“But if you're engaged, son, don't let this disturb you. I've seen some dames that, believe me, I wouldn't care what they married me for, as long as they did!”
Having proceeded thus far, we turned back to the table of contents for affirmation of what we vaguely remembered to have read there. Yes, we had read it! The tale was labeled by the editor, “A funny story.”
So this is fiction for “the average man,” and on this spiritual fare his cravings for literature are fed! So this is the sort of thing which doubles the circulation of a popular magazine in twenty months! Such melancholy reflections crossed our mind, coupled with the thought that with no speech at all in the movies, and such speech as this in his magazines, the “average man” will either have to read his Bible every day or soon forget that there was once such a thing as the beautiful English language. And alas, the circulation of the Bible hasn't doubled in the past twenty months! “This magazine accepts man as he is—and helps him”—so reads the editor's self-puffery. What an indictment of man—and what an idea of help! We would hate to go to bed with his conscience,—if editors have such old-fashioned impediments.
But suddenly we caught a ray of light amid the encircling gloom. The editor hadn't stated what his circulation was twenty months ago! We recalled how Irvin Cobb once told us that the attendance at his musical comedy had doubled the previous evening—the usher had brought his sister. Doubtless the new circulation isn't more than a million,—and what is a mere million nowadays?
Wood Ashes and Progress
“Once man defended his home and hearth; now he defends his home and radiator.” The words stared out of the bulk of print on the page with startling vividness, a gem of philosophy, a “criticism of life,” in the waste of jokes which the comic-paper editor had read and doubtless paid for, and which the public was doubtless expected to enjoy. The Man Above the Square laid aside the paper, leaned toward his fire, took up the poker (an old ebony cane adorned with a heavy silver knob which bore the name of an actor once loved and admired) and rolled the top log over slowly and meditatively. The end of the cane was scarred and burned from many a contest with stubborn logs, and the Man Above the Square looked at the marks of service with a smile before he stood the heavy stick again in its place by the fireside.
“It isn't every walking-stick which comes to such a good end,” he said aloud.
Then either because he was cold or in penitence for the pun, he walked over to the windows to pull down the shades. But before he did so he looked out into the night, his breath making a frosty vapor on the pane. Below him the Square gleamed in white patches under the arc-lamps, and across these white patches here and there a belated pedestrian, coat collar turned up, hurried, a black shadow. The cross on the Memorial Church gleamed like a cluster of stars, and deep in the cold sky the moon rode silently. A chill wind was complaining in the bare treetops beneath him and found its way to his face and body through the window chinks. He drew down the shades quickly and pulled the heavy draperies together with a rattle of rings on the rods. Then he turned and faced his room.