The Hohenzollerns in America Part 14

Their faces are fixed. Their sentences are reduced to- "Do you know the Petersons?"

"No. Do you know the Appleby's?"

"No. Do you know the Willie Johnsons?"

"No."

Then at last comes a rift in the clouds. One of them happens to mention Beverley Dixon. The other is able to cry exultingly-

"Beverley Dixon? Oh, yes, rather. At least, I don't KNOW him, but I used often to hear the Applebys speak of him."

And the other exclaims with equal delight-

"I don't know him very well either, but I used to hear the Willie Johnsons talk about him all the time."

They are saved.

Half an hour after they are still standing there talking of Beverly Dixon.

The Etiquette Book

Personally I have suffered so much from inability to begin a conversation that not long ago I took the extreme step of buying a book on the subject. I regret to say that I got but little light or help from it. It was written by the Comtesse de Z-. According to the preface the Comtesse had "moved in the highest circles of all the European capitals." If so, let her go on moving there. I for one, after trying her book, shall never stop her. This is how the Comtesse solves the problem of opening a conversation:

"In commencing a conversation, the greatest care should be devoted to the selection of a topic, good taste demanding that one should sedulously avoid any subject of which one's vis-a-vis may be in ignorance. Nor are the mere words alone to be considered. In the art of conversation much depends upon manner. The true conversationalist must, in opening, invest himself with an atmosphere of interest and solicitude. He must, as we say in French, be prepared to payer les rais de la conversation. In short, he must 'give himself an air.'"

There! Go and do it if you can. I admit that I can't. I have no idea what the French phrase above means, but I know that personally I cannot "invest myself with an atmosphere of interest." I might manage about two per cent on five hundred dollars. But what is that in these days of plutocracy?

At any rate I tried the Comtesse's directions at a reception last week, on being introduced to an unknown lady. And they failed. I cut out nearly all the last part, and confined myself merely to the proposed selection of a topic, endeavouring to pick it with as much care as if I were selecting a golf club out of a bag. Naturally I had to confine myself to the few topics that I know about, and on which I can be quite interesting if I get started.

"Do you know any mathematics?" I asked.

"No," said the lady.

This was too bad. I could have shown her some good puzzles about the squares of the prime numbers up to forty-one.

I paused and gave myself more air.

"How are you," I asked, "on hydrostatics?"

"I beg your pardon," she said. Evidently she was ignorant again.

"Have you ever studied the principles of aerial navigation?"

I asked.

"No," She answered.

I was pausing again and trying to invest myself with an air of further interest, when another man was introduced to her, quite evidently, from his appearance, a vapid jacka.s.s without one tenth of the brain calibre that I have.

"Oh, how do you do?" he said. "I say, I've just heard that Harvard beat Princeton this afternoon. Great, isn't it?"

In two minutes they were talking like old friends. How do these silly a.s.ses do it?

When Dressed Hogs are Dull

An equally unsuccessful type of conversation, often overheard at receptions, is where one of the two parties to it is too surly, too stupid, or too self-important and too rich to talk, and the other labours in vain.

The surly one is, let us say, a middle-aged, thick-set man of the type that anybody recognizes under the name Money Hog. This kind of person, as viewed standing in his dress suit, mannerless and stupid, too rich to have to talk and too dull to know how to, always recalls to my mind the head-line of the market reports in the newspapers, "Dressed Hogs are Dull."

The other party to the conversation is a winsome and agreeable woman, trying her best to do her social duty.

But, tenez, as the Comtesse of Z-- would say, I can exactly ill.u.s.trate the position and att.i.tude of the two of them from a recollection of my childhood. I remember that in one of my nursery books of forty years ago there was a picture ent.i.tled "The Lady in Love With A Swine." A willowy lady in a s.h.i.+mmering gown leaned over the rail of a tessellated pig-sty, in which an impossibly clean hog stood in an att.i.tude of ill-mannered immobility. With the picture was the rhyming legend,

There was a Lady in love with a swine, "Honey," said she, "will you be mine?

I'll build you a silver sty And in it you shall lie."

"Honk!" said He.

There was something, as I recall it, in the sweet willingness of the Lady that was singularly appealing, and contrasted with the dull mannerless pa.s.sivity of the swine.

In each of the little stanzas that followed, the pretty advances of the Lady were rebuffed by a surly and monosyllabic "honk" from the hog.

Here is the social counterpart of the scene in the picture-book. Mr. Grunt, capitalist, is standing in his tessellated sty,-the tessellated sty being represented by the hardwood floor of a fas.h.i.+onable drawing-room. His face is just the same as the face of the pig in the picture-book. The willowy lady, in the same s.h.i.+mmering clothes and with the same pretty expression of eagerness, is beside him.

"Oh, Mr. Grunt," she is saying, "how interesting it must be to be in your place and feel such tremendous power. Our hostess was just telling me that you own practically all the shoemaking machinery factories-it IS shoe-making machinery, isn't it?-east of Pennsylvania."

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

"Shoe-making machinery," goes on the willowy lady (she really knows nothing and cares less about it) "must be absolutely fascinating, is it not?"

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

"But still you must find it sometimes a dreadful strain, do you not? I mean, so much brain work, and that sort of thing."

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt.

"I should love so much to see one of your factories. They must be so interesting."

"Honk!" says Mr. Grunt. Then he turns and moves away sideways. Into his little piggy eyes has come a fear that the lady is going to ask him to subscribe to something, or wants a block of his common stock, or his name on a board of directors. So he leaves her. Yet if he had known it she is probably as rich as he is, or richer, and hasn't the faintest interest in his factories, and never intends to go near one. Only she is fit to move and converse in polite society and Mr. Grunt is not.

2.-Heroes and Heroines

"What are you reading?" I asked the other day of a blue-eyed boy of ten curled up among the sofa cus.h.i.+ons.

He held out the book for me to see.

"Dauntless Ned among the Cannibals," he answered.

"Is it exciting?" I enquired.

"Not very," said the child in a matter-of-fact tone. "But it's not bad."

I took the book from him and read aloud at the opened page.