Part 4
“But, as I remarked before, I can’t say I’d advise anybody to try to be even a single centenarian, to say nothing of scoring nine. Think of paying for nine hundred birthday presents your wife gave you, not to mention several thousand contributed by the children and grandchildren and other descendants. Why, one birthday I got ninety-three pairs of slippers, most of ’em, of course, a size too small—must have thought I was a centipede. Then there’s a good deal of competition among centenarians, and that leads to jealousy and hard feelings. For instance, I’d always predicted the weather by my rheumatiz (although I could never tell when there was going to be a storm at home). I got quite a reputation by it. And then an upstart centenarian over at Ararat, a young fellow only about three hundred years old, claimed it always rained when his corns hurt him—or the other way round—and took away about half my visitors. He boasted that he had a set of infallible corns, and every morning he’d get out a bulletin such as ‘Fair and warmer,’ or ‘Cold weather with snow.’ A regular fakir, he was. Honest folk just considered him one of those excess prophets. But he seemed to guess right about fifty per cent of the time, and when he was wrong people gave him credit for his good intentions. His whole stock in trade was his corns. Any good chiropodist could have reduced him to bankruptcy in five minutes. But he put up a bluff and got away with it and made folks think he was the real Oldest Inhabitant.”
“One more question, Mr. Methuselah: how do you account for the fact that folks lived so much longer in your time than they do nowadays?”
“Well, there were no automobiles and telephones and germ theories, and revenue officers and apartment houses and phonographs and piano-players and rolled hose and alarm clocks and table d’hôte dinners, for one thing, and for another, we didn’t try to compress five hundred years of living into a fifty years’ existence. We didn’t cover any more distance over the highway of life than you moderns do, but we took more time to do it in. We walked instead of ran, and picked flowers along the wayside and paused now and then to admire the scenery. And rich or poor, young or old, we got out of life exactly what you do—a living. And now I must ask you to excuse me. I promised to play nine holes with Noah before luncheon. How would you like to carry my golf sticks?”
I respectfully declined, pleading a previous engagement. I have played many rôles in my time, as a reporter, but I felt I must draw the line at caddying for Methuselah.
IX
JESSE JAMES TALKS ON TIPPING
On receiving the city editor’s assignment to interview the shade of Jesse James on the tipping custom, I carefully removed my watch, purse and scarfpin and left them in my desk, for even my brief experience with dwellers in the astral region had taught me that they haven’t greatly changed their habits and modes of living since their departure from earthly scenes, and I couldn’t afford to run any risk. But I soon found that I needn’t have taken the precaution, for in almost his first words the famous bandit and all-round bad man showed me that he had thoroughly reformed.
“Want me to talk about tipping, eh?” he growled. “Well, I throw up my hands. I’m through with the bandit business. I’m a has-been, a second-rater, and I don’t mind admittin’ it. I suppose you know that we shades go back to earth now and then to see how things are comin’ along, take a hand in ’em, too, if we feel like it. Sometimes we play one-night stands for the mejums. Captain Kidd had a job all last season at a kind of continuous performance seance in Boston. Took all sorts of parts, from Julius Cæsar to Andrew Jackson. One night he was materializin’ as John Bunyun, and he couldn’t find his chewin’ tobacco or something, and he kind o’ forgot himself and he used the particular brand of language that Bunyun didn’t and—well, that ended the Massachusetts engagement. We don’t all go in for performin’. Personally, I prefer just to go around the old places and mix in with the crowds and compare old times to these, but I’m not going back again for a while. My last trip was a little too much for me. I got a shock and I guess I need a good long rest.
“I’d heard considerable about this tipping business, pro and con, but I thought it just meant slippin’ the colored waiter a nickel if he happened to be extra spry and accommodatin’. That’s the way it used to be out in Missouri back in seventy-nine. But tipping today! Yours truly and his gang was called bandits, and train robbers, and highwaymen, and I don’t know what all, when we was carryin’ on our profitable little business of forty years ago, but we had nothing on the members of the Amalgamated Association of Tip Extractors of 1922. We were pikers, that’s all, plain, everyday pikers. We had no organization, no system, no nothing. It was just about the difference between running a peanut stand and a billion-dollar trust. I suppose if we were operatin’ today with our old gang we’d have a cash register and an addin’ machine and a private telephone exchange and a card index of past and prospective customers and a publicity department, to see that the papers got our names and pictures straight. But, shucks! Even then we couldn’t compete with the great national hold-up game that’s going on all the time. On that last trip down below I was never so discouraged and humiliated in my life. I sat in a hotel restaurant and watched a head waiter at work. From the professional standpoint it was beautiful. Nothing could have been more artistic. But it made me feel blue, made me realize how I had neglected my opportunities. There he stood, no mask on his face, no gun in his hand, dressed in a swallowtail and biled shirt, takin’ toll so fast he hadn’t time to count it. Everybody gave up, without a murmur. And the next day, too, he was there at the same old stand, as if there wasn’t any such thing as a sheriff within fifty miles. No look-out men on guard, no disguise, no frisking the victims for concealed weapons. The folks just handin’ out the coin as meek as lambs. It was a revelation to me. In the old days we never stayed two days in the same place, nor two hours neither, believe me. But somebody said that head waiter had been on that same job for fifteen years. Fifteen years! I’d have owned the state of Missouri if they’d let me alone that long.
“It made me positively sick to see how the hold-up boys are getting away with it so easy these days, and a friend recommended an ocean trip. ‘Take a run over to Europe and back,’ he says. ‘You’ve never been to sea and it’ll do you good.’ The day I boarded the boat I asked a stranger who had the next cell to put me wise to this tipping business, because I wanted to do the right thing. ‘Five dollars to your stateroom steward,’ he said, ‘and five to the saloon steward.’ ‘I don’t drink any more,’ I said. ‘Saloon means dining room.’ ‘Oh, all right,’ I said. ‘And two-fifty to the deck steward and the same to the library steward. The smoke room steward will expect a couple of dollars and the boy who blacks your boots about one-fifty. Bath steward, two dollars. Card room steward, one dollar. And of course you’ll tip the barber and anyone else who does you a service.’
“Going into the washroom, the first sign I saw read: ‘Please tip the basin.’ And I walked right out and went to bed for two days. The waiter brought in all my meals—a dollar tip a meal. When I had recovered enough to sit on deck in one of them overgrown Morris chairs, I couldn’t get that tipping idea out of my head. A friend introduced me to a fat fellow in uniform. I didn’t catch the name, but automatically handed him fifty cents and then learned that he was the captain. The day we arrived at Liverpool the passengers were all drawn up on deck and so were the pirates—excuse me, I mean the crew. Then came the ringing words of command: ‘Present alms!’ And we handed over all the coin we had left. I only wished Captain Kidd had been there. He’d have learned something new about his old game.
“I confess I had thought some of going back into the hold-up business, just to keep my hand in, but never again now. Too much competition, and I’m too old to learn new ways. Good-bye, young man, and if you want to say a good word for an old man who never did you any harm, put this in your article:
“‘Jesse James may have had his faults, but he was different from some of the folks who are now carrying on the business—he never robbed the same man twice.’”
X
SHAKESPEARE MENTIONS MOVIES
The thought of interviewing a gentlemanly genius like William Shakespeare after stacking up against such remote and formidable characters as Bluebeard, Brigham Young and Jesse James was most refreshing, though it took some nerve after all to tackle the world’s champion dramatic poet. I had feared he might be slightly disinclined to talk, not being familiar with the ways of modern journalism, but I was speedily set at ease on that point.
“Not talk for publication?” said the shade of Shakespeare, as he resumed his seat in his Morris chair upon my entrance, and tried to look like his pictures. “Not talk for publication? Did you ever know an actor, playwright or a poet who wouldn’t? And I’ve been all three, and a theatrical manager thrown in. It’s quite a while since I trod the boards, or walked the ties, but I’ve managed to keep fairly in touch with the times from frequent trips down below to oblige my mediumistic friends. There’s a great boom on just now. I could get an engagement every night in the week, and a pair of matinées, if I cared to perform. But there’s nothing in it. If they’d let me perform in my own plays it would be different. But there’s not much demand for them, it seems. All they’ll let me do is play the tambourine in a dark cabinet and scribble on slates and turn tables—just vaudeville I call it. And I see they’re beginning to censor my plays and cut out all references to booze on account of the new prohibition law. They made one of my actors quit giving the line: ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’ Said it gave a wrong impression and tantalized men in the audience who thought the speaker was referring to his private stock down cellar. Well, all the world’s a stage—and the last time I was down I noticed most of the girls seemed to believe in making up for their parts. Talk about fresh paint!
“But you wished me to compare modern theatrical conditions with those of my day. This is an age of specialists, but as I have said, when I was on earth, ‘One man in his time plays many parts.’ I used to write a play, hire a company, rehearse it, take the leading part myself, sell tickets at the door, usher, beat the bass drum, fill the lamps and sweep out. I’ve died on the stage and two minutes later gone up into the top gallery to bounce a couple of rowdies. But we were all trained to versatility in those days. No women were allowed to act, you know. You can’t imagine how nice and peaceful it was in our companies. Nobody ever threatened to quit because the type of his name on the posters was an eighth of an inch smaller than somebody else’s. Nobody ever cried all over the stage because somebody made disparaging remarks about his complexion or said his teeth showed he was ten years older than he claimed. But there were disadvantages, too, from the absence of the girls. Men had to take feminine parts. And you take an Ophelia, for instance, who chews tobacco and is drunk half the time, and it’s hard to invest the part with the genuine pathos it demands. I remember one time I hired a tall, gawky youth to play the part of Desdemona. He was all right the first week, but after that his voice suddenly began changing, and it sounded like a phonograph record that’s had a fall and got twisted. A Desdemona with a deep bass voice that switches to a shrill soprano without warning and then back again to the husky rumbling in the space of thirty seconds is bound to incur adverse criticism.
“I once had a Lady Macbeth, too, who had a habit of smoking his pipe behind the scenes while waiting for his cue. And one time, when he got the call, he absent-mindedly forgot to put his pipe away. It is entirely contrary to tradition for Lady Macbeth to smoke a pipe in the sleep-walking scene, and I had to dispense with his services the next Saturday night. And barring absent-mindedness, he was the best Lady Macbeth I ever had, too. I suppose our performances were pretty bum. But there were no daily newspaper dramatic critics then, and we didn’t know how rotten we were. Ignorance was bliss, both for us and for our audiences. We were handicapped, also, by lack of scenery. Our property man had a sinecure. The only ‘set’ we had consisted of a couple of kitchen chairs and a tin pan—the latter for the thunder. We used the chairs for thrones or mossy banks or anything else that happened to be needed. The audience had to picture the rest of the scenery. There was no curtain and the orchestra consisted of one performer. That insured harmony in the orchestra. Our equipment was ahead of your modern companies in only one respect: that of costumes. We always had plenty of costumes, such as they were. The last time I was down below I attended a musical comedy performance, and I was pained to observe how badly handicapped the management was in the matter of costumes. There weren’t half enough to go around. And the thermometer was below zero, too. As I said, we always had enough costumes, because we used the same ones in every performance. Everybody, from Romeo to old King Lear, wore an antiquated red bathrobe and slippers. At least we managed to keep warm. Unlike your modern managers, we never had to hang out the ‘Standing room only’ sign. Nobody would have gone if he couldn’t get a seat. But I’ve been told that nowadays theater audiences will stand for anything. I can believe it after seeing some of your plays. As I have remarked in one of my own compositions, ‘Sweet are the uses of advertisements.’
“But to return to our discussion. The present generation has witnessed a wonderful addition to the dramatic art. I refer to the moving pictures. You thought I wouldn’t be for them? I am. I think they’re wonderful. I only wish we’d had them in my day. I’d have been able to retire about ten years sooner. You see, the highest salary I ever got was about twenty-five a week, and out of that I had to pay my board and traveling expenses—everything but hauling trunks to the hotel. Then I went into the producing game and did a little better. But even then, some Saturday nights, the ghost didn’t walk—except the one in Hamlet. I understand the average salary of a modern moving picture actor is a million dollars a year and accident insurance. Newcomers learning the business draw down nominal pay of five thou’ a week. Small my-lord-the-carriage-waits parts get only two thousand a week, and so on down to the supes and scene-shifters and deckhands struggling to support their families on a hundred or so a day. I figure that the salary of a first-class movie actor for one year would have supported in luxury all the actors of my day for their entire lifetimes. And they’d have saved money. In my day an actor was about the next thing to a professional pauper. Like the dentist, he eked out a hand-to-mouth existence, but unlike the dentist he didn’t often have the opportunity of filling an aching void—his stomach. Life was just one bill collector after another. When anybody was needed to play the rôle of the half-starved apothecary in Romeo and Juliet there was no trouble finding a fellow who looked the part. There was always a rush of volunteers for the banquet scenes—if real food was provided. But I don’t begrudge your modern actors their prosperity. I only wish the stuff had been handed around a little earlier. That’s all.”
“Are you so enthusiastic over the movies, Mr. Shakespeare, that you like to have them produce your own plays? Or is that sacrilege?”
“I’d like to have my plays in the movies if they’d produce them properly. But what makes me sore is to have them leave out all the pep. When a play is transferred from the book or the stage to the movie, certain necessary changes should be made. The first requirement of the picture play is action. There’s no place for talk. Now, if they’re going to have my plays in the movies, I wish they’d popularize ’em. For instance, in my day there wasn’t an actor who knew how to throw a pie. Nobody could fire a pistol without ever taking aim—the way the movie actors do it. I hate to see my plays fail just for lack of a few pies and pistols, artistically handled. When one of my productions is put on the screen they engage some long-faced tragedian who’s immersed in great gobs of gloom all the time—some impressive individual with a St. Bernard voice that’s entirely wasted in the movies. What I say is: get somebody like Charlie Chaplin for Romeo and Mary Pickford for Juliet, Mary Carr or Nazimova for the nurse, and put some punch into it. Take Hamlet: imagine Ben Turpin and his fat side kick as grave diggers! What a rattling good duel Doug Fairbanks and Bill Hart could pull off with pistols at forty paces! If they’re going to have my plays in the movies, then have movie actors give them; that’s all I say. And make them real movie plays while they’re about it.”
“One question more, Mr. Shakespeare. You have described most graphically the seven ages of man. In view of femininity’s wonderful progress, could you not give me a parting message on the ages of woman?”
The great dramatist pondered deeply for a moment and then replied in an impressive tone. “Woman has only two ages nowadays,” he said with a sigh. “Her real one and the one she uses to vote.”
His air of finality showed me that our interview was at an end.
XI
ADAM CONDEMNS FEMININE FASHIONS
I had been assigned to interview Eve on the feminine fashions of 1922, but the maid said she was out, and so I had to fall back on old Adam instead. I approached the father of the race not without diffidence, feeling so painfully young and fearing he would not care to talk for publication, but his opening remarks set me entirely at ease.
“Not care to be quoted!” he exclaimed. “I’m mighty glad of the opportunity. I don’t have one so often, now that Eve stays home so much. You see, she calls only on people of the first families, and they’re not very numerous around here. The neighbors say she gives herself airs, and so they don’t call on her. It’s been a lasting source of grief that she’s ineligible to join the Daughters of anything. She arrived too early on the scene. It used to be awfully galling to her to hear the women all talking about their family trees and boasting of their ancestors, and swapping lies about what their great-great-grandfathers said to George Washington at the battle of San Juan Hill, or whatever it was, and giving an expurgated edition of what George Washington said to Lord Cornwallis, as handed down to posterity in the family records. Eve used to sit in a corner and weep while the Daughters of the Mexican Revolutions or the Granddaughters of Russian Independence (to be eligible for the latter you must have an ancestor who shot at least one grand duke, five assassinations making you an ace; and if your relative happened to pot a Czar your social position is assured forever) were spinning their yarns and trying to make each other jealous. But now she’s organized a new society, the Mothers of Humanity, and she’s president, secretary, treasurer and chairman of the committee on membership. She’s away this afternoon calling on Mrs. Methuselah and they’re trying to get up some scheme that will induce all the women they want to blackball to apply for membership.
“Yes, poor Eve has had a pretty hard time right from the start, and I don’t believe her descendants have appreciated what she did for them. I’ll say this for her: she’s been as true as steel, even if she hasn’t always kept her temper so well. It’s a fact that after that first little unpleasantness she always kept a broomstick handy for any peddler who might come along trying to sell ‘nice eating apples,’ but consider the provocation! There we were, nicely settled in the garden, no work, nothing to do but step out in the yard and help ourselves to all the fruit and vegetables in sight. All the trees and vines were of the self-cultivating variety. We’d never even heard of the high cost of living. No family to support. No neighbors to scrap with. No money, and no pockets to put it in if we had had, but, glorious thought! No bills to pay. We had our little disagreements, of course. The first day she arrived, Eve said I’d been doing the dishes the wrong way, letting ’em all go until the end of the month and then turning the hose on ’em out in the front yard; she insisted on washing ’em after every meal. But, as I said, who was there to know the difference? She had to learn the names of all the animals, and she was especially glad to hear about the bear, so that she could tell me what I was as-cross-as when I got the grip that first winter.
“Yes, life is real and wife is earnest, but, as I said, ours was very happy. The first quarrel? I don’t know that I remember just what it was about. I recall a dispute over Eve’s new bathing suit, which was intensified by my innocent remark that it was an exceedingly small thing to quarrel about, but I think our initial serious disagreement occurred when I respectfully declined to go into hysterics over Cain’s first tooth.
“And this reminds me: our first social event in Eden was little Cain’s inaugural bawl. I’m sure you’ll pardon me for getting that off my mind at this stage of the interview. If I tried that joke on Eve once I tried it fifty times, and every time I was met by the same blank stare. I’ve been waiting seven thousand years to tell it to somebody who would appreciate it. Thank you for smiling. I was the originator of the saying that women have no sense of humor. Man was made to mourn, and he never realizes it so keenly as when he hears a woman try to tell a funny story. I could talk to you all day about Eve, the only girl I ever loved—because there wasn’t any other. It didn’t take us long to get out of the Garden that time—principally because Eve didn’t have to wait to dress. Today it would be a different story. If clothes had been in vogue in the year one I suppose I might have waited two hours down in the front hall while Eve was getting ready and packing the trunks—and then probably I’d have had to go back two or three times for something she thought she’d forgotten after we got outside. Well, what I started to say was that little Eve bore up bravely under her misfortunes. She put up a splendid bluff. I’ll say that for her. Why, do you know, instead of sitting down and bewailing her hard fate after being put out of the Garden, she actually gave a coming out party! I certainly admired her nerve, one day, when I overheard her telling the new neighbors that Eden was all very well for young couples just starting housekeeping, but the neighborhood was getting so crowded and it was so near the zoo that we just really had to move. And then she remarked that she had never been able to get me to take enough exercise anyway and she thought gardening would now be just fine for me. It takes a woman to carry a thing off like that. Women are the world’s champion bluffers and yet we men think we know how to play poker. Why—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Adam, but I was asked to get an interview on feminine fashions of 1922, and whether you think they have changed for the better.”