Post Impressions Part 10

"You see," he explained, "the people who were here before you had a music-box."

When a renting-agent discerns signs of disappointment in a prospective tenant he immediately calls his attention to the shower. The agent's face as he ushered me into the bath-room and pointed to the shower was irradiated by a smile of ecstatic beat.i.tude. He reminded me of Mme.

n.a.z.imova when she waits for the Master Builder to tumble from the church tower.

"Does the shower work?" I asked.

"Why, of course it does," he said.

"That is very interesting," I said. "Most of them either drip or else the hot water comes down all at once. I don't suppose you have to keep away to one side and thrust your finger forward timidly before you venture under the shower?"

"Not at all," he said. "This has splendid pressure. Just turn it on for yourself."

I did as I was told, and after he had finished drying himself with his handkerchief he asked me whether this wasn't one of the best showers I had ever come across. I agreed, and he then told me that the very latest ideas in modern bath-room construction had been utilised by the architect. As for the people who had just moved out, they were so delighted with the shower that they spent the greater part of the day in the tub, often doing their reading there.

On our way towards the library and living-room he called my attention to the air in the hall. He said that if there was any breeze stirring anywhere we were sure to get it in that particular apartment. This puzzled me, because he had told Emmeline the same thing about another apartment which she had inspected and which faces south and west, while this one faces north and east. Suppose now a good northeast breeze-- But we were now in the main bedroom and he was asking me to take notice of a small iron safe let into the wall at the height of one's head.

"This," he said, "is extremely useful for jewels and old silver. You don't find it in every apartment house, I a.s.sure you."

"That _is_ convenient," I said, and looked out of the window, "and of course one could keep other valuables in there, too, like bonds and mortgages and such things."

"A great many people do," he said.

We pa.s.sed another bedroom which was so small that even the agent looked apologetic. He said it was the maid's room, but that the people who had just moved out had a woman come in by the day and used the chamber as a store-room. He supposed we should prefer to have our maid sleep in the house.

"We do," I said, "but then we might get a short maid. The Finns, for example, are a notoriously chunky race and attain their full height at an early age. Let us look at the library."

I did not like the room at all. It faced north and looked out upon the rear of a tall building only thirty feet away. I asked him if the light was always as bleak as it was to-day.

"You get all the light you want in here," he said. "Lots of people, you know, object to the sun. It's hard on the eyes. The people who had this apartment always kept the window shades down. It made the room so cosy."

I shook my head. The dimensions of the room were quite disappointing. It was not only small, but there was little wall s.p.a.ce, because the architect had provided no less than three doorways which were supposed to be covered with portieres. I presume that architects find open doorways much easier to plan than any other part of a room.

He was surprised at my objections. There was plenty of s.p.a.ce, he thought. As libraries go it was one of the largest he had seen. Here you put an armchair, and here you put a small, compact writing-desk, and you had plenty of floor s.p.a.ce in the middle for a small table.

"And the bookcases?" I asked.

He looked downcast.

"You have bookcases?" he said.

"We have six."

He was about to say something, but I antic.i.p.ated him.

"I know, of course," I said, "that the people who lived here before used to keep their books in the kitchen, but I hardly see how we could manage that. It's too much trouble, and besides I am somewhat absent-minded. It would be absurd if I should walk into the kitchen for a copy of 'Man and Superman,' and come back with half a grapefruit on a plate. And, furthermore, I like a library where a man can get up occasionally from his writing-table and pace up and down while he is clarifying his ideas.

You couldn't do that here."

"There is a nice, long hall," he said. "You might pace up and down that." But he saw I was unconvinced, and he did not go to much pains in exhibiting the dining-room, merely remarking that it did look rather small, but the people who last lived in the apartment were accustomed to go out for their meals.

You will see now why I am so intensely interested in the tenants whose successors we were on the point of being. With life growing more flat and monotonous about us, how refres.h.i.+ng to come across a family which keeps a music-box in the nursery, does its reading in the bath-tub, and never eats in the dining-room. Is it studied originality on their part or are they born rebels? And how far does their eccentricity go? Does the head of the house, when setting out for his office in the morning, walk upstairs? Do they walk downstairs when they wish to go to bed?

I am still to meet these highly original citizens of New York, but their numbers must be increasing. Every year I hear of more and more former tenants who prefer dark rooms and libraries without shelf s.p.a.ce. I have never asked the renting-agent why, being so contented with their surroundings, his tenants should have moved out. But probably it is because they have found an apartment where the rooms are still smaller and the windows have no sun at all.

XVIII

DIFFERENT

Constantly I am being invited, through the mails or the advertising columns, to buy something because it is different. Such appeals are wasted upon me. In the realm of ideas, I am as radical as the best of them, in many ways. But when it comes to shopping I am afraid of change.

The advertising writer is the most unoriginal creature imaginable. He is more imitative than a theatre manager on Broadway. He is more imitative than the revolutionaries of art, the Impressionist who imitates the Romanticist, the Post-Impressionist who imitates the Impressionist, the Cubist who imitates the Post-Impressionist, the Futurist who imitates the Cubist, and the Parisian dressmaker who imitates the Futurist. When a happy word or phrase or symbol is let loose in the advertising world, it is caught up, and repeated, and chanted, and echoed, until the sound and sight of it become a torture. How long ago is it since every merchantable product of man's ingenuity from automobiles to xylophones was being dedicated to "his majesty the American citizen"? How long is it since every item in the magazine pages was something ending in ly, "supremely" good, or "potently" attractive, or "permanently" satisfying, or in any other conceivable phrase, adverbially so? To-day the mail-order lists are crammed with commodities that are different. Oh, jaded American appet.i.te that refuses to accept a two-for-a-quarter Troy collar unless it is different!

Now the truth that must be apparent to any man who will only think for a moment--and by all accounts your advertising writer is always engaged in a h.e.l.lish fury of cerebration--is that there are a great many commodities whose value depends on the very fact that they shall not be different, but the same. If I were engaged in the business of publicity, I cannot imagine myself writing, "Try our eggs--they are different." I should also hesitate to write, "Sample our lifeboats, they are different; try them and you will use no other." If I were working for the gas company I should never think of saying, "Come in and look at our gas metres, they are different." It requires little effort to draw up a list of marketable goods, services, and utilities for which it would be no recommendation at all to say that they are different. Thus:

Railway time tables.

Photographs.

Grocers' scales.

Complexions.

Affidavits, and especially statements made in swearing off personal property tax a.s.sessments.

Clocks.

Individual shoes of a pair.

The multiplication table.

The Yosemite Valley.

In every instance it would manifestly be absurd to try to prove that the object in question is anything but what we have always known it to be or expected it to be.

On the other hand, there is a great cla.s.s of commodities which one would never think of taking seriously unless we were a.s.sured that they are different from what we have always found them to be. If some ingenious inventor could really put on the market a Tammany Hall that was different, or a hair tonic that was different, or something different in the way of

Hat plumes (guaranteed not to tickle).

Musical comedy.

Rag-time.

Domestic help.

Book-reviews.

Winter temperature at Palm Beach (as compared with temperature in New York city).

Remarks on the weather.

Mr. Carnegie's speeches.

Remarks on Maude Adams.

Epigrams about women.

Epigrams about love.

Epigrams about money.

Epigrams.

Food prices.

Florence Barclay.

Golf drivers (guaranteed not to slice).

Bra.s.sies (guaranteed not to top).