by S. T. Joshi
THE FIRST MAN
But you can say one thing for the German trains: they get in on time.
THE SECOND MAN
So they do, but no wonder! They run so slow they can’t help it. The way I figure it, a German engineer must have a devil of a time holding his engine in. The fact is, he usually can’t, and so he has to wait outside every big town until the schedule catches up to him. They say they never have accidents, but is it any more than you expect? Did you ever hear of a mud turtle having an accident?
THE FIRST MAN
Scarcely. As you say, these countries are far behind the times. I saw a fire in Cologne; you would have laughed your head off! It was in a feed store near my hotel, and I got there before the firemen. When they came at last, in their tinpot hats, they got out half a dozen big squirts and rushed into the building with them. Then, when it was out, they put the squirts back into their little express wagon and drove off. Not a line of hose run out, not an engine puffing, not a gong heard, not a soul letting out a whoop! It was more like a Sun day-school picnic than a fire. I guess if these Dutch ever did have a civilised blaze, it would scare them to death. But they never have any.
THE SECOND MAN
Well, what can you expect? A country where all the charwomen are men and all the garbage men are women!—
For the moment the two have talked each other out, and so they lounge upon the rail in silence and gaze out over the valley. Anon the gumchewer spits. By now the sun has reached the skyline to the westward and the tops of the ice mountains are in gorgeous conflagration. Scarlets war with golden oranges, and vermilions fade into palpitating pink s. Below, in the valley, the colours begin to fade slowly to a uniform seashell gray. It is a scene of indescribable loveliness; the wild reds of hades splashed riotously upon the cold whites and pale blues of heaven. The night train for Venice, a long line of black coaches, is entering the town. Somewhere below, apparently in the barrack s, a sunset gun is fired. After a silence of perhaps two or three minutes, the Americans gather fresh inspiration and resume their conversation.
THE FIRST MAN
I have seen worse scenery.
THE SECOND MAN
Very pretty.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, sir; it’s well worth the money.
THE SECOND MAN
But the Rockies beat it all hollow.
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, of course. They have nothing over here that we can’t beat to a whisper. Just consider the Rhine, for instance. The Hudson makes it look like a country creek.
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, you’re right. Take away the castles, and not even a German would give a hoot for it. It’s not so much what a thing is over here as what reputation it’s got. The whole thing is a matter of press-agenting.
THE FIRST MAN
I agree with you. There’s the “beautiful, blue Danube.” To me it looks like a sewer. If it’s blue, then I’m green. A man would hesitate to drown himself in such a mud puddle.
THE SECOND MAN
But you hear the bands playing that waltz all your life, and so you spend your good money to come over here to see the river. And when you get back home you don’t want to admit that you’ve been a sucker, so you start touting it from hell to breakfast. And then some other fellow comes over and does the same, and so on and so on.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, it’s all a matter of boosting. Day in and day out you hear about Westminster Abbey. Every English book mentions it; it’s in the newspapers almost as much as Jane Addams or Caruso.3 Well, one day you pack your grip, put on your hat and come over to have a look—and what do you find? A one-horse church full of statues! And every statue crying for sapolio!4 You expect to see something magnificent and enormous, something to knock your eye out and send you down for the count. What you do see is a second-rate graveyard under roof. And when you examine into it, you find that two-thirds of the graves haven’t even got dead men in them! Whenever a prominent Englishman dies, they put up a statue to him in Westminster Abbey—no matter where he happens to be buried! I call that clever advertising. That’s the way to get the crowd.
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, these foreigners know the game. They have made millions out of it in Paris. Every time you go to see a musical comedy at home, the second act is laid in Paris, and you see a whole stageful of girls wriggling around, and a lot of old sports having the time of their lives. All your life you hear that Paris is something rich and racy, something that makes New York look like Roanoke, Virginia. Well, you fall for the ballyho and come over to have your fling—and then you find that Paris is largely bunk. I spent a whole week in Paris, trying to find something really awful. I hired one of those Jew guides at five dollars a day and told him to go the limit. I said to him: “Don’t mind me. I am twenty-one years old. Let me have the genuine goods.” But the worst he could show me wasn’t half as bad as what I have seen in Chicago. Every night I would say to that Jew: “Come on, now Mr. Cohen; let’s get away from these tinhorn shows. Lead me to the real stuff.” Well, I believe the fellow did his darndest, but he always fell down. I almost felt sorry for him. In the end, when I paid him off, I said to him: “Save up your money, my boy, and come over to the States. Let me know when you land. I’ll show you the sights for nothing. This Baracca Class atmosphere is killing you.”5
THE FIRST MAN
And yet Paris is famous all over the world. No American ever came to Europe without dropping off there to have a look. I once saw the Bal Tabarin crowded with Sunday-school superintendents returning from Jerusalem. And when the sucker gets home he goes around winking and hinting, and so the fake grows. I often think the government ought to take a hand. If the beer is inspected and guaranteed in Germany, why shouldn’t the shows be in spected and guaranteed in Paris?
THE SECOND MAN
I guess the trouble is that the Frenchmen themselves never go to their own shows. They don’t know what is going on. They see thousands of Americans starting out every night from the Place de l’Opéra and coming back in the morning all boozed up, and so they assume that everything is up to the mark. You’ll find the same thing in Washington. No Washingtonian has ever been up to the top of the Washington monument. Once the elevator in the monument was out of commission for two weeks, and yet Washington knew nothing about it. When the news got into the papers at last, it came from Macon, Georgia. Some honey-mooner from down there had written home about it, roasting the government.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, me for the good old U. S. A.! These Alps are all right, I guess—but I can’t say I like the coffee.
THE SECOND MAN
And it takes too long to get a letter from Jersey City.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, that reminds me. Just before I started up here this afternoon my wife got the Ladies’ Home Journal of the month before last. It had been following us around for six weeks, from London to Paris, to Berlin, to Munich, to Vienna, to a dozen other places. Now she’s fixed for the night. She won’t let up until she’s read every word—the advertisements first. And she’ll spend all day tomorrow sending off for things; new collar hooks, breakfast foods, complexion soaps and all that sort of junk. Are you married yourself?
THE SECOND MAN
No; not yet.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, then, you don’t know how it is. But I guess you play poker.
THE SECOND MAN
Oh, to be sure.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, let’s go down into the town and hunt up some quiet barroom and have a civilised evening. This scenery gives me the creeps.
THE SECOND MAN
I’m with you. But where are we going to get any chips?
THE FIRST MAN
Don’t worry. I carry a set with me. I made my wife put it in the bottom of my trunk, along with a bottle of real whiskey and a couple of porous plasters. A man can’t be too careful when he’s away from home—
They start along the terrace
toward the station of the funicular railway. The sun has now disappeared behind the great barrier of ice and the colours of the scene are fast softening. All the scarlets and vermilions are gone; a luminous pink bathes the whole picture in its fairy light. The night train for Venice, leaving the town, appears as a long string of blinking lights. A chill breeze comes from the Alpine vastness to westward. The deep silence of an Alpine night settles down. The two Americans continue their talk until they are out of hearing. The breeze interrupts and obfuscates their words, but now and then half a sentence comes clearly.
THE SECOND MAN
Have you seen any American papers lately?
THE FIRST MAN
Nothing but the Paris Herald—if you call that a paper.
THE SECOND MAN
How are the Giants making out?
THE FIRST MAN
. . . bad as usual . . . rotten . . . shake up . . .
THE SECOND MAN
. . . John McGraw . . .6
THE FIRST MAN
. . . homesick . . . give five dollars for . . .
THE SECOND MAN
. . . whole continent without a single . . .
THE FIRST MAN
. . . glad to get back . . . damn tired . . .
THE SECOND MAN
. . . damn . . . !
THE FIRST MAN
. . . damn . . . !
Asepsis: A Deduction in Scherzo Form
CHARACTERS:
A CLERGYMAN
A BRIDE
FOUR BRIDESMAIDS
A BRIDEGROOM
A BEST MAN
THE USUAL CROWD
PLACE—The surgical amphitheatre in a hospital.
TIME—Noon of a fair day.
Seats rising in curved tiers. The operating pit paved with white tiles. The usual operating table has been pushed to one side, and in place of it there is a small glass-topped bedside table. On it, a large roll of aseptic cotton, several pads of gauze, a basin of bichloride, a pair of clinical thermometers in a little glass of alcohol, a dish of green soap, a beaker of two percent. carbolic acid, and a microscope. In one corner stands a sterilizer, steaming pleasantly like a tea kettle. There are no decorations—no flowers, no white ribbons, no satin cushions. To the left a door leads into the Anesthetic Room. A pungent smell of ether, nitrous oxide, iodine, chlorine, wet laundry and scorched gauze. Temperature: 98.6 degrees Fahr.
THE CLERGYMAN is discovered standing behind the table in an expectant attitude. He is in the long white coat of a surgeon, with his head wrapped in white gauze and a gauze respirator over his mouth. His chunkiness suggests a fat, middle-aged Episcopal rector, but it is impossible to see either his face or his vestments. He wears rubber gloves of a dirty orange color, evidently much used. THE BRIDEGROOM and THE BEST MAN have just emerged from the Anesthetic Room and are standing before him. Both are dressed exactly as he is, save that THE BRIDEGROOM’S rubber gloves are white. The benches running up the amphitheatre are filled with spectators, chiefly women. They are in dingy oil-skins, and most of them also wear respirators.
After a long, and uneasy pause THE BRIDE comes in from the Anesthetic Room on the arm of her FATHER, with THE FOUR BRIDESMAIDS following, by twos. She is dressed in what appears to be white linen, with a long veil of aseptic gauze. The gauze testifies to its late and careful sterilization by yellowish scorches. There is a white rubber glove upon THE BRIDE’S right hand, but that belonging to her left hand has been removed. Her FATHER is dressed like THE BEST MAN. THE FOUR BRIDESMAIDS are in the garb of surgical nurses, with their hair completely concealed by turbans of gauze. As THE BRIDE takes her place before THE CLERGYMAN, with THE BRIDEGROOM at her right, there is a faint, snuffling murmur among the spectators. It hushes suddenly as THE CLERGYMAN clears his throat.
THE CLERGYMAN
(In sonorous, booming tones, somewhat muffled by his respirator.) Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together in the face of this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is commended by God to be honorable among men, and therefore is not to be entered into inadvisedly or carelessly, or without due surgical precautions, but reverently, cleanly, sterilely, soberly, scientifically, and with the nearest practicable approach to bacteriological purity. Into this laudable and non-infectious state these two persons present come now to be joined and quarantined. If any man can show just cause, either clinically or microscopically, why they may not be safely sutured together, let him now come forward with his charts, slides and cultures, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.
(Several spectators shuffle their feet, and an old maid giggles, but no one comes forward.)
THE CLERGYMAN
(To THE BRIDE and BRIDEGROOM): I require and charge both of you, as ye will answer in the dreadful hour of autopsy, when the secrets of all lives shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any lesion, infection, malaise, congenital defect, hereditary taint or other impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in eugenic matrimony, ye do now con fess it. For be ye well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise than in a state of absolute chemical and bacteriological innocence, their marriage will be septic, unhygienic, pathogenic and toxic, and eugenically null and void.
(THE BRIDEGROOM hands over a long envelope, from which THE CLERGYMAN extracts a paper bearing a large red seal.)
THE CLERGYMAN
(Reading): We, and each of us, having subjected the bearer, John Doe, to a rigid clinical and laboratory examination, in accordance with Form B-3 of the United States Public Health Service, do hereby certify that, to the best of our knowledge and belief, he is free from all disease, taint, defect, deformity or hereditary blemish, saving as noted herein. Temperature per ora, 98.6. Pulse, 76, strong. Respiration, 28.5. Wassermann, -2. Hb., 114%. Phthalein, 1st. hr., 46%; 2nd hr., 21%. W. B. C., 8,925. Free gastric HCl, 11.5%. No stasis. No lactic acid. Blood pressure, 122/77. No albuminuria. No glycosuria. Lumbar puncture: clear fluid, normal pressure.
Defects Noted. 1. Left heel jerk feeble. 2. Caries in five molars. 3. Slight acne rosacea. 4. Slight inequality of curvature in meridians of right cornea. 5. Nicotine stain on right forefinger, extending to middle of second phalanx. (Signed)
SIGISMUND KRAUS, M.D.
WM. T. ROBERTSON, M.D.
JAMES SIMPSON, M.D.
Subscribed and sworn to before me, a Notary Public for the Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, State of New York.
(Seal) ABRAHAM LECHETITSKY.
So much for the reading of the minutes. (To THE BRIDE): Now for yours, my dear.
(THE BRIDE hands up a similar envelope, from which THE CLERGYMAN extracts a similar document. But instead of reading it aloud, he delicately runs his eye through it in silence.)
THE CLERGYMAN
(The reading finished) Very good. Very creditable. You must see some good oculist about your astigmatism, my dear. Surely you want to avoid glasses. Come to my study on your return and I’ll give you the name of a trustworthy man. And now let us proceed with the ceremony of marriage. (To THE BRIDEGROOM): John, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy state of eugenic matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, protect her from all protozoa and bacteria, and keep her in good health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee unto her only, so long as ye both shall live? If so, hold out your tongue.
(THE BRIDEGROOM holds out his tongue and THE CLERGYMAN inspects it critically.)
THE CLERGYMAN
(Somewhat dubiously) Fair. I have seen worse. . . . Do you smoke?
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Obviously lying) Not much.
THE CLERGYMAN
Well, how much?
THE BRIDEGROOM
Say ten cigarettes a day.
THE CLERGYMAN
And the stain noted on your right posterior phalanx by the learned medical examiners?
THE BRIDEGROOM
Well, say fifteen.
THE CLERGYMAN
(Waggishly) Or
twenty to be safe. Better taper off to ten. At all events, make twenty the limit. How about the booze?
THE BRIDEGROOM
(Virtuously) Never!
THE CLERGYMAN
What! Never?
THE BRIDEGROOM
Well, never again!
THE CLERGYMAN
So they all say. The answer is almost part of the liturgy. But have a care, my dear fellow! The true eugenist eschews the wine cup. In every hundred children of a man who ingests one fluid ounce of alcohol a day, six will be left-handed, twelve will be epileptics and nineteen will suffer from adolescent alb uminuria, with delusions of persecution. . . . Have you ever had anthrax?
THE BRIDEGROOM
Not yet.
THE CLERGYMAN
Eczema?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Pott’s disease ?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Cholelithiasis?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Do you have a feeling of distention after meals?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Have you a dry, hacking cough?
THE BRIDEGROOM
Not at present.
THE CLERGYMAN
Are you troubled with insomnia?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Dyspepsia?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Agoraphobia?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Do you bolt your food?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Have you lightning pains in the legs?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Are you a bleeder? Have you hæmophilia?
THE BRIDEGROOM
No.
THE CLERGYMAN
Erthrocythæmia? Nephroptosis? Fibrinous bronchitis? Salpingitis? Pylephlebitis? Answer yes or no.