volume ill written and stupidly conceived, to set me in conceit

with myself. I read a few pages, and then apply myself to the

composition of verses. These done, I burn them, and go to bed

with a cheerful spirit.

THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS ORATION

Address to An Employer Upon Demanding a Raise, or, The Battle of

Manila Envelopes

_As Planned_ _As Delivered_

I think you will admit, If you are not too

sir, that the quality busy, sir, there is one

of my work during the other matter--in fact,

last two years has been the truth of the matter

such that my services in fact is exactly--well,

could not easily be replaced. sir, I was precisely

I speak more wondering whether--of

in pain than in anger course I know this is a

when I say that it has bad time--indeed I have

been a matter of profound been very pleased to see

surprise to me to business picking up a

note that you have not bit lately, and I am sure

seen fit to acknowledge my own department has

my value to the firm in been--but to tell you the

some substantial way. I truth, sir, I have been

think I may say that wondering--of course it

I have been patient. is just as you think best

I have continued my and I wouldn't think of

efforts with unremitting insisting, but after all,

zeal, and I think I may perhaps I have made a

flatter myself that my mistake in mentioning

endeavors have not been it, but I was thinking

without result. I have that possibly you might

here, carefully tabulated, bear in mind the idea of

a memorandum of a possible future raise in

the increased profits in salary at some future time.

my department during

the last twelve months,

due in great part to my

careful management. I

am sorry to have to

force you into a decision,

but I think I owe it to

myself to say candidly

that unless you see the

matter in the same way

that I do I shall feel

obliged to deprive the

firm of my services.

ON LAZINESS

[Illustration]

To-day we rather intended to write an essay on Laziness, but were too

indolent to do so.

The sort of thing we had in mind to write would have been exceedingly

persuasive. We intended to discourse a little in favour of a greater

appreciation of Indolence as a benign factor in human affairs.

It is our observation that every time we get into trouble it is due to

not having been lazy enough. Unhappily, we were born with a certain fund

of energy. We have been hustling about for a number of years now, and

it doesn't seem to get us anything but tribulation. Henceforward we are

going to make a determined effort to be more languid and demure. It is

the bustling man who always gets put on committees, who is asked to

solve the problems of other people and neglect his own.

The man who is really, thoroughly, and philosophically slothful is the

only thoroughly happy man. It is the happy man who benefits the world.

The conclusion is inescapable.

We remember a saying about the meek inheriting the earth. The truly meek

man is the lazy man. He is too modest to believe that any ferment and

hubbub of his can ameliorate the earth or assuage the perplexities of

humanity.

O. Henry said once that one should be careful to distinguish laziness

from dignified repose. Alas, that was a mere quibble. Laziness is always

dignified, it is always reposeful. Philosophical laziness, we mean. The

kind of laziness that is based upon a carefully reasoned analysis of

experience. Acquired laziness. We have no respect for those who were

born lazy; it is like being born a millionaire: they cannot appreciate

their bliss. It is the man who has hammered his laziness out of the

stubborn material of life for whom we chant praise and allelulia.

The laziest man we know--we do not like to mention his name, as the

brutal world does not yet recognize sloth at its community value--is

one of the greatest poets in this country; one of the keenest satirists;

one of the most rectilinear thinkers. He began life in the customary

hustling way. He was always too busy to enjoy himself. He became

surrounded by eager people who came to him to solve their problems.

"It's a queer thing," he said sadly; "no one ever comes to me asking for

help in solving _my_ problems." Finally the light broke upon him. He

stopped answering letters, buying lunches for casual friends and

visitors from out of town, he stopped lending money to old college pals

and frittering his time away on all the useless minor matters that

pester the good-natured. He sat down in a secluded cafe with his cheek

against a seidel of dark beer and began to caress the universe with his

intellect.

The most damning argument against the Germans is that they were not lazy

enough. In the middle of Europe, a thoroughly disillusioned, indolent

and delightful old continent, the Germans were a dangerous mass of

energy and bumptious push. If the Germans had been as lazy, as

indifferent, and as righteously laissez-fairish as their neighbours, the

world would have been spared a great deal.

People respect laziness. If you once get a reputation for complete,

immovable, and reckless indolence the world will leave you to your own

thoughts, which are generally rather interesting.

Doctor Johnson, who was one of the world's great philosophers, was lazy.

Only yesterday our friend the Caliph showed us an extraordinarily

interesting thing. It was a little leather-bound notebook in which

Boswell jotted down memoranda of his talks with the old doctor. These

notes he afterward worked up into the immortal Biography. And lo and

behold, what was the very first entry in this treasured little relic?

Doctor Johnson told me in going to Ilam from Ashbourne, 22

September, 1777, that the way the plan of his Dictionary came to

be addressed to Lord Chesterfield was this: He had neglected to

write it by the time appointed. Dodsley suggested a desire to

have it addressed to Lord C. Mr. J. laid hold of this as an

excuse for delay, that it might be better done perhaps, and let

Dodsley have his desire. Mr. Johnson said to his friend, Doctor

Bathurst: "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord

Chesterfield it will be ascribed to deep policy and address,

when, in fact, it was only a casual excuse for laziness."

Thus we see that it was sheer laziness that led to the greatest triumph

of Doctor Johnson's life, the noble and memorable letter to Chesterfield

in 1775.

Mind your business is a good counsel; but mind your idleness also. It's

a tragic thing to make a business of your mind. Save your mind to amuse

yourself with.

The lazy man does not stand in the way of progress. When he sees

progress roaring down upon him he steps nimbly out of the way. The lazy

man doesn't (in the vulgar phrase) pass the buck. He lets the buck pass

him. We have always secretly envied our lazy friends. Now we are going

to join them. We have burned our boats or our bridges or whatever it is

that one burns on the eve of a momentous decision.

Writing on this congenial topic has roused us up to quite a pitch of

enthusiasm and energy.

TEACHING THE PRINCE TO TAKE NOTES

[Illustration]

The Prince of Wales probably suffers severely during his tours abroad,

for he is a shy youth; but he also makes many friends, for he is a

delightfully simple and agreeable person. When we used to see him he

looked a good deal like the traditional prince of the fairy tales, for

he was a slender boy with yellow hair, and blue eyes, and a quick pink

blush. And we feel toward him the friendly sense of superiority that the

college alumnus always feels toward the man who was a freshman when he

himself was a senior; for the prince and ourself stood in that relation

a few years ago at a certain haunt of letters.

There was a course of lectures on history that we were to attend. It was

a popular course, and the attendance was large. Arriving late at the

first lecture the room was packed, and we could see from the door that

there was only one empty seat. This happened to be in the very front

row, and wondering how it was that so desirable a place had not been

seized we hastened to it. The lecturer was a swift talker, and we fell

to taking notes busily. Not for some minutes did we have a chance to

scrutinize our surroundings. We then saw that in the adjoining chair sat

the prince, and surmised that no one had wanted to take the chair for

fear of being twitted by his companions for a supposed desire to hobnob

with royalty.

If we remember correctly, it was the prince's first term of college

life. The task of taking notes from a rapid-fire lecturer was plainly

one to which he was not accustomed, and as he wrestled with his notebook

we could see that he had not learned the art of considering the

lecturer's remarks and putting down only the gist of them, in some

abbreviated system of his own, as every experienced student learns.

Grant Robertson, the well-known historian, was lecturing on English

constitutional documents, and his swift and informal utterance was

perfectly easy to summarize if one knew how to get down the important

points and neglect the rest. But the unhappy prince, desperately eager

to do the right thing in this new experience, was trying to write down

every word. If, for instance, Mr. Robertson said (in a humorous aside),

"Henry VIII was a sinful old man with a hobby of becoming a widower,"

the experienced listener would jot down something like this: H 8,

_self-made widower_. But we could see that the prince was laboriously

copying out the sentence in full. And naturally, by the end of a few

paragraphs, he was hopelessly behind. But he scribbled away

industriously, doing his best. He realized, however, that he had not

quite got the hang of the thing, and at the end of the lecture he turned

to us with most agreeable bashfulness and asked if we would lend him our

notebook, so that he could get down the points that he had missed. We

did so, and briefly explained our own system of abbreviating. We noticed

that in succeeding sessions our royal neighbour did very much better,

learning in some measure to discriminate between what was advisable to

note down and what was mere explanatory matter or persiflage on the part

of the lecturer. But (if we must be candid) we would not recommend him

as a newspaper reporter. And, indeed, the line of work to which he has

been called does not require quite as intense concentration as that of a

cub on what Philip Gibbs calls "The Street of Adventure."

No one could come in contact with the prince without liking him, for his

bashful, gentle, and teachable nature is very winning. We remember with

a certain amusement the time that Grant Robertson got off one of his

annual gags to the effect that, according to the principle of strict

legitimacy, there were in Europe several hundred (we forget the figure)

people with a greater right to the British throne than the family at

present occupying it. The roomful of students roared with genial mirth,

and the unhappy prince blushed in a way that young girls used to in the

good old days of three-piece bathing suits.

A CITY NOTEBOOK

(_Philadelphia_)

It would be hard to find a more lovely spot in the flush of a summer

sunset than Wister Woods. Old residents of the neighbourhood say that

the trees are not what they were fifteen and twenty years ago; the

chestnuts have died off; even some of the tall tulip-poplars are a

little bald at the top, and one was recently felled by a gale. But still

that quiet plateau stands in a serene hush, flooded with rich orange

glow on a warm evening. The hollyhocks in the back gardens of Rubicam

Street are scarlet and Swiss-cheese-coloured and black; and looking

across the railroad ravine one sees crypts and aisles of green as though

in the heart of some cathedral of the great woods.

Belfield Avenue, which bends through the valley in a curve of warm thick

yellow dust, will some day be boulevarded into a spick-and-span highway

for motors. But now it lies little trafficked, and one might prefer to

have it so, for in the stillness of the evening the birds are eloquent.

The thrushes of Wister Woods, which have been immortalized by T. A. Daly

in perhaps the loveliest poem ever written in Philadelphia, flute and

whistle their tantalizing note, while the song sparrow echoes them with

his confident, challenging call. Down behind the dusty sumac shrubbery

lies the little blue-green cottage said to have been used by Benjamin

West as a studio. In a meadow beside the road two cows were grazing in

the blue shadow of overhanging woodland.

[Illustration]

Over the road leans a flat outcrop of stone, known locally as "The Bum's

Rock." An antique philosopher of those parts assured the wayfarer that

it is named for a romantic vagabond who perished there by the explosion

of a can of Bohemian goulash which he was heating over a small fire of

sticks; but one doubts the tale. Our own conjecture is that it is named

for Jacob Boehm, the oldtime brewer of Germantown, who predicted in his

chronicles that the world would come to an end in July, 1919. From his

point of view he was not so far wrong.

Above Boehm's Rock, in a grassy level among the trees, a merry little

circle of young ladies was sitting round a picnic supper. The twilight

grew darker and fireflies began to twinkle. In the steep curve of the

Cinder and Bloodshot (between Fisher's and Wister stations) a cheerful

train rumbled, with its engine running backward just like a country

local. Its bright shaft of light wavered among the tall tree trunks. One

would not imagine that it was less than six miles to the City Hall.

* * * * *

A quarter to one A. M., and a hot, silent night. As one walks up

Chestnut Street a distant roaring is heard, which rapidly grows louder.

The sound has a note of terrifying menace. Then, careering down the

almost deserted highway, comes a huge water-tank, throbbing like an

airplane. A creamy sheet of water, shot out at high pressure, floods the

street on each side, dashing up on the pavements. A knot of belated

revellers in front of the Adelphia Hotel, standing in mid-street, to

discuss ways and means of getting home, skip nimbly to one side, the

ladies lifting up their dresses with shrill squeaks of alarm as the

water splashes round them. Pedestrians plodding quietly up the street

cower fearfully against the buildings, while a fine mist envelops them.

After the tank comes, more leisurely, a squad of brooms. The street is

dripping, every sewer opening clucks and gurgles with the falling water.

There is something unbelievably humorous in the way that roaring

Niagara of water dashes madly down the silent street. There is a note of

irony in it, too, for the depressed enthusiasts who have been sitting

all evening in a restaurant over lemonade and ginger ale. Perhaps the

chauffeur is a prohibitionist gone mad.

* * * * *

While eating half a dozen doughnuts in a Broad Street lunchroom at one

o'clock in the morning, we mused happily about our friends all tucked

away in bed, sound asleep. There is one in particular on whom we thought

with serene pleasure. It was charming to think of that delightful,

argumentative, contradictory, volatile person, his active mind stilled

in the admirable reticence of slumber. He, so endlessly speculatory, so

full of imaginative enthusiasms and riotous intuitions and troubled

zeals concerning humanity, lost in a beneficent swoon of

unconsciousness! We could not just say why, but we broke into chuckles

to think of him lying there, not denying any of our statements,

absolutely and positively saying nothing. To have one's friends asleep

now and then is very refreshing.

* * * * *

Off Walnut Street, below Fifth, and just east of the window where that

perfectly lovely damsel sits operating an adding machine--why is it, by

the way, that the girls who run adding machines are always so

marvellously fair? Is there some secret virtue in the process of adding

that makes one lovely? We feel sure that a subtracting engine would not

have that subtle beautifying effect--just below Fifth Street, we started

to say, there runs a little alley called (we believe) De Silver Court.

It is a sombre little channel between high walls and barred windows, but

it is a retreat we recommend highly to hay fever sufferers. For in one

of the buildings adjoining there seems to be a warehouse of some company

that makes an "aromatic disinfector." Wandering in there by chance, we

stood delighted at the sweet medicinal savour that was wafted on the

air. It had a most cheering effect upon our emunctory woes, and we

lingered so long, in a meditative and healing ecstasy, that young women

immured in the basement of the aromatic warehouse began to peer upward

from the barred windows of their basement and squeak with astonished and

nervous mirth. We blew a loud salute and moved away.

* * * * *

We entered a lunchroom on Broad Street for our favourite breakfast of

coffee and a pair of crullers. It was strangely early and only a few of

the flat-arm chairs were occupied. After dispatching the rations we

carefully filled our pipe. With us we had a copy of an agreeable book,

"The Calamities and Quarrels of Authors." It occurred to us that here,

in the brisk serenity of the morning, would be a charming opportunity

for a five-minute smoke and five pages of reading before attacking the

ardours and endurances of the day. Lovingly we applied the match to the

fuel. We began to read:

Of all the sorrows in which the female character may participate,

there are few more affecting than those of an authoress----

[Illustration]

A stern, white-coated official came over to us and tapped us on the

shoulder.

"There's a sign behind you," he said.

We looked, guiltily, and saw:

POSITIVELY

NO SMOKING

* * * * *

The cocoateria on Eighth Street closes at one A. M. Between

twelve-thirty and closing time it is full of busy eaters, mostly the

night shift from the Chestnut Street newspaper offices and printing and

engraving firms in the neighbourhood. Ham and eggs blossom merrily. The

white-coated waiters move in swift, stern circuit. Griddle cakes bake

with amazing swiftness toward the stroke of one. Little dishes of baked

beans stand hot and ready in the steam-chest. The waiter punches your

check as he brings your frankfurters and coffee. He adds another

perforation when you get your ice cream. Then he comes back and punches

it again.

"Here," you cry, "let it alone and stop bullying it!"

"Sorry, brother," he says. "I forgot that peach cream was fifteen

cents."

One o'clock. They lock the door and turn out the little gas jet where

smokers light up. As the tables empty the chairs are stacked up on top.

And if it is a clear warm evening the customers smoke a final weed along

the Chestnut Street doorsteps, talking together in a cheery undertone.

* * * * *

No man has ever started upon a new cheque-book without a few sourly

solemn thoughts.

In the humble waters of finance wherein we paddle we find that a book of

fifty cheques lasts us about four months, allowing for two or three duds

when we start to make out a foil payable to bearer (self) and decide to

renounce that worthy ambition and make it out to the gas company

instead.

It occurs to us that if Bunyan had been writing "Pilgrim's Progress"

nowadays instead of making Christian encounter lions in the path he

would have substituted gas meters, particularly the quarter-in-the-slot

kind that one finds in a seaside cottage. However----

Four months is quite a long time. It may be weak of us, but we can never

resist wondering as we survey that flock of empty cheques just what

adventures our bank account is going to undergo during that period, and

whether our customary technique of being aloof with the receiving teller

and genial and commentary with the paying ditto is the right one. We

always believe in keeping a paying teller in a cheerful frame of mind.

We would never admit to him that we think it is going to rain. We say,

rather, "Well, it may blow over," and try not to surmise how many

hundreds there are in the pile at his elbow. Probably we think the

explanation for the really bizarre architecture of our bank is to keep

depositors' attention from the money. Unquestionably Walt Whitman's tomb

over in Harleigh--Walt's vault--was copied from our bank.

The cheques in our book are blue. We have always regretted this. If we

had known it beforehand perhaps we would have inflicted our problems

upon another bank. Because there are so many more interesting colours

for cheques, tints upon which the ink shows up in a more imposing

manner. A pale pink or cream-coloured cheque for $2.74 looks much more

exciting than a blue cheque for $25. We have known gray, pink, white,

brown, green, and salmon-coloured cheques. A friend of ours once showed

us one that was a bright orange, but refused to let us handle it. But

yellow is the colour that appeals to us most strongly. When we were very

young and away from home our monthly allowance, the amount of which we

shall not state, but it cost us less effort than any money we ever

received since, came to us by way of pale primrose-coloured cheques.

For, after all, there are no cheques like those one used to get from

one's father. We hope the Urchin will think so some day.

* * * * *

We like to pay homage to the true artist in all lines. At the corner of

Market and Marshall streets--between Sixth and Seventh--the collar-clasp

orator has his rostrum, and it seems to us that his method of harangue

has the quality of genuine art. He does not bawl or try to terrify or

bully his audience into purchase as do the auctioneers of the

"pawnbrokers' outlets." How gently, how winningly, how sweetly he pleads

the merits of his little collar clasp! And there is shrewd imagination

in his attention-catching device, which is a small boy dressed in black,

wearing a white hood of cheesecloth that hides his face. This peculiar

silent figure, with a touch of mystery about it, serves to keep the

crowd wondering until the oration begins.

[Illustration]

With a smile, with infinite ingratiation and gentle persuasion, our

friend exhibits the merits of his device which does away with the

traditional collar-button. His art is to make the collar-button seem a

piteous, almost a tragic thing. His eyes swim with unshed tears as he

describes the discomfort of the man whose collar, fastened by the

customary button, cannot be given greater freedom on a hot, muggy day.

He shows, by exhibition on his own person, the exquisite relief afforded

by the adjustable collar clasp. "When the day grows cool," he says,

"when you begin to enjoy yourself and want your collar tighter, you just

loosen the clasp, slide the tabs closer together, and there you are. And

no picking at your tie to get the knot undone. Now, how many of you men

have spoiled an expensive tie by picking at it? Your fingers come in

contact with the fibres of the silk and the first thing you know the tie

is soiled. This little clasp"--and he casts a beam of affection upon

it--"saves your tie, it saves your collar, and it saves your patience."

A note of yearning pathos comes into his agreeable voice, and he holds

out a handful of the old-fashioned collar-buttons. "You men are wearing

the same buttons your great-grandfathers wore. Don't you want to get

out of collar slavery? _Don't_ you want to quit working your face all

out of shape struggling with a collar-button? Now as this is a

manufacturing demonstration----"

* * * * *

On a warm evening nothing is more pleasant than a ride on the front

platform of the Market Street L, with the front door open. As the train

leaves Sixty-ninth Street it dips down the Millbourne bend and the cool,

damp smell of the Cobb's Creek meadows gushes through the car. Then the

track straightens out for a long run toward the City Hall. Roaring over

the tree tops, with the lights of movies and shops glowing up from

below, a warm typhoon makes one lean against it to keep one's footing.

The airy stations are lined by girls in light summer dresses, attended

by their swains. The groan of the wheels underfoot causes a curious

tickling in the soles of the feet as one stands on the steel platform.

This groan rises to a shrill scream as the train gathers speed between

stations, gradually diminishing to a reluctant grumble as the cars come

to a stop. In the distance, in a peacock-blue sky, the double gleam of

the City Hall tower shines against the night. Down on the left is the

hiss and clang of West Philadelphia station, with the long, dim, amber

glow of the platform and belated commuters pacing about. Then the smoky

dive across the Schuylkill and the bellow of the subway.

* * * * *

From time to time humanity is forced to revise its customary notions in

the interests of truth. This is always painful.

It is an old fetich that the week-end in summer is a time for riotous

enjoyment, of goodly cheer and mirthful solace. A careful examination of

human beings during this hebdomadal period of carnival leads us to

question the doctrine.

[Illustration]

When we watch the horrors of discomfort and vexation endured by

simple-hearted citizens in pursuit of a light-hearted Saturday and

Sunday, we often wonder how it is that humanity will so gleefully

inflict upon itself sufferings which, if they were imposed by some

taskmaster, would be called atrocious.

We observe, for instance, women and children standing sweltering in the

aisles of trains during a two-hour run to the seashore. We observe the

number of drownings, motor accidents, murders, and suicides that take

place during the Saturday to Monday period. We observe families loaded

down with small children, who might have been happy and reasonably cool

at home, struggling desperately to get away for a day in the country,

rising at 5 A. M., standing in line at the station, fanning themselves

with blasphemy, and weary before they start. We observe them chased home

by thunderstorms or colic, dazed and blistered with sunburn, or groaning

with a surfeit of ice cream cones.

It is a lamentable fact (and the truth is almost always lamentable, and

hotly denied) that for the hard-working majority the week-end is a curse

rather than a blessing. The saddest fact in human annals is that most

people are never so happy as when they are hard at work. The time may

come when criminals will be condemned, not to the chair, but to twenty

successive week-ends spent standing in the aisles of crowded excursion

trains.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

Strolling downtown to a well-known home of fish dinners, it is

appetizing to pass along the curve of Dock Street in the coolness of the

evening. The clean, lively odours of vegetables and fruit are strong on

the air. Under the broad awnings of the commission merchants and

produce dealers the stock is piled up in neat and engaging piles ready

to be carted away at dawn. Under the glow of pale arcs and gas lamps the

colours of the scene are vivid. Great baskets of eggplant shine like

huge grapes, a polished port wine colour; green and scarlet peppers

catch points of light; a flat pinkish colour gleams on carrots. Each

species seems to have an ordered pattern of its own. Potatoes are ranged

in a pyramid; watermelons in long rows; white and yellow onions are

heaped in sacks. The sweet musk of cantaloupes is the scent that

overbreathes all others. Then, down nearer to the waterfront, comes the

strong, damp fishy whiff of oysters. To stroll among these gleaming

piles of victuals, to watch the various colours where the lamps pour a

pale silver and yellow on cairns and pyramids of vegetables, is to

gather a lusty appetite and attack the first oyster stew of the season

with a stout heart.

It being a very humid day, we stopped to compliment the curly-headed

sandwich man at Ninth and Market on his decollete corsage, which he

wears in the Walt Whitman manner. "Wish we could get away with it the

way you do," we said, admiringly. He looked at us with the patience of

one inured to bourgeois comment. "It's got to be tried," said he, "like

everything else."

* * * * *

We stopped by the Weather Man's little illuminated booth at Ninth and

Chestnut about 10 o'clock in the evening. We were scrutinizing his

pretty coloured pictures, wondering how soon the rain would determine,

when a slender young man appeared out of the gloom, said "I'm sorry to

have to do this," switched off the light, and pulled down the rolling

front of the booth. It was the Weather Man himself.

We were greatly elated to meet this mythical sage and walked down the

street a little way with him. In order to cheer him up, we complimented

him on the artistic charm of his little booth, with its glow of golden

light shining on the coloured map and the bright loops and curves of

crayon. We told him how almost at any time in the evening groups of

people can be seen admiring his stall, but his sensitive heart was

gloomy.

"Most of them don't understand it," he said, morosely. "The women are

the worst. I've gone there in the evening and found them studying the

map eagerly. Hopefully, I would creep up behind to hear their comments.

One will say, 'Yes, that's where my husband came from,' or 'I spent last

summer over there,' pointing to some place on the map. They seem to

think it's put there for them to study geography."

We tried to sympathize with the broken-hearted scientist, but his spirit

had been crushed by a long series of woes.

"The other evening," said he, "I saw a couple of girls gazing at the

map, and they looked so intelligent I really was charmed. Apparently

they were discussing an area of low pressure that was moving down from

the Great Lakes, and I lent an ear. Imagine my chagrin when one of them

said: 'You see the colour of that chalk line? I'm going to make my next

knitted vestee just like that.' And the other one said: 'I think the

whole colour scheme is adorable. I'm going to use it as a pattern for my

new camouflage bathing-suit.'"

"Thank goodness," cried the miserable Weather Man: "I have another map

like that down at the Bourse, and the brokers really give it some

intelligent attention."

We went on our way sadly, thinking how many sorrows there are in the

world. It is grievous to think of the poor Weather Man, lurking with

beating pulses in the neighbourhood of Ninth and Chestnut in the hope

of finding someone who understands his painstaking display. The next

time you are standing in front of his booth do say something about the

Oceanic High in the South Atlantic or the dangerous Aleutian Low or the

anticyclonic condition prevailing in the Alleghenies. He might overhear

you, and it would do his mournful heart good.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

It was eight o'clock, a cool drizzling night. Chestnut Street was gray

with a dull, pearly, opaque twilight. In the little portico east of

Independence Hall the gas lamp under the ceiling cast a soft pink glow

on the brick columns.

Independence Square was a sea of tremulous, dripping boughs. The quaint

heptahedral lamps threw splashed shimmers of topaz colour across the

laky pavement. "Golden lamps in a green night," as Marvell says,

twinkled through the stir and moisture of the evening.

ON GOING TO BED

One of the characters in "The Moon and Sixpence" remarked that he had

faithfully lived up to the old precept about doing every day two things

you heartily dislike; for, said he, every day he had got up and he had

gone to bed.

It is a sad thing that as soon as the hands of the clock have turned ten

the shadow of going to bed begins to creep over the evening. We have

never heard bedtime spoken of with any enthusiasm. One after another we

have seen a gathering disperse, each person saying (with an air of

solemn resignation): "Well, I guess I'll go to bed." But there was no

hilarity about it. It is really rather touching how they cling to the

departing skirts of the day that is vanishing under the spinning shadow

of night.

This is odd, we repeat, for sleep is highly popular among human beings.

The reluctance to go to one's couch is not at all a reluctance to

slumber, for almost all of us will doze happily in an armchair or on a

sofa, or even festooned on the floor with a couple of cushions. But the

actual and formal yielding to sheets and blankets is to be postponed to

the last possible moment.

The devil of drowsiness is at his most potent, we find, about 10:30

P. M. At this period the human carcass seems to consider that it has

finished its cycle, which began with so much courage nearly sixteen

hours before. It begins to slack and the mind halts on a dead centre

every now and then, refusing to complete the revolution. Now there are

those who hold that this is certainly the seemly and appointed time to

go to bed and they do so as a matter of routine. These are, commonly,

the happier creatures, for they take the tide of sleep at the flood and

are borne calmly and with gracious gentleness out to great waters of

nothingness. They push off from the wharf on a tranquil current and

nothing more is to be seen or heard of these voyagers until they

reappear at the breakfast table, digging lustily into their grapefruit.

These people are happy, aye, in a brutish and sedentary fashion, but

they miss the admirable adventures of those more embittered wrestlers

who will not give in without a struggle. These latter suffer severe

pangs between 10:30 and about 11:15 while they grapple with their fading

faculties and seek to reestablish the will on its tottering throne. This

requires courage stout, valour unbending. Once you yield, be it ever so

little, to the tempter, you are lost. And here our poor barren clay

plays us false, undermining the intellect with many a trick and wile. "I

will sit down for a season in that comfortable chair," the creature

says to himself, "and read this sprightly novel. That will ease my mind

and put me in humour for a continuance of lively thinking." And the end

of that man is a steady nasal buzz from the bottom of the chair where he

has collapsed, an unsightly object and a disgrace to humanity. This also

means a big bill from the electric light company at the end of the

month. In many such ways will his corpus bewray him, leading him by

plausible self-deceptions into a pitfall of sleep, whence he is aroused

about 3 A. M. when the planet turns over on the other side. Only by

stiff perseverance and rigid avoidance of easy chairs may the critical

hour between 10:30 and 11:30 be safely passed. Tobacco, a self-brewed

pot of tea, and a browsing along bookshelves (remain standing and do not

sit down with your book) are helps in this time of struggle. Even so,

there are some happily drowsy souls who can never cross these shallows

alone without grounding on the Lotus Reefs. Our friend J---- D----

K----, magnificent creature, was (when we lived with him) so potently

hypnoidal that, even erect and determined as his bookcase and urgently

bent upon Brann's _Iconoclast_ or some other literary irritant, sleep

would seep through his pores and he would fall with a crash, lying there

in unconscious bliss until someone came in and prodded him up, reeling

and ashamed.

But, as we started to say, those who survive this drastic weeding out

which Night imposes upon her wooers--so as to cull and choose only the

truly meritorious lovers--experience supreme delights which are unknown

to their snoring fellows. When the struggle with somnolence has been

fought out and won, when the world is all-covering darkness and

close-pressing silence, when the tobacco suddenly takes on fresh vigour

and fragrance and the books lie strewn about the table, then it seems as

though all the rubbish and floating matter of the day's thoughts have

poured away and only the bright, clear, and swift current of the mind

itself remains, flowing happily and without impediment. This perfection

of existence is not to be reached very often; but when properly

approached it may be won. It is a different mind that one uncovers then,

a spirit which is lucid and hopeful, to which (for a few serene hours)

time exists not. The friable resolutions of the day are brought out

again and recemented and chiselled anew. Surprising schemes are started

and carried through to happy conclusion, lifetimes of amazement are

lived in a few passing ticks. There is one who at such moments resolves,

with complete sincerity, to start at one end of the top shelf and read

again all the books in his library, intending this time really to

extract their true marrow. He takes a clean sheet of paper and sets down

memoranda of all the people he intends to write to, and all the plumbers

and what not that he will call up the next day. And the next time this

happy seizure attacks him he will go through the same gestures again

without surprise and without the slightest mortification. And then,

having lived a generation of good works since midnight struck, he

summons all his resolution and goes to bed.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS

GARDEN CITY, N. Y.