Part 5

I had been assigned to interview Eve on the feminine fashions of 1922, but the maid said she was out, and so I had to fall back on old Adam instead. I approached the father of the race not without diffidence, feeling so painfully young and fearing he would not care to talk for publication, but his opening remarks set me entirely at ease.

“Not care to be quoted!” he exclaimed. “I’m mighty glad of the opportunity. I don’t have one so often, now that Eve stays home so much. You see, she calls only on people of the first families, and they’re not very numerous around here. The neighbors say she gives herself airs, and so they don’t call on her. It’s been a lasting source of grief that she’s ineligible to join the Daughters of anything. She arrived too early on the scene. It used to be awfully galling to her to hear the women all talking about their family trees and boasting of their ancestors, and swapping lies about what their great-great-grandfathers said to George Washington at the battle of San Juan Hill, or whatever it was, and giving an expurgated edition of what George Washington said to Lord Cornwallis, as handed down to posterity in the family records. Eve used to sit in a corner and weep while the Daughters of the Mexican Revolutions or the Granddaughters of Russian Independence (to be eligible for the latter you must have an ancestor who shot at least one grand duke, five assassinations making you an ace; and if your relative happened to pot a Czar your social position is assured forever) were spinning their yarns and trying to make each other jealous. But now she’s organized a new society, the Mothers of Humanity, and she’s president, secretary, treasurer and chairman of the committee on membership. She’s away this afternoon calling on Mrs. Methuselah and they’re trying to get up some scheme that will induce all the women they want to blackball to apply for membership.

“Yes, poor Eve has had a pretty hard time right from the start, and I don’t believe her descendants have appreciated what she did for them. I’ll say this for her: she’s been as true as steel, even if she hasn’t always kept her temper so well. It’s a fact that after that first little unpleasantness she always kept a broomstick handy for any peddler who might come along trying to sell ‘nice eating apples,’ but consider the provocation! There we were, nicely settled in the garden, no work, nothing to do but step out in the yard and help ourselves to all the fruit and vegetables in sight. All the trees and vines were of the self-cultivating variety. We’d never even heard of the high cost of living. No family to support. No neighbors to scrap with. No money, and no pockets to put it in if we had had, but, glorious thought! No bills to pay. We had our little disagreements, of course. The first day she arrived, Eve said I’d been doing the dishes the wrong way, letting ’em all go until the end of the month and then turning the hose on ’em out in the front yard; she insisted on washing ’em after every meal. But, as I said, who was there to know the difference? She had to learn the names of all the animals, and she was especially glad to hear about the bear, so that she could tell me what I was as-cross-as when I got the grip that first winter.

“Yes, life is real and wife is earnest, but, as I said, ours was very happy. The first quarrel? I don’t know that I remember just what it was about. I recall a dispute over Eve’s new bathing suit, which was intensified by my innocent remark that it was an exceedingly small thing to quarrel about, but I think our initial serious disagreement occurred when I respectfully declined to go into hysterics over Cain’s first tooth.

“And this reminds me: our first social event in Eden was little Cain’s inaugural bawl. I’m sure you’ll pardon me for getting that off my mind at this stage of the interview. If I tried that joke on Eve once I tried it fifty times, and every time I was met by the same blank stare. I’ve been waiting seven thousand years to tell it to somebody who would appreciate it. Thank you for smiling. I was the originator of the saying that women have no sense of humor. Man was made to mourn, and he never realizes it so keenly as when he hears a woman try to tell a funny story. I could talk to you all day about Eve, the only girl I ever loved—because there wasn’t any other. It didn’t take us long to get out of the Garden that time—principally because Eve didn’t have to wait to dress. Today it would be a different story. If clothes had been in vogue in the year one I suppose I might have waited two hours down in the front hall while Eve was getting ready and packing the trunks—and then probably I’d have had to go back two or three times for something she thought she’d forgotten after we got outside. Well, what I started to say was that little Eve bore up bravely under her misfortunes. She put up a splendid bluff. I’ll say that for her. Why, do you know, instead of sitting down and bewailing her hard fate after being put out of the Garden, she actually gave a coming out party! I certainly admired her nerve, one day, when I overheard her telling the new neighbors that Eden was all very well for young couples just starting housekeeping, but the neighborhood was getting so crowded and it was so near the zoo that we just really had to move. And then she remarked that she had never been able to get me to take enough exercise anyway and she thought gardening would now be just fine for me. It takes a woman to carry a thing off like that. Women are the world’s champion bluffers and yet we men think we know how to play poker. Why—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Adam, but I was asked to get an interview on feminine fashions of 1922, and whether you think they have changed for the better.”

“Oh, beg pardon, I’m sure. But when I get talking about Eve my tongue runs away with me. I suppose all married men are that way. It’s so delightful sometimes to have the chance of talking without feeling that you’re interrupting anybody. Feminine fashions, eh? Well, I’ve seen some changes in the last seven thousand years. I thought nothing could shock me any more, but I’ve had a few stiff jolts the last few months. I guess I’m not as strong as I used to be. Back in the old days, in the garden, fashions weren’t so much. That was before the trouble, but after we moved, plain, simple fig-leaves became passée, hopelessly old-fashioned and out-of-date. I read a book the other day entitled ‘How to Dress on Nothing a Year.’ That described our case exactly, in the early, happy, carefree days. There wasn’t a dressmaker in the world. If anybody had mentioned the word ‘modiste’ I’d have thought it was some new kind of animal I’d overlooked in taking the census. I wouldn’t have known what he meant. Ever have a sewing woman come to your house and stay a week at a time and always sit down with the family at table and be a damper on the conversation? Well, that’s one trouble we never experienced. Eve never came home from a walk in the woods and remarked carelessly that she’d just seen a hat downtown that could be bought for a song, and then it turned out that the song was ‘Old Hundred.’ Not for a minute. Nobody gave a hang in those days what others might be wearing as the latest style. We knew they might wear more, but they couldn’t well wear any less. When anybody wanted a Spring or Fall outfit, all he had to do was to go out in the woods and pick a new suit off a tree. If you were getting a bit shabby and resolved to dress better in the future, you just turned over a new leaf.

“Then came moving day, and what a change! First crack out of the box the girls all began clamoring for clothes, real clothes. I remember one hot day—the thermometer would have been registering about ninety-five, if there had been one—the girls all set up a howl for furs—furs, mind you, with the sun hot enough to boil a cold storage egg. I tried to reason with ’em. ‘You don’t mean furs,’ I said, ‘you mean bathing suits or peek-aboo waists or mosquito netting. This is summer, the hottest weather since the year one. The heat has affected your brains. Go take a swim in the Euphrates and cool off.’ But they insisted that they knew what they were talking about, and so there was nothing for it but I must shoulder my old club and go off and kill a bear and a couple of foxes and a mink and fit ’em all out with a set of furs to wear while most folks were busy trying to dodge sunstrokes. That was the start, I believe, of this modern movement of the girls, wrapping themselves up in ‘summer furs’ just as soon as the weather gets hot enough. That next winter Eve and the girls started going around in the snow and ice in low shoes and short, open-work stockings and wish-bone waists and pneumonia sleeves, and defying the doctors. And that’s the worst of it, that’s what makes me mad. The girls do defy every last rule of health when it comes to dress and get away with it. The strongest man that ever lived couldn’t do it without a call from the undertaker, but the girls seem to thrive on their foolishness.

“The fashions of 1922! Well, looking at them pro and con, without blinders or smoked glasses or anything at all, I may say that they have nothing on the fashions of the year one. And the fashions of the year one (I am merely stating the naked truth) had nothing on anybody. One word more, and I trust you are strong enough to stand it: It’s all right for the women to be eager rivals, but they ought to draw the line at trying to outstrip each other.”

The next thing I knew I was in the ambulance headed for the Olympus Homeopathic Hospital. Old Adam had done his worst.

XII

CAPTAIN KIDD ON TAG DAYS

“Yes, I have observed that your country is now experiencing one of those unprecedented waves of crime for which it is justly celebrated,” remarked Captain Kidd as he unsheathed a huge bowie knife and proceeded to cut off a man’s dose of particularly black eating tobacco. “For a nation that’s been so busy makin’ the world safe for democracy you don’t seem to be doing much to make it unsafe for the gunmen and stick-up artists. A few months ago everybody was talkin’ about the ‘uplift.’ And now they’re trying to dodge the hold-ups. I was down below the other night. Had a date at a Philadelphia seance. And the moment I appeared the whole audience started bombarding me with questions about the location of my buried treasure. I didn’t tell ’em, of course, but I did give ’em some good advice for the present emergency. I told ’em that any man who carried more than carfare and lunch money in his pockets these days, and nights, was a fool. And I also suggested that anybody who buried his treasure in a sand bank instead of a savings bank or a safe deposit vault was entitled to admission to the nearest home for the feeble-minded without an entrance examination.

“I went out for a walk down Chestnut Street and in going four blocks had my pocket picked three times. The fellow who was supposed to be looking after that other block must have been off his beat. I got scared and wanted to hustle back up here, but to oblige the medium I stayed over until the next day. I took another walk, down Market street this time, and found it was a tag day. There were female hold-up artists at every corner. I turned over what the pick-pockets had missed the night before and made my escape. Terra firma is no place these days for a reformed pirate. It reminds him too painfully of the many good bets he overlooked.

“Sometimes, especially after I’ve been readin’ of the activities of your cabaret waiters, bootleggers and Pullman porters, I can’t help thinkin’ that history has been too hard on us plain, unornamental pirates. We had to pick up a livin’ best we could. We didn’t have our tools and equipment provided for us. We had to furnish our own cutlasses and pistols, while your modern waiters and porters have their trays and whisk-brooms anyhow supplied free of charge. There wasn’t an unwritten law, either, that anybody who didn’t cough up freely was a piker, and we had the greatest difficulty sometimes in getting a victim to produce. Folks found all sorts of mean little schemes for hiding away their valuables. That’s why we had to invent the ingenious device known as ‘walking the plank’ to make ’em give till it hurt. But nowadays it’s amazing to me to see the way the people hand over without even a pistol clapped at their heads. They’re meek as lambs. The pirate business would have been a lot less wearing on the nerves if the public had co-operated then the way it does now.

“Holding up a shipload of passengers used to be a complicated, annoying business. First, we’d run up the black flag with the skull and crossbones on it. Then we’d fire a round shot across the vessel’s bows to bring her to. We’d paint our faces sometimes to make ourselves look as horrible as possible, and taking a pistol in each hand and a cutlass in our teeth, board the ship and line up the passengers and crew in a row. By the time we’d gone through their pockets and searched the cabin and lugged out the strong box we’d put in an eight-hour day, straight time. Hard, exhausting work, and all because people hadn’t been properly trained in those days to hand over quickly and gracefully so that we could get on to the next job.

“If I were flying the Jolly Roger today on my old pirate ship, with my crew of hard-boiled sinners around me, possibly we’d find merchant and passenger ships pestering us to come and take their money away from them. I’d be taking a quiet snooze in my cabin, maybe, when the bosn’s mate would wake me up and say: ‘Cap’n, a vessel on the starboard bow has just signalled for us to stand by and it will send over a boatload of treasure.’ And we’d have to get a cash register and a card index of customers and a press agent, to see that the papers got our names and pictures straight, as Jesse James suggests, and an ad writer to put a piece in saying: ‘Why go elsewhere to be robbed? Come to old reliable Captain Kidd & Co., Inc., and be immediately relieved.’ But at that I don’t suppose with my old-fashioned ideas I’d be able to compete with your up-to-date hold-up games.

“I guess the best plan, if I were ever able to resume business, would be to start a ‘drive’ or hold a tag day. From the way the public gives up, I don’t know but a drive for a $100,000 fund to establish a home for worn-out pirates would bring in a lot of coin. First thing I’d get up a dinner for my executive committee of one hundred. You can’t start anything without a lot of eating these days. Then we’d have a daily luncheon to receive reports from the captains of the various teams, winding up with a mass meeting where we’d take up a collection and announce the result of the house-to-house canvass. Still, a general tag day might bring in more money. I’d have pretty girls at all the street corners to pin a miniature artificial lemon on every contributor to the Captain Kidd Refuge for Reformed Robbers. What do you think?”

“There are many excellent causes, Captain, that have adopted these devices to raise money and I hope you don’t intend to reflect upon them.”

“Oh, not at all, not at all. But don’t you think yourself that the idea has been worked a little hard? It’s all right for the public to give to the things it knows about, but I was thinking it was becoming such an easy mark I might as well have my share. What I object to is being set down in history as the world’s champion pirate and all around bad man, when the fact is I was naturally the most peaceable individual you ever met. The trouble is, I was born about a hundred years too soon. If I were in business today I wouldn’t be a pirate; I’d be a head waiter in a New York hotel, with a foreign accent but able to understand all languages. Money talks. Probably I’d have served an apprenticeship at the place where they check your hat and coat.

“If I wasn’t a head waiter I’d be a steward on an ocean ship. Perhaps I’d feel more at home on the sea anyway. I was talking to my old friend, Jesse James, the other day and he said the difference between him and the modern professional tip extractor was that he never robbed the same man twice. But I suppose his successors believe that anybody who is worth doing at all is worth doing well. One of these days the American people will probably adopt a new Declaration of Independence against foreign waiters and resolve to give the enemy no quarter—and no half dollar either. They’ll change the old naval hero’s slogan to ‘Don’t give up the tip.’ ‘Millions for good meals, but not one cent for tribute.’ ‘All things come to him who waits.’ Well, I’m sorry for the waiter if he ever gets all that’s coming to him. Ta, ta! young man.”

And as he hobbled off to splice the main brace I could hear the old fellow muttering to himself: “And they used to call me a pirate!”

XIII

ALFRED THE GREAT TRIES TO FIND PROSPEROUS KING

“You want me to talk about modern monarchs!” Alfred the Great responded with a trace of irritation. “Why don’t you ask me to talk about the snakes in Ireland or the best method of preserving hen’s teeth? Why not interview me on the habits of the dodo? How about a little chat concerning that common domestic animal, the long-toed diplodocus, or that popular indoor pet, the megatherium? Let’s discuss that numerous class of estimable citizens, the mound builders. Let’s—”

“I beg pardon, your Majesty,” I hastened to interrupt, “but I had no intention of offending. I know kings are very few and far between these days, but I thought your views on the two or three who have managed to survive would be most interesting to the present generation. You yourself were such a mighty monarch, so generally respected for your honesty and ability and bravery and regal appearance, that I am sure—”

“There, there, say no more,” he replied with condescending affability, “I am just a trifle sensitive, I suppose, on the subject. When I see so many of my brothers sacrificed to the onrushing tide of democracy, naturally it makes me a bit sad.

“It’s just a month,” continued King Alfred, as he lighted his long meerschaum and settled down comfortably in his armchair, which was fashioned like a throne, “it’s just a month since I took my first trip down below to see how the earth had been getting along in my absence of a thousand years plus. And I am frank to confess I found some changes. I went down under the auspices of a spiritualist who wanted me to tell a woman’s club how to make griddle cakes. I suppose you’ve read about the time I let the cakes burn in the farmer’s cottage and the housewife bawled me out when she came back. It’s in every school reader. Well, the next day I called in my chief cook and had him show me how to make griddle cakes that would melt in your mouth. There’s no trick at all to it, really. The only thing is you must keep your mind on it. That time in the cottage I got to thinking about a new way to fight the Danes, and the first thing I knew there was a smell like burning rubber and the old dame rushed in and called me down. I’d have ordered her off to instant execution, but just then our side needed all the votes it could get, and I didn’t know whether her husband would thank me or be annoyed.

“Sometimes you can make a hit with a husband by giving his wife a ten-year sentence in jail, and again it makes him peevish—particularly if he has to do his own housework. So I spared her that time. Where was I? Oh, yes, as I was saying, I went down to tell the club how to make griddle cakes. After I’d filled that date I decided to take a little trip around the capitols of Europe and call on my cousins, the kings and queens. You know every king is supposed to be at least a cousin of every other one—that’s why we have such strained relations so often in royal circles. Well, I decided first to project my astral body up to Moscow, the ancient capitol of Russia. I’d never traveled that far during my previous existence on earth, because I couldn’t spare the time—our wars were a continuous performance. Arrived at the palace, I walked right up to the front door and was going in when a big fellow, roughly clad, his countenance concealed beneath a tangled growth of whiskers, barred my passage.

“‘Who do you want to see?’ he inquired gruffly.

“‘Whom do I want to see?’ I said, ‘Why—’

“‘No, _who_, not _whom_,’ he returned. ‘Anybody who uses good grammar is bourgeois and an enemy of the Commune. Down with fool laws and rules. This is the land where all speak and do as they choose.’

“‘But you’re not letting me speak as I choose,’ I retorted. ‘How’s that for consistency?’ He said anyone who was a Bolshevik, whatever that was, didn’t have to be consistent. Consistency was a jewel. Jewelry was wealth. The Bolsheviki were opposed to wealth and private property in any form. I was about to force my way past this lunatic when a number of other rough-looking persons, armed with guns and bayonets, rushed out of the palace and surrounded me.

“‘I want to see the king!’ I exclaimed. And immediately by their faces, or as much of them as I could see peeping out from beneath the whiskers—I saw that something was wrong.