A Book of Burlesques Part 28

_I.--Men_

Fat, slick, round-faced men, of the sort who haunt barber shops and are always having their shoes s.h.i.+ned. Tall, gloomy, Gothic men, with eyebrows that meet over their noses and bunches of black, curly hair in their ears. Men wearing diamond solitaires, fraternal order watchcharms, golden elks' heads with rubies for eyes. Men with thick, loose lips and s.h.i.+fty eyes. Men smoking pale, spotted cigars. Men who do not know what to do with their hands when they talk to women. Honorable, upright, successful men who seduce their stenographers and are kind to their dear old mothers. Men who allow their wives to dress like chorus girls.

White-faced, scared-looking, yellow-eyed men who belong to societies for the suppression of vice. Men who boast that they neither drink nor smoke. Men who mop their bald heads with perfumed handkerchiefs. Men with drawn, mottled faces, in the last stages of arterio-sclerosis.

Silent, stupid-looking men in thick tweeds who tramp up and down the decks of ocean steamers. Men who peep out of hotel rooms at Swedish chambermaids. Men who go to church on Sunday morning, carrying Oxford Bibles under their arms. Men in dress coats too tight under the arms.

Tea-drinking men. Loud, back-slapping men, gabbling endlessly about baseball players. Men who have never heard of Mozart. Tired business men with fat, glittering wives. Men who know what to do when children are sick. Men who believe that any woman who smokes is a prost.i.tute. Yellow, diabetic men. Men whose veins are on the outside of their noses. Now and then a clean, clear-eyed, upstanding man. Once a week or so a man with good shoulders, straight legs and a hard, resolute mouth....

_II.--Women_

Fat women with flabby, double chins. Moon-faced, pop-eyed women in little flat hats. Women with starchy faces and thin vermilion lips.

Man-shy, suspicious women, shrinking into their clothes every time a wet, caressing eye alights upon them. Women soured and robbed of their souls by Christian Endeavor. Women who would probably be members of the Lake Mohonk Conference if they were men. Gray-haired, middle-aged, waddling women, wrecked and uns.e.xed by endless, useless parturition, nursing, worry, sacrifice. Women who look as if they were still innocent yesterday afternoon. Women in shoes that bend their insteps to preposterous semi-circles. Women with green, barbaric bangles in their ears, like the concubines of Arab horse-thieves. Women looking in show-windows, wis.h.i.+ng that their husbands were not such poor sticks.

Shapeless women lolling in six thousand dollar motorcars. Trig little blondes, stepping like Shetland ponies. Women smelling of musk, ambergris, bergamot. Long-legged, cadaverous, hungry women. Women eager to be kidnapped, betrayed, forced into marriage at the pistol's point.

Soft, pulpy, pale women. Women with ginger-colored hair and large, irregular freckles. Silly, chattering, gurgling women. Women showing their ankles to policemen, chauffeurs, street-cleaners. Women with slim-shanked, whining, sticky-fingered children dragging after them.

Women marching like grenadiers. Yellow women. Women with red hands.

Women with asymmetrical eyes. Women with rococo ears. Stoop-shouldered women. Women with huge hips. Bow-legged women. Appetizing women.

Good-looking women....

_III.--Babies_

Babies smelling of camomile tea, cologne water, wet laundry, dog soap, _Schmierkase_. Babies who appear old, disillusioned and tired of life at six months. Babies that cry "Papa!" to blus.h.i.+ng youths of nineteen or twenty at church picnics. Fat babies whose earlobes turn out at an angle of forty-five degrees. Soft, pulpy babies asleep in perambulators, the sun s.h.i.+ning straight into their faces. Babies gnawing the tails of synthetic dogs. Babies without necks. Pale, s...o...b..tic babies of the third and fourth generation, d.a.m.ned because their grandfathers and great-grandfathers read Tom Paine. Babies of a bluish tinge, or with vermilion eyes. Babies full of soporifics. Thin, cartilaginous babies that stretch when they are lifted. Warm, damp, miasmatic babies.

Affectionate, ingratiating, gurgling babies: the _larvae_ of life insurance solicitors, fas.h.i.+onable doctors, Episcopal rectors, dealers in Mexican mine stock, hand-shakers, Sunday-school superintendents. Hungry babies, absurdly sucking their thumbs. Babies with heads of thick, coa.r.s.e black hair, seeming to be toupees. Unbaptized babies, dedicated to the devil. Eugenic babies. Babies that crawl out from under tables and are stepped on. Babies with lintels, grains of corn or shoe-b.u.t.tons up their noses, purple in the face and waiting for the doctor or the embalmer. A few pink, blue-eyed, tight-skinned, clean-looking babies, smiling upon the world....

_XIV.--HOMEOPATHICS_

_XIV.--Homeopathics_

1.

_Scene Infernal._

During a lull in the uproar of h.e.l.l two voices were heard.

"My name," said one, "was Ludwig van Beethoven. I was no ordinary musician. The Archduke Rudolph used to speak to me on the streets of Vienna."

"And mine," said the other, "was the Archduke Rudolph. I was no ordinary archduke. Ludwig van Beethoven dedicated a trio to me."

2.

_The Eternal Democrat._

A Socialist, carrying a red flag, marched through the gates of Heaven.

"To h.e.l.l with rank!" he shouted. "All men are equal here."

Just then the late Karl Marx turned a corner and came into view, meditatively stroking his whiskers. At once the Socialist fell upon his knees and touched his forehead to the dust.

"O Master!" he cried. "O Master, Master!"

3.

_The School of Honor._

A trembling young reporter stood in the presence of an eminent city editor.

"If I write this story," said the reporter, "it will rob a woman of her good name."

"If you don't write it," said the city editor, "I'll give you a kick in the pantaloons."

Next day the young reporter got a raise in salary and the woman swallowed two ounces of permanganate of pota.s.sium.

4.

_Proposed Plot For a Modern Novel._

Herman was in love with Violet, the wife of Armand, an elderly diabetic.

Armand showed three per cent of sugar a day. Herman and Violet, who were Christians, awaited with virtuous patience the termination of Armand's distressing malady.

One day Dr. Frederick M. Allen discovered his cure for diabetes.

5.

_Victory._

"I wooed and won her," said the Man of His Wife.

"I made him run," said the Hare of the Hound.