’m giving Father cigars.”

“I know, I thought of cigars too. Men always like cigars and cigarettes. You can’t go wrong on them. Say, would you like to try one or two of these cigarettes? We can take them from the bottom. You’ll like them, they’re Russian—away ahead of Egyptian.”

“Thanks,” answered Willie. “I’d like one immensely. I only started smoking last spring—on my twelfth birthday. I think a feller’s a fool to begin smoking cigarettes too soon, don’t you? It stunts him. I waited till I was twelve.”

“Me too,” said Edwin, as they lighted their cigarettes. “In fact, I wouldn’t buy them now if it weren’t for Dad. I simply had to give him something from Santa Claus. He believes in Santa Claus absolutely, you know.”

And, while this was going on, Clarisse was showing little Ulvina the absolutely lovely little bridge set that she got for her mother.

“Aren’t these markers perfectly charming?” said Ulvina. “And don’t you love this little Dutch design—or is it Flemish, darling?”

“Dutch,” said Clarisse. “Isn’t it quaint? And aren’t these the dearest little things, for putting the money in when you play. I needn’t have got them with it—they’d have sold the rest separately—but I think it’s too utterly slow playing without money, don’t you?”

“Oh, abominable,” shuddered Ulvina. “But your mamma never plays for money, does she?”

“Mamma! Oh, gracious, no. Mamma’s far too slow for that. But I shall tell her that Santa Claus insisted on putting in the little money boxes.”

“I suppose she believes in Santa Claus, just as my mamma does.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Clarisse, and added, “What if we play a little game! With a double dummy, the French way, or Norwegian Skat, if you like. That only needs two.”

“All right,” agreed Ulvina, and in a few minutes they were deep in a game of cards with a little pile of pocket money beside them.

About half an hour later, all the members of the two families were again in the drawing-room. But of course nobody said anything about the presents. In any case they were all too busy looking at the beautiful big Bible, with maps in it, that the Joneses had brought to give to Grandfather. They all agreed that, with the help of it, Grandfather could hunt up any place in Palestine in a moment, day or night.

But upstairs, away upstairs in a sitting-room of his own Grandfather Jones was looking with an affectionate eye at the presents that stood beside him. There was a beautiful whisky decanter, with silver filigree outside (and whiskey inside) for Jones, and for the little boy a big nickel-plated Jew’s harp.

Later on, far in the night, the person, or the influence, or whatever it is called Santa Claus, took all the presents and placed them in the people’s stockings.

And, being blind as he always has been, he gave the wrong things to the wrong people—in fact, he gave them just as indicated above.

But the next day, in the course of Christmas morning, the situation straightened itself out, just as it always does.

Indeed, by ten o’clock, Brown and Jones were playing with the train, and Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Jones were making dolls’ clothes, and the boys were smoking cigarettes, and Clarisse and Ulvina were playing cards for their pocket-money.

And upstairs—away up—Grandfather was drinking whisky and playing the Jew’s harp.

And so Christmas, just as it always does, turned out all right after all.

XI. Lost in New York

A VISITOR’S SOLILOQUY

Well! Well!

Whatever has been happening to this place, to New York? Changed? Changed since I was here in ‘86? Well, I should say so.

The hack-driver of the old days that I used to find waiting for me at the station curb, with that impossible horse of his—the hack-driver with his bulbous red face, and the nice smell of rye whisky all ‘round him for yards—gone, so it seems, for ever.

And in place of him this—what is it they call it?—taxi, with a clean-shaven cut-throat steering it. “Get in,” he says, Just that. He doesn’t offer to help me or lift my satchel. All right, young man, I’m crawling in.

That’s the machine that marks it, eh? I suppose they have them rigged up so they can punch up anything they like. I thought so—he hits it up to fifty cents before we start. But I saw him do it. Well, I can stand for it this time. I’ll not be caught in one of these again.

The hotel? All right, I’m getting out. My hotel? But what is it they have done to it? They must have added ten stories to it. It reaches to the sky. But I’ll not try to look to the top of it. Not with this satchel in my hand: no, sir! I’ll wait till I’m safe inside. In there I’ll feel all right. They’ll know me in there. They’ll remember right away my visit in the fall of ‘86. They won’t easily have forgotten that big dinner I gave—nine people at a dollar fifty a plate, with the cigars extra. The clerk will remember me, all right.

Know me? Not they. The clerk know me! How could he? For it seems now there isn’t any clerk, or not as there used to be. They have subdivided him somehow into five or six. There is a man behind a desk, a majestic sort of man, waving his hand. It would be sheer madness to claim acquaintance with him. There is another with a great book, adjusting cards in it; and another, behind glass labelled “Cashier,” and busy as a bank; there are two with mail and telegrams. They are all too busy to know me.

Shall I sneak up near to them, keeping my satchel in my hand? I wonder, do they see me? Can they see me, a mere thing like me? I am within ten feet of them, but I am certain that they cannot see me. I am, and I feel it, absolutely invisible.

Ha! One has seen me. He turns to me, or rather he rounds upon me, with the words “Well, sir?” That, and nothing else, sharp and hard. There is none of the ancient kindly pretence of knowing my name, no reaching out a welcome hand and calling me Mr. Er—Er—till he has read my name upside down while I am writing it and can address me as a familiar friend. No friendly questioning about the crops in my part of the country. The crops, forsooth! What do these young men know about crops?

A room? Had I any reservation? Any which? Any reservation. Oh, I see, had I written down from home to say that I was coming? No, I had not because the truth is I came at very short notice. I didn’t know till a week before that my brother-in-law—He is not listening. He has moved away. I will stand and wait till he comes back. I am intruding here; I had no right to disturb these people like this.

Oh, I can have a room at eleven o’clock. When it is which?—is vacated. Oh, yes, I see, when the man in it gets up and goes away. I didn’t for the minute catch on to what the word—He has stopped listening.

Never mind, I can wait. From eight to eleven is only three hours, anyway. I will move about here and look at things. If I keep moving they will notice me less. Ha! books and news papers and magazines—what a stack of them! Like a regular book-store. I will stand here and take a look at some of them. Eh! what’s that? Did I want to buy anything? Well, no, I hadn’t exactly—I was just—Oh, I see, they’re on sale. All right, yes, give me this one—fifty cents—all right—and this and these others. That’s all right, miss, I’m not stingy. They always say of me up in our town that when I—She has stopped listening.