Part 4

What an excellent thing it is that Stratford is comfortably married. He is built for marriage. That is the life for him; a nice, quiet, wholesome, unexciting life of home comforts. Mr. and Mrs. Stratford dwell happily in a little nest called a cottage. Here they are surrounded by all the sundry and divers chattels and effects incident to the life they follow.

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In order that he may be properly protected against the elements, Stratford is plentifully supplied with overshoes, earbobs, Storm King chest protectors, mufflers, and umbrellas. He arms himself with these instruments according to the precise demand of each different occasion. Going out into the weather is an undertaking, and an adventure, accompanied by hazardous risks. With Stratford, preparation for it is a system and a science. Sometimes, however, Stratford's judgment errs in the matter of precaution. One day last week Stratford went downtown. Yielding to his vanity on that day, he recklessly wore kid gloves instead of his mittens, which were so much more suited to the then prevailing inclement weather. Now he suffers from it. He has a cough, and is compelled to keep his breast goose-greased.

Few people realize the importance of health, and the relation of diet to health. Pork is not wholesome. New potatoes are very hard to digest. Cream should never be eaten with peaches. This pernicious combination curdles. Stratford knows much more about these things than does the writer, which is fortunate for Stratford; the writer has only attempted to point out and warn you against a few of the most important, which he learned from Stratford. Stratford learned all this from experience. Last evening at dinner Stratford drank two cups of coffee. He did not sleep a wink all the night in consequence. Coffee is very bad for the nerves, very bad.

It may be that there are many persons like the writer in not knowing how to serve coffee. The cream should always be put in the cup first, then the coffee poured on. Though you may not be aware of the fact, it absolutely ruins coffee to serve it any other way. It is better to put sugar on oatmeal after the cream is on. The writer does not know why; but it is better.

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Though one would hardly suspect it, in his youth Stratford was considerable of a rake. He often tells the story. It appears that in a spirit of reckless dare-deviltry on an occasion Stratford partook of some spirituous liquor. Now Stratford has a tolerably strong head. But this wine--or was it cocktail?--proved almost too much for him. Ah, well! those wild and lawless days are past and gone. Stratford has reformed, and will not fill a drunkard's grave. No one, we hope, respects Stratford the less for having been a little wild. We all hate a milksop, you will agree.

XIX

A HUMAN CASH REGISTER

Across the table from a lodger sits Mr. Fife. Mr. Fife is a clerk. This statement comprises, not inadequately, his memoirs.

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When a man speaks to you of the useful piece of mechanism called a cash register, you comprehend him perfectly. You know what a cash register is, for what purpose it was designed, how it looks, how much approximately it is worth, what it will perform, and what it will remain--a cash register. A cash register could not have been born a toy balloon, spent its youth as a bicycle, been educated as a pulpit, have imprudently married a footlight, been forced to obtain employment as a cash register, but cherishes a secret ambition to be a typewriter and solace itself in turn as a violin, a mug of ale, and a tobacco pipe. A lodger does not say that Mr. Fife is no better in any way than a cash register. A mother nursed him at her breast, watched him as he slept; he was somebody's baby. A grown man was strangely moved, probably, when he was born. He played somewhere as a child. Dirty little brothers and sisters, perhaps, were his. He was spanked and had diseases and suffered and was frightened and rejoiced. Hearts have been glad when he was near. One or two little girls, no doubt, have admired him very much. Some woman, probably somewhere, admires him still. A lodger does not say that Mr. Fife has no inner life. He does not say that the forces of existence constantly, ceaselessly beating in on this man (or rather clerk) are not here slowly, inevitably shaping a moral character, this way or that. But as this human life sits here at Mrs. Wigger's board a clerk is here, with his past and his future.

Mr. Fife has a "furnished room" somewhere around on the next street, and only takes his meals at Mrs. Wigger's.

XX

IT STANDS TO REASON

On the hotel porch a large, earnest man was delivering the argument. He poised his pipe in his hand; and, moving forward from period to period with judicial deliberation, choosing his words with care, building his sentences with a nice regard for precision, he constructed his exposition in logical sequence. He had time at his command; and, so he gripped his audience, was in no fear of interruption. "For instance, we will take, for instance, just for instance, do you understand? the little town of New York to represent the whole country. Well, here we have the little town of New York. Now, it stands to reason----" One who chanced to overhear passed beyond range.

But what of the disquisition had been caught gave rise to an important reflection. When you examine the subject you find there are three fundamental phrases in arguing, in the dexterous use of which is largely constituted the talent of the born arguer. These home-driving phrases, which are his stock in trade, are: "It stands to reason," "between man and man," and "that's human nature." With these, strongly used, one can do almost anything. "Does capital meet labor?" says the born arguer. "No; what is the consequence? It stands to reason. Labor goes to the wall." Or, again: "You take the generations we have now, the young people." He smokes a while in silence. "It's human nature," comes the philosophical conclusion. And when the arguer addresses his audience "as between man and man," when in this direct, blunt way all the frangipani of class and convention is cleared aside, and only their manhood stands between them, he has got at the bed-rock of argument.

XXI

A THREE-RINGED CIRCUS

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Our friend MacKeene is a very interesting person. One of his most pronounced characteristics is an assiduous striving on his part to increase his vocabulary. We are always made aware of any of his new acquisitions in this direction by its frequent repetition during a conversation, the loving way in which he appears to dwell upon it, to hug it to his heart, allow it gradually to mount to his throat, roll it in his mouth to suck its flavor, to send it forth at length, to watch it tenderly and admiringly (like a fine ring of tobacco smoke) until it loses itself in the flow of speech that comes after it. We relish this new word ourselves. It is like a play; it thrills our soul, and we sigh when it is gone--but we know it will come again many times before the night is passed.

It has never been our fortune to see a man that enjoyed the show of life more than does MacKeene. He reads newspapers with a relish that is positively amazing; he smacks his lips over them; their contents are to him the headiest romance. MacKeene goes to the finest theater in the world every evening when he reads his penny paper. The anxiety with which he awaits the account of each new murder, swindle, election, disaster, marriage, or divorce of a special publicity, the mental agility with which he pounces upon it, the astonishing variety of points of view he can take of the thing, and the application with which he follows through successive installments the story to the very end, are delightful to behold.

He invariably winds up his observations upon life with the comment that "it is a funny world; such funny people in it."

True, or, rare MacKeene! It _is_ a funny world, and there _are_ such funny people in it! Everybody is queer but thee and us.

The other evening, after he had devoured his newspaper and sat staring at the wall, we started him going by the remark:

"Well, what's in the paper to-night, MacKeene?"

"What's in the paper to-night?" cried he.

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"Everything is in the paper, everything--worlds of it--plays, skits, comedies, farces, tragedies, burlesques: material for the student, the historian, the author, the poet, the moralist, the humorist, much matter to be fast applauded for its slapstick good nature, and some bowed with leaden-eyed despair, some replete with rosy schemes, some of waxing hopes and sweet, unprofitable pipe dreams, some of many moneys, births, deaths, marriages and giving in marriages, loves, hatreds, wisdoms, follies, crimes, vices and virtues, heroisms, hypocrisies, arts, commercialism, surprises, bacchanals, hard exigencies, and poor resorts and petty contrivances. _Life_--ah! that's the boy--life and all its train of consequences, ringing in my ears, dancing before my eyes, crowding on the senses, a three-ringed circus in full blast, a roary, noisy, bloomin' spectacle, a mammoth aggregation of prodigious eye-openers and unparalleled splendors, with gorgeous hippodrome under perfect subjection, and a Casino Wonderland Musee of queer, peculiar, wild, domestic, instructing, funny, beautiful, horrible, and revolting curios and monstrosities of land, air, and sea."

XXII

SNAPSHOTS IN X-RAY

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What a terrible thing is the X-ray!

Terrible?

Listen. Contemplate the prospect of this invention's being brought into popular use, so that, say, anybody might have such an attachment to his kodak. In such case, science, which has been so powerful a force in refining the civilization of man, would by one stroke lay waste the whole of her handiwork. Civilized society would collapse.

A German professor at one time went pretty well into the subject of clothes and the philosophy thereof, and reasoned among other things that society would instantly dissolve without them. Nothing could more vividly bear out this gentleman than contemplation of the possibilities of the Roentgen ray. It is an exciting prospect. A press of the button, and there would be Herr Teufelsdrockh's "straddling Parliament." But a thousand times more grotesque: gentlemen stripped not only of the tailored habiliment of the bodies, the symbols of their gentility, as it were, but of the fleshly garments of their frame, laying bare their mortality. And humorously, witheringly, for among the other distinctions man is said to possess above his brethren the beasts, being the only animal that laughs, and so forth, it is certainly true that of all creation he has the funniest skeleton. It would be the end. No candidate for public office would dare to come forth upon the platform. What stout lady could give a party?

Unless, indeed, as would probably result, for the preservation of society the use and carrying of kodaks would be regulated, like the carrying of revolvers, by statute. To photograph a gentleman or lady on the street would be a criminal deed carrying a penalty of twenty years' imprisonment. For though ladies blessed by nature might not, in this lingerie-less, tube-skirt age, shrink from further perception of their loveliness, it is doubtful if any man could make love to a woman after having seen an effigy of her skeleton. To snap the President would be equivalent, in the eyes of the law, to assassinating him. To take an X-ray photograph of a fashionable assembly would be, like discharging a dynamite bomb in the midst, punishable with death.

XXIII

BACHELOR REMINISCENCES

Sometimes my thoughts carry me away from my solitary strife with the world; back to my boyhood, when all men were not thieves and scoundrels, as they are now; back to my old home and my family, where we loved one another and did not, lynx-eyed, watch for a grip upon our neighbors' throats nor count our every friend as a possibility of our own advancement, and every favor we did another a business investment.

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In one such mood as this, on an evening, I was pleased, upon answering the knock at my door, to usher in my neighboring lodger Harrison. In reminiscence we would renew our youth; and to that purpose I started him off upon the desired track.

Harrison poses as something of a philosopher, and he began with some of his customary rot.

"Well," said he, "I have never known a man that talked at all upon the subject who did not follow a calling which was the most trying of all those at which men labor in this world, who did not have a most remarkably hard time in early life, and who did not fondly imagine that he was a very bad boy in his youth. These, I take it, are the three most familiar hallucinations in life. I am a victim to them myself. But I shall not regale you with them to-night. I was thinking of my own boyhood, the wickedness of it, and the happiness. Ah! boyhood, that is the happy time; girlhood may be, too--but I doubt it.

"These many years have I been like poor Joe in 'Bleak House,' I must keep moving along; but when I was a boy I had a home. A strange word it is to me now. I am reminded of the old vaudeville 'stunt': Any old place I hang my hat is home, sweet home, to me. I follow a trunk about the world, and a devil of a globe-trotter of a trunk it is.

"But when I was a boy," continued Harrison, the lines in his face softened--and he somehow just now looked very like a boy--"I had a home; there the board was always paid." The lines came back in his face for an instant, then faded away again. "There in the winter it was always warm," he said, looking very hard at my small fire. "There we had great feasting and drinking." I could not but notice how spare he was now. "There were noise and romping," and the softness of his voice now emphasized the extreme desertedness of my chambers. "There were brothers and sisters. Did you ever have a brother?" he asked me rather suddenly.

I replied that I never did.

"Or a sister?" he inquired.

I said "No."

He looked at me with a sort of annoying pity.

"I hope," he said rather irritatedly, "that you had a mother?"

I replied that I had had, but I did not see why we should fight about it.

"Now, don't lose your temper, old man," said Harrison. "You're such an incorrigible old dope, you know, such a cynical, confirmed old bachelor of a bohemian, I mean; so contented with this lonesome, vagabond life, that I hardly think you ever had a real, happy, wholesome boyhood home. By the way, did you ever have a boyhood?" he asked with something very near to a sneer.

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"Now, look here," I said, "if you had such an insufferable home, why didn't you stay there and make your own family miserable instead of wandering about the world bemoaning your fate, wishing yourself back there, and insulting people who are not moved by ties of relationship to be tolerant with your spleen? And who won't be," I added, rising.

"You're a fool," said Harrison, as he banged the door.

XXIV

A TESTIMONIAL

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For years I was a great sufferer from insomnia. At one time this dread scourge had so fastened its terrible fangs upon me that I could scarcely walk. My body became one mass of sleeplessness; I tried many remedies, but without avail, and my friends had all given me up for dead when by chance from a mere acquaintance I heard of this great cure which I would recommend to all who are afflicted as I was.

I remember with horror the tortures I used to endure in agony as I tossed to and fro on the hot pillow, going over in my fevered mind interminably the formulas of the so-called reliefs from this peerless disease. An unconscionable number of times I numbered a round of sheep over a stile. I counted up to ten, over and over again; and then up to fifteen, and then twenty, twenty-five, thirty, fifty, only to craze myself with the thought of the futility of this lunacy. I heard my dollar watch tick on the dresser, until in madness I arose and placed it on the restraining pad of a clothes-brush. I heard the clock in the next room relentlessly tell the passing hours; I heard a neighboring public clock follow it through the watches of the night. I heard my happy neighbor snore. I heard the sound of rats near by, and the creaking of floors, and the voice of the wind. I tried bathing my feet before going to bed. I tried eating a light lunch. I tried intoxicating liquors. But always I stared through the blackness of the fearful night until an eerie color tinged my window, and then the dawn came up like thunder across the bay.

It was when my spirit had become worn through my body like elbows through the sleeve of an old coat that I heard the remarkable recipe for insomnia: Think of the top of your head. That is what I was told to do. "Think of the top of your head," I said to myself with some disdain in the awful grip of the night; "now how in thunder do you think of the top of your head?"

"Do you think of your hair?" I asked, turning my eyeballs upward in their sockets. "Do you think of that lightly hidden baldness?" striving to put my mind, so to say, on the top of my head. "How the Dickens-can-you-think-of----" but a drowsy numbness pained my sense as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains one minute past, and Lethewards had sunk. And I dreamed that quite plainly, as though it were some other fellow's, I saw the top of my head.

XXV

FRAGRANT WITH PERFUME

Mr. Duff is the tenant of the second floor front. His wife has been away. Mr. Duff himself may be encountered about in the halls. He is a large man with a considerable girth and a face that one knows to be youthful for his age; he cannot be under thirty.

Recently the second floor hall became fragrant with the odor of perfume. Mrs. Duff, presumably, had returned. Yes, Mrs. Duff was at the telephone. She calls, "Hello!" very sweetly, in two syllables. Mr. Duff's first name, it appears, is Walter, pronounced by his doting wife also in two syllables, "Wal-ter." Mrs. Duff bleats, it seems, in two syllables. Mr. Duff's middle name evidently is "Hon-ey."

Mrs. Duff said over the telephone that she "had been ba-ad." She said it, or, so sweetly. She had, she said, taken a little walk and had stayed "too long" and she had been away when he had called her up. But she had had the "best little time." She was going to work now, "oh! so ha-rd." She was going to clean out the bureau drawers and "that little box," and unpack her trunk and put away her things. No, she would be careful not to overwork herself. She would see him, Walter Honey Duff, when he came home from work. "Good-by, little boy," she said.

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Then she called up a creamery. She wanted the creamery to send her, please, a pint of milk, and the smallest jar it had of cream cheese. How soon could those be sent, please? Oh-h! not till then? Well, she supposed she would have to wait.

The second floor hall is fragrant with the odor of perfume.

XXVI

WOULDN'T LOOK AT HIM

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"They say," remarked the portly man with several double chins on the back of his neck, "that the Duke is over in the Library."

"I wouldn't walk across the street to see him," said a shabby individual, helping himself to a cracker.

"He's no better than any other man," said the bar-boy.

"I wouldn't look at him if they brought him in to me," announced an aggressive-looking character.

Now this was a remark rich in pictorial suggestion. It was eloquent with dramatic evocation. One instantly imagines the striking scene; the duke is dragged in; the aggressive-looking character is called upon to look at him; this he refuses to do.

"He breathes the same kind of air we do, don't he?" pointedly inquired the shabby individual.

"I guess that's right enough, too!" exclaimed the bar-boy.

XXVII

CONNUBIAL FELICITY

I've got a fine wife, too. I tell you, Bob, there's nothin' better can happen to a feller than to get the right woman. I don't care for battin' around any more now. Nothin' I like any better than to go home to my flat at night, take off my shoes and put on my slippers, and listen to my wife play the piano. My wife is musical, vocal and instrumental. Her vocal is on a par with her instrumental. I like music. I always said if ever I got married I'd marry, a wife that was musical. I ain't educated in music, exactly, but I've an ear. A feller told me,--Doc. Hoff, a mighty smart man, I'd like you to know him, his talk sometimes it would take a college professor to understand it,--he says to me, "I'm no phrenologist but I can see you've got an ear for music."

My wife is an aristocrat. When I married her, Thunder! I had no polish, that is to speak of. You know that, Bob. My talk was the vernacular. My wife's an Episcopalian. She asked me if I had any objection to the Episcopal ceremony for marrying. I said I didn't have no religion; anything would suit me so long as it was legal. I had fifteen hundred dollars to the good. I don't know how I come to have it. I oughtn't to have, by rights. Some of these book makers ought to have had it, accordin' to the life I led. But I did have it, anyhow. I took three hundred dollars and got a sweet of drawing room furniture--Louie fourteenth, or fifteenth, they call it, I forget which. Then I got a mahogany table, solid parts through, for our dining room, and some what they call Chippendale chairs. I got a darn good library up there, too.

My wife don't say "and so forth"; she says "and caetera."

XXVIII

A FRIEND, INDEED

He was a sturdy-looking little man, with a square, honest face, and an upright manner, to put it so. He seemed to be a Swede. His companion had something the look of Mr. Heep, and he wore a cap.

"Yes, sir, Will," said his companion, "I'd like to see you own that piece of property. I would. If you owned that piece of property, Will, then you see you'd have something. You'd have something, Will. Something you could always call your own, Will."

"Do you think it's good land?" said Will.

"Oh, yes," said his companion; "that's a very fine piece of land, Will. I know every bit of it. I've worked up there, Will."

"Rocky?" asked Will.

"Oh, no, Will; there's hardly a rock on it."

"How far now does it come down this way?" inquired Will musingly.

"Down the hill, Will?" asked his companion, with great attention.

"Yes," said Will.

"Well, now as to that," said the other, casting his face upward in thought, "I couldn't just exactly say."