CHAPTER II

On her twenty-first birthday, this warm mamma met an over ripe quince who had been named Herman Pupick by his unfortunate parents. A word about Herman. Our hero was one of triplets. His father, Rudolph Pupick, a traveling salesman, rushed home from Milwaukee when he got the tidings.

After looking over the year’s crop, Mr. Pupick, Sr., said: “We’ll keep this one and drown the other two.” The one he kept was Herman. This was a mean break.

Our hero showed his disposition at an early age. He was a wet smack from the take off. When he was five months old he refused to nurse at his mother’s breast. He considered it immoral and obscene.

Before little Herman was nine years old, everybody knew he was the lily’s whiskers. He grew up to be one of those fireproof crepe hangers, who take orders only from God, and he married an autumn leaf named Emmaline, suffering from virginity.

When he was thirty-five years old the only flesh pots Herman had ever seen were those his wife tended on the kitchen stove. He had been married ten years and every night before sliding into the hay he and the dementia praecox case who shared his headaches would kneel beside their thorny couch and request God to keep them pure. And He did.

Herman himself was so pure that he cancelled his subscription to the Presbyterian Weekly during the War owing to a headline which appeared in that racy organ on March 3, 1917. The headline read, “Naval Maneuvers Described by Eye Witness.” Our right hand of God considered this headline too suggestive for an organ intended for the home.

This pious dingelberry had only one eye. The other one was made of glass. It cost seven dollars and a half and was painted green.

The way our hero lost his gig was like this. On the seventh anniversary of his wedding Herman brought home a quart of plain white ice cream.

“Tonight,” said Herman, “is the seventh anniversary of our joint fight against the Devil. It is, therefore, fitting that we should make merry.”

So they ate the ice cream, although Mrs. Pupick complained it gave her a headache. After this part of the bridal night had been relieved, Herman challenged his consort to a game of Tiddlywinks.

In the heat of this game, Mrs. Pupick snapped one of the tiddlywinks with unusual vigor, for marriage had not taken the fire out of her, and it flew into Herman’s lamp and put it out.

“God,” said our one-eyed Pilgrim, as he shelled out the seven and a half smackers for a new gig, “has smote me for my sins.” This was fair enough.

A few more words are necessary about Herman Pupick before launching into this great drama of sin and passion, to illustrate our hero’s ignorance of the world and its alleged humans. Herman thought that a brassiere was something to melt lead in; that bloomers was a slang term which meant a series of mistakes; that torso was the name of a notorious Spanish bullfighter and that passion was what happened when a carpenter hit his thumb with a hammer.

What, you ask, did this big ham do for a living? Stand back, kind reader, control yourself. Herman Pupick was a reformer. He was employed by the United States of America for $29 a week to plug up all the pitfalls of the great city.

Yes, it was Herman’s duty whenever he saw something wicked to jump on it with both feet and crush it into the ground, and although our razzberry pedlar had only one eye he saw plenty that was low and vile.

In fact, to Herman the whole world was just one big House of Shame and everybody excepting himself and his wife and an adenoid sufferer named Rev. Gurglelurgel were all inmates.

Nearly everything Herman saw he figured out incited other people to sin. And this made him mad. Once when God smote our undertaker’s plume with a severe attack of constipation he wrote a burning letter to the Voice of the People in the Tribune denouncing the immorality and obscenity of public toilets.

It was the same way with Madam Pupick. When Madam got all dressed up and ready to go to prayer meeting and tell God what she thought of herself, she looked as if she had forgotten to remove the Boncilla mud pack.

We will now leave this sweet minded team and leap into the maelstrom of tragedy and passion which fate was even then weaving on its maelstrom-loom.

THIRD STANZA

_In which the Devil Kicks Herman Pupick in the Pants_

THIRD STANZA

Herman Pupick first met Cutie on the corner of State and Madison streets. Our little home wrecker had slipped and fallen and a large crowd of first nighters had gathered to watch Officer Murphy, the traffic dictator, extract a splinter out of Cutie’s knee.

At this point Herman’s one good eye bulged out of his head like a ripe mushroom. One peek at Cutie’s injured fox trotter filled him with a nameless rage.

“How dare you!” he cried, addressing Officer Murphy. “How dare you take advantage of this maiden’s mishap and expose her person to the lewd eyes of this crowd? Unhand her!”

Officer Murphy dropped the hem of Cutie’s dress and a great sigh went up from the cock-eyed multitude.

“Come with me,” Herman spoke, a ring of authority in his voice, and seizing Cutie’s arm he escorted her to the new Methodist Book Store in the Temple Building, for our hero was a great reader.

“Now,” said Herman, mopping his brow, “you are safe. Be not afraid.”

“Say, bozo,” Cutie said, handing him an O. O., which would have discouraged Former Attorney General Daugherty, “what kind of a racket is this? I am just an honest little kiddie trying to get along.”

From which it can be seen that our heroine thought it was a pinch.

Still trembling with rage, Herman handed her one of his blackmailing cards.

“Here,” he said, “is my name and vocation.”

“Oh, Herman Pupick, Censor and Reformer,” Cutie read out loud. “My Gawd, the Arsenic Kid. Oh, Papa’s lost his teeth. Send for the monkey gland wagon. So you are a reformer?”

“Yes,” said Herman.

“What kind of reforming do you specialize in?” continued Cutie. “Maybe I can be a great help to you.”

“Sin,” answered Herman, “any kind of sin. Wherever I find things which incite to lewdness and debauchery, there my duty lies.”

“Amen, brother, mine too,” cried Cutie. And lifting up her dress she eyed her knee with concern. “I take it,” she murmured, “that splinters are not in your line.”

Herman Pupick closed his glass eye. For a moment he stood his ground. Then he fainted.

“Where am I?” he muttered five minutes later when his stricken senses returned.

“I’ll bite, where are you?” echoed Cutie. “When last seen you were counting moth balls in a Swedish restaurant.”

“Ah, it all comes back to me now,” gurgled our woozy smut hound. “God drew a veil before my eyes to shut out that evil spectacle.”

And lifting his fanny off the floor Herman pointed his forefinger at our heroine.

“You spawn of Hell,” he cried, “you painted Jezebel, don’t try to work your sinful wiles on me. I know you for what you are, a cigarette smoking, rum guzzling creature of the underworld. Begone to your devil’s lair. You soul wrecker luring innocent men to their doom with your corruptions.”

“Say,” Cutie broke in, “you poor kidney-footed clown, you one-eyed leftover, how do you get that way? What Lost Manhood advertisement have you been reading? Go on, get back into your manhole before some enterprising undertaker lays a lamp on you.”

“Me trying to lure you,” Cutie continued, having taken a fresh breath. “I would just as soon get amorous with a blue-nosed Mandril. A gimp like you takes my appetite away for a week. Come on, beat it, poison ivy, before I start calling you any hard names.”

At this point, Herman Pupick turned on his heel and walked out of the bookstore, leaving his vis-a-vis flat.

But when our hero reached his dove cote that evening, he felt strangely disturbed.

“Emmaline,” he said to his fellow sufferer, “have you ever had a splinter in your knee?”

“Herman! How dare you!” cried Mrs. Pupick, blushing violently. “Do you think that sort of talk is fit for the home?”

“No,” said Herman, a wave of shame covering him like a pail of dishwater. An hour later Herman and the dementia praecox case were kneeling beside their sleeping bags requesting God all over again to keep them pure.

But Herman couldn’t sleep. Every ten minutes he would wake up and say “Splinters.” Finally our hero, first crossing himself three times, peeled back the bed covers from his sleeping consort. Madam Pupick was partial to the kind of night shirts they bury sailors in who have died at sea.

For a moment Herman was almost discouraged. But a strange impulse had mastered him. Gingerly he lifted up the night dress until he had exposed Madam Pupick’s knee. At this point, the kippered herring at his side opened one of its glims and sensing danger, let out a terrible squawk.

“Herman! What are you doing,” she shrieked.

“I dreamed you had a splinter in your knee,” Herman mumbled with a guilty start, “and I was going to take it out.”

Madam Pupick stared at him with watery eyes and yanked the bed covers into their proper position. She was a daughter of Eve, but her father was a mackerel.

Thus was the first thread woven in the maelstrom of passion which was to trip our hero and singe his wings. For all that night he tossed on his bed like a Mexican jumping bean.

He dreamed he was kneeling before a beautiful window and watching a windmill made of splinters turning around outside and on top of the windmill was a large snake. Then slowly in his dream the windmill and the snake did a fadeout and he found himself looking at Cutie’s knee just as he had seen it in the Methodist Book Store.

In the middle of the night Herman woke up with a yell. He had kicked all the covers off and was standing in the middle of the bedroom. As his senses returned our hero felt that something had happened. And he remembered all of a sudden that he had forgotten his hat in the book store.

Falling to his knees, Herman put the tips of his fingers together and, his eyes rolling, raised his voice in a grim unfaltering song.

“_Onward Christian soldiers, Marching as to War.... With the Cross of Jesus_----”

And at just this moment in another part of the great city Cutie with vine leaves in her hair was gathering asphodels in the groves of Kypris while the cuckoo clock on the rubber mantlepiece struck three and the ukeleles danced in the wind.

FOURTH MOVEMENT

_In which Our Hero Becomes an Open Book_

FOURTH MOVEMENT

Herman Pupick wrestled with the Devil for three weeks and lost two straight falls. It was no use. Our hero’s pure mind was a total wreck.

In vain Herman asked God to help him out. Whenever he closed his one eye to receive the divine message all he saw was Cutie’s right leg. Satan had marked our crepe hanger for his own.

“There is something wrong with me,” groaned our hero, making it unanimous. “I will have to go and see a doctor.”

This was how it happened that Herman came panting into the offices of Dr. Kukuheimer, the noted dirt digger who had got rich off the complex-boom. Herman’s tongue was hanging out like a slice of watermelon.

The dizzy medicine man took one look at this bottle of sour cream and patted the marcel in his Van Dyke.

“I will first take the history of your case,” he warned. “Tell me your name, business and favorite dreams.”

Herman stuck out his tissue paper chest and announced who and what he was, from one point of view.

“I am,” spoke our hero, “Herman Pupick, censor and reformer. I am employed by the United States government to fight sin wherever I see it. My specialty is suppressing lewd and obscene books.”

“Can you read?” inquired Dr. Kukuheimer quickly.

“Well,” said our hero proudly, “I know all the dirty words.”

“Now tell me,” the eagle-brained scientist pursued, “what your symptoms are?”

“I can’t figure it out,” Herman answered. “I get hot and cold sweats, ringing in the ear and at night I keep imagining things.”

“What sort of things?” inquired the doctor.

Herman hung his head like a dead herring.

“I would rather not say,” he answered, biting his necktie.

“Oh, them kind of things,” Dr. Kukuheimer frowned. “Well, we will have to give you the pinochele test.”

The great soul diver pulled down all the window blinds and took out his magic lantern.

“I will show you some pictures,” he announced, “and take down your reactions.”

The first picture thrown on the screen was that of Queen Alexandria. Her Nibs was a regal-looking broad. Herman squirmed in his chair like a plate full of fresh noodles.

The second picture was Julian Eltinge in he-man’s clothes. Our hero caught his breath and blushed like a piece of liver sausage.

“Don’t,” he lisped.

Dr. Kukuheimer marked down the reactions with his pencil and switched on a picture of Baby Peggy. Herman began to heave.

“I didn’t come to see a movie show,” he gurgled. “Movies are lewd and obscene. Take it away.”

Dr. Kukuheimer turned on a slide showing the ruins of Pompeii. Our hero was now breathing like the winner of a fat woman’s race. Without giving him a chance to recover, Dr. Kukuheimer flashed a life sized chromo of Annette Kellerman.

Herman took one look at the fancy curves and jumped to his feet with a yell. Tearing his hair, our hero began running around the room and falling over desks.

“Take her away,” he screamed, “I can’t stand such vile sights.”

But Dr. Kukuheimer only smiled and threw a picture of Gilda Grey on the screen. Gilda was doing her Hawaiian split and wearing a small-sized doormat with the word Welcome on it.

This was too much for our hero. After pulling wildly at his hair he let out a deep groan and collapsed into the wastebasket. Dr. Kukuheimer revived him with an ice pick.

“Oh, God!” murmured Herman, “was there anybody saved?”

“Sit up and I will tell you what’s the matter with you,” answered Dr. Kukuheimer. “You are among friends.”

Herman sneaked a look at the empty screen, and sighed.

“Yes,” spoke the doctor, “you are in a bad way. You have all the complexes. A wonderful case. My record shows you have a highly developed Oedipus Rex Complex, a homosexual complex and a distinct touch of necrophilia. You are also suffering from a pronounced masochistic neurosis with catamite tendencies, and it is obvious that you are a pathologic fetichist with malignant satyriasis compulsions.”

Our hero, when he heard this, broke down and wept like a school boy.

“What do you advise, doctor?” he gulped.

“Well,” Dr. Kukuheimer answered, “I would suggest that you shoot yourself. The sooner the better.”

Herman handed the clever man twenty-five charlies and staggered off the premises like a one-legged turtle.