Part 6
“Sometimes, however, I can’t help wondering what’ll be the next great reform. Abolishing tobacco, prob’ly. The fellows who never succeeded in learning to smoke are getting busy already, I see. If I called for my bowl today I wouldn’t get it, and I suppose along about week after next, if I call for my pipe, somebody will tell me that all tobacco is prohibited except Wheeling tobies containing less than half of one per cent of the real thing. I can still call for my fiddlers three, but the next thing I know they’ll be locking me up for running a cabaret without a license and a cover charge.
“You never can tell where those measly reformers will break out next. One of these mornings you’ll pick up the paper and read: ‘Association for the Prohibition of Lemon Pie Introduces Bill in Congress. Alarming Increase in Indigestion Attributed to Seductive Delicacy. New Law Provides for Right of Search of Pantries.’ There’d be a lot of kicks, but what’s the use? Folk would go around wearing buttons inscribed: ‘No Pie, No Work.’ Orators would point out that the workingman must have his pie. Schoolboys would go on strike. New England farmers would protest that their breakfasts had been spoiled. But the pie amendment would be slipped in some appropriation bill as a joker, and then good-bye pie.
“That would be only a starter. The scheme to have the government prescribe what you shall eat and drink and smoke is only beginning to get up speed. Every domestic menu will have to be O. K’d by the Secretary of the Interior. There will be laws to make everybody go to bed at ten and get up at six, to prohibit the wearing of blue neckties with red whiskers, to compel the printing of all baseball reports in English, and to force pedestrians to wear license numbers, front and rear, and give three loud honks on approaching congested cross-walks.
“You’ll have to get up in the morning by the official whistle, eat breakfast according to the food controller, ride to work in a government street car, work so many hours, play a round of golf on the public links, don a Bureau of Health mask to kiss your wife when you get home, eat another government meal, sit on the front porch and smoke a tobaccoless cigar, fight the mosquitos awhile—remembering the anti-profanity amendment to the old Federal Constitution—and then go to bed when the curfew sounds, being careful not to transgress the state anti-snoring law. That’s what you’re coming to.
“‘Old King Cole was a merry old soul.’ Ah, my boy, I’m afraid the emphasis is going to be on the ‘was.’ I try to keep up the bluff that I’m enjoying myself; it’s a tough task. Take away my pipe, and my bowl, and my fiddlers three, and you can have my job as king. A king will have no more fun than a commoner. But here comes the Queen. Sh! Sh! Not a word of this to Her Majesty.
“Yes, my dear, this young man and I have just been having a chat about the delights and benefits of prohibition. As I was saying, what a glorious thing it is to think that husbands who used to hang around bar-rooms after office hours will now spend their evenings at home, sitting by the fireside reading Woodrow Wilson’s ‘History of the American People’ in nine volumes, net, and drinking hot lemonade. Must you go so soon? Well, good-bye. And listen: if you must print what I said, perhaps you’d better not use my name. Just say ‘one of our most prominent citizens,’ or something. Farewell.”
And as I stepped into the cockpit of my ethereal airplane I reflected that some kings, after all, are no different from other men.
XV
KING HENRY VIII ADMITS SOME MATRIMONIAL MISTAKES
“King Henry the Eighth wants to see you,” said the city editor as I reported for duty. “Says he doesn’t think we’re giving him a square deal. We’ve printed interviews with Solomon and Bluebeard and Brigham Young, all much-married men, and let them make their explanations to put them in a better light with posterity, but for some reason he can’t understand we’ve passed him up. Better see what the old boy has to say.”
“Yes,” said His Majesty, as he motioned me graciously to a seat in his reception room, “I thought it only due to myself to make a statement for publication, particularly since you have been interviewing some of my noted—er—er—competitors, or perhaps I should say fellow-sufferers, and setting them right with the public. Not that I consider them exactly in my class, of course. Unlike Solomon and Bro. Young, I did not believe in what I might call numerically-simultaneous matrimony, nor like Mr. Bluebeard did I think a man justified, whatever the provocation, in resorting to the most extreme measures himself and taking the law into his own hands. Let everything be done strictly according to law, was my motto. I defy anyone, in the case of my wives, to find the coroner’s verdict defective. I am not saying there is not such a thing as justifiable uxoricide. But I can’t understand how a man could get up his nerve to do it. Certainly, speaking for myself, after being bossed by the first five, I’m sure I didn’t feel like raising my finger, or even my voice, against Mrs. Henry Tudor VI. If they lost their heads I do not think the whole blame should rightly rest on me. It takes two to make a quarrel. There were faults on both sides—especially theirs. History records the—that is—rather sudden shufflings-off of my several spouses, but it doesn’t tell the real reasons therefor. Sometimes it seems to me that the history of my case must have been written either by old bachelors or by members of the women’s rights association. Certainly if experienced married men had done the job they wouldn’t have left out all the extenuating circumstances.”
“As what, Your Majesty?”
“Well, did you ever see any reference in history to the annual earthquake at St. James’ Palace known as the Fall house-cleaning cataclasm? Of course you haven’t. And yet we husbands were afflicted with the same epidemics in those days, that seem so far away, as you are now.”
“I never thought of it before, Your Majesty. With the canning and house-cleaning seasons over, a modern married man begins to realize just how the soldiers felt the day the armistice was signed.”
“Precisely. Even though he knows the trouble is bound to recur when the germs get in the air again next Fall. But the man who has been married to only a limited extent can’t begin to sympathize with a case like mine. The first few wives are the hardest.
“Take this matter of house-cleaning. Every wife has her own system, her exclusive, copyrighted plan of offensive campaign which differs from everybody else’s. My first wife, for example, believed in moving all the furniture out of the dining room into the hall on the very first day of the attack and then served all meals for two days in the form of a stand-up free lunch in the butler’s pantry. The regular hall furniture was moved into the parlor to make room for the dining room furniture. Consequently the place was so cluttered up there was nowhere to sit down. But of course all husbands, even when house-cleaning is not prevalent, have to stand a good deal. My second wife, as soon as she was inaugurated in office as secretary of the interior and speaker of my house, reversed all the precedents of her predecessor. When the house-cleaning epidemic arrived she collected all the furniture in the palace and piled it up in the dining room. On fine days during the upheaval I got a hand-out on the back porch and on wet days I ate in the cellar. I had just become fairly accustomed to this domestic arrangement when Wife III, Series A, appeared on the scene with some entirely different and equally ingenious scheme for turning the house downside up. So it went, each new domestic administration having its own peculiar policies, not only with reference to house-cleaning but to all forms of domestic discipline. I was willing enough to obey—I realized that is the first duty of soldiers and husbands—but I had work keeping track of the orders. I perceived then why so many married men were volunteering for my new army to fight in France: they wanted to get where there would not be quite so much discipline.
“As I was saying, I got mixed on my orders and was constantly making mistakes. Wives so often fail to realize that accidents will happen to the best regulated husbands. For instance, Wife No. 1 had a rule that I must be in by eleven o’clock, but might stay out till twelve if I could tell just where I’d been. Wife No. 2 changed the hour to ten and No. 3, if I recall correctly, fixed it at ten-thirty. It’s not strange if occasionally along late in the evening I got a trifle mixed as to which administration was in office at that precise moment and consequently strayed a bit from the prescribed schedule. I could not always be sure whether I was supposed to be running on eastern or central standard time. As a result the first unvarying greeting that met my ears on my arrival home was apt to assume the sharply interrogatory form. I always answered whenever I could distinctly remember. At least I did my best. Matrimony is paved with good intentions.
“There were other disadvantages, also—connected with what I now perceive to have been my mistaken matrimonial policy—which may not occur to persons of more limited experience. For instance, how many realize that I was virtually at the mercy of a soviet of my wives’ relations? When a wife happened to shuffle off did her relatives immediately conclude that they were no longer my connections by marriage? They did not. They still considered themselves close relations—even closer, when I sought to borrow money from them. After a few matrimonial administrations I had enough ‘in-laws’ to fill a convention hall. Indeed, they did form a sort of mutual benefit association and used to meet and pass resolutions of condemnation on me and condolence with the new incumbent every time I happened to change wives. Sore, of course, because they weren’t invited to the wedding. But I had to draw the line somewhere. In those days, as now, they used to term it ‘solemnizing’ a marriage, although that word ‘obey’ in the ceremony was a joke. And half the time I felt just like a sort of comic supplement. In all my voyaging on the seven seas of matrimony I can recollect very few times when I was allowed to do any of the steering. Looking back, life seems to have been just one wife after another. Why did I do it? Well, I read in the newspapers the other day a supposedly sensational story of a Boston man who got married while under the influence of hypnotism, but I couldn’t see that the case contained any unusual feature.”
“Speaking of matrimony, Your Majesty (as you have just been doing so extensively), have you any advice to offer? What do you consider the lucky month for marriage?”
“Young man,” replied the king in solemn tones as he arose to bid me adieu, “I don’t know anything about that. But I can tell you this: there are at least six unlucky ones. That is as far as I experimented.”
And though I possessed only one-sixth of his matrimonial experience, I shook the aged monarch’s hand in silent sympathy before tiptoeing from his pathetic presence.
XVI
DON QUIXOTE SAYS HE WASN’T SO CRAZY AS SOME MODERN REFORMERS
As the trim figure in a neatly fitted sack suit arose to greet me with an odd mixture in his manner of ancient courtesy and the modern “glad hand,” my face must have betrayed my surprise at his unexpected appearance for he exclaimed: “Astonished, eh? Most earth folk are. Seem to expect to see the shade of Don Quixote de la Mancha togged out in his old cast-iron clothes and helmet with a sword for a walking stick. They fail to make allowance for the fact that we shades progress, just like you people down below. We try to be as up-to-date as possible. I suppose you thought, too, you were going to interview a harmless lunatic and listen amusedly to his rambling conversation and perhaps have the fun of joshing him a bit. Well, I’m happy to say I’ve got over my delusions, or illusions or whatever they were. And shall I tell you what cured me? Why, watching the antics and performances of some of you down on earth. My motto is thoroughness. I want to do every job up in the most complete style. I will either be the champion, the record-holder, the biggest in the bunch or else nothing at all. I may once have been in a fair way to becoming the world’s most inspired idiot and champion all-round, catch-as-catch-can professional ‘regulator,’ but I’m now a has-been, a second-rater. There’s too much competition. I’m ashamed of myself. I throw up my hands and quit. Do you understand me?”
“Well, not entirely, Don Quixote. What modern competitors or successors have you got?”
“Do you have to ask that?” he replied. “Why, I can get materialized and take a run below and in five minutes see more fellows crazier than I ever was than I can count. Or I can just stay up here and read the newspapers. I was reading only this morning of a bill that’s going to be introduced in the Maine Legislature to prohibit women from wearing high-heeled shoes. They used to call me a fool reformer, but I never was quite so idiotic as to try to reform women’s dress in the slightest particular. Trying to dictate feminine fashions would be just about as sensible as attempting to sweep back the ocean. The next thing they know somebody will be trying to tack an amendment on to the Constitution forbidding women to wear furs in summer and low shoes and open-work waists in winter. I see one writer calls the anti-high-heels measure ‘Quixotic.’ That shows all he knows about me. I was accused of being slightly off at one time, but nobody ever charged me with utter imbecility. And I see that some other professional set-’em-all-rights are going to put the ban on tobacco—if they can. They’ll have some hard sledding. But I was glad to observe that a judge had the sense to turn down an application for a charter from an anti-tobacco association. The society’s announced object was to make the growing, manufacture, sale and use of tobacco illegal. I held my breath until I found what the judge did.
“And what did the judge do? Opening a fresh box of Havanas, he carefully selected a long, slender, chocolate-colored panatela, with a red and gold waistband, cut off the end with his gold-mounted clipper, fished a match out of his vest pocket, struck it on the ink-stand, applied the blaze to the end of the cigar, blew a fragrant cloud of incense to the ceiling in worship of the spirit of justice and perfect impartiality, gave a great big sigh of measureless content, and then proceeded to write an opinion on the subject that did my heart good to read. In dignified, judicial terms he affectionately advised the anti-tobacconists to go soak their venerable heads; he reminded them that the most admirable and wholly beneficial occupation of the human species is minding its own business; and intimated that so long as the court should continue to enjoy unimpaired intellectual vigor and be in full possession of all its faculties, it would never authorize a movement to regulate the personal conduct of rational adult beings by organized idiocy.
“It was an elegant set-back for the chronic busybodies, but I haven’t much hope it will be permanent. Mark my words, those fellows are only getting ready to break out in some new place. If they can’t prohibit tobacco they’ll attack chewing gum or ice cream soda. One of these days I expect to pick up the paper and read: ‘New Sundae Law Proposed. Association Opposed to Ice Cream Soda in Any Form Applies for Charter.’ I may have made a few mistakes that time when I was supposed to be a little off my balance, but I never made the same mistake twice. I tilted at those old windmills, as they turned out to be, but I didn’t respond to an encore. Some of your modern reformers are continually butting their heads against stone walls, and if their heads weren’t so thick they couldn’t get away with it.
“Folks laugh at that account of my exploits and adventures, but they don’t stop to notice that there are lots of fellows running around loose who are ten times funnier than Don Quixote ever was. For instance, I understand you have a good many Congressmen-at-large. There are societies already comprising some fifty-seven and one-half varieties of butters-in, advocating all kinds of reforms, including the prohibiting of flowers from growing on Sunday. The first thing we know they’ll be having each new Congress decide whether men shall wear their hair pompadour or brushed down (if they have any), rule on the question of visible suspenders in summer and settle the length of moustaches, coats, sermons, stockings, lawns, skirts, soft drinks and hatpins. And of course there’ll be a law compelling all persons to wear long faces.
“Now, I may have been a bit erratic at one time, but I never got up a Society for the Prevention of Public Enjoyment. The trouble with lots of your reformers is, that not satisfied with being ‘off’ themselves, they want to drive other folks crazy. They’re doing it. Take that proposed state anti-snoring law out in Oklahoma. It’s going to declare any person a public nuisance who keeps other folks awake at night with solos by his nasal organ. But nobody dreams of interfering with the scoundrel who dashes along the street in his automobile at two A. M. with his muffler cut-out. I see you’re surprised at my keeping tab on things down below. There’s a reason. It gratifies me to realize that if I were back on earth I should have no trouble procuring a certificate of perfect sanity after the way so many folks are behaving. I see one man was paid $300,000 for pounding another man who got $200,000 for letting him do it. And the very persons who contributed to that fund kick the loudest about the high cost of living. And yet they used to call me unsound! Puck said a mouthful when he remarked: ‘What fools these mortals be.’ The world is a place of perpetual change, and yet lots of women continue cheerfully to give up two dollars a curl for a ‘permanent’ Marcel wave. Foolish men are less concerned with how many miles they can get out of a gallon than with how many smiles they can get out of a quart.
“But what showed me more clearly than anything else whither you earth folks are drifting was a sign, on my last trip, outside a butcher’s: ‘Tongue, 48 cents a pound; brains, 33 cents.’ If tongue is getting to be worth so much more than brains, then I’m glad I shuffled off when I did.”
And as I volplaned back to earth I wondered also why our topsy-turvy world ever considered Don Quixote loco.
XVII
PHARAOH SOLVES SERVANT PROBLEM
All the way to King Pharaoh’s house I kept wondering how I should enter the presence of decayed royalty. More modern monarchs, I knew from my reportorial experience, were frequently regular fellows whom it was perfectly safe to offer to shake hands with and perhaps, after a brief acquaintance, to slap on the back and ask for the loan of a cigarette or the “makin’s.” But the thought of conversing with a four-thousand-year-old personage who had retired from the king business, yet retained his former notions of dignity and grandeur, filled me with awe. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when in response to my ring at the front door it slowly opened about half an inch, as if someone were trying to peek out and size up the visitor, and then a moment later it was thrown back and a commanding figure, who I knew from his pictures was none other than Pharaoh himself, stood in the doorway with a smile of welcome.
“Come right in,” he exclaimed. “I was afraid at first you might be a walking delegate of the Dish-Breakers’ Union.” And there stood the erstwhile mighty monarch clad in a long blue-checked apron, the kind that pins up over the shoulders with a couple of thing-a-ma-jigs and comes ’way down below the belt. His sleeves were rolled up above his elbows and he had the general appearance of a cross between a chauffeur who had been digging in the garden and a butler who had taken an automobile apart and was now trying to put the pieces back again.
“Your Majesty,” I began, with a low obeisance, but that was as far as I got with my speech of introduction.
“Come right out in the kitchen,” he interrupted affably, “and we can have a chat while I’m doing up my dishes. I understand you want to interview me on the servant problem. You’ve come to the right shop. I can talk feelingly on the subject. In the course of forty-five centuries of experience I’ve hit all the high spots, from the time when I had fifteen hundred cooks and chambermaids in the house and six hundred charioteers in the royal garage down to the cruel present, when I’m reduced to doing my own work. The servant problem! I’ve solved it. I could send you out of here so chock full of information about it that you couldn’t walk straight. Have a smoke? Mrs. Pharaoh objects to my smoking a pipe and washing the china at the same time (she complained at dinner of a decided flavor of nicotine in the soup) but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t light up while I’m finishing the job. Then, after I manicure the knives and forks, massage the sink, and take a brief and exhilarating spin around the dining room with my new six-cylinder carpet sweeper, I’ll have nothing to do but fix the oatmeal for tomorrow morning, in the jackpot or whatever you call it, put it on to boil and I’ll be at your service.
“Yes, it may seem to you like considerable of a comedown,” said his former majesty when we were comfortably settled in armchairs in the library, “but during the last few days, since I let the sole remaining servant go, I’ve been experiencing the first real peace I’ve known in just four thousand five hundred and sixty-two years. Quite a long time when you come to think of it. You ask me to define the servant problem and then comment upon it. Let me tell you some of our recent troubles with ‘domestic assistants.’ That’s what they want to be called nowadays. Oh, yes, we have servants up here. This isn’t exactly heaven, you know. Somebody has said that voyaging on the sea of matrimony is all right until the cook wants to be captain. Well, our cooks have all wanted to be commanders-in-chief with the pay, pretty near, of active admirals. And among them they’ve mighty near wrecked the ship. The next to the last we got, No. 19, promised to be the light of our existence. The light went out one night and never came back. Her testimonials said she was a very good cook. They must have been referring exclusively to her moral character. Her successor was described as ‘a perfect treasure’, but, according to the proverb, ‘Riches take wings,’ and she was no exception. In her case, however, it was just as well. She claimed to have cooked ten years for John D. Rockefeller. And it did not occur to us until later that Mr. Rockefeller is a chronic sufferer from dyspepsia.