Post Impressions Part 5

"Fortunately Helen did not feel my neglect as she might. For by this time she, too, was getting letters from sociological experiment stations. Helen was graduated from a New England college. Her letters, at first, dealt with problems of domestic economy. She had to write out model dietaries, statements of weekly expenses, the relative merits of white and coloured help. Later she was led into the field of child psychology. Our little Laura was hardly able to go out into the open air, because her mother had to keep her under observation during so many hours of the day. The child grew pale and nervous. Helen grew thin. In her case, poor girl, it was actual lack of food. There was no money in the house. One night as we sat down at table there was just a gla.s.s of milk and a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter at Laura's plate; for us there was nothing. At first I failed to understand. Then I looked at Helen and she was trying to smile through her tears."

He sobbed and I turned and stared out of the window.

"That night," he said, "I went out and p.a.w.ned my watch; my great-grandfather had worn it. People rally quickly under trouble, and the next morning we were fairly cheerful. I set to work on a list of questions from the Bureau of Comparative Eugenics. Helen was busy with a questionnaire on Reaction Time in Children Under Six, from the Psychological Department at Harvard. I was resigned. I looked up and saw Laura playing with her alphabet blocks. I thought: Well, our lives may be spoiled, but there is the child. Life had cast no shadow on the current of her young days. At that moment the hall-boy brought in a letter. It was addressed to Miss Laura Smith--our baby. It was from the Wisconsin Laboratory of Juvenile aesthetics. It contained a list of questions for the child to answer. How many hours a day did she play?

Did she prefer to play in the house or on the street? Did she look into shop windows when she was out walking or at moving-picture posters? Was she afraid of dogs? I was crushed. There was a mist before my eyes. I fell forward on the table and wept."

His lip trembled, but the manhood was not gone from him. He faced me with a show of firmness.

"Mind you," he said, "I am not complaining. The individual must suffer if the world is to move forward. We have suffered, but in a good cause."

I agreed. I recalled the tabulated results of a particularly elaborate questionnaire printed in the morning's news. Questions had been sent to a thousand college graduates. Of that number it appeared that 480 lived in the country, 230 preferred the drama to fiction, 198 were vegetarians, and 576 voted for Mr. Wilson at the last Presidential election. Those who voted the Democratic ticket were less proficient in spelling than those who voted for Colonel Roosevelt. Could anything be more useful?

IX

THORNS IN THE CUs.h.i.+ON

I have a confession to make and I have my desk to clean out. One is as hard to go at as the other. If people would only refrain from putting my books and papers in order whenever I am away, I could always find things where I leave them and the embarra.s.sment I am about to relate would have been spared me. After all, there is efficiency and efficiency. If the book I need at any moment is always buried beneath a pile of foreign newspapers, it is only interfering with my work to haul it out during my absence and put it on the desk right in front of me, where I cannot see it.

It was at Harding's place that I met Dr. Gunther. Harding had insisted that we two ought to know each other. After I had spent half an hour in the Doctor's company I agreed that had been worth my while; the rest is for him to say. Gunther is a physician of high standing, but his hobby is astronomy, and it was quite evident that he is as big an expert in that field as in his own profession. We spent a delightful evening. As he rose to say good-night, Gunther turned to me and smiled in a timid fas.h.i.+on that was altogether charming.

"I must confess," he said with a sort of foreign dignity of speech, "that my desire to make your acquaintance was not altogether disinterested. I have here," pulling a large envelope out of his pocket, "a few remarks which I have thrown together at odd moments, and which it occurred to me might be of interest to your readers. It is on a subject which I can honestly profess to know something about. Perhaps you might pa.s.s it on to your editor after you have glanced through it and decided that it had a chance. In case it is found unavailable for your purposes, you must be under no compunction about sending it back. You see, I have put the ma.n.u.script into a stamped and addressed envelope. I know how busy you journalists are."

I told him I would be delighted to do what I could. I brought the ma.n.u.script to the office next morning, laid it on my desk, and forgot about it. It was a Sat.u.r.day. After I left the office, the janitor's a.s.sistant, being new to the place, came in and cleaned up my room. When I looked for the paper on Monday, I could not find it. At first I was not alarmed, because I reasoned that in the course of two or three weeks it would turn up.

But this was evidently Dr. Gunther's first experience as a contributor to the press. He was impatient. Within a week I had a letter from him, dated Boston, where, as he explained, he had been called on a matter of private business which would keep him for some time. Without at all wis.h.i.+ng to seem importunate, he asked whether my editor had arrived at any decision with regard to his ma.n.u.script. It was a vexing situation. I shrank from writing and confessing how clumsy I had been; and besides the paper was likely to be found at any moment. I saw that I must fight for time.

What I am about to say will confirm many good people in their opinion of the unscrupulous nature of the newspaper profession; but the truth must be told. I determined to write to Dr. Gunther as if I had read his article. The terrible difficulty was that I did not know what it was about. I was fairly sure it had to do with one of two things, medicine or astronomy. He had said, when he gave me the ma.n.u.script, that it was a subject on which he could claim special knowledge. But which of the two was it? For some time I hesitated, and then I wrote the following letter:

"Dear Dr. Gunther: Before giving your valuable paper a second and more thorough reading, I must bring up a question which suggests itself even after the most cursory examination. It is this: Will your article go well with ill.u.s.trations, and if so where are they to be had? You know that ours is a picture supplement, appealing to a general audience, and there is every chance for inserting ill.u.s.trations into an article of scientific nature abounding in such close-knit argument as you present.

Of course there is not the least reason for haste in the matter. A reply from you within the next four weeks will be in time."

Next morning I found a telegram from Boston on my desk. It said: "Naturally no objection to pictures. Suggest you reproduce some of the ill.u.s.trations from Langley's masterly work on the subject. Gunther."

My ruse had succeeded. I was prepared now to keep up a fairly active correspondence until the missing paper was found. I knew of Samuel Pierpont Langley, one of the greatest of American astronomers and a pioneer of aviation. I turned to the encyclopaedia to see which one of Langley's books was likely to be the one Gunther had in mind. There, before me, was a biographical sketch of John Newport Langley, an English physiologist, who had published, among other things, a treatise "On the Liver," and another "On the Salivary Glands." I recalled that at Harding's house Gunther, after an elaborate discussion of the present state of meteorology, had drifted into a spirited tirade against the evils of ill-cooked and undigested food. It might very well be this paper "On the Salivary Glands" that Gunther had in mind.

I delayed writing as long as I could while the office was being ransacked for the missing article. It was a hopeless search. The ma.n.u.script had evidently been swept away into the all-devouring waste basket, another victim to mistaken ideals of efficiency. A few days later came a long and friendly letter from Gunther. Without wis.h.i.+ng to flatter me, he said that he was quite as much interested in my opinion of his article as in getting it published. He hoped to hear from me at my very earliest convenience.

I waited nearly a week, and yielding to fate wrote as follows:

"Dear Dr. Gunther: The article is altogether admirable. It seems to me that there are just two subjects which never lose their appeal to the average man. One is the food by which he lives. The other is the universe in which he lives. They represent the opposite poles in his nature, one being no less important than the other. Let the primitive man but satisfy the cravings of his stomach, and his awed gaze will turn to the illimitable glory of the stars. I think of Pasteur's epoch-making researches into the processes of food-fermentation and then I think of Galileo. If you ask me which is the greater man, I will say frankly I do not know. Your article will duly appear in our magazine, though not for some time. In the meanwhile, it may be that additions or changes will suggest themselves to you. Very likely you have a carbon copy of your ma.n.u.script at home. Make such alterations as you see fit and send the new ma.n.u.script to us as soon as you are satisfied with it."

The foregoing letter was addressed to Dr. Gunther in Boston. Two days later he wrote from his home address in New York. He said: "I cannot speak adequately of the consideration you have given to my poor literary effort. Your letter offering me an opportunity to revise the ma.n.u.script reached me just before I left for New York. At home I found the original article awaiting me, in my own envelope. Evidently it had occurred to you that I might not have a copy of the article at hand--which is indeed the case--and so you hastened to send me the original."

Of course the envelope containing the good Doctor's ma.n.u.script had not fallen into the hands of the janitor at all. It had caught the quick eye of our conscientious mail-boy, who saw his duty and promptly did it. It only remains for me to persuade the managing editor to print the article when it comes back. After what I have gone through, this should not be difficult. Our readers, therefore, may look forward to a masterly article on a subject of great interest. Whether it is an astronomical article or a pure food article the reader will learn for himself.

X

LOW-GRADE CITIZENS

Cooper was in a confidential mood.

"Isn't it true," he said, "that once so often every one of us feels impelled to go out and a.s.sa.s.sinate a college professor?"

"Why shouldn't one?" said Harding. "No one would miss a professor except, possibly, his wife and the children."

"That's just it, his children," said Cooper. "That's what makes a man hesitate. The particular college professor I have in mind recently published an article on Social Decadence in the _North American Review_.

He deplored the tendency among our well-to-do cla.s.ses toward small families. At the same time he deplored the mistaken zeal of our low-income cla.s.ses in trying to more than make up for the negligence of their betters. He said, 'The American population may, therefore, be increasing most rapidly from that group least fitted by heredity or by income to develop social worth in their offspring. Such a process of "reversed selection" must mean, for the nation, a constant decrease in the social worth of each succeeding generation.' He brought forward a good many figures, but I have been so angry that I am quite unable to recall what they are."

"In that case," Harding said, "you should lose no time in seeking out the man and slaying him before his side of the case comes back to you."

"People," said Cooper, with that happy gift of his for dropping a subject to suit his own convenience, "have fallen into the habit of saying that the art of letter-writing is extinct. They say we don't write the way Madame de Sevigne did or Charles Lamb. This is not true.

"For instance, on April 26, 1913, Charles Crawl, a low-income American residing in the soft-coal districts of western Pennsylvania, wrote a letter which I have not been able to get out of my mind. With that unhappy predilection for getting into tight places which is one of the characteristics of our improvident, low-income cla.s.ses, Charles Crawl happened to be in one of the lower workings of the Cincinnati mine when an explosion of gas--unavoidable, as in all mine disasters--killed nearly a hundred operatives. Charles Crawl escaped injury, but after creeping through the dark for two days he felt his strength going from him, and so, with a piece of chalk, on his smudgy overalls, he wrote the following letter:

"'Good-bye, my children, G.o.d bless you.'

"He had two children, which for a man of low social worth was doing quite well. But on the other hand he was improvident enough to leave his children without a mother. When I was at college, my instructor in rhetoric was always saying that my failure to write well was due to the fact that I had nothing to say; and he used to quote pa.s.sages from Isaiah to show how the thing should be done. I think my rhetoric teacher would have approved of Charles Crawl's epistolary style. I think Isaiah would have."

"But we can't all of us work in the mines," I said.

"Therefore it is not to you that America is looking for the development of an epistolary art," said Cooper; "an art in which we are bound to take first place long before our coal deposits are exhausted. Charles Crawl had his predecessors. In November, 1909, Samuel Howard was thoughtless enough to let himself be killed, with several hundred others, in the St. Paul's mine at Cherry, Illinois. He, too, left a letter behind him. He wrote:

"If I am dead, give my diamond ring to Mamie Robinson. The ring is at the post-office. I had it sent there. The only thing I regret is my brother that could help mother out after I am dead and gone.

I tried my best to get out and could not.

"You see, being a low-income man, of small social worth and pitifully inefficient, even when he did his best to get out, he could not. But perhaps the subject tires you?"

"You might as well go on," said Harding. "If you finish with this subject you will have some other grievance."

"I have only two more examples of the vulgar epistolary style to cite,"

said Cooper. "Strictly speaking one of them is not a letter. But it is to the point. On the night of April 14, 1912, an Irishman named Dillon of low social value, in fact a stoker, happened to be swimming in the North Atlantic. The _t.i.tanic_ had just sunk from beneath his feet. But perhaps I had better quote the testimony before the Mersey Commission, which, being an official communication, is necessarily unanswerable, as the late Sir W. S. Gilbert pointed out:

"Then he [Dillon] swam away from the noise and came across Johnny Bannon on a grating--

"From the fact that Johnny Bannon had managed to possess himself of a grating we are justified in concluding that he was a man of somewhat higher social worth than the witness, Dillon. However,

"--came across Johnny Bannon on a grating. He said, "Cheero, Johnny," and Bannon answered, "I am all right, Paddy." There was not room on the grating for two, and Dillon, saying, "Well, so long, Johnny," swam off--

In thus leaving Johnny Bannon in undisputed possession of the grating you see that Dillon once more wrote himself down as a low-grade man unfit for compet.i.tive survival. However,