Part 3

“I’ve got a job for you that’s some assignment. You say _you_ always have to suggest the subjects for these interviews with the shades. Well, here’s one for you that I thought of last night all by myself. Interview Collector Brigham Young on woman suffrage.”

“Collector Young? I can’t quite recall on the moment. Let’s see: what did he collect?”

“Wives. Had one of the largest modern collections on record. When they were young used to call ’em his souvenir spoons. You may have a tough time getting him to talk, but if you succeed it ought to be hot stuff. I can imagine what Brigham Young would think of woman suffrage.”

But my usually infallible city editor was wrong on both points. Collector Young was not averse to talking for publication, and his views on woman suffrage were quite different from those he might have been presumed to hold.

“Take a seat. Glad to see you,” he exclaimed with all the affability I had been accustomed to receive during my adventures in interviewing illustrious spirits. “Thought I mightn’t wish to talk for publication? Why, I’ll talk for anything. Mighty glad of the opportunity. I talk now on the slightest provocation. Sometimes when there’s nobody else to talk to I talk to myself. Do you realize, young man, what it was to have forty-nine wives, simultaneously, and just about how much chance a husband had to get in an occasional remark edgewise? And as for getting the last word in a more or less animated discussion! Why, it always looked as if there never were going to be any last word.

“But after my extensive and varied matrimonial experience, as I have said, you can imagine the amount of pent-up opinions, the quantity of suppressed conversation I still have in my system. For thirty-two years my principal rôle in life was that of silent listener. Think of having to sit still and listen to forty-nine separate and distinct, and largely contradictory, reports of the meeting of the Mount Zion Missionary and Sewing Society! Think of listening every Sunday afternoon to forty-nine individual criticisms, chiefly destructive, of the feminine fashions observed in the congregation! Imagine the position of a so-called head of the house who could never utter a word without interrupting somebody or other! But the most maddening experience I had to undergo was when they all came down with the crocheting craze at the same time—or else the knitting mania—another form of feminine insanity—it’s all one to me. When the spell was on they wouldn’t talk to anyone else or let anyone else talk to them. It put them out of their count, they said. But they’d sit there in the front parlor—the whole regiment of them—and knit away, muttering some mysterious words to themselves. And never condescending to explain to a mere man what it was all about. They declared that would be ‘casting purls before swine.’ The click-click-click of the needles, forty-nine pairs of them all going at once, would sound like a knitting mill running full blast. And they always knitted in the evening, the time they insisted on my being at home. Said it made them nervous to be left alone in the house at night. Why, the forty-nine of them could have talked an ordinary burglar to death in half an hour and robbed him of his tools. But they thought they ought to have a man’s protection.”

“That reminds me, Mr. Young, of something I wanted to ask you before I knew you were going to be so courteously communicative. You will pardon me, I know, but I have often wondered how certain things were managed in such a-er-er—such a numerous establishment. For instance, the average husband with only one wife expects to be asked where he has been when he returns home late at night, but if he had forty-nine matrimonial partners, why, er-er—”

“You want to know whether they would all ask him at once? No, sir. That wasn’t the arrangement. We had committees for all such matters. Otherwise there would have been intolerable confusion. It would never have done in the world. A husband might inadvertently give twenty or thirty different—er-er—explanations of his unavoidable tardiness, and then when they got to comparing notes there would have been trouble. As I have said, we had committees. There was a committee on late returns and excuses, a committee for seeing that husband wore his rubbers to the office, a committee for reminding him to get his hair cut, a committee on new hats and gowns for summer and other seasons, a committee to get him to put on the screen doors in May, a committee to remind him about birthdays one week in advance, a committee for—oh, everything you can imagine. It was like a Legislature or Congress—except that instead of one there were forty-nine Speakers in the House.”

“Very interesting, Mr. Young, I am sure. But I was instructed to get your views on woman suffrage. Do you approve of women voting?”

“I don’t quite like the form of your question. Put it this way: do I object to women voting? I do not, for two reasons: first, I know better, after my extensive experience, than to object to anything women want to do, since it can do no good; and second, since women run things, anyway, to suit themselves, the act of voting is merely a symbol or ceremony of registration of their power. They were the real rulers before they got the ballot, and the vote isn’t going to change the situation any. The only hitch I see will come if the women can’t make up their minds as to just what and whom they want to vote for. I suppose in states where women have never voted before there may be a little trouble with those who have changed their minds after casting their ballot and want to get it back for a minute to add a postscript. But on the whole I don’t see why any man—any married one at least—should object to woman suffrage. Since the average voter gets his instructions from a political boss, anyway, it might be more convenient to have that boss in the family. Woman is assuming new duties and responsibilities every day. The hand that used to roll the baby carriage now rolls the cigarette.”

“You have spoken, Mr. Young,” I remarked as I rose to depart, “as if the wife were always the ruler, the autocrat of the home. Are you aware that the Census Bureau now officially recognizes the husband as the head of the house?”

Brigham smiled sadly as he replied: “Yes; but they only take a census once in ten years.”

And I tiptoed silently from the pathetic presence of one who had married not wisely, but too much.

VII

HIPPOCRATES ON MODERN DOCTORS

“What did you say about a hip-pocket?” queried the city editor suspiciously. “I want a drink as much as any man, but since prohibition arrived no camel has had anything on me. I believe in respecting the law even if—”

“I didn’t say anything about a hip-pocket,” I cut in. “I said it might be a good scheme to interview old Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, and find out what he thinks about modern doctors and surgeons and professional etiquette and whether times have improved any since he was in active practice a couple of thousand years ago. What do you think of the idea?”

“Go to it,” responded the C. E., “but be careful he doesn’t try to charge you ‘for professional advice.’ Make him understand that we’re doing the favor, not he. He ought to be glad of the free advertising. He’ll say at first he doesn’t want any publicity—it is unethical. See if he doesn’t. These doctors are all alike. I know ’em.”

Much to my surprise the city editor’s cynical prediction was verified by my victim’s opening remarks. “You want me to talk for _publication_, young man?” said the Father of Medicine. “You’re sure you’re not a representative of an eastern publishing house who has been authorized to place a few copies of a new encyclopedia with a selected number of the most prominent citizens, absolutely free of charge, on payment of a dollar down and five dollars a month for twenty years?”

Somewhat mystified, I replied in the negative.

“And you’re not demonstrating from purely philanthropic motives—the only charge being for packing and postage—a new tonic guaranteed to make the baldest pate blossom into a Paderewski?”

“No, sir, I’m not an agent of any kind. I have nothing to sell.”

“You are certain you are not promoting the sale of a new absolutely talk-proof safety razor for married men whose wives insist on conversing while they are trying to shave themselves? Or a new hip-pocket Testament holding one pint? Or a machine for manufacturing cigars at home, in anticipation of the next Great Reform? Or a self-spelling typewriter for business college graduates? You are not selling stock in a gold mine in Iceland at fifty cents par today, but price to be raised positively next Monday at ten o’clock to a dollar and a half, all shares guaranteed non-assessable and non-returnable? You are not the agent for a combination snow-shovel and lawn-mower, especially designed for the North American climate, transposable at a moment’s notice? You are not selling diamond-studded coupon clippers for profiteers or self-finding collar buttons, or—”

“My dear sir, I have nothing to sell at all. I am a reporter and I want—”

“Oh, a reporter? Well, why didn’t you say so at first, instead of causing all this confusion and waste of breath? I’ve been so bothered with agents of every sort lately that I can’t sleep nights. I told one that the other day and he pulled a bottle out of his bag and tried to sell me an infallible cure for insomnia. I resolved not to let another one into my house. But you’re a reporter, eh? That’s a refreshing novelty around here. Come in.

“But you must know that I never talk for publication. I have never done such a thing in my entire professional career. It would be entirely contrary to the ethics of my sacred calling. Somebody might say I was trying to advertise myself. You know doctors can’t be too careful. We never advertise. We may occasionally consent, under pressure, to the publication of an item in the society column saying that ‘Dr. Theophilus Sawbones of 52896 Arnica Avenue has returned after a two weeks’ trip to Atlantic City and resumed his practice.’ But that isn’t advertising. That’s news. You never see a surgeon, for instance, descending to the low commercial plane of your merchants, and announcing in a display advertisement: ‘Cut rates all this week at Dr. Carvem’s. Now is the time to get that appendix cut out. All operations marked down. Special bargains in tonsils.’

“No, sir. We have an exalted code of ethics in our profession, I am happy to say, dating from the time when I founded the practice of medicine. But if you are sure a few timely remarks from me will not be misinterpreted and regarded as an attempt on my part to get into the limelight, I am at your service to the extent of about a column and a half, offered for acceptance at your regular rates, to be run next reading matter.”

“I am certain, doctor,” I responded, “that the world will attribute no self-promoting motives to one enjoying your long and honorable reputation. Do you note many changes in the practice of medicine since the days when you were in the harness?”

“Well,” responded Hippocrates as he thoughtfully stroked his long beard, “there seem to be more different kinds of doctors nowadays than we had in 400 B. C. We didn’t know anything about specialists in our time. We were not merely general practitioners; we were universal practitioners.

“Suppose, for instance, a prosperous citizen of Athens had the gout, indigestion, corns, heart murmur, rheumatism, torpidity of the liver and clergyman’s sore throat—seven ailments in all. He sent for me and I treated all his diseases at the same time. While he had a combination of diseases, we knew any good doctor would understand the combination.

“I felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, and told him he was working too hard—just as one of your modern doctors would do. It always pleases a prosperous citizen to be told that he is working too hard—and we aim to please. If I thought he would like a trip somewhere, I recommended a run over to Rome during the Coliseum season. They used to have some mighty good shows at the Coliseum. If he preferred to take his vacation at home, then I recommended a trip for his wife. I told him not to eat so much and to take more exercise, and to cut out the worry, and then collected my fee of two drachmas, and went on to the next vic—I mean, the next patient.

“But take that same prosperous citizen today. How many specialists would he have to call in before he could consider his case properly attended to? Seven diseases, seven specialists, you say? Oh, more than that. First thing he’d have to send for the primary diagnostician, if he wished to do it in thoroughly up-to-date style. Well, the primary diagnostician would come in to find out, first, what was the matter with him. He looks the patient all over and takes flash-light pictures of his interior, makes a card index of all the things the matter with him and then calls in his stenographer and dictates a circular letter to a collection of specialists, asking them to drop around at their leisure and confirm his diagnoses. And do _they_ proceed then to treat the patient? Not for a minute. They are the secondary diagnosticians. Each has his specialty and wouldn’t dream of encroaching on any other specialist’s territory. The gout man looks only for gout—and he finds what he is looking for. The indigestion expert does the same—and it can’t escape his eagle eye. It’s the same all down the line.

“When the seven secondary diagnosticians have finished their job the patient is presented with seven neatly-inscribed charts, showing the general plan and location of his various troubles—and seven courteously worded communications beginning with precisely the same words: ‘For professional services to date.’

“Now it’s time to call in the specialists who administer the treatment. Seven more of ’em. Why, nowadays the house of a rich man who’s got something the matter with his insides looks like the convention hall of the American Medical Association during a well-attended session. And that’s not all. You not only have to have a different doctor for each disease, but a whole lot of brand-new diseases we never heard of in my time have been invented. Back in the old days in Athens there were only about a dozen ailments a fellow could acquire. If he escaped these he never had to call in a doctor. But today, as any specialist will tell you, there are about fifty-seven varieties of throat trouble alone. You can have eighty-six different things the matter with your liver, while the various kinds of indigestion, plain and fancy, would fill a book. In our time, too, we did mighty little tinkering with the human frame with tools and things. We knew about the appendix, but we failed to perceive its commercial possibilities. We thought it had been put there for some wise purpose—but it didn’t occur to us that it might be a financial one. The price of a modern appendicitis operation would have supported one of our old Greek physicians in luxury for three years.

“It was the same with tonsils. We’d as soon have thought of cutting off a man’s tongue as taking out his tonsils. Every young doctor had to take an oath—the _Hippocratic_ oath, _I_ called it—that he would give everybody the benefit of his services without regard to money. Nowadays if doctors take the oath I presume a good many of them keep their fingers crossed. I agree that when a doctor is called out of his bed in the middle of the night, to treat an old fellow who is suffering from nothing except fatty degeneration of the pocketbook, it’s quite a temptation to relieve him of a substantial share of that trouble. Some folk think they aren’t getting full attention unless they are charged enough to make them feel it in the pocket nerve. Increased wages of workingmen are bound to enlarge the number of millionaire medicos.”

“So, you think, Doctor, the practice of medicine has become somewhat commercialized since your day?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. I did not wish to reflect on my successors. That would not be professional. I’m simply sorry that back in 400 B. C. we were not alive to our opportunities. Think of our allowing Croesus, the richest man that ever lived, to go around with his appendix intact! Why, I sat up with him all one night when he had acute inflammation of the imagination and thought he saw pink Egyptian crocodiles crawling up the window-shades, and only charged him two dollars!

“No, understand me. I’m not finding fault with the twentieth century doctors. I’m only envious of their opportunities. Your modern doctor dashes around town in his automobile and calls on twenty patients a day. I had an old ox team, non-self-starting, that couldn’t take the smallest hill on high and had a maximum speed on the level of two miles an hour. While I was attending a patient at one end of Athens a patient at the other end had time to get well without my assistance. That was discouraging to any young fellow just as his practice and professional beard were beginning to grow. And nowadays they tell me you have allopaths, and homeopaths and osteopaths—but you must remember that all paths lead to the grave.”

“Why is that last joke just like you, Doctor?” I interposed in self-defense.

“I give it up. Why is it?”

“Because it dates from at least 400 B. C.”

And the look Hippocrates gave in return made me thankful he wasn’t my family doctor. I knew he would rejoice to write me a prescription of ten grains of strychnine, three times a day, to be taken before meals.

VIII

METHUSELAH GIVES LONGEVITY SECRETS

It’s odd how often in interviewing the old-timers and ancient shades one’s preconceived ideas get a jolt. In my mind’s eye I had a vision of Methuselah, for instance, as an antediluvian figure with a Santa Claus beard and a general air of decrepitude. The door was opened in response to my ring by a smartly dressed, smooth-shaven individual, who certainly looked as if the burden of age sat lightly upon his shoulders.

“I should like to see Mr. Methuselah,” I said. “That is, if he is able to see callers today. If he’s having his nap, or not feeling very spry this morning, I can come again.”

“Come again? I guess not. You see me right now. I was going over to the Olympus Club to play a round of golf, but I’ll be glad to give you half an hour. Walk right in. What can I do for you?”

“My city editor wanted an interview on how to attain long life, but I must have got hold of the wrong Mr. Methuselah. I want the one who lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, the world’s champion oldest inhabitant. Surely you’re not—”

“I’ll say I am. I’m the only original, the guaranteed nine-times-centenarian and then some. I know what you expected to see: an old fossil with snowy whiskers and numerous wrinkles, walking with a couple of canes and dressed in a single garment like an old-fashioned nightshirt. You were prepared to have me give my reminiscences, to wheeze out, between painful breaths, that the old days were far better than anything we have now, to roast the younger generation, and wind up by attributing my longevity to abstaining from booze and the use of tobacco in any form. You were all ready to put down that I can read fine print without glasses and can remember events of nine hundred and fifty years ago as if they happened only yesterday. Oh, I know you newspaper fellows and I’ve read so many interviews with centenarians I could write one myself with my eyes shut. My advice to anybody who wants to live to be a hundred, to say nothing of nine hundred and sixty-nine, is, ‘Don’t.’ And as for reminiscences, my motto is, ‘Forget it.’ I haven’t any very happy recollections of my long-drawn-out stay on earth. Existence is pleasant, but it is possible to have entirely too much of a good thing.

“Take our married life, for instance. At the start everybody said it was a regular love story. But even a love story that stretches out into a serial of over nine hundred chapters gets a trifle monotonous. You’ve never heard of Mrs. M. She wouldn’t tell her age even to get her name into the Bible. I remember when they first started taking the census. The census taker came to our house and camped out three years. Couldn’t get all the facts of our family any other way. And we had to board him all that time. Well, his wife’s sister belonged to the Daughters of Eve Foreign Missionary Society, the same one my wife did, and Mrs. M. said she just knew that if she gave her age, why, that mean old thing would know it within half an hour, and it would be all around town before the day was over. And she just wouldn’t give it. I gave him all the dope about the other members of the family, my great-great-great-etc.-grandchildren and the close relations on my wife’s side who’d been living with us for three hundred and fifty years (close was no name for it), but I balked when it came to the question of Mrs. M.’s age. The fact was, she was only about four hundred and twenty-five, or thereabouts, at the time, but you know how women are—so blamed sensitive about something that men are proud of—and so I told him to go and get the information from headquarters.

“Well, it happened to be a bad combination that day. It was wash-day, and the cook had just left, after being with us for a hundred and eighty years, and quite a number of the children had the measles and the whooping cough and one thing another, and Mrs. M. happened to have a mop in her hand at the time, and—But here I am reminiscing away and I said I wouldn’t. Let’s get back to business. What did you want me to talk about?”

“I’d like you to explain how you’ve kept so young-looking and feeling after all these years.”