The So-called Human Race

Philardee.

No, not in this instance. We quite sympathize with the lady. We much prefer Havelock Ellis to “Jurgen,” for example. Chacun à son goût.

This peculiar and unliterary preference of ours may be due to the fact that once upon a time, in a country job-print, we were obliged to read the proofs of a great many medical works, made up largely of “Case 1, a young man of 28,” “Case 2, a woman of thirty,” etc. These things were instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when “Case 1” is expanded to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or “Case 2” expressed in the form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of lassitude comes o’er us which is more or less akin to pain.

THE COME-BACK

Click! Click!
Goes my typewriter,
Transcribing letters
That the Boss dictates around
His chew
After he has discussed the weather,
And the squeak in his car,
And his young hopeful’s latest,
And the L. of N.

Click! Click!
While he writes impudent
Things
For the Line
About the Stenos,
And asks me how to spell
The words.

Hark!
To the death rattle of
The cuspidor
Upset,
As he departs at two o’clock
To golf,
While I type on
Till five. Agnes.

Mr. Gompers advises labor to accomplish its desires at the polls, instead of chasing after the red gods of political theory. This is excellently gomped, and will make as deep an impression as an autumn leaf falling on a rock.

Since the so-called working classes are unable or unwilling to do so simple a sum as dividing the total wealth of a nation by the number of its inhabitants; since they cannot or will not understand that if the profits of an industry are exceeded by the wages paid, the industry must stop; since they only reason a posteriori when that is well kicked, and by themselves – it is fortunate that the United States has the opportunity to watch the progress of the experiment now making in England.

Nowadays the buying and dispatching of Christmas gifts is scientifically made. One merely selects this or that and orders it sent to So-and So. One turns in to a book store a list of titles and a list of names and addresses, and the book store does the rest.

Consequently one misses the pleasant labor of tying up the gift, of journeying to the post-office, to have it weighed and stamped, and of dropping it through the slot and wondering whether the string will break, or whether the package will go astray.

We were engaged in dropping newly-minted double-eagles into the Christmas stockings of our contributors when an auto truck got mired near our chamber window, and the roar of it woke us up.

Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, and other Orientals are disliked, not because of race or color, but because they are willing to work. Anyone who is willing to work in these times is, like the needy knife-grinder, a wretch whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance.

Washladies get more money for less work than any other members of the leisure class, with the exception of the persons who work on putting greens. In addition to their wage, they get car-fare and two or three meals. Why? Because it is not generally known that a mere man, with a washing machine and a bucket of solution, can do more washing in three hours than a washlady does in three days.

What do they mean “industrial unrest”? Industry never rested so frequently or for such protracted periods.

The natives of Salvador can neither read nor write, but their happy days are numbered. The Baptist church is going to spend three millions on their conversion. Their capacity for resistance is not so great as that of the Chinese. Do you remember what Henry Ward Beecher said of the Chinese? “We have clubbed them, stoned them, burned their houses, and murdered some of them, yet they refuse to be converted. I do not know any way except to blow them up with nitroglycerine, if we are ever to get them to heaven.”

“Do you not know,” writes Persephone, “that with the coming of all this water, all imagination and adventure have fled the world?” Just what we were thinking t’other evening, when we dissipated a few hours with our good gossip the Doctor. “I am,” said he, pouring out a meditative three-fingers, “in favor of prohibition; and I believe that some substitute for this stuff will be found.”

We pursued that lane of thought a while, until it debouched into a desert. The Doctor then took down the works of Byron, and read aloud – touching the high spots in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” “Don Juan,” “Childe Harold,” “The Prisoner of Chillon” – pausing ever and anon to replenish the glasses. It was midnight ere the book was returned to its shelf.

It was a delightful evening. And we wondered whether, without the excellent bourbon and the cigars, we should not have had enough of Byron by 10:30.

An English publisher binds all his books in red because, having watched women choosing books in the libraries, he found that they looked first at the red-bound ones. Does that coincide with your experience, my dear?

Our interest in Mr. Wells’ “Outline of History” has been practically ruined by learning from a geologist that Mr. Wells’ story of creation is frightfully out of date. Should he not have given another twenty-four hours to so large an opus?

Visiting English authors have a delightful trick of diagramming their literary allusions. Only the few are irritated by it.

“And as I am in no sense a lecturer …” – Mr. Chesterton.

Seemingly the knowledge of one’s limitations as a public entertainer does not preclude one from accepting a fee five or ten times larger than one would receive in London. We are languidly curieux de savoir how far the American equivalent would get in the English capital.

You cannot “make Chicago literary” by moving the magazine market to that city. Authors lay the scenes of their stories in New York rather than in Chicago, because readers prefer to have the scene New York, just as English readers prefer London to Manchester or Liverpool. If a story is unusually interesting it is of no consequence where the scene is laid, but most stories are only so-so and have to borrow interest from geography.

THANKS TO MISS MONROE’S MAGAZINE

Only a little while ago
The pallid poet had no show —
No gallery that he could use
To hang the product of his muse.

But now his sketches deck the walls
Of many hospitable halls,
And juries solemnly debate
The merits of the candidate.

TRADE CLASSICS

Every trade has at least one classic. One in the newspaper trade concerns the reporter who was sent to do a wedding, and returned to say that there was no story, as the bridegroom failed to show up. Will a few other trades acquaint us with their classics? It should make an interesting collection.

Sir: The classic of the teaching trade: A school teacher saw a man on the car whose face was vaguely familiar. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but aren’t you the father of two of my children?” S. B.

Sir: The son of his father on a certain occasion, when the paper was overset, objected to adding two pages, but in a moment of economical inspiration agreed to permit one extra page. C. D.

Sir: Don’t forget the classic of dry stories. “An Irishman and a Scotchman stood before a bar – and the Irishman didn’t have any money.” L. A. H.

To continue, the Scotchman said: “Well, Pat, what are we going to have to-day? Rain or snow?”

Sir: “If you can’t read, ask the grocer.” But I heard it differently. An Englishman and an American read the sign. The American laughed. The Englishman did not see the humor of it. The American asked him to read it again; whereupon the Englishman laughed and said: “Oh, yes; the grocer might be out.” 3-Star.

You may know the trade classic about the exchange editor. The new owner of the newspaper asked who that man was in the corner. “The exchange editor,” he was informed. “Well, fire him,” said he. “All he seems to do is sit there and read all day.”

Divers correspondents advise us that the trade classics we have been printing are old stuff. Yes; that is the peculiar thing about a classic. Extraordinary, when you come to think of it.