Part 2
Poorly fed, the prisoners stalk around like spectres. They receive scanty rice rations for the amount of work they do, and are compelled to beg from everybody. Their murderously-minded Corsican keepers look like fiends in human form, provoke to kill, and like the followers of Marquis de Sade, take a mad pleasure in torture, gloating over the suffering of the wretches they starve and flog. As companions I prefer the thief and assassin convict to the jailer with his white cork helmet jammed down over a low forehead, his shaggy black brows and lashes from which flash heartless glances, his long, bandit-like mustachios, framing a savage slit for a mouth, and his brutal jaw. Far from the restraint of civilization he becomes a beast in fury, and loves to torment his charge. Hearts as well as stones are broken in these prisons. The convict’s complaint is useless, for his letters are censored, doctored and amputated before they reach home. There was one American down here for stealing. He told a friend of mine he could be trusted up to $500, but any amount over that he would steal. Escaped prisoners taken back to Cayenne are often chained to the deck, lashed and kicked by ruthless black guards, and left to wallow in their excrement. The mouths of the rivers are well guarded, and all told there are about 700 police who set the springs to this death-trap. Camps are insanitary and full of disease, insects and vermin. After work the exiles are thrust into dark cells of decaying barracks. Still they have some privileges besides death and torture. They are furnished a piece of ground with necessary tools to work it; allowed to send home for their families, or to have a contract marriage if they have been here two years and shown good behaviour.
If the convict escapes, the French officials don’t care much. He prefers the savage jungle to his savage keeper, fleeing to the bush not half so wild, through fen and flood to Brazil, Dutch and British Guiana. With no weapons for game or hook for fish, they grow mad with hunger, kill each other and have cannibal feasts, for which they are guillotined if captured. To avoid ambush they go in gangs, and when they eat or rest watch the four points of the compass. Just as America had an underground railway between the North and South to aid the fugitive slaves, so in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, there are agents of a society formed in France who provide food, clothes and money to aid the convict’s escape. There I was informed that the American Bauxite Company engages escaped convicts, and gives them a chance. However, in holy British Guiana, if caught, they are sent back or given so many days to leave the colony, in which case they often fly to Venezuela. Recently there was a frightful murder in the bush, a man’s head was chopped off and placed in a canoe to shoot the falls in order to cover traces of the crime. But as in Eugene Aram, guilt could not be hidden, for the canoe went over the rapids and falls without spilling its gruesome cargo; it was beached, discovered; the assassins were tracked; and an aeroplane was sent from the penal colony which swooped down on the murderers like a bird of prey and carried them off to prison.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the salvation of Cayenne is the convict—he does the work. I talked with a man who employs convicts and he said they were all “good” workers. Many of the other inhabitants, who sweat to get balata and gold, are just as bad outlaws, their life being one guilty round of drink, seduction, cruelty and crime.
The colony is full of physical as well as moral lepers. Like the other Guianas, elephantiasis, leprosy and filthy diseases scurf and scourge. The jungles are full of envenomed serpents. As for heat, the country is a few degrees above the equator and many above the boiling point. This dirty land is washed by the Atlantic, although the ocean does not, as Euripides says, wash away the wounds and stain of the world, but rather washes them here from France. Like a New York garbage boat carrying refuse to the sea, French convict ships dump the offal of humanity on these shores. The Pilgrims came to America with religious convictions, somewhat different from the convictions criminal and otherwise those Frenchmen held who settled Canada, Caledonia and Cayenne. Climate here is one long season of sorrow. Guiana is an outlaw country, a jumping-off place of the world, a back-door to perdition; a dominion of dolour, despair, mud and blood, where Death is the jailer who frees. The cities of Cayenne and St. Laurent are cities of dreadful day and night where spread
“Infections of unutterable sadness, Infections of incalculable madness, Infections of incurable despair.”
Faith, hope and charity are banished the colony, and the prisoners are the saddest and weariest of men.
La Belle France has succeeded in establishing and maintaining a hell on earth in French Guiana. Dante says, “There is a place within the depths of hell called Malebolge.” His prophetic eye must have seen this colony accurst, for he peoples the ten gulfs of that eighth circle of the “Inferno” with seducers, thirsters for gold, grafters, thieves, peculators, hypocrites, robbers, forgers and counterfeiters—and punishes these lost souls with terrible heat, horrible leprosies, poisonous serpents, filth and scourging demons!
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=Bold Bad Willie= (From the Imperial Review)
The teacher was explaining to her class the difference between concrete and abstract.
“Concrete,” she said, “is that which can be seen, abstract that which cannot be seen. Now, Willie, give me an example of the concrete.”
“My pants,” said Willie.
“Good,” said the teacher. “Now give me an example of the abstract.”
“Yours,” replied Willie.
Anticipation: Realization:
An olive drab uniform An olive drab uniform
That fits as snugly as a Made to fit a fat man, glove,
Bringing admiring glances Bringing smiles and from the girls. giggles from the girls.
Parades in which he would K. P. at which he toiled proudly march, and sweat,
Cheered and applauded by Cursed and reviled by the the patriotic crowds. army cooks.
Honors, won on the Tortures endured in the battlefields of France, S. O. S. in France,
For heroic deeds in From battling sergeants, action. M. P.’s Looies.
Promotion and bars for Demotion and the brig for following duty’s call. duty dodging.
And medals pinned upon Cooties biting and his manly chest for tickling his manly valor. chest.
His triumphant return His return home, a home, a hero. doughboy who didn’t get to the front,
Worshipped by the town Greeted warmly, folks. nevertheless, by the town folks.
His old job back with His old job held down by increased pay, a slacker;
The girl he left behind The girl he left behind him for his wife, him, the slacker’s wife,
Installed in a cute Installed in a cute little cottage, built little cottage with a for two. pair of twins.
—H. A. Perrill.
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Mary had a little ruffle, I discovered it by chance; Just a dainty little ruffle On the bottom of her underskirt.
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=Sayings of the Famous=
Billyus Plutocrat—“Rave on, Red Raven, you shall not split tonight.”
=_Formation of Women_=
ANCIENT mythology and folklore contain innumerable stories of the creation of the world and of man. Most of them have this in common that they relate that, when it came to the creation of woman, the being who had the task in hand experienced immense difficulties. According to a supposed legend, for instance, this is the origin of woman:
“Twashtri, the god Vulcan of the Hindu mythology, created the world, but on his commencing to create woman he discovered that for man he had exhausted all his creative materials, and that not one element had been left. This, of course greatly perplexed Twashtri, and caused him to fall into a profound meditation. When he arose from it he proceeded as follows. He took:
=The roundness of the moon. The undulating curve of the serpent. The graceful twist of the creeping plant. The light shivering of the grass blade and the slenderness of the willow. The velvet of the flowers. The lightness of the feather. The gentle gaze of the doe. The frolicsomeness of the dancing sunbeam. The tears of the cloud. The inconsistency of the wind. The timidity of the hare. The vanity of the peacock. The hardness of the diamond. The cruelty of the tiger. The chill of the snow. The cackling of the parrot. The cooing of the turtle dove.=
All these he mixed together and formed a woman.”
This is widely accepted as an ancient Hindu legend and nobody would suffer very much for continuing to believe such to be the case, but a gentleman, in answer to a query the other day, completely destroys the foundations for this belief. He says: “The legend of the creation of woman is the creation in English of an English mind; its author is F. W. Bain, and it is to be found in his charming book, ‘A Digit of the Moon.’”
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=They Answered Him=
He had only ten dollars left and thought he would have a tour on the railway. So he hied himself to a big ticket office where there was a host of booking clerks and inquired:
“Here! Can I go to Halifax for ten dollars?”
“No,” answered the booking clerk.
“Well, can I have a return to Montreal?”
“No,” replied the clerk again.
“Well, where can I go for ten dollars?” Then in a chorus they all answered him.
=_Havemeyer and Harriet_=
BY NEMESIS
IT is the old, old, story. Sporty married man, trustful or maybe designing girl, wool over her optics, girl finally gets wise, recriminations, breach of promise suit, and—?
Hector Havemeyer and Harriet Hearn comprise the alliterative couple in the calcium effulgence this time. Havemeyer is a scion of the sugar magnate; one of whose stunts was to ruin a competitor by bribing a workman in the rival plant to run a pipe from the syrup tank to the river and waste fifty or a hundred barrels a day. We mention this to show that Hector did not inherit a high standard of principle or regard for the rights of others.
Harriet eked out her truce with profiteering landlords and dry goods stores by digging muck from under the claws of such customers as presented themselves for the purpose. Her modest shingle swung in a barber shop in the Grand Central Station, Graftopolis-on-the-Harlem, generally known as New York. Hector came, he saw, he—well, you can guess the rest. Of course he proposed marriage. And of course Harriet sprung the old song and dance about it being “so sudden.” But when Hector offered as lagniappe to blow her to a whole slew of diamonds, a kolinsky cape and a trip South, his suddenness compared to hers as she Pisa-towered on his caoutchouc and celluloid, mooning: “Hector, I am thine!” was even as Congress controlling the trusts to a terrier kyoodle with a turpentine enema.
The fair Harriet was soon installed in a seven-dollar-a-day suite at a no-questions-asked hotel. Manicurists seldom can afford such things out of their own earnings, and we will give our readers three guesses as to who signed the checks for the rent. As long as Hector paid he naturally was entitled to call as often as he darn pleased, which was about once a day and then some. Not contented with that he would telephone so often to her at her place of business that her barber employer ultimatumed that she must either cut it out or take the gate. Hector also sent flowers and candy galore. His progenitor had acquired coin in the manner quoted above; a manner both easy and honorable, and passed it on to Hector to blow. Hector also pined for special messages from his Dulcinea del Toboso, and would employ the red cap porters at the station to go to her and beseech for him a missive of love to ease his near ruptured cardiac.
The strange part of it all is that at first Hector was too bashful to go like an avuncular just arrived from Canajoharie and have Harriet extract the Graftopolis real estate and microbes from the nether side of his hive-scratchers. Instead he sought the services of a New York Central detective as his John Alden, the fair Harriet states. But she fell for the detective presented proposition and consented to the introduction.
The promise of marriage, which Harriet claims was made, might have been either the last resort of a man dealing with a near-Pamela and cute minx combined, or else a gratuitous piece of calorified atmosphere. But as she had to know some day that he could not keep his word without committing bigamy, Hector preferred that it should be from him rather than from his vindictive investigating storm-and-strife, or the serpentine lollypop-licker of Mrs. Grundy. Having had preliminary practice in another way, he screwed up his courage and broke the news, although he let her down easy with the hoary classic bucolic cataplasm about his wife not understanding him, there would soon be a divorce, and then his Harriet would be =IT=. That was all Harriet wanted to hear. She flew the seven-dollar-a-day coop whose manager, as there were several times seven dollars of arrears, was so unkind as to retain her powder-rag, her tooth-brush, and other feminine impedimenta which we forbear to catalogue.
Harriet went back to finding her own rent-money, but nevertheless she did not break with her Hector. Instead she kept Hectoring him with special delivery letters and telegrams; ditto his wife, although she charges that in the latter case Hector had fixed all the apartment house help so that none of her retaliatory revelations would strike home. She says, too, that her Lothario had the St. Vitus dance even when she was not in proximity to him. Seeing that he had taken her all and given her in return nothing but candy, flowers and broken promises, she is going to try very hard to make him pay, and has brought suit for a hundred thousand dollars. She exults that she did not sell or give away all her old clothes and resign her position, as he urged her to do, and says she would not be in a Gehenna of a fix if she had.
Hector claims that Harriet, like himself, is married to somebody else; a certain Garry Hearn being the man. But Harriet denies the allegation and defies the alligator. Hector lives with his wife at 375 Park avenue, New York. He seems to take it all as a joke, but his Harriet evidently does not. She alleges that he wooed and won her under the name of Palmer, and also that he ungallantly refuses to pay the rest of the rent so that she can get her needful belongings out of hock; and, to make matters worse, he will not see her any more. But she protests her undying love for him in spite of the way he has wounded her poor, tender little feelings, which ought to be easy for her, seeing the size of his saccharine bank-roll. Heads she wins, tails she loses. Harriet figures she stands to get a slice of it if he doesn’t make good about divorcing his wife and marrying her; or, in the other event, she will have the spending of most of it anyhow. So why shouldn’t modest little Harriet sue? And echo answers, why?
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=The New Supper Menu=
No more liquid glances, No more pretty speeches; No more stewed live lobsters, No more pickled peaches!
=_Questions and Answers_=
=Dear Captain Billy=—How will I head a story about a prominent Boston society girl marrying a Providence socialist?—=Cub Reporter.=
Just say: “Plymouth Rock chicken marries Rhode Island Red.”
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=Old Wheezy Bill=—My landlord has raised my rent because I have a case of whisky in my apartments. Now, I don’t like to move and I don’t like to pay rent and then again its against the law to move the whisky, so what the’ll shall I do?—=Oberst.=
Your “case” has undoubtedly been disposed of by this time.
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=Dear Bill=—To settle a dispute, please tell me what disease is caused from the microbe of a kiss?—=June Bugg.=
Palpitation of the heart.
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=Dear Bill=—The ocean side seems so different this year. Why does it seem to make me feel so blue?—=Flo Waters.=
I do not know, Flo, unless it’s the wind blowing the froth over the bar that reminds you of olden days.
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=Dear Captain Billy=—Why won’t they allow army aviators to take up women passengers in airplanes?—=May Wheat.=
I am told that too many of the pilots went blind while looping the loop.
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=Dear Editor=—Can you give me the technical name for snoring?—=Al McGluek.=
Sheet music.
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=Dear Billy=—Don’t you think the short skirts the girls are wearing make us look lots shorter?—=Daisy Fields.=
Yes, Daisy, but they make us men look lots longer, so what’s the difference?
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=Dear Billy=—As you were in the United States army during the recent war, I wish you would inform me as to the principal ailments the boys got from abroad.—=Prophylactic Pete.=
I am unable to answer your question, Peter, but have referred it to Private Iodine Ike of the Cotton Batting corps.
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=Dear Captain Billy=—I am lame, halt, nearly blind and 85 years old. What job do you think I should work at?—=R. J.=
Would suggest you apply for the position of gardener in a young woman’s seminary.
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=Dear Cap.=—I’ve just composed a song for my 1920-21 “Record Breakers” show, entitled “The Stockyards Rag.” I’m enclosing a copy to get your opinion of it.—=Jack Read=, the “Information Kid.”
Dear Jack: The words of your song are all right, but I don’t like the “air.” It doesn’t smell just right.
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=Dear Captain Billy=—What is your opinion of regulated public dance halls and do you believe there is a cure for the alleged dance evil?—=Ichabod Iliad.=
I say, on with the dance, let joy be unconfined, there is gladness unabated since Maggie Murphy dined. Did you, my dear Ichabod, ever see a teakettle bubble, dance, sing and boiler over? Well, that was the effect. The pep, fire and energy underneath it was the cause. You can’t put out the fire by removing the teakettle to a cooler spot. Therefore you can’t cure evil thinking by doing away with dancing. Fire, pep, energy is the natural results we get from the disgusting habit we have of eating. Consequently if we remove the cause, which is eating, evil thinking or dancing, which is the effect, will cure themselves.
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=Dear Editor=—Please help me. I was out with a young lady for the first time when she saw some jewelry. She said she wished to buy some but had left her pocketbook at home. What should I have done?—=Troubled Tom.=
You should have lent the lady five cents to go home and get her pocketbook. Always be a gentleman.
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=Dear Billy=—Is it essential that a “movie vamp” have dark hair and eyes?—=Blondie.=
No, Blondie, you still have a chance. A vamp doesn’t have to have dark hair and eyes. I know of lots of blond ones, with big blue eyes, and several red-headed ones.
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=Dear Whiz Bang=—Is there any truth in the rumor that Douglas Fairbanks is already considering getting a divorce from Mary Pickford?—=Ima Darby.=
I don’t believe it’s true but only an idle rumor gathered from the story that Doug was peeved because Mary talked in her sleep and cried out the name of her first husband too often.
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=Dear Editor Whiz Bang=—I am a civics instructor at a high school, am 45 years of age, but act like any spry young man. I am deeply infatuated with the pretty young school secretary. I went with her a few months this year and then for a spell lost my liking for her. Now for some reason or other I am again in love with her, but am afraid to make any advances to her because she has recently purchased a car and I am afraid people will think that there is “method in my madness.” Remember that I love her and then tell me what to do.—=Ad Noid.=
You’re not acting like “any spry young man” if you’re withholding your declaration of love for fear of what people would think. Tell her and don’t lose any time about it.
_Whiz Bang_ _Editorials_ _“The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet”_
The Whiz Bang desires to call the attention of its readers to the latest book published by the Reverend “Golightly” Morrill, famous author-traveler-preacher, who has been a regular correspondent to this magazine. Mr. Morrill is one of America’s most forceful writers and his varied experiences as a social worker and globetrotter fits him to deal trenchantly on varied subjects. The editor is not personally acquainted with Mr. Morrill but has been an interested reader of all his works for the past 20 years. Read his ad on page 64 of this issue and add his latest book to your library.
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Tangier Island, in Chesapeake Bay, is where the natives still vote for Andrew Jackson. The island is nothing if not religious in the narrowest and most reactionary sense of the word. Only one church is on the island, and those who run it think that hell’s hottest fires are burning specially for all who do not agree with each and every religious dogma they have. The minister is almost qualified to butt into the Trinity and make it a Quartette. It is against the law to hold or attend any religious service not under the auspices of the local church monopoly. It is also required by law that you attend the church every Sunday, and as if that is not enough, you are not allowed to be out of your house on Sunday, not even on your own porch, except to go to and from church services. It is frankly claimed by the powers that be, that without such stern compulsion the natives would desecrate the Sabbath by congregating at stores or elsewhere, and then, if the devil should happen to come to claim his own, he might scoop up the whole island population as a consequence.
Roland Parks, a young man 17 years old, a resident of Tangier Island, was wicked and audacious enough to cut church service one Sunday and to take the air on the porch of his house while the meeting was in progress. Officer Connorton got on the job and ordered him to come to church. Young Parks refused, Connorton tried to arrest him, Parks fled, Connorton drew his revolver and shot Parks, dangerously wounding him. The inhabitants of the island regret the shooting, but hold that it would be better for such as Parks to be shot and killed rather than the law, which they approve, should be violated.
Among the other Puritan blue laws of Tangier Island are those prohibiting music anywhere during church service, even though the instrument may be far away and no sound come through the walls; playing ball at any time on Sunday, etc.