The So-called Human Race

THE SECOND POST[Received by a construction company.]

Dear Sir I an writhing you and wanted to know that can I get a book from your company which will teach me of oprating steam and steam ingean. I was fireing at a plant not long ago and found one of your catalogs and it give me meny good idol about steam. I have been opiratin stean for the last 12 years for I know that there are lots more to learn about steam and I want to learn it so I will close for this time expecting to here from you soon.

“Since Frank Harris has been mentioned,” communicates C. E. L., “it would be interesting to a lot of folks to know just what standing he has in literature.” Oh, not much. Aside from being one of the best editors the Saturday Review ever had, one of the best writers of short stories in English or any other language, and one of the most acute critics in the profession, his standing is negligible.

Our young friend who is about to become a colyumist should certainly include in his first string the restaurant wheeze: “Don’t laugh at our coffee. You may be old and weak yourself some day.”

“One sinister eye – the right one – gleamed at him over the pistol.” – Baltimore Sun.

No wonder foreigners have a hard time with the American language.

BALLADE OF THE OUBLIETTEAnd deeper still the deep-down oubliette,Down thirty feet below the smiling day.– Tennyson.Sudden in the sunAn oubliette winks. Where is he? Gone.– Mrs. Browning.Gaoler of the donjon deep —Black from pit to parapet —In whose depths forever sleepFamous bores whose sun has set,Daily ope the portal; letIn the bores who daily bore.Thrust – sans sorrow or regret —Thrust them through the Little Door.Warder of Oblivion’s keep —Dismal dank, and black as jet —Through the fatal wicket sweepAll the pests we all have met.Prithee, overlook no bet;Grab them – singly, by the score —And, lest they be with us yet,Thrust them through the Little Door.Lead them to the awful leapWith a merry chansonette;Push them blithely off the steep;We’ll forgive them and forget.Toss them, like a cigarette,To the far Plutonian floor.Drop them where they’ll cease to fret —Thrust them through the Little Door.Keeper of the Oubliette,Wouldst thou have us more and moreIn thine everlasting debt —Thrust them through the Little Door.

To insure the safety of the traveling public, the Maroon Taxicab Company is putting out a line of armored cabs. These will also be equipped with automatic brakes, so that when a driver for a rival taxicab company shoots a Maroon, the cab will come to a stop.

A neat and serviceable Christmas gift is a sawed-off shotgun. Carried in your limousine, it may aid in saving your jewels when returning from the opera.

“The entertainment committee of the Union League Club,” so it says, “is with considerable effort spending some of your money to please you.” In the clubs to which we belong there is no observable effort.

Certain toadstools are colored a pizenous pink underneath; a shade which is also found on the cheeks of damosels and dames whom you see on the avenue. Poor kalsomining, we call it.

When we begin to read a book we begin with the title page; but many people, probably most, begin at “Chapter I.” We have recommended books to friends, and they have read them; and then they have said, “Tell me something about the author.” The preface would have told them, but they do not read prefaces. Do you?

Although ongweed to the extinction point by the subject of names, we have no right to assume that the subject is not of lively interest to other people. So let it be recorded that George Demon was arrested in Council Bluffs for beating his wife. Also, Miss Elsie Hugger is director of dancing in the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. Furthermore, S. W. Henn of the Iowa State College was selected as a judge for the National Poultry Show. Moreover, G. O. Wildhack is in the automobile business in Indianapolis, and Mrs. Cataract takes in washing in Peoria. Sleepy weather, isn’t it?

SUCH A ONE MIGHT HAVE DRAWN PRIAM’S CURTAIN IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, AND TOLD HIM HALF HIS TROY WAS BURNED[From the Eagle Grove, Ia., Eagle.]

The Rev. Winter was pastor of the M. E. Church many years ago, at the time it was destroyed by a cyclone. Engineer Sam Wood broke the news to Mr. Winter gently by shouting: “Your church has all blown to hell, Elder!”

THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER[From the Lewisville, Ark., Recorder.]

The evening was most propitious. The air was balmy. The fragrance of flowers was patent in the breeze. The limpid moonlight, in a glow of beauty, kissed the hills and valleys. While from the vines and bushes the merry twitter of playful birds, symphonies soft and low, entranced with other delight, the romantic party goers. Now a still other delight was in store – some fine music and good singing, which every recipient enjoyed to the highest note. Thanks and compliments for such a model evening were ornate and lavish and all left truly glad that they had been.

FULL OF HIS SUBJECT[From the Evansville, Ind., Courier.]

Dr. Hamilton A. Hymes, pastor of Grace Memorial Presbyterian church, has recovered from a recent illness, caused from a carbuncle on his neck. His subject for Sunday night will be “Is There a Hell?”

THAT TRIOLET DRIVELWill you can it or no? —That Triolet drivel.It irritates so.Will you can it or no?For the habit may grow,And the thought makes me snivel.Will you can it or no? —That Triolet drivel.D. A. D. Burnitt.Yes, we’ll can it or no,As the notion may seize us.If a thing is de trop,Yes; we’ll can it – or no.For we always let goWhen a thing doesn’t please us.Yes, we’ll can it, or – no,As the notion may seize us.

Sir Oliver Lodge has seen so many tables move and heard so many tambourines, that he now keeps an open mind on miracles. We hope he believes that the three angels appeared to Joan of Arc, as that is our favorite miracle. Had they appeared only once we might have doubted the apparition; but, as we remember the story, they appeared three times.

Sir Oliver may be interested in a case reported to us by L. J. S. His company had issued a tourist policy to a lady who lost her trunk on the way to Tulsa, Okla., and who put in a claim for $800. The adjuster at Dallas wrote:

“Assured is the famous mind reader, and one of her best stunts is answering questions in regard to the location of stolen property, but she was unable to be of any assistance to me.”

Some of the members of the Cosmopolitan club are about as cosmopolitan as the inhabitants of Cosmopolis, Mich.

At the request of a benedick we are rushing to the Cannery by parcel-post Jar 617: “Don’t they make a nice-looking couple!”

ENGLISH AS SHE IS MURDERED

Sir: After Pedagogicus’ class gets through with Senator Borah’s masterpiece, it might look over this legend which the Herald and Examiner has been carrying: “Buy bonds like the victors fought.” E. E. E.

The Illinois War Savings Bulletin speaks of “personal self-interest.” This means you!

“Graduation from the worst to the best stuff,” is Mr. W. L. George’s method of acquiring literary taste. Something can be said for the method, and Mr. George says it well, and we are sorry, in a manner of speaking, not to believe a word of it; unless, as is possible, we both believe the same thing fundamentally. Taste, in literature and music, and in other things, is, we are quite sure, natural. It can be trained, but this training is a matter of new discoveries. A taste that has to be led by steps from Owen Meredith to George Meredith, which could not recognize the worth of the latter before passing through the former, is no true taste. Graduation from the simple to the complex is compatible with a natural taste, but this simple may be first class, as much music and literature is. New forms of beauty may puzzle the possessor of natural taste, but not for long. He does not require preparation in inferior stuff.

Speaking of George Meredith, we are told again (they dig the thing up every two or three years) that, when a reader for Chapman & Hall, he turned down “East Lynne,” “Erewhon,” and other books that afterward became celebrated. What of it? Meredith may not have known anything about literature, but he knew what he liked. Moreover, he was a marked and original writer, and as that tolerant soul, Jules Lemaitre, has noted, the most marked and original of writers are those who do not understand everything, nor feel everything, nor love everything, but those whose knowledge, intelligence, and tastes have definite limitations.

BUT WOULD IT NOT REQUIRE A GEOLOGIC PERIOD?

Sir: You are kind enough to refer to my lecture on “Literary Taste and How to Acquire It.” I venture to suggest that your summary – viz.: “It is to read only first-class stuff,” not only fails to meet the problem, but represents exactly the view that I am out to demolish. If, as I presume, you mean that the ambitious person who now reads Harold Bell Wright should sit down to the works of Shakespeare, I can tell you at once that the process will be a failure. My method is one of graduation from the worst to the best stuff. W. L. George.

We do not wish to crab W. L. George’s act, “Literary Taste and How to Acquire It,” but we know the answer. It is to read only first-class stuff. Circumstances may oblige a man to write second-class books, but there is no reason why he should read such.

THE STORM(By a girl of ten years.)It lightnings, it thundersAnd I go under,And where do I go,I wonder.I go, I go —I know.Under the covers,That’s where I go.

The little poet of the foregoing knew where she was going, which is more than can be said for many modern bards.

THE EIGHTH VEIL(By J-mes Hun-k-r.)

There was a wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the evocations of a loud bassoon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and spat acridly upon the pave. “Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic rot!” he raged.

Three young men drew toward the scene. Ulick barred their way, but two of the trio slipped by him and escaped. The third was nailed by Guffle’s glittering eye. Ulick laid an ineluctable hand upon the stranger’s arm. “Listen!” he commanded. “Matrimony and Art are sworn and natural foes. Ingeborg Bunck was right; there are no illegitimate children; all children are valid. Sounds like Lope de Vega, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It is Bunck. Whitman, too, divined the truth. Love is a germ; sunlight kills it. It needs l’obscurité and a high temperature. As Baudelaire said – or was it Maurice Barrès? – dans la nuit tous les chats sont gris. Remy de Gourmont …”

The wedding guest beat his shirtfront; he could hear the bassoon doubling the cello. But Ulick continued ineluctably. “Woman is a sink of iniquity. Only Gounod is more loathsome. That Ave Maria – Grand Dieu! But Frédéric Chopin, nuance, cadence, appoggiatura – there you have it. En amour, les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes. Listen to Rochefoucauld! And Montaigne has said, C’est le jouir et non le posséder qui rend heureux. And Pascal has added, Les affaires sont les affaires. As for Stendhal, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Edgar Saltus, Balzac, Gautier, Dostoievsky, Rabelais, Maupassant, Anatole France, Bourget, Turgenev, Verlaine, Renan, Walter Pater, Landor, Cardinal Newman and the Brothers Goncourt …”

Ulick seized his head with both hands, and the wedding guest seized the opportunity to beat it, as the saying is. “Swine!” Ulick flung after him. “Swine, before whom I have cast a hatful of pearls!” He spat even more acridly upon the pave and turned away. “After all,” he growled, “Stendhal was right. Or was it Huysmans? No, it was neither. It was Cambronne.”

Though there has been little enough to encourage it, the world is growing kinder; at least friendliness is increasing. Every other day we read of some woman living pleasantly in a well appointed apartment, supplied with fine raiment and an automobile, the fruit of Platonism. “No,” she testifies, “there was nothing between us. He was merely a friend.”

What heaven hath cleansed let no man put asunder. Emma Durdy and Raymond Bathe, of Nokomis, have been j. in the h. b. of w.

THE TRACERS ARE AT WORK

Sir: Please consult the genealogical files of the Academy and advise me if Mr. Harm Poppen of Gurley, Nebraska, is a lineal descendant of the w. k. Helsa Poppen, famous in profane history. E. E. M.

Our opinion, already recorded, is that if Keats had spent fifteen or twenty minutes more on his Grecian Urn, all of the stanzas would be as good as three of them. And so we think that if A. B. had put in, say, a half hour more on her sonnet she would not have rhymed “worldliness” and “moodiness.” Of the harmony, counterpoint, thoroughbass, etc., of verse we know next to nothing – we play on our tin whistle entirely by ear – but there are things which we avoid, perhaps needlessly. One of these is the rhyming of words like utterly, monody, lethargy, etc.; these endings seem weak when they are bunched. Our assistants will apprehend that we are merely offering a suggestion or two, which we hope they will follow up by exploring the authorities.

Music like Brahms’ Second Symphony is peculiarly satisfying to the listener. The first few measures disclose that the composer is in complete control of his ideas and his expression of them. He has something to say, and he says it without uncertainty or redundancy. Only a man who has something to say may dare to say it only once.

Those happy beings who “don’t know a thing about art, but know what they like,” are restricted to the obvious because of ignorance of form; their enjoyment ends where that of the cultivated person begins. Take music. The person who knows what he likes takes his pleasure in the tune, but gets little or nothing from the tune’s development; hence his favorite music is music which is all tune.

We recall a naïve query by the publisher of a magazine, at a musicale in Gotham. Our hostess, an accomplished pianist, had played a Chopin Fantasia, and the magazine man was expressing his qualified enjoyment. “What I can’t understand,” said he, “is why the tune quits just when it’s running along nicely.” This phenomenon, no doubt, has mystified thousands of other “music lovers.”

A Boston woman complains that school seats have worn out three pairs of pants (her son’s) in three months. “Is a wheeze about the seat of learning too obvious?” queries Genevieve. Oh, quite too, my dear!

Mr. Frederick Harrison at 89 observes: “May my end be early, speedy, and peaceful! I regret nothing done or said in my long and busy life. I withdraw nothing, and, as I said before, am not conscious of any change in mind. In youth I was called a revolutionary; in old age I am called a reactionary; both names alike untrue… I ask nothing. I seek nothing. I fear nothing. I have done and said all that I ever could have done and said. There is nothing more. I am ready, and await the call.”

A very good prose version of Henley’s well known poem. As for regretting nothing, a man at forty would be glad to unsay and undo many things. At seventy, and decidedly at eighty-nine, these things have so diminished in importance that it is not worth while withdrawing them.

A DAY WITH LORD DID-MORE

“Mr. Hearst is the home brew; no other hope.”

– The Trib.At his usual hour Lord Did-More rose —Renewed completely by repose —His pleasant duty to rehearseOf oiling up the universe.Casting a glance aloft, he sawThat, yielding to a natural law,The sun obediently movedPrecisely as he had approved.If mundane things would only runAs regularly as the Sun!But Earth’s affairs, less nicely planned,Require Lord Did-More’s guiding hand.This day, outside Lord Did-More’s door,There waited patiently a scoreOf diplomats from far and nearWho sought his sympathetic ear.Each brought to him, that he might scan,The latest governmental plan,And begged of him a word or twoApproving what it hoped to do.Lord Did-More nodded, smiled or frowned,Some word of praise or censure found,Withheld or added his “O. K.”And sent the ministers away.These harmonized and sent away,Lord Did-More finished up his dayBy focusing his cosmic brainOn our political campaign.And night and morning, thro’ the land,The public prints at his commandProclaimed, in type that fairly burst,The doughty deeds of Did-More Hearst.THE SECOND POST[From a genius in Geneseo, Ill.]

Dear sir: I am the champion Cornhusker I have given exhibitions in different places and theater managers and moveing picture men have asked me why I dont have my show put into moves (Film). I beleave it would make a very interesting Picture. We could have it taken right in the Cornfield and also on the stage. It would be very interesting for farmer boys and would be a good drawing card in small towns. I beleave we could make 1000 feet of it by showing me driveing into the field with my extra made wagon. then show them my style and speed of husking and perheps let a common husker husk a while. I could also give my exibition on the stage in a theater includeing the playing of six or eight different Instruments. For instence when I plow with a traction engine or tresh I also lead bands and Orchestra’s.

There is a stage in almost everybody’s musical education when Chopin’s Funeral March seems the most significant composition in the world.

The two stenogs in the L coach were discussing the opera. “I see,” said one, “that they’re going to sing ‘Flagstaff.’” “That’s Verdi’s latest opera,” said the other. “Yes,” contributed the gentleman in the adjacent seat, leaning forward; “and the scene is laid in Arizona.”

Mr. Shanks voxpops that traffic should be relieved, not prevented, as “the automobile is absolutely important in modern business life.” Now, the fact is that the automobile has become a nuisance; one can get about much faster and cheaper in the city on Mr. Shanks’ w. k. mare. Life to-day is scaled to the automobile, whereas, as our gossip Andy Rebori contends, it ought to be scaled to the baby carriage. Many lines of industry are short of labor because this labor has been withdrawn for the care of automobiles.

“Do you remember,” asks a fair correspondent (who protests that she is only academically fair), “when we used to read ‘A Shropshire Lad,’ and A. E., and Arthur Symons, and Yeats? And you used to print so many of the beautiful things they wrote?” Ah, yes, we do remember; but that, my dear, was a long, long time ago, in the period which has just closed, as Bennett puts it. How worth while those things used to seem, and what pleasant days those were. Men say that they will come again. But men said that Arthur would come again.

Our method: We select only things that interest us, assuming that other people will be interested; if they are not – why, chacun à son goût, as the cannibal king remarked, adding a little salt. We printed “The Spires of Oxford” a long time ago because it interested us exceedingly.

A valued colleague quotes the emotional line —

“This is my own, my native land!” —

as palliation, if not justification, for the “simple, homely, and comprehensive adjuration, ‘Own Your Own Home.’” We acknowledge the homeliness and comprehensiveness, but we deny the value of poetic testimony. Said Dr. Johnson:

“Let observation with extensive viewSurvey mankind from China to Peru,”

which, De Quincey or Tennyson declared, should have run: “Let observation with extended observation observe mankind extensively.” Poets and tautology go walking like the Walrus and the Carpenter.

BOLSHEVISM OF LONG AGO

“A radical heaven is a place where every man does what he pleases, and there is a general division of property every Saturday night.” – George S. Hillard (1853).

LULLABYIn Woodman, Wis., the Hotel LullIs where a man may rest his skull.All care and fret is void and nullWhen one puts up at Hotel Lull.Ah, might I wing it as a gullUnto the mansion kept by Lull —By W. K. Lull, the w. k. Lull,Who greets the guests at Hotel Lull.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” But if, miraculously, it happens in Chicago, it can, despite the poet’s word, “pass into nothingness.” The old Field Museum, seen beneath a summer moon, when the mist is on the lake, is as beautiful as anything on the earth’s crust. Not to preserve the exterior were a sin against Beauty, which is the unforgivable sin.

“LEMME UP, DARLING! LEMME UP!”[From the Detroit Free Press.]

My advertisement of Feb. 24 was error. I will be responsible for my wife’s debts. Leo Tyo.

“I’ll make the Line some day or jump into Great Salt Lake,” warns C. W. O. Pick out a soft spot, friend. We jumped into it one day and sprained an ankle.

Alice in Cartoonland

I

“Hello!” said the Hatter. “I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

“No,” said Alice; “I’ve been all over – in Wonderland, in Bookland, in Stageland, and forty other lands. People must be tired of my adventures. Where am I now? I never know.”

“In Cartoonland,” said the Hatter.

“And what are you doing here?” inquired Alice.

“I’m searching for an original cartoon idea,” replied the Hatter. “Would you like to come along?”

“Ever so much,” said Alice.

“The first thing we have to do is to get across that chasm,” said the Hatter, pointing.

Alice saw a huge legend on the far wall of the chasm, and spelled it out – “O-b-l-i-v-i-o-n.”

“Yes, Oblivion,” said the Hatter. “That’s where they dump defeated candidates and other undesirables. Come on, we can cross a little below here.”

He indicated a thin plank that lay across the Chasm of Oblivion.

“Will it hold us?” said Alice.

“It has held the G. O. P. Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, and all sorts of people and things. Let’s hurry over, as here comes the Elephant now, with Mr. Taft riding it, and the plank might give way.”

II

“By the way,” said the Hatter, “here is my hat store.”

There were only two kinds in the window – square paper caps and high silk hats. Alice had never seen paper caps before.

“They’re worn by the laboring man,” said the Hatter; “but you never see them outside of Cartoonland. The plug hats are for Capitalists. I also keep whiskers; siders for Capital and ordinary for Labor.”

“O, there’s a railroad train!” said Alice, suddenly.

“No use taking that train,” said the Hatter; “it doesn’t go. Did you ever see an engine like that outside Cartoonland? And even if it did work we shouldn’t get very far, as the rock Obstruction is always on the track.”

“I’d just as soon walk,” said Alice.

III

“Mercy! there’s a giant!” exclaimed Alice.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said the Hatter; “he’s perfectly good natured.”

“What an awful-looking creature!” said Alice.

“He’s awfully out of drawing,” said the Hatter, critically; “but, then, almost everything in Cartoonland is. It’s the idea that counts.”

“You said you were searching for an original idea,” Alice reminded him.

“But I don’t expect to find one,” the Hatter replied. “You see, it wouldn’t be any use; nobody would understand it. People like the old familiar things, you know.”

“Still, we might happen on one,” said Alice. “Let’s walk along.”

IV

Suddenly a door opened, and a great quantity of rubbish was swept briskly into the street.

“That’s the New Broom,” said the Hatter. “There’s been another election. Evidently the Democrats won, as there goes the Donkey, waving his ears and hee-hawing.”

“Oh, is that a fruit store?” asked Alice.

“No; the Republican headquarters,” replied the Hatter. “That huge cornucopia you see is a symbol of Prosperity. Prosperity in Cartoonland is always represented by a horn of plenty with a pineapple in the muzzle. You’ve heard the expression, ‘The pineapple of prosperity.’”

“No,” said Alice, “but I’ve heard about the ‘pineapple of politeness.’”

“That,” said the Hatter, “is something else again.”

V

Presently they came to a collection of factories, the tall chimneys of which poured out smoke in great volume.

“Those are the Smoking Stacks of Industry,” said the Hatter.

“What do they manufacture here?” asked Alice.

“Cartoonatums,” said the Hatter. “A cartoonatum,” he explained, “is a combination of wheels, rods, cogs, hoppers, cranks, etc., which sometimes looks like a sausage grinder and sometimes like a try-your-weight machine. It couldn’t possibly go, any more than the locomotives in Cartoonland.”

“Why don’t the Cartoonlanders have machines that can go?” inquired Alice.

“That,” replied the Hatter, “would require a little study and observation.”

VI

As Alice and the Hatter walked along they passed many curious things, such as Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, the skin of a Tiger nailed to a barn door, St. George and the Dragon, Father Knickerbocker, barrels of political mud, a huge serpent labeled “Anarchy,” a drug store window full of bottles of Political Dope and boxes of Political Pills, an orchard of Political Plum Trees, and other objects which the Hatter said were as old as the hills. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to hold us here,” he declared.