If You Don't Write Fiction

by Charles Phelps Cushing

"If reports from unveracious employees of Coney Island are to be trusted, the summer season of 1910 is going to bring forth thrilling novelties for the air and the earth and the tunnels beneath the earth."

We listed then the Biplane Hat Glide (women were wearing enormous hats that season) and Motor Ten Pins—get in a motor car and run down dummies which count respectively, a child, ten points; a blind man, five; a newsboy, one. Then the Shontshover. We explained the Shontshover in detail because it was supposed to have a particularly strong appeal to the millions who ride in the subway:

"New York's good-natured enjoyment of its inadequate subway service is responsible for the third novelty of the season. In honor of a gentleman who once took a ride in one of his own subway cars during the rush hour, the device has been named the 'Shontshover' (from 'Shonts' and 'shover'). It is the sublimation of a subway car, a cross between a cartridge and a sardine can. The passengers are packed into the shell with a hydraulic ram, then at high speed are shot through a pneumatic tube against a stone wall. Because of the great number of passengers the Shontshover can carry in a day, the admission price to the tube is to be only twenty-five cents."

We suggested on other occasions that new churches should have floors with an angle of forty-five degrees, on account of the prevailing fashion of large hats among women; that City Hall employees were outwitting Mayor Gaynor's time clock by paying the night watchman to punch it for them at sunrise, and that beauty had become a bar to a job as waitress in numerous New York restaurants. (O shades of George Washington, forgive us that one, at least!) These squibs did nobody any harm, and did us on the average, the good of the price of a week's room rent. We never meant them to be taken seriously or ever supposed that any one in the world would swallow them whole. But among our readers was a square-headed German; and one of the most absurd of our imaginings turned out, as a result, to be a physical possibility.

"Ever since it was announced, a few days ago, that hazing in a modified modernized form is to be permitted at West Point," we related, "a reporter for the World has been busily interviewing people of all ages and interests to find the latest ideas on the subject.... Some small boys in Van Cortlandt Park yesterday afternoon, diabolo experts, suggested 'plebe diabolo.' It is simply diabolo for grown-ups. A rope takes the place of the customary string and a first year man is used for a spool. Any one can see at a glance what a great improvement this would be over the old-fashioned stunt of tossing the plebe in a blanket."

A few months later I picked up a copy of the Scientific American and chortled to read the account of a German acrobat who was playing in vaudeville as the "Human Diabolo."

But this sort of thing was merely temporizing, and we finally had to abandon it for subjects more substantial. By a slow and harrowing process we learned our specialties and made a few helpful friends in New York's Fleet Street. The fittest among the many manuscripts turned out by our copy mill survived to teach us that the surest way into print is to write about things closest to personal knowledge—simple and homely themes close to the grass roots. We turned again to middle western topics and the magazines opened their doors to us. We plugged away for six months and cleared a profit large enough to pay off all our debts and leave a little margin. Then we felt that we could look the west in the face again, and go home, if we liked, without a consciousness of utter defeat. For though we had not won, neither had we lost. Our books struck a balance.

When the Wanderlust began calling again in May, I sat many an evening in the window of our little room, gazing down into the backyard cat arena or up at the moon, and dragging away at a Missouri corncob pipe in a happy revery. Some of my manuscript titles of editorial paragraphs contributed to Collier's trace what happened next:

Longings at the Window.
Packing Up.
A Mood of Moving Day.
From Cab to Taxi.
Outdoor Sleeping Quarters.
Shortcake.

Which is to say that it was sweet to see the home folks again, to eat fried chicken and honest homemade strawberry shortcake and to slumber on a sleeping porch. Our forces had beat a strategic retreat, but the morale was not gone. Our determination was firm to assault New York again at the first favorable opportunity. Meanwhile, we had learned a thing or two.