“There were other disadvantages, also—connected with what I now perceive to have been my mistaken matrimonial policy—which may not occur to persons of more limited experience. For instance, how many realize that I was virtually at the mercy of a soviet of my wives’ relations? When a wife happened to shuffle off did her relatives immediately conclude that they were no longer my connections by marriage? They did not. They still considered themselves close relations—even closer, when I sought to borrow money from them. After a few matrimonial administrations I had enough ‘in-laws’ to fill a convention hall. Indeed, they did form a sort of mutual benefit association and used to meet and pass resolutions of condemnation on me and condolence with the new incumbent every time I happened to change wives. Sore, of course, because they weren’t invited to the wedding. But I had to draw the line somewhere. In those days, as now, they used to term it ‘solemnizing’ a marriage, although that word ‘obey’ in the ceremony was a joke. And half the time I felt just like a sort of comic supplement. In all my voyaging on the seven seas of matrimony I can recollect very few times when I was allowed to do any of the steering. Looking back, life seems to have been just one wife after another. Why did I do it? Well, I read in the newspapers the other day a supposedly sensational story of a Boston man who got married while under the influence of hypnotism, but I couldn’t see that the case contained any unusual feature.”
“Speaking of matrimony, Your Majesty (as you have just been doing so extensively), have you any advice to offer? What do you consider the lucky month for marriage?”
“Young man,” replied the king in solemn tones as he arose to bid me adieu, “I don’t know anything about that. But I can tell you this: there are at least six unlucky ones. That is as far as I experimented.”
And though I possessed only one-sixth of his matrimonial experience, I shook the aged monarch’s hand in silent sympathy before tiptoeing from his pathetic presence.
XVI
DON QUIXOTE SAYS HE WASN’T SO CRAZY AS SOME MODERN REFORMERS
As the trim figure in a neatly fitted sack suit arose to greet me with an odd mixture in his manner of ancient courtesy and the modern “glad hand,” my face must have betrayed my surprise at his unexpected appearance for he exclaimed: “Astonished, eh? Most earth folk are. Seem to expect to see the shade of Don Quixote de la Mancha togged out in his old cast-iron clothes and helmet with a sword for a walking stick. They fail to make allowance for the fact that we shades progress, just like you people down below. We try to be as up-to-date as possible. I suppose you thought, too, you were going to interview a harmless lunatic and listen amusedly to his rambling conversation and perhaps have the fun of joshing him a bit. Well, I’m happy to say I’ve got over my delusions, or illusions or whatever they were. And shall I tell you what cured me? Why, watching the antics and performances of some of you down on earth. My motto is thoroughness. I want to do every job up in the most complete style. I will either be the champion, the record-holder, the biggest in the bunch or else nothing at all. I may once have been in a fair way to becoming the world’s most inspired idiot and champion all-round, catch-as-catch-can professional ‘regulator,’ but I’m now a has-been, a second-rater. There’s too much competition. I’m ashamed of myself. I throw up my hands and quit. Do you understand me?”
“Well, not entirely, Don Quixote. What modern competitors or successors have you got?”
“Do you have to ask that?” he replied. “Why, I can get materialized and take a run below and in five minutes see more fellows crazier than I ever was than I can count. Or I can just stay up here and read the newspapers. I was reading only this morning of a bill that’s going to be introduced in the Maine Legislature to prohibit women from wearing high-heeled shoes. They used to call me a fool reformer, but I never was quite so idiotic as to try to reform women’s dress in the slightest particular. Trying to dictate feminine fashions would be just about as sensible as attempting to sweep back the ocean. The next thing they know somebody will be trying to tack an amendment on to the Constitution forbidding women to wear furs in summer and low shoes and open-work waists in winter. I see one writer calls the anti-high-heels measure ‘Quixotic.’ That shows all he knows about me. I was accused of being slightly off at one time, but nobody ever charged me with utter imbecility. And I see that some other professional set-’em-all-rights are going to put the ban on tobacco—if they can. They’ll have some hard sledding. But I was glad to observe that a judge had the sense to turn down an application for a charter from an anti-tobacco association. The society’s announced object was to make the growing, manufacture, sale and use of tobacco illegal. I held my breath until I found what the judge did.
“And what did the judge do? Opening a fresh box of Havanas, he carefully selected a long, slender, chocolate-colored panatela, with a red and gold waistband, cut off the end with his gold-mounted clipper, fished a match out of his vest pocket, struck it on the ink-stand, applied the blaze to the end of the cigar, blew a fragrant cloud of incense to the ceiling in worship of the spirit of justice and perfect impartiality, gave a great big sigh of measureless content, and then proceeded to write an opinion on the subject that did my heart good to read. In dignified, judicial terms he affectionately advised the anti-tobacconists to go soak their venerable heads; he reminded them that the most admirable and wholly beneficial occupation of the human species is minding its own business; and intimated that so long as the court should continue to enjoy unimpaired intellectual vigor and be in full possession of all its faculties, it would never authorize a movement to regulate the personal conduct of rational adult beings by organized idiocy.