The Project Gutenberg eBook, New Brooms, by Robert J. (Robert James) Shores

NEW BROOMS

NEW BROOMS

By
ROBERT J. SHORES

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1913
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

CONTENTS

NEW BROOMS

A PHILOSOPHICAL COOK

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: Though I am not one of your subscribers I am, I believe, one of your most faithful readers. I do not take your magazine, it is true, but I am at present employed in a family some member of which is evidently a subscriber, as the maid brings it out in the waste-paper basket regularly, once a month, when, according to her custom, she permits me to select from the month’s periodicals such journals as seem to me to be worthy of my attention in my leisure hours. I shall not conceal from you the fact that my fancy was first attracted to your publication by the fact that I always found it fresh and clean, with the leaves still uncut, and not soiled, bedraggled and often coverless as are some of the others which suffer more usage before reaching me. But having once cut the leaves with a convenient bread-knife and looked through one of your numbers, I perceived at once that you are, in your way, something of a philosopher, and I have ever been partial to everything that smacked of philosophy. Could you step into my pantry at the present moment you would find upon my shelves Plato and Aristotle as well as the immortal Mrs. Rorer, for I am, in my humble fashion, a philosopher as well as a cook. I do not at all agree with that learned and talented French gentleman who declared that to study philosophy was to learn to die; on the contrary, I hold that to study philosophy is to learn to live, and I see no reason why the study of philosophy is not as fitting an occupation for a cook as for a collegian. Therefore I cook or philosophize according to my inclination, and if it seem to you that I philosophize like a cook, my employer, I am proud to say, will tell you that I cook like a philosopher.

In youth I had the advantage of a grammar school education, and that education I have supplemented with reading and observation. If, as Pope has said,

“The proper study of mankind is man,”

then I have entered the right school for the completion of my education; for the kitchen is, it seems to me, a natural observatory for the study of human nature. Working away at my chosen profession in the seclusion of my kitchen, I can, without ever having laid eyes upon him, give you a complete character of the head of the household. I can not with certainty say whether he is a large or small man, because the appetite is sometimes deceptive in this respect, and I have known a small man to eat as much as would suffice for two stevedores, and I have known an athlete to peck at a meal that would leave a child hungry. It is not, then, by his physical character that I judge him, but by his mental and psychological symptoms. I do not gage him by how much he eats, but by what he eats. I can not tell you whether he is large or small, but I can tell you whether he is voluptuous or esthetic, good-natured or crabbed, rich or poor, wise or foolish.

It is really remarkable the knowledge I come to have of this person whom I have never seen, or it would be if the method by which I reach my conclusions were not so simple. If he keeps fast days and eats only fish upon Fridays, I know, of course, that he is a churchman. If he persistently eats food which is bad for any man’s digestion, I know that he is both irritable and obstinate, for no man can continue to eat what does not agree with him without becoming irritable, and no man will continue such a course in the face of his better judgment unless he is obstinate. If he eats only of rich food and shows a constant preference for taste over nutrition, I know that he is a voluptuary; it is seldom that a man indulges himself in a passion for over-eating who does not indulge himself in other passions as well, and even though his one indulgence be eating, he is none the less a voluptuary by nature. If he eats little and that in an abstracted manner, sometimes overlooking a favorite dish or allowing his soup to grow cold so that it is returned half-eaten, I know that he is absent-minded and eats merely because he has to, not because he loves eating for its own sake. If he insists upon having his toast an exact shade of brown and his coffee at a given degree of temperature, I know that he is exacting and particular as to details; that he thinks well of himself and thinks of himself often.

So, as you see, there are hundreds of these moral symptoms which are as familiar to me as physical symptoms are to a physician. Thus I supplement my theoretical knowledge of philosophy by my observation of life.

When I was casting about me for an occupation I had, being an orphan, a perfectly free choice. Had I followed my first impulse, I think I should have gone to live in a tub like Diogenes, and have resolved to spend my life, like Schopenhauer, in thinking about it. But a little observation soon convinced me that the man who lives in the fashion of Diogenes is not held in high favor in these days and that philosophy, as a profession, would be likely to prove unremunerative. Now I am not one who desires riches or who can not be happy without wealth, but I soon decided that I must be possessed of a certain amount of money in order to indulge my taste for personal cleanliness. I soon gave over the tub of Diogenes, but I was loath to forego all intercourse with the ordinary domestic tub.

Having determined, therefore, to enter upon some profession in which I could make a reasonable amount of money without requiring a great preliminary outlay, I looked about me for a vocation which might supply my physical needs, and at the same time, afford me some mental and spiritual satisfaction. I dismissed the study of the law or medicine as beyond my means, and I did not find myself sufficiently religious to permit me to enter the ministry with a clear conscience. For trade I had your true philosopher’s distaste, and I confess no sort of manual labor, except as cooking may be so described, held any attraction for me. I shuddered at the thought of becoming a barber, chiropodist or hair-dresser, and my pride would not permit me to suffer the rebuffs which fall to the lot of a pedler, book agent or commercial traveler.

It was then that I was struck with my happy inspiration. I would become a member of an old and honorable profession—I would become a cook. If I could not be a philosopher and nourish men’s minds, I would be a cook and nourish their bodies. I would make dishes so delicious and enticing that men upon the brink of suicide would turn back to life with new hope in their hearts. I would impart energy to the weary, peace to the troubled in mind and happiness to the discontented. I would become such a cook as might have won the praise of Lucullus; I would become an artist worthy to take the hand of Epicurus. Such were the extravagant hopes I hugged to my breast when I matriculated at the best cooking-school of my native state. It is true that my achievements have fallen far short of my ambitions, but I have never swerved from my allegiance to my ideal of the Perfect Dinner.

Upon finishing my course at cooking-school, I utilized my savings in indulging myself in a post-graduate course abroad. I went to Paris, and there I made the acquaintance of the immortal Frederick of the Tour d’Argent, he of the famous pressed ducks, and of other masters of the culinary art.

This, then, was my preparation for a life of cooking. Possibly you will think that I took my profession too seriously; possibly you do not hold the same high opinion of the art of cooking that I have always held—there are many so minded. It is a never-failing source of wonder to me that men are so quick to recognize the services of those who feed their minds and so slow to acknowledge the debt they owe to those who feed their bodies. I have never regarded cooking in the light of mere manual labor. Labor, it seems to me, is work that is distasteful and only performed from necessity; a “labor of love” seems to me to be a paradox. Work, on the contrary, may be as keen a source of pleasure as recreation. Work may be the striving of an artist to attain his ideal. The very word “labor” suggests pain and exhaustion. We speak of an author’s “works,” but who would think of referring to them as his “labors”?

I do not believe, as many seem to believe, that any man or woman who can juggle a skillet or wield an egg-beater is a cook. Merely to follow a formula in a cookery book does not make one a cook any more than the compounding of a prescription makes one a physician. Cooking is an art as well as a science. The violinist can not express his personality in the strains of his instrument more fully than can the cook in his cooking. The favorite dishes of a race are characteristic of that race. The Spaniard, like his chili con carne and his tamale, is hot, peppery and economical. The Frenchman, like his many concoctions, is full of spice, imagination and extravagance. The Italian is indolent and averse to exertion, as is evidenced by his macaroni and spaghetti. The Englishman is red and hearty like his roast beef. The German is fat and fair like his sausages. The Russian is odd and interesting like his caviar. The American, like his diet, is cosmopolitan. And as the cooking of a nation or race is characteristic of that nation or race, so the cooking of an individual is characteristic of that individual. Coarse people do not prepare dainty dishes. A cook may strike a discord as surely as a musician.

To be a good cook, a cook worthy of one’s calling, one must have the soul of an artist. One must be clean, self-respecting, industrious, ambitious, earnest, quick to learn and trained to remember. Do other professions require more?

The cook wields a tremendous influence for good or for evil. Over a good dinner the most cynical or the most brutal man must relax into something like human kindness. It is indeed true that

“All human history attests

That happiness for man,—the hungry sinner!—

Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner!”

If there be even the feeblest spark of charity in a man’s breast, a good dinner will fan it into flame. A bad dinner, on the other hand, will bring to the surface all that is mean and ignoble in his nature. Indigestion, I surmise, has been the cause of most of the cruelty of men. Viewing history in this light, it is easier to understand the apparently wanton slaughter among barbarians. Fed upon ill-conditioned food, the barbarian is attacked in his most sensitive part—his stomach. He is upset, distrait; his nerves are set upon edge and he knows not what ails him. He grows irritable and quick to anger, and he wrecks his unreasoning and unreasonable spleen upon the first convenient victim. It is to be observed that the science of cookery and the progress of civilization advance together. Well-fed men are slow to wrath and easily appeased. At the height of the Roman civilization the Romans became epicures and ceased to be warriors. War has no charms for the man who is at peace with his own stomach.

It may be urged by some that cooking, in rendering a man unwarlike, does him an ill service because it makes him effeminate. But the same may be said of all the cardinal virtues except, perhaps, bravery. Forbearance, loving kindness, gentleness, faith—all these and many others are essentially feminine virtues. Nay, civilization itself is a feminizing influence. Under our modern civilization, which as far as we know is the highest the world has ever experienced, men are reduced to the condition of dependents. Men no longer rely upon their personal prowess and valor for redress for their injuries or the defense of their natural rights. The law has become the protector of men, just as men were once the protectors of women. And this feminizing influence of civilization is, I take it, a wise provision of Providence for the benefit of cookery. The less men are concerned with battle, murder and sudden death, the more they are concerned with their dinners; and the more solicitous they become for their dinners, the more they desire the safety of the home, the peace of nations and the prosperity of mankind—all things, in short, which help to make possible the Perfect Dinner, perfectly chosen, perfectly cooked and perfectly eaten.

I say “perfectly eaten” because it seems to me that there is an art of eating as well as an art of cooking. It is said that a musician does his best when playing before an appreciative audience; and so the cook is at his best when cooking for an appreciative diner. It is a discouraging thing for an actor to peep out from behind the drop-curtain and see the pit all but empty of spectators; but it is a heart-breaking experience for a cook to peep through the swinging doors of his sanctum sanctorum and to behold the diners distant and indifferent, this one idly chattering and that one buried in a late edition of a newspaper, while his delicious soups, his super-excellent omelets, his heart-warming coffee, his inspiring steaks and his magnificent pâtés grow cold and unpalatable upon the unregarded plates! To see one’s chef-d’œuvres treated as hors-d’œuvres—that is a tragedy of the soul!

To attain the Perfect Dinner we must attain the Perfect Civilization. The diner must be as free to enjoy his dinner as the cook is to prepare it; and, in like manner, the Perfect Dinner is the concomitant of the Perfect Civilization. Man is civilized when he is well-fed and uncivilized when he is ill-fed. This is a truth which you need not accept upon my unsupported authority; any housewife will tell you as much. If the earth were to be visited by a plague which attacked only those who could cook and carried them off all at one time, I believe that the world would relapse into anarchy in the space of thirty days.

It seems to me that the profession of cooking is not at all incompatible with the study of philosophy. As I apply my philosophy to my cooking, so I apply my cooking to my philosophy. Some of my philosophers I take raw, some I boil down to the very juice and some I season; for philosophy, I believe, is often more digestible when taken cum grano salis.

I may be wrong, and it may seem egotistical in me to say it, but really, Mr. Idler, I believe that if more people were of my mind to mix their philosophy and their cooking, there would be many more intelligent cooks and not a few more palatable philosophers.

I am, Sir, your humble servant,
Bartholomew Battercake.

A BACHELOR ON WOMEN

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I have lately been the subject of many animadversions upon the part of literary critics because of a novel of mine, recently published, which these critics have been pleased to term “a study in feminine psychology.” My story has been criticized severely and my observations upon the female character mercilessly condemned, and in every one of these adverse criticisms which has been brought to my attention, the reviewer has taken occasion to say, in substance, “This book was evidently written by a bachelor.”

Now, the fact of my bachelorhood I have no wish to deny, nor could I if I would, for it is well known to my many friends and acquaintances that I am a single man. But is the fact that I am a bachelor conclusive, or even prima facie, evidence of my incompetency to discourse upon feminine psychology? I do not see why it should be so considered. It is plain that a great many people are of the opinion that the man who has married a woman must know more of women in general than the man who has not. But, after all is said, Mr. Idler, why should the married man know more of women than the bachelor knows? He is married only to one woman—not to all womankind.

No man becomes an expert entomologist through the study of one insect. There is no one insect which can furnish him with a general knowledge of entomology. Nor is there any one woman who can furnish us with a general knowledge of women. There is no one woman so typical of her sex that all other women may be judged by her. Yet the only advantage which the married man enjoys over the unmarried man is his intimate knowledge of one particular woman. The married man has not the same liberty of observing women which is the perquisite of the bachelor. The only time when a married man has an opportunity to observe women other than his wife is when his wife is not with him, and then, for a short time, he possesses the same degree of liberty which the bachelor enjoys all of the time. The bachelor observes, not one woman, but many. It is true that his knowledge of women differs from that of the married man in one particular: if he has any intimate knowledge of woman at her worst it is likely to be a knowledge of Judy O’Grady, rather than of the colonel’s lady. The bachelor sees good women at their best and bad women at their worst. The married man sees one good woman at her best and at her worst.

The question, then, is, which sort of knowledge is more likely to enable a man to form a just estimate of the female character? Personally, I think the bachelor has all the best of it. And, Sir, if none of these arguments has weight with you, there remains one supreme argument which proves that the bachelor knows more of women than the married man, and that, Sir, is the simple fact that he is a bachelor, as

I am, Sir,
Fortunatas Freeman.

N. B. The editor disclaims all responsibility for the sentiments expressed in the above communication.

ON PENSIONING WRITERS

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I observe by the daily press that the English government has just issued a list in full of such authors as have been selected for the receipt of a pension. In this list I find the names of a number of widows and orphans of authors as well as the names of living authors, and this is no doubt as it should be. I have heard certain hypercritical persons object to the late project of the “Dickens stamp” upon the ground that no man is entitled to anything which he has not earned and that literary heirs are entitled to no more consideration than monetary heirs. Now, personally, I can not understand what is so objectionable about the inheritance of money. It seems to me that a man’s heirs are quite as much entitled to receive the benefits of his fortune or the fruits of his industry after his death as they are during his life; and no one has yet gone so far as to say that a man may not, with perfect propriety, bestow upon his heirs and relatives such pecuniary gifts and benefits as he may see fit during his lifetime. It seems to me that the heirs of an author inherit as great an interest in his work as the heirs of a banker or broker. But, however this may be, there is one feature about this pensioning of authors which convinces me that the British government has gone about the matter in a very wrong fashion.

I find in looking over the list that pensions have been granted because of writings upon ornithology, Elizabethan literature, poetry, socialism, philosophy and so on. While I must confess that I am unfamiliar with the majority of the names which appear upon the list, I assume from the manner in which they have been selected that the British government considers their work to have been of really great value, although not popular. The British government, in fact, appears to be offering encouragement, in the shape of pensions, to such writers as can not hope to please the general public with their work. The government is supplying a pension in lieu of popular appreciation.

Now, this is all very well if the government is merely going into the business of being philanthropic and is willing to extend its system of pensions to include worthy shoemakers who have been unable to secure a sufficient custom to keep them in food and clothing because of the inroads made upon the cobbler’s trade by the manufacturers of machine-made shoes; lawyers who are learned in the law, but who have been unable to secure the business of the great corporations; doctors who are efficient, but who chance to live in unusually healthy neighborhoods; ministers of the Gospel who are unfortunately assigned to meager or irreligious parishes; music teachers who are excellent instructors, but who find formidable foes to business in the automatic piano and the phonograph. If the British government is bent upon making up for public indifference to such authors as are willing to benefit mankind, but who can not make mankind take note of their efforts in that direction, then, I say, the British government shows a kindly and courteous disposition, but it should not stop with authors; it should carry on the good work in every walk of life.

But if, as I suspect to be the case, the British government is establishing this system of pensions in the hope that the system will result in more and better books, then I must say I think the system is more likely to fail than to succeed.

One has but to glance back at the history of literature to be convinced that poverty has never been an effective check upon literary genius. Poets have starved and philosophers have gone about clad in shabby raiment rather than forsake their chosen work. Herbert Spencer did not go clad in rags, to be sure, but where mediocre writers were reaping fortunes from their literary labors, he was expending fortunes in the effort to bring his philosophy to the attention of the world. Doctor Johnson never wrote so prolifically or so well as when he was starving in a Grub Street garret.

An empty stomach does not mean an empty head where authors are concerned. The fact of the matter is, it is easier for men to write great poetry and to think deeply when they are poor than when they are well-to-do. A wealthy and famous man has to suffer innumerable distractions from the work he has in hand; his time and attention are not his own to command. At every turn he is harassed by the responsibilities of his position. In obscurity and poverty, on the other hand, a man is not only brought more closely in touch with life, but he is absolute master of his own time and effort. Providing he be not married, and so responsible for others, the obscure and poor author is absolutely his own master. Whether he drop his greater work for the sake of earning a meal is a matter which is entirely optional. He does not have to eat if he does not care to do so. The rich and successful author, on the contrary, is expected to observe certain social duties and to return courtesy for praise and patronage. If he treats his public cavalierly and refuses to admit himself bound by the amenities of ordinary life, he is in grave danger of losing both his popularity and his eminence.

“O Poverty,” wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau, “thou art a severe teacher. But at thy noble school I have received more precious lessons, I have learned more great truths than I shall ever find in the spheres of wealth.”

Had Louis the Little actually taken up François Villon from his squalor and wretchedness, his stews and taverns, his thieves and slatterns, and made him the Grand Marshal of France, as he is made to do in Justin Huntley McCarthy’s romance, If I Were King, he would have spoiled a good poet to make a poor courtier. When poor and writing for posterity, the author is at his best; when rich and writing for more money, he is usually so anxious to make hay while the sun shines that his work suffers in proportion to his output. No, poverty has never spoiled a good poet—even the youthful Chatterton might have lost his magic with the disillusionment which follows on the heels of affluence.

And since the really great authors can not be kept from writing in any case, it would seem to me that a much better scheme would be to pension those who were better idle. Let the British government pension, not the good authors, but the bad. Let the penny-a-liner be retired in comfort where he will never need to write another poem, novel, play or philosophic treatise. Since the inspiration which moves him to labor is the desire for money, when he has the money he will no longer have any temptation to write. But for the great authors, who will write whether or no, let them be kept on their mettle, stung to action by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” inspired by their faith in their work and close to the hearts of humanity, so that they may continue to pour out the riches of literature, philosophy and science, unimpeded by the obligations and worries attendant upon the possession of a bank account!

I am, Sir,
A Lover of Literature.

A PURITAN IN BOHEMIA

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: You will often hear it asserted by those who assume to speak with authority, that there is no longer any such thing as Bohemia in New York; that the Bohemians are scattered hither and thither and that their haunts are given over to seekers after sensation, sight-seers and the like. The seeming sophistication of those who speak thus is, more often than not, entirely sham, and is assumed by pert reporters for the daily press who wish, by appearing worldly, to divert attention from their patent callowness and youth.

There is, Sir, such a thing as Bohemia, and there are such people as Bohemians, and this I know to my sorrow, and the way in which I discovered this I shall presently relate. Bohemia, as I have found it, is not a place, but a state of mind and a manner of life. The Bohemians have a fixed abode no more than the Arabs of the desert or the wild tribes of Tartary. If one of their citadels is wrested from them by the invasion of the Philistines, they fall back upon another, and being, for the most part, unencumbered with Lares and Penates, they have no difficulty in finding another retreat in which they are soon as happy and content as in the one which they formerly occupied. They may be said to be a people without attachments (if we except the writs so called by those of the legal profession), and if they pay devotion to any god, I know not whom it may be, unless, indeed, Bacchus, who was always a roving deity, as like to be found in one spot as another, whose chief attributes are liberty and license, and whose rites, therefore, may be celebrated wherever his devotees are given the liberty of a place that has a license.

But do not let me, by the use of these terms, lead you to fall into the vulgar error that these Bohemians are people without conventions and who observe no rules of conduct, but act solely according to the whim of the moment, for indeed the contrary is the case. The Bohemians, Sir, are as jealous of their customs and conventions as any class of people, and they even have certain ideas of caste to which they adhere as rigidly as the most fanatical of the Hindus. To lose caste in Bohemia is like losing one’s “face” among the Chinese and results in ostracism quite as surely.

The customs and conventions of the Bohemians, as I shall presently show, are, in truth, very different from the customs and the conventions of what is known as “good society”; so that it is not surprising that those who have only, so to speak, touched upon the frontiers of this country of the imagination, should declare it to be a land of absolute freedom and of individualistic philosophy. Myself, when I first came among them, was as astonished and confused as Gulliver among the Houyhnhnms, for here I found everything turned about from the manner in which I was used to seeing it. That which I had been accustomed to consider worthy, I found here to be unworthy, and that which I had been taught to hold a fault I found here to be a virtue. I had been taught to admire thrift, but here I found it held to be the meanest of qualities. The Beau Ideal of a Bohemian I discovered to be the young man who is free with his purse and careless of his obligations. I found it a humorous thing to defraud one’s creditors but a shameful thing to deny one’s purse to a fellow Bohemian. I had been taught to be circumspect in my conversation with the ladies, but here I found them conversing upon all subjects with utter freedom and an entire lack of embarrassment. I had been used to admire innocence, but here I found that innocence was considered as ignorance and a subject for mirth or censure. Religion, patriotism, respect for established customs, reverence for those in power—all those things, in short, which had been so carefully impressed upon me at home, I found to be nowhere admired among these people.

To acquaint you briefly with the manner of my coming among these citizens: I fell among them by design and not, as you may have supposed, by accident. Possessed of some talent in a musical way and having something of a turn for original composition, I had secured a position in an orchestra in one of the local theaters. Though I had been brought up in the most orthodox manner by my father, who was a professor in a small New England college, I chafed under the restrictions of social life in my native village, where intellectual attainments were held in such high repute as to overshadow completely all natural talent and genius, and where a man was more respected for knowing Boethius than for knowing beans. I had neither taste nor inclination for pedagogy, but yearned with all my heart for the artistic life. I had, in short, a somewhat exaggerated attack of what is known as the artistic temperament, and finding that my own people considered music as a parlor accomplishment rather than a serious art, I was more than ever impatient of their narrow-minded Puritanism and more than ever determined to leave the little college town and all that it stood for, and to go out into the world to seek companionship with those who shared my own ideals and ambitions.

The final rupture with my people came when I announced to my father my intention of becoming a professional violinist, and he replied that if I were determined to disappoint his hopes of my future I might at least have hit upon something respectable, and not brought upon him the reproach of having a fiddler in the family. “I can only hope,” said he, “that you will be a total and abject failure in your misguided efforts, for if you were to succeed and I were to come upon your name flaunted in shameless fashion from the boards of some play-house, I should certainly die of mortification.” With these good wishes ringing in my ears, I packed my meager belongings, tucked my violin case under my arm and turned my back upon my native village and respectability, as I thought, forever.

A few weeks of playing in the orchestra at a theater convinced me that I had yet to seek the intellectual sympathy for which I left home. My fellow players, with one exception, were all phlegmatic Germans who played well enough, to be sure, but who appeared to be as devoid of spiritual aspirations and artistic appreciation as so many day-laborers. They worked at their music as a barber works at his trade, and when the evening’s task was done, they retired to a corner saloon where they drank beer, ate Limburger and talked politics like so many grocers. There was, as I have said, one exception; a young man like myself, who seemed to scorn the middle-class ideas and ideals of our companions and who never joined in the beer-drinking or the political discussions at the corner. This young man, said I to myself, has been here for some time, and he, if any one, should be able to direct me to the haunts of the true friends of art; he, of all these, is the only one fitted to act as my guide, philosopher and friend.

Timidly I approached him upon the subject nearest to my heart, and heartily he replied that not only could he introduce me into the free-masonry of art, but that he would do so the very next night. Accordingly, when the curtain fell the following evening, we set off at once and arrived shortly at a restaurant and café, upon the East Side, which was situated in a basement. A large wooden sign proclaimed it to be “Weinstein’s Rathskeller,” but my companion assured me that it was known to the elect as the “Café of the Innocents,” because those who came there were yet young and comparatively unknown in the world of art and letters.

To describe my sensations upon that evening, Sir, would require the pen of a Verlaine. My own poor efforts can never do them justice. I can make shift to express emotion upon the strings of my instrument, but when I exchange my bow for a pen my fingers become as thumbs and my emotions defy expression, so that I am as helpless as a six weeks’ infant plagued by a pin, and can no more make clear my meaning than a sign-painter could imitate Rubens.

Suffice it to say that I was overcome, charmed, enchanted! In stepping through the portals of that dingy East Side resort, I seemed to have stepped over the border-line that divides the world of the dull and the practical from the world of romance and desire. I had entered the land of dreams, the country of magnificent distances! I was as astonished as William Guppy would have been had he stumbled unwittingly into the rose garden of Hafiz. Here were men and women after my own heart; men and women who saw the world as a whole, unbounded by the petty lines of counties, states and nations. Here the names of the masters of art and literature were bandied about as familiarly as the names of our local professors were at home. Here were lights, here music, and here the good glad laughter of youth! Here were women—not the slim spinsters and prim matrons that I had known, but hearty healthy women who seemed to be alive. Ah, that was it—they were all, all of them, so much alive! Between their fingers they held, not knitting-needles, but dainty cigarettes! Here was wine, wit and winsomeness—a dangerous, a deadly combination for such as I!

Well, Sir, to be brief, I was enthralled. I grew so greedy of that atmosphere that I began to begrudge my work the hours that it called me away from such good company. Finally I exchanged my place at the theater for a position in the orchestra at the café. And so I came to live among the Bohemians and become one of them.

From the first I was enamored of the conversation of these stepchildren of Genius, and I soon began descending from the platform and mingling with the habitués of the place; for at Weinstein’s the only snobbery is of the Bohemian variety, and those who would blush to be seen dining with a prosperous bourgeois, were not at all averse to drinking with an humble member of the orchestra—for was not I, too, an artist? It was not long before I began to care more for talking of my art than for practising it, and all the time that I was playing I was impatient to be down among the tables enjoying the praise which my performance, or, as I am now inclined to suspect, the subsequent order for drinks, never failed to secure. Thus I ceased to practise and played no more except when I was at work.

Of course I did not come to realize all this in a moment.

It was some months before I woke from the daze into which I fell at the first. It came to me gradually as I began to make unpleasant discoveries. It was disconcerting to find that I had fled my own world to escape conventions only to come upon others, or rather upon the same lot, turned topsy-turvy. It annoyed me to find that to be accounted a true Bohemian one must hold only certain views, and those always opposed to the views of acknowledged authorities; that one must not dress too well, eat too well or drink too well. Which was not at all the same thing as saying too much. But this was by no means the most shocking of my disillusions. I soon learned that while the Bohemians are forever talking and thinking of success and wishing success for their friends, the moment one of them really succeeds he is no longer a member of the company; and for this reason it is said, with some truth, that there are no successful Bohemians. When one of them who has made a marked success intrudes himself into the old gathering place, he is given such a cold shoulder that he never ventures there again. A small triumph furnishes the occasion for a feast of congratulation, but a real “arrival” excites the whole company to sneers and innuendoes, so that such felicitations as are offered are bitter with envy. They have a sort of optimism of their own, but it is all a personal optimism. Each one hopes and believes that he will succeed, but each one believes and secretly hopes that the others will not. A cynical smile and a shrugging of shoulders is the tribute to the absent artist.

Well, Mr. Idler, the longer I remained among these people, the more I came to be of the mind of Alice in Wonderland, that though some may be marked off from the pack and may look like kings and queens, they are nothing but playing-cards after all.

But there was one young woman who held my waning interest and who bound me by sentimental ties to the life of which I now began to be somewhat weary. If I had not made her acquaintance I believe that I should long ago have left Bohemia and shaken the sawdust of Weinstein’s from my feet. She was a demure young person, a newcomer from the West, who was studying art. She seemed so different from the others, so fresh, so ingenuous, that I could not but believe her to be genuine. She smoked her cigarette and drank of the table d’hôte wine, it is true (she could do no less in the face of Bohemian convention), but she did it all with such a pretty air of youth and innocence as touched me greatly. For I was by now as strongly attracted by a quiet woman as I had formerly been by a lively one.

To spare you a tedious recital of my passion, I determined to ask her to marry me, thinking that she might arouse in me the old ambition to become a great musician—the ambition which my long sojourn in the Lotus land of Bohemia had all but killed. And so one night I put the question gently over our cups of black coffee, asking her, “Would you—could you—share with me my career?” Then, Sir, that happened which you will scarce believe. Yes, she said, she would be glad to share my career with me, but I must be under no misapprehension; she could not marry me; she already had a husband in the West; but inasmuch as she had not seen him in three years and had never found him very congenial in any case, he need not in any way interfere with our plans.

As you may imagine, I was thunderstruck. I concealed my confusion as best I might by pretending to choke upon a bit of cheese, and at the first opportunity I made my escape and sought the seclusion of my chamber where I faced my problem. I had striven to become a Bohemian, but I had been born a Puritan and there was a limit to my acquired unconventionality. I could not confess my prudery to the lady; could not ignore the incident. Therefore I have determined to accept the one course left open to me. I shall fly. I am now going out to pawn my fiddle and with the money I get I shall buy me a ticket to that little New England town where I first saw the light of day.

Others may seek for inspiration at the Café of the Innocents, but as for me, I am going where a modest young man may live in the protection of the old-fashioned conventions. I am going where I can be moral without being queer. I am going home. And so, Sir,

Farewell,
Timothy Timid.

AN ARRAIGNMENT OF ORIGINALITY

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I am, I doubt not, one of your most devoted readers, and the reason of my devotion, if I may say so, is because you so seldom say anything original. Nay, Sir, this is not said in jest, but in very earnest, for in truth I am vastly wearied of originality in all its forms. We are so beset upon all sides by “originals” of one sort or another, that it is a positive relief to open a book or pick up a magazine which is decently dull and warranted harmless. To sit down for a quiet evening with one of our sensational monthlies is like lighting one’s self to bed with a giant cracker—there is no peace or quiet to be had with ’em.

From my earliest youth it has been my ambition to keep myself well informed of the affairs of the day, and to this end I have made it a practise to glance at least through the monthly numbers of our popular magazines. I regret to say that I have been compelled to break off this lifelong habit, as my physician has strongly advised me against continuing it. The startling and alarming articles which make up the bulk of the month’s offerings in these periodicals have a very bad effect upon my heart and my imagination. More than once in the last two or three years I have been troubled with evil dreams and nightmares brought on by reading these publications shortly before going to bed. More than this, I am by nature somewhat irritable and short of temper, and I have been thrown into a very fury of indignation upon reading the recital of my wrongs in these magazines; so much so, indeed, that I have narrowly escaped apoplexy, a disease to which, my doctor says, I am peculiarly liable. And since I had rather be swindled upon every hand, as long as it is in happy ignorance, than to die of indignation, I have left off reading them altogether.

I can say without dissimulation that I do not miss them greatly. To say the truth, I have small fondness for the originality which is everywhere urged upon us in these days. I have small patience with the spirit which drives us on from one extravagance to another until there is no telling to what base uses the human intellect may eventually fall. Sir, I have taken it upon myself to raise my voice in protest against the prevalent craze for originality and to say a word, which needs to be said, in defense of imitation. If in so doing I am unintentionally original, I can only crave your indulgence.

If I read the signs of the times aright, we are in imminent danger of falling into the ways of the Greeks, “ever seeking some new thing”; considering in our art, music and literature not the qualities of beauty, sense and melody, but only the quality of newness, which is to say, novelty. We do not ask of a musician, is his work harmonious? But only, is it different? We do not ask of a painter, is he artistic? But only, is he clever? We do not ask of an author, is he sound? But only, is he witty? Is it not a sad commentary upon our insane desire for change, Mr. Idler, that our artists, musicians and authors should urge only these claims upon our consideration, that they are different, clever and witty? Sir, the music of an Ojibway Indian is different; a sign-painter may well be clever; and the most ignorant street urchins are often witty. Are these, then, the only qualities we should seek in those who presume to instruct and elevate the human mind and soul? Are we to pass by sound sense for the sake of empty wit? Are we to forsake harmony for the novelty of a mad jumble of absurd sounds? Are we to value cartoons above masterpieces?

For a convenient example of the depths to which we have sunk, let me cite you, Sir, the case of dancing. Dancing was, I believe, originally a religious exercise. Like music, it was employed to express the nobler emotions of the soul. I confess that it may have been sensuous, even at a very early date, but the most sensuous dance of the ancients, the bacchante, was, nevertheless, performed in honor of a god. In the minuet of our grandfathers there was both dignity and grace. There, Sir, was such a dance as might enhance the noble bearing, the beauty and the gentility of those who danced it. There was a dance fit for ladies and gentlemen, a dance which had in it nothing incompatible with innocent womanliness or manly dignity. Who, let me ask you, can say as much for the unspeakable modern original dances, the kangaroo, the grizzly bear, and the bunny hug? Sir, can you bring yourself for one moment to think upon the spectacle of George Washington dancing the kangaroo? Can you conceive of such an unthinkable thing as Henry Clay performing the grizzly bear? Can you, by any force of imagination, picture Abraham Lincoln lost in the mazes of the bunny hug? God forbid!

As it is with dancing, so it is with art. The poster insanity has hardly passed away and we are already overwhelmed with a horde of symbolists of one sort or another, who appear to agree upon one point only—that pictures should not in any way resemble nature. These ambitious daubers, Sir—I can not bring myself to call them artists—have the impertinence to assume that they can express life more fully and clearly upon their hideous canvases than the Author of the Universe has expressed it in nature. As to the absurdity of their pretensions, I need say nothing; it is apparent to all who can lay claim to even the most ordinary degree of intelligence. But as to the effect this nonsense has upon the weak, the easily impressed, I could never say enough. This insanity has spread like a plague from painting to poetry, and from poetry to all the arts that are known. Originality, like charity, is made to cover a multitude of sins. The creative artist who has not the strength or the patience to win distinction along recognized lines produces something that is grotesque and defies us to criticize his work, saying, “There is no standard by which you can measure this, for it is absolutely new. Nobody ever did anything just like this before.” The obvious retort to this would be that nobody ever wanted to do anything like it before, but this would be lost upon the artist, for the “original” of to-day is as impervious to ridicule as he is to criticism.

That music is better for being original, I do not believe. Such an assumption is without warrant in nature. There is no purer sweeter melody than that of the birds. What says the poet?

“Hark! that’s the nightingale,

Telling the self-same tale

Her song told when this ancient earth was young:

So echoes answered when her song was sung

In the first wooded vale.”

Year after year, century after century, these natural musicians continue to ravish and delight all mankind with those same songs they warbled on creation morn. It is no care of theirs to mingle melody with horrid sounds; to weld their notes into a dagger of discord wherewith to stab men through the ear. They do not strive to produce those damnable gratings, shriekings and rumblings which so often pass for music in these days. Where, Sir, is the originality of the nightingale, or of the mocking-bird? Sir, all music may be noise, but that all noise is music I do deny with all my heart. That a noise is new does not recommend it to my ear.

Sir, I lay it down as a proposition not to be refuted, that a good imitation is better than a poor original, and while many men may create passable imitations, very few can produce anything which is both original and good. I do not hold it against an author that he is not wholly original. On the contrary, if he imitate good models, I regard his imitation as an evidence of sound sense. And, what is more, Sir, I believe that most people are no more enamored of originality than I am.

Here is a secret, Mr. Idler, known to only a few: We never grow tired of the things we really like, but only of the things which have appealed to us momentarily because of their novelty. When we really like an author, we like another author who is like him. When we really like a melody, we like another melody which is like it. When we really like a place, we have no desire to leave it. Early in life we form attachments for certain things—our homes, our parents, Mother Goose and the like. This fondness we never entirely outgrow. We like the books we used to like, the pictures, the songs and the places. I am speaking now, Sir, of normal human beings. There are some, ever seeking new things, who never learn to like anything. To them, old books are wearisome, old pictures are uninteresting, old tunes insipid. To them, all places are places to go from or go to, but never to stay in. For them, the past is closed and history is out of date.

“Beware of imitations!” say the advertisements. “Beware of originality!” say I. If we were all original, there would be no living with us. The original genius is well enough when we wish to be entertained, but it is the old-fashioned reliable imitator who makes this world the pleasant place it is. And let us not forget, Sir, that the most original thing in the world is sin.

I am, Sir,
David Duplex.

A FLATTERING TRIBUTE

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: Some months ago I read in your magazine an article in which you advocated the keeping of a journal or diary, saying that by this means one might always keep one’s self well informed as to what progress one might be making spiritually, morally and mentally upon the journey through life. This suggestion struck me very forcibly; so much so, indeed, that I straightway determined to act upon your advice and to begin forthwith such a record of my intimate life as would enable me, at any time when the spirit moved me, to inform myself in this respect. Up to the time when I read the article of which I speak, I had always considered the writing of a diary as rather a senseless occupation, since I could not see why one need put down that which was already well known to one’s self; but when I had read your advice upon the subject, I soon came to see that there is much which will inevitably escape, not only the memory, but the attention as well, unless committed to paper.

Convinced, then, of the usefulness of such an intimate record, I set myself to writing down with great particularity all that I saw, heard, said, did or read; so that I may now look back at the end of the year and review each day in all its details. As you may suppose, I was much surprised to find myself given to habits of which I had formerly been quite unaware. I discovered that much of my reading, for instance, was of a decidedly frivolous and unprofitable sort. After considering this for some time, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for me to mend my ways and to abandon my habit of indiscriminate and idle reading, and I therefore request that you will cancel my subscription to The Idler.

Thanking you for the article on diaries, which will, I am sure, prove a most valuable suggestion to me, I am, Sir,

Truly yours,
Lucy Lackwit.

THE RIDDLE OF A DREAM

“Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride a gallop.”—Shakespeare.

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I have had a curious dream and I am at a loss to account for it. I have consulted an old dream book, which I have in my possession, and which was formerly the property of my old nurse, Aunt Betty S., but for all my diligent searching therein, I have failed utterly to find anything which might serve as an interpretation of my vision. I called at the public library of our village and asked for the latest and most up-to-date work of this character, but the librarian only laughed at my request and assured me that she possessed no such work and that as far as she knew there had never been any such work upon her shelves. To my protest that no library could be complete without at least a few volumes of this character, she retorted that only fools and old fogies any longer had any faith in the meaning of dreams, and that if I was troubled with nightmare the best thing I could do would be to stop lying on my back or be more careful of what I ate before going to bed.

It would seem that I am a bit old-fashioned in my faith in the meaning of dreams, though I do not see how any one who pretends to a belief in the Christian faith can scoff at the interpretation and significance of them in the face of the many notable instances cited in the Bible, as, for example, the vision of Jacob and the dream which caused Joseph to flee into Egypt. I suppose, however, that I should not be surprised at the light and irreverent fashion in which the young people of to-day treat this subject, when I reflect that a Christian clergyman has recently suggested a revision of the Ten Commandments. Notwithstanding the apparently widespread heresy concerning the futility and emptiness of dreams, I trust that I am not the only Christian gentleman now living who clings to the faith of his fathers and who has sufficient faith in the inspiration of the Gospels to believe that a dream is something more than a result of injudicious eating. It is in the hope that some such person may be a reader of your journal and that the result may be a correct interpretation of my own dream, that I am writing this to you. I observe that your journal is somewhat behind the times in many respects and therefore I assume that some of your readers are likely to be as old-fashioned and as “superstitious” as myself.

The dream which I am about to relate came to me in the following circumstances. I had been out rather late the night before and had partaken of a number of fancy dishes such as I am not in the habit of eating at my own table, but which my daughter, who is just back from a young ladies’ finishing school, assures me are much more pleasing if not more nourishing than the ham and eggs which I was upon the point of ordering for our supper after the theater. It was in the morning of the next day and we were out in our new automobile which had only come from the factory the day before. The automobile, or “car” as my daughter calls it, is of rather expensive make and luxurious to a degree. Being somewhat fagged by my unaccustomed dissipation of the night before, I leaned back upon the cushions and presently I fell asleep.

It appeared to me that I was no longer in the automobile, but trudging along the road as I was in the habit of doing in my younger years. As I came to a turn in the road I was confronted with a troop of horsemen, who were by all odds the strangest company it has ever been my lot to behold. All of them were splendidly mounted on magnificent horses which were caparisoned like the mounts of the knights in some rich and gorgeous medieval tapestry. Their bridles were of chased leather with bits and buckles of solid gold; their stirrups were of platinum and silver, and their saddles were of silver and gold, upholstered in plush and velvet. Silk and satin ribbons floated from the bridles of the horses and flaunted in the wind in gay and beautiful streamers. But with the horses and their trappings the magnificence came to a sudden end. The riders themselves were the most incongruous riders for such noble animals that one could imagine. They were, without exception, tattered and bedraggled to the last degree of unkempt frowsiness. Their faces were gaunt and drawn as with hunger and their hair hung unbrushed and uncombed upon their frayed collars. In more than one instance a foot was thrust through a silver stirrup while the toes of the rider came peeping through the broken ends of his boot. A more wretched company mounted upon more beautiful chargers it would be difficult to imagine.

At sight of me the whole company came to a sudden halt, checking their mounts as at the command of a leader, though no word was spoken. The leader of the cavalcade, who bestrode a handsome gelding, rode out a little in advance of his fellows, and removing his crownless hat, swept me a bow, leaning low over the pommel of his saddle. And when I had returned his salutation, he addressed me in these words: “I give you good morrow, gentle sir, and I beg you in the name of Christ and this our company that you spare us a few coins of silver or of gold that we may partake of food and drink, for the way is long and weary and we can not travel without meat and wine to sustain us on our journey.”

Now this speech greatly astonished me, as I had never seen so large a company of beggars journeying together, and I was the more astounded that men mounted in such splendid fashion should be asking alms.

“What!” I cried in amazement, “are you begging then, while you ride upon such fine horses, and your bridles and saddles are worth a king’s ransom?”

“Even so,” replied the leader, “and much as I loathe discourtesy, I must remind you that our time is short, so pray give us what funds you can spare and let us be on our way, for we hope to reach our destination by nightfall.”

“And what is your destination?” I asked.

“The City of Vain Display,” he replied. “But we dally.”

“But if you need money,” I protested, “why do you not sell your horses and trappings?”

At this the whole company cried out in protest, and the leader answered: “Sell our mounts? Never! Look at them. Are they not beautiful?”

And truly they were. And as I looked at them I was seized with a great desire to feel a horse of like magnificence between my knees, and I cried, “I wish that I, too, had a horse like that!”

“Give me all the money that you have,” said the leader, “and you shall have one.”

So I gave him the money. Presently I found myself riding with them and my clothes were as tattered and torn as the clothes of the others. And we set off at a furious pace, faster and faster, until the horses panted with exertion, and after a time one stumbled and fell, sending his rider over his head to the hard road. But nobody stopped, and looking back, I saw the unfortunate fellow sprawling in the roadway with his neck broken. On, on we went, one horse after another giving a final gasp and falling down in the road, and as each one fell we who were left urged our mounts to greater exertions, plying whip and spur without ceasing, until finally only the leader and I were riding on. Then his horse stumbled to its knees and rolled over on its side, and I rode on alone. Lashing my horse I strained onward till the poor beast came crashing down with a jar that threw me headlong upon the highway, where I fell so heavily that I woke.

I have pondered over this dream ever since, but I confess I can make nothing of it. I must draw this letter to a close now, for my daughter informs me that the automobile is waiting, and I have not mortgaged my house to secure the thing for the purpose of letting it stand idle.

I hope, Sir, that if you or any of your readers can read me the riddle of this dream they will be good enough to forward the solution to

Your humble servant,
Timothy Tinseltop.

Blufftown, New York.

BEDS FOR THE BAD

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: It was Sancho Panza, if my memory serves me right, who invoked a blessing upon the head of the man who first invented sleep; I think he had done better to bestow his blessings upon the man who first invented beds. I think it extremely doubtful if sleep can be classed as an invention of man; it is, rather, a function, like breathing, and I doubt not that Adam fell a-nodding before ever he knew the meaning of sleep at all. The bed, upon the contrary, is without question of human origin, for no other living thing has constructed anything resembling it except the bird, who makes his nest serve him as both bed and house, and certainly no deity could have occasion to use such an article, seeing that eternal wakefulness is a necessary attribute of godhood.

The bed, in my opinion, is the greatest of all human inventions, without which sleep were robbed of half its pleasure. Nowhere do we enjoy such delicious refreshing repose as when snugly ensconced in a proper bed, and for my part, there is no other luxury which I could not spare better than my bed. Napkins, tablecloths, knives, forks, spoons—even the table, I could forego without great loss of appetite, but I can rest nowhere else than in a bed, and I can rest well in no bed but my own. So strong is my regard for this article of household furniture, that, were I a poet, I should ask no greater glory than to be the author of those beautiful lines of Thomas Hood—

“O bed! O bed! delicious bed!

That heaven upon earth to the weary head!”

No truer words were ever spoken than those of Isaac De Benserade when he said:

“In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,

And, born in bed, in bed we die;

The near approach a bed may show

Of human bliss to human woe.”

A man may be without land or money and still be happy; he may endure the loss of friends and fortune, and he may preserve his courage even in the face of shame and disgrace; but, Sir, a man who has not a good bed is no more than half a man. Without this refuge from the trials and troubles of the world, a man is robbed of the one consolation which it should be the right of every man to enjoy. Without a bed, his vitality is sapped, his courage is broken down and his moral sense is impaired. I maintain, Sir, that no man can go bedless without becoming a menace to the community, and this brings me to the subject I had in mind when I sat down to write this letter.

I have observed, Mr. Idler, that though a great many people of excellent intentions devote themselves to the task of reforming and reclaiming members of the criminal class, the result of their labors is very far from being satisfactory. In spite of the great number of reformatories, prisons and houses of refuge erected in all parts of the world; in spite of numberless soup kitchens, missions, free sanatoriums and the like, men continue to break the laws and all our efforts to eradicate crime appear to go for little or nothing. Now I am convinced that there is a very good reason why this is true, and it is my conviction that our failure to abolish crime is directly due to our stupidity and block-headedness in attacking the problem from the wrong angle. Instead of trying to reform our criminals by the fear of punishment, we should prevent crime by diverting their minds from evil-doing and direct them into proper paths by the simple expedient which I am about to lay before you.

There is nothing in the world which is more likely to put a man into a good humor with himself, with other men and with existing conditions, than a good night’s rest. As I have said before, every man who lacks a bed is a potential criminal and there are a number of reasons why this is so. To lack repose naturally wears upon the nerves and reduces a man to a condition bordering upon insanity. It is conducive to cynicism, self-pity, a feeling of resentment against all other men and a strong sense of injustice. No matter what the cause of his bedless condition may be, no man can preserve an even temper when he wants to go to bed and has no bed to which he may go. Again, being out of bed and out of temper, he is ripe for various sorts of evil deeds from which he would turn in loathing after a good night’s rest. He is driven for shelter and divertisement into the haunts of vice and the dens of iniquity. He beguiles his sleepless hours in the company of vicious and dissolute persons. He regards the world from an entirely different point of view from the man who has just passed seven or eight pleasant hours in restful slumber. Sleeplessness and crime are as closely related as insomnia and insanity. Crime leads to sleeplessness and sleeplessness leads to crime.

Now, Sir, what I propose is just this: let us put the criminals to bed. Instead of offering the outcast a cold plate of soup or an inane tract, let us offer him a warm comfortable bed where he may lie down and pass at least eight hours of the twenty-four in dreaming that he is John D. Rockefeller or some other such harmless illusion. Let us offer him an opportunity to recover his strength, his courage and his moral balance in innocent sleep. I do not believe that the perfect social state can ever be brought about until such time as every person in the world shall own his own bed; until such time as beds shall be assigned by law to all those who can not purchase them upon their own account; until such time as a man’s bed shall be sacred to his own use, exempt from taxation or seizure by writ or other legal process and as inviolate as the clothes upon his back. I do not believe a perfect social state will ever be attained until it shall be a crime for a chambermaid to make a bed improperly or for a merchant to sell an imperfect spring or a lumpy mattress. I do not believe a perfect social state can ever be reached until every man in the world, and every woman and child, is guaranteed a good night’s rest every night in the year.

But as we have not yet advanced to a state of civilization where it would be practicable to provide every human being with a personal bed of his own, let us do what we can. Do you believe, Sir, that any but the most callow of youthful roisterers prefer the disgusting atmosphere of the all-night saloon or the bleak cheerlessness of a park bench to the heavenly comforts of a good bed? If you do, Sir, you are vastly mistaken. Throw open to these men an absolutely free lodging-house filled with clean comfortable beds, where all may come and go unquestioned as long as they enter at a certain hour and remain a stipulated time, and I warrant you that lodging-house will be filled to its capacity every night in the year. Let every community erect as many of these lodging-houses as its financial condition will permit. Let the vast sums that are now being wasted upon futile missions and piffling soup-kitchens be diverted to this legitimate end. Once we have our criminals and our outcasts in bed, we shall have them out of the streets, out of the parks, out of the gambling hells, out of the brothels and out of mischief!

The state plays the father in chastising disobedient citizens; let the state also play the mother in tucking them into bed. Go look upon them when every face is wiped clean of frown and leer; go look upon them when every face is smooth and quiet as the resting soul within

“And on their lids

The baby Sleep is pillowed ...”

and I warrant you, you shall find them, not outcasts and outlaws, but poor tired children whom you can not forbear to wish, as I now wish you,

Good night, and happy dreams!
Cadwallader Coverlet.

IS CHESTERTON A MAN ALIVE?

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: If I were a writer of biographical sketches, I should begin these remarks with the statement that Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in the year 1874; but I am not a writer of biographical sketches. On the contrary, Sir, I am one who aims to tell the truth as often as it is possible to tell the truth without appearing eccentric. I do not begin these remarks in the fashion I have suggested because I am restrained by scruples which would never trouble a writer of biographies. The fact of the matter is, I do not know that Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in 1874. I do not know that he was ever born at all—at most I only suspect it. I suspect it because I never knew a man who had never been born to attract so much attention. His books may be urged as evidence of his birth, but they are by no means conclusive evidence. So far as my personal information goes, he may be nothing more than a name, like Bertha M. Clay. Perhaps he is only a creature of the imagination, like Innocent Smith, created by some author who chooses to write under the name, “Gilbert Chesterton.” I do not suggest these things as probabilities, but only as possibilities. And yet, what could be more improbable than Chesterton himself? Is it not, after all, more probable that he has been evolved from pen and ink, than from the clay of Adam?

We come now to the question which I borrow from the title of this paper: Is Gilbert Keith Chesterton a man alive? Is he not, rather, a very amusing conception of what a man might be? Let us consider the matter.

Of course the fact that you and I have no positive proof of his having been born does not argue that he is not a living man. Every day we meet men who are unquestionably as real as ourselves (providing we do not lean to the theory of Bishop Berkeley, that we can be sure of no existence but our own), yet we know little or nothing of the origin of these men. They may have been born, or they may not. If you were to ask them, they would probably insist that they were born at one time or another. They believe this because they can not account for their existence upon any other hypothesis. But they believe it on hearsay evidence. Not one of them really remembers anything at all about it. People sometimes grow up to learn that they are changelings; that they are not at all the people they had thought they were. Is it not possible, then, that here and there may live a man who was never born at all? I should not be so bold as to deny the possibility. There have always been legends of men who can not die—men who live on in spite of age and accident. I see no reason why one man should not escape birth if another may escape death. I do not, therefore, insist that Mr. Chesterton prove himself to have been born. It is only that I find it hard to believe that he really exists in the flesh.

Now, Mr. Chesterton, in all his works, dwells upon the subject of madness or insanity. Does this prove that Mr. Chesterton is mad? By no means. As he himself has said, the man who is really mad seldom suspects that he is unbalanced; it is the man who fears madness who finds madness a fascinating subject. Sir, Mr. Chesterton is not mad, but I think he fears madness. It is almost impossible to find one of his essays in which there is no mention of madness. I think it fair to assume that he writes of madness because he has a fear—not necessarily a terror, you understand, but still a fear—that some day he may be afflicted with this malady. Mr. Chesterton also writes a whole book upon the subject of being alive. Are we to assume, because of this, that he is alive? By no means. It is quite possible that he only fears he may some day come alive; that he may some day cease to be the whimsical creation of some author’s fancy and become a real man of flesh and blood.

Do you see no reason why he should fear such a metamorphosis? Surely you must. From time immemorial, men have shuddered at the thought of becoming a spirit, an infinite being composed chiefly of memory; a purely intellectual organism having nothing material in its make-up. Now if men are disturbed, as they are, at the prospect of becoming ideas, why should not ideas be disturbed at the prospect of becoming men? Is it likely that an idea, immune from all the evils of mortal existence, superior to the weaknesses of the flesh and possessing, at least, a potential immortality, would be pleased with the prospect of becoming mere man? Would an idea willingly abandon the clear atmosphere of a purely intellectual plane for the muggy mists and murky fogs of London? Assuredly not.

Lucretius, ridiculing the theory of reincarnation in his work, De Rerum Natura, drew a ludicrous picture of disembodied spirits eagerly awaiting their turn to enter a vacant human tenement. Lucretius was thoroughly appreciative of the absurdity of his picture. He knew that no disembodied spirit would be so foolish as to desire imprisonment in a mortal frame. And as it is with spirits, so we may suppose it to be with ideas. It is one thing to be put into a book; it is quite another to be put into a body. No matter how often an idea may be put into a book, it can not be confined therein. It is still free to travel where it lists. It can leap from London to Overroads in the twinkling of an eye—or it can be in both places at one and the same time. It may appear to a dozen different men in a dozen different aspects. It possesses the Protean faculty of being all things to all men. But confine that idea in a human body; transform that idea into a human being—and what is the result? Why, the result is an immediate loss of liberty. The man, who was formerly an idea, can no longer flit about with lightning-like rapidity. If he wishes to travel from Overroads to London, he must go by train or motor-car. He can by no ingenuity contrive to be in both places at the same time. He must wear the same face wherever or in whatever company he may be. Whether the body which he inhabits is known to its neighbors as Smith or Chesterton, the result is the same—he has lost his liberty. And what has he gained? He has gained the ability to prove his mortal existence—the right to say that he has been born.

It is easy enough to see why an idea should fear to become a man. And when we consider such an idea as Chesterton, the matter is even clearer. Whimsicalities and contradictions which may have been useful and even ornamental in the fictitious Chesterton—in Chesterton the idea—might, Sir, prove most embarrassing to Chesterton the British Subject. You can not prosecute an idea for treason, nor sue it for damages. You can not even confine an idea in a mad-house for being crazy. Most ideas are crazy; none more so perhaps than the one which I am presenting to you now. It is true that a few ideas have been confined in a mad-house, but of those few which have been shut up with the persons claiming them, the great majority have been quite sane. Just as many sane men are devoted to crazy ideas, so many sane ideas are devoted to crazy men; so devoted to them that they will follow them anywhere—even to a mad-house.

If my idea that Mr. Chesterton is an idea is correct, I am sure I do not know whose idea he may be; but he is just such a crazy idea as might belong to a sane man and should therefore be safe in sticking to his originator. If Mr. Chesterton is an idea and is thinking of becoming a man, I should strongly advise him against adopting any such course. I like him much better as an idea. He is so much more plausible that way.

I am, Sir,
A. Visionary.

FROM A HUNCHBACK

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, to be born a hunchback. This, in itself, Sir, is an affliction sufficient to render my life a hard one and to embitter such happiness as I may snatch from the hands of fate; but it is an affliction for which, as far as I know, nobody is to blame, and one, therefore, which I must bear with such patience and fortitude as I can command. But I bear in common with other cripples a far greater burden than mere physical disability, and that is the contempt and pity of my fellow men.

I find that some men regard me with contempt alone, some with contempt and pity intermingled, and some with simple pity—and of the three I think the last is, perhaps, the hardest to endure with equanimity, since it is the most sincere feeling of superiority which prompts it. I do not ask the pity of my fellows; I consider myself in much better case than many men who have straight backs and smooth shoulders; and certainly I can not see why I should deserve the contempt of any one merely because I happen to have been born with a body unlike that of the majority of men. Yet I find the hump upon my back a hindrance in every venture that I undertake.

A few years ago when I was younger and more sanguine than I am now, when I still had faith in the innate fairness of human nature and in the spirituality of the love of women, I fell in love. Fortunately, as I thought then, I had not come into the world naked if I had come crooked, for I possessed a comfortable balance at the bank; a sum of money in point of fact which was far in excess of the financial resources of any of the other young men of my acquaintance. Counting upon the good times which my supply of ready money seemed likely to afford them, a number of the more prominent young men of my native town had taken the trouble to cultivate my society during their college days when they were often short of money and found it convenient to have a friend who could always be relied on to help out in a pinch and who was not at all inclined to play the dun if payments were somewhat slow. Having, as I say, availed themselves of my generosity and cultivated my company in those lean years of study, these young men, upon entering into the world of business and society, could not, with a good grace, begin to ignore me altogether, and they therefore made it a point to look me up now and then and to invite me about with them to such functions and entertainments as I might enjoy, and at the same time, enter into unhandicapped by my physical deformity.

I could not, of course, play tennis, golf or any game of that sort. I was, in truth, deterred from entering into any such sport more by my natural horror of appearing ridiculous than by reason of an actual lack of the strength necessary to swing a racket or handle a club. The fact is, I am not especially weak physically, having always taken great care of my health and having practised with some success such physical exercises as might be practised in the privacy of my own chambers or such as would not be likely to excite comment. But no matter how muscular a man may be, he can not but appear absurd when he goes about carrying a golf club nearly as tall as himself or rushing about a tennis net like a lame camel.

But though, as I say, I was not in demand for such games as these, I did play an excellent hand at whist, could thrum the guitar a bit, play accompaniments upon the piano, sing a little in a fairly good baritone voice and carry on a conversation light or heavy as the occasion seemed to require. Of course, I did not dance, but I often sat at the piano and furnished music for the others, thus making myself useful and at the same time diplomatically avoiding drawing notice to the fact that I was disqualified as a dancer. Although I always had a secret longing for theatricals and knew myself to be possessed of histrionic ability in no mean degree, I never joined our local amateur dramatic club. I think perhaps I might have done so had not some tactless member of the club once sent me an invitation to take part in a performance of Richard the Third, which so incensed me that I never again so much as attended a play given by that organization.

It was during this time, when I was almost enjoying life like an ordinary man, owing to the careful manner in which my acquaintances concealed their dislike and contempt for my crooked back, that I met and fell in love with a girl who seemed to me, at the time, a charming and sweet-souled young woman. I saw a great deal of her, owing to the fact that we were both of musical tastes and often played and sang together, and it was not long before I came to the conclusion that if I were ever to marry I might as well be about it then as any time, and especially since I had the necessary mate at hand, so to speak. To think was to act with me in those days, and I put the matter to her bluntly the very first time I saw her after forming my resolution in this respect. You may not believe me, but I swear to you that I am telling the truth when I say that I had grown so accustomed to having my friends ignore my infirmity that I had quite forgotten to take it into account in the case of the young woman. In fact, I would have considered it an unjust aspersion of her character to think her capable of holding such a thing against me, our relations having been always of the most spiritual.

You can imagine, then, the shock it gave me when I saw the horror growing in her eyes which I had so often surprised in the eyes of strangers! You can fancy, perhaps, the physical and mental anguish I suffered in that moment when I realized that even to her I was not as other men—that she had played with me as one might play with a child, and that she would no sooner think of becoming my wife than she would think of wedding with an educated baboon. And yet, Sir, within the space of two years I saw that same young woman stand at the altar with a senile and decrepit old roué who had never possessed the tenth part of my own intellectuality and who had absolutely nothing to recommend him but a fortune, somewhat smaller than my own, and a straight back. I am told that she is not happy with him, and small wonder, since he is never at home save when he is too drunk to be elsewhere; but even so, I doubt if she has ever regretted her answer to me, so strong is the prejudice of the normal person against all forms of physical deformity. The fact that her husband is more crooked in his morals than I am in my back would, I dare say, have no weight whatever with her.

I have heard people say that women are often attracted by men of odd and unusual personal appearance and that many women find an almost irresistible fascination in cripples and the like, but I have never encountered anything in my personal experience to incline me to this view. It is an idea upon which Victor Hugo dilates in his romance, The Man Who Laughs, where the duchess becomes enamored of a monster. But I am of the opinion that Hugo treated this matter more truthfully and realistically in The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame, where the white soul and brave heart of Quasimodo count for nothing with Esmerelda when weighed against the physical attractions of the philandering captain, who is a thoroughly bad lot. I have heard it asserted that Lord Byron owed much of his popularity with the ladies to his club foot, but this I take to be the sheerest nonsense. The fascination which Lord Byron exercised upon the women was not, I am convinced, due to his physical deformity, but to what we may call his mental and moral deformity. And this, Sir, brings us to the milk in the cocoanut and the point of this letter. I wish to ask you, and to ask your readers, what I have so often asked myself: Why is it that men and women find physical deformity so hateful while they so often find mental and moral deformity attractive?

Shakespeare, learned in the ways of human nature, laid particular stress upon the physical shortcomings of Richard the Third, well knowing that no amount of mere wickedness would serve to turn the audience against him so strongly as a hump upon his back. The villain of the play, if he be handsome and brave, will often oust the hero from his rightful place in the esteem of the audience, so that presently the pit, the galleries and the boxes are united as one man in wishing him success in his villainy, or at least in wishing him immunity from his well-deserved punishment. Instead of hissing him, the spectators are moved to applaud him. And for this reason the playwrights and the novelists have, until late years when the worship of virtue is no longer considered an essential part of art, caused the villain to appear a coward or burdened him with some physical deformity. And the devil of it all is, Sir, that most of the villains in real life are like the villains of the stage who oust the hero. Charles Lamb once said that it is a mistake to assume that all bullies are cowards; and in my opinion it is an even greater mistake to assume that a villain can not be attractive. If villains had no charm, villainy would soon cease through want of success.

In the case of Byron, since I seem to have chosen him for an example, the women were attracted on the one hand by his reputation as a genius and upon the other hand by his reputation as a rake. Byron, though a cripple, was an unusually handsome man of the poetic type, and I think we may safely assume that the aversion which may have been created by his club foot was more than offset by the fact that he was otherwise of pleasing appearance and was known to be an athlete. Now, of course, it would be impossible to say whether more women were fascinated by his genius or by his rakishness, but on a venture I would be willing to wager that nine out of ten of the women who knew him would rather have read his love letters than his poetry. Genius is a thing apart from love, and, say what they will, I believe that the mistress of such a man is more like to be jealous of her lover’s genius than proud of it, and especially so where she can not flatter herself that it has been inspired by love of her. She is interested in a poem in which she can find herself, not because it is poetry, but because she is in it. Therefore I incline to the belief that Byron’s conquests were due to his reputation as a rake, rather than to his reputation as a poet. But given the combination of a poet, a rake, a handsome man and a lord, it would be unnatural if women did not love him.

But Byron’s case is not the only one I have in mind. It is a common thing for murderers in jail to receive flowers and sentimental letters from women. Women, too, who have never so much as set eyes upon them and who know them only by the stories of their crimes in the newspapers. The maddest of religious fanatics can always count upon a goodly number of women as converts. The taint of insanity itself seems to be less repulsive to women than physical deformity. And the men are little better than the women. A man will often knowingly wed with a fool because she has a pretty face, or vote a rogue into office because he thinks him clever. The juries of men which try women murderers are ready to grow maudlin over them if the women happen to be good-looking.

It is a problem, Sir, which I can not solve, turn and twist it as I may. Sometimes I think that we who are deformed in body are granted the only straight minds to be found among men, by way of compensation. And at such times, Sir, I am inclined to thank God that He has seen fit to put the hump upon the back and not upon the mind or soul of

Harold Hishoulder.

FROM A HOTEL SPONGE

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I feel it my duty to publicly express my disapproval of the recent ruling of certain hotel proprietors of this city, and to publicly protest against their hasty and ill-advised agreement that hereafter they will discourage, in every way possible, the visits of outsiders who make use of their lobbies and halls.

I am myself one of the best-known non-resident patrons of the hotels in this city, or, in the vulgar language of the innkeepers themselves—a hotel sponge. That is to say, I do not register at these hotels as a guest, but I do make it a point to drop into one or two of them every afternoon and evening, and I think I may say, without undue egotism, that you will seldom see a more debonair and smart-looking man than I appear upon these occasions. I am, I believe, as my tailor says, “an ornament to any assembly,” and my presence in a hotel lobby or corridor is sufficient to stamp that hotel as a proper place in the minds of all those who are sufficiently acquainted with the hall-marks of the haut ton to recognize a gentleman when they see one.

I have been a familiar figure about a certain hotel on Thirty-fourth Street for the last ten years, and though the tide of fashion which once flowed through those corridors is now somewhat diminished, having set in a northerly direction, yet that hotel continues to hold its own with the visitors from out of town. And do you know why this is so, Mr. Idler? Do you know why it is that this hostelry is still enabled to present an appearance of smartness and exclusiveness? I presume that you do not, and so I shall tell you. It is simply that I have chosen to continue to appear there. Though the social leaders whose names are known across the continent desert the place for the newer and no less pretentious hotels farther up-town, this place, by reason of my loyalty, has suffered no loss of standing. I, Sir, am to the hotels of New York what John Drew is to the American stage. I am that rosy-faced, perfectly groomed, elegant gentleman of leisure who saunters through the halls and corridors at tea time and at dinner time, and who confirms the out-of-town guest in his opinion that he has selected as a place to stop the one hotel which is the resort of fashion.

If it were not for me and for the other members of my class, how long do you suppose these hotels could go on charging the enormous prices they now charge for food and lodging? How long do you suppose they could induce the thrifty countryman to part with such sums of his hard-earned money if he were not provided with the inspiring spectacle which I present when arrayed in my full regalia? Not one month, Sir. In less than a fortnight the word would go forth to all parts of the United States that these hotels had lost caste and were becoming back numbers.

It is to me, and to others like me, that the great modern hotels of this city owe their prosperity; indeed, I might say, their very existence. It is we who set the pace in luxury and style. The hotels merely live up to our standards. The manager of a shabby hotel can not see me walk into his lobby without feeling instantly ashamed of the poor accommodations he has to offer me. The hotel managers were so irked at being put out of countenance by the obvious superiority of the casual hotel visitor that they set out to provide for him a proper setting. Do you suppose, Sir, that the expensive furniture, the music, the luxurious reading and smoking-rooms, the glittering bars and the comfortable armchairs of the modern, up-to-date New York hotel were necessary to obtain the custom and patronage of the provincial visitors, or even necessary to hold that patronage? No, Sir! But I am necessary to hold the business of these people, and the luxuries are necessary to hold me. All this is so plain, so perfectly apparent to any observing person, that it seems almost incredible that these managers should dare to risk our indignation. Drive us out, indeed! They will be very lucky if we do not withdraw altogether of our own accord, after such a gratuitous insult. A strike of waiters, Sir, would not prove one-half so demoralizing as a strike of the atmosphere creators, or, to use the insulting term of the hotel men, the “hotel sponges.”

Can you imagine, Sir, trying to paint a forest scene without a tree in sight? That task would be as easy as trying to conduct an aristocratic hotel without an aristocrat in sight. “But,” you say, “you fellows are not really aristocrats—you are only imitation aristocrats.” In so saying, Sir, you fall into the same error into which these hotel men have fallen. We are aristocrats. We are the ideal aristocrats, and let me tell you, Sir, we are much more convincing than those whom you would doubtless call the real aristocrats. I have not lived as a man-about-town for the last ten years without coming to know these dyed-in-the-wool aristocrats of yours very well indeed. I assure you that you would be much surprised and disappointed should you see them, as I have seen them, at our leading hotels. They would no more correspond to the countryman’s idea of an aristocrat than an Indian Chief would fulfil the romantic maiden’s ideal of a ruler of men. Sir, where I am urbane, they are ill at ease. Where I am clad in the very pink of fashion, they are often dowdy, not to say shabby. Where I appear indifferent and slightly bored, they are often irritable, easily upset and worried-looking. Oscar Wilde once said that he was very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean, and I can imagine that his disappointment was not deeper than that of the rural visitor who happens to stumble upon a member of what is known as our best society.

Doubtless you fancy that I and the others of my kind concern ourselves with aping the dress and manners of these society people. If so, you were never more mistaken in your life. It is they who copy and imitate us. They go where we go, they wear what we wear, they eat what we eat and they drink what we drink. Only, as is always the case with imitators, they fall far short of their models. How is it possible that any man can appear the perfect gentleman of leisure unless, indeed, his life is actually a life of ease and pleasure? We have no cares and no responsibilities. They have a thousand. We have no social duties to distract our attention. They are constantly consulting their watches. And, lastly, Sir, we have art, and they have none.

I can not imagine what has led these misguided innkeepers to think that they can do without us. But I can tell you, they will soon regret their recent action, whatever motives may have moved them to take it, for they will find very shortly that their hotels are not nearly so necessary to us as we are to their hotels. I am, Sir,

Percival Pigeonbreast.

FROM SARAH SHELFWORN

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I have to complain of an abuse which is daily growing greater and which, if not checked, will soon assume the proportions of a national menace. It is my purpose, Sir, to call to your attention and to the attention of all earnest thinking people, a pernicious influence exercised by a certain portion of our daily press—by those vulgar flaunting publications known as “yellow journals”. Now do not misunderstand me, Mr. Idler; this letter is no ill-considered general attack upon the press; no incoherent or fanatical outcry against the publication of disagreeable facts. It is, on the contrary, a protest against a certain idealism which pervades the pages of these newspapers and which unduly excites the imagination of our young men. I do not refer to stories of crime, extravagance or anything of that sort—but to the publication of pictures of beautiful women.

You may ask, what possible harm can come of the publication of these pleasing portraits? Well, Sir, I will tell you; but in order that you may understand my point of view, I must first tell you something of myself and explain somewhat, my own experience.

I, Sir, am a school-teacher—an instructor in English literature—and since the school where I am employed is a public high school, it is hardly necessary to add, I am a woman. Or perhaps it would be more truthful to say I was a woman once upon a time. When I was young and fairly pretty, there was no more womanly woman than I in all this section of the country, but let me tell you, Sir, ten years of teaching school is an experience calculated to unsex any person, man or woman. We veteran school-teachers constitute what a magazine writer recently referred to as “an indeterminate sex.” We have left in us nothing of the masculine or feminine nature. We think, feel, argue and reason like one another and like nobody else in the world—we are neuter throughout. It is, perhaps, for this reason that I can now look back upon my wasted life with only a passing regret, and that I can, without any feeling of outraged modesty or womanly reserve, lay bare to you the dreams of my girlhood and the thoughts of my maturity.

To begin, then, I have always lived in the little town where I am now teaching, though to be sure, since I became a teacher, I have traveled more or less during my vacations. I have visited many places in Europe and America at one time or another. I have made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon six times in as many years, and it is perhaps for this reason that I have never found time to read any of Shakespeare’s works beyond the four or five plays which we read in class. Be that as it may, when I was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, I was a bright, merry-hearted young creature who had not a care in the world, nor a thought for anything but pleasure. Not that I was without sentiment, for truth to tell, I was as sentimental as any, and let me tell you, Sir, one girl of eighteen has more sentiment in her composition than all of the old men in the world. I say “old men,” because I have observed that whereas sentiment comes to a woman early in life, so that she is soon done with it, men seldom become sentimental until they have passed middle age. And that is why, Sir, you will observe in the restaurants and cafés of your city, young men with old women and old men with young women. Like is naturally attracted to like. The old man loves the young woman for her romanticism which is akin to his own, and the young woman loves the old man because he is not ashamed to admit his infatuation and glories in his subjection to her charms. The young man, upon the other hand, is attracted to the older woman by her knowledge of the world, her masculine view-point, her independence of mind, her air of good-fellowship, and her frank acceptance of a temporary affection. The old woman finds in the young man the only sensible, sober and sane being that wears trousers.

As I say, Sir, I was as sentimental as any; I had my girlish dreams of home and fireside, of husband and little ones, but I was not obsessed with this pleasant dreaming. I took all that for granted as my natural birthright, and a career which was guaranteed to me by virtue of my very womanhood. I was cheerful, a capable housekeeper, possessed of a clear complexion, good eyes, sound teeth, a fair figure—in short, I was passably good-looking. Why should not I be married in due time, as my mother was before me, and as the girls of my native village had always been? I was not hump-backed, bow-legged, nor squint-eyed. I was neither a shrew nor a prude. I could manage a house and (I had no doubt) I could manage a husband; how could I fail to get him?

Alas! Sir, my youthful optimism was my undoing. I delayed my choice and I lost my opportunity. I refused one or two offers of marriage that came to me in the first flush of my womanhood—and I have never since received another! The young men of our town had always married our home girls. With the exception of a few prodigals who left home to see the world and who never returned, some going to jail and some to congress, none of our young men sought their wives among strangers. They were well content with what they found at home. How, then, could I anticipate a sudden exodus of eligible young men? An exodus, I say! For an exodus it was, and an exodus it has continued, year by year, ever since that fatal day when Willie Titheridge Talbott went over to Ithaca and married Minna Meyerbeer who won the Tompkins County beauty contest!

No sooner do our young men arrive at that age when they can don a fuzzy hat and coax a mustache without exciting the ridicule of their little brothers, than they shake the dust of this town from their feet and set out to find a wife among those vampire beauties whose portraits decorate the pages of our Sunday papers. As for our girls, they are left as I was, to choose between frank spinsterhood at home, or to follow the young men out into the world, there to become chorus girls, manicures, stenographers—or to engage in some other similar profession which exerts such a glamour and fascination over the men as to make up for their lack of classical beauty.

And who, Sir, is to blame for this lamentable state of affairs? The beauties? No, not altogether, for if they were not so exploited by the newspapers, our young men would never suspect that they existed. For, Sir, even if he were to meet her face to face, the ordinary young man is so lacking in sentiment, so matter-of-fact, that he would never suspect one of those beauties of being anything extraordinary if her beauty were not vouched for by some newspaper. The young man who has not been corrupted in this way, and who has not had fostered in him by these newspapers the silly notion that he is a knight errant searching the world for beauty in distress, is a docile creature, easily captured and easily managed. He treats matrimony as he treats his meals, he takes what is set before him and afterward grumbles as a matter of course, but deep down in his heart he is very well satisfied. It is the editors, Sir, who have caused all of the trouble; the editors with their silly beauty contests and their simpering half-tone, half-world women of the stage flaunting their coquettish graces and flirting with our young men from the pages of the Sunday papers.

Now, Sir, I hope that you will not dismiss this letter as a matter of no consequence and the peevish complaint of a disappointed spinster, for I assure you the roots of this evil go deeper than appears at first glance. Our magazines are asking, “Why do young men leave the farm?” Our sociologists are asking why are our villages becoming depopulated? Superficial observers often reply that the young men go to the city for the sake of money-making. But I, Sir, know better. The young men are leaving the farms and the villages to hunt for wives because the newspapers, with their photographs, have made them dissatisfied with what they find at home. And now that you know the cause of it, Mr. Idler, is there no hope that you may devise some way to put a stop to it?

I am, Sir,
Sarah Shelfworn.

FROM ANNA PEST

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: Doubtless you are familiar with some of the newer schools of poetry, as for instance, that one which has abandoned rhyme for assonance, which has led an ignorant and prejudiced critic to say of it that its poetry may be rich in assonance, but that he finds in it more of asininity. Such is the treatment accorded all independent artists by the hidebound adherents of outworn ideals!

Now, Mr. Idler, nobody is more convinced than I am that we need new forms of poetry. I have been writing poems for a number of years and I feel that I speak with authority when I say that the old classical forms are entirely inadequate for modern poetic expression. I have tried them all and I have found them all wanting, for though I have written poems in the form of sonnets, lyrics, triolets, quatrains, couplets, rondels—and even in blank verse—I was never able to produce a decent poem in any of them. I therefore conclude that what every modern poet needs is to shake off the shackles of poetic convention and follow a form suited to his nature. I have been greatly encouraged by the introduction of the vers libre in France and I am heartily in accord with the aims of those pioneers of the new poetry who are laboring to educate the public taste to modern ideals, but I fear that in one or two instances they have overshot the mark.

Much as I admire the courage of Monsieur Alexandre Mercereau, who has, with splendid audacity, forsaken verse altogether and determined to write all of his poetry in prose, I do not believe it advisable to attempt to accomplish the poetic revolution at one step. I am more in sympathy with those who have abandoned rhyme, but retained rhythm.

For my own part, I have invented a form which I think better than either. I believe that this form is as superior to the sonnet as the sonnet is to the limerick. I call this form the duocapet because it is, in a sense, double-headed, having two rhyming words in every line—one at each end. I have discarded rhythm but retained rhyme. I had good reasons for adopting this course. I regard meter as a useless encumbrance. It is meter, not rhyme, which hampers the true poet. The poet should be free—free as the air—free as the birds. It is a crime against art to bind him with silly meaningless meters and rhythms which distract his attention from his theme and serve only to furnish critics with an excuse for picking flaws. I hope that the happy day will soon arrive when laymen will leave to the poets the settling of all questions of form, but in the present state of public ignorance and prejudice I think it advisable to concede them something in order that they may realize that we are writing poetry. Later, when the public is sufficiently educated to recognize poetry without any of its ancient ear-marks, I may discard rhyme also.

For the present I think the duocapet is the most logical and artistic of existing forms. Writing in the duocapet, the poet has only one rule to observe—that the first word of every line shall rhyme with the last. I have, in fact, reduced the couplet to a single line, making the two rhyming words come one at each end of that line, where they logically belong, one opening and one closing the line, instead of placing them one under the other in the manner of Pope. Standing in this position they may be likened to two sentries that guard the thought of the poet. It is as if the rhyme at the first end of the line called out, “Who goes there?” and the other responds, “A friend!” In the duocapet the poet may make his lines short or long as best pleases him without regard for the length of lines that go before or that follow.

This poetry is produced as all true poetry should be produced, a line at a time. No whole can be perfect which is defective in any part. In the duocapet every line is a perfect poem, complete in itself, every line contains a distinct thought, and though the sentence may sometimes extend from one line to another, this is never necessary and rests with the discretion of the poet. Should he choose, he might write a whole poem consisting of nothing but complete sentences, a sentence a line, with a period at the end of each. The poem can be made ten lines in length or ten thousand, and asterisks and italics can be introduced at will. With the exception of the rhyme, the poet is as free in this form as in any form of vers libre. I append an example of duocapet which should give you a good idea of the possibilities of this form:

Midnight

Gone is the day and I look out upon

Night bathed in Luna’s sad illusive light ...

Dark are the shadows out in Central Park;

Hushed are the streets through which the traffic rushed ...

See! Underneath that weeping-willow tree

Prone lies a figure on a bench alone!

Why should he lie there ’neath the sky?

Is there no home he can call his?

Creeps now the moonlight where he sleeps ...

Shakes then the outcast as he wakes,

Chill with the bitter winds that fill

All of the Park from wall to wall.

Slinks then away in search of drinks.

Soon he will be in a saloon.

Still as I lean upon the sill

And see the sky on every hand

Sprinkled with those same stars that twinkled

Bright on that blessed Christmas night

When angels sang good-will to men ...

Sore is my heart unto the core!

Sick is my soul unto the quick!

Sick is my soul ... my soul ... how sick!

I hope that you will publish this poem and letter in the interest of Poetic Art, and in order that the world may know that we poets of America are almost, if not quite, as progressive as those of France.

I am, Sir,
Anna Pest.

FROM SETH SHIRTLESS

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I am the victim of a most peculiar affliction. I am suffering from what appears to be a sort of disease and which can not be classified. As I am not able to find the true explanation of this matter myself and as physicians seem to be equally at a loss in regard to it, I have decided to appeal to the public at large in the hope that some one who reads my communication will be able to suggest a cure or at least some method of alleviation.

There is an old saying, Mr. Idler, borrowed from some author, if I mistake not, that “the apparel oft proclaims the man.” This I consider a true saying aptly put; but I believe, Sir, that apparel sometimes does more than proclaim the man—that it sometimes actually makes the man. It is well known that men are often affected by the clothes they wear. Good clothing has a tendency to inspire confidence in the breast of the wearer, while poor clothing robs a man of his assurance, if not of his self-respect. That all men are more or less subject to the influence of their garments, there can be no doubt, but I, Sir, am peculiarly susceptible to it. It has been so all my life. Even in childhood I became supercilious and insolent with pride when clad in my best, and most envious and depressed the moment I had changed to my every-day wear.

Since I have come to manhood, I have felt this weakness growing upon me despite my most earnest efforts to resist it, until now, Mr. Idler, my character and my wardrobe are so inextricably mixed together that I may be said to change my nature with my clothing. When I am richly dressed I feel rich, and my thoughts and sentiments are those of a wealthy person. At such times I am a firm believer in all measures for the protection of property and vested rights. I am a hearty adherent of the established order and I am distinctly suspicious of all so-called reforms and innovations in governmental machinery. When, on the other hand, I am dressed shabbily, my views and my feelings undergo a complete change. I am no longer a believer in the sacredness of property rights. Indeed, I look upon all rich men as so many robbers who have seized upon the land and the natural resources which should, of right, be the common property of all mankind. I feel that I have been defrauded of everything they have which I have not. Their insolence vexes me and their display drives me into a very fury of rage which is partly inspired by just indignation and partly by simple envy. At these times I am fiercely radical in politics. No measure of reform can be too revolutionary for my taste. My dearest wish is that the whole social fabric may be rent to shreds and rewoven in a pattern after my democratic heart.

To such extremes of sentiment do my clothes carry me. When I am fashionably clad a Socialistic pamphlet irritates me as a red rag enrages a bull. But when I am poorly dressed and shod, I write such pamphlets. Write them, and, Sir, incredible as it may seem, leave them lying about my quarters for the very purpose of irritating myself, and well knowing that when my eyes light on them while in my conservative frame of mind I shall fall upon them and tear them to tatters. I, Sir, am as a house divided against itself—I am a man at war with his own soul!

You have heard, I doubt not, of the celebrated case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and of other instances of double personality, where men, by reason of contending spirits within them, have been forced to lead double lives. I do not hesitate to say that such are blessed when their lot is compared to my own unhappy state, for I lead, not a double, but a treble existence. In addition to these two personalities, which I term for want of a better nomenclature my Aristocratic and my Proletarian selves, I am also possessed of a Normal self which is in evidence only when I am completely disrobed.

Can you fancy, Sir, what this means to me? Can you imagine in what straits a man must be who can think clearly and logically only when he is naked, and who, before he can decide upon any matter of importance, must hurry home and throw off his clothes lest he be led astray by rabid prejudice or blind enthusiasm? That, Sir, is precisely my situation. When I awake in the morning I am compelled to make a choice between my two antagonistic personalities. My wardrobe stares me in the face as if asking the eternal question, “Which is it to be to-day—Aristocrat or Proletariat?” Always, upon falling asleep at night, I am haunted by the specter of the ordeal which awaits me in the morning.

In addition to this, my Aristocratic and my Proletarian selves have recently conceived a violent dislike for each other and they have begun to vent their spite in many petty ways, much to the disgust of my Normal self who has small use for either of them. For example, about a fortnight ago, my Proletarian self indulged himself freely in gin, a drink which is loathsome to my Aristocratic self. He stayed in this condition for a matter of four days and upon his return to my—perhaps I should say our chambers, he wantonly destroyed a new top hat which my Aristocratic self had carelessly left lying upon the hall table. By way of retaliation, my Aristocratic self seized some overalls belonging to my Proletarian self and flung them into the ash-barrel. Altogether, they behave, Sir, in a fashion to make me thoroughly ashamed of them both.

Possibly you are wondering how it comes that I am in the habit of changing my clothing so frequently and varying the quality of my dress in this way. I may as well tell you that for many years I was a professional politician, much in demand as an orator, and that I was called to speak before audiences of widely different character, so that I sometimes found it expedient to dress in evening clothes and at other times it was necessary for me to appear a workingman. My constantly changing political convictions made it impossible for me to continue in this work, but by the time I gave it up I had come to know these two personalities so well that I was unwilling to trust myself for long in the hands of either of them. I have thought of purchasing a decent outfit of ready-to-wear clothing, but I realize that the result of such a step would be to render me hopelessly middle-class, a condition I have hitherto escaped. I have no desire to add a fourth personality to those I already possess.

I have consulted my tailor without good result, and the best that my physician has been able to do for me was to suggest a period of rest in the country. I am now very comfortably lodged in a quiet house in the suburbs, where I came upon the advice of my doctor and two of his colleagues with whom I discussed my trouble.

I am very well content here for a man who is virtually a prisoner. Not that I am confined by force, Sir, but I have determined never to put on another suit of clothes until I have solved the problem which confronts me, and I can not leave my room without dressing; the landlord of this place objects to my doing so. Here, then, I expect to remain until I hit upon some solution of my difficulty or until some other person is good enough to suggest a way out of my dilemma. I am, Sir,

Seth Shirtless.

SARTOR-PSYCHOLOGY

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: I am a social worker, and it is in this capacity that I address you upon a subject which appears to me to be of vital importance to all classes of society. I have, Sir, hit upon a plan which will, if generally adopted, work the greatest reform that has ever been effected, and which will, I am convinced, completely do away with the necessity for long-term sentences to imprisonment. In simple honesty I must admit that this idea is not entirely my own. It was suggested to me by the extraordinary and very interesting communication from Mr. Seth Shirtless which appeared in your January issue.

The influence of clothing upon character has long been recognized, but I do not remember ever to have heard of another case so well illustrating that influence as the case of Mr. Shirtless. His story of his experiences was profoundly interesting from a psychological point of view, and while reading it I conceived the plan of which I spoke just now. It occurred to me that the influence of dress might be of great use in reforming men of evil habit and temperament. It is well known to all social workers that many criminals cherish a spirit of bitter animosity toward society at large, and that not a few habitual criminals have embarked upon a career of crime urged on by the mistaken belief that the hand of every man was against them. Having once plunged into evil ways, these misguided creatures come to be more and more of the opinion that they are not as other men; that they have lost for all time to come any hope of being treated with respect and that they must live and die outside the pale of respectability.

It must be confessed that the treatment now accorded them, both in jail and after their release, lends some color of truth to this conviction. To win these men back to a useful way of life it is only necessary to show them that they are wrong; that a temporary fall from grace does not involve an eternal and perpetual atonement. They must be made to feel that they are still members of the Brotherhood of Man and that they may again become members in good standing. Once they are convinced of this, they will certainly mend their ways and gladly conform to right standards of living. Society is coming to realize, as it never did before, that the true purpose of imprisonment is to reform, and not to punish; that our criminals and law-breakers are susceptible to the same methods as our children, and that our proceedings against them should be corrective, rather than retaliatory. These men are sick, sick in mind if not in body, and it is the duty of the state to reclaim them.

In consequence of this awakening to the real purpose of imprisonment, many of our prisons have given up the hideous practise of dressing convicts in the degrading and brutalizing uniforms which were formerly so common as to be almost universal in penal institutions. Men have pretty generally come to see that the use of the striped zebra-like suit for prisoners was a mistake; an added infamy which served no good purpose, but only deepened the convict’s sense of shame and resentment. But though the old garb for prisoners is rapidly becoming obsolete, all reform of this character has, so far, been negative in its nature. The method which I propose is positive. Why should we be content with relieving the convicts of their shameful uniforms? Why not go a step further and institute a constructive reform in their dress? Why not array them in such a fashion that their self-respect must be reawakened and their sense of responsibility quickened into life? Why not bring to bear upon their characters the influence of clean linen and a respectable wardrobe?

What I propose, Mr. Idler, is just this: Let every convict and prisoner be clad in clothing suitable for a substantial citizen and a respected member of the community. Let every inmate of our prisons and penitentiaries be supplied each week with a liberal allowance of clean linen and underwear. Let every man of them be furnished with a decent wardrobe; say, two or three business suits of good quality and correct cut, a walking-coat or frock for afternoon wear, evening dress, a silk hat and a dinner coat. We already provide for them good books to elevate their minds; let us now give them such attire as will increase their respect for their persons.

Now, there is no denying that a well-dressed man makes a better impression upon strangers than a sloven; and if this is true of strangers, what shall we say of the effect upon the man himself? While few of us are so strongly affected as Mr. Shirtless, yet we are all of us, I think, affected in some degree. A pleasing image in a mirror increases our self-respect, but when we see ourselves unkempt and ill-clad we are ashamed. When we have made our prisoners presentable, I believe we should give them the satisfaction of seeing how much they are improved, and I therefore suggest that a mirror be placed in each cell where the inmate can see himself at full length. Thus, if in spite of his new outfit he occasionally feels a disposition to backslide, he has only to glance into the glass to be restored to respectability. In this way he can be led to see the possibilities within him. Let a man look into a looking-glass and see there a reflection which might well be that of a statesman, and his subconsciousness will at once inquire why not? The inspiring sight will reawaken his ambition.

Though it will be a great step forward to dress these convicts like decent citizens, yet this is hardly enough. There must be a corresponding reform in their occupations and employments. There is certainly something incongruous in the thought of a man clad in a frock coat and silk hat breaking stones with a hammer. Such a thing must appear bizarre even to the dullest of these unfortunates. To keep them at such labor would seem as if we were making sport of them. It will therefore be advisable to devise for each inmate of our prisons some employment which will be in keeping with his clothes and, at the same time, congenial and respectable. Here is a man, let us say, who has been convicted of larceny. We will make a promoter of him. Here is another who has been sentenced for gambling. He would make a good broker. A third, who has been an anarchist, will make a good magazine editor. A fourth, confined for highway robbery, can be transformed into a hotel proprietor. And so on down the list.

Of course it will be necessary to release some of them upon parole when the time comes for them to begin the practise of their professions, but by the time they have mastered the details of their new callings this will probably be safe enough. If a carpenter has been sent to prison for burglary, it is not reasonable to keep him employed at the same trade while in confinement, for then he is released knowing no more—and no better off—than he was when incarcerated. Perhaps it was carpentry which drove him to crime. No, Mr. Idler, we should elevate him.

As for those who are merely dissolute and idle, we will make gentlemen of them. We will dress them in the latest fashion and establish for them a club where they may follow their natural bent and continue in their usual habits, only now with the sanction of society.

If the system I have outlined should be adopted in all of our prisons, Sir, I see no reason why our convicts should not soon be a credit to the community.

I am, Sir,
Al. Truist.

MR. BODY PROTESTS

To the Editor of The Idler.

Dear Sir: It is with a feeling of dismay—nay, I may even say terror—that I read in my morning paper the statement that during last year there were made and sold in the United States no less than 8,644,537,090 cigarettes! Nearly nine billion of these devil’s torches, or almost one hundred of them for every man, woman and child throughout the country. And not only that, but an increase of 150,000,000 cigars and 15,000,000 pounds of manufactured tobacco over the production of the preceding year.

To what, Sir, is this country coming, when such things are possible? Can it be that the whole nation is bent upon suicide? I have read that a single drop of the pure essense of nicotine dropped upon the back of a healthy and robust flea will cause the unfortunate beast to fall into convulsions, frequently terminating in a partial paralysis or total dissolution. Now, it is well known to all who make the slightest pretense to any knowledge of entomology that the flea, or Pulex irritans, is one of the most hardy insects known to man and is extremely hard to kill. Indeed, it is a matter of record that the fleas of Mexico encountered the army of Bonaparte and Maximilian and gave such a good account of themselves that the French soldiers were more in awe of the fleas than of the natives. If nicotine, then, has such a disastrous effect upon such a hearty and well-protected beast as the flea, what must be the effect of its poison upon man, who is, perhaps, the most easily killed of all living creatures? It is too horrible to contemplate! I have, by most careful calculations, proved to my entire satisfaction that the American people have already been totally exterminated through their persistence in this evil habit of using tobacco; and if, as may be said, the facts do not seem to fit in with my figures, I can only say that I am convinced that their survival is in nowise due either to their hardiness or to the innocuous character of the herb, but solely to the kindly interposition of Providence, who, unwilling to see so young and so promising a nation perish by reason of this folly, has deliberately set at naught the wiles of the Devil and robbed him of his prey by fortifying and strengthening the constitutions of this people to withstand the dread effects of this evil practise. But how long can people given over to this wicked practise look to Providence for patience and protection?

I have but now spoken of the American people as a promising nation, but I am not sure but that I should amend this to “a once promising nation.” I believe that this nation can never become truly great until it has become a nation of non-smokers. Did the Greeks smoke? No. Did the Romans smoke? No, again. Not in the history of any of the great nations of antiquity do I find a single reference to tobacco smoking. The Boers are reputed to be great smokers, and it is to this that I attribute their defeat at the hands of the English. I have heard that the Boers even went into battle with their pipes alight, and I have no doubt that it was due to their distraction and lack of attention caused by their habit of scratching matches to keep their pipes burning, that they lost many important engagements. Do you imagine, Sir, that Troy could have withstood the assault of the Greeks for ten long years, had Hector and his fellow warriors lolled upon the battlements puffing on cigarettes? Can you fancy, Sir, the grave and dignified Cicero pausing in the midst of one of his philippics to expectorate tobacco juice? Yet I am told upon good authority that this may be witnessed among the learned justices of our own Supreme Court.

The almost total destruction of the American Indian, I attribute chiefly to the debilitating effects of this narcotic. Of all of the American Indians, the Peruvians attained the highest state of civilization. And why? Because, Sir, they alone used tobacco only as a medicine and in the form of snuff. Had they forborne the use of snuff, it might well have been that the Incas had conquered the Spanish and colonized the coast of Europe. Snuff, I consider the least harmful of all forms of tobacco; but only because it is the least frequently used. There is a lady of my acquaintance, in all other respects a most estimable woman, who so far forgets her duty as a mother as to permit her offspring to utilize as a plaything a handsome silver snuff-box which she inherited from her grandfather. I, Sir, should as soon think of giving my children a whisky-flask for a toy. I am well aware that many who have been termed “gentlemen” have been addicted to the use of snuff; nay, that it was even at one time a fashion among men and women of the mode to partake of it. But I think none the better of it for that. As much might be said for rum.

Lord Chesterfield said that he was enabled to get through the last five or six books of Virgil by having frequent recourse to his snuff-box; but I say, if the taking of snuff is necessary to the enjoyment of Virgil, why then, it were better never to read that poet. I had rather fall asleep over Virgil than to inhale culture tainted with snuff. I had rather, indeed, snore over the classics, than sneeze at them. Trahit sua quemque voluptas—I suspect that his Lordship did not so much find snuff an aid to Virgil as Virgil an excuse for snuff.

Tobacco, Sir, won its way into Europe by a ruse—a pretense. It wormed its way into the confidence of the European peoples masquerading as a medicine—a panacea. Introduced by Francesco Fernandez, himself a renowned physician, and endorsed by many other men supposed to be learned in materia medica, it was taken on faith and retained through weakness. At the very outset some of the wiser heads saw the danger of it. Burton sounded a note of warning in his Anatomy of Melancholy: “Tobacco, divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, is a sovereign remedy in all disease. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medically used; but, as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purge of goods, lands, health,—hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.”

King James, of blessed memory, was not deceived by the fictitious virtues of this plant, and he condemned it in his noble work, The Counterblaste. Would that more had been so blessed with wisdom!

The absurdity of the extravagant claims made for the curative powers of this herb is well illustrated in the words of Master Nicholas Culpepper, author of The English Physitian, published so late as 1671:

“It is a Martial plant (governed by Mars). It is found by good experience to be available to expectorate tough Flegm from the Stomach, Chest and Lungs.... The seed hereof is very effectual to expel the toothach, & the ashes of the burnt herb, to cleanse the Gums and make the Teeth white. The herb bruised and applied to the place grieved by the Kings-Evil, helpeth it in nine or ten days effectually. Manardus, faith, it is a Counter-Poyson against the biting of any Venomous Creatures; the Herb also being outwardly applyd to the hurt place. The Distilled Water is often given with some Sugar before the fit of Ague to lessen it, and take it away in three or four times using.”

Such vaporings were, indeed, as little worthy of credence as the empty chatter of Ben Jonson’s Bobadil: “Signor, believe me (upon my relation) for what I tell you, the world shall not improve. I have been in the Indies (where this herb grows), where neither myself nor a dozen gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of one and twenty weeks, but tobacco only. Therefore it can not be but ’tis most divine. Further, take it in the nature, in the true kind, so, it makes an antidote, that had you taken the most deadly poisonous simple in all Florence it should expel it, and clarify you with as much ease as I speak.... I do hold it, and will affirm it (before any Prince in Europe) to be the most sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.”

Such were the absurd claims of those who held tobacco to be a medicine. But I contend, Sir, that tobacco has never been proven of any real medical value whatever; that it is a poison and not a blessing. I have been told, indeed, that it sometimes destroys the toothache; but for my own part I had rather taste the toothache than tobacco; and as for deadening the pain, so, for that matter, will opium or prussic acid.

I contend, Sir, that tobacco will eventually bring to grief every nation which makes use of it. Who can contemplate the present distressing state of Portugal without recalling that it was from Jean Nicot, a Portuguese, that the poison, nicotine, received its name?

Tobacco destroys all that is noble in man. There is no more noble sentiment than chivalry; and tobacco has destroyed the chivalry of man. How else could we applaud that English poet who sang,

“A thousand surplus Maggies are waiting to bear the yoke;

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke”?

Tobacco is offensive to all high-minded people of delicate sensibilities; it is offensive to me. Nay, the smoker himself sometimes involuntarily recoils from his slavery and feels disgust for the vile weed, as is shown by the cry of the modern poet, whose name for the moment escapes me, in that line—

“Then, as you love me, take the stubs away!”

Oh, Sir, it is now high time for all men of sound judgment and unselfish nature to unite in stamping out this nefarious traffic! Let every state pass laws forbidding the manufacture, sale and use of tobacco in any form. Let the government suppress with stringent law and heavy penalty that wicked and seductive book of J. M. Barrie’s called My Lady Nicotine; that work which has, without doubt, led many young men to contract this evil habit and confirmed many older men in it against their own better judgment. Let all books in praise of tobacco be destroyed publicly, as is befitting a public menace.

For my own part, having suffered all my life from a quinsy which I contracted early in youth, and which my family physician assured me would be greatly aggravated by the use of tobacco, I have been saved from the vile effects of even the slightest contact with that noxious plant. But, Sir, being a man of tender sensibilities and imbued with an almost paternal love of humanity, it has grieved me to the heart to see my fellow men falling ever deeper and deeper into the clutches of this sinful practise. Owing to the distress I suffer from the fumes of tobacco, I have often been compelled practically to abstain from the company of men, otherwise estimable citizens, who have contracted this habit. Everywhere I go I see young and old blowing out their brains with every puff of smoke, until I am sometimes tempted to blow out my own in sheer despair of ever making them see the evil of their ways. And they smoke, Sir, with such an air of innocent enjoyment as is enough to fair madden one whose counsel they scorn and at whose warnings they scoff.

I have been told, Sir, that you are, yourself, a victim of this evil habit of tobacco using, and I have been warned that you will refuse, with the infatuation of a confirmed smoker, to grant me space in your publication for these honest and unprejudiced expressions of opinion upon this subject. I have refused, however, to credit these scandalous reflections upon your character, and I hope that you will refute them and cause the utter confusion of your calumniators, as well as help enlighten an ignorant and misguided people, by printing this communication in full.

I am, Sir, very truly yours,
B. Z. Body.