A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 20

"You're nuts. Hennessey has a sea picture over the bar with some gals on the rocks. You know the one I mean. And if this is a sea picture I'm a orang-outang."

"Well, Louis, it's probably a different sea. Can you imagine anybody sending a thing like that in? It ain't hardly worth the work of unwrapping it. Hurry up, Louis, we're way behind."

"Well, take this, then. 'Children of the Ice.' Hm, I don't see no kids. I suppose this stuff here is the ice. But where's the kids?"

"He probably means the birds over there, Louis."

"If he means the birds why don't he say birds instead of children? Why don't he say 'birds of the ice'? What's the sense of saying 'children of the ice' when he means birds?"

"Go on, Louis. Don't argue with me. Hurry up."

"Here's some photographs."

"Them ain't photographs, you nut. They're portraits."

"Well, they look almost as good as photographs. 'My Favorite Pupil.' It's pretty good, Mike. See, there's the violin. He's a violin pupil. You can tell. Got it?"

"Yeah. Bring on the next."

A silence came over Louis. He stood for several minutes staring at something.

"Hurry up," called Mike. "It's getting late."

"This is a mistake," called Louis. "Here's one that's a mistake."

"How come, Louis?"

"Well, look at it. You can see for yourself. The guy made a mistake."

"What does it read on the back? Hurry, we can't waste no more time."

"It reads 'Up, Down and Across' or something. It's a mistake though."

Louis remained eyeing the canvas raptly. "It ain't finished, Mike. We ought to send it back."

"Let's see, Louis." Time out for critical inspection. "You're right. It is a mistake. 'Up, Down and Across,' you said. Well, we'll let it ride. It's not our fault. What's the name of the guy?"

"Bert Elliott," called Louis. A laugh followed. Louis turned to me and my friend.

"You see this?" he said. "I get it now. That's the Wrigley Building over there. What do you know about that?"

Louis seized his sides and doubled up. Mr. Elliott, beside me, cleared his throat and glanced apprehensively at his canvas.

"I'll say it's the first one he laughed at," said Mr. Elliott, pensively.

"He didn't laugh at any of the others. Look, he's still looking at it.

That's longer than he looked at any of the others."

"All right, Louis," from Mike. "Come on."

"Ho, ho," Louis went on, "I'd like to see this guy Elliott. Anybody who would draw a picture like that. Hold your horses, Mike, here's another.

'The Faun." What's a faun, Mike? I guess he means fern. It looks like a fern."

"It does that, Louis. But we'll have to let it go as a faun. It's probably a foreign word. Most of these artists are foreigners, anyway."

Mr. Elliott and I left, Mr. Elliott remarking on the way down the Inst.i.tute steps, "Ho, hum."

ORNAMENTS

Ornaments change, and perhaps not for the best. The scherzo architecture of Villon's Paris, the gabled caprice of Shakespeare's London, the Rip Van Winkle jauntiness of a vanished New York, these are ghosts that wander among the skysc.r.a.pers and dynamo beltings of modernity.

One by one the charming blunders of the past have been set to rights.

Highways are no longer the casual folderols of adventure, but the reposeful and efficient arteries of traffic. The roofs of the town are no longer a rumble of idiotic hats c.o.c.ked at a devil-may-care angle. Windows no longer wink lopsidedly at one another. Doorways and chimneys, railings and lanterns have changed. Cobblestones and dirt have vanished, at least officially.

Towns once were like improvised little melodramas. Men once wore their backgrounds as they wore their clothes--to fit their moods. A cap and feather, a gable and a latticed window for romance. A glove and rapier, a turret and a postern gate for adventure. And for our immemorial friend Routine a humpty-dumpty jumble of alleys, feather pens, cobblestones, echoing stairways and bouncing milk carts.

These things have all been properly corrected. Today the city frowns from one end to the other like a highly efficient and insanely practical plat.i.tude. Mood has given way to mode. An essential evolution, alas!

D'Artagnan wore his Paris as a cloak. And perhaps Mr. Insull wears his Chicago as a s.h.i.+rt front. But most of us have parted company with the town. It is a background designed and marvelously executed for our conveniences. The great metronomes of the loop with their million windows, the deft crisscross of streets, the utilitarian miracles of plumbing, doorways, heating systems and pa.s.senger carriers--these are monuments to our collective sanity.

But if one is insane, if one has inherited one's grandfather's characteristics as idler, loafer, lounger, dreamer, lover or picaroon, what then? Eh, one stays at home and tells it to the typewriter or, more likely, one gets run down, chewed up and bespattered while darting across State Street in quest of an invigorating vanilla phosphate.

Nevertheless--there's a word that speaks innate optimism, nevertheless, there are things which do not change as logically as do ornaments. Men and women, for instance. And although the town wears its mask of deplorable sanity and though Sunnyside Avenue seems suavely reminiscent of Von Bissing's troops goose-stepping through Belgium--there are men and women.

One naturally inquires, where? Quite so, where are there men and women in the city? One sees crowds. But men and women are lost. One observes crowds answering the advertis.e.m.e.nts. The advertis.e.m.e.nts say, come here, go there.

And one sees men and women devotedly bent upon rewarding the advertisers.

Again, nevertheless, there are other observations to make. There are the taxicabs. Here in the taxicabs one may still observe men and women.

Villon's Paris, Shakespeare's London and vanished New York, these are crowded into the taxicabs. In the taxicabs men and women still wear the furtive, illogical, questing, mysterious devil-may-care, wasterel adventure masks of their grandfathers' yesterdays.

What ho! A devilishly involved argument, that, when the taxicab owners plume themselves upon being the last word in the matter of deplorable efficiency, the ultimate gasp in the business of convenience!

Nevertheless, although Mr. Hertz points with proper scorn to the sedan chair, the palanquin, the ox cart and the Ringling Brothers' racing chariots, we sweep a three-dollar fedora across the ground, raise our eyebrows and smile mysteriously to ourselves.

For on the days when our insanities grow somewhat persistent there is a solace in the spectacle of taxicabs that none of the advertis.e.m.e.nts of Mr.

Hertz or his; contemporaries can take away. For odds bodkins! gaze you through the little windows of these taxicabs. Pretty gals leaning forward eager-eyed, lips parted, with an air of piquing rendezvous to the parasols clutched in their dainty hands. Plump, heavy-jowled dandies reclining like tailored paladins in the leather cus.h.i.+ons. Keen-eyed youths surrounded with heaps of bags and cases on a carefully linened quest. Nervous old women, mysteriously ragged creatures, rakish silk hats, bundles of children with staring fingers, strangely mustachioed and ribald-necked gentry.

A goodly company. A teasing procession for the eye and the thought. The cabs shoot by, caracoling through the orderly lines of traffic; zigzags of yellow, green, blue, lavender, black and white snorting along with a fine disdain. They speak of destinations reminiscent of the postern gate and the latticed window; of the waiting barque and the glowing tavern.