Dr. Pearly is never answered, for the Chairman looks at his watch and says: “I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but I have an appointment at 5:45 and must be going. Supposing I appoint a sub-committee consisting of Dr. Pearly, Mr. Twing and Mr. Berry, to find Mr. Entwhistle and see what he dug out of the files of the Scientific American. Then, at the next meeting we can have a report from both sub-committees and will also hear from Professor McKlicktric, who has just returned from Panama. . . . A motion to adjourn is now in order. Do I hear such a motion?”
After listening carefully, he hears it, and the railroads run themselves for another week.
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Noting an Increase
in Bigamy
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Either more men are marrying more wives than ever before, or they are getting more careless about it. During the past week bigamy has crowded baseball out of the papers, and while this may be due in part to the fact that it was a cold, rainy week and little baseball could be played, yet there is a tendency to be noted there somewhere. All those wishing to note a tendency will continue on into the next paragraph.
There is, of course, nothing new in bigamy. Anyone who goes in for it with the idea of originating a new fad which shall be known by his name, like the daguerreotype or potatoes O’Brien, will have to reckon with the priority claims of several hundred generations of historical characters, most of them wearing brown beards. Just why beards and bigamy seem to have gone hand in hand through the ages is a matter for the professional humorists to determine. We certainly haven’t got time to do it here.
But the multiple-marriages unearthed during the past week have a certain homey flavor lacking in some of those which have gone before. For instance, the man in New Jersey who had two wives living right with him all of the time in the same apartment. No need for subterfuge here, no deceiving one about the other. It was just a matter of walking back and forth between the dining-room and the study. This is, of course, bigamy under ideal conditions.
But in tracing a tendency like this, we must not deal so much with concrete cases as with drifts and curves. A couple of statistics are also necessary, especially if it is an alarming tendency that is being traced. The statistics follow, in alphabetical order:
In the United States during the years 1918-1919 there were 4,956,673 weddings. 2,485,845 of these were church weddings, strongly against the wishes of the bridegrooms concerned. In these weddings 10,489,392 silver olive-forks were received as gifts.
Starting with these figures as a basis, we turn to the report of the Pennsylvania State Committee on Outdoor Gymnastics for the year beginning January 4th, 1920, and ending a year later.
This report being pretty fairly uninteresting, we leave it and turn to another report, which covers the manufacture and sale of rugs. This has a picture of a rug in it, and a darned good likeness it is, too.
In this rug report we find that it takes a Navajo Indian only eleven days to weave a rug 12 x 5, with a swastika design in the middle. Eleven days. It seems incredible. Why, it takes only 365 days to make a year!
Now, having seen that there are 73,000 men and women in this country today who can neither read nor write, and that of these only 4%, or a little over half, are colored, what are we to conclude? What is to be the effect on our national morale? Who is to pay this gigantic bill for naval armament?
Before answering these questions any further than this, let us quote from an authority on the subject, a man who has given the best years, or at any rate some very good years, of his life to research in this field, and who now takes exactly the stand which we have been outlining in this article.
“I would not,” he says in a speech delivered before the Girls’ Friendly Society of Laurel Hill, “I would not for one minute detract from the glory of those who have brought this country to its present state of financial prominence among the nations of the world, and yet as I think back on those dark days, I am impelled to voice the protest of millions of American citizens yet unborn.”
Perhaps some of our little readers remember what the major premise of this article was. If so, will they please communicate with the writer.
Oh, yes! Bigamy!
Well, it certainly is funny how many cases of bigamy you hear about nowadays. Either more men are marrying more wives than ever before, or they are getting more careless about it. (That sounds very, very familiar. It is barely possible that it is the sentence with which this article opens. We say so many things in the course of one article that repetitions are quite likely to creep in).
At any rate, the tendency seems to be toward an increase in bigamy.
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The Real Wiglaf:
Man and Monarch
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Much time has been devoted of late by ardent biographers to shedding light on misunderstood characters in history, especially British rulers. We cannot let injustice any longer be done to King Wiglaf, the much-maligned monarch of central Britain in the early Ninth Century.
The fall of the kingdom of Mercia in 828 under the the onslaughts of Ecgberht the West-Saxon, have been laid to Wiglaf’s untidy personal habits and his alleged mania for practical joking. The accompanying biographical sketch may serve to disclose some of the more intimate details of the character of the man and to alter in some degree history’s unfavorable estimate of him.
Our first glimpse of the Wiglaf who was one day to become ruler of Mercia, the heart of present-day England (music, please), is when at the age of seven he was taken by Oswier, his father’s murderer, to see Mrs. Siddons play Lady Macbeth. (Every subject of biographical treatment, regardless of the period in which he or she lived, must have been taken at an early age to see Mrs. Siddons play Lady Macbeth. It is part of the code of biography.)
While sitting in the royal box, the young prince Wiglaf was asked what he thought of the performance. “Rotten!” he answered, and left the place abruptly, setting fire to the building as he went out.
Beobald, in citing the above incident in his “Chronicles of Comical Kings,” calls it “an hendy hap ichabbe y-hent.” And perhaps he’s right.
Events proceeded in rapid succession after this for the young boy and we next find him facing marriage with a stiff upper-lip. Mystery has always surrounded the reasons which led to the choice of Princess Offa as Wiglaf’s bride. In fact, it has never been quite certain whether or not she was his bride. No one ever saw them together. [1] On several occasions he is reported to have asked his chamberlain who she was as she passed by on the street. [2]
And yet the theory persists that she was his wife, owing doubtless to the fact that on the eve of the Battle of Otford he sent a message to her asking where “in God’s name” his clean shirts had been put when they came back from the wash.
We come now to that period in Wiglaf’s life which has been for so many centuries the cause of historical speculation, pro and con. The reference is, of course, to his dealings with Aethelbald, the ambassador from Wessex. Every schoolboy has taken part in the Wiglaf-Aethelbald controversy, but how many really know the inside facts of the case?
Examination of the correspondence between these two men shows Wiglaf to have been simply a great, big-hearted, overgrown boy in the whole affair. All claims of his having had an eye on the throne of Northumbria fade away under the delightful ingenuousness of his attitude as expressed in these letters.
“I should of thought,” he writes in 821 to his sister, “that anyone who was not cock-ide drunk would have known better than to of tried to walk bear-foot through that eel-grass from the beech up to the bath-house without sneekers on, which is what that ninn Aethelbald tryed to do this AM. Well say laffter is no name for what you would of done if you had seen him. He looked like he was trying to walk a tide-rope. Hey I yelled at him all the way, do you think you are trying to walk a tide-rope? Well say maybe that didn’t make him sore.”
Shortly after this letter was written, Wiglaf
ascended the throne of Mercia, his father having disappeared Saturday night without trace. A peasant [3] some years after said that he met the old king walking along a road near what is now the Scottish border, telling people that he was carrying a letter of greeting from the Mayor of Pontygn to the Mayor of Langoscgirh. Others say that he fell into the sea off the coast of Wales and became what is now known as King’s Rocks. This last has never been authenticated.
At any rate, the son, on ascending the throne, became king. His first official act was to order dinner. “A nice, juicy steak,” he is said to have called for, [4] “French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee.” It is probable that he really said “a coff of cuppee,” however, as he was a wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as the next king.
We are now thrown into the maelstrom of contradictory historical data, some of which credits Wiglaf with being the greatest ruler Mercia ever had and some of which indicates that he was nothing but a royal bum. It is not the purpose of this biography to try to settle the dispute. All we know for a fact is that he was a very human man who had faults like the rest of us and that shortly after becoming king he disappears from view.
His reign began at 4 P.M. one Wednesday (no, Thursday) afternoon and early the next morning Mercia was overrun by the West-Saxons. It is probable that King Wiglaf was sold for old silver to help pay expenses.
[1] Lebody. Witnesses of the Proximity of Wiglaf to Offa. II. 265
[2] Rouguet. Famous Questions in History. III. 467
[3] Peasant Tales and Fun-making. II. 965.
[4] Fifty Menus for August. —46.
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Facing the
Boys’ Camp Problem
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The time seemed to have come to send Junior away to a boys’ camp for the summer. He was getting too large to have about the house during the hot weather, and besides, getting him out of town seemed the only way to stop the radio concerts which had been making a continuous Chautauqua of our home-life ever since March.
I therefore got out a magazine and turned to that section of the advertising headed, “Summer Camps and Schools.” There was a staggering array. Judging from the photographs the entire child population of the United States spent last summer in bathing suits or on horseback, and the pictures of them were so generic and familiar-looking that there was a great temptation to spend the evening scrutinizing them closely to see if you could pick out anyone you knew.
“Come on, read some out loud,” said Doris in her practical way.
“‘The Nooga-Wooga Camps,’” I began. “‘The Garden Spot of the Micasset Mountains. Tumbling water, calls of birds, light-hearted laughter, horseback rides along shady trails, lasting friendships – all these are the heritage of happy days at Nooga-Wooga.’ . . . I don’t think much of the costumes they give the boys to wear at Nooga-Wooga. They look rather sissy to me.”
“That’s because you are looking at the Camps for Girls, dear,” said Doris. “Those are girls in Peter Thompsons and bloomers.”
Hurriedly turning the page, I came to Camps for Boys.
“‘Camp Wicomagisset, for Manly Boys. On famous Lake Pogoniblick in the heart of the far-famed Wappahammock district. Campfire stories, military drill, mountain climbing, swimming, wading, hiking, log-cabins, sailing—’ they say nothing about horseshoeing. Don’t you suppose they teach horseshoeing?”
“That probably comes in the second year for the older boys,” said Doris. “I wouldn’t want Junior to plunge right into horseshoeing his first season. We mustn’t rush him.”
“‘Camp Wad-ne-go-gallup on the shores of Crisco Bay, Maine. Facing that grandest of all oceans, the Atlantic. Located among the best farms where fresh and wholesome food can be had in abundance’ – yes but is it had, my dear? That’s the question. Anyway, I don’t like the looks of the boat in the picture. It’s too full of boys.”
“‘Opossum Mountain Camp for Boys. Unusual sports and trips’ – Ah, possibly condor stalking! That certainly would be unusual. But dangerous! I’d hate to think of Junior crawling about over ledges, stalking condors. And it says here that there is a dietitian and a camp-mother, as well.”
“Camp-mother?” Doris sniffed, “Probably she thinks she knows how to bring up children—”
Just then Junior came in to announce that he had signed up for a job for the summer, working on the farm of Eddie Westover’s uncle. So in view of this added income, I felt that I could afford a little vacation myself, and am leaving on July 1st for Camp Mionogonett in the foothills of the Rokomokos, “a Paradise for Manly Men.”
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All About
the Silesian Problem
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So much controversy has been aroused over Silesia it is high time that the average man in this country had a clearer idea of the problem. At present many people think that if you add oxygen to Silesia you will get oxide of silesia and can take spots out of clothes with it.
A definite statement of the whole Upper Silesian question is therefore due, and, for those who care to listen, about to be made.
The trouble started at the treaty of Noblitz in 1773. You have no idea what a perfectly rotten treaty that was. It was negotiated by the Grand Duke Ludwig of Saxe-Goatherd-Cobalt, whose sister married a Morrisey and settled in Fall River. The aim and ambition of Ludwig’s life was to annex Spielzeugingen to Nichtrauschen, thereby augmenting his duchy and at the same time having a dandy time. And he was the kind of man who would stop at nothing when it came time to augment his duchy.
In this treaty, then, Ludwig insisted on a clause making Silesia a monogamy. This was very clever, as it brought the Centrist party in Silesia into direct conflict with the party who wanted to restore the young Prince Niblick to the throne; thereby causing no end of trouble and nasty feeling.
With these obstacles out of the way, the greed and ambition of Ludwig were practically unrestrained. In fact, some historians say that they knew no bounds. Summoning the Storkrath, or common council (composed of three classes: the nobles, the welterweights, and the licensed pilots) he said to them: (according to Taine)
“An army can travel ten days on its stomach, but who the hell wants to be an army?”
This saying has become a by-word in history and is now remembered long after the Grand Duke Ludwig has been forgotten. But at the time, Ludwig received nothing short of an ovation for it, and succeeded in winning over the obstructionists to his side. This made everyone in favor of his disposition of Silesia except the Silesians. And, as they could neither read nor write, they thought that they still belonged to Holland and cheered a dyke every time they saw one.
The question remained in abeyance therefore, for a century and a quarter. Then, in 1805, three years after the accession of Ralph Rittenhouse to the throne of England, the storm broke again. The occasion was the partition of Parchesie by the Great Powers, by which the towns of Zweiback, Ulmhausen and Ost Wilp were united to form what is known as the “industrial triangle” on the Upper Silesian border. These towns are situated in the heart of the pumice district and could alone supply France and Germany with pumice for fifty years, provided it didn’t rain. Bismarck once called Ost Wilp “the pumice heart of the world,” and he was about right, too.
It will therefore be seen how important it was to France that this “industrial triangle” on the Silesian border should belong to Germany. At the conference which designated the border line, Gambetta, representing France, insisted that the line should follow the course of the Iser River (“iser on one side or the other,” was the way he is reported to have phrased it), which would divide the pumice deposits into three areas, the fourth being the dummy. This would never do.
Experts were called in to see if it might not be possible to so divide the district that France might get a quarter, Germany a quarter and England fifty cents. It was suggested that the line be drawn down through Globe-Wernicke to the mouth of the Is
er. As Gambetta said, the line had to be drawn somewhere and it might as well be there. But Lord Hay-Paunceforte, representing England, refused to concede the point and for a time it looked like an open breach. But matters were smoothed over by the holding of a plebiscite in all the towns of Upper Silesia. The result of this plebiscite was taken and exactly reversed by the council, so that the entire Engadine Valley was given to Sweden, who didn’t want it anyway.
And there the matter now stands.
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“Happy the Home
Where Books Are Found”
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By way of egging people on to buy Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf of books, the publishers are resorting to an advertisement in which are depicted two married couples, one reading together by the library table, the other playing some two-handed game of cards which is evidently boring them considerably. The query is “Which One of These Couples Will be the Happier in Five Years?” the implication being that the young people who buy Dr. Eliot’s books will, by constant reading aloud to each other from the works of the world’s best writers, cement a companionship which will put to shame the illiterate union of the young card players.
Granted that most two-handed games of cards are dull enough to result in divorce at the end of five years, they cannot be compared to coöperative family reading as a system of home-wrecking. If this were a betting periodical, we would have ten dollars to place on the chance of the following being the condition of affairs in the literary family at the end of the stated time:
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