Part 12

By this time, having noted the quickness of the Editor at “reactionizing,” we were very keen to get something of our own into his story. An airplane came over. Inside Stuff announced that the plane was taking pictures to be delivered in Cleveland in time for the morning papers. How he knew this, we can’t guess--very likely he didn’t. This also faithful Shellspecs passed on. The plane was a big silvery beauty--we remarked, loudly, to our neighbour that she looked as though made of aluminum. A moment later the Editor, having handed a page to Shellspecs, said: “Add that the plane was aluminum.” Shellspecs wrote down in blue pencil: “It’s an aluminum flying machine.” But we mustn’t be unjust. Very likely the Editor got the reaction just as we did. It was fairly obvious.

Sixth Inning--The Editor hit a hot twisting paragraph to the outposts of his syndicate, but troubled Shellspecs by saying--Mr. Whitey Witt’s name having been mentioned--“Is he a Yankee or a Giant?” “He’s an albino, has pink eyes,” volunteered indefatigable Inside Stuff. The flying keys caught it and in it went, somewhat philosophized: “Lack of pigment in hair, skin, and retina seems not to diminish his power.” Inside Stuff: “It’s the beginning of the Seventh and they’re all stretching. It’s the usual thing.” But no stretching for the Editor. He goes on and on. Twenty pages now. When his assistants put a fact just where he likes it his quick mind knocks it for five million circulation.

“Stengel, considered a very old man in baseball,” says the cheery mentor. “He’s thirty-one years old.” To none of these suggestions does the Editor make any comment. He wastes no words--orally, at least. He knows what he wants--sifts it instanter.

We left at the end of the Eighth. The Editor was still going strong. He didn’t see the game, but we think he was happy in his own way.

We hope we haven’t seemed too impertinent. We want to be a Scribe--not a Pharisee. But our interest in the profession is greater than our regard for any merely individual sanctity. We’ve given you a faithful picture of what has been called supreme success in journalism. Take a good look at it, you students of newspapers, and see how you like it. We’ll tell you a secret. It’s pretty easy, if that’s the sort of thing you hanker for. In a way, it’s rather thrilling. But (between ourselves) it’s also a Warning.

THE DAME EXPLORES WESTCHESTER

We fear that the Salamis dealer in cigars, newspapers, and ice cream cones thinks we are a low-spirited fellow. For ten days or so preceding the Fourth of July he urged us every day not to forget to buy our supply of firecrackers from him. Finally he grew so insistent that we had to tell him the truth. We don’t believe in firecrackers for small children, we told him. Well, how about some nice rockets, balloons, Roman candles? he cried. No, we said firmly; Mr. Mackay, up on Harbour Hill, shoots off about five thousand dollars’ worth of very lovely fireworks every Fourth of July evening for the pleasure of the villagers; why should we attempt vainly to compete?

But of course, something had to be done to celebrate the Fourth. It would be only just, we thought, to have an adventure that would give pleasure to Dame Quickly, who has given us more innocent cheer than any one else during the past year. Besides, she had just attained the dignity of having travelled more than 8,000 miles. Excepting for two or three tentative and brief excursions upon Manhattan, she had never been off Long Island. We had heard, from time to time, that across the Sound there lay a region of mystery and heyday called Westchester County--a land supposed to be more aristocratic and splendid than anything our lowly Paumanok could show. A land, they said, flowing with gasolene and Eskimo Pie. But, in our timid and non-temerarious disposition we had never ventured. The ferry from Sea Cliff to New Rochelle ceased running during the war and has never resumed. The ferry from Oyster Bay to Greenwich--well, we had once made inquiry as to the prices; 25 cents per foot, measured over all, for the vehicle alone, to say nothing of the fare for the occupants. But, then, we had heard rumour of a humbler craft plying between College Point and The Bronx. This, we had an instinctive prompting, would be the caper. We determined to make the attempt.

No one has yet (so far as we know) properly uttered the fine poetry of a car that feels herself turned loose for the day upon unknown paths. That strong, rigorous hum underneath the bonnet, the intelligent questing look of her hood as it goes snouting along the road--these are potent mystery. The Younger Generation, duly caparisoned for either shine or rain, were installed, and ejaculated innocent defiance. Two small and quite useless wooden rabbits accompanied them, emblems of fortune and also of the Occupational Therapy Society (from whom they were purchased). The Urchin and Urchiness were hopeful of storm; they enjoy seeing a parent hustle to rig up the curtains. Some day we shall fool them by getting a sedan. We have a name already chosen for her. She will be Diana of the Crossways. The Microcosm, still too young to care what happens to her, was a nugget of plump, regardless cheer. Titania wore her khaki breeks, which are astoundingly comely. This had all the earmarks of a Foray against Relentless Destiny.

So, without hap--save for two grievous motor-bikers near Willets Point, who had jammed their clutch and halted the Dame to beg the borrow of a screwdriver--the equipage proceeded mildly to College Point. Here there was secret applause when the official said that only 50 cents would be necessary. That excellent ancient vessel the _Steinway_ was already waiting. The Dame, with an air of skittish enterprise, trundled aboard. Befitting a boat of such orchestral name, a person with the word _Musician_ embroidered on his cap played a powerful concertina. Already it seemed a literary excursion, for the chauffeur, studying his map, learned that not far away was a region of The Bronx called Casanova. Let this be a reminder, he said to himself, to read the frequently but enigmatically commended memoirs of De Seingalt. The chevalier himself, it is said, was once reduced to playing a fiddle in a cabaret: perhaps this concertina person is also a virtuoso of quality in an ad interim embarrassment. In the brass bowl ingeniously affixed to the machine of melody the chauffeur contributed a nickel as cautious largesse to Art.

On such occasions, adventuring in little-known parts of this great panorama of surprise known as New York, we reflect sadly on our own lack of enterprise in exploring its grim hilarities. Indeed we always intend to spend all our time on the streets, where we are endlessly happy and entertained; it is only a lack-lustre and empty resolution towards answering letters that brings us to the office. By this time, however, the _Steinway_ had reached Clason Point, and with a keen sense of excitement we set forth to examine new lands and strange.

The first thing to do was to lay in some lunch. On Westchester Avenue our eye was caught by the sign _Bible & Son, Undertakers and Real Estate_; right next door was a meritorious-looking delicatessen shop, which we invaded. The young man in charge was much pleased. All his family had gone away for a three days’ holiday and had left him to run the store; the Fourth was proving shockingly tranquil, he said; he was so gratified by getting our trade that he gave us a bottle opener for the near-beer. We thought we were doing very well in our purchasing when Titania entered and revised it, saying that sardines would not do for the Younger Generation. Turning north at a venture, we found the Williamsbridge Road, where lunch was enjoyed beside a damp, quiet woodland.

But it was after lunch, when we turned into the Boston Post Road, that the real thrills began. On that famous highway Dame Quickly seemed to feel herself really in swell company. But we were glad we had not attempted it in our freshman days as a driver. Off in the distance we could see Long Island, a quiet, blue profile: how calm it looked. A vast vanload of elated coloured folk, packed ecstatically on lurching camp stools, groaned uphill on low gear. All subsequent traffic was stalled by this vehicle’s sudden halt, and we found an impulsive flivver browsing along our fender. We began to wonder whether Westchester was as élite as they had told us. We were startled, also, by the number of kennels offering chows and those animals called Pekingese. We were glad Gissing had not accompanied us: we fear his hardy, vulgar soul would have scoffed.

New Rochelle seemed an almost unnecessarily large town; much larger than Long Islanders are used to. Larchmont is evidently very civilized. In Mamaroneck, when we sought the waterfront, we found ourself embarrassingly arriving at the front door of a private mansion. On such occasions Dame Quickly, who is really a very noble creature, looks suddenly paltry and shameful. We turned towards home, though we were sorry to leave the view of the rocks called SCOTCH CAPS. These appealed to all our instincts as a printer. And by the way: the low tide seems to go much lower over there than it does along Paumanok. Real estate men, we are told, always take care to bring their clients out that way at high water.

Titania had an eagerness to see Neptune Avenue in New Rochelle, where she had lived as an urchin. She hadn’t been there for more than twenty years and said it was much changed. Trying to discover which had been the house, we found one for sale, and the door yielded to pressure. Inside, in an empty room, was a gilt sword blazoned with emblems of the Knights of Pythias or the Knights Templars or something of that sort. Somehow this seemed like an ideal setting for a humorous mystery story. We hoped that a crime had been committed; and yet the sword was very blunt.

We are still a confirmed Long Islander.

THE POWER AND THE GLORY

Dear old Dr. Johnson used to pray to be delivered from “vacillation and vagrancy of mind, mental vellications and revulsions.” These are also our most painful infirmity. The conflict of ambitions in the mind is no easy problem. When one considers the career of a man like Lord Northcliffe it is fairly evident that he knew more or less clearly what he wanted, and went after it. He wanted to be a Great Newspaper Proprietor, and he wanted to be a figure behind the scenes (but the scenes need not be too opaque) in politics. He succeeded very powerfully in all this, as competent and dogged men do when they have a clearly defined objective. And in order to succeed in this manner, it is fairly plain that he did not mind failure in the other realms of life. Poetry, peaceful privacy, philosophy, and all the other pensive pleasures that begin with a p, he was content (we imagine) to ignore.

This business of making up one’s mind among the various ambitions that an exciting planet offers is highly perplexing. There is one part of our mind that hankers only for seclusion, rambling by lonely watersides, and plenty of ink and paper. There is another unregenerate lobe of our brain that would find a life of important trivial bustling like Northcliffe’s highly diverting and agreeable. It must be interesting (we sometimes ponder) to have a steam yacht, play golf with Premiers, talk choppily and brusquely over the telephone to a hireling Editor, and persuade oneself that the great laws of life are coming to heel very nicely. There is no doubt about it, the business of being a Public Figure probably has in it a great deal of exhilarating excitement that keeps the mind from brooding and painful activity.

We were interested to read in one of the papers not long ago a piece about how a conscientious young man of wealth is studying to fit himself for “public life”--which means, presumably, politics. It would be profitable to hear a discussion from the local magi as to what constitutes the best training for a political career. Aristotle made some comment--didn’t he?--about educating a special class of public servants--we must look it up in the _Politics_. We cannot rid ourself of the idea that the most important feature of such a training would be a considerable period of travel, to instil into the mind of the intending statesman that no one country has any monopoly of wisdom, humour, scenery, or good cooking. We have been much struck by the fact that since the war young graduates of British universities who would in earlier times have made their Grand Tour on the mainland of Europe have been trooping hither in astonishing numbers to have a look at the American scene. It has evidently penetrated the mind of the British political-minded classes that social phenomena over here are important and interesting enough to merit observation.

Almost every reasonably high-minded young man has, we suppose, thought at one time or another about the duty of going into politics--and then, if he has any tincture of sensitiveness, has sheered off in alarm after seeing the dreadful antics that the ambitious underling has to perform. He has seen, perhaps, a current event movie of an Assistant Secretary of the Navy marching gayly in a parade of The Elks at Atlantic City; or, driving quietly past a Long Island picnic glade, has noticed a gathering in motor trucks--Greenpoint Nest No. 653, Fraternal Order of Owls--being harangued, preliminary to hot dogs and Eskimo Pie, by a perspiring young man in white flannel trousers who hopes for a job as Assemblyman. Do not misunderstand us: we are not mocking these necessary small jobs at the foot of the political ladder. They have to be done, and it is only right that they should be done by those zealous fellows who can get some fun out of them. The life of politics, which we study with increasing amazement, must be an exhausting and exciting one, very foreign to the placid instincts of the philosophic observer. The latter, if he is wise, will restrain his impulse to mock, and will try to preserve that mood of affectionate scrutiny which is the only permanently valuable attitude towards human affairs. But sometimes he will think that newspaper men ought to be drafted, by an occasional compulsory legislation, into Government service. After several years of unrebuked privilege to snap and snigger at public men the tables ought to be turned. Some of us who show, in our unmolested kennels, such sweet untested wisdom, might well be hounded out to take a share in the difficult, damnable business of making the machinery go. But the electorate need not be alarmed. There is no real danger. At the first tread on the stair the editor would be out by the window.

But we were speaking of Lord Northcliffe. We have never made a careful study of his career, but oddly enough we have always had a sort of sneaking affection for the man himself while regarding that type of person in general as extremely mischievous. We do not care at all for these people who accumulate newspapers much as they would a number of suits of clothes, and who hire editors to traipse round the world with them as a kind of subservient mouthpiece. We are being told by all the papers that Northcliffe “wielded terrific power.” Well, in a way, we suppose he did; but it was a power that dealt mainly in ephemeral and unimportant things. Even his greatest triumph, the Premiership of Lloyd George, he could not permanently control. It was one of the oddities of coincidence that on the day of Northcliffe’s death a cable dispatch comes in telling us that four of Mr. George’s goats have won prizes at a goat show. Mr. George has a goat farm, it appears. If it would not seem heartless, we should say that Lord Northcliffe died rather than have to read Mr. Lloyd George’s memoirs. He had a great spirit and a huge ambition; but we cannot see in his career any evidence that Public Life and power necessarily develop the finer and more sensitive parts of man.

GISSING JOINS A COUNTRY CLUB

A number of our clients have been asking for news of Haphazard Gissing, the Synthetic Dog. Since we have always been so candid with our patrons, we shall have to tell the unvarnished story of the latest surprising chapter in that romantic animal’s career.

We say it with reluctance, and we say it with unfeigned sadness: we have had to deport Gissing. Admirable creature though he was, active, agile (you should have seen him play catch with a rubber ball), sonorous at night when he suspected alien footstep, highly intelligent and not devoid of a rude houndish comeliness--with all these gifts, he was not congenial among children. We do not know whether it was due to some dark strain of philosophy in him that rendered him too introspective to understand the ways of juveniles, or whether it was a blend of hot cavalier jealousy--at any rate, he never seemed able to unbend properly among the extremely young. The terror that he inspired in icemen and tinsmiths could be countenanced, but when he bristled and showed his teeth at neighbouring children something had to be done. It was the familiar problem of literature and life: here is an amiable creature, well beloved, possessed (by some kink of breeding) with an unexorcisable deviltry. We can leave it at that, and not harmonize the theme with sentimental arpeggios.

Of course the first thing to be done was to find a good home for the exile. We consulted Dr. Rothaug, the kindly veterinarian of Sea Cliff, at whose establishment Gissing took a cultural course last winter. Dr. Rothaug told us of a farmer in that pretty suburb of Glen Cove which is miscalled _Skunk’s Misery_, who was said to be looking for a fierce watch-dog to guard his chickens. Thither we went, and found the farmer milking at a barn on the lonely hillside. But just the night before he had been given a tramp collie. We liked the look of the farm at Skunk’s Misery; it was the kind of place where Gissing would have been well content, but the farmer said that one dog was enough. That night, very late, we let Gissing indoors, and shared a Last Supper with him at the icebox. Perhaps we shall remember that he seemed just a little surprised at the beef-bone and the arrowroot biscuits spread with Roquefort cheese. Well, we said to ourself defensively, he was always fond of Roquefort; there’s only a scrap of it left; and very likely he’ll never taste it again.

We refuse to be stampeded into any sentiment about this matter; we always thought that Gissing, as he matured, was developing a touch of the Thomas Hardy fatalism; he would be annoyed if we tried to over-dramatize this incident.

The next day the whole family was mustered to pay parting honours; all hands were embarked in Dame Quickly; the condemned dog ate a hearty breakfast, and with a bight of clothesline about his neck was escorted to the chariot, his long unused hawser having vanished since the Urchin used it to moor a full-rigged ship to a neighbouring sapling. By this time the victim had suspected something amiss; his deeply stricken cider-coloured eye was painfully interrogative. The Dame, however, seemed to us a trifle heartless. Off she went, her cylinders drumming with their usual alacritous smoothness. To a wedding or a funeral, all one to her. Gissing, now probably reviewing inwardly the tale of his errors (there must have been many of which we are ignorant: we never did know where he went on those long daily expeditions) was (we are pleased to record it) too honourable to attempt any insincere repentances. He kept climbing into the laps of his guardians, but the ironist insists that this was not all affection, but rather that the vibration of the floorboards tickled his pads. There was an occasional secret caress, both given and taken, but we know our clients are too stiff in the bosom to want to hear about such matters. The younger generation, in the back seat, were eager to see the country club that Gissing was going to join. So had the matter been explained to them.

Across those autumn-tinted fields of central Long Island--all colours of pink and fawn and panther with the weathered shrivelling corn-shocks like old ghost-Indian tepees, and the pumpkins bright in the stubble--we proceeded to the Bide-a-Wee Home, which lies tucked away in the woods near Wantagh. This place had been to us only a name, and indeed we knew not exactly what to expect. Great was our pleasure to find a charming old farmhouse with great barns and outhouses, and an immediate clamour from hundreds of dogs running gayly in fenced inclosures, and lesser dogs, both hale and cripple, about the yard. Gissing hopped out blithely: his tail lifted sharply over his back, feathering downward as it curved: the warm October air, one supposes, came to him sharply barbed with the aromas of innumerable congenials. He was very much alive, and walked nimbly on cushion toes. Holding the rope, we walked among the barns, saluted by prodigious applause from all sides. Even an inclosure full of cats showed gracious interest. The conclusion drawn by the Younger Generation was that Gissing’s friends were glad to see him. Then came a genial curator, Gissing was led to a wire gate, and introduced into an orchard plot among about thirty more or less his own size. There was a good deal of bristling and growling, but he stood his ground calmly while a dozen or so of his new clubmates inquired into his credentials.

We had been somewhat troubled by the signboard of the Bide-a-Wee, which calls itself a _Home for Friendless Animals_. We wished to impress upon the curator that Gissing was far from friendless, but we soon found that the legend on the board was inaccurate. Many very well-loved animals go there, for one reason or another; the organization tries to find a suitable home for all the beasts in its care; the name and characteristics of each are entered in a ledger when it arrives, and, if he so desires, the previous owner is notified when the animal goes to its new home. We were pleased to learn also that much of the broken bread from the Waldorf and Vanderbilt Hotels is shipped out to the Bide-a-Wee; so, if you are lunching there and don’t finish your roll, perhaps Gissing will get it. (He is particularly fond of the crescent-shaped ones, with little black specks on them.) The Home is supported by voluntary contribution. In the record book we inscribed Gissing’s biography very briefly:

GISSING: _origin doubtful: two years old: has always had a good home. A fine watch-dog, but not good with children._

We would have liked to go on, for much more might have been said. We would have liked to tell the friendly curator that this very week (by the quaint irony of circumstance) a book is to be published of which Gissing--somewhat transformed--is the hero. But we thought it best not to mention this, lest it get around among the other members and they taunt Gissing about it. We were happy to leave him in so congenial and friendly a home. And if any of our clients happen to need a good dog for a lonely country place--a dog who is perhaps too intellectual and excitable for children, but a tocsin of excellent acoustic strength--there you’ll find him. He has promised to write to the Urchiness, provided she eats her cereal a little faster.

As we left, Gissing was standing on his hind legs looking through the fence. He wailed just a little. It would be less than justice (to both sides) not to admit it. Like Milton’s hero leaving the Garden, “a few natural tears he shed, but dried them soon.” As the friendly curator said, “By to-morrow he’ll think he’s lived here all his life.” On the way home, there being more room in the Dame, a supply of cider was laid in for consolation. Last night it seemed just a little strange to visit the icebox all alone. To-morrow, perhaps, we shall take lunch at the Waldorf.

THREE STARS ON THE BACK STOOP