But in all this talk about Whitman, Kingsley, Lowell, and the rest, I am afraid that we run a danger of overlooking several anniversaries which mean much to American letters, perhaps more than any of those thus far celebrated. I have two such dates in mind, and it will be through no fault of mine if they are passed by without their share of special stories, reminiscences and quotations from the works of the men whose centenaries they are.
JOHN BARTLETT
The one hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Bartlett, author of “Bartlett’s Quotations,” is rapidly approaching. Who shall say that it is without significance in the literary history of our country? I said “Who shall say that it is without significance in the literary history of our country?” As he himself has written of another (on page 115 of his collected works, Little, Brown, 1899):
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, “This was a man!”
There is probably no writer in the whole course of our national literature who has made his influence so felt on other writers of his time (and of times to follow him) as John Bartlett. It is not an exaggeration to say that his words are in everyone’s mouth wherever there is any pretense to culture in the English language. The hold which his works have taken on the minds of men cannot be overestimated.
And it is only just that it should be so. Where, in any literature, can there be found a writer whose range could include the production of such lines as:
To each his suff’rings; all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan, –
The tender for another’s pain,
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss
’Tis folly to be wise.
(page 382)
and then, in what might be termed the same breath, the conception of such a stanza as we find on page 679:
Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toun,
Upstairs and downstairs, in his nicht-goun,
Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock,
‘Are the weans in their bed? for its nou ten o’clock.’
It is told of Bartlett that he wore the same sort of underwear winter and summer. One day, while waiting in Harvard Square for the horse-car which was to take him in to Boston, he was accosted by one of the haberdashery-salesmen who infest those collegiate precincts.
“We’ve got a nice line of balbriggans in today, Mr. Bartlett,” said the man, hoping to make a sale.
“Thank you, I never use them,” was the quick retort, somewhat softened by a twinkle of the eye, which, however, the salesman did not see as Bartlett was looking in the opposite direction. The man went his way, and Bartlett took the horse-car to Boston.
Having seen this side of the man, it is easier for students of his works to understand the spirit which prompted the penning of those immortal lines:
Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
(page 561)
or, in somewhat different mood, but still displaying the same fire and deep insight into human hopes and aspirations:
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, – not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
(page 527)
Bartlett’s creative life may be divided into three periods, all sharply differentiated and yet all, in a manner of speaking, similar. I shall refer to these periods hereafter as the Period of Preparation (1820-1840); the Sturm und Drang Period (1840-1897), and the Period of Revision and Introspection (1897-1905). It was during the Sturm und Drang Period that he published the work which stands second only to his “Quotations” in intensity and depth of feeling, viz., “A New and Complete Concordance or Verbal Index to Words, Phrases and Passages in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare; with a Supplementary Concordance to the Poems.” To one who does not know this book, a complete acquaintance with Bartlett has not been vouchsafed. It is within its pages that we find those lines so significant now to us in our present national unrest:
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
But it were useless to go on enumerating the priceless gems of thought which Bartlett has given us. It were a presumption to imply that the mind of the public is needful of their iteration. And yet, as his centenary draws nigh, let us not find ourselves so spent with our Whitmans and our Kingsleys that we have no paper streamers and siren-blasts for our Bartletts.
The second figure in American letters whose name I would bring forward for festive consideration on this one hundredth anniversary of his birth, is one which, I fear, is not known by reputation to many of us. And yet he is a man whose work, given to us anonymously, ranks with that of Bartlett in its far-reaching influence on modern English prose and verse. I am not quite sure of his name myself, but I feel no hesitancy in bringing an approximation of it to the public attention, for upon his writings rather than on any accident of nomenclature, rests his fame.
I refer to Amos W. Kent, the author of The Standard Thesaurus and Treasury of English Words and Phrases. Born in Sutton, Massachusetts, on August 27, 1819, Mr. Kent devoted his entire life, after his graduation from Harvard, to the compilation of a thesaurus which stands on equal grounds with that of Peter Roget, popularly called “The Thesaurus King,” and, in many respects, excels the work of that Englishman, especially in its indices.
At a time when the categorical stanzas of Walt Whitman have been revived in every paper and literary journal in the country under the flimsy excuse that it was his one hundredth birthday, it is somewhat irritating to those of us who are admirers of Kent to consider how dependent Whitman was on Kent for nine-tenths of his material, and how slavish he (Whitman) was in his imitation of his (Kent’s) verse forms (Kent’s and Whitman’s). Let us take one example. If the following quotation from Kent (page 375), written fifteen years before Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” is not the very essence of the Good Gray Poet’s stock-in-trade, then the present reviewer will eat a hat furnished by any lady or gentleman in the audience. (I sing the – )
Cervical vertebrae, thoracic, the lumbar
The sacral, the presternum, the mesosternum, the scapula.
The clavicle, humerus, radius, ulna, femur, patella.
The tibia and the fibula and the long internal lateral ligament.
Or again, on page 370, Kent antedates Whitman by at least ten years:
Man, male, he; manhood, &c. (adolescence) 131;
Gentleman, sir, master, yeoman, wight, swain, fellow.
Blade, beau, elf, gaffer, good man; husband, &c. (married man)
Mr., mister; boy, &c. (youth) 129.
Male animal, drake, gander, dog, boar, stag.
Hart, buck, horse, gib, – tom-cat; he-Billy goat.
It is when one considers these points in the work of Kent and sees them for what they are, and then hears the public adulation of Whitman, an obvious disciple, that the lover of truth must feel that he is in the presence of a great literary injustice.
Since then, we are on the look-out for centenaries this year, let us not forget to pay homage to these two cornerstones of American letters, Bartlett and Kent. Altogether now, fellers, three long Bartletts with three short Kents on the end! One – two – three! –
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A Word
&n
bsp; About Hay Fever
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On the eighteenth of August, at 6 A.M., I celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the advent of my hay fever. I plan to make quite an occasion of it, with field sports and a buffet lunch in a tent during the day and a soirée de gala after dinner with fireworks (including set pieces representing the different varieties of noxious weeds) and dancing for those who can. Twenty-five years of hay fever is nothing to be – would you believe it, I almost wrote “sneezed at” without thinking! Gosh!
On the eighteenth of August, 1905, I awoke at 6 A.M. (the reason for this unnatural procedure was that I was at a boys’ camp at the time and a bugle had been blowing in my ear since 5:45) and realized that something was wrong. I realized that something was wrong because I sneezed nineteen times in rapid succession. One or two sneezes on arising is not abnormal, but nineteen indicate some derangement of the apparatus. “I must have caught cold,” I said, and promptly went back to bed.
But as I got again within range of the straw-filled tick which served us hardy boys as a mattress, I realized that it was no ordinary head cold which had descended on me. I had heard and seen enough of hay fever among my tribesmen at home to know that the old Gypsy’s Curse which was laid on the Benchleys generations ago in a dank Welsh cave had caught up with me, the youngest of the clan, and that, from that date on, I was to be marked with the red eye and the tender nose of the anaphylaxis sufferer.
If anaphylaxis (or hypersensitiveness to protein) were all that the victim of hay fever suffers from, things wouldn’t be so bad. He could buy a bale of soft cotton handkerchiefs and fight the thing out by himself. The real suffering comes through his relations with the rest of society and from man’s recognized inhumanity to man. In other words, he is a figure of fun.
People can have sunburn, hangnails, or even ordinary head colds, and their more fortunate mates will say: “Aw, that’s too bad! Why don’t you just take the day off and go home?” But the minute anyone with hay fever comes along, even though he be blind and gasping for breath, the entire community stops work and screams with laughter.
“Hay fever!” they say, holding their sides. “Boy, you ought to pose for a bunch of pomegranates!” or “What’s the matter? Did you leave your eyes at home on the bureau?” People who are not ordinarily given to wise-cracking blossom out as the wits of their day when confronted with someone in the throes of a hay-fever attack. You wouldn’t think there could be so many light-hearted, facile jokesters in the world. I can imagine no national calamity which would not be alleviated, no community depression which would not be shot through with sunshine, by the mere presence of a poor guy poisoned with ragweed pollen.
Hay fever has been going now for quite a number of centuries. Every year, along about August, there are editorials in the papers (humorous, unless the editorial writer himself happens to be a sufferer), and reports of conventions and newly discovered cures. And yet the ignorance of the immune citizenry on the subject is nothing short of colossal. Tell a man that the reason why you look so funny is that you have hay fever and, as soon as he has stopped laughing and has delivered himself of the customary bon mots, he will say: “Hay fever, eh? That’s something you get from eating goldenrod, isn’t it?” Goldenrod somehow always sticks in their minds as the sole cause of the affliction, although goldenrod is really one of the minor excitants and practically a soothing agent compared to ragweed and the more common grasses. But the non-sneezing layman will have it goldenrod, and goldenrod it is in song and story.
Then there is a great deal of good-natured incredulity over the fact that the first attack comes along about the same day every year. “You don’t mean to tell me that it comes annually on exactly the eighteenth of August!” they say, poking the sufferers in the ribs. “That’s because you are looking for it then. Suppose the eighteenth of August falls on a Sunday!”
They express no surprise that golden bantam corn comes along at the same time each year, or that the rambler roses on their porch are in full bloom every Fourth of July; but say that ragweed starts shedding its pollen every August along about the eighteenth, and they look at you suspiciously. I have struck, and will strike again, anyone who pushes me too far in this manner.
I do not know which is worse, to meet someone who knows nothing about hay fever and asks questions, or someone who knows just enough about it to suggest a remedy. The thing being as prevalent as it is, a lot of people have relatives who are victims. “I have a cousin who used to have hay fever,” they say, “and he did something, I don’t exactly remember what it was, but it was something you rub on your forehead, Cleenax or something like that – anyway, he hasn’t had hay fever since he started using it.” You never by any chance meet the cousin who has been cured, and you never find out just what this “Cleenax or something” was, but the implication is that if you don’t follow the suggestion up you just like to have hay fever.
There is also quite a general, though extremely hazy, knowledge about inoculations. “Isn’t there something that they shoot into your arm that fixes it up? A guy in our office had that done and is O.K. now.” Well, there are plenty of things that you could shoot into your arm which would fix hay fever, among them a good, strong solution of bichloride of mercury; but most of the pollen serums which are used for this purpose have to be shot in every fifteen minutes from February 15 until November 1, and even then there is a very good chance that the result will be simply a sore arm in addition to hay fever. I tried it one year and have gone back to the good, old-fashioned eye-and-nose infirmity.
So, beginning with my twenty-fifth anniversary, I am going to take the aggressive. Instead of letting people say to me, “What’s the matter with you? You look so funny,” I am going to lead off with “What’s the matter with you? You look awful.” Just as Thoreau replied to Emerson, “Why aren’t you in jail?” when the great philosopher asked him why he was in jail, I intend to make the immune ones explain why, with so many charming and intelligent people wiping their eyes and sneezing, they are standing there like ninnies and breathing easily.
I shall either adopt this course or do as I have been doing for the past five years – retire to a darkened room, shut the windows, and tear bits of paper from August 18 until September 15.
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À Bas
the Military Censor
The Ride of Paul Revere –
As It Would Be featured in Washington Today
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One wonders (especially if one is writing a story about it) just what would have happened if there had been a Committee on Public Information or a Military Censor during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). How would Paul Revere have got his big news story to the people if he had been forced to deal through the channels of publicity which a modern news writer must traverse in our military organization? Following is a vivid word picture, giving the whole thing in detail:
Let us assume that Paul Revere and his little friend would have been allowed to execute their signalling stunt from the North Church steeple. As a matter of fact, the chances are they would have been arrested by the Salem Street Chapter of the Home Guard before they had waved one lantern aloft. We will concede that young Revere, on the opposite shore, has received the signal indicating that the British are on the way. His excuse for being out at that time of night is to inform the public.
But, being under a voluntary censorship not to disclose any military information without first submitting it to the proper authority for an O.K., he would ride quickly to the office of the Committee on Public Information, Middlesex Division.
On being shown into the office of the Public Informer (who, for the purpose of this story, would have to be staying late at the office that night working up a story on “How Our Soldier Boys Get Their Snuff”) he would say:
“I have here a story on the imminent advance of the British troops which I think ought to get to the public as soon as possible or it will lose all of its news value. Do
you suppose that I could get a release on it to-night?”
The Public Informer would take it and look at the first paragraph.
“Have you got John Adams O.K. on this?” he would ask.
Mr. Revere would admit that he had just received the story.
“Well, I’ll tell you what to do,” would say the Continental Creel. “Leave the story here and I will have one of my men go over it for grammatical errors and then take it up with either Mr. Adams or Mr. Hancock, under whose department it comes. And, as it is a matter directly concerning military affairs, General Putnam ought to go over it first, also. I will be glad to put it out for you as soon as a decision has been reached. It looks like a good story to me. Come in tomorrow afternoon.”
Although bursting with a desire to make himself the subject of a poem by dashing through “every Middlesex village and farm” that very night, our hero would have to spend the time between then and the next afternoon shooting Kelly Pool in the Boston Tavern, and telling the boys just what he thought about the Committee of Public Information.
On the following day he would gallop (he simply had to gallop somewhere, even if it were only back and forth from the Censor’s office) and the Public Informer would explain to him how the matter lay:
“One of my men has taken it up with General Putnam, and the General is very much disturbed that such information should have fallen into civilian hands in the first place. He wants to see you at 9:07 tomorrow morning to ask you where you got it. In the second place, both the General and Mr. Hancock agree with me that to give this story out to the public at this time would tend to create an atmosphere of unhealthy pessimism. You say here, in the first paragraph: ‘The British are coming!’ Now that is direct military information, and might be used by the Tory element to inform General Gage that we know of his plans and the whole affair might be called off.
Chips Off the Old Benchley Page 25