Part 5
“Oh, beg pardon, I’m sure. But when I get talking about Eve my tongue runs away with me. I suppose all married men are that way. It’s so delightful sometimes to have the chance of talking without feeling that you’re interrupting anybody. Feminine fashions, eh? Well, I’ve seen some changes in the last seven thousand years. I thought nothing could shock me any more, but I’ve had a few stiff jolts the last few months. I guess I’m not as strong as I used to be. Back in the old days, in the garden, fashions weren’t so much. That was before the trouble, but after we moved, plain, simple fig-leaves became passée, hopelessly old-fashioned and out-of-date. I read a book the other day entitled ‘How to Dress on Nothing a Year.’ That described our case exactly, in the early, happy, carefree days. There wasn’t a dressmaker in the world. If anybody had mentioned the word ‘modiste’ I’d have thought it was some new kind of animal I’d overlooked in taking the census. I wouldn’t have known what he meant. Ever have a sewing woman come to your house and stay a week at a time and always sit down with the family at table and be a damper on the conversation? Well, that’s one trouble we never experienced. Eve never came home from a walk in the woods and remarked carelessly that she’d just seen a hat downtown that could be bought for a song, and then it turned out that the song was ‘Old Hundred.’ Not for a minute. Nobody gave a hang in those days what others might be wearing as the latest style. We knew they might wear more, but they couldn’t well wear any less. When anybody wanted a Spring or Fall outfit, all he had to do was to go out in the woods and pick a new suit off a tree. If you were getting a bit shabby and resolved to dress better in the future, you just turned over a new leaf.
“Then came moving day, and what a change! First crack out of the box the girls all began clamoring for clothes, real clothes. I remember one hot day—the thermometer would have been registering about ninety-five, if there had been one—the girls all set up a howl for furs—furs, mind you, with the sun hot enough to boil a cold storage egg. I tried to reason with ’em. ‘You don’t mean furs,’ I said, ‘you mean bathing suits or peek-aboo waists or mosquito netting. This is summer, the hottest weather since the year one. The heat has affected your brains. Go take a swim in the Euphrates and cool off.’ But they insisted that they knew what they were talking about, and so there was nothing for it but I must shoulder my old club and go off and kill a bear and a couple of foxes and a mink and fit ’em all out with a set of furs to wear while most folks were busy trying to dodge sunstrokes. That was the start, I believe, of this modern movement of the girls, wrapping themselves up in ‘summer furs’ just as soon as the weather gets hot enough. That next winter Eve and the girls started going around in the snow and ice in low shoes and short, open-work stockings and wish-bone waists and pneumonia sleeves, and defying the doctors. And that’s the worst of it, that’s what makes me mad. The girls do defy every last rule of health when it comes to dress and get away with it. The strongest man that ever lived couldn’t do it without a call from the undertaker, but the girls seem to thrive on their foolishness.
“The fashions of 1922! Well, looking at them pro and con, without blinders or smoked glasses or anything at all, I may say that they have nothing on the fashions of the year one. And the fashions of the year one (I am merely stating the naked truth) had nothing on anybody. One word more, and I trust you are strong enough to stand it: It’s all right for the women to be eager rivals, but they ought to draw the line at trying to outstrip each other.”
The next thing I knew I was in the ambulance headed for the Olympus Homeopathic Hospital. Old Adam had done his worst.
XII
CAPTAIN KIDD ON TAG DAYS
“Yes, I have observed that your country is now experiencing one of those unprecedented waves of crime for which it is justly celebrated,” remarked Captain Kidd as he unsheathed a huge bowie knife and proceeded to cut off a man’s dose of particularly black eating tobacco. “For a nation that’s been so busy makin’ the world safe for democracy you don’t seem to be doing much to make it unsafe for the gunmen and stick-up artists. A few months ago everybody was talkin’ about the ‘uplift.’ And now they’re trying to dodge the hold-ups. I was down below the other night. Had a date at a Philadelphia seance. And the moment I appeared the whole audience started bombarding me with questions about the location of my buried treasure. I didn’t tell ’em, of course, but I did give ’em some good advice for the present emergency. I told ’em that any man who carried more than carfare and lunch money in his pockets these days, and nights, was a fool. And I also suggested that anybody who buried his treasure in a sand bank instead of a savings bank or a safe deposit vault was entitled to admission to the nearest home for the feeble-minded without an entrance examination.
“I went out for a walk down Chestnut Street and in going four blocks had my pocket picked three times. The fellow who was supposed to be looking after that other block must have been off his beat. I got scared and wanted to hustle back up here, but to oblige the medium I stayed over until the next day. I took another walk, down Market street this time, and found it was a tag day. There were female hold-up artists at every corner. I turned over what the pick-pockets had missed the night before and made my escape. Terra firma is no place these days for a reformed pirate. It reminds him too painfully of the many good bets he overlooked.
“Sometimes, especially after I’ve been readin’ of the activities of your cabaret waiters, bootleggers and Pullman porters, I can’t help thinkin’ that history has been too hard on us plain, unornamental pirates. We had to pick up a livin’ best we could. We didn’t have our tools and equipment provided for us. We had to furnish our own cutlasses and pistols, while your modern waiters and porters have their trays and whisk-brooms anyhow supplied free of charge. There wasn’t an unwritten law, either, that anybody who didn’t cough up freely was a piker, and we had the greatest difficulty sometimes in getting a victim to produce. Folks found all sorts of mean little schemes for hiding away their valuables. That’s why we had to invent the ingenious device known as ‘walking the plank’ to make ’em give till it hurt. But nowadays it’s amazing to me to see the way the people hand over without even a pistol clapped at their heads. They’re meek as lambs. The pirate business would have been a lot less wearing on the nerves if the public had co-operated then the way it does now.
“Holding up a shipload of passengers used to be a complicated, annoying business. First, we’d run up the black flag with the skull and crossbones on it. Then we’d fire a round shot across the vessel’s bows to bring her to. We’d paint our faces sometimes to make ourselves look as horrible as possible, and taking a pistol in each hand and a cutlass in our teeth, board the ship and line up the passengers and crew in a row. By the time we’d gone through their pockets and searched the cabin and lugged out the strong box we’d put in an eight-hour day, straight time. Hard, exhausting work, and all because people hadn’t been properly trained in those days to hand over quickly and gracefully so that we could get on to the next job.
“If I were flying the Jolly Roger today on my old pirate ship, with my crew of hard-boiled sinners around me, possibly we’d find merchant and passenger ships pestering us to come and take their money away from them. I’d be taking a quiet snooze in my cabin, maybe, when the bosn’s mate would wake me up and say: ‘Cap’n, a vessel on the starboard bow has just signalled for us to stand by and it will send over a boatload of treasure.’ And we’d have to get a cash register and a card index of customers and a press agent, to see that the papers got our names and pictures straight, as Jesse James suggests, and an ad writer to put a piece in saying: ‘Why go elsewhere to be robbed? Come to old reliable Captain Kidd & Co., Inc., and be immediately relieved.’ But at that I don’t suppose with my old-fashioned ideas I’d be able to compete with your up-to-date hold-up games.
“I guess the best plan, if I were ever able to resume business, would be to start a ‘drive’ or hold a tag day. From the way the public gives up, I don’t know but a drive for a $100,000 fund to establish a home for worn-out pirates would bring in a lot of coin. First thing I’d get up a dinner for my executive committee of one hundred. You can’t start anything without a lot of eating these days. Then we’d have a daily luncheon to receive reports from the captains of the various teams, winding up with a mass meeting where we’d take up a collection and announce the result of the house-to-house canvass. Still, a general tag day might bring in more money. I’d have pretty girls at all the street corners to pin a miniature artificial lemon on every contributor to the Captain Kidd Refuge for Reformed Robbers. What do you think?”
“There are many excellent causes, Captain, that have adopted these devices to raise money and I hope you don’t intend to reflect upon them.”
“Oh, not at all, not at all. But don’t you think yourself that the idea has been worked a little hard? It’s all right for the public to give to the things it knows about, but I was thinking it was becoming such an easy mark I might as well have my share. What I object to is being set down in history as the world’s champion pirate and all around bad man, when the fact is I was naturally the most peaceable individual you ever met. The trouble is, I was born about a hundred years too soon. If I were in business today I wouldn’t be a pirate; I’d be a head waiter in a New York hotel, with a foreign accent but able to understand all languages. Money talks. Probably I’d have served an apprenticeship at the place where they check your hat and coat.
“If I wasn’t a head waiter I’d be a steward on an ocean ship. Perhaps I’d feel more at home on the sea anyway. I was talking to my old friend, Jesse James, the other day and he said the difference between him and the modern professional tip extractor was that he never robbed the same man twice. But I suppose his successors believe that anybody who is worth doing at all is worth doing well. One of these days the American people will probably adopt a new Declaration of Independence against foreign waiters and resolve to give the enemy no quarter—and no half dollar either. They’ll change the old naval hero’s slogan to ‘Don’t give up the tip.’ ‘Millions for good meals, but not one cent for tribute.’ ‘All things come to him who waits.’ Well, I’m sorry for the waiter if he ever gets all that’s coming to him. Ta, ta! young man.”
And as he hobbled off to splice the main brace I could hear the old fellow muttering to himself: “And they used to call me a pirate!”
XIII
ALFRED THE GREAT TRIES TO FIND PROSPEROUS KING
“You want me to talk about modern monarchs!” Alfred the Great responded with a trace of irritation. “Why don’t you ask me to talk about the snakes in Ireland or the best method of preserving hen’s teeth? Why not interview me on the habits of the dodo? How about a little chat concerning that common domestic animal, the long-toed diplodocus, or that popular indoor pet, the megatherium? Let’s discuss that numerous class of estimable citizens, the mound builders. Let’s—”
“I beg pardon, your Majesty,” I hastened to interrupt, “but I had no intention of offending. I know kings are very few and far between these days, but I thought your views on the two or three who have managed to survive would be most interesting to the present generation. You yourself were such a mighty monarch, so generally respected for your honesty and ability and bravery and regal appearance, that I am sure—”
“There, there, say no more,” he replied with condescending affability, “I am just a trifle sensitive, I suppose, on the subject. When I see so many of my brothers sacrificed to the onrushing tide of democracy, naturally it makes me a bit sad.
“It’s just a month,” continued King Alfred, as he lighted his long meerschaum and settled down comfortably in his armchair, which was fashioned like a throne, “it’s just a month since I took my first trip down below to see how the earth had been getting along in my absence of a thousand years plus. And I am frank to confess I found some changes. I went down under the auspices of a spiritualist who wanted me to tell a woman’s club how to make griddle cakes. I suppose you’ve read about the time I let the cakes burn in the farmer’s cottage and the housewife bawled me out when she came back. It’s in every school reader. Well, the next day I called in my chief cook and had him show me how to make griddle cakes that would melt in your mouth. There’s no trick at all to it, really. The only thing is you must keep your mind on it. That time in the cottage I got to thinking about a new way to fight the Danes, and the first thing I knew there was a smell like burning rubber and the old dame rushed in and called me down. I’d have ordered her off to instant execution, but just then our side needed all the votes it could get, and I didn’t know whether her husband would thank me or be annoyed.
“Sometimes you can make a hit with a husband by giving his wife a ten-year sentence in jail, and again it makes him peevish—particularly if he has to do his own housework. So I spared her that time. Where was I? Oh, yes, as I was saying, I went down to tell the club how to make griddle cakes. After I’d filled that date I decided to take a little trip around the capitols of Europe and call on my cousins, the kings and queens. You know every king is supposed to be at least a cousin of every other one—that’s why we have such strained relations so often in royal circles. Well, I decided first to project my astral body up to Moscow, the ancient capitol of Russia. I’d never traveled that far during my previous existence on earth, because I couldn’t spare the time—our wars were a continuous performance. Arrived at the palace, I walked right up to the front door and was going in when a big fellow, roughly clad, his countenance concealed beneath a tangled growth of whiskers, barred my passage.
“‘Who do you want to see?’ he inquired gruffly.
“‘Whom do I want to see?’ I said, ‘Why—’
“‘No, _who_, not _whom_,’ he returned. ‘Anybody who uses good grammar is bourgeois and an enemy of the Commune. Down with fool laws and rules. This is the land where all speak and do as they choose.’
“‘But you’re not letting me speak as I choose,’ I retorted. ‘How’s that for consistency?’ He said anyone who was a Bolshevik, whatever that was, didn’t have to be consistent. Consistency was a jewel. Jewelry was wealth. The Bolsheviki were opposed to wealth and private property in any form. I was about to force my way past this lunatic when a number of other rough-looking persons, armed with guns and bayonets, rushed out of the palace and surrounded me.
“‘I want to see the king!’ I exclaimed. And immediately by their faces, or as much of them as I could see peeping out from beneath the whiskers—I saw that something was wrong.
“‘He wants to see the Czar,’ they shouted, and then laughed in a way that made my blood run cold. ‘There are no more kings. They’ve been abolished.’ And one huge fellow, drawing a long knife out of his belt, shook it menacingly under my nose and began to cross-examine me. It took me about one-fifth of a second to make up my mind to be about the most enthusiastic revolutionist and all-around king hater that ever was born. ‘What did you want to see the Czar for, eh?” he asked. ‘I want to kill him,’ I replied. And a chorus of cheers rent the air. But it was an exceedingly narrow escape. I learned later that the Czar was no more, that the country was being ruled by a little band of lunatics calling themselves Bolsheviki, and that it was a crime even to utter the word king unless a strong adjective was put before it.
“I couldn’t understand it at the time, but I didn’t wait to investigate. I decided to get back to civilization by the shortest route, and so I projected my astral body over to Poland. To save time, I’ll just say that Poland was as benighted as Russia. No king. Then I hopped over to Jugo-Slovakia, I believe you call it. Same thing there. On I sped over the kingless countries of the Balkans and up to Budapest. A big sign on the front door of the palace: ‘Beggars, Peddlers and Kings Not Admitted to This Building.’ I moved on. I went hopefully to Vienna. Picking up a newspaper, I read these headlines: ‘Open Season for Aristocrats Begins. In First Day’s Shooting Twenty-nine Counts and Forty-three Barons Bagged. Slaying Parties Now Favorite Winter Sport. Special Prize Offered by Government to First Person to Kill King.’ Two minutes later I was on my aerial way to Berlin. Here, at least, I was sure I should find royal autocracy firmly entrenched. But as I went up the palace walk one glance told me that Germany, too, had cast off her royal rulers. Sitting on the front steps in his shirtsleeves, smoking a corncob pipe, was a slouchy, unshaven citizen whom I mistook for the janitor. In the old days you know no such uncouth specimen of humanity would have been permitted within half a mile of the palace. And who do you think he turned out to be? The President of the German Republic. A harness-maker, or cobbler, or something of the sort. I learned that, as in Russia, the very name of king was tabooed. Just a day or two before a prominent author had been executed for absent-mindedly remarking that he was fond of collecting his royalties. In a German deck of cards instead of having a king they have two knaves. So I lit out for France. Here I found they hadn’t had a king for many years. I inquired anxiously about my old kingdom, England. ‘Oh, they have something over there they call a king,’ I was told. ‘You might cross the Channel and have a chat with him. It would cheer him up.’
“I decided to act on the hint. I didn’t see many changes in London. I thought I recognized some familiar faces among the cab horses. I got an audience with King George by pretending to be the business agent of the Pavers’ and Rammers’ Union. Labor is all-powerful in England today (where is it not?) and George sent word to walk right in the minute he got my card. He was wearing that morning the fool dress uniform of an Honorary Vice-President in the Royal Hibernian Highlanders, Ltd. As soon as we were alone in his private office and I disclosed my identity, he fell on my neck and wept, and called me Uncle Alf. It was very affecting. ‘You’re the only king left that I can talk confidentially to,’ he said, ‘and you’re not really alive. It used to be that almost every country in Europe had its king and royal family. Everybody with a drop of royal blood in his veins was on the public payroll. It kept me busy exchanging birthday greetings with my fellow monarchs. I got a stack of letters from them every day. Today the annual convention of the European Kings’ Mutual Benefit Association could hold its meetings in a telephone booth. Where have they all gone? Some are dead and others wish they were.
“‘There’s not much to choose between the mighty dead and the mighty near dead,’ King George continued. ‘Cousin Mohammed, the last I heard of him, was running an elevator in a Swiss hotel. Cousin Ferdinand was an old clothes man in Naples. Cousin Ludwig had got a job as janitor of an apartment house—determined to be an autocrat to the end. Cousin Wilhelm was engaged in writing his auto-obituary and reading a book on ‘St. Helena As a Health Resort.’ Cousin Charles got upset and left for good. All the retired kings I know are retiring indeed. About the quickest way to unpopularity these days is to proclaim the divine right of kings. Even my oldest boy feels it, poor Wails. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ The man who wrote that knew what he was talking about. It makes the poorest nightcap on record. I’ll s’y.
“‘I feel comparatively safe myself,’ he went on, ‘because I’m not and never have been a real king. I draw the salary and hold the title and wear tailor-made uniforms without doing the work. I have no real authority. Why, I can’t dictate to anybody except the court stenographer—when she’s not too busy scrutinizing her nose. Shall I tell you who’s the real boss of Buckingham Palace? (Whisper) The wife. I can’t even spend my own money as I choose. Freedom of the ‘shes’ and all that sort of thing. Also, there’s an Hereditary Keeper of the Royal Purse, and whenever I want any coin I have to apply to him. You’ve heard of the ‘king’s touch’? Well, that’s it. George is the ruler of England, all right, but his first name is Lloyd, not King.’
“‘And is there any genuine autocrat left on earth?’ I asked King George. ‘Anybody to carry on the traditions of the old absolute monarchs?’
“‘Just one,’ he replied, ‘and he’s not called a king. His title is President. His name is—’
“‘George! George!’ a shrill voice interrupted his Majesty. ‘Did you get that pound of sugar I sent you for?’
“‘I told you I wasn’t an absolute monarch,’ George said, as he motioned me to depart while the departing was good. But I wonder whom he meant when he said there was only one world autocrat left?”
As I took my leave I could not even hazard a guess.
XIV
OLD KING COLE GIVES VIEWS ON PROHIBITION
The city editor’s assignment read: “Interview Old King Cole if sober (I mean the king, not you) and get his photo and pictures of the pipe, the bowl and the three fiddlers, if possible, for a nice layout. Stir him up on prohibition.”
I found His Majesty at his home at the corner of Rye and Bourbon Avenues, planet of Jupiter, next door to Bacchus and across the street from Gambrinus. I entered his presence not without trepidation, for I had never interviewed a real king before, although I am personally acquainted with several apartment house janitors and the policeman on our beat. But I needn’t have feared, for he received me with the utmost urbanity. Dressed in a purple robe, he was sitting in a chair of state and looked every foot a king. I just had time to note his typical poker face, suffused with a royal flush, when he gave me greeting.
“Sit down and have something,” he exclaimed. “What’ll it be? Tea, lemonade, beerine or just a drink from the old town pump? Here’s a new soft bottled beverage that’s having quite a run with the boys. It’s made of ginger, red pepper, turpentine, cocaine, yeast and chewing tobacco. Here’s another drink the boys call the ‘lame mule,’ because it hasn’t any kick. Ha, ha! Would you like to have some more of my jokes?”
“In just a few minutes, Your Majesty, but business before pleasure. I have been asked to interview you on the subject of prohibition, but I had no idea that booze was under the ban up here.”
“Oh, yes, we had to follow the fashion. Queen Cole, as you may not know, has been president of the West Jupiter W. C. T. U. for years, and when America did the Sahara act, why there was nothing to it but we must give prohibition a whirl too. But I dunno. I kind of think we’ll be back on the old basis again some day.