The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2

Even before Noll died a number of Presbyterian Preachers had announced that they considered Adam, Moses, Jonah and other personages of Note in Bible literature as Myths. With rare exceptions, there is about as little initiative in Professional Preachers as there is in Professional Pugilists, and the last sect of which one might have expected such iconoclastic utterances is that which claims Calvin and John Knox as its shining lights. I remember, as a small boy, feeling sorry for a chum because, as a Presbyterian, he did not know and had no means of finding out whether he had been born to go to Heaven or Hell, and in those days both of those resorts were spelled with capitals and pronounced with awe. Had he been able by a most rigorous observance of all the rules laid down by God and Man to make certain of living in a future state of beatitude I would have felt sorry for him still, as he would be compelled, of necessity, to miss many of the joys of this world; still his future then—though in a hard and grinding measure—would have lain in his own hands. But whether he became a Pirate or a Preacher was all one; he had been born to go to Heaven or Hell and nothing that he could do could enable him to change his final destination. In later life he, evidently, appreciated this, for he became a Stock-Broker, after, as a Preacher, having broken most of the Commandments and fractured the rest. Had the Dominie of the flock of which he was a member expressed a doubt of the existence, some years ago, of Adam, Moses or Jonah, but particularly Adam, he would have saved my friend from much mental and some physical distress.

Adam a Myth

When a hide-bound, moss-grown bigot begets doubts and then removes them, he is like a bull in a china shop and wants to break everything in sight, not through an innate love of destruction, but because he has lost his rope and is too delirious to find the corral. This throwing overboard of Adam so suddenly and without any recently discovered evidence upon his personality or lack of it, comes in the nature of a shock. The act has been perpetrated after the fashion of Captain Kidd in his worst days. It shows a complete lack of even a faint acquaintance with the small amenities that help to smooth the ruts in social intercourse to not only order a personage of Adam's standing and reputation to "walk the plank," but to push him off. Besides, it shows an utter disregard for the feelings of that large body of people who do not think, to wipe out, at one fell wipe, the whole scheme of creation without substituting another. If there were no Adam there could not have been a Garden of Eden or an Eve. And what about the Apple and the Serpent and a lot of other picturesque details? Personally, I intend to stick to my belief in Adam, not because I ever had a high opinion of him, but because I have met a number of men who remind me of him—men who always throw the blame on the woman; also because I have seen several spots that would make an admirable Eden. Besides, there is something in the story of what happened in the Garden that rings true; not that all women would adopt Eve's bold method, but much may be forgiven a woman who had no mother or maiden aunt to play duenna, and who lived before either was fashionable, or, according to the story, necessary.

Hurrah for Noah

But these reverend gentlemen must not go too far. One may regret Adam, and his extinction may start fissures in many genealogical trees, but to such of us as only "came over in the Mayflower," or "with the Conqueror," his flop into oblivion may entail no serious damage to existing rights. Upon Moses I always looked as a person of doubtful parentage, and a leader who, had he lived in recent centuries, would have been sacrificed by his own men within a month at most. His only title to fame is that he kept the Jews for forty years from appropriating anything but a desert which nobody else wanted and was a blistering hindrance to them. The story of Moses certainly has weak spots. Too much is known of the localities which he frequented. The crossing of the Red Sea without even getting his boots full of water seems too lurid an accomplishment for a pedestrian who consumed forty years in reaching the confines of an ordinary desert. His disappearance will cause but little clamor. Then there is Jonah. Those who know the sea, or have a passing acquaintance with fish, place no reliance upon the Jonah-whale story. Jonah will not be missed greatly. But I must insist upon the preservation of Noah. In him are we all—no creed nor color barred—indebted for our first striking and imperfect impressions of the animal kingdom. No liar could have invented the story of the flood. It is of too wholesale a character for pure invention, and the few details which accompany it wear an air of truth. Unless it were founded upon fact, could manufacturers all over the world have been induced to strengthen it and put money in their purse by turning out, annually, not millions but trillions of Noah's arks? Once shake the belief of childhood in the stability of Noah and ruin will fall upon a great industry, for machinery which will turn out a never-ending stream of Noah's arks could not be driven to turn out anything else. There is nothing to take the place of Noah's ark, as there is no one to take the place of Noah. In other lines trade may follow the flag, but in the Noah's ark industry it follows a belief in Noah and is known to every flag that has ever waved, paying allegiance to no particular banner. Before these fatiguing divines drive even a tack into Noah's coffin, let them provide us with a personage of equal interest and influence. If they are not permitted to move further in their scheme of destruction until they do this, Noah is safe. They can only try to kill; they cannot create.

Callow Judgment

Mr. William M. Thomas, United States Minister to Sweden, called upon the President lately and made him a present of several Swedish razors. A Washington correspondent at once telegraphed to his newspaper in New York: "He selected the razors himself and is a fine judge of them though he does not use a razor." If the person who sent this important dispatch wanted to secure an Old Master he, doubtless, would hire a canal boatman to pass judgment upon the painting before he put his money down.

Champagne and "Champagne"

It is customary for Americans to think that they get the best of everything. There are Americans who do get the best of everything, but this is because they know what is best and are able and willing to pay for it. But where hoi polloi thinks that it gets the best of everything it is mistaken. Take champagne, for instance. "A large bottle on the ice" is a common order in New York. To the waiter it means a bottle of champagne. He may or may not ask if any particular brand is required: that depends upon the quality of the hostelry in which he is employed; also upon the quality of the customer. The "large bottle" is forthcoming. It contains a label on which is printed the maker's name.

The cork which comes out of the bottle is, generally, much larger than the neck into which it has been forced. It is seldom that one hears a buyer ask to see the cork. The average buyer of champagne would not understand the cork's story. He is accustomed to large and bulging corks and if he were to see an attenuated specimen, of dark complexion and as hard as a piece of vulcanized rubber he would look at it with great suspicion and, doubtless, refuse the wine. But an experienced waiter will know his man and will bring him the sort of "large bottle" to which he has been accustomed, though it will not be champagne that a wine drinker would care to swallow. Champagne of the "large bottle" variety is drunk to a larger extent in the United States than anywhere else; in fact one would not be far wrong in saying that it is manufactured for the American market. Generally, the best champagne is made for England and Russia. The people of those countries who drink champagne have made at least a cursory study of it and are able, at a moment's notice, to name the best vintages of the last twenty-five or thirty years. There are Americans who can do this, too, but they are not of the "large bottle" or "cold bottle" variety. The latter are the people who account for the fact that much more "champagne" is consumed than is furnished by the vineyards of France.

    THOMAS B. FIELDERS.

Drift of the Day

From my station here on the housetop my gaze wanders out over acres of roofs—the leaded coverings of hotels, apartment-houses, and office buildings. They rear themselves beneath and around me as the lesser peaks of the Himalayas seen from Mount Everest. My eyes ache with the diversity of their shapes, the eccentricity of their styles, the irregularity of their altitudes. No man viewing them can continue blind to the independence of the American citizen, to the ostentation of his right of personal selection, to his individual caprice. They stand, a brick-and-iron commentary upon the competing ambitions of two generations of townsmen.

A hulking, twenty-story modernity stands side by side with a dwarfish, Dutch anachronism, but neither possesses any right of precedence over the other. They are equal in the eyes of the proletary. Classic and nondescript, marble and brick, granite and iron, unite to form the most heterogeneous collection of fashions the earth's surface anywhere exhibits. Even Milton's blind eyes pictured nothing so fantastic as this architectural chaos of Manhattan, so hopeless of eventual order. And yet are there not lacking signs that the quaint pot-pourri of whimsicalities will one day coalesce into a well-defined, artistic composition, a twentieth century City Beautiful. God grant its attainment be not unduly protracted!

But it is with the insides of this vast confusion of buildings I am presently concerned. As the buildings are, so are the inhabitants—little and big, tall and short, honestly constructed and jerry built, old fashioned and up to date, aping the fashions of a dozen civilizations. In any one of these great structures will be found the representatives of a dozen nations, born to a dozen tongues, yet all conversing in a common English, covering their motley nationalities with a common Americanism, united in their loyalty to the Republic. In the diversity of its constituents lies the strength of the American nation.

No European section of the American community sufficiently preponderates over its fellows to affect the national sympathy toward foreign Powers. Irish counteracts English opinion; German sonship is balanced by the filial sentiment of the Latin races—the Slavs and the Russian Jews have no European predilections. Consequently, American foreign policy is dictated by Americans for the benefit of Americans, without reference to the warring interests in Europe or in Asia. The men who lead in the United States are men who, for the most part, have not voyaged beyond the confines of the United States. All of their attention upon affairs of State is cast inward upon their own land, is absolutely self-centred. The resultant national policy is the most selfish, but the most formidable in the world of nations.

American and Briton are alike co-heirs to the common Anglo-Saxon heritage, but they are brothers who differ as materially in temperament as in ambition and in creed. The Briton is daily becoming more cosmopolitan, his outlook more world-wide. The shadow of the village pump has departed from his statecraft, and his political horizon girdles the earth. But the American remains intensely introspective, suspicious of foreign influence, interested solely in his world of the Western Hemisphere.

In Britain are Little Englanders who dread every step the nation makes in outward expansion, but there are here no Little Americanders. The Little Englanders doubt the nation's power to hold the nation's possessions. Here, in the United States, are men who question the advisability of penetrating into world politics, but no man among them has doubt of the nation's power to keep whatever territory the Star Spangled Banner once has floated over. They are merely jealous, jealous of the absolute isolation of their commonwealth, quick to resent any remotest possibility of interference with it.

In every American's ears rings the music of assured success, the certainty of a rich inheritance laid up for him and his children's children in the internal resources of his country. In many an Englishman's ears sound only the doleful croakings of the prophets, the sinister rumblings of approaching doom. Though his pessimism be in great part born of his climate, it has had a very real effect upon his statecraft. It has driven him outward to find hope and sunshine abroad, in his colonies, and in India. It has made of the race a nation of expansionists, reaping where they have not sown, gathering where they have not strawed.

It is otherwise here with us under a sky that would make of Job an optimist. All around are light and color, the evidences of life and hope. Here the whites are white, and not a dirty drab. The streets glisten clean in the sunlight, and every window is a reflector of glad promise. In London, choked with fog, and grimy with soot-dust, the Englishman cannot see the future for smoke, cannot extract a gleam of hope from the sodden, mud-soaked thoroughfares. To be sanguine here on my housetop is to be natural and in harmony with my surroundings. To be hilarious in the Strand is to be unnatural, to court detention in a police cell or a lunatic asylum. There is a wide gulf separating Sandy Hook from Land's End, but a still wider between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Westminster Bridge Road.

And so those who have dreamed of Anglo-American alliances awake to find themselves deceived by the very intensity of their desires. The bloodship between the nations is itself the surest deterrent of alliance. Just as in the Church marriage between nigh kinsmen is forbidden, so political marriage between the British and American nations can never be. The United States is possessed of a single idea—the consolidation and enrichment of the United States. No interest is permitted to clash with that paramount national ambition.

To that end all share in the pomp and vanities of the world is sacrificed; her ambassadors tolerated, not supported; her Secretary of State snubbed; her President jealously watched in all his exchanges of courtesy with foreign Powers. United States citizens may be maltreated and murdered in Bulgaria or in China, the United States will not go to war on their behalf. Her mission is confined to the Western Hemisphere, and over its borders no insult, no cajolery will avail to tempt her. Within her own sphere her temper is quick, and her arm strong to avenge. Across the ocean she is long suffering and slow to anger.

Down here at my feet the American is engaged in his nation-building somewhat less satisfactorily than out in the wide world beyond. A nation compounded of a dozen alien races may unite on matters of foreign policy, but in that is no warranty of harmony at home. Domestic strife is as bitter here as in Germany or Britain or France. I watch from my housetop men marching in processions of protest; I read of strikes; I hear of an infinity of rude wranglings, of senators battling on the floor of the forum, of disputes in the sacred halls of Tammany. Not yet has the Irish lamb lain down with the Virginian lion.

It were strange were it otherwise in a land where the city man has destroyed the home. The American has shown no great genius for the domestic virtues. He has hauled down the homes of his ancestors, has builded in their stead vast apartment-houses and tenement buildings—steam-heated Towers of Babel. Into each of these he has packed the population of a European market-town, has left the children to grow up on the roofs and staircases, the babies to find a blessed release through rickety fire-escapes. When a fit of reform has touched him, he has stirred up the garbage of the Tenderloin and the Red Light District, has spread it broadcast over his cities to poison his wife and his daughter.

No, the American has still much to learn of domestic politics. Let him sit with me here any night on my housetop and he will see the sad effects of sectarian reform and newspaper hysteria. He will see the creatures of the Tenderloin at home on Broadway and Fifth Avenue where, twelve months ago, their presence was unknown. He will see the policeman on the beat neglect the broken lock of my house door that haply he may learn something of the doings of his fellow constable. He will see a whole civil service turned into a bureau of information, a department of espionage. He will see the entire machinery of city government made ineffectual in the sacred name of Reform.

It was an American who made immortal the simple phrase: "There's no place like home." Verily, one must take a long day's journey from New York ere he discover a place in any essential comparable with the home of our childhood's prattle, the home with its mother and its mother love, its rosy boys and its sweet faced lasses. That home has been handed over to the house-breakers, to make way for modern buildings, for improvements on the surroundings that made our mothers and our wives.

Sitting here on the housetop, one wonders if those residential skyscrapers are indeed rooted in the foul pit of Acheron. If built in the proportions of the iceberg, they must reach well into the bowels of Tophet and thence derive the evil that is in them.

    ROGER SKIRVING.

Lady Betty's Comment

In opposition to the familiar precept of a patriot touching the price and preciousness of liberty, femininity, scorning to be free, exults in shackles. We hesitate over our own taste, and turn rather to the crowning of some courageous male, with a liking and a talent for notoriety. The duties of this gentleman being irksome and his reward being ridicule, it is perhaps amazing that we stand in no nearer danger of lacking a leader for want of aspirants than does the nation of begging for a President. Once guided by a master mind the most exotic may come frankly forth to meet and struggle with the daily weariness of dinner giving and dinner eating: may look towards a triumphant overthrow of those problems on what forks to use, what jewels to adopt, what mannerisms to affect and what fads to uplift. As our persons are no more sacred than our habits we feel that our vanity is never safe; and our present despot, who owns a Turkish taste in femininity, and insists on the fashionableness of fat, unhappy is the woman who, like Mrs. Spottletoe of Chuzzlewit fame, is lean and dry and errs on the side of slimness.

The dawn of the racing season alters the bucolic character of the roads leading to Morris Park and makes them gay and noisy thoroughfares—conglomerations of smart traps and rainbow frocks. The drive to and from the track is the jolliest feature of a programme that—as is not uncommonly the case where the mighty are involved—smacks not a little of sameness. The inevitable lunch at the club house is occasionally enlivened by a friendly tiff over the possession of a piazza table where is offered a view of the course combined with the comforts of repletion, and is, in consequence, considered a vantage point of desirability. We meet the same people, and we eat of the same dishes disguised in the same service, that daily play the routine of our fashion; for, as Thackeray says of his British, wherever we may go, we carry with us our pills and our prejudices. And there be times, too, when we almost echo those cravings of poor Becky Sharp who, having attained the summits of society, cries in the desperation of her ennui: "Oh, how much gayer it would be to dance in spangles in a booth!"

That enterprising bachelor, Mr. James Henry Smith, evinces a nice taste in matters feminine. His much-to-be-desired box seat is not infrequently embellished by the presence of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, who this year shows a preference for the varying shades of Quaker gray, and was recently admired in a cloth of that color made with a plain skirt and a blousing coat with bishop sleeves. Mrs. Alfred likewise leans modestly towards the dove and is shown at her best in a soft pale frock trimmed with passementerie of the same shade and topped by a large hat of black chip tipped well towards the right side. Mrs. Alfred is young enough to ignore the ravages of a possible embonpoint, but there be other matrons who hang so uncertainly about that borderland of beauty that they somehow manage to convey the hint that only by an unwinking watchfulness do they succeed in foiling the onslaughts of his ogreship of avoirdupois. In their eye lurks terror and in their lines one spells their secret of rebellious hunger; of Delsarte, gymnastics and massage. Sometimes the matron is an improvement on the maid. But this is not always true. For those who turn coarse and harsh with years, we recommend Christian Science and a less flexible self-denial.

We find it difficult to understand that lack of sense and taste which led to the recent criticisms of Mr. Jefferson's oratory on the Actor's Home occasion. Mr. Jefferson, happening by mistake to pass over one of the many names of benefactors, and, presto! there were a dozen listeners, malice-prompted, eager to ascribe to this falter of an old man's memory every meager and jealous motive. An intricate and, of a necessity, a somewhat didactic argument, delivered in the open air, does not become the simplest of tasks in the hands of an old gentleman who has turned his back upon the fourscore mark. He was brave and he was most obliging to undertake a speech of any character, and now his payment seems to be in the customary false, ill-natured coin.

It is said that the late Ward McAllister shrank with peculiar distaste from the vulgarity of divorce. If so he is to be congratulated on passing away before the publication of his niece's domestic misfits. Mrs. Young is appallingly frank concerning her wrongs and the suit threatens to be spicy; although so far, the name of the actress corespondent has not been given to the press. It was good of Mr. McAllister to attempt that separation of wheat from chaff which at one time rendered his verdicts of such dread power among social aspirants; it may be the irony of mockery that to-day his family are conspicuous upon only two points. One relative goes clamorously into the divorce court while another wins celebration by the showy style of a bodice.

The gossip who predicted that the wife of the French ambassador would decline to be received by the Countess Cassini must content herself as best she may with the development of some lesser scandal, for certainly this last effort has met refutation. Mme. Cambon dined at the Russian embassy like the diplomatic woman that she is.

The visit of Miss Roosevelt to Cuba is said to have been more or less of a failure speaking from a Latin standpoint. Miss Roosevelt did not "take" with the Cuban element. She is uncompromisingly Anglo-Saxon and lacks that pliability which would endear her to the children of another race. Cuban women excel in charm of mannerism and in their eyes Miss Roosevelt appears unpolished and uncut. We may like her better as she is, but it is safe to say that had she but a few added years of experience there would have been a more gracious outcome to her trip. Miss Roosevelt Scovel was recently dining at Sherry's. She wore an exquisite white frock but is not herself a pretty girl though her grace uplifts somewhat her mediocrity of appearance.

It is the province of brides to be as bedecked as circumstances permit. Why then does Mrs. Depew automobile about Washington in a miserable machine that most people would refuse to be seen in? Is it humility? It is not gallant in Chauncey to permit the lady to appear in such an antiquated rattletrap. In appearance she is a plain woman; sensible, gracious and nice. Her position is a trying one which she supports with tact. So far she has been guilty of no error of taste and her manner with her husband is pleasant without bearing a trace of that silliness which the Senator's great age encouraged Washington to expect. No one has yet enjoyed any spiteful fun at Mrs. Depew's expense though many were on the qui vive for entertainment.

Idlehours has been duly garnished for the return of the master, who loves this home better than the gray pile which represents the best architectural type on Fifth Avenue. Mr. Vanderbilt is modestly conscious of the prestige wrested from Fournier, and is a cheering illustration of the soundness of open-air enjoyment.

How often have we read of the monthly ten thousand dollars which our ambassador will lavish upon Brook House! In justice to Mr. Reid it must be owned that he is simplicity itself, and by no one is it supposed that either he or Mrs. Reid have part in the publication of these details. He showed wisdom in a preference for his own household over the proffered royal quarters which would have been assigned him. He is chosen for his fitness, but were he the veriest clod the dignity of his position would still carry with it a sufficient measure of respect. Our desire to embellish its importance is absurd, and the hysteria of the dailies is calculated to place a dignified gentleman in a ridiculous light. Mrs. Reid's name and cultivation will doubtless enable her to support a monotonous role with grace; but, in consideration of British proficiency in matters ceremonial, their money will not be called upon to add a jot to the dignity of their reception. Their early departure has not prevented the opening of their country place, Ophir Hall, in the vicinity of White Plains, while their neighbor, Colonel Astor, has long been established at Ferncliffe.

Miss Nannie Leiter, of studious renown, is visiting Chicago in the company of her father. Mamma Leiter plans a garden party in compliment to Ambassador and Madame Cambon, while brother Joseph courts fame from the arena of Buffalo Bill; but for a clear space of a day or two we have learned naught of Daisy of the violet orbs. They are the loveliest eyes in Washington, by contrast with which the commoner grays and blues appeal to the enamoured diplomats but as so many soulless pebbles.

From London wafts the rumor that Alexandra, pleading a dread of copy-designing peeresses, guards with jealous vigilance the secret of her coronation crown, and gossip adds that she fears to have it duplicated by some enterprising American. It is doubtful if the peculiar humor of the British populace would allow of a full appreciation of this joke. Years and etiquette combined have led her Majesty to the thraldom of the rouge and enamel pot. Like the sensible woman that she is she attempts no concealment of the fact that she protects herself from becoming hideous by the employment of three maids whose duty it is to successively undertake the embellishment of the royal countenance. By means of this relief no one of these women loses her delicacy of eye and touch, and Alexandra blooms with the rosy softness of a girl.

The papers seem to be woefully wrought up over the financial rating of Mr. Harry Lehr. Whether he is or whether he is not a wine boomer would not ordinarily be a query of agitating importance. Nor yet is the exact proportion of his yearly salary of national interest. No one ever accused this agile gentleman of setting up for a millionaire while his ingenuousness touching his wife's property is disconcerting in its frankness.

Now that Tom Reed is settled in New York one wonders somewhat that one hears so little of his family. They are to be congratulated on their breeding, for with his prominence to back them they would find notoriety an easy plum. A gentleman called at Mr. Reed's office a day or two ago to ask for an autograph letter on the plea that he had in his possession one of each of the speakers, and wound up his request with the half joking query of "You are a great man, are you not, Mr. Reed?" "No," said the rotund Tom in his big-voiced drawl, "No, but I am a good man."

    BETTY STAIR.

The Play

If it be true that the future is revealed in the past, then should there be something in the dramatic season which is dead to indicate the character of the season not yet born. By the straws of public approval is the course of the dramatic current determined by those master mariners of the stage, the managers of theatres. The late season has left no great store of such buoys to mark the fair channel to success. Of such as there are, the purport is not altogether convincing.

To record that "Du Barry" and "Beauty and the Beast" are notable successes is but to record that the public, as ever, is attracted by display of rich vestments and spectacular effect. Such straws indicate nothing more than that a Circus or a Wild West Show will seduce to Madison Square Garden an audience that would fill a theatre for a month.

Mr. Hawtrey's triumph at the Garrick Theatre is as little of a guide to popular opinion as was Anna Held's or Weber and Fields'. No manager in his senses would suggest that because Mr. Hawtrey succeeded with "A Message from Mars," the public are prepared to support a series of like Christmas ghost stories. It was the novelty that took, and the personality of a refreshingly non-American actor.

For myself I would seek the trend of public opinion in a very different group of plays; in a batch that did not chronicle one single great success, but each of which received a fair meed of popular support. I refer to such plays as "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," "A Modern Magdalen," and "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." In such plays lies the modern tragedy. They are addressed to the times, actual, intelligible.

But such as held the New York stage in the past season were timorously constructed, bowdlerized by stage managers and, for the most part, poorly acted. Two of the three I have indicated are plays many seasons old. The greatest of these is "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," interpreted for us by the greatest actress who ever essayed the part. It indicated a development I believe to be still in its infancy—a development that was arrested before it had been weaned from its first timid suckling.