 |
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Supply Captain's name.
LIII
HOW TO SELL GOODS
The Retail Merchants' Association ought to buy up all the copies of "Elements of Retail Salesmanship," by Paul Westley Ivey (Macmillan), and not let a single one get into the hands of a customer, for once the buying public reads what is written there the game is up. It tells all about how to sell goods to people, how to appeal to their weaknesses, how to exert subtle influences which will win them over in spite of themselves. Houdini might as well issue a pamphlet giving in detail his methods of escape as for the merchants of this country to let this book remain in circulation.
The art of salesmanship is founded, according to Mr. Ivey, on, first, a thorough knowledge of the goods which are to be sold, and second, a knowledge of the customer. By knowing the customer you know what line of argument will most appeal to him. There are several lines in popular use. First is the appeal to the instinct of self-preservation—i.e., social self-preservation. The customer is made to feel that in order to preserve her social standing she must buy the article in question. "She must be made to feel what a disparaged social self would mean to her mental comfort."
It is reassuring to know that it is a recognized ruse on the part of the salesman to intimate that unless you buy a particular article you will have to totter through life branded as the arch-piker. I have always taken this attitude of the clerks perfectly seriously. In fact, I have worried quite a bit about it.
In the store where I am allowed to buy my clothes it is quite the thing among the salesmen to see which one of them can degrade me most. They intimate that, while they have no legal means of refusing to sell their goods to me, it really would be much more in keeping with things if I were to take the few pennies that I have at my disposal and run around the corner to some little haberdashery for my shirts and ties. Every time I come out from that store I feel like Ethel Barrymore in "Declassee." Much worse, in fact, for I haven't any good looks to fall back upon.
But now that I know the clerks are simply acting all that scorn in an attempt to appeal to my instinct for the preservation of my social self, I can face them without flinching. When that pompous old boy with the sandy mustache who has always looked upon me as a member of the degenerate Juke family tries to tell me that if I don't take the five-dollar cravat he won't be responsible for the way in which decent people will receive me when I go out on the street, I will reach across the counter and playfully pull his own necktie out from his waistcoat and scream, "I know you, you old rascal! You got that stuff from page 68 of 'Elements of Retail Salesmanship' (Macmillan)."
* * * * *
Other traits which a salesperson may appeal to in the customer are: Vanity, parental pride, greed, imitation, curiosity and selfishness. One really gets in touch with a lot of nice people in this work and can bring out the very best that is in them.
Customers are divided into groups indicative of temperament. There is first the Impulsive or Nervous Customer. She is easily recognized because she walks into the store in "a quick, sometimes jerky manner. Her eyes are keen-looking; her expression is intense, oftentimes appearing strained." She must be approached promptly, according to the book, and what she desires must be quickly ascertained. Since these are the rules for selling to people who enter the store in this manner, it might be well, no matter how lethargic you may be by nature, to assume the appearance of the Impulsive or Nervous Customer as soon as you enter the store, adopting a quick, even jerky manner and making your eyes as keen-looking as possible, with an intense expression, oftentimes appearing strained. Then the clerk will size you up as type No. 1 and will approach you promptly. After she has quickly filled your order you may drop the impulsive pose and assume your natural, slow manner again, whereupon the clerk will doubtless be highly amused at having been so cleverly fooled into giving quick service.
* * * * *
The opposite type is known as the Deliberate Customer. She walks slowly and in a dignified manner. Her facial expression is calm and poised. "Gestures are uncommon, but if existing tend to be slow and inconspicuous." She can wait.
Then there is the Vacillating or Indecisive Customer, the Confident or Decisive Customer (this one should be treated with subtle flattery and agreement with all her views), The Talkative or Friendly Customer, and the Silent or Indifferent one. All these have their little weaknesses, and the perfect salesperson will learn to know these and play to them.
There seems to be only one thing left for the customer to do in order to meet this concerted attack upon his personality. That is, to hire some expert like Mr. Ivey to study the different types of sales men and women and formulate methods of meeting their offensive. Thus, if I am of the type designated as the Vacillating or Indecisive Customer, I ought to know what to do when confronted by a salesman of the Aristocratic, Scornful type, so that I may not be bulldozed into buying something I do not want.
If I could only find such a book of instructions I would go tomorrow and order a black cotton engineer's shirt from that sandy-mustached salesman and bawl him out if he raised his eyebrows. But not having the book, I shall go in and, without a murmur, buy a $3 silk shirt for $18 and slink out feeling that if I had been any kind of sport at all I would also have bought that cork helmet in the showcase.
LIV
"YOU!"
In the window of the grocery store to which I used to be sent after a pound of Mocha and Java mixed and a dozen of your best oranges, there was a cardboard figure of a clerk in a white coat pointing his finger at the passers-by. As I remember, he was accusing you of not taking home a bottle of Moxie, and pretty guilty it made you feel too.
This man was, I believe, the pioneer in what has since become a great literary movement. He founded the "You, Mr. Business-Man!" school of direct appeal. It is strictly an advertising property and has long been used to sell merchandise to people who never can resist the flattery of being addressed personally. When used as an advertisement it is usually accompanied by an illustration built along the lines of the pioneer grocery-clerk, pointing a virile finger at you from the page of the magazine, and putting the whole thing on a personal basis by addressing you as "You, Mr. Rider-in-the-Open-Cars!" or "You, Mr. Wearer-of-141/2-Shirts!" The appeal is instantaneous.
In straight reading-matter, bound in book form and sold as literature, this Moxie talk becomes a volume of inspirational sermonizing, and instead of selling cooling drinks or warming applications, it throws dynamic paragraph after dynamic paragraph into the fight for efficiency, concentration, self-confidence and personality on the part of our body politic. A homely virtue such as was taught us at our mother's knee (or across our mother's knees) at the age of four, in a dozen or so simple words, is taken and blown up into a book in which it is stated very impressively in a series of short, snappy sentences, all saying the same thing.
Such a book is called, for instance "You," written by Irving R. Allen.
* * * * *
"You" takes 275 pages to divulge a secret of success. It would not be fair to Mr. Allen to give it away here after he has spent so much time concealing it. But it might be possible to give some idea of the importance of Mr. Allen's discovery by stating one of my own, somewhat in the manner in which he has stated his. I will give my little contribution to the world's inspiration the title of
HEY, YOU!
You and I are alone.
No, don't try to get away. That door is locked. I won't hurt you—much.
What I want to do is make you see yourself. I want you, when you put down this book, to say, "I know myself!" I want you to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say: "Why, certainly I remember you, Mr. Addington Simms of Seattle, you old Rotary Club dog! How's your merger?"
And the only way that you can ever be able to do this is to read this book through.
Then read it through again.
Then read it through again.
Then ring Dougherty's bell and ask for "Chester."
Now let's get down to business.
I knew a man once who had made a million dollars. If he hadn't been arrested he would have made another million.
Do you see what I mean?
If not, go back and read that over a second time. It's worth it. I wrote it for you to read. You, do you hear me? You!
If you want to know the secret of this man's success, of the success of hundreds of other men just like him, if you want to make his success your success, you must first learn the rule.
What is this rule? you may ask.
Go ahead and ask it.
Very well, since you ask.
It is a rule which has kept J.P. Morgan what he is. It is a rule which gives John D. Rockefeller the right to be known as the Baptist man alive. It is a rule which is responsible for the continued existence of every successful man of today.
And now I am going to tell it to you.
You, the you that you know, the real you, are going to learn the secret.
Can you bear it?
Here it is:
You can't win if you breathe under water.
Read that again.
Read it backward.
It may sound simple to you now. You may say to yourself, "What do you take me for, a baby boy?"
Well, you paid good money for this book, didn't you?
LV
THE CATALOGUE SCHOOL
Without wishing in the least to detract from the praise due to Sinclair Lewis for the remarkable accuracy with which he reports details in his "Main Street," it is interesting to speculate on how other books might have read had their authors had Mr. Lewis's flair for minutiae and their publishers enough paper to print the result.
For instance, Carol Kennicott, the heroine, whenever she is overtaken by an emotional scene, is given to looking out at the nearest window to hide her feelings, whereupon the author goes to great lengths to describe just exactly what came within her range of vision. Nothing escapes him, even to shreds of excelsior lying on the ground in back of Howland & Gould's grocery store.
* * * * *
Let us suppose that Harriet Beecher Stowe had been endowed with Mr. Lewis's gift for reporting and had indulged herself in it to the extent of the following in "Uncle Tom's Cabin:"
"Slowly Simon Legree raised his whip-arm to strike the prostrate body of the old negro. As he did so his eye wandered across the plantation to the slaves' quarters which crouched blistering in the sun. Cowed as they were, as only ramshackle buildings can be cowed, they presented their gray boards, each eaten with four or five knot-holes, to the elements in abject submission. The door of one hung loose by a rust-encased hinge, of which only one screw remained on duty, and that by sheer willpower of two or three threads. Legree could not quite make out how many threads there were on the screw, but he guessed, and Simon Legree's guess was nearly always right. On the ground at the threshold lay a banjo G string, curled like a blond snake ready to strike at the reddish, brown inner husk of a nut of some sort which was blowing about within reach. There were also several crumbs of corn-pone, well-done, a shred of tobacco which had fallen from the pipe of some negro slave before the fire had consumed more than its very tip, an old shoe which had, Legree noticed by the maker's name, been bought in Boston in its palmier days, doubtless by a Yankee cousin of one of Uncle Tom's former owners, and an indiscriminate pile of old second editions of a Richmond newspaper, sweet-potato peelings and seeds of unripe watermelons.
"Swish! The blow descended on the crouching form of Uncle Tom."
* * * * *
Or Sir Walter Scott:
"Sadly Rowena turned from her lover's side and looked out over the courtyard of the castle. Beneath her she saw the cobble-stones all scratched and marred with gray bruises from the horses' hoofs, a faded purple ribbon dropped from the mandolin of a minstrel, three slightly imperfect wassails and a trencher with a nick on the rim, all that had not been used of the wild boar at last night's feast, a peach-stone like a wrinkled almond nestling in a sardine tin. Slowly she faced her knight:
"'Prithee,' she said."
* * * * *
And I am not at all sure that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Ivanhoe" wouldn't have made better reading if they had lapsed into the photographic at times. Mr. Lewis may overdo it, but I expect to re-read "Main Street" some day, and that is more encouragement than I can hold out to Mrs. Stowe or Sir Walter Scott.
LVI
"EFFECTIVE HOUSE ORGANS"
To the hurrying commuter as he waits for his two cents change at the news stand it looks as if all the periodicals in the United States were on display there, none of which he ever has quite time enough to buy. It seems incredible that there should be presses enough in the country to print all the matter that he sees hanging from wires, piled on the counter and dangling from clips over the edge, to say nothing of his conceiving of there being other periodicals in circulation which he never even hears about. But any one knowing the commuter well enough to call him "dearie" might tell him in slightly worn vernacular that he doesn't know the half of it.
One cannot get a true idea of the amount of sideline printing that is done in this country without reading "Effective House Organs," written by Robert E. Ramsay. The mass effect of this book is appalling. Page after page of clear-cut illustrations show reproductions of hundreds and hundreds of house-organ covers and give the reader a hopeless sensation of going down for the third time. Such names as "Gas Logic," "Crane-ing," "Hidden's Hints," "The Y. and E. Idea," "Vim," "Tick Talk" and "The Smileage" show that Yankee ingenuity has invaded the publishing field, which means that the literature of business is on its way to becoming the literature of the land.
For those who are so illiterate as not to be familiar with the literature of business, I quote a definition of the word "house organ":
"A house magazine or bulletin to dealers, customers or employees, designed to promote goodwill, increase sales, induce better salesmanship or develop better profits."
* * * * *
In spite of Mr. Ramsay's exceedingly thorough treatment of his subject, there is one type of house organ to which he devotes much too little space. This is the so-called "employee or internal house organ" and is designed to keep the help happy and contented with their lot and to spur them on to extra effort in making it a banner year for the stockholders. The possibilities of this sort of house organ in the solution of the problem of industrial unrest are limitless.
Publications for light reading among employees are usually called by such titles as "Diblee Doings," "Tinkham Topics," "The Mooney and Carmiechal Machine Lather" or "Better Belting News."
First of all, they carry news notes of happenings among the employees, so that a real spirit of cooperation and team-play may be fostered. These news notes include such as the following:
"Eddie Lingard of the Screen Room force, was observed last Saturday evening between the mystic hours of six-thirty with a certain party from the Shipping Room, said party in a tan knit sweater, on their way to Ollie's. Come, 'fess up, Eddie!"
"Everyone is wondering who the person is who put chocolate peppermints in some of the girls' pockets while they were hanging in the Girls' Rest Room Thursday afternoon, it being so hot that they melted and practically ruined some of their clothing. Some folks have a funny sense of humor."
* * * * *
Then there are excerpts from speeches made by the Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton and young Mr. Rockefeller or by the President and Treasurer of the Diamond Motor Sales Corporation, saying, in part:
"The man who makes good in any line of work is the man who gives the best there is in him. He doesn't watch the clock. He doesn't kick when he fails to get that raise that he may have expected. He just digs into the job harder and makes the dust fly. And when some one comes along waving a red flag and tries to make him stop work and strike for more money, he turns on the agitator and says: 'You get the h—— out of here. I know my job better than you do. I know my boss better than you do, and I know that he is going to give me the square deal just as soon as he can see his way clear to do it. And in the mean time I am going to WORK!'
"That is the kind of man who makes good."
* * * * *
And then there are efficiency contests, with the force divided into teams trying to see which one can wrap the most containers or stamp the largest number of covers in the week. The winning team gets a felt banner and their names are printed in full in that week's issue of "Pep" or "Nosey News."
And biographies of employees who have been with the company for more than fifty years, with photographs, and a little notice written by the Superintendent saying that this will show the company's appreciation of Mr. Gomble's loyal and unswerving allegiance to his duty, implying that any one else who does his duty for fifty years will also get his picture in the paper and a notice by the Superintendent.
It will easily be seen how this sort of house organ can be made to promote good feeling and esprit de corps among the help. If only more concerns could be prevailed upon to bring this message of weekly or monthly good cheer to their employees, who knows but what the whole caldron of industrial unrest might not suddenly simmer down to mere nothingness? It has been said that all that is necessary is for capital and labor to understand each other. Certainly such a house organ helps the employees to understand their employers.
Perhaps some one will start a house organ edited by the employees for circulation among the bosses, containing newsy notes about the owners' families, quotations from Karl Marx and the results of the profit-sharing contest between the various mills of the district.
This would complete the circle of understanding.
LVII
ADVICE TO WRITERS
Two books have emerged from the hundreds that are being published on the art of writing. One of them is "The Lure of the Pen," by Flora Klickmann, and the other is "Learning to Write," a collection of Stevenson's meditations on the subject, issued by Scribners. At first glance one might say that the betting would be at least eight to one on Stevenson. But for real, solid, sensible advice in the matter of writing and selling stories in the modern market, Miss Klickmann romps in an easy winner.
It must be admitted that John William Rogers Jr., who collected the Stevenson material, warns the reader in his introduction that the book is not intended to serve as "a macadamized, mile-posted road to the secret of writing," but simply as a help to those who want to write and who are interested to know how Stevenson did it. So we mustn't compare it too closely with Miss Klickmann's book, which is quite frankly a mile-posted road, with little sub-headings along the side of the page such as we used to have in Fiske's Elementary American History. But Miss Klickmann will save the editors of the country a great deal more trouble than Stevenson's advice ever will. She is the editor of an English magazine herself, and has suffered.
* * * * *
Where Miss Klickmann enumerates the pitfalls which the candidate must avoid and points out qualities which every good piece of writing should have, Stevenson writes a delightful essay on "The Profession of Letters" or "A Gossip on Romance." These essays are very inspiring. They are too inspiring. They make the reader feel that he can go out and write like Stevenson. And then a lot of two-cent stamps are wasted and a lot more editors are cross when they get home at night.
On the other hand, the result of Miss Klickmann's book is to make the reader who feels a writing spell coming on stop and give pause. He finds enumerated among the horrors of manuscript-reading several items which he was on the point of injecting into his own manuscript with considerable pride. He may decide that the old job in the shipping-room isn't so bad after all, with its little envelope coming in regularly every week. As a former member of the local manuscript-readers' union, I will give one of three rousing cheers for any good work that Miss Klickmann may do in this field. One writer kept very busy at work in the shipping-room every day is a victory for literature. I used to have a job in a shipping-room myself, so I know.
If, for instance, the subject under discussion were that of learning to skate, Miss Klickmann might advise as follows:
1. Don't try to skate if your ankles are weak.
2. Get skates that fit you. A skate which can't be put on when you get to the pond, or one which drags behind your foot by the strap, is worse than no skate at all.
3. If you are sure that you are ready, get on your feet and skate.
On the same subject, Scribners might bring to light something that Stevenson had written to a young friend about to take his first lesson in skating, reading as follows:
"To know the secret of skating is, indeed, I have always thought, the beginning of winter-long pleasance. It comes as sweet deliverance from the tedium of indoor isolation and brings exhilaration, now with a swift glide to the right, now with a deft swerve to the left, now with a deep breath of healthy air, now with a long exhalation of ozone, which the lungs, like greedy misers, have cast aside after draining it of its treasure. But it is not health that we love nor exhilaration that we seek, though we may think so; our design and our sufficient reward is to verify our own existence, say what you will.
"And so, my dear young friend, I would say to you: Open up your heart; sing as you skate; sing inharmoniously if you will, but sing! A man may skate with all the skill in the world; he may glide forward with incredible deftness and curve backward with divine grace, and yet if he be not master of his emotions as well as of his feet, I would say—and here Fate steps in—that he has failed."
* * * * *
There is, of course, plenty of good advice in the Stevenson book. But it is much better as pure reading matter than as advice to the young idea or even the middle-aged idea. It may have been all right for Stevenson to "play the sedulous ape" and consciously imitate the style of Hazlitt, Lamb, Montaigne and the rest, but if the rest of us were to try it there would result a terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected authors, all playing the sedulous ape and all looking the part.
On the whole, the Stevenson book makes good reading and Miss Klickmann gives good advice.
LVIII
"THE EFFECTIVE SPEAKING VOICE"
Joseph A. Mosher begins his book on "The Effective Speaking Voice" by saying:
"Among the many developments of the great war was a widespread activity in public speaking."
Mr. Mosher, to adopt a technical term of elocution, has said a mouthful. Whatever else the war did for us, it raised overnight an army of public speakers among the civilian population, many of whom seem not yet to have received their discharge. It is the aim of Mr. Mosher's book to keep this Landwehr in fighting trim and aid in recruiting its ranks, possibly against the next war. Until every nation on earth has subjected its public speakers to a devastating operation on the larynx no true disarmament can be said to have taken place.
* * * * *
In the first place there are exercises which must be performed by the man who would have an effective speaking voice, exercises similar to Walter Camp's Daily Dozen. You stand erect, with the chest held moderately high. (Moderation in all things is the best rule to follow, no matter what you are doing.) Place the thumbs just above the hips, with the fingers forward over the waist to note the muscular action. Then you inhale and exhale and make the sound of "ah" and the sound of "ah-oo-oh," and, if you aren't self-conscious, you say "wah-we-wi-wa," slowly, ten or a dozen times.
"The student should stop at once if signs of dizziness appear," says the book, but it does not say whether the symptoms are to be looked for in the student himself or in the rest of the family.
* * * * *
The author does the public a rather bad turn when he suggests to student speakers that, under stress, they might use what is known as the "orotund." The orotund quality in public speaking is saved for passages containing grandeur of thought, when the orator feels the need of a larger, fuller, more resonant and sounding voice to be in keeping with the sentiment. Its effect is somewhat that of a chant, and here is how you do it:
The chest is raised and tensed, the cavities of the mouth and pharynx are enlarged, more breath is directed into the nasal chambers and the lips are opened more widely to give free passage to the increased volume of voice.
The effectiveness of the orotund might be somewhat reduced if the audience knew the conscious mechanical processes which went to make it up. Or if, in the Congressional Record, instead of (laughter and applause) the vocal technique of the orator could be indicated, how few would be the wars into which impassioned Senators could plunge us! For example, Mr. Thurston's plea for intervention in Cuba:
"The time for action has come. (Tensing the chest.) No greater reason for it can exist tomorrow than exists today. (Enlarging the cavities of the mouth.) Every hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. (Enlarging the cavities of the pharynx.) Only one power can intervene—the United States of America. (Directing more breath into the nasal chambers.) Ours is the one great nation of the New World—the mother of republics. (Elevating the diaphragm.) We cannot refuse to accept this responsibility which the God of the Universe has placed upon us as the one great power of the New World. We must act! (Raising the tongue and thrusting it forward so that the edges of the blade are pressed against the upper grinders.) What shall our action be? (Lifting the voice-box very high and the edges of the tongue blade against the soft palate, leaving only a small central groove for the passage of air.)"
* * * * *
The aspirate quality, or whisper, is very effective when well handled, and the book gives a few exercises for practice's sake. Try whispering a few of them, if you are sure that you are alone in the room. You will sound very silly if you are overheard.
a. "I can't tell just how it happened; I think the beam fell on me."
b. "Keep back; wait till I see if the coast is clear."
c. "Ask the man next to you if he'll let me see his programme."
d. "Hark! What was that?"
e. "It's too steep—he'll never make it—oh, this is terrible!"
* * * * *
For the cheery evening's reading, if you happen to be feeling low in your mind, let me recommend that section of "The Effective Speaking Voice" which deals with "the Subdued Range." The selections for the practice-reading include the following well-known nuggets in lighter vein:
"The Wounded Soldier," "The Death of Molly Cass," "The Little Cripple's Garden," "The Burial of Little Nell," "The Light of Other Days," "The Baby is Dead," "King David Mourns for Absalom," and "The Days That Are No More."
After all, a good laugh never does anyone any harm.
LIX
THOSE DANGEROUSLY DYNAMIC BRITISH GIRLS
It is difficult to get into Rose Macaulay's "Dangerous Ages" once you discover that it is going to be about another one of those offensively healthy English families. Ever since "Mr. Britling" we have been deluged with accounts from overseas of whole droves of British brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, who all get out at six in the morning and play hockey all over the place. Each has some strange, intimate name like "Bim," or "Pleda," or "Goots," and you can never tell which are the brothers and which the sisters until they begin to have children along in the tenth or eleventh chapter.
In "Dangerous Ages" they swim. Dozens of them, all in the same family, go splashing in at once and persist in calling out health slogans to one another across the waves. There are Neville and Rodney and Gerda and Kay, and one or two very old ladies whose relationship to the rest of the clan is never very definitely established. Grandma, for some reason or other, doesn't go in swimming that day, doubtless because she had already been in before breakfast and her suit wasn't dry.
These dynamic British girls are always full of ruddy health and current information. They go about kidding each other on the second reading of the Home Rule bill or fooling in their girlish way about the chances of the Labor candidate in the coming Duncastershire elections. It is getting so that no novel of British life will be complete without somewhere in its pages a scene like the following:
"A chance visitor at The Beetles some autumn morning along about five o'clock might have been surprised to see a trail of dog-trotting figures winding their way heatedly across the meadow. No one but a chance visitor would be surprised, however, for it was well known to invited guests that the entire Willetts family ran cross-country down to the outskirts of London and back every morning before breakfast, a matter of fourteen miles. In the lead was, of course, Dungeon in running costume, followed closely by the flaxen-haired Mid and snub-nosed Boola, then Arlix and Linny, striving valiantly for fourth place but not reckoning on the fleet-footed Meeda, who was no longer content to hobble in the vanguard with Grandpa Willetts and Grandpa's old mother, who still insisted on cross-country running, although she had long since been put on the retired list at the Club.
"'Oh, Linny,' called out Dungeon over her shoulder, 'you young minx! Why didn't you tell us that you were reading a paper on Birth Control at the next meeting of the Spiddix? Twiller just told me today. It's too ripping of you!'
"'Silly goose,' panted Linny, stumbling over a hedgerow, 'how about what the vicar said the other night about your inferiority complex? It was toppo, and you know it.'
"'It won't be long now before we'll have disenfranchisement through, anyway,' muttered Grandpa Willetts, crashing down into a stone quarry, at which exhibition of reaction a loud chorus of laughter went up from the entire family, who by this time had reached Nogroton and were bursting with health."
LX
BOOKS AND OTHER THINGS
For those to whom the purple-and-gold filigreed covers of Florence L. Barclay's books bring a stirring of the sap and a fluttering of the susceptible heart, "Returned Empty" comes as a languorous relief from the stolid realism of most present-day writing. One reads it and swoons. And on opening one's eyes again, one hears old family retainers murmuring in soft retentive accents: "Here, sip some of this, my lord; 'twill bring the roses back to those cheeks and the strength to those poor limbs." It's elegant, that's all there is to it, elegant.
"Returned Empty" was the inscription on the wrappings which enfolded the tiny but aristocratic form of a man-child left on the steps of the Foundlings Institution one moonless October night. There was also some reference to Luke, xii., 6, which in return refers to five sparrows sold for two farthings. What more natural, then, than for the matron to name the little one Luke Sparrow?
Luke was an odd boy but refined. So odd that he used to go about looking in at people's windows when they forgot to pull down the shades, and so refined that he never wished to be inside with them.
But one night, when he was thirty years old, he looked in at the window of a very refined and elegant mansion and saw a woman. In the simple words of the author, "in court or cottage alike she would be queen." That's the kind of woman she was.
And what do you think? She saw Luke looking in. Not only saw him but came over to the window and told him that she had been expecting him. Well, you could have knocked Luke over with a feather. However, he allowed himself to be ushered in by the butler (everything in the house was elegant like that) and up to a room where he found evening clothes, bath-salts and grand things of that nature. On passing a box of books which stood in the hall he read the name on it "before he realized what he was doing." Of course the minute he thought what an unrefined thing it was to do he stopped, but it was too late. He had already seen that his hostess's name was "Lady Tintagel."
When later he met her down in the luxurious dining-room she was just as refined as ever. And so was he. They both were so refined that she had to tell the butler to "serve the fruit in the Oak Room, Thomas."
* * * * *
Once in the Oak Room she told him her strange tale. It seemed that he was her husband. He didn't remember it, but he was. He had been drowned some years before and she had wished so hard that he might come back to life that finally he had been born again in the body of Luke Sparrow. It's funny how things work out like that sometimes.
But Luke, who, as has been said before, was an odd boy, took it very hard and said that he didn't want to be brought back to life. Not even when she told him that his name was now Sir Nigel Guido Cadross Tintagel, Bart. He became very cross and said that he was going out and drown himself all over again, just to show her that she shouldn't have gone meddling with his spirit life. He was too refined to say so, but when you consider that he was just thirty, and his wife, owing to the difference in time between the spirit world and this, had gone on growing old until she was now pushing sixty, he had a certain amount of justice on his side. But of course she was Lady Tintagel, and all the lovers of Florence Barclay will understand that that is something.
So, after reciting Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar," at her request (credit is given in the front of the book for the use of this poem, and only rightly too, for without it the story could never have been written), he goes out into the ocean. But there—we mustn't give too much of the plot away. All that one need know is that Luke or Sir Nigel, as you wish (and what reader of Florence Barclay wouldn't prefer Sir Nigel?), was so cultured that he said, "Nobody in the whole world knows it, save you and I," and referred to "flotsam and jetson" as he was swimming out into the path of the rising sun. "Jetsam" is such an ugly word.
It is only fitting that on his tombstone Lady Tintagel should have had inscribed an impressive and high-sounding misquotation from the Bible.
LXI
"MEASURE YOUR MIND"
"Measure Your Mind" by M.R. Traube and Frank Parker Stockbridge, is apt to be a very discouraging book if you have any doubt at all about your own mental capacity. From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating "Low Average Ability," reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it. If they ever adopt the "menti-meter tests" on this journal I shall last just about forty-five minutes.
And the trouble is that each test starts off so easily. You begin to think that you are so good that no one has ever appreciated you. There is for instance, a series of twenty-four pictures (very badly drawn too, Mr. Frank Parker Stockbridge. You think you are so smart, picking flaws with people's intelligence. If I couldn't draw a better head than the one on page 131 I would throw up the whole business). At any rate, in each one of these pictures there is something wrong (wholly apart from the drawing). You are supposed to pick out the incongruous feature, and you have 180 seconds in which to tear the twenty-four pictures to pieces.
* * * * *
The first one is easy. The rabbit has one human ear. In the second one the woman's eye is in her hair. Pretty soft, you say to yourself. In the third the bird has three legs. It looks like a cinch. Following in quick succession come a man with his mouth in his forehead, a horse with cow's horns, a mouse with rabbit's ears, etc. You will have time for a handspring before your 180 seconds are up.
But then they get tricky. There is a post-card with a stamp upside down. Well, what's wrong with that? Certainly there is no affront to nature in a stamp upside down. Neither is there in a man's looking through the large end of a telescope if he wants to. You can't arbitrarily say at the top of the page, "Mark the thing that is wrong," and then have a picture of a house with one window larger than all the others and expect any one to agree with you that it is necessarily wrong. It may look queer, but so does the whole picture. You can't tell; the big window may open from a room that needs a big window. I am not going to stultify myself by making things wrong about which I know none of the facts. Who am I that I should condemn a man for looking through the large end of a telescope? Personally, I like to look through the large end of a telescope. It only shows the state of personal liberty in this country when a picture of a man looking at a ship through the large end of a telescope is held before the young and branded as "wrong."
* * * * *
Arguing these points with yourself takes up quite a bit of time and you get so out of patience with the man that made up the examination that you lose all heart in it.
Then come some pictures about which I am frankly in the dark. There is a Ford car with a rather funny-looking mud-guard, but who can pick out any one feature of a Ford and say that it is wrong? It may look wrong but I'll bet that the car in this picture as it stands could pass many a big car on a hill.
Then there is a boy holding a bat, and while his position isn't all that a coach could ask, the only radically wrong thing that I can detect about the picture is that he is evidently playing baseball in a clean white shirt with a necktie and a rather natty cap set perfectly straight on his head. It is true he has his right thumb laid along the edge of the bat, but maybe he likes to bunt that way. There is something in the picture that I don't get, I am afraid, just as there is in the picture of two men playing golf. One is about to putt. Aside from the fact that his putter seems just a trifle long, I should have to give up my guess and take my defeat like a man.
But I do refuse to concede anything on Picture No. 22. Here a baby is shown sitting on the floor. He appears to be about a year and a half old. Incidentally, he is a very plain baby. Strewn about him on the floor are the toys that he has been playing with. There are a ball, a rattle, a ring, a doll, a bell and a pair of roller-skates. Evidently, the candidate is supposed to be aghast at the roller-skates in the possession of such a small child.
The man who drew that picture had evidently never furnished playthings for a small child. I can imagine nothing that would delight a child of a year and a half more than a pair of roller-skates to chew and spin and hit himself in the face with. They could also be dropped on Daddy when Daddy was lying on the floor in an attempt to be sociable. Of all the toys arranged before the child, the roller-skates are the most logical. I suppose that the author of this test would insist on calling a picture wrong which showed a baby with a safety-razor in his hand or an overshoe on his head, and yet a photograph of the Public Library could not be more true to life.
That is my great trouble in taking tests and examinations of any kind. I always want to argue with the examiner, because the examiner is always so obviously wrong.
LXII
THE BROW-ELEVATION IN HUMOR
After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get out a new book by him each year. Without recourse to the ouija board, Harper & Brothers manage to do very well by Mark Twain, considering that all they have to work with are the books that he wrote when he was alive. Each year we get something from the pen of the famous humorist, even though the ink has faded slightly. An introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine and a hitherto unpublished photograph as a frontspiece, and there you are—the season's new Mark Twain book.
This season it is "Moments With Mark Twain," a collection of excerpts from his works for quick and handy reading. We may look for further books in this series in 1923, 1924, 1925, &c., to be entitled "Half Hours With Mark Twain" (the selections a trifle longer), "Pleasant Week-Ends With Mark Twain," "Indian Summer With Mark Twain," &c.
There is an interesting comparison between this sample bottle of the humor of Mark Twain and that contained in the volume entitled "Something Else Again," by Franklin P. Adams. The latter is a volume of verse and burlesques which have appeared in the newspapers and magazines.
In the days when Mark Twain was writing, it was considered good form to spoof not only the classics but surplus learning of any kind. A man was popularly known as an affected cuss when he could handle anything more erudite than a nasal past participle or two in his own language, and any one who wanted to qualify as a humorist had to be able to mispronounce any word of over three syllables.
Thus we find Mark Twain, in the selections given in this volume, having amusing trouble with the pronunciation of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, expressing surprise that Michael Angelo was dead, picking flaws in the old master's execution and complaining of the use of foreign words which have their equivalent "in a nobler language—English."
There certainly is no harm in this school of humor, and it has its earnest and prosperous exponents today. In fact, a large majority of the people still like to have some one poke fun at the things in which they themselves are not proficient, whether it be pronunciation, Latin or bricklaying.
* * * * *
But there is an increasingly large section of the reading public who while they may not be expert in Latin composition, nevertheless do not think that a Latin word in itself is a cause for laughter. A French phrase thrown in now and then for metrical effect does not strike them as essentially an affectation, and they are willing to have references made to characters whose native language may not have been that noblest of all languages, our native tongue.
That such a school of readers exists is proved by the popularity of F.P.A's verses and prose. If any one had told Mark Twain that a man could run a daily newspaper column in New York and amass any degree of fame through translations of the "Odes of Horace" into the vernacular, the veteran humorist would probably have slapped Albert Bigelow Paine on the back and taken the next boat for Bermuda. And yet in "Something Else Again" we find some sixteen translations of Horace and other "furriners," exotic phrases such as "eheu fugaces" and "ex parte" used without making faces over them, and a popular exposition of highly technical verse forms which James Russell Lowell and Hal Longfellow would have considered terrifically high-brow. And yet thousands of American business men quote F.P.A. to thousands of other American business men every morning.
* * * * *
Can it be said that the American people are not so low-brow as they like to pretend? There is a great deal of affectation in this homespun frame of mind, and many a man makes believe that he doesn't know things simply because no one has ever written about them in the American Magazine. If the truth were known, we are all a great deal better educated than we will admit, and the derisive laughter with which we greet signs of culture is sometimes very hollow. In F.P.A. we find a combination which makes it possible for us to admit our learning and still be held honorable men. It is a good sign that his following is increasing.
LXIII
BUSINESS LETTERS
A text-book on English composition, giving examples of good and bad letter-writing, is always a mine of possibilities for one given to ruminating and with nothing in particular to do. In "Business Man's English" the specimen letters are unusually interesting. It seems almost as if the authors, Wallace Edgar Bartholomew and Floyd Hurlbut, had selected their examples with a view to their fiction possibilities. It also seems to the reader as if he were opening someone else's mail.
For instance, the following is given as a type of "very short letter, well placed":
* * * * *
Mr. Richard T. Green, Employment Department, Travellers' Insurance Co., Chicago, Ill.
Dear Mr. Green:
The young man about whom you inquire has much native ability and while in our employ proved himself a master of office routine.
I regret to say, however, that he left us under circumstances that would not justify our recommending him to you.
Cordially yours,
C.S. THOMPSON
* * * * *
Now I want to know what those "circumstances" were. And in lieu of the facts, I am afraid that I shall have to imagine some circumstances for myself. Personally, I don't believe that the "young man" was to blame. Bad companions, maybe, or I shouldn't be at all surprised if he was shielding someone else, perhaps a young lady stenographer with whom he was in love. The more I think of it the more I am sure that this was the secret of the whole thing. You see, he was a good worker and had, Mr. Thompson admits, proved himself a master of office routine. Although Mr. Thompson doesn't say so, I have no doubt but that he would have been promoted very shortly.
And then he fell in love with a little brown-eyed stenographer. You know how it is yourself. She had an invalid mother at home and was probably trying to save enough money to send her father to college. And whatever she did, it couldn't have been so very bad, for she was such a nice girl.
Well, at any rate, it looks to me as if the young man, while he was arranging the pads of paper for the regular Monday morning conference, overheard the office-manager telling about this affair (I have good reason to believe that it was a matter of carelessness in the payroll) and saying that he considered the little brown-eyed girl dishonest.
At this the young man drew himself up to his full height and, looking the office-manager squarely in the eye, said:
"No, Mr. Hostetter; it was I who did it, and I will take the consequences. And I want it understood that no finger of suspicion shall be pointed at Agnes Fairchild, than whom no truer, sweeter girl ever lived!"
"I am sorry to hear this, Ralph," said Mr. Hostetter. "You know what this means."
"I do, sir," said Ralph, and turned to look out over the chimney-pots of the city, biting his under lip very tight.
And on Saturday Ralph left.
* * * * *
Since then he has applied at countless places for work, but always they have written to his old employer, Mr. Thompson, for a reference, and have received a letter similar to the one given here as an example. Naturally, they have not felt like taking him on. You cannot blame them. And, in a way, you cannot blame Mr. Thompson. You see, Mr. Hostetter didn't tell Mr. Thompson all the circumstances of the affair. He just said that Ralph had confessed to responsibility for the payroll mix-up. If Mr. Thompson had been there at the time I am sure that he would have divined that Ralph was shielding Miss Fairchild, for Mr. Thompson liked Ralph. You can see that from his letter.
But as it stands now things are pretty black for the boy, and it certainly seems as if in this great city there ought to be some one who will give him a job without writing to Mr. Thompson about him. This department will be open as a clearing-house for offers of work for a young man of great native ability and master of office routine who is just at present, unfortunately, unable to give any references, but who will, I am quite sure, justify any trust that may be placed in him in the future.
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