Part 4

“‘Do you sell it by the yard?’ I asked, just to bring him out. ‘Shuah!’ and pulling down a roll of black goods, he unrolled enough dialect to color ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ But I said, ‘I don’t want to buy, uncle; but I’m obliged to you for showing it to me.’ ‘Oh, dat’s all right, boss. No trouble to show goods. Ah reckon yo’ nev’ saw sech a heap er local col’in’ as dat. Hyah! hyah! hyah! We got de goods, an’ any tahm you want to fix up a tale, an’ put in de Queen’s English in black, come yer an’ as’ fer me. Good day, sah.’ And I passed on to the next--Western dialect.

“Here I found that James Whitcomb Riley had just engaged the whole output of the plant. The clerk had an assistant in his little son,--a Hoosier boy,--and he piped up: ‘We got ’ist a littul bit er chile’s di’lec’, an’ my popper says ’at ef Mist’ Riley don’t come an’ git it soon ’at I can sell it all my own se’f. ’At ’d be the mostest fun!’ and his childish treble caused all the other clerks in the store to look around and smile kindly at him.

“In the German department the clerk told me he was not taking orders for dialect in bulk. ‘Zome off dose tayatree-kalers dey buy it, aber I zell not de best to dem. I zell imitation kints “made in Chairmany.” Aber I haf der best eef you vant it.’

“I told him I did not care to buy, and passed on to the French-Canadian department. The clerk was just going out to lunch; but although I told him I merely wished to look, and not to buy, he said politely: ‘I try hall I can for get di’lect, but hup in Mon’réal dat McLennan he use hall dere is; but bymby I speak for some dat a frien’ have, an’ he sen’ me some. An’ ’e tell me I’ll get hit las’ summer.’

“I expressed a polite wish that he might get his goods even sooner than ‘las’ summer,’ and walked to the Jew-dialect counter, over which I was nearly pulled by the Hebrew clerk. ‘You’re chust in time,’ he said. ‘Say, veepin’ Rachel! but I sell you a parkain. Some goots on’y been ust vun veek on der staich; unt so hellep me cracious! you look so like mein prudder Imre dat I let dem go’--here he lowered his voice to a whisper--‘I let dem go fer a qvarter uf a darler.’

“I resisted him, and hurried to the Yankee department. There was tall hustling going on there, and a perfect mob of buyers of all sorts and conditions of writers; and it took half a dozen men, women, and children, including three typical farmers, to wait on them; and they were selling it by the inch and by the carload. ‘Wall, I’m plumb tired. Wisht they’d let up so ’st I could git a snack er somep’n’ inside me,’ said one; and he looked so worn out that I passed on to the Irish counter. A twinkling-eyed young Irishman, not long over, in answer to my question, said: ‘Sure, there’s not much carl fer larrge quantities av ut. Jane Barlow do be havin’ a good dale, an’ the funny papers do be usin’ ut in smarl lots, but ’t is an aisy toime I have, an’ that’s a good thing, fer toimes is harrd.’

“I paused a moment at the English-dialect counter, and the rosy-cheeked clerk said: ‘Cawn’t I show you the very litest thing in Coster?’ I told him no, and he offered me Lancashire and Yorkshire at ‘gritely reduced rites’; but I was proof against his pleading, and having now visited all the departments but one, went to that.”

“What was it?” asked the writer for the magazines.

“The tough-dialect counter.”

“Tough is not a dialect,” said he.

“Maybe not, but it sounds all right, all right. Well, whatever it is, the fellow in charge was a regular Ninth-Warder, and when I got abreast of him he hailed me with, ‘Soy, cully, wot sort d’ yer want? I got a chim-dandy Sunny-school line er samples fer use in dose joints, or I c’n gi’ yer hot stuff up ter de limit an’ beyon’. See? Here’s a lot of damaged “wot t’ ’ells” dat I’ll trun down fer a fiver, an’ no questions ast. Soy, burn me fer a dead farmer if I ever sol’ dem at dat figger before; but dey’s some dat Townsen’ did n’ use, an’ yet dey’s dead-sure winners wit’ de right gang. See?’

“And then I woke up, if I was asleep; and if I wasn’t, I wish I could find the store again, for I’d be the greatest dialect-writer of the age if I could get goods on credit there. Say, waiter, we came for lunch, not supper.”

XXI

“FROM THE FRENCH”

When a Frenchman sets out to write a tale that shall be wholly innocuous, he succeeds--and thereby drives his readers to seek in De Maupassant and Zola the antidote for his poisoning puerility.

He generally lays the scene in London, that he may air his ignorance of things foreign; and when the tale is done it contains absolutely nothing that would bring the blush of shame to any cheek in Christendom, seek said cheek where you might.

The following is a fair sample of the unharmful French story. I trust that if it had been printed without preamble or credit, the discerning reader would have exclaimed, upon reading it, “From the French!” I have called it--

IT IS GOOD TO BE GOOD

In the great city of London, which, as you may know, is in England, there is a bridge, famous throughout the whole town as London Bridge. One dark night, many years ago, two men started to cross it in opposite directions, and running into each other, their heads crashed together in the fog which day and night envelops the city.

“_Parbleu!_” cried one, a fellow of infinite wealth; “but have you, then, no better use for your head than to make of it a battering-ram?”

“_Sapristi!_” replied the other, speaking in the coarse tones of an English mechanic out of work. “What matters it what I do with it? A moment more and I shall be in the Thames” (a large river corresponding to our Seine, and in equal demand by suicides). “To-night, for the first time in my life, I commit suicide!”

“Why, then,” said the other, “we will jump together, for it is for that purpose that I have come to this great bridge.”

“But,” said the mechanic, “why should you commit suicide? I can tell by the feeling of your garments that you are rich, and by the softness of your head that you are noble.”

“True, I am both of those things, but, also, I have exhausted every pleasure in life but the pleasure of suicide, and would now try that. But you, you are a mechanic out of work, as I can tell by your speech. Why should you seek pleasure instead of employment?”

“Alas, sir! I have at home one wife and seventeen children, all flaxen-haired, and all as poor as I. I cannot bear to go home to them without even the price of a _biftek_ or a _rosbif_.”

“Come,” said the nobleman; “I will defer my sport for the night. I have never seen a starving family. It will furnish me with a new sensation.”

“Ah! but you have a kind heart, and I will not refuse you. The river will keep. Follow me.”

They followed each other through the region of the Seven Clocks, and through Blanc Chapel, afterward the scene of the murders of “Jean the RApper,” until they came to the wretched apartment of the poor artisan. There, huddled in the corner of the room, were sixteen of the starving but still flaxen-haired children. The mother sat near the fireplace, so that she might be near the warmth when it came. In the other corner of the room--for they were so poor, these people, that they could not afford four corners--sat a vision of beauty, aged seventeen and a girl, _ma foi_! At sight of her the count’s eyes filled with tears of compassion, and he handed his purse to the wretched father and said: “My good man, do not stir from here. I will return in an hour with furniture!”

Tears of gratitude coursed down the thirty-eight cheeks of the poor family, and they no longer felt hungry, for they knew that in a short time they would be sitting upon real sofas and rocking in chairs like those they had seen through the windows of the rich on Holy Innocents’ Day.

The count, whose full title was Sir Lord _E_rnold CIcil Judas GeorgeS HErold WAllington, grandson of the great Lord of WAllington, was as good as his word, and in an hour he returned with six of his servants, bearing sofas and cushions and tables and tête-à-têtes, and what not.

The family seated themselves on the furniture, and, clasping his knees, overwhelmed him with thanks.

“_Dame! Sacré!_” cried he. “It is nothing, this thing I have done. What is it that it is? Know, then, that for the first time in my life I have the happiness.” Then, turning to the father: “Give me the purse. I left it as a collateral. Now that you have the furniture, you will not need it. But that angelic being there, she shall never weep again. I will take her with me.”

“Ah!” said the mother; “but that is like you, Count WAllington. You mean that she is to be a maid in your father’s house? Ah! what prosperity!”

“Ah! do not insult the most beautiful being who ever went about in a London fog. She a servant? Never! I will make her my wife. She shall be Miledi Comptesse _E_rnold CIcil Judas GeorgeS HErold WAllington!”

In Southwark-on-Trent, a suburb of London, is the hospital for those about to commit suicide. Ring the bell at the gate, and you will be admitted by sixteen flaxen-haired ones who will conduct you to the governor and matron. Need I say who they are, or whose money built the institution?

And when you read in London _POnch_, among the court news, that a great beauty has been presented to the Queen of England, London, and Ireland, you will know that it is the Comptesse WAllington. She is presented at all the levees, and, with her husband, the handsome and philanthropic Lord WAllington, is the cynosure of all English eyes.

It is good to be good.

XXII

ON THE VALUE OF DOGMATIC UTTERANCE

FROM MY “GUIDE TO YOUNG AUTHORS”

My dear young reader, if you are thinking of launching a little craft upon the troublous sea of literature, see that it is well ballasted with dogmatic assertions. (I should like to continue this nautical metaphor further, but I am such a landlubber that I doubt if I should be able to mix it properly, and what interest has a metaphor if it be not well mixed?) But to continue in plain English: A dogmatic assertion carries conviction to the minds of most unthinking people--in other words, to most people. (You and I don’t think, dear reader, and is it likely that we are worse than the rest of mankind?)

If you purpose becoming a novelist of character, follow my directions, and your first book will nail your reputation to the mast of public opinion. Fill your story full of such utterances as these: “Chaplain Dole always nodded his head a great many times to express affirmation. This is a common practice with persons who are a little hard of hearing.” (It isn’t, and yet it may be, for all I know to the contrary; but it will carry weight. Nine persons out of ten will say, “Why, that’s so, isn’t it? Haven’t you noticed it?”)

It doesn’t matter what you say; if you say it dogmatically it will go. Thus: “She walked with the slow, timid step that is so characteristic of English spinsters.” That’s a fine one, for it may excite contradiction, and contradiction is advertisement. Here are half a dozen examples: “He tapped his forehead with his left little finger, a gesture peculiar to people who have great concentration of mind.” “His half-closed eyes proclaimed him a shrewd business man. Why is it that your keen man of affairs should always look out at the world through a slit?” “The child spoke in that raucous tone of voice that always presages cerebral trouble.” “Miss de Mure waved her fan languidly, with a scarcely perceptible wrist motion, a sure indication that she was about to capitulate, but Mr. Wroxhaemme, not being a keen observer, took no note of it.” And, “He spoke but three words, yet you sensed that he was an advocate. Why is it that a lawyer cannot conceal his profession? A doctor may talk all day, and if he bar shop his vocation will not be detected; but a lawyer tunes up his vocal chords, as it were, and the secret is out.”

If all the above specimens of “observation” were introduced into your story the critics would unite in praising your keenness of vision.

Perhaps you would like to figure as a musical author. Few authors know anything about music, and you don’t have to; dogmatism and alliteration in equal parts will take the trick. Please step this way (as they say in the stores) and I will show you.

“She played Chopin divinely--but she did not care to clean dishes. Chopin and care of a house do not coalesce. A girl may love Beethoven and yet busy herself with baking; Bach and the Beatitudes are not antagonistic; Haydn, Handel, and housekeeping hunt together; Schumann and Schubert are not incompatible with sweetness and serenity of demeanor and a love for sewing; Mozart and Mendelssohn may be admired and the girl will also love to mend stockings; Weber and work may be twins: but Chopin and cooking, Wagner and washing, Berlioz or Brahms and basting, Dvořák and vulgar employment--or Dvořák and darning (according as you pronounce Dvořák)--are eternally at war. So, when I have said that Carlotta was a devotee of Chopin, I have implied that her poor old mother did most of the housework, while the sentimental maiden coquetted with the keys continually.”

Fill your stories with such bits of false observation, and ninety-nine persons out of a hundred will accept them at their face-value; which remark, being in itself a dogmatic assertion, will doubtless carry weight and conviction with it.

XXIII

THE SAD CASE OF DEACON PERKINS

It is now some fifteen years since the dialect story assumed undue prominence in the literary output of the time, and about eight since it became a “craze.” There is no craze without its attendant disease or ailment: thus roller-skating developed “roller’s heel”; gum-chewing, “chewer’s jaw”; bicycling, the “bicycle face,” and later the “leg”; housekeeping, “housemaid’s knee”; golf-playing, “idiocy”; and so on, every craze having a damaging effect upon some portion of the anatomy. It is only within the last year, however, that it has been discovered that an over-indulgence in dialect stories is liable to bring on an affection of the tongue.

A peculiarly sad case and the most notable that has thus far been brought to the attention of the public is that of Deacon Azariah Perkins of West Hartford, Connecticut.

Far from deploring the spread of the dialect story, he reveled in it, reading all the tales that he could get hold of in magazines or circulating library. But his was not a healthy, catholic taste; he had ears and eyes for one dialect alone--the negro. For him Ian Maclaren and Barrie spread their most tempting Scotch jaw-breakers in vain; he had no desire for them. After fifteen years of negro dialect in every form in which Southern and Northern writers can serve it, any specialist in nervous disorders could have told the deacon that he was liable to have “negromania”; but West Hartford does not employ specialists, and so the stroke came unheralded, with all the suddenness of apoplexy.

Deacon Perkins has always been able to think standing; indeed, he has been called the Chauncey Depew of West Hartford, and no revival meeting or strawberry festival or canned clam-bake was considered a success unless the deacon’s ready tongue took part in the exercises.

Last Sunday they had a children’s festival in the Congregational Church, and after the children had made an end of reciting and singing, the deacon was called upon for a few remarks. He is a favorite with young and old, and a man of great purity and simplicity of character. He arose with alacrity and walked down the isle with the lumbering gait peculiar to New-Englanders who have struggled with rocky farms the best part of their lives. He ascended the platform steps, inclined his head to the audience, and spoke as follows:

“Mah deah li’l’ chillun! Yo’ kahnd sup’inten’ent has ast me to mek a few remahks.” (Subdued titters on the part of the scholars.) “Ah don’ s’pose you-all’ll b’lieve me w’en Ah say dat Ah too was once a li’l’ piccaninny same as yo’, but Ah was, an’ Ah ’membeh how mah ol’ mammy use teh tek me to Sunny-school.” (Consternation on the part of the superintendent and teachers.)

“Now, ef you-all wan’ to go to heb’n w’en yo’ die, be ci’cumspectious ’bout de obsarvence ob de eighth c’man’ment. Hit ain’t so awful wicked ter steal--dat ain’t hit, but hit’s jes nach’ly tryin’ to a man’s self-respec’ ter git cotched. Don’ steal jes fer deviltry, but ef yo’ is ’bleeged ter steal, study de wedder repohts, ac’ accordin’, an’--don’ git foun’ out--or in, eiver.”

During the delivery of this remarkable speech the deacon’s face wore his habitual expression; a kindly light shone in his eye, a smile of ineffable sweetness played about his lips, and he evidently imagined that he was begging them to turn from their evil ways and seek the narrow path.

But at this juncture Dr. Pulcifer of New York, the eminent neurologist, who happened to be spending Sunday in West Hartford, whispered to the superintendent, and on receiving an affirmative nod to his interrogation, went up to the platform. He held out his hand to Deacon Perkins, who was making a rhetorical pause, and said kindly, “Good morning, uncle.”

“Mornin’, sah,” said the deacon, bowing awkwardly and scratching his head.

“Can you direct me to a good melon-patch?”

Deacon Perkins gave vent to an unctuous negro chuckle. Then, holding up his forefinger to enjoin caution, he tiptoed off the platform, closely followed by the doctor; and before nightfall he was on his way to a private hospital for nervous diseases, where rest and a total abstention from negro-dialect stories is expected to restore him to his usual sane condition of mind in a short time.

XXIV

THE MISSING-WORD BORE

Then, there’s that bore whose thoughts come by freight, and the freight is always late. You know what’s coming, that is, you can imagine the way-bill, but he won’t let you help him to make better time, and runs his train of thought as if it were on a heavy grade.

He starts to tell a story, blinking his red eyes, meanwhile, as if he thought that they supplied the motive power for his tongue. To make listening to him the harder, he generally tells a very old story.

“One day, William Makepeace--er-er--”

“Thackeray,” you say, intending to help him. Of course it is Thackeray, and he was going to tell about the novelist and the Bowery boy; but he is so pig-headed that he shifts on to another track.

“No; Dickens, Charles Dickens. One day, when Charles Dickens was at work on ‘Bleak’--er--er--”

“‘Bleak House’?” you say.

“No!” he snaps; “‘Dombey and Son.’ One day, when Charles Dickens was at work on ‘Dombey and Son,’ he was approached by his biographer, John--er--er--”

“Forster?”

“No; it wasn’t his biographer, either; it was Edmund Yates.”

You now take a gleeful pleasure in seeing how hopelessly you can make him tangle himself up by the refusal of your help, but he doesn’t care. He’ll tell it in his own words, though the heavens fall and though he starts a hundred stories.

“Charles Dickens had a very loud way of--er--er--”

“Dressing?”

“No, no! He had a loud way of talking, and he and Edmund--er--er--”

“Yates?”

“No, sir; Edmund Spenser.”

Of course this is arrant nonsense on the face of it, but he won’t admit that he’s made pi of his story, and he goes on:

“Edmund said that Charles--”

“Dickens?”

“No, sir; Charles Reade. Edmund said that Charles Reade thought George--er--”

“Meredith?”

“No; hang it all! George Eliot. He thought that George Eliot never wrote a better book than ‘Silas’--er--”

“‘Marner’?”

“Not at all! ‘Silas Lapham.’”

Now, if you are merciful, or if you are refinedly cruel, either one, you will allow him to finish his story in peace, and, like as not, he will start all over again by saying: “I guess I inadvertently got hold of the wrong name at the beginning. It was not Dickens, as you said, but Thackeray. Thackeray was one day walking along the Bowery when he met a typical--” And so on to the bitter end.

For the sake of speed, do not ever interrupt his kind!

XXV

THE CONFESSIONS OF A CRITIC

I met a prominent literary critic the other evening. A review signed with his name or even with his initials is apt to make or mar the work treated therein.

Now, I have not a little hypnotic power, and the mischievous idea came into my head to hypnotize him and make him “confess.”

We were sitting in the reading-room of an up-town club. I led the conversation to the subject of hypnotism, and soon gained the critic’s consent to be put into a trance.

I did not influence him any more than to put his mind in the attitude of truthfully answering what questions I might ask him.

_Q._ Which do you prefer to criticize, a book that has already been reviewed or one that is perfectly fresh?

_A._ Oh, one that has been reviewed, and the oftener the better. I thus gain some idea of the trend of critical opinion and shape my review accordingly.

_Q._ Do you ever run counter to the general sentiment?

_A._ Yes; if I find that a book has been damned with faint praise, I sometimes laud it to the skies and thus gain a reputation for independence that is very useful to me. Or if a book has been heralded by the best critics of both countries as “the book of the year,” I sometimes pick it to pieces, taking its grammar as a basis, or some other point that I think I can attack without injury to my reputation for discernment, and again I score a victory for my independence.

_Q._ Why don’t you like to be the first to review a new book?

_A._ For the same reason that most critics hate to--unless, indeed, they are just out of college and are cock-sure of everything. I fear that its author may be one of the numerous coming men. I may be entirely at sea about the book. I prefer to get some idea of what the consensus of the best opinion is.

_Q._ Then you do not consider your own the best opinion?

_A._ No; no one critic’s opinion is worth much.

_Q._ Can you tell an author by his style?

_A._ Always, if I know who he is before I begin to read. But it is hazardous work to say such-and-such a work is by such-and-such a man unless there are internal evidences aside from the style. Once a book was sent to me for criticism. Before I opened it I lent it to a waggish friend of mine, and he returned it next day. I looked at the title-page, saw that it was by an absolutely unknown man and that the scene was laid in India, and, of course, I felt safe in giving it fits on the principle that Rudyard Kipling is not likely to be equaled in this generation as a depicter of Indian life. Well, I said that it was painfully crude and amateurish; that it might do for the “Servants’ Own,” but was not a book for ladies and gentlemen; that it had absolutely no style or local coloring; that the scene might as well have been laid in Kamchatka; and that it was marked by but one thing, audacity, for the author had borrowed some of Kipling’s characters--to the extent of the names only. In short, I had fun with that book, for I knew that my fellow-critics would with one accord turn and rend it. By mere chance I didn’t sign it.

_Q._ And who had written the book?

_A._ Why, Kipling. My friend had cut another name out of a book and had pasted it so neatly over Kipling’s wherever his occurred that I was, of course, taken unawares. You can’t bank on style. Look how positive people were Mark Twain had not written “Jeanne d’Arc.”