And really I was sorry I had said it. It seemed so like twitting a person on facts, when I came to think about it.
THE UTILITARIAN MR. CARRAWAY
The Christmas season was approaching, and Mr. Carraway, who had lately become something of a philosopher, began to think about gifts for his wife and children. The more he thought of them, the more firmly was he convinced that there was something radically wrong with the system of giving that had prevailed in past years. He conjured up visions of the useless things he had given and received on previous occasions, and an inventory of his personal receipts at the four celebrations leading up to the present disclosed the fact that he was long on match-boxes, cigar-cases, and smoking-jackets, the last every one of them too small, with an appalling supply of knitted and crocheted objects, the gifts of his children, in reserve. His boot-closet was a perfect revelation of the misdirected Christmas energies of the young, disclosing, as it always did upon occasions when he was in a great hurry, a half-dozen pairs of worsted slippers, which he had received at Yuletide, some of them adorned with stags of beads leaping over zephyr walls, and others made in the image of cats of extraordinary color, with yellow glass eyes set in directly over the toe whereon he kept his favorite corn. I am not sure that it was not the stepping of an awkward visitor upon one of these same glass eyes, while these slippers for the first time covered his feet, that set Mr. Carraway to cogitating upon the hollowness of "Christmas as She is Celebrated." Indeed, it is my impression that at the very moment when that bit of adornment was pressed down upon Mr. Carraway's corn he announced rather forcibly his disbelief in the utility of any such infernal Christmas present as that. And as time went on, and that offending, staring slipper slipped into his hand every time he searched the closet in the dark for a left patent-leather pump, or some other missing bit of foot-gear, the conviction grew upon him that of the great reforms of which the world stood in crying need, the reformation of the Christmas gift was possibly the most important.
The idea grew to be a mania with him, and he gradually developed into a utilitarian of the most pronounced type. Nothing in the world so suited him as an object, homely or otherwise, that could be used for something; the things that were used for nothing had no attractions for him. After this he developed further, and discovered new uses for old objects. Mrs. Carraway's parlor vases were turned into receptacles for matches, or papers, according to their size. The huge Satsuma vase became a more or less satisfactory bill-file; and the cloisonné jar, by virtue of its great durability, Mr. Carraway used as a receptacle for the family golf-balls, much to the trepidation of his good wife, who considered that the vase, like some women, had in its beauty a sufficient cause for existence, and who would have preferred going without golf forever to the destruction of her treasured bit of bric-à-brac.
Mrs. Carraway did her best to stay the steady advance in utilitarianism of her husband. She could bide with him in most matters. In fact, until it came to the use of the cloisonné jar for a golf-ball reservoir, she considered the idea at least harmless, and was forced to admit that it indeed held many good points.
"I think it is perfectly proper," she said, "to consider all things from the point of view of their utility. I do not believe in sending a ball-dress to a poor woman who is starving or suffering for want of coal, but I must say, John, that you carry your theory too far when you insist on using an object for some purpose for which it was manifestly never intended."
"But who is to say what a thing is manifestly made for?" demanded Carraway. "You don't know, or at least you can't say positively, what one of many possible uses the designer and maker of any object had in mind when he designed and made that especial object. This particular vase was fashioned by a heathen. It is beautiful and graceful, but beyond producing something beautiful and graceful, how can you say what other notion that heathen had as to its possible usefulness? He may have made it to hold flowers. He may have intended it for a water-jug. He may have considered it a suitable receptacle in which its future favored owner might keep his tobacco, or his opium, or any one of the thousand and one things that you can put in a vase with a hope of getting it out again."
"Well, we know he didn't intend it for golf-balls, anyhow," said Mrs. Carraway. "For the very simple reason that the heathen don't play golf."