Bert Leston Taylor

“Lord, what fools these mortals be.”

ARMS AND THE COLYUM.

[p 80]
Listen, Laura, Mary, Jessica, Dorothy, and other sweet singers! Gadder Roy, who is toiling over the pitcher-and-bowl circuit, wishes that some poet would do a lyric on that salvation of the traveler, Ham and Eggs. He doubts that it can be done by anybody who has not, time out of mind, scanned a greasy menu in a greasier hashery, and finally made it h. ande.

WE FEARED WE HAD STARTED SOMETHING.

Sir: Should G.E. Thorpe’s typewritten communications carrying the suggestion GET/FAT precede or follow our communications which carry EAT/ME? E.A.T.

THEY’RE OFF!

Sir: What position in your letter file, respecting the suggestions of GET/FAT, will my typewritten letters land, as they end thusly: “HEL/NO”? H.E.L.

SWEETLY INEFFECTIVE.

Sir: Perhaps the reason my collection letters have so little effect lately is that these cheerless communications always conclude with JAM/JAR. J.A.M.

BUT APROPOS.

Sir: All this GET/FAT excitement reminds me of the case, so old it’s probably new again, of [p 81] />one Simmons, who wrote letters for one Green, and signed them “Green, per Simmons.” W.S.

SORRY. THERE WERE SEVERAL IN LINE AHEAD OF YOU.

Sir: I have been waiting, very patiently, for some one to inform you that the sincerity of A.L. Lewis, manager of the country elevator department of the Quaker Oats Company, is sometimes made questionable by the initials, ALL/GAS, appearing on his business correspondence. O.K.

THE SECOND POST.
[Received by a clothing company.]

Dear Sirs: I received the suits you sent me but in blue not gray as I said. Don’t try to send me your refuss, I am sending them back. I ain’t color blind or a jack ass, you shouldn’t treat me as that. I understand your wife is making coats for ladies now. Have her make one (dark) for my wife who is a stout 42 with a fer neck. Now send me what I asked for, the old woman is perticular. The trousers you sent wouldn’t slip over my head. Ever faithful, etc.

For Academy Ghost, or Familiar Spirit, P.D.Q. nominates Miss Bessie Spectre of Boston.

[p 82]
“The lake is partially frozen over and well filled with skaters.”—Janesville Gazette.

There is plenty of snap to the department of mathematics in the Shortridge high school in Indianapolis. The head of the department is Walter G. Gingery.

Wedded, in Chicago, Otho Neer and Lucille Dimond. Fashion your own setting.

Oh, dear! Rollin Pease, the singer, is around again, reminding sundry readers of the difficulty of keeping them on a knife.

“THOSE FLAPJACKS OF BROWN’S.”
(Postscriptum.)

THE DICTATERS.

Sir: I have lost a year’s growth since I went into business in answering questions about the letters that appear after my communications—HAM/AND. H.A.M.

Letters from the vice-president of the Badger Talking Machine Company of Milwaukee are signed JAS/AK. What do you make of that, Watsonius?

[p 84]
The following was typed at the end of a letter received t’other day: “HEE/HA.”

Recurring to the dictaters, letters from the O’Meara Paper company of New York are tagged JEW/EM.

Hint to students in the School of journalism: Always begin the description of a tumultuous scene by saying that it is indescribable, and then proceed to describe it until the telegraph editor chokes you off.

To our young friend who expects to operate a column: Lay off the item about Miss Hicks entertaining Carrie Dedbeete and Ima Proone; it is phony. But the wheeze about the “eternal revenue collector” is still good, and timely.

“I am a cub reporter,” writes W.H.D., “and am going to conduct a column in a few weeks, I think.” Zazzo? Well, you can’t do better than to start with the announcement that Puls & Puls are dentists in Sheboygan. And you might add that if the second Puls is a son the firm should be Puls &Fils.

[p 85]
Our cub reporter friend, W.H.D., who expects to run a column presently, should not overlook the sure-fire wheeze, “Shoes shined on the inside.”

Still undiscouraged by the failure of his “shoes shined on the inside” wheeze to get by, the new contrib hopefully sends us the laundry slogan: “Don’t kill your wife. Let us do the dirty work.”

When all the world is safe for democracy, only the aristocracy of taste will remain, and this will cover the world. There is hardly a town so small that it does not contain at least one member. All races belong to it, and its passwords are accepted in every capital. Its mysteries are Rosicrucian to persons without taste. And no other aristocracy was ever, or ever will be, so closely and sympathetically knit together.

Whether Europe and Latin America like it or not, the Monroe Doctrine must and shall be preserved. You may remember the case of the man who was accused of being a traitor. It was charged that he had spoken as disrespectfully of the Monroe Doctrine as Jeffrey once spoke of the Equator. This the man denied vigorously. He avowed that he loved the Monroe Doctrine, that he was willing to fight for it, and, if [p 86] />necessary, to die for it. All he had said was that he didn’t know what it was about.

“There will be no speeches. The entire evening will be given over to entertainment.”—Duluth News-Tribune.

At least prohibition is a check on oratory.

We have just been talking to an optimist, whose nerves have been getting shaky. We fancy that a straw vote of the rocking-chair fleet on a sanitarium porch would show a preponderance of optimists. What brought them there? Worry, which is brother to optimism. We attribute our good health and reasonable amount of hair to the fact that we never flirted with optimism, except for a period of about five years, during which time we lost more hair than in all the years since.

May we again point out that pessimism is the only cheerful philosophy? The pessimist is not concerned over the so-called yellow peril—at least the pessimist who subscribes to the theory of the degradation of energy. Europe is losing its pep, but so is Asia. There may be a difference of degree, but not enough to keep one from sleeping soundly o’ nights. The twentieth or twenty-first century can not produce so energetic a gang as that which came out of Asia in the fifth century.

[p 87]
“If I had no duties,” said Dr. Johnson, “and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a postchaise with a pretty woman.” And we wonder whether the old boy, were he living now, would choose, instead, a Ford.

In time of freeze prepare for thaw. And no better advice can be given than Doc Robertson’s: “Keep your feet dry and your gutters open.”

There was an Irish meeting in Janesville the other night, and the press reported that “Garlic songs were sung.” And we recall another report of a lecture on Yeats and the Garlic Revival. Just a moment, while we take a look at the linotype keyboard.…

THINGS WORTH KNOWING.

Sir: A method of helping oneself to soda crackers, successfully employed by a traveling man, may be of interest to your boarding house readers. Slice off a small piece of butter, leaving it on the knife, then reach across the table and slap the cracker. V.

By the way, Bismarck had a solution of the Irish problem which may have been forgotten. He proposed that the Irish and the Dutch [p 88] />exchange countries. The Dutch, he said, would make a garden of Ireland. “And the Irish?” he was asked. “Oh,” he replied, “the Irish would neglect the dikes.”

A city is known by the newspapers it keeps. They reflect the tastes of the community, and if they are lacking in this or that it is because the community is lacking. And so it is voxpoppycock to complain that a newspaper is not what a small minority thinks it ought to be. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our journals, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Dissatisfaction with American newspapers began with the first one printed, and has been increasing steadily since. In another hundred years this dissatisfaction may develop into positive annoyance.

We tried to have a sign in Los Onglaze translated into French for the benefit of Lizy, the linotype operator who sets this column in Paris, and who says she has yet to get a laugh out of it, but two Frenchmen who tried their hand at it gave it up. Perhaps the compositor at the adjacent machine can randmacnally it for Lizy. Here is the enseigne:

“Flannels washed without shrinking in the rear.”

[p 89]
To the fair Murine: “Drink to me only with thine eyes.”

“Hosiery for Easter,” declares an enraptured ad writer in the Houston Post, “reaches new heights of loveliness.”

If the persons who parade around with placards announcing that this or that shop is “unfair” were to change the legend to read, “God is unfair,” they might get a sympathetic rise out of us. We might question the assertion that in creating men unequal the Creator was actuated by malice rather than a sense of humor, but we should not insist on the point.

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.

[p 90]
“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 OUBLIETTE.

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 [p 92] />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 [p 93] />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 [p 94] />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 DRIVEL.

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!”

[p 96]
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.

[p 97]
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.

[p 98]
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.)

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 [p 99] />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, [p 100] />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. ofw.

THE TRACERS ARE AT WORK.

Sir: Please consult the genealogical files of the Academy and advise me if Mr. Harm Poppen of [p 101] />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.

[p 102]
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 [p 103] />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.

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 [p 105] />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 [p 106] />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!”—

[p 107]
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 view
Survey 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).

LULLABY.