The Patient Observer Part 9

Stopping before a gla.s.s case containing little heaps of ordinary copper coins, Harrington pointed out that these were the odd cents which the scrupulous science of statistics insists on leaving attached to vast sums of money. He showed me the 27 cents which, added to $3,469,746,854 represented the value of the foreign commerce of the United States in 1910; he showed me the twopence ha'penny which, increased by 788,990,187, const.i.tutes the total funded debt of Great Britain; and he laid special emphasis on the eleven pennies which Tammany's most vigorous efforts at economy could not pare off from New York City's budget of $166,246,729.11 for the year 1909.

Another row of gla.s.s cases contained what appeared at first sight a collection of comic dolls. Cooper pointed to a st.u.r.dy little mannikin in boots and a Russian blouse, who, with mouth fearfully distended, was endeavouring to swallow an iron bar four or five times his own size.

"You may have read," said Cooper, "that the annual consumption of pig-iron in Russia is 3.7 tons per capita. This figure shows the fact concretely. Here," indicating the figure of an infant apparently a week or two old, "is a French baby. You may observe that she is engaged in counting her share of the national wealth, which is estimated in France at 1,254 francs 63 centimes for every man, woman, and child. She is wondering whether she ought to invest her capital in Russian treasury bonds or in Steel Common. This," pointing to a group of seven or eight dolls riding on a perfectly modelled brindled cow, "represents the proportions of domesticated cattle to the total population of the United States."

The fire which flashes up in the eye of every amateur when he contemplates the gem of his collection, was visible as Cooper led the way to a good-sized platform of polished mahogany and bra.s.s on which was set up what I took to be a beautiful reproduction of the planetary system in miniature. I was right. "But observe," said Cooper, "the details of construction. The sun is made up of infinitely small eggs, since we know that the weight of all the hen's eggs consumed by the human race since the beginning of the Christian era is equal to one-billionth the weight of the sun. The planets are fas.h.i.+oned in the same way. Jupiter you see is made up of little, squirming animal-like units; that is because Jupiter occupies the same amount of s.p.a.ce that would be filled by the descendants of a single pair of Australian rabbits in five hundred years, if left unchecked. Observe the orbit of the earth. It is marked out in twopenny postage stamps, for statisticians a.s.sure us that the path of the earth around the sun is equivalent in length to all the postage stamps consumed since the beginning of the nineteenth century, if laid end to end. In the same way the seven rings of Saturn are made up of copper pennies, obtained by reducing the world's annual output of gold to coins of that denomination."

We pa.s.sed into a cosy little alcove lined to the ceiling with books.

There seemed nothing out of the ordinary about them at first sight, but my host soon undeceived me. "These," he said, "are the books that might have been written in the last hundred years, if the time and energy that are spent on smoking, drinking, whist, bridge, and out-door games were devoted to the cultivation of literature. Here, for instance, are three plays quite as good as 'Hamlet,' written by two million men named Smith, who gave up the use of tobacco. Here is a philosophical poem which shows on every page an inspiration higher than Goethe ever attained; it embodies the concentrated ideas produced by twenty-five thousand former golf players, thinking half an hour a day for three days in the week.

Here is a poetic version of the future life which completely outcla.s.ses the 'Divina Commedia.' It is compounded out of the experiences of forty-three thousand moderate drinkers who became total abstainers, seventy disbanded croquet a.s.sociations, and 1,125 obsolete euchre clubs.

"Perhaps," concluded Cooper, "you should see this before you go," and he pointed to a single shelf of books with a curious mechanical arrangement at one side. "This shelf," he said, "is exactly five feet long. This little electric motor at the side is so constructed that it gets into motion every day for twenty minutes, and stops. By a system of cogs and levers the motor propels a fine steel needle straight through the five feet of books. A glance at this bra.s.s dial shows at once how far the needle point has reached. At the present moment, for instance, it is halfway through the front cover of the 'Journal of John Woolman.' And while the dial is recording the distance covered on the five-foot shelf, the blue liquid in this gla.s.s tube measures the rising level of culture.

It is a very ingenious application of President Eliot's idea, don't you think?"

XXVI

THE COMMUTER

Whenever Harrington urges me to go to live in the country, his place is only forty-three minutes from City Hall. But when he asked me last week to spend Sat.u.r.day afternoon with him, he told me that some trains are slower than others and that I had better allow ten minutes for the ferry. I have never known a commuter who told the truth about the time it takes him to cover the distance from his office-door to his front lawn. If he is exceptionally conscientious he will take into account the preliminary ride on the Subway and possibly even the walk from his office to the Subway station. But no commuter ever alludes to the fifteen minutes' walk at the other end. I did know one man who never under-estimated the length of his daily trips, but he was a cynic who hated the country and lived there because his wife's mother owned the house, and he multiplied by two the time it really took him to get into town. The exact truth I have never had.

As a matter of fact, sitting there in a rather stuffy car which made its way through much unlovely landscape, I reflected that there are really three different schedules on which suburban traffic is conducted. One is the time it takes a commuter's friends to come out to see him. Another is the time he claims it takes him to come into town every day. The third, and incomparably the shortest of the three, is the time your friend says it will take him to come into town after the completion of some very extensive railway improvements which, in practice, I have found are never completed. I am quite aware that great bridges have been built, and that railway tunnels have been opened into Long Island and other railway tunnels into New Jersey, and that steam is being rapidly replaced by electricity. But it is my firm belief that such of my suburban friends as live within the zone affected by these improvements will move away before the change for the better actually comes. I am no pessimist. I base this expectation on the simple fact that every commuter I know, for as long a period as I have known him, has been looking forward to the completion of railway improvements involving the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars. The march of progress apparently finds the suburban resident always a little in advance.

Harrington met me at the station and asked me if that was not a very good train I had come down on. The suburban virus was in me. I lied and said yes. As we sat at our luncheon I felt how peculiarly a vital factor in out-of-town existence the railroad const.i.tutes. Both Harrington and his wife spoke of trains as of living, breathing people. Some trains, with all their faults, the Harringtons evidently loved. Others they detested, and made no attempt to conceal the fact. I had just finished telling Mrs. Harrington about the latest woman's suffrage parade when Harrington said: "Do you know, my dear, the 8.13 is getting worse all the time." I was still thinking of my own story, and I failed to catch just who or what it was that was getting worse all the time to an extent so inimical to Harrington's peace of mind. But Mrs. Harrington looked up, frowning slightly, and said: "Can't anything be done?" Harrington shook his head. "It's hopeless." By this time I was convinced that it must be some family skeleton that Harrington had rather oddly chosen to bring out before a stranger; some scapegrace cousin, I suspected, who probably got drunk and came to Harrington's office and demanded money. I looked discreetly into my plate as Mrs. Harrington suggested: "You might write to the superintendent." "We have," replied Harrington, "and he threatened to take it off altogether. Not that it would mean any loss. I can make just as good time now by the 8:35."

After luncheon we walked. I have never found the walking in the suburbs very good. There is a regrettable lack of elbow-room. A short stroll brings one either to a railway-siding, which is bad enough, or to a promising growth of trees, which is worse. From the road these trees look like the beginning of a primeval jungle sweeping on to far horizons. Plunge into that timber growth and in five minutes you emerge on a sewered road with concrete sidewalks and ornamental lamp posts and a crew of Italian labourers drinking beer in the shadow of a steam-roller. It is a gash of civilisation across the face of the wilderness, and, like most deformities, it is displeasing to the eye.

Walking under such conditions is not stimulative. I miss the sense of s.p.a.ce and freedom I get in the streets of New York, where I know that I can walk twenty miles north or twenty miles east without interference or inconvenience. Give me either a mountain-top or Broadway. Suburban vistas are pitifully cramped.

That day it had rained, and I should have been additionally glad to stay indoors. But Mrs. Harrington is a fervent naturalist, and she insisted on taking me out to look at the wild flowers and listen to the bird-calls. Both of these branches of nature-study, I am convinced, call for an intensity of sympathetic imagination that I am incapable of developing; and especially the bird-calls. Concerning the latter, I feel sure that a great deal of humbug is being said and written. I mean to cast no reflections upon Harrington or his wife. The only occasions on which I have known Harrington to deviate from the truth have been, as I have already pointed out, in connection with his train-schedules. And as Mrs. Harrington does not travel to the city, even this charge will not hold against her. And yet I cannot help feeling that neither of the two really hears the catbird say "miaow" or the robin "cheer up," as they pretend to. At the first twitter or chirp from some invisible source Mrs. Harrington stops and with radiant face asks me whether I do not distinctly catch the "pit-pit-pity-me" of the meadow-lark. I say yes; but I really don't, and I don't believe she does. My explanation is that Mrs. Harrington is a woman and consequently ready to hear what she has been led to expect she would hear. As for Harrington, he is a devoted husband.

For let us look at the matter with an open mind. Our alphabetical representations of animal sounds are at best only rough approximations.

Most often they are not even that. They are mere arbitrary symbols. We use consonants where the bird uses none, as when we give the name cuckoo to a bird whose cry is really "ooh, ooh." Or else we put in the wrong consonants, which is shown by the fact that different nations a.s.sign different consonantal sounds to the same bird. We do not even agree on the vowel sounds. What is there in common between our English "c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo" and M. Rostand's "cocorico"? And we need not go as far as the animal world. See how the nations differ in spelling out that elementary human sound which is the expression of pain or surprise, and which in this country we hear as "Oh," and the Germans hear as "Ach,"

and the Greeks heard as "Ai, Ai." If the human vocal chords can be so imperfectly imitated, what shall we say of birds speaking after a manner all their own? For myself I confess that in congenial company I can hear birds say anything, but that left to myself I am sometimes puzzled by a parrot. And that is the reason why I am sceptical concerning Mrs.

Harrington's accomplishments in this field.

But while the birds about the Harringtons' home simply offend my regard for the truth, the Harringtons' dog causes me acute bodily and mental discomfort. He is of a spotted white, with a disreputable black patch over one eye, and weighs, I should imagine, between eighty and ninety pounds. During luncheon he takes his place under the table, and from there emits blood-curdling howls with sufficient frequency to make conversation extremely difficult. This he varies by nosing about the visitor's legs and growling. I am not fond of dogs under the best of circ.u.mstances. I always labour under the presumption that they will bite. Their habit of suddenly das.h.i.+ng across the floor, in furious pursuit of nothing in particular, upsets me. But an invisible dog under a dining-room table is a dreadful experience. It is true that I managed to give Mrs. Harrington a fairly rational account of the woman's suffrage parade. But was she aware, as I sat there smiling spasmodically, what agonies of fear were mine as I waited for those white fangs under the table to sink into my flesh? If, under the circ.u.mstances, I confused Harriet Beecher Stowe with Julia Ward Howe, and made a bad blunder about woman's rights in Finland, am I so very much to blame?

Not that the Harringtons are the worst offenders in this respect. There is an old cla.s.smate, and a very dear friend, indeed, who lives on Flus.h.i.+ng Bay, and has a pair of hopelessly ferocious dogs that hold the neighbourhood in terror. The only occasion on which they have been known to show indifference to strangers was one night when burglars broke in and stole some silver and a revolver. When I go out to Flus.h.i.+ng, I stipulate that the dogs shall be locked up in the cellar from ten minutes before my train is due until ten minutes after I have left the house. But it would be foolhardy to omit additional precautions. Hence I always carry an umbrella with the ferrule sharpened to a point, and when I am within a block of the house I stoop and pick up a large stone, and go on my way, with all my senses acute, whistling cheerfully. It is odd how people will put themselves out to keep a harmless, poor relation out of the way of visitors, and never think of the much greater discomfort attendant upon the constant presence of an active bull-terrier.

I may have produced the impression that life in the country makes no appeal to me. Nothing could be further from my intentions. Whatever doubts I may have entertained on this point vanish completely as the Harringtons escort me to the station in the cool of the evening, the dog having been left at home at my request. We pa.s.s by low, white-pillared houses behind hedges, and the scent of hay comes up from the lawns, and laughter comes from the dark of the verandas. The city at such a time seems a very undesirable place to return to; a place to lose one's self in--yes, and that is all. The Harringtons never were in the city what they are here. They have taken root, they have developed local pride which is only the sense of home. As we walk they point out the residences of the leading citizens. Here lives the owner of one of the largest factories of mechanical pianos in the country. This j.a.panese temple belongs to a man who writes for some of the best-known magazines.

That colonial dwelling is occupied by the lawyer who defended Mrs. Dower when she was tried for poisoning her husband. I reflect, in genuine humility, that in the city I never think of taking strangers to see Mr.

William Dean Howells's house or Mr. Joseph H. Choate's. And with real regret and admiration, I say good-night to the Harringtons.

XXVII

HEADLINES

After Stephane Dubost, editor of the Paris _Reveil_, had been ten days in this country, and had collected all his material for a series of volumes on the American Woman, Yankee and Yellow Peril, Democracy Decollete, and Football _versus_ the Fine Arts--to name only a few--he was asked what single feature of our life had impressed him as most characteristically American. He replied, "The headlines in your daily press." Just what M. Dubost did think of our achievements in that department of journalism may be gathered from a letter he addressed the very same day to his friend, Marcel Complans, director of the Bureau of Cipher Codes in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

"In nothing, my dear Marcel, is the American genius for saving time so strikingly exemplified as in their newspaper headlines. Think of our _Figaro_ or _Temps_ with its dreary columns of solid type introduced by a minute solitary heading, and then pick up one of Uncle Sam's great dailies. It may be only an item of four or five inches, what they call here a stickful or two, but are you left to make your way una.s.sisted through the brief account? No. Your eye immediately catches a time-saving headline like this:

DESERTED GIRL WIFE TO HOLD UP MAN.

Having that concise legend before you, all you need to do, my dear Marcel, is simply to decide for yourself whether our story deals with an unscrupulous wretch who abandons his young wife to engage on a career of highway robbery; or whether it is the history of a deserted girl who becomes the wife of a professional outlaw; or whether it is a betrayed young wife who gives herself up to the cause of elevating the human race. A French reader, under the circ.u.mstances, would be compelled to go through as much as thirty or forty lines of small print before he secured the desired information. Thus it requires but a brief experience with American headlines to recognise that when the Chicago _Evening Post_ says

FINDS ENGLISH FOOD FOR LAND TAX FAITH

it means that an American single-taxer, who has just returned from Great Britain, believes that the English people is ready to listen to the principles of the single-tax theory. And when the New York _Sun_ says

LA FOLLETTE TALKING BOLT

it does not mean that the Senator from Wisconsin is a manifestation of cras.h.i.+ng, celestial eloquence, but that he is advocating a secession from the Republican party. Can you not see, my friend, what magnificent economies of time are effected by headlines like

WATCH SPRINGS TRAP FOR j.a.pANESE SPY

over a story dealing with the capture of an Oriental suspect by a sentinel at one of the Pacific Coast forts, or

SCREAMING FRIARS TORTURED CHILD MOTHER FAINTS

which does not mean that a society of howling friars have been guilty of an atrocious crime upon an infant in the presence of its mother; or that a band of religionists are driven by torture to cries of pain, while a young mother faints at the sight. It only means that a poor mother, who has suddenly gone insane, breaks into a house of refuge, where her little boy is being cared for by a religious fraternity, accuses, without warrant, the brothers of torturing her child, and faints. Or take

FRENCH RACE WORN OUT ENGLISH TO TRIUMPH.

These lines are not the summary of a study in national growth and decay, but expressive of the fact that a French bicycle team wins a signal victory over a group of exhausted English compet.i.tors. Do you see now how far towards the art of simplified story-telling these Americans have gone?

"I can only express my profound admiration, as I pa.s.s, for the genius of those men who almost automatically will dig the heart out of a 'story,'

and blazon it before the reader not only with marvellous brevity and meaning, but with extraordinary appropriateness of characterisation.

Can you seize, for instance, the full relevancy of a headline like

PRESBYTERIAN FALLS TWENTY FEET

or,

PROFESSOR THRICE MARRIED DENIES AUTHENTICITY OF BIBLE

or see how the essential point is caught when a 'head' writer places

FLORODORA GIRL EXPELLED FROM CZAR'S CAPITAL

over an account of the latest ukase which banishes from St. Petersburg two hundred members of the Duma, twelve professors, fifty-five Jewish bankers and artists, all the labour delegates, as well as the agent of the American Plough Corporation, whose wife was one of the original s.e.xtette?

"I will conclude with what to me is an example of the art of headline writing carried almost to perfection. Suppose that at Paris a long-distance foot-race between one of our countrymen and a foreign athlete had been won by our compatriot. The _Reveil_ would probably say, 'Armand Wins at Auteuil,' and go on to give the details. But observe what they do here. I cite the article complete, headline and text: