Part 3

Julius Cæsar is said to have been in the habit of dictating to three secretaries simultaneously. How does this compare with the literary productivity of Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr. Jack London?

At the last meeting of the Tammany aldermanic convention of the Fifth Assembly District a speaker declared it to be the most momentous event in the history of the world. Compare the Fifth Assembly District convention with (a) the battle of Marathon; (b) the meeting of the States-General at Versailles in 1789; (c) the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

V. LOGIC

Prove that the department store is the principal cause of prostitution by showing that the department store is fifty-six years old and the social evil is forty thousand years old.

The mortality rate in municipal foundling asylums is 99-1/2 per cent. Develop this into an argument for the maintenance of all children by the State.

Compare the arguments advanced in at least four (4) New York newspapers to show that the Giants would win with the reasons given in the same newspapers why the Athletics won.

Compare Richard Pearson Hobson's last speech on the Japanese peril with Demosthenes's Oration on the Crown.

VI. SCIENCE

The classification of the sciences has always presented peculiar difficulties, but a partial list would include the following:

Tonsorial Science, Sunday Supplement Science, Science of Bricklaying Domestic Science, Science of Cosmic Love Bohemian Science, Science of Advertising Science of Sir Oliver Lodge, Scranton, Pa., Science Science of Packy McFarland, Science of Puts and Calls Science of Sexology, Anti-vivisectionist Science, Science.

VII

MORGAN

We were speaking of the man whose career was written in terms of huge corporations and incomparable art collections.

"What a life it was!" said Cooper. "From his office-desk he controlled the destinies of one hundred million people. His leisure hours were spent amidst the garnered beauty of five thousand years. Isn't it almost an intolerable thought that the same man should have been master of the Stock Exchange and owner of that marvellous museum in white marble on Thirty-sixth Street?"

"Cooper," I said, "you sound like the I. W. W."

"I am that," he retorted. "I express the Inexhaustible Wonder of the World in the face of this thing we call America. A nation devoted to the principle that all men are born equal has produced the perfect type of financial absolutism. A people given up to material aims has cornered the art treasures of the ages. Need I say more?"

"You needn't," I said. "You have already touched the high-water mark in lyricism."

But Harding waved me aside.

"I have also been thinking of that marble palace on Thirty-sixth Street," he said. "I can't help picturing the scene there on that critical night in the fall of 1907 when Wall Street was rocking to its foundations, and a haggard group of millionaires were seeking a way to stave off ruin. I imagine the glorious Old Masters looking down from their frames on that unhappy assembly of New Masters--the masters of our wealth, our credit, our entire industrial civilisation. I imagine Lorenzo the Magnificent leaning out from the canvas and calling the attention of his neighbour, Grolier, to that white-faced company of great American collectors. The perspiring gentleman at the head of the table had one of the choicest collections of trust companies in existence. The man at his elbow was the owner of an unrivalled collection of copper mines and smelters. Facing him was an amateur who had gone in for insurance companies. Others there had collected railroads, or national banks, or holding companies. No wonder old Lorenzo was moved at the prospect of so many matchless accumulations, representing the devoted labour of years, going under the hammer. Around the walls the wonderful First Editions stood at attention and some one was saying, 'Naturally, on the security of your first mortgage bonds--'"

"Putting poetry aside," I said somewhat impatiently, "what I should like to know is whether this garnered beauty of five thousand years, as Cooper calls it, really has any meaning to its owners. I understand that most of our great collections are bought in wholesale lots, Shakespeare folios by the yard, Chinese porcelains by the roomful. Does a man really take joy in his art treasures in such circumstances?"

"Of course he does," said Cooper. "If we buy masterpieces in the bulk, that again is the American of it. I am certain that this man's extraordinary business success is to be explained by the mental stimulus he derived from his books and his pictures. His business competitors really had no chance. Their idea of recreation was yachts or cards or roof-gardens. But he found rest in the presence of the loveliest dreams of dead painters and poets. Can't you see how a man's imagination in such surroundings would naturally expand and embrace the world? No wonder he thought in billions of dollars. Why, I myself, if I could spend half an hour before a Raphael whose radiant beauty brings the tears to your eyes, could go out and float a $100,000,000 corporation."

"Having first dried your tears, of course," I suggested.

"Well, yes," he said.

Harding had been showing signs of impatience, a common trait with him when other people are speaking.

"When a rich man dies," he said, "the first thing people ask is what will the stock market do. They were putting that question last week. Your Wall Street broker is a sensitive being. Nothing can happen at the other end of the world but he must rush out and sell or buy something. Returning, he says to the junior partner, 'I see there has been a big battle at Scutari. Where's Scutari and what are they fighting about?' 'Search me,' says the junior partner, 'but I think you did right in buying.' 'I sold,' says the broker. 'Who won the battle?' says the junior partner. 'I don't recall,' says the broker. But he is convinced that no big battle should be allowed to pass without being reflected in Wall Street.

"But that is not what I wanted to say. Suppose the market does go up two points or loses two points. What is the effect on the Stock Exchange compared with the crisis that ensues in the art world when a rich American dies? There's where things begin to look panicky. The quotations on Rembrandts and Van Dycks are cut in two. There is consternation in London auction rooms and Venetian palaces. In some half-ruined little Italian town the parish council has almost made up its mind to ship to New York the thirteenth-century altar piece which is the glory of the cathedral. The news comes that Croesus is dead and the parish authorities see their dreams of new schools and a new chapel and a modern water supply vanish. That is the crisis worth considering."

"Not to speak," I said, "of that little shop on Fourth Avenue where they paint Botticellis."

"I admit that Harding has made a very interesting suggestion, though probably without any deliberate intention on his part," said Cooper. "This steady drain by Wall Street upon Europe's art treasures is a civilising process which scarcely receives the attention it deserves, except when some Paris editor loses his temper and calls us barbarians and despoilers. I am not sure who is the barbarian, the American trust magnate who thinks a million francs is not too much for one of Raphael's Madonnas, or the scion of Europe's ancient nobility who thinks that no Madonna is worth keeping if you can get a million francs for it. According to the European idea, the proper place for a masterpiece is a corner of the lounging-room where the weary guest, after a hard day with the hounds, may be tempted to stare at the canvas for a moment and say, 'Nice little daub, what?' Their masterpieces are made to be seldom seen and never heard of.

"Now see what we do with the same picture over here. Before it is brought into the country all the papers have cable despatches about it, and they have impressed its value on the public mind by multiplying the real price by five. Then we advertise it by raising the question whether it is genuine or a fake. Then we put it into a museum and countless thousands besiege the doorkeeper and ask which is the way to the million-dollar picture. Then the Sunday papers print a reproduction in colours suitable for framing, but it isn't framed very often because the baby destroys it while papa is busy with the comic supplement. Then the New York correspondents of the Chicago papers write columns about the picture. Then it is taken up by women's clubs, the reading circles, and the Chautauqua. Before the process is completed that picture has entered into the daily thought and speech of the American people."

Harding interrupted.

"The members of the European nobility have seldom been interested in art. They have been too busy wearing military uniforms or pursuing the elusive fox all over the landscape."

"But that is just the point I was making," said Cooper indignantly.

"Yes, but not so clearly as I have formulated it," said Harding. "The fact is that art has always flourished under the patronage of the merchant class. The Athenians were a trading people. Lorenzo the Magnificent came from a family of pawn-brokers. Rembrandt sold his pictures to the sturdy, and quite homely, tea and coffee merchants of Holland. It is preposterous to suppose that because a man is lucky in the stock market he is incapable of appreciating the very best things in art. He is not incapable; only he keeps his interests separate. From ten o'clock to three our patron of the arts is busy downtown attending to the unfortunate financiers whom he has caught on the wrong side of the market. If Cooper here were a Cubist painter, and you gave him the run of a great art collector's front office on settlement day, he could produce any number of pictures entitled Nude Speculator Descending a Wall Street Staircase."

"The European aristocracy doesn't always despise us," I said. "Occasionally an American will be decorated by the Grand Duke of Sonderklasse-Ganzgut with the cross of the Bald Eagle of the Third Class, the person thus honoured being worth nine hundred million dollars and the area of the Prince's dominions being eighty-nine square miles."

VIII

THE MODERN INQUISITION

QUESTIONNAIRE: _A favourite indoor amusement in uplift circles._

His eyes were bloodshot and he stared forward into vacancy.

"We were married," he said, "shortly after I was graduated from law school. For just five years we were happy. We were in love. I was making good in my profession. Helen took delight in her household duties and her baby. Then one day--the exact date is still engraved in letters of fire on my memory--I received a letter. It was from the Society for the Propagation of Ethical Statistics. It said that a study was being made of the churchgoing habits of college graduates, and there was a printed list of questions which I was requested to answer. I cannot recall the entire list, but these were some of the items:

"Do you go to church willingly or to please your wife?

"Do you stay all through the sermon?

"What is the average amount you deposit in the contribution plate (a) in summer; (b) in winter?

"Is your choice of a particular church determined by (a) creed; (b) the quality of the preaching; (c) ventilation?

"Are you ever overtaken by sleep during the sermon, and if so, at what point in the sermon do you most readily yield to the influence? (Note: In answering this question a state of recurrent drowsiness is to be considered as sleep.)

"Do you go to sleep most easily under (a) an Episcopalian; (b) Presbyterian; (c) Methodist; (d) Rabbi; (e) Ethical Culturist? (Note: Strike out all but one of the above names.)

"Is your awakening attended by a sensation of remorse or merely one of profound astonishment?

"What do you consider to be the ideal length for a sermon, leaving climatic conditions out of account?

"I tossed the letter across the breakfast table to Helen and intimated that I couldn't spare the time for an answer. But Helen insisted it was my duty as a college graduate. If the science of sociology couldn't look to us men of culture for its data, whom could it go to? So I telephoned down to the office that I would be late and sat down to draft my reply. It was much more difficult than I imagined. I was amazed to find how little I knew of my own habits and processes of thoughts. It took the greater part of the morning, and when I finally did get down to the office I learned that my most important client, an aged gentleman of uncertain temper, had gone off in a rage saying he would never come back. He kept his word.

"That letter was the beginning. I had no leisure to worry over this loss of a very considerable part of my income, because the next morning's mail brought a letter from the Association for the Encouragement of the City Beautiful. It contained a very long questionnaire which I was requested to fill out and forward by return mail. I was asked to state whether the character of the telegraph poles in our neighbourhood was such as to reflect credit on the civic spirit of the community, in respect to material (a) wood, (b) ornamental iron; and secondly, as to paint, (a) yellow, (b) red, (c) green, (d) no paint at all. I was also to say whether conditions in our neighbours' back yards were conducive to the propagation of the typhoid-bearing or common house-fly and to give my estimate of the number of flies so propagated in the course of a week, in hundreds of thousands. Finally, was the presence of the house-fly in our community due to the negligence of individual citizens, or was it the direct result of inefficient municipal government? And if the latter, was our municipal administration Republican or Democratic, and what were the popular majorities for mayor since the Spanish-American war?

"With Helen's assistance I managed to send off my reply within two days. But when I came down to my place of business I found that I had missed an important long-distance call from Chicago which the office-boy had promised to transmit to me, but failed to do so because he did not understand it in the first place."

He sighed and stared at the floor. His emaciated fingers beat a rapid tattoo on my desk. He droned on in dull, impersonal tones, as if this story of the wreck of a man's happiness had no special concern for him.

"Well," he said, "you can foresee the end for yourself. Within less than two months my law business disappeared, because I simply could not devote the necessary time to it. I resorted to desperate measures. I wrote to our alumni secretary, asking him to remove my name from the college catalogue; but it was too late. My name was by this time the common property of all the sociological laboratories and research stations in the country. At home, want began to stare us in the face. Worry over my financial condition, added to the long hours of labour involved in filling out questionnaires, undermined my health. I grew morose, ill-tempered, curt in my behaviour to Helen and the child. We still loved each other, but the glow and tenderness of our former relations had disappeared.

"Fortunately Helen did not feel my neglect as she might. For by this time she, too, was getting letters from sociological experiment stations. Helen was graduated from a New England college. Her letters, at first, dealt with problems of domestic economy. She had to write out model dietaries, statements of weekly expenses, the relative merits of white and coloured help. Later she was led into the field of child psychology. Our little Laura was hardly able to go out into the open air, because her mother had to keep her under observation during so many hours of the day. The child grew pale and nervous. Helen grew thin. In her case, poor girl, it was actual lack of food. There was no money in the house. One night as we sat down at table there was just a glass of milk and a slice of bread and butter at Laura's plate; for us there was nothing. At first I failed to understand. Then I looked at Helen and she was trying to smile through her tears."

He sobbed and I turned and stared out of the window.

"That night," he said, "I went out and pawned my watch; my great-grandfather had worn it. People rally quickly under trouble, and the next morning we were fairly cheerful. I set to work on a list of questions from the Bureau of Comparative Eugenics. Helen was busy with a questionnaire on Reaction Time in Children Under Six, from the Psychological Department at Harvard. I was resigned. I looked up and saw Laura playing with her alphabet blocks. I thought: Well, our lives may be spoiled, but there is the child. Life had cast no shadow on the current of her young days. At that moment the hall-boy brought in a letter. It was addressed to Miss Laura Smith--our baby. It was from the Wisconsin Laboratory of Juvenile Æsthetics. It contained a list of questions for the child to answer. How many hours a day did she play? Did she prefer to play in the house or on the street? Did she look into shop windows when she was out walking or at moving-picture posters? Was she afraid of dogs? I was crushed. There was a mist before my eyes. I fell forward on the table and wept."

His lip trembled, but the manhood was not gone from him. He faced me with a show of firmness.

"Mind you," he said, "I am not complaining. The individual must suffer if the world is to move forward. We have suffered, but in a good cause."

I agreed. I recalled the tabulated results of a particularly elaborate questionnaire printed in the morning's news. Questions had been sent to a thousand college graduates. Of that number it appeared that 480 lived in the country, 230 preferred the drama to fiction, 198 were vegetarians, and 576 voted for Mr. Wilson at the last Presidential election. Those who voted the Democratic ticket were less proficient in spelling than those who voted for Colonel Roosevelt. Could anything be more useful?

IX

THORNS IN THE CUSHION

I have a confession to make and I have my desk to clean out. One is as hard to go at as the other. If people would only refrain from putting my books and papers in order whenever I am away, I could always find things where I leave them and the embarrassment I am about to relate would have been spared me. After all, there is efficiency and efficiency. If the book I need at any moment is always buried beneath a pile of foreign newspapers, it is only interfering with my work to haul it out during my absence and put it on the desk right in front of me, where I cannot see it.

It was at Harding's place that I met Dr. Gunther. Harding had insisted that we two ought to know each other. After I had spent half an hour in the Doctor's company I agreed that had been worth my while; the rest is for him to say. Gunther is a physician of high standing, but his hobby is astronomy, and it was quite evident that he is as big an expert in that field as in his own profession. We spent a delightful evening. As he rose to say good-night, Gunther turned to me and smiled in a timid fashion that was altogether charming.

"I must confess," he said with a sort of foreign dignity of speech, "that my desire to make your acquaintance was not altogether disinterested. I have here," pulling a large envelope out of his pocket, "a few remarks which I have thrown together at odd moments, and which it occurred to me might be of interest to your readers. It is on a subject which I can honestly profess to know something about. Perhaps you might pass it on to your editor after you have glanced through it and decided that it had a chance. In case it is found unavailable for your purposes, you must be under no compunction about sending it back. You see, I have put the manuscript into a stamped and addressed envelope. I know how busy you journalists are."

I told him I would be delighted to do what I could. I brought the manuscript to the office next morning, laid it on my desk, and forgot about it. It was a Saturday. After I left the office, the janitor's assistant, being new to the place, came in and cleaned up my room. When I looked for the paper on Monday, I could not find it. At first I was not alarmed, because I reasoned that in the course of two or three weeks it would turn up.

But this was evidently Dr. Gunther's first experience as a contributor to the press. He was impatient. Within a week I had a letter from him, dated Boston, where, as he explained, he had been called on a matter of private business which would keep him for some time. Without at all wishing to seem importunate, he asked whether my editor had arrived at any decision with regard to his manuscript. It was a vexing situation. I shrank from writing and confessing how clumsy I had been; and besides the paper was likely to be found at any moment. I saw that I must fight for time.

What I am about to say will confirm many good people in their opinion of the unscrupulous nature of the newspaper profession; but the truth must be told. I determined to write to Dr. Gunther as if I had read his article. The terrible difficulty was that I did not know what it was about. I was fairly sure it had to do with one of two things, medicine or astronomy. He had said, when he gave me the manuscript, that it was a subject on which he could claim special knowledge. But which of the two was it? For some time I hesitated, and then I wrote the following letter:

"Dear Dr. Gunther: Before giving your valuable paper a second and more thorough reading, I must bring up a question which suggests itself even after the most cursory examination. It is this: Will your article go well with illustrations, and if so where are they to be had? You know that ours is a picture supplement, appealing to a general audience, and there is every chance for inserting illustrations into an article of scientific nature abounding in such close-knit argument as you present. Of course there is not the least reason for haste in the matter. A reply from you within the next four weeks will be in time."

Next morning I found a telegram from Boston on my desk. It said: "Naturally no objection to pictures. Suggest you reproduce some of the illustrations from Langley's masterly work on the subject. Gunther."

My ruse had succeeded. I was prepared now to keep up a fairly active correspondence until the missing paper was found. I knew of Samuel Pierpont Langley, one of the greatest of American astronomers and a pioneer of aviation. I turned to the encyclopædia to see which one of Langley's books was likely to be the one Gunther had in mind. There, before me, was a biographical sketch of John Newport Langley, an English physiologist, who had published, among other things, a treatise "On the Liver," and another "On the Salivary Glands." I recalled that at Harding's house Gunther, after an elaborate discussion of the present state of meteorology, had drifted into a spirited tirade against the evils of ill-cooked and undigested food. It might very well be this paper "On the Salivary Glands" that Gunther had in mind.

I delayed writing as long as I could while the office was being ransacked for the missing article. It was a hopeless search. The manuscript had evidently been swept away into the all-devouring waste basket, another victim to mistaken ideals of efficiency. A few days later came a long and friendly letter from Gunther. Without wishing to flatter me, he said that he was quite as much interested in my opinion of his article as in getting it published. He hoped to hear from me at my very earliest convenience.

I waited nearly a week, and yielding to fate wrote as follows: