Part 3

“As I came away, he said: ‘Glad to have you call any time that you feel the need of a few plain truths. We have a minister who says what he thinks in a very trenchant way, and I’m sure you’d be glad to let him give you a raking over. Here’s one of our cards. Drop in any time you’re passing. If, for any reason, you are not able to come, we can send a man to take up his abode in your house, or to give you half-hour talks from the shoulder, and you can have a monthly account with us. Say a good word for us to any of your plutocratic friends who are tired of sycophancy. Good day, old man.’”

I was aghast at what he had told me, and I said: “I wonder at his temerity!”

“Why,” said the millionaire, “I love him for it! After a directors’ meeting, when I have been kotowed to until my gorge rises, I just drop in there, and they tell me unpleasant truths about myself with the utmost freedom,--you see, they keep posted about me,--and I come out feeling a hundred per cent. better. Well, here’s my office. Good day, young man.”

“Good day, sir, and thank you for letting me ride with you.”

He slammed the door as if vexed, and as he approached the door of his office a negro ran to open it, and two office-boys took his coat and hat, and I envied the great man from the bottom of my heart.

XIV

A NEW USE FOR HORSES

I met Scott Bindley the other day. Scott is a great schemer. I think he must be related on his mother’s side to Colonel Sellers. At any rate, there isn’t a day in the year that he doesn’t think of some idea that should interest capital, although capital, somehow, fails to become interested. As soon as he saw me he said:

“Got a great scheme. Small fortune in it for the right parties.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Come into some cheap lunch-place, and I’ll blow myself off to a meal and give you the particulars.”

So it came to pass that we were soon seated in a restaurant which, if cheap, is clean--a combination rarer than need be.

“You’ve probably noticed that the more automobiles there are in use, the more breakdowns there are.”

I could but admit that it was so.

“Well, what is more useless than a broken-down motor-wagon?”

I would have suggested “Two,” but Bindley hates warmed-up jokes, so I refrained and told him that I gave it up.

“It isn’t a conundrum,” said he, irritably. “Nothing in the world is more useless than a broken-down motor. There are some vehicles of a box-like pattern that can be used as hen-houses when they have outlived their initial usefulness, but who wants a hen-house on Fifth Avenue, corner of Twenty-fifth Street, or any other place where a motor vehicle gives out? The more I thought this over, the more I felt that something was needed to make a disabled automobile of some use, and I saw that the man who would supply that something could make money hand over fist. So I devoted a great deal of time to the subject, and at last I hit it. Horses.”

“Horses what?” said I.

“Why, horses to supply the motive power. Horses are getting to be a drug in the market, and can be bought dirt-cheap. That being the case, I am going to interest capitalists in the scheme, and then we will buy up a lot of horses and distribute them at different points in the city. Then, when a man is out in his automobile and breaks down, he will telephone to the nearest station and get a horse. This can easily be hitched to the motor by a contrivance that I intend to patent, and then the horse can drag the wagon to the nearest power-house, where it can be restocked with electricity, or gas, or naphtha, or whatever is wanted. Isn’t it a great scheme? Why, sir, I can see in the future the plan enlarged so that people will always take a horse along with them when they go a-motoring, and, if anything happens, there they are with the good old horse handy. Talk about the horseless age! Why, horses are just entering upon a new sphere of usefulness.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he went on: “I tell you that if I can get the holders of automobile stock to coöperate with me I’ll stop eating at places like this.”

A look of such sweet content overspread his features that I told him to put me down for ten shares as soon as his company was organized. That was a month ago, and I haven’t gotten my stock yet. But motors are becoming stalled every day.

XV

A CALCULATING BORE

My friend Bings is one of those habitual calculators--one of the kind that says if all the teeth that have been extracted since the first dentist began business were to be used for paving purposes in Hades, the good-resolutions contractor would be out of a job for ten thousand years. He thinks in numbers, and if he were a minister he would get all his texts from the same source.

The other day he saw me first on a ferry-boat, and immediately buttonholed me. Said he: “How sad it is to think that so much labor goes for naught!”

I knew that I was in for one of his calculations; but I also knew that it would be useless to try to head him off.

He stroked his beard, and said, with an imitation of thoughtfulness:

“Every day in this Empire State one million human beings go to bed tired because you and I and the rest leave butter on our plates and don’t eat our crusts.”

I told him that I was astonished, but that he would have to elucidate.

“The farmers sow 8,000,000 bushels of useless grain,--grain that eventually goes out to sea on the refuse-scows,--they milk 50,000 cows to no other purpose than to produce sour or spilled milk, they allow their valuable hens to lay 1,654,800,001 eggs that will serve no better purpose than to spatter some would-be Booth or lie neglected in some out-of-the-way corner, while their wives are making 1,008,983 pounds of butter that will be left on the edges of plates and thrown into the refuse-pail. If they didn’t sow the useless grain, or fuss over the hens that lay the unused eggs, or draw the milk that is destined to sour, or make the butter that is to ornament the edges of the china disks, they would be able to go to bed merely healthily tired instead of overworked, and fewer farmers would commit suicide, and fewer farmers’ wives would go insane.”

His eyes gleamed, and I knew that, as he would put it, his pulse was going so fast that if it were revolutions of a locomotive-wheel it would take only so long to go somewhere.

“And what is your remedy for all this?” asked I, with becoming, if mock, interest.

“Let us help ourselves to no more than we want at table, buy our eggs a week earlier, drink our milk the day before, eat our bread before it is too dry, and in six months’ time there will be a reduced State death-rate, more vacancies in the insane asylums, 1,456,608 rosy cheeks where to-day there are that many pale ones--”

Just then the ferry-boat’s gates were lifted, and as we went our several ways, in the hurry that is characteristic of 7,098,111 Americans out of eight millions, I thought that, if all the brains of all the arithmetical cranks were used in place of wood-pulp to make into paper, we writers would get our pads for nothing.

XVI

AN URBAN GAME

A game that is much played in hot weather by persons who are addicted to the department-store habit is called “Where can I find it?” It is played by means of counters, and its duration is often a whole morning in length. To the looker-on it is much like golf, it seems so aimless; and it is aimless, but it has the advantages over golf that it can be played in the city and does not necessitate the services of a caddy. Over a score take a hand in it from first to last, but only one is “it,” and she or he displays the only activity necessary to the game. Only those who are of tough build should undertake to play it on a hot day, as it is extremely debilitating.

To make the game long and interesting, you should enter the store and ask for something a little unusual that you may have seen advertised somewhere. For instance, you go to the glove counter and ask for a preparation for making soup, called “Soupina.” I am not advertising anything, as the name is fictitious, but it will serve to illustrate my meaning. The particular embodiment of haughtiness at the glove counter will think that you mean some kind of soap, and will frigidly direct you to the perfumery department, “pillar No. 8.” You go there simply because it is your move, and you repeat your inquiry, adding that you think it’s put up in bottles.

“Bottled goods,” is the quick rejoinder, “fourth floor.”

The elevator bears you to the grocery department, and you ask for “bottled goods.”

“Pillar 20.”

At pillar No. 20 you are made to realize what a poor worm you are, and you turn to pillar 10, as requested, that being the canned-goods department. That clerk will undoubtedly misunderstand your order and will direct you to the basement, “pillar 15.” You hurry down in the elevator, and come face to face with the mouse-trap counter. How you go from ladies’ underwear to carpets, to furniture, to the telegraph-office, to the dental parlors, to the menagerie, to the restaurant, to the lace goods, to every department known to a modern city under one roof, you can best find out for yourself, but of one thing you may be sure--you will never find “Soupina.”

At last, dazed and heated and leg-weary, you find yourself in the oath-registering room. This is a little room that is in every well-equipped department-store, and fills a long-felt want, for all shoppers, at one time or another, wish to register an oath. Whether you register or not, the game is now over, and you have lost; there is no possibility of winning. And yet, so fascinating is the sport that as soon as you have recovered the use of your muscles you will be eager to play again.

XVII

“DE GUSTIBUS”

It was on one of the cannibal islands, and a family of cannibals were discussing the pleasures of the table on their front piazza while they waited for dinner to be announced. Their eldest daughter, a slim, acidulous-looking girl, just home from boarding-school, and full of fads and “isms,” had said that, for her part, she did not care for human flesh at all, and was of the opinion that pigs or lambs, or even cows, would make just as good eating as the tenderest enemy ever captured or the juiciest missionary ever broiled.

“How disgusting!” said her brother, a lusty young cannibal who had once eaten two Salvation Army lassies at a sitting. “Really, if you get such unpleasant notions at school, it would be better for you to stay at home. My gorge rises at the idea. Ugh!”

“Papa,” said dear little kinky-haired E. Taman, the peacemaker of the family, changing the subject, “why are missionaries better eating than our neighbors and enemies?”

“Probably because they are apt to be cereal-eaters,” said her father, the cannibal chief; “although one of the most delicious missionaries I ever tasted was a Boston lady who had been raised on beans. She was a Unitarian. Your Unitarians generally make good eating. There’s a good deal of the milk of human kindness in them, and that makes them excellent roasters. Now, you take a hard-shell Baptist, and you might as well eat a ‘shore dinner’ at once. They need a heap of steaming, and they’re apt to be watery when all’s said and done. But it must be confessed they have more taste than a wishy-washy agnostic.”

“I think the most unsatisfactory of the lot,” said his wife, “is your Presbyterian. He’s pretty sure to be dry and gnarly, and good for nothing but fricasseeing. But I think that for all-round use, although they haven’t the delicacy of the Unitarian, the Methodist is what you might call the Plymouth Rock of missionaries. He’s generally fat, and he hasn’t danced himself dry, and he’s good for a pot-roast or any old thing. By the way, we’re going to have one to-day. I must go and tell the cook to baste him well.”

The old grandfather, who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation, said at this point: “Well, as you know, in my day I have been something of an epicure, and I have tasted every variety of dish known to cannibals. I don’t care for fresh-killed meat, no matter of what denomination it is, and while I don’t wish to be considered a sectarian, yet I do think that if you want a dish that is capable of a good deal of trimming and fancy fixings’ get hold of an Episcopal missionary; and, to me, the chief beauty of the Episcopalian is that he’s apt to be a little high.”

XVIII

“BUFFUM’S BUSTLESS BUFFERS”

I was looking at a rather startling picture in the morning paper of a man who had fallen from a seventh-story window and had been instantly killed. The man in the seat next to me--we were on the elevated--said: “I’ll do away with all those accidents soon.”

I turned and looked at him. He was a lean-faced, hollow-eyed man, full of nervous starts, and quick of speech.

“What do you mean?” asked I, somewhat puzzled.

“Oh, nothing; oh, nothing at all,” he replied, as if sorry he had spoken. “I do not wish to be laughed at. I am no Keely motor man to be laughed at. I spoke without thought.”

I fancied there was a story in him, and so I drew him out, and he said in short, quick sentences, but in so low a tone that I had to strain my ears to hear him:

“I am Burgess Buffum, the inventor of Buffum’s Bustless Buffers.”

He paused with rhetorical effect, and nodded and blinked his eyes; and I, duly impressed, asked him what the buffers were supposed to buff.

“Children at open windows. Painters on scaffolds. Panic-stricken flyers from fires. Mountain-climbers. In fact, all persons whose business or duty or pleasure carries them to unsafe heights. My buffers are filled with air, and you can’t bust ’em. Child can fill ’em. Foot-pump, puff, puff, puff, and there you are. They are made of rubber and weigh next to nothing. Painter at work on scaffold; hears rope breaking; seizes one of my patent buffers; holds it carelessly in his right hand until within five feet of the pavement; then catches it with both hands, holds it in front of him as a shield, and falls with it under him. Merely pleasant titillation. Up at once; mends rope; resumes painting; undertaker foiled; no funeral; money saved; put in bank, or invested in stock in my company--”

“But,” said I, interrupting him, “suppose the buffer isn’t handy?”

“Ah, that’s his lookout. It must be handy. No business to take chances when safeguard is on scaffolding with him. Or child playing on fire-escape; careful mother puts two of my buffers out there; warns child not to fall without one; goes about her work care-free; child feels that it is about to fall; clutches buffer; goes down like painter; pleasant ride; child enjoys it; perfect confidence in my buffer; holds it under him; arrives seated; no deleterious effect; continues play in street. Object-lesson in favor of my invention. Child takes orders for my buffers; gets commission from me. Sells dozens--”

Just then the guard called out, “Forty-second Street!” and a man whom I had not noticed before, but who wore an air of authority, and who sat next to Buffum, rose and, touching him on the arm, said, “Come.”

And before I could get the inventor’s address he had left the train.

But I fancy that

BURGESS BUFFUM, ESQ., Bloomingdale,

will reach him.

AT THE LITERARY COUNTER

XIX

“THE FATHER OF SANTA CLAUS”

The Successful Author dropped in at the club and looked around for some one to whom he might talk shop. He spied the Timid Aspirant in the corner, and asked him to sit down. The Timid Aspirant blushed all over, and felt that better days were dawning for him, because the Successful Author’s name was in every one’s mouth.

“Have much trouble to sell your stuff, my boy?”

“Oh, I suppose I oughtn’t to complain.”

“Never destroy a manuscript, my boy. You don’t, do you?”

“Sometimes, sir.”

“Ah, don’t. You never know when it will become valuable. Anything written has its niche somewhere.”

Then the Successful Author sank back in his arm-chair and continued reminiscently: “I’ll never forget how one of my articles fared. It was the fourth or fifth thing that I had written, and it was called ‘The Father of Santa Claus.’ I liked it better than any editor has ever liked anything of mine.”

The Timid Aspirant nodded sympathetically, and the Successful Author continued: “I sent it to the ‘Prospect,’ and it came back promptly. Did I destroy it? Not at all. I pigeonholed it, and next year I sent it to them again. Again it came back, and once more I laid it to rest for a twelvemonth, and then bombarded the ‘Prospect’ with it. This sort of thing went on for several years, until at last, to save time, the editor had a special form of rejection printed for it that ran about as follows:

“DEAR SIR: The time of year has come once more when we reject your story, ‘The Father of Santa Claus.’ It would not seem like the sweet Christmas season if we did not have a chance to turn it down.

“Yours respectfully, “EDITOR THE PROSPECT.”

“Let you down easy each year, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Well, in course of time my price went up. At the start I’d have been tickled to death to get five dollars for the thing, but now I knew that if the editor ever did change his mind I’d get at least fifty, so I kept at it. Well, it was last year that my collection of stories made such a hit, and since then I’ve been so busy filling orders for short stories that I forgot to send my dear old mossback out this year. But day before yesterday I received a note from the editor of the ‘Prospect’ asking for a Christmas sketch. Now was my opportunity. I wrote back:

“Sorry I haven’t anything new, but it struck me that you might like to look at an old thing of mine called ‘The Father of Santa Claus,’ and if you care to consider its publication I’ll let it go for a couple of hundred, just for the sake of old times.

I inclosed the story, and just before coming here I received a check for two hundred dollars.”

“What moral do you deduce from this, sir?”

“Don’t ever sell anything until you’ve gotten a big reputation.”

“Do you mind talking a little more shop?” asked the Timid Aspirant. Somehow he lost his timidity when talking to his renowned friend.

“Of course not. No one really does, though some affect to. Most talk is shop talk. It may relate to plumbing, or to dry-goods, or to painting, or to babies, but it is of the shop shoppy, as a rule, only ‘literary shop talk,’ as Ford calls it, is more interesting to an outsider than the other kinds. What particular department of our shop did you want me to handle?”

“I wanted to ask you if you believed in cutting a man’s work--in other words, do you believe in blue-penciling?”

“Ah, my boy, I see that they have been coloring your manuscript with the hateful crayon. No, I don’t believe in it. I dislike it now because it mars my work, and I used to hate it because it took money from my purse. Let me tell you a little incident.

“One time, years ago, I wrote an article, and after it was done I figured on what I would get for it and with it. If I sold it to a certain monthly I had in mind I should receive enough to buy a new hat, a new suit, a pair of shoes, ditto of socks, and a necktie, for all of which I stood in sore need. I hied me forth in all the exuberance of youth and bore my manuscript to the editor. As he was feeling pretty good, he said he’d read it while I waited. At last he laid it down and said: ‘That’s a pretty good story.’ My heart leaped like an athlete. ‘But’--my heart stopped leaping and listened--‘it will need a little cutting, and I’ll do it now, if you wish.’”

“Poor fellow!” said the Timid Aspirant, sympathetically.

“Well, the first thing that editor did was to cut the socks off of it; then he made a deep incision in the hat; then he slashed away at the trousers and did some scattered cutting, and at last handed the manuscript to me that I might see the havoc he had wrought in my prospective wardrobe. Dear man, I had a vest and a necktie left, and that was all. And it would have been the same if it had been a dinner.”

The Timid Aspirant shuddered.

“Many a young author has seen the soup and the vegetables, and at last the steak, fade away under the terrible obliterating power of the indigo crayon, and lucky is he if a sandwich and a glass of water remain after the editor’s fell work. Blessed is that editor who does not care to work in pastel,--to whom the blue pencil is taboo,--for he shall be held in honored remembrance of all writers, and his end shall be peace.”

“Amen!” said the Timid Aspirant.

XX

THE DIALECT STORE

“I suppose I dreamed it; but if there isn’t such a store, there might be, and it would help quill-drivers a lot,” said the newspaper man, as he and his friend were waiting to give their order in a down-town restaurant yesterday noon.

“What store are you talking about, and what dream? Don’t be so vague, old man,” said his friend the magazine-writer.

“Why, a dialect store. Just the thing for you. I was walking down Fifth Avenue, near Twenty-first Street, and I saw the sign, ‘Dialect shop. All kinds of dialects sold by the yard, the piece, or in quantities to suit.’ I thought that maybe I might be able to get some Swedish dialect to help me out on a little story I want to write about Wisconsin, so I walked in. The place looked a good deal like a dry-goods store, with counters down each side, presided over by some twenty or thirty clerks, men and women.

“The floor-walker stepped up to me and said, ‘What can I do for you?’ ‘I want to buy some dialect,’ said I. ‘Oh, yes; what kind do you want to look at? We have a very large assortment of all kinds. There’s quite a run on Scotch just now; perhaps you’d like to look at some of that.’ ‘No; Swedish is what I’m after,’ I replied. ‘Oh, yes; Miss Jonson, show this gentleman some Swedish dialect.’

“I walked over to Miss Jonson’s department, and she turned and opened a drawer that proved to be empty. ‘Are you all out of it?’ I asked. ‘Ja; but I skall have some to-morrer. A faller from St. Paul he baen haer an’ bought seventy jards.’

“I was disappointed, but as long as I was there I thought I’d look around; so I stepped to the next counter, behind which stood a man who looked as if he had just stepped out of one of Barrie’s novels. ‘Have you Scotch?’ said I. ‘I hae joost that. What’ll ye hae? Hielan’ or lowlan’, reeleegious or profane? I’ve a lairge stock o’ gude auld Scotch wi’ the smell o’ the heather on it; or if ye’re wantin’ some a wee bit shop-worn, I’ll let ye hae that at a lower price. There’s a quantity that Ian Maclaren left oot o’ his last buke.’ I expressed surprise that he had let any escape him, and he said: ‘Hech, mon, dinna ye ken there’s no end to the Scots?’ I felt like telling him that I was sorry there had been a beginning, but I refrained, and he went on: ‘We’re gettin’ airders fra the whole English-sp’akin’ warld for the gude auld tongue. Our manager has airdered a fu’ line of a’ soorts in anticipation of a brisk business, now that McKinley--gude Scotch name, that--is President.’

“I should have liked to stay and see a lot of the Scotch, as it seemed to please the man to talk about his goods; but I wanted to have a look at all the dialects, so I bade him good morning, and stepped to the next department--the negro.

“Here an unctuous voice called out: ‘Fo’ de Lawd! Ah don’ b’lieve you’ll pass me widout buyin’. Got ’em all hyah, boss--Sou’ Ca’lina an’ Ten’see an’ Virginny. Tawmas Nelson Page buys a heap er stuff right yer. Dat man sut’n’y got a great haid. He was de fustes’ one ter see how much folks was dyin’ ter git a leetle di’lect er de ra’ht sawt, an’ Ah reckon Ah sol’ him de fus’ yard he evah bo’t.’