When the servant returned the patient was so far gone that Cheyne-Stokes breathing had already set in, so the doctor decided to administer the whole contents of the vial—a heroic dose, truly, for it has been immemorially held that even so little as the amount that will cling to the end of a horsehair is sufficient to cure. Alas, in his professional zeal and excitement, the celebrated pathologist permitted his hand to shake like a myrtle leaf in a Spring gale, and so he dropped not only the contents of the vial, but also the vial itself down the esophagus of his moribund patient.
The accident, however, did not impede the powerful effects of this famous remedy. In ten minutes Chu Yi-Foy was so far recovered that he asked for a plate of rice stewed with plums, and by morning he was able to leave his bed and receive the reports of his spies, informers and extortioners. That day he sent for Dr. Yen and in token of his gratitude, for he was a just and righteous man, settled upon him in due form of law, and upon his heirs and assigns in perpetuity, the whole rents, rates, imposts and taxes, amounting to no less than ten thousand Hangkow taels a year, of two of the streets occupied by money-changers, bird-cage makers and public women in the town of SzuLoon, and of the related alleys, courts and lanes. And Dr. Yen, with his old age and the old age of his seven sons and thirty-one grandsons now safely provided for, retired from the practise of his art, and devoted himself to a tedious scientific inquiry (long the object of his passionate aspiration) into the precise physiological relation between gravel in the lower lobe of the heart and the bursting of arteries in the arms and legs.
So passed many years, while Dr. Yen pursued his researches and sent his annual reports of progress to the Academy of Medicine at Chan-Si, and Chu Yi-Foy increased his riches and his influence, so that his arm reached out from the mountains to the sea. One day, in his eightieth year, Chu Yi-Foy fell ill again, and, having no confidence in any other physician, sent once more for the learned and now venerable Dr. Yen.
“I have a pain,” he said, “in my left hip, where the stomach dips down over the spleen. A large knob has formed there. A lizard, perhaps, has got into me. Or perhaps a small hedge-hog.”
Dr. Yen thereupon made use of the test for lizards and hedge-hogs—to wit, the application of madder dye to the Adam’s apple, turning it lemon yellow if any sort of reptile is within, and violet if there is a mammal—but it failed to operate as the books describe. Being thus led to suspect a misplaced and wild-growing bone, perhaps from the vertebral column, the doctor decided to have recourse to surgery, and so, after the proper propitiation of the gods, he administered to his eminent patient a draught of opium water, and having excluded the wailing women of the household from the sick chamber, he cut into the protuberance with a small, sharp knife, and soon had the mysterious object in his hand.… It was the vial of dissolved gnats’ eyes – still full and tightly corked! Worse, it was not the vial of dissolved gnats’ eyes, but a vial of common burdock juice—the remedy for infants griped by their mothers’ milk.…
But when the eminent Chu Yi-Foy, emerging from his benign stupor, made a sign that he would gaze upon the cause of his distress, it was a bone that Dr. Yen Li-Shen showed him – an authentic bone, ovid and evil-looking—and lately the kneecap of one Ho Kwang, brass maker in the street of Szchen-Kiang. Dr. Yen carried this bone in his girdle to keep off the black, blue and yellow plagues. Chu Yi-Foy, looking upon it, wept the soft, grateful tears of an old man.
“This is twice,” he said, “that you, my learned friend, have saved my life. I have hitherto given you, in token of my gratitude, the rents, rates, imposts and taxes, of two streets, and of the related alleys, courts and lanes. I now give you the weight of that bone in diamonds, in rubies, in pearls or in emeralds, as you will. And whichever of the four you choose, I give you the other three also. For is it not said by K’ung Fu-tsze, “The good physician bestows what the gods merely promise’?”
And Dr. Yen Li-Shen lowered his eyes and bowed. But he was too old in the healing art to blush.
A Smart Set Circular
From SUGGESTIONS TO OUR VISITORS, a four-page leaflet distributed in the 1921–22 era. Nathan and I, in those days, took our editorial duties very lightly, and sought to relieve them with various buffooneries. The following circular was one of several that I wrote
1. The editorial chambers are open daily, except Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays, from 10.30 a.m. to 11.15 a.m.
2. Carriage calls at 11.15 a.m. precisely.
3. The Editors sincerely trust that guests will abstain from offering fees or gratuities to their servants.
4. Visitors expecting telephone calls while in audience will kindly notify the Portier before passing into the consulting rooms.
5. Dogs accompanying visitors must be left at the garderobe in charge of the Portier.
6. Visitors are kindly requested to refrain from expectorating out of the windows.
7. The Editors regret that it will be impossible for them, under any circumstances, to engage in conversations by telephone.
8. The Editors assume no responsibility for hats, overcoats, walking sticks or hand luggage not checked with the Portier.
9. Solicitors for illicit wine merchants are received only on Thursday, from 12 o’clock noon until 4.30 p.m.
10. Interpreters speaking all modern European languages are in daily attendance, and at the disposal of visitors, without fee.
11. Officers of the military and naval forces of the United States, in full uniform, will be received without presenting the usual letters of introduction.
12. The House Surgeon is forbidden to accept fees for the treatment of injuries received on the premises.
13. Smoking is permitted.
14. Visitors whose boots are equipped with rubber heels are requested to avoid stepping from the rugs to the parquetry.
15. A woman Secretary is in attendance at all interviews between the Editors, or either of them, and lady authors. Hence it will be unnecessary for such visitors to provide themselves with either duennas or police whistles.
16. Choose your emergency exit when you come in; don’t wait until the firemen arrive.
17. Visiting English authors are always welcome, but in view of the severe demands upon the time of the Editors, they are compelled to limit the number received to 50 head a week.
18. The objects of art on display in the editorial galleries are not for sale.
19. The Editors regret that they will be unable to receive visitors who present themselves in a visibly inebriated condition.
20. Cuspidors are provided for the convenience of our Southern and Western friends.
21. The Editors beg to make it known that they find it impossible to accept invitations to public dinners, memorial services or other functions at which speeches are made, or at which persons are present who ever make speeches elsewhere.
22. The Editors assume that visitors who have had the honor of interviews with them in the editorial chambers will not subsequently embarrass them in public places by pointing them out with walking sticks.
23. Photographs of the Editors are on sale at the Portier’s desk.
24. Members of the hierarchy and other rev. clergy are received only on Thursdays, from 12 o’clock noon to 4.30 p.m.
25. The Editors cannot undertake to acknowledge the receipt of flowers, cigars, autographed books, picture postcards, signed photographs, loving cups or other gratuities. All such objects are sent at once to the free wards of the public hospitals.
26. Positively no cheques cashed.
Suite Américaine
From PREJUDICES: THIRD SERIES, 1922, pp. 320–24. Aspiration was First printed in the Smart Set, Nov., 1921, pp. 34–35, and Eminence in the same magazine, July, 1922, p. 41
1
Aspiration
POLICE sergeants praying humbly to God that Jews will start poker-rooms on their posts, and so enable them to educate their eldest sons for holy orders.… Newspaper reporters resolving firmly to work hard, keep sober and be polite to the
city editor, and so be rewarded with jobs as copy-readers.… College professors in one-building universities on the prairie, still hoping, at the age of sixty, to get their whimsical essays into the Atlantic Monthly.… Pastors of one-horse little churches in decadent villages, who, whenever they drink two cups of coffee at supper, dream all night that they have been elected bishops.… Delicatessen dealers who spend their lives searching for a cheap substitute for the embalmed veal used in chicken-salad.… Italians who wish that they were Irish.… Mulatto girls in Georgia and Alabama who send away greasy dollar bills for bottles of Mme. Celestine’s Infallible Hair-Straightener.… Ashmen who pull wires to be appointed superintendents of city dumps.… Mothers who dream that the babies in their cradles will reach, in the mysterious after years, the highest chairs in the Red Men and the Maccabees.… Contestants for the standing broad-jump championship of the Altoona, Pa., Y.M.C.A.…
2
Diligence
Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.… Women hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.… Lime and cement dealers being initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red men or the Woodmen of the World.… Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, hoping that they’ll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren evangelist preach.… Ticket-sellers in the subway, breathing sweat in its gaseous form.… Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.… Grocery-clerks trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.… Women confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is all about.… Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.… Wives and daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles, going tremblingly to swami séances in dark, smelly rooms.… Decayed and hopeless men writing editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.… Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb., and Tyrone, Pa.… Presidents of one-building universities in the rural fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee.… Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers.… Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Vermont and Idaho.… Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo, Ind., and Logansport.…
3
Eminence
The leading Methodist layman of Pottawattamie county, Iowa.… The man who won the limerick contest conducted by the Toomsboro, Ga., Banner.… The secretary of the Little Rock, Ark., Kiwanis Club.… The man who owns the best bull in Coosa county, Ala.… The tallest man in Covington, Ky.… The oldest subscriber to the Raleigh, N. C., News and Observer.… The most fashionable milliner in Bucyrus, O.… The business agent of the Plasterers’ Union of Somerville, Mass.… The author of the ode read at the unveiling of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Valdosta, Ga.… The owner of the champion Airedale of Buffalo, N. Y.… The first child named after Warren Gamaliel Harding.… The old lady in Wahoo, Neb., who has read the Bible 38 times.… The youngest murderer awaiting execution in Chicago.… The leading dramatic critic of Des Moines.… The night watchman in Penn Yan, N. Y., who once shook hands with Admiral Dewey.… The Lithuanian woman in Bluefield, W. Va., who has had five sets of triplets.… The best horse doctor in Montana.… The highest-paid churchchoir soprano in Knoxville, Tenn.… The most eligible bachelor in Cheyenne, Wyo.… The girl who got the most votes in the popularity contest at Egg Harbor, N. J.…
People and Things
From PREJUDICES: FOURTH SERIES, 1924, pp. 294–301. The Capital of a Great Republic first appeared in the Smart Set, Sept., 1922, p. 46; The High Seas in Dec., 1922, pp. 49–50, and The Shrine of Mnemosyne in Dec., 1920, p. 41
1
The Capital of a Great Republic
THE FOURTH secretary of the Paraguayan legation.… The secretary to the secretary to the Secretary of Labor.… The brother to the former Congressman from the third Nebraska district.… The messenger to the chief of the Senate folding-room.… The door-keeper outside the committee-room of the House committee on the disposition of useless executive papers.… The stenographer to the assistant chief entomologist of the Bureau of Animal Industry.… The third assistant chief computer in the office of the Naval Almanac.… The assistant Attorney-General in charge of the investigation of postal frauds in the South Central States.… The former wife of the former secretary to the former member of the Interstate Commerce Commission.… The brother to the wife of the chargé d’ affaires of Czecho-Slovakia.… The press-agent to the chaplain of the House.… The acting substitute elevator-man in the Washington monument.… The aunt of the sister of the wife of the officer in charge of ceremonials, State Department.… The neighbor of the cousin of the step-father of the sister-in-law of the President’s pastor.… The superintendent of charwomen in Temporary Storehouse B7, Bureau of Navy Yards and Docks.… The assistant confidential clerk to the chief clerk to the acting chief examiner of the Patent Office.… The valet to the Chief Justice.
2
Ambassadors of Christ
Fifth avenue rectors with shining morning faces, preaching on Easter to pews packed with stockbrokers, defendants in divorce suits, members of the Sulgrave Foundation and former Zionists.… Evangelists of strange, incomprehensible cults whooping and bawling at two or three half-witted old women and half a dozen scared little girls in corrugated iron tabernacles down near the railroad yards.… Mormon missionaries pulling doorbells in Wheeling, W. Va., and Little Rock, Art., and handing naughty-looking tracts to giggling colored slaveys.… Methodist candidates for the sacred frock, sent out to preach trial sermons to backward churches in the Mail-order Belt, proving magnificently in one hour that Darwin was an ignoramus and Huxley a scoundrel.… Missionaries in smelly gospel-shops along the waterfront, expounding the doctrine of the Atonement to boozy Norwegian sailors, half of them sound asleep.… Little fat Lutherans with celluloid collars and no neckties.… Former plumbers, threshing-machine engineers and horse-doctors turned into United Brethren bishops.… Missionaries collecting money from the mill children in Raleigh, N. C., to convert the Spaniards and Italians to Calvinism.… Episcopal archdeacons cultivating the broad English a.… Swedenborgians trying to explain the “Arcana Cœlestia” to flabbergasted newspaper reporters.… Polish clergymen leaping out of the windows at Polish weddings in Johnstown, Pa., hoping that the next half-dozen beer-bottles won’t hit them.… Quakers foreclosing mortgages.… Baptists busy among the women.
3
The High Seas
The boy who sits in the bucket of tar.… The buxom stewardess who comes in and inquires archly if one rang.… The humorous piano-tuner who tunes the grand piano in the music-room in the 15-16ths-tone scale.… The electric fan which, when a stray zephyr blows in through the porthole, makes a noise like a dentist’s drill.… The alien ship’s printer who, in the daily wireless paper, reports a baseball score of 165 to 3…. The free Christian Science literature in the reading-room.… The pens in the writing-room.… The red-haired girl in the green sweater.… The boy who climbs into the lifeboat.… The chief steward wearing the No. 18¾ collar.… The mysterious pipes that run along the stateroom ceilings.… The discovery that one forgot to pack enough undershirts.… The night watchman who raps on the door at 3.30 a.m. to deliver a wireless message reading “Sorry missed you. Bon voyage.”… The bartender who adds a dash of witch-hazel to cocktails.… The wilting flowers standing in ice-pitchers and spittoons in the hallway.… The fight in the steerage.… The old lady who gets stewed and sends for the doctor.… The news that the ship is in Long. 43°, 41′, 16″ W, Lat. 40°, 23′, 39″ N.… The report that the starboard propeller has lost a blade.
4
The Shrine of Mnemosyne
The little town of Kirkwall, in the Orkney Islands, in a mid-Winter mist, flat and charming like a Japanese print.… San Francisco and the Golden Gate from the top of Twin Pea
ks.… Gibraltar on a Spring day, all in pastel shades, like the back-drop for a musical comedy … My first view of the tropics, the palm-trees suddenly bulging out of the darkness of dawn, the tremendous stillness the sweetly acid smell, the immeasurable strangeness.… he Trentino on a glorious morning, up from Verona to the Brenner Pass.… Central Germany from Bremen to Munich, all in one day, with the apple trees in bloom.… Copenhagen on a wild night, with the Polizei combing the town for the American who upset the piano.… Christiania1 in January, with the snow-clad statue of Ibsen looming through the gloom like a ghost in a cellar.… The beach at Tybee Island, with the faint, blood-curdling rattle of the land-crabs.… A child playing in the yard of a Godforsaken town in the Wyoming desert.… The little pile of stones on the beach of Watling’s Island, marking the place where Columbus landed.… A dull night in a Buffalo hotel, reading the American Revised Version of the New Testament.… The day I received the proofs of my first book.
1 This was war-time Prohibition, preliminary to the main catastrophe.
1 March went to the Philippines as commander of the forgotten Astor Battery and saw long and hard service here. He was a commander of the artillery in the A.E.F. and later its chief of staff. He retired from the Army in 1921. He had many decorations besides the grand cross of the order of St. Michael and St. George, including the grand cordon of the Chia Ho of China and that of Polonia Restituta.
2 Benson was chief of naval operations in World War I. He had the order of the Rising Sun of Japan, the order of St. Gregory the Great, conferred by the Pope, and a gold medal struck in his honor by New Mexico. He died in 1932.
Mencken Chrestomathy (Vintage) Page 69