Love Conquers All

by Robert Benchley

  Then comes the unpacking. It has been estimated that in the trunks of returning vacationists, taking this section of the country as a whole, the following articles will be pulled out during the next few weeks:

  Sneakers, full of sand.

  Bathing suits, still damp from the “one last swim.”

  Dead tennis balls.

  Last month’s magazines, bought for reading in the grove.

  Shells and pretty stones picked up on the beach for decoration purposes, for which there has suddenly become no use at all.

  Horse-shoe crabs, salvaged by children who refused to leave them behind.

  Lace scarfs and shawls, bought from itinerant Armenians.

  Remnants of tubes formerly containing sunburn ointment, half-filled bottles of citronella and white shoe-dressing.

  White flannel trousers, ready for the cleaners.

  Snap-shots, showing Ed and Mollie on the beach in their bathing suits.

  Snap-shots which show nothing at all.

  Faded flowers, dance-cards and assorted sentimental objects, calculated to bring up tender memories of summer evenings.

  Uncompleted knit-sweaters.

  Then begins the tour of the neighborhood, comparing summer-vacation experiences. To each returning vacationist it seems as if everyone in town must be interested in what he or she did during the summer. They stop perfect strangers on the streets and say: “Well, a week ago today at this time we were all walking up to the Post-Office for the mail. Right out in front of the Post-Office were the fish-houses and you ought to have seen Billy one night leading a lobster home on a string. That was the night we all went swimming by moon-light.”

  “Yeah?” says the stranger, and pushes his way past.

  Then two people get together who have been to different places. Neither wants to hear about the other’s summer – and neither does. Both talk at once and pull snap-shots out of their pockets.

  “Here’s where we used to take our lunch—”

  “That’s nothing. Steve had a friend up the lake who had a launch—”

  “—and everyday there was something doing over at the Casino—”

  “—and you ought to have seen Miriam, she was a sight—”

  Pretty soon they come to blows trying to make each other listen. The only trouble is they never quite kill each other. If only one could be killed it would be a great help.

  The next ban on immigration should be on returning vacationists. Have government officials stationed in each city and keep everyone out who won’t give a bond to shut up and go right to work.

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  Animal Stories – I

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  HOW GEORGIE DOG GETS THE RUBBERS

  ON THE GUEST ROOM BED

  Old Mother Nature gathered all her little pupils about her for the daily lesson in “How the Animals Do the Things They Do.” Every day Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus came to Mother Nature’s school, and there learned all about the useless feats performed by their brother and sister animals.

  “Today,” said Mother Nature, “we shall find out how it is that Georgie Dog manages to get the muddy rubbers from the hall closet, up the stairs, and onto the nice white bedspread in the guest room. You must be sure to listen carefully and pay strict attention to what Georgie Dog says. Only, don’t take too much of it seriously, for Georgie is an awful liar.”

  And, sure enough, in came Georgie Dog, wagging his entire torso in a paroxysm of camaraderie, although everyone knew that he had no use for Waldo Lizard.

  “Tell us, Georgie,” said Mother Nature, “how do you do your clever work of rubber-dragging? We would like so much to know. Wouldn’t we, children?”

  “No, Mother Nature!” came the instant response from the children.

  So Georgie Dog began.

  “Well, I’ll tell you; it’s this way,” he said, snapping at a fly. “You have to be very niftig about it. First of all, I lie by the door of the hall closet until I see a nice pair of muddy rubbers kicked into it.”

  “How muddy ought they to be?” asked Edna Elephant, although little enough use she would have for the information.

  “I am glad that you asked that question,” replied Georgie. “Personally; I like to have mud on them about the consistency of gurry – that is, not too wet – because then it will all drip off on the way upstairs, and not so dry that it scrapes off on the carpet. For we must save it all for the bedspread, you know.

  “As soon as the rubbers are safely in the hall closet, I make a great deal of todo about going into the other room, in order to give the impression that there is nothing interesting enough in the hall to keep me there. A good, loud yawn helps to disarm any suspicion of undue excitement. I sometimes even chew a bit of fringe on the sofa and take a scolding for it – anything to draw attention from the rubbers. Then, when everyone is at dinner, I sneak out and drag them forth.”

  “And how do you manage to take them both at once?” piped up Lawrence Walrus.

  “I am glad that you asked that question,” said Georgie, “because I was trying to avoid it. You can never guess what the answer is. It is very difficult to take two at a time, and so we usually have to take one and then go back and get the other. I had a cousin once who knew a grip which could be worked on the backs of overshoes, by means of which he could drag two at a time, but he was an exceptionally fine dragger. He once took a pair of rubber boots from the barn into the front room, where a wedding was taking place, and put them on the bride’s train. Of course, not one dog in a million could hope to do that.

  “Once upstairs, it is quite easy getting them into the guest room, unless the door happens to be shut. Then what do you think I do? I go around through the bathroom window onto the roof, and walk around to the sleeping porch, and climb down into the guest room that way. It is a lot of trouble, but I think that you will agree with me that the results are worth it.

  “Climbing up on the bed with the rubbers in my mouth is difficult, but it doesn’t make any difference if some of the mud comes off on the side of the bedspread. In fact, it all helps in the final effect. I usually try to smear them around when I get them at last on the spread, and if I can leave one of them on the pillow, I feel that it’s a pretty fine little old world, after all. This done, and I am off.”

  And Georgie Dog suddenly disappeared in official pursuit of an automobile going eighty-five miles an hour.

  “So now,” said Mother Nature to her little pupils, “we have heard all about Georgie Dog’s work. Tomorrow we may listen to Lillian Mosquito tell how she makes her voice carry across a room.”

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  Animal Stories – II

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  HOW LILLIAN MOSQUITO

  PROJECTS HER VOICE

  All the children came crowding around Mother Nature one cold, raw afternoon in summer, crying in unison:

  “Oh, Mother Nature, you promised us that you would tell us how Lillian Mosquito projects her voice! You promised that you would tell us how Lillian Mosquito projects her voice!”

  “So I did! So I did!” said Mother Nature, laying down an oak, the leaves of which she was tipping with scarlet for the fall trade. “And so I will! So I will!”

  At which Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus jumped with imitation joy, for they had hoped to have an afternoon off.

  Mother Nature led them across the fields to the piazza of a clubhouse on which there was an exposed ankle belonging to one of the members. There, as she had expected, they found Lillian Mosquito having tea.

  “Lillian,” called Mother Nature, “come off a minute. I have some little friends here who would like to know how it is that you manage to hum in such a manner as to give the impression of being just outside the ear of a person in bed, when actually you are across the room.”

  “Will you kindly repeat the question?” said Lillian flying over to the railing.

  “We want to know,
” said Mother Nature, “how it is that very often, when you have been fairly caught, it turns out that you have escaped without injury.”

  “I would prefer to answer the question as it was first put,” said Lillian.

  So Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus, seeing that there was no way out, cried:

  “Yes, yes, Lillian, do tell us.”

  “First of all, you must know,” began Lillian Mosquito, “that my chief duty is to annoy. Whatever else I do, however many bites I total in the course of the evening, I do not consider that I have ‘made good’ unless I have caused a great deal of annoyance while doing it. A bite, quietly executed and not discovered by the victim until morning, does me no good. It is my duty, and my pleasure, to play with him before biting, as you have often heard a cat plays with a mouse, tormenting him with apprehension and making him struggle to defend himself. . . . If I am using too long words for you, please stop me.”

  “Stop!” cried Waldo Lizard, reaching for his hat, with the idea of possibly getting to the ball park by the fifth inning.

  But he was prevented from leaving by kindly old Mother Nature, who stepped on him with her kindly old heel, and Lillian Mosquito continued:

  “I must therefore, you see, be able to use my little voice with great skill. Of course, the first thing to do is to make my victim think that I am nearer to him than I really am. To do this, I sit quite still, let us say, on the footboard of the bed, and, beginning to hum in a very, very low tone of voice, increase the volume and raise the pitch gradually, thereby giving the effect of approaching the pillow.

  “The man in bed thinks that he hears me coming toward his head, and I can often see him, waiting with clenched teeth until he thinks that I am near enough to swat. Sometimes I strike a quick little grace-note, as if I were right above him and about to make a landing. It is great fun at such times to see him suddenly strike himself over the ear (they always think that I am right at their ear), and then feel carefully between his finger tips to see if he has caught me. Then, too, there is always the pleasure of thinking that perhaps he has hurt himself quite badly by the blow. I have often known victims of mine to deafen themselves permanently by jarring their eardrums in their wild attempts to catch me.”

  “What fun! What fun!” cried Edna Elephant. “I must try it myself just as soon as ever I get home.”

  “It is often a good plan to make believe that you have been caught after one of the swats,” continued Lillian Mosquito, “and to keep quiet for a while. It makes him cocky. He thinks that he has demonstrated the superiority of man over the rest of the animals. Then he rolls over and starts to sleep. This is the time to begin work on him again. After he has slapped himself all over the face and head, and after he has put on the light and made a search of the room and then gone back to bed to think up some new words, that is the time when I usually bring the climax about.

  “Gradually approaching him from the right, I hum loudly at his ear. Then, suddenly becoming quiet, I fly silently and quickly around to his neck. Just as he hits himself on the ear, I bite his neck and fly away. And, voilà, there you are!”

  “How true that is!” said Mother Nature. “Voilà, there we are! . . . Come, children, let us go now, for we must be up bright and early tomorrow to learn how Lois Hen scratches up the beets and Swiss chard in the gentlemen’s gardens.”

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  The Tariff Unmasked

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  Let us get this tariff thing cleared up, once and for all. An explanation is due the American people, and obviously this is the place to make it.

  Viewing the whole thing, schedule by schedule, we find it indefensible. In Schedule A alone the list of necessities on which the tax is to be raised includes Persian berries, extract of nutgalls and isinglass. Take isinglass alone. With prices shooting up in this market, what is to become of our picture post-cards? Where once for a nickel you could get a picture of the Woolworth Building ablaze with lights with the sun setting and the moon rising in the background, under the proposed tariff it will easily set you back fifteen cents. This is all very well for the rich who can get their picture post-cards at wholesale, but how are the poor to get their art?

  The only justifiable increase in this schedule is on “blues, in pulp, dried, etc.” If this will serve to reduce the amount of “Those Lonesome-Onesome-Wonesome Blues” and “I’ve Got the Left-All-Alone-in-The-Magazine-Reading-Room-of-the-Public-Library Blues” with which our popular song market has been flooded for the past five years, we could almost bring ourselves to vote for the entire tariff bill as it stands.

  Schedule B

  Here we find a tremendous increase in the tax on grindstones. Householders and travelers in general do not appreciate what this means. It means that, next year, when you are returning from Europe, you will have to pay a duty on those Dutch grindstones that you always bring back to the cousins, a duty which will make the importation of more than three prohibitive. This will lead to an orgy of grindstone smuggling, making it necessary for hitherto respectable people to become law-breakers by concealing grindstones about their clothing and in the trays of their trunks. Think this over.

  Schedule C

  Right at the start of this list we find charcoal bars being boosted. Have our children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without Hershey’s charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride through the country-side than a band of gypsum encamped by the road with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff insists on raising the tax on gypsum?

  Schedule D

  A way to evade the injustice of this schedule is in the matter of marble slabs. “Marble slabs, rubbed” are going to cost more to import than “marble slabs, unrubbed.” What we are planning to do in this office is to get in a quantity of unrubbed marble slabs and then rub them ourselves. A coarse, dry towel is very good for rubbing, they say.

  Any further discussion of the details of this iniquitous tariff would only enrage us to a point of incoherence. Perhaps a short list of some of the things you will have to do without under the new arrangement will serve to enrage you also:

  Senegal gum, buchu leaves, lava tips for burners, magic lantern strips, spiegeleisen nut washers, butchers’ skewers and gun wads.

  Now write to your congressman!

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  LITERARY DEPARTMENT

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  “Take Along a Book”

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  There seems to be a concerted effort, manifest in the “Take Along a Book” drive, to induce vacationists to slip at least one volume into the trunk before getting Daddy to jump on it.

  This is a fine idea, for there is always a space between the end of the tennis-racquet and the box of soap in which the shoe-whitening is liable to tip over unless you jam a book in with it. Any book will do.

  It is usually a book that you have been meaning to read all Spring, one that you have got so used to lying about to people who have asked you if you have read it that you have almost kidded yourself into believing that you really have read it. You picture yourself out in the hammock or down on the rocks, with a pillow under your head and pipe or a box of candy near at hand, just devouring page after page of it. The only thing that worries you is what you will read when you have finished that. “Oh, well,” you think, “there will probably be some books in the town library. Maybe I can get Gibbon there. This summer will be a good time to read Gibbon through.”

  Your trunk doesn’t reach the cottage until four days after you arrive, owing to the ferry-pilots’ strike. You don’t get it unpacked down as far as the layer in which the book is until you have been there a week.

  Then the book is taken out and put on the table. In transit it has tried to eat its way through a pair of tramping-boots, with the result that one corner and the first twenty pages have becom
e dog-eared, but that won’t interfere with its being read.

  Several other things do interfere, however. The nice weather, for instance. You start out from your room in the morning and somehow or other never get back to it except when you are in a hurry to get ready for meals or for bed. You try to read in bed one night, but you can’t seem to fix your sun-burned shoulders in a comfortable position.

  You take the book down to luncheon and leave it at the table. And you don’t miss it for three days. When you find it again it has large blisters on page 35 where some water was dropped on it.

  Then Mrs. Beatty, who lives in Montclair in the winter time (no matter where you go for the summer, you always meet some people who live in Montclair in the winter), borrows the book, as she has heard so much about it. Two weeks later she brings it back, and explains that Prince got hold of it one afternoon and chewed just a little of the back off, but says that she doesn’t think it will be noticed when the book is in the bookcase.

  Back to the table in the bedroom it goes and is used to keep unanswered post-cards in. It also is convenient as a backing for cards which you yourself are writing. And the flyleaf makes an excellent place for a bridge-score if there isn’t any other paper handy.

  When it comes time to pack up for home, you shake the sand from among the leaves and save out the book to be read on the train. And you leave it in the automobile that takes you to the station.

  But for all that, “take along a book.” It might rain all summer.