Boredom, insufferable boredom. There is no American expression—there will be soon, no doubt—for this disease which claims so many victims from the Channel coast to the borders of Switzerland. The British have it without giving it a name. They say “Fed up and far from home.” The more inventive French call it “Cafard.”
Our outlook upon life is warped, or, to use a more seasonable expression, frozen. We are not ourselves. We make sarcastic remarks about one another. We hold up for ridicule individual peculiarities of individuality. Some one, tiring of this form of indoor sports, starts the phonograph again.
Wind, wind, wind (the crank)
Kr-r-r-r-r-r-r (the needle on the disk)
La-dee-dum, dee-doodle, di-dee-day (the orchestral introduction)
Sometimes when I feel sad
And things look blue,
I wish the boy I had
Was one like you—
“For the love of Pete! Shut off that damn silly thing!”
“I admire your taste, Irving!”
“Can it!”
“Well, what will you have, then?”
“Play that Russian thing, the 'Danse des Buffons.'”
“Don't play anything.”