The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V

Melinda was dejected. She told herself that she was groping in the vale of despair, that life was a vast, gray, echoing void. She decided that ambition was dead—a case of starvation; that friendship had slipped through too eagerly grasping fingers; that love—ah, love!—

"You'd better take a dose of blue-mass," her aunt suggested when she had sighed seven times dolefully at the tea table.

"Not blue-mass. Any other kind of mass you please, but not blue," Melinda shuddered absently.

No; she was not physically ill; the trouble was deeper—soul sickness, acute, threatening to become chronic, that defied allopathic doses of favorite and other philosophers, that would not yield even to hourly repetition of the formula handed down from her grandmother—"If you can not have what you want, try to want what you have." Yet she could lay her finger on no bleeding heart-wound, on no definite cause. It was true that the deeply analytical, painstakingly interesting historical novel on which she had worked all winter had been sent back from the publishers with a briefly polite note of thanks and regrets; but as she had never expected anything else, that could not depress her. Also, the slump in G.C. Copper stock had forced her to give up her long-planned southern trip and even to forego the consolatory purchase of a spring gown; but she had a mind that could soar above flesh-pot disappointments. Then, the Reverend John Graham;—but what John Graham did or said was nothing—absolutely nothing, to her.

So Melinda clenched her hands and moaned in the same key with the east wind and told the four walls of her room that she could not endure it; she must do something. Then it was, that in a flash of inspiration, it came to her—she would write a humorous story.

The artistic fitness of the idea pleased her. She had always understood that humorists were marked by a deep-dyed melancholy, that the height of unhappiness was a vantage-ground from which to view the joke of existence. She would test the dictum; now, if ever, she would write humorously. The material was at hand, seething and crowding in her mind, in fact—the monumental dullness and complacent narrowness of the villagers, the egoism, the conceit, the bland shepherd-of-his-flock pomposity of John Graham. What more could a humorist desire? Yes; she would write.

Thoughts came quick and fast; words flowed in a fiery stream like lava that glows and rushes and curls and leaps down the mountain, sweeping all obstacles aside. (The figure did not wholly please Melinda, for everybody knows how dull and gray and uninteresting lava is when it cools, but she had no time to bother with another.) She felt the exultation, the joy and uplifting of spirit that is the reward—usually, alas, the sole reward—of the writer in the work of creation.

Then before the lava had time to cool she sent the story to the first magazine on her list with a name beginning with "A." It was her custom to send them that way, though sometimes with a desire to be impartial she commenced at "Z" and went up the list.

At the end of two weeks the wind had ceased blowing from the east. Melinda decided that though life for her must be gray, echoing, void, yet would she make an effort for the joy of others. She would lift herself above the depression that enfolded her even as the buoyant hyacinths were cleaving their dark husks and lifting up the beauty and fragrance of their hearts to solace passers-by. Therefore she ceased parting her hair in the middle and ordered a simple little frock from D–'s—hyacinth blue voile with a lining that should whisper and rustle like the glad winds whisking away last year's leaves.

Then the day came when she strolled carelessly and unexpectantly down the village street to the post-office and there received a letter that bore on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope the name of the magazine first on her list beginning with "A." A chill passed along Melinda's spine. That humorous story—Could this mean?—It was too horrible to contemplate.

She took a short cut through the orchard and as she walked she tore off a corner and peeped into the envelope. Yes, there was a pale-blue slip of paper with serrated edges. She leaned against a Baldwin apple-tree to think.

How true it is that one should be prepared for the unexpected. Melinda had sent out many manuscripts freighted with tingling hopes and eager aspirations and with the postage stamps that insured their prompt return; how was she to know, by what process of reasoning could she infer that this, that had been offered simply from force of habit, would be retained in exchange for an æsthetically tinted check? She anathematized the magazine editor. (That seems the proper thing to do with editors.) She wanted to know what business he had to keep that story after having led her to believe that it was his unbreakable custom to send them back. It was deception, she told the swelling Baldwin buds, base, deep-dyed, subtle deception. After baiting her on with his little, pink, printed rejection slips, he suddenly sprung a wicked trap.

It was some time before Melinda grew calm enough to read the editorial letter. It ran:

"Dear Madam—We are glad to have your tender and delicately sympathetic picture of village life. There is a note of true sentiment and a generous appreciation of homely virtue marking this story for which we desire to add an especial word of praise. Check enclosed.

    "Very truly yours,
    "The Editor of A–."

Melinda sank limply on the bleached, last year's grass at the foot of the tree. "Tender and delicately sympathetic picture"—"Generous appreciation!" She laughed feebly. The editor was pleased to be facetious. Having a fine sense of humor himself he showed his realization of the story by acknowledging it in the same vein of subtle satire.

She reread the letter and unfolded the slip of paper with serrated edges with changing emotions. After all it was not such a very bad story. She permitted herself to recall how humorous it was, how cleverly and keenly it laid bare the ridiculous, the unexpected, how it scintillated with wit and abounded in droll and subtle distinctions and descriptions—all—all at the expense of her nearest relatives and her dearest friends.

Melinda thought she would return the check and demand that her story be sent back to her or destroyed; but, reflecting that Punch's advice is applicable to other things than matrimony and suicide, she didn't. She resolutely put her literary Frankenstein behind her. She reasoned that in all probability the story would not be published during the lifetime of any of the originals of the characters; that even if the worst came to the worst, Mossdale was likely to remain in ignorance that would be blissful. The villagers were not wont to waste time on the printed word; in fact, such was the profundity of their unenlightenment, few of them had heard of the magazine with a name beginning with "A." Even John Graham paid little attention to the secular periodicals; besides, if absolutely necessary, John's attention might be diverted.

So Melinda went away on a visit. Her health demanded it. The doctor was unable to name her malady, but she herself diagnosed it as magazinitis.

Toward fall Melinda, entirely recovered, returned to Mossdale. Entirely recovered, yet she turned cold, unseeing eyes on the newsboy when he passed through the car with his towering load of varicolored periodicals, and rather than be forced to the final resort of the unaccompanied traveler, she welcomed the advent of an acquaintance possessed of volubility of an ejaculatory, eruptive variety. After many gentle jets and spurts of gossip much remained to be told, as the lady hastily gathered up her impedimenta preparatory to alighting at her home station.

"How like me in the joy of seeing you, to forget! What a sweet, clever story! And to think of you having something published in 'A–'! I never was more surprised than when Mr. Ferguson brought home the magazine. Those delicious Mossdale people! I could not endure that the dear things should not see and know at once. The lovely hamlet is so—so remote, and I knew you were traveling. What a pleasure to send them half a dozen copies that very evening!—Yes, porter, that, too—Do run down to see me soon, dear—Now do. Good-by!"

Melinda summoned the newsboy and bought the latest number of the magazine with a name beginning with "A." She turned to the list of "Contents" with feverish anxiety, then the book slid from her nerveless fingers. Her humorous story had been given to an eager public. She leaned back and gazed out at the flying telegraph poles and fields. Even the worthiest, the gravest, the finest, she reflected, has a face, that if seen in a certain light, will flash out the ignus fatuus of the ridiculous; but it is not usually considered the office of friendship to turn on the betraying light. Oh, well, her relatives would forgive in time. Relatives have to forgive. It was unfortunate that John Graham was not a relative. "One thing, I know now how much Mrs. Ferguson cares because I got those six votes ahead of her for the Thursday Club presidency—Half a dozen copies!" Melinda said aloud as she caught sight of the spire of the Mossdale Church.

Her Uncle Joe met her at the station and kissed her for the first time since she had put on long dresses. Notwithstanding a foolish prejudice against tobacco juice Melinda received the salute in a meek and contrite spirit.

"Notice how many citizens were hanging around underfoot on the depot platform—so as you kinder had to stop and shake hands to get 'em out o' the way?" Uncle Joe queried as he turned the colts' heads toward home.

Melinda had noticed. "I suppose they came out to see the train come in," she suggested.

"Nope; not exactly." Uncle Joe explained, "Looking out for automobiles and flying airships have made trains of cars seem mighty common up this way. Nope; the folks was out on account of you a-comin'."

"Me?" Having a guilty conscience Melinda glanced backward apprehensively and made a motion as though to dodge a missile.

"Yep; and you'll find a lot of the relations at the house a-waitin' for you."

"Why—what—? Now look here, Uncle Joe, there is no occasion to be foolish about a little—"

"Foolish? Now, mebby some would call it foolish, but us folks up the creek here we can't help feelin' set up some over findin' out we have a second Milton or a Mrs. Stowe in the fambly."

Melinda looked at her relative's concave profile in sick suspicion. Was the trail of the serpent over them all? But no, Uncle Joe was beaming mildly with the satisfaction of having shown that although the literary hemisphere was the unknown land, he had heard of a mountain and a minor elevation or two; he was, as she had always believed, incapable of satire.

For once Melinda was speechless. But Uncle Joe was likely to be fluent when he got started. He cleared his throat and turned mild, suffused, half-shamed blue eyes on his shrinking niece. "Yes, your piece has come out in the paper, Melinda, and your folks are all-fired pleased with you. I told Lucy this morning I wisht your poor Pap could come back to earth for just this one day."

"Ah-h!" Melinda took a firm grip on the side of the buggy. "But I guess you'll have to write another right off. There is some jealousy amongst them that aren't in it," Uncle Joe went on. "I told 'em you couldn't put the whole connection in or it would read like a list of 'them present' at a surprise party. Your Aunt Lucy, she's just as tickled as a hen with three chickens." The old man chuckled. "There it is all down in black and white just like it happened, only different, about her spasm of economy when she was cleanin' away Mary Emmeline's medicine bottles and couldn't bear to throw away what was left over, but up and took it all herself in one powerful mixed dose to save it, and had to have the doctor with a stomach-pump to cure her of spasms, what wasn't so economical after all. It's her picture tickles her most."

"Oh!" said Melinda.

"Yes, you know the picture is as slim as a girl in her first pair o' cossets a-standin' on a chair a-reachin' bottles off a top shelf, and your Aunt Lucy's that hefty she hain't stood on a chair for ten years for fear 'twould break down, and she's had to trust the top shelf to the hired girl. I guess when she goes to Heaven she'll want to stop on the way up and fix that top shelf to suit her. So she just sits and looks at that picture and smiles and smiles. She likes my whiskers, too. Yes, she's always wanted me to wear whiskers ever since we was married, but we never was a whiskery fambly and they wouldn't seem to grow thicker than your Uncle Josh's corn when he planted it one grain to the hill. But there I am in the picture in the paper with real biblical whiskers reachin' to the bottom o' my vest."

Uncle Joe cleared his throat and glanced sideways at his niece again. "I want to tell you, Melindy, that I am real obleeged to you for makin' me one of the main ones in the piece with a lot to say. Your Aunt Lucy says 'twas only right and proper, me bein' your nighest kin and you livin' with us; but I told her there was so many others that was smarter and more the story-paper kind, that I thought it showed real good feelin' on your part; yes, I did.—G'up, there, Ginger!—Then I kind o' thought I'd warn you, too, Melindy, that they all are just a-dyin' to hear you say who 'The Preacher' is. He's the only one we couldn't quite place."

Melinda took the little bottle of smelling salts from her bag and held it to her nose.

"Yes," Uncle Joe went on, "the others was easy identified because you had named the names; but him you just called 'The Preacher' all the way through. Some says it's the Reverend Graham kind of toned down and trimmed up like things you see in the moonlight on a summer night. But I told them the Reverend Graham is a nice enough chap, but that that extra-fine, way-up preacher fellow in the story must be some stranger you knew from off and didn't give his name, because you didn't rightly know what it was. I thought, even if you was so soft on Reverend Graham as to see him in that illusory, moony light, that about the stranger from off was the right and proper thing for me, being your uncle, to say any way. So if you want to keep it dark about 'The Preacher' you can just talk about a stranger from off."

"I will, Uncle Joe—dear Uncle Joe." Melinda exclaimed gratefully as they stopped in front of the gate.

Melinda greeted her relatives with a warmth and enthusiasm that embarrassed and made them suspicious. She was not usually so complacent, so solicitous for the health and progress of offspring; above all she was not usually so loth to talk about herself. She acted as though she had never written a story, yet three copies of it were spread open under her nose—one on the piano, one on the parlor table, one on the sideboard—all open at the passage about "The Preacher."

The relatives retired in disgust. With the departure of the last one Melinda seized a magazine and fled to the orchard. She would read that story herself. As she turned the leaves she caught sight of a manly form carefully climbing the fence. She dropped the periodical and stood on it, gazing up pensively into the well-laden boughs of the Baldwin.

The Reverend Graham took her hands in a strong ministerial squeeze.

"It is very good of you to come to see me so soon after my return," she faltered.

"Good—Melinda! Do you think I could help coming?" he ejaculated. "I can not tell you—words are inadequate to express what I feel," he went on,—"the deep gratitude, the humility, the wonder, the triumph, the determination, with God's aid, to live up to the high ideal you have set forth in your wonderful story. You have seen the latent qualities, the nobler potentialities; you have shown me to myself. Melinda! Do not think that I do not appreciate the difficulties of this hour for you. I know how your heart is shrinking, how your delicate maidenly modesty is up in arms. But Melinda, you know! you know! Dear Melinda!"

"I am glad you understand me, John."

"Understand you!" The Reverend Graham could restrain himself no longer. He swept her into his arms, appropriating his own.

Melinda remained there quiescently leaning against his shoulder, because there seemed nothing else to do, also because it was a broad and comfortable shoulder against which to lean. "I am done for," she reflected. "Now I will never dare to confess that I was trying to be humorous."

Then she reached up a hand and touched the Preacher's face timidly. His cheek was wet. "Why, John—John!" she whispered.

ABOU BEN BUTLER

By John Paul