“Oh, is that so?” said Perinne’s hotly. “Well, since you think you’re so smart, it isn’t on the records at the Harvard Observatory. I’ve been out of this solar system entirely. They couldn’t have seen me if they had wanted to. And I’ll tell you right now that where I’ve been is the greatest little place in the universe. And cheap! Why, say, I got a room and bath and three meals a day (and, boy, let me tell you they were some meals, too. Hors d’oeuvres, soup, roast, two kinds of vegetables, salad, dessert and coffee), all for a hundred and twenty-five kronen; that’s about – let me see – eleven cents in our money.”
Skjellerup’s and Baade’s looked at each other apprehensively.
“Have a little something to drink,” suggested Baade’s, more to change the subject than anything else. “It’s all right, I can guarantee it. My doctor gave it to me for Christmas.”
“Put it up, quick!” whispered Skjellerup’s. “They’re watching us down there at Harvard.”
“I suppose you guys think you know good liquor when you taste it. Well, I could show you a little place where I’ve been that would make your eyes pop out of your heads.”
“And say, let me tell you another thing,” he continued. “You all here don’t know what climate is. Why, we took a little swirl down the line over there, lasting maybe ten years, and I give you my word that only once in those ten years did we run into anything that you could really call bad weather. And that wasn’t anything more than a shower.”
The music of the spheres unfortunately cut in at this point, but the following item, when it appears, will explain what finally happened.
TWO COMETS VANISH
FROM AGE-OLD TRIO
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (A.P.) Astronomers here are mystified at the sudden disappearance of two comets which formerly made up the trio known as “The Jolly Three.” Skjellerup’s and Baade’s are the names of the two missing tailed stars, while Perrine’s remains the only one of the group to be visible from the observatory. It is thought that Skjellerup’s and Baade’s are in hiding somewhere.
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Books
and Other Things
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For those to whom the purple-and-gold filigreed covers of Florence L. Barclay’s books bring a stirring of the sap and a fluttering of the susceptible heart, “Returned Empty” comes as a languorous relief from the stolid realism of most present-day writing. One reads it and swoons. And on opening one’s eyes again, one hears old family retainers murmuring in soft retentive accents: “Here, sip some of this, my lord; ’twill bring the roses back to those cheeks and the strength to those poor limbs.” It’s elegant, that’s all there is to it, elegant.
“Returned Empty” was the inscription on the wrappings which enfolded the tiny but aristocratic form of a man-child left on the steps of the Foundlings Institution one moonless October night. There was also some reference to Luke, xii., 6, which in return refers to five sparrows sold for two farthings. What more natural, then, than for the matron to name the little one Luke Sparrow?
Luke was an odd boy but refined. So odd that he used to go about looking in at people’s windows when they forgot to pull down the shades, and so refined that he never wished to be inside with them.
But one night, when he was thirty years old, he looked in at the window of a very refined and elegant mansion and saw a woman. In the simple words of the author, “in court or cottage alike she would be queen.” That’s the kind of woman she was.
And what do you think? She saw Luke looking in. Not only saw him but came over to the window and told him that she had been expecting him. Well, you could have knocked Luke over with a feather. However, he allowed himself to be ushered in by the butler (everything in the house was elegant like that) and up to a room where he found evening clothes, bath-salts and grand things of that nature. On passing a box of books which stood in the hall he read the name on it “before he realized what he was doing.” Of course the minute he thought what an unrefined thing it was to do he stopped, but it was too late. He had already seen that his hostess’s name was “Lady Tintagel.”
When later he met her down in the luxurious dining-room she was just as refined as ever. And so was he. They both were so refined that she had to tell the butler to “serve the fruit in the Oak Room, Thomas.”
Once in the Oak Room she told him her strange tale. It seemed that he was her husband. He didn’t remember it, but he was. He had been drowned some years before and she had wished so hard that he might come back to life that finally he had been born again in the body of Luke Sparrow. It’s funny how things work out like that sometimes.
But Luke, who, as has been said before, was an odd boy, took it very hard and said that he didn’t want to be brought back to life. Not even when she told him that his name was now Sir Nigel Guido Cadross Tintagel, Bart. He became very cross and said that he was going out and drown himself all over again, just to show her that she shouldn’t have gone meddling with his spirit life. He was too refined to say so, but when you consider that he was just thirty, and his wife, owing to the difference in time between the spirit world and this, had gone on growing old until she was now pushing sixty, he had a certain amount of justice on his side. But of course she was Lady Tintagel, and all the lovers of Florence Barclay will understand that that is something.
So, after reciting Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” at her request (credit is given in the front of the book for the use of this poem, and only rightly too, for without it the story could never have been written), he goes out into the ocean. But there – we mustn’t give too much of the plot away. All that one need know is that Luke or Sir Nigel, as you wish (and what reader of Florence Barclay wouldn’t prefer Sir Nigel?), was so cultured that he said, “Nobody in the whole world knows it, save you and I,” and referred to “flotsam and jetson” as he was swimming out into the path of the rising sun. “Jetsam” is such an ugly word.
It is only fitting that on his tombstone Lady Tintagel should have had inscribed an impressive and high-sounding misquotation from the Bible.
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Browsing Through
the Passport
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It won’t be long now before they’ll all be coming home – all those Americans who went to Europe this summer. They are hanging on their elbows over the counters in London and Paris steamship offices this very minute, trying to get reservations back to New York, and saying: “The price doesn’t matter. Just something on A deck, if you can.”
Considering how easy it is to get out of this country, the getting-back-in is made very discouraging. Not only is there the question of passage-money for the return trip (a feat in itself of no mean proportions after you have discovered that those purple Bank of France notes that you had tucked away in the reserve wallet against a rainy day were for 500 francs apiece instead of 1000), but there is also the unpleasant reception you get when you reach the harbor of your native land. It is almost as if the Government didn’t want you. Well, I don’t want the Government – so we’re even.
The thing that makes it confusing is that everyone on board an ocean-liner, bright and early on the morning when she is supposed to dock in New York, gets out on deck all dressed in street clothes, looking very stuffy and strange, just as if it were simply a question of finishing the second cup of breakfast coffee (if you can get the first one down, the second doesn’t taste so frightful) and then stepping right off the side of the ship into a taxi. If the thing is supposed to dock at 11, everyone is all set to land at 8 A.M., with umbrellas rolled up and cameras slung over their shoulders, and with nothing to do but walk up and down the deck and fret.
This is all due to the fact that our beloved Government, by way of a welcome home, meets us with little reception committees of doctors and passport tasters, who have come out to the ship in a little boat with what are known as the “delay papers.” The idea is simply to delay things. Some of these offici
als have been in the business of delaying for as much as twenty-five years and have it down to a fine art. They can take a ship which is ready to dock at 9 A.M. and, merely by making little check-marks on a sheet and thumbing passport leaves, with an occasional look under the eyelids of a passenger, hold things up until noon. And not very nicely, either. You would think that they, instead of you, were the ones who had just come from abroad and from seeing the Winged Victory in the Louvre and the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. You would think that the Old World air, which you have paid at least $3000 to acquire, gave you no rights at all.
This hanging around for hours and hours on shipboard between quarantine and the pier can spoil an entire summer of travel for a nervous man. If he has packed his bags and got everything out of his stateroom, donned his straw hat and wrapped his raincoat over his arm (with every indication of the hottest day of the year wafting down the bay from the city) he has nothing to do but pace about and think. He suddenly finds that his shipmates are very dull, at practically the same moment in which they found that he is very dull himself, and there is nothing to talk about. People who have been the life of the ship on the way over, when they get dressed in their landing-suits and come under the influence of the Long Interval, change into flat-footed Babbitts with nothing to say but: “Well, there’s Little Old New York.” Everyone seems to have produced a dog from somewhere, and there is the constant threat of fighting to keep what little breath of life there is left alive. But there never is a dog-fight, much as it would be welcomed. Even the dogs are let down.
It is at this time, when all one’s books and magazines are packed, that one takes out the old passport and reads every word in it just out of sheer boredom. Standing in line waiting for Uncle Sam to look at your tongue or hanging around on dock waiting for the tide to turn, there is nothing like a little red passport to while away the time. And what a bit of reading-matter that is!
To start with, there is the unpleasant line on the front page: “In Case of Death or Accident Notify – ” Well, unless something happens between quarantine and the pier, you have made a bum out of that. It is nothing to read on the trip across. It brings up too many mental pictures of avalanches or bad fish.
“This passport is a valuable document. Due care should be taken to see that it does not pass into the possession of an unauthorized person.” A fine time to be reading that! Practically everybody on the continent of Europe, including bartenders and the young ladies at the Belles Poules, have had a crack at this passport, if only to see how you spell your name. What would “due care” be? What would an “unauthorized person” be? So far as I am concerned, everybody in Europe is unauthorized. I recognize no authority but the Constitution of the United States (some parts of it) and the bouncer at Jack’s and Charlie’s. And yet my passport has been practically the picture-book of the Continent. More people have read it than have read the Book of Ruth.
Here is a man named “D. Lorinas” or “D. Toinaz” who messed up one whole page under the pretext of getting me into England. I must write him a post-card from America just to show that all Americans aren’t rude. Then there is somebody connected with the French government whose name is just nothing but a long line of “m’s,” written in dandy purple ink. According to the stamp under his name (I translate literally and without any attempt at style) “The present visa does not dispense the porter to conform to dispositions regulating in France the day of strangers.” O.K. Monsieur, the porter gets you! No monkey business.
The German one I am not so sure about. It seems to be signed by a man named “Grosvenor” who should, I should think, have signed the British one instead of Mr. Lorinas. Perhaps there was an exchange professorship, with Mr. Grosvenor filling in for Mr. Lorinas at Koln and Mr. Lorinas doing the Dover trick. I’ll bet they were both glad to get home and get some real cooking. Mr. Grosvenor, doubtless due to unfamiliarity with German, has filled in a line which, according to my knowledge of the language, would have me traveling backwards, which I certainly never did. I traveled sideways for a couple of days in Paris, but never backwards, especially in Germany. I must check Mr. Grosvenor up on this.
I sincerely hope Mr. Grosvenor will be able to straighten me out on this, because nobody wants to be barging backwards about the continent of Europe, especially when you are unconscious that you are facing in the wrong direction.
The next two pages frankly baffle me. One is headed “Érvényes Magyarországba” and is signed “S. N.” I guess that I am supposed to be on very friendly terms with “S. N.” and recognize his initials, but, unless it is Sam Northrup, I haven’t the slightest idea who it is. And Sam Northrup certainly wouldn’t be writing in my book about “Érvényes Magyarországba,” not after all we went through together in the old days. Either the same man went right on into the next page of my passport, or it is another language entirely. I wouldn’t know. But evidently on the sixteenth of Brez (prijezd odjezo), I rated a paragraph from Str. (name undecipherable) saying that “Plati ve smysĺu vynosu nitra ze dne. 31/VII 1925 cis 52858 vyjimeene k jedomu prujezdu pres uzemi csr.”
Now I have done some unaccountable things in my travels abroad and have turned up with a lot of little knickknacks that I don’t remember buying, but I would swear that, wherever I was on the sixteenth of Brez, I had nothing to do with “vyjimeene k jedomu.” I’ll bet that the official, Sam Northrup or whoever it was, just was trying to be funny and confuse me. And, if we hadn’t been held up so long in the harbor, I never should have seen it. That’s the way with those jokes like that. You go to all the trouble of writing them in books, and then the person who is supposed to be the goat never even sees them. I am a little sorry that I looked now.
Perhaps it would be a good idea if the professional joke makers would make it a practice to notify their intended victims well in advance. This would avoid complete confusion as well as doing away with wasted effort. Goodness knows that the life of a jokesmith is full enough of bitter disappointments and disillusionments. We should all do our utmost to make life simpler and sweeter for them.
Of course, this reading over of a passport will not take up all the time between quarantine and the pier. You will still have opportunity to walk around the deck eight or ten times and go back to your stateroom to pick up the things you forgot to pack. But it will help to while away a little of the tedium, and also may make you more reconciled to staying home next summer.
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Memoirs
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Now that people have begun writing their memoirs before they are 30 and before they have anything to memoir about I see no reason why I shouldn’t do mine and get it over with. I don’t remember very much, but then, I haven’t got very much space on this page to remember in.
My earliest recollection is that of not liking fireworks, especially those which went “Bang!” This still holds good, so it really isn’t any feat of memory to recall it. I don’t like any fireworks now, even those which just go “pf-f-f-f-t-t-t!”
This brings me up to the age of 20, when I remember meeting President Taft. I say that I “met” him. I was one of a committee of 50 students who met him at a train in Back Bay, and I remember him saying “How ar-r-re you, boys?” with a distinct Ohio trill on the “r.” That was all that he said to me personally, but he later lost the election.
I never met another President of the United States, although I almost taught school at Groton. I say that I “almost taught school.” The headmaster of Groton wanted someone from my class in college to teach French, but I didn’t know enough French. I talked it over with the headmaster though.
At the age of 33 I had my tonsils taken out, but I do not remember very much about it. I found out later, however, that I was indirectly the cause of a revolution in throat therapeutics. The doctor told my nurse to give me two aspirin tablets and a glass of water and she, being just fresh from Finland, thought that he said “two aspirin tablets in a glass of water,” which she prepare
d and which I gargled with terrific success.
It was from this accident that the aspirin gargle was evolved and hundreds of thousands of tonsil patients relieved. (I am not kidding.) So, at any rate, I can feel that I have done my bit toward the advancement of science. I want, however, to give the nurse equal credit and take this opportunity to do it.
We now come to the age of 40, the most interesting time of a boy’s life. I don’t remember very much about my 40th year, except that I tried to forget some stocks which I had been told to buy, put away and forget. I haven’t forgotten them, even now. They were – but there – I mustn’t kiss and tell.
And so the trail winds on and on, into the setting sun, and, as I look back over Memory Lane, sitting in the fire in front of my pipe, I wonder if it has all been worth while, this struggle for Fame and Fortune, this gaining ground and losing it, this petty little work-a-day thing we call life. Who knows?
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Looking at
Picture Books
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The present craving of adults for picture books makes one wonder if all this past business of reading type-matter has perhaps been a pose. Considering how grown-up we are (and lots of us are great big boys and girls now) we do an awful lot of poring over picture books, and we do everything with them that the children do with theirs except drop them on the floor for someone else to pick up. When we drop our picture books, they stay dropped unless we pick them up ourselves. That’s why so many of us are so bitter about life.
Chips Off the Old Benchley Page 12