But the evening wears on and the whipping mental urge of grape juice meddled with by Uncle Henry wears off. And so, before it all ends, what about Herman Wagner, Sole Prop. of Wagner's Sylvan Glen?
I know it has been a hard day, but let us try to get the thing in order. Why not begin cautiously with a series of whys? Why any particular sylvan glen in a country where everything is continuously and overwhelmingly sylvan and you can't heave a rock without hitting a glen? Really, you can't walk fifty yards out there without stepping on a glen—or in a glen; it doesn't matter. What I am earnestly trying to get at is, if this Herman Wagner wanted to be sole prop. of a sylvan glen, why should he have gone thirty-two miles farther for one? Why didn't he have it right there? Why insanely push thirty-two miles on in a country where miles mean something serious? Up-and-down miles, tilted horribly or standing on edge!
It didn't seem astute. And Herman achieved simply no persuasion whatever with me by stocking in that "only." He could have put only all over the rock and it would still have been thirty-two miles, wouldn't it? Only indeed! You might think the man was saying "Only ten minutes' walk from the post office"—or something with a real meaning like that. I claimed then and I claim now that he should have omitted the only and come out blunt with the truth. There are times in this world when the straight and bitter truth is better without any word-lace. This Wagner person was a sophist. So I said to him, now, as a man will at times:
"All right, Herman, old top! But you'll have to think up something better than only to put before those thirty-two miles. If you had said 'Only two miles' it might have had its message for me. But thirty more than that! Be reasonable! Why not pick out a good glen that parties can slip off to for a quiet evening without breaking up a whole week? Frankly, I don't understand you and your glen. But you can bet I'll find out about it!"
So, right away, I said to Ma Pettengill, who by this time had a lot of bills and papers and ledgers and stuff out on her desk, and was talking hotly to all of them—I said to her that there was nearly half a bottle of Uncle Henry's wine left, his rare old grape wine laid down well over a month ago; so she had better toss off a foamy beaker of it—yes, it still foamed—and answer me a few questions.
It was then she said the things about that there wine being able to inflate the casualty lists, even of Polish weddings, which are already the highest known to the society page of our police-court records. She said, further, that she had took just enough of the stuff at dinner to make her think she wasn't entirely bankrupt, and she wanted to give these here accounts a thorough going-over while the sensation lasted.
Not wishing to hurt Uncle Henry's feelings, even if he didn't catch me at it, I partook again of the fervent stuff, and fell into new wonder at the seeming imbecility of Herman Wagner. I found myself not a little moved by the pathos of him. It was little enough I could get from Ma Pettengill at first. She spoke almost shortly to me when I asked her things she had to stop adding silly figures to answer.
What I found out was mostly my own work, putting two and two in their fit relationship. Even the mention of Herman Wagner's full name brought nothing about himself. I found it most annoying. I would say: "Come on, now; what about this Herman Wagner that paints wheedling messages across the face of Nature?" And to this fair, plain query I would merely have more of the woman's endless help troubles. All that come looking for work these days was stormy petrels, not caring if they worked or not—just asking for it out of habit.
Didn't she have a singing teacher, a painless dentist, a crayon-portrait artist and a condemned murderer on her payroll this very minute, all because the able-bodied punchers had gone over to see that nasty little Belgium didn't ever again attack Germany in that ruthless way? She had read that it cost between thirty and thirty-five thousand dollars to wound a soldier in battle. Was that so? Well, she'd tell me that she stood ready to wound any of these that was left behind for between thirty and thirty-five cents, on easy payments. Wound 'em severely, too! Not mere scratches.
Presently again I would utter Herman Wagner, only to be told that these dry cows she was letting go for sixty dollars—you come to cut 'em up for beef and you'd have to grease the saw first. Or I heard what a scandal it was that lambs actually brought five-fifty, and the Government at Washington, D.C., setting back idly under the outrage!