“Then he put in his pockets a Walgin Watch with a Wearever Gold Chain, a Leakwell Fountain Pen and a Neverpoint Pencil.
“For breakfast he had a Moonshine Orange, a plate of Mothers’ Wild Oats, a slice of Mawruss Ham and two ordinary unadvertised eggs, Digesto Bread, spread with Prunella Butter and a cup of Moko-Boko Coffee, and, when he had lighted a good old Ginko Cigar, George F. Babbitt was ready for the fray.
“There, my friends, I don’t pretend to be a literary gink, but you give me my good old fountain pen and the advertising pages of the Saturday Evening Post and I’ll show you how to marry literature and life together. That’s what we want, gentlemen. That’s real, true blue United States one hundred per cent realism.”
JOSEPH AND THE BRIGHT SHAWL
He had never before heard of Cuba, but a chance mention of its name, Cuba, dominated Joseph completely. The Spaniards were shooting Cubans down there. Boys, younger than himself. And they were shot with muskets, guns. That was so much more horrible than if they were shot with candlesticks or white mice.
Instantly he knew that he must liberate Cuba. He must shoot the beastly Spanish Captain-General in his gold-laced abdomen, tummy; himself be shot in return or elsewhere, and die heroically, while a competent brass-band played “Annie Laurie.” So should Cuba be free.
He quickly settled every visible, every audible detail save one, his last dying words. “Don’t give up the ship!” seemed inappropriate. “I owe a cock to Æsculapius; see that it is paid,” was too long. “Kiss me, Hardy!” was short, but heaven knew what utter stranger might accept the invitation. At last he fixed upon “Sic semper tyrannis!” to be said as he fired, and “Et tu, brute!” as he was shot; “brute” with a small “b” seemed so nicely to combine defiance and grim humor.
⁂
Providing a costume for the event was a puzzling matter. It should be of the period, but what was the present year of grace? It was in the fall, exactly forty years before the return of the Americans from the Great War in 1919. Was this then 1879? Impossible, since Grant was President, and Fish, Secretary of State, and that would make it not later than 1876.
He gave it up, threw chronology to the winds, bought a plum-colored cape, vintage of the Regency, and a lot of very high stocks, period of Daniel Webster. Perhaps, in this he was misled by reading in a newspaper that stocks were very high.