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Ebook has 496 lines and 24977 words, and 10 pages

Why else had Nature brought them together from the ends of the earth?

But alas, Eugenics had not yet been invented and the Puritan and the Indian just naturally hated each other at first sight and so Mother Nature slipped up in her calculations, and a wonderful flower of racial possibility was forever nipped in the bud.

If the Puritan, with his piety and thrift and domesticity and his doctrine of election and the Noble Red Man, with his love of paint and syncopated music and dancing and belief in a happy Hereafter, had overcome their mutual prejudices and instead of warring with flintlocks and tomahawks, had pursued each other with engagement rings and marriage licenses, what a grand and glorious race we might be today!

What a land of freedom might be ours!

CONCERNING REVOLVING DOORS.

There has been some discussion of late as to the etiquette of the revolving door. When a man accompanied by a woman is about to be revolved in it, which should go first? Some think the man should precede the woman furnishing the motive power, while she follows idly in the next compartment. Others hold that the rule "Ladies first" can have no exception, therefore the man must stand aside and let the female of his species do the rough work of starting the door's revolution while the man, coming after, keeps it going and stops it at the right moment.

"Starting something" is perhaps of all pastimes in the world the one most popular with the sex we are accustomed to call the gentle sex; one might almost say that "starting something" is Woman's prerogative; on the other hand there is nothing on earth so abhorrent to that same gentle sex as the thing that is called Consistency; and though she may be perfectly charmed to start a revolution in South America, or in silk pajamas, or suffrage, or the rearing of children it does not follow that she will take kindly to the idea of starting the revolution of a revolving door.

As for the rule "Ladies first," its application to the etiquette of doors in general is purely a matter of geography. In some European countries it is the custom, when entering a room, for the man to precede the woman, and if it be a closed street or office door, the man will open it and following the door inward, hold the door open while she passes in. If the door opens outward the woman naturally enters first, since her companion must remain outside to hold the door open.

The American rule compelling the woman to precede her escort when entering a room or building doubtless originated with our ancestor the cave-man.

On returning to his Apartment with his wife after a hunting expedition Mr. Hairy K. Stoneaxe would say with a persuasive Neolithic smile "After you my dear," being rewarded for his politeness by advance information as to whether there were Megatheriums or Loxolophodons or an ambuscade of jealous rivals lurking in the darkness of his stone-upholstered sitting-room.

How much happier--and happiness is the mainspring of etiquette--they would be, this same pair, if the escort should push boldly the door to its widest openness and holding it thus with one hand behind his back, with the other press his already removed hat against his heart as the lady grateful and unruffled sweeps majestically by.

BOLSHEVISM FOR BABIES

"That babies don't commit such crimes as forgery is true, But little sins develop, if you leave them to accrue; For anything you know, they'll represent, if you're alive, A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five."

When W. S. Gilbert wrote these lines, he stated in an amusing way a great truth, for the doctrine of infant depravity and original sin thus lightly touched upon is, when stripped of its Calvinistic mummery, a recognized scientific verity.

I sometimes think that if the "highbrow" mothers who turn to books by long-haired professors with retreating chins for advice in child training, should study instead the nonsensical wisdom of Gilbert's book, they would derive more benefit therefrom. At least it would do them no harm.

I wish as much as that could be said of a book I have lately come across entitled "Practical Child Training," by Ray C. Beery . So far from harmless it is, in my opinion, a more fitting title for it would be "Bolshevism for Babies."

The "five principles of discipline" are embodied in the following story: The father of a boy sees him and two other boys throwing apples through a barn window, two of whose panes had been broken. To make a long story short, the parent, instead of reproving his offspring, says: "Good shot, Bob! Do you see that post over there? See if you can hit it two out of three times." "It would have been unwise for that father to say, 'I'd rather you'd not throw at that window opening--can't you sling at something else?' The latter remark would suggest that the window was the best target and the boys would have been dissatisfied at having to stop throwing at it."

The inference that the boys only needed the father's objection to an act on their part to convince them that it was a desirable act would be ludicrous if it weren't so immoral.

THE TUTTI-FRUTTI TREE

Neither so far as we can learn, had Solomon who knew and could address in its own language every flower and tree in existence, ever heard of the Tutti-Frutti Tree.

There is to my certain belief only one tree in existence answering to that name, and I christened it myself. I am its Godfather.

In the heartmost heart of the fruitful Paradise of New Jersey stands a small but ancient stone cottage that has come to regard me as its lord, and on Squire Williams' estate, whose verdant acres lie just outside my garden fence, grows the Tutti-Frutti Tree.

Once it was a young Apple Tree. It is still young, but as the result of a series of sap transfusions it is also several other kinds of tree, and when it grows up it will bear apples, quinces, two kinds of pears, peaches and, I believe, plums--almost everything in fact except Water Melons.

Some day a future Stevenson will immortalize it in verse something after this fashion,

It's quite absurd, of course, but just suppose the Tree of Knowledge in that First Garden has been a Tutti-Frutti Tree instead of an Apple Tree! With seven separate kinds of fruit to choose from, all equally forbidden and, for that reason, equally desirable, how could Eve ever have decided which one to pluck?

And with Eve's hesitation Sin would have been lost to the world!

THOSE BILL-BOARDS

Every now and again, generally when the warm weather is upon us, somebody or other starts a heated discussion about something that is of no particular interest to anybody.

This time it is Mr. Joseph Pennell, the artist, who wails and gnashes his pen about the terrible bill-board and advertising pictures that deface the public buildings and thoroughfares of American cities and the public scenery of the American countryside.

If my opinion were asked I should be tempted to quote the gentle answer with which the late William D. Howells was wont to turn away argument, and say to Mr. Pennell, "I think perhaps you are partly right."

But since I am not on Mr. Pennell's list of great American artists, a list, by the way that contains only two names, I am free to say what I really think, and that is that if the dear old familiar "Ads" were suddenly to disappear from the streets and cars, I should miss them very much.

Perhaps I have acquired a taste for them as the dweller near a street railroad first endures, then tolerates, and at last becomes so completely habituated to the roaring of wheels and the clang of metal that he is unable to sleep without their soothing lullaby.

Soothing--that's what they are, these advertising pictures. They soften the underground torment of travel in the Subway, they take the place of the scenery which beguiles the tedium of ordinary travel, and at least they are, as a rule, more interesting to contemplate than the people in the opposite seat. Those people are strangers, the people in the advertisement panels are, many of them, old friends, friends met in other cars in other cities. Mr. Pennell no doubt would like to see them thrown off the train, but I am always glad to meet them again, and to some of them, with whom I have a sort of informal bowing acquaintance, I mentally take off my hat.

One amiable gentleman in particular I always look for and hail with delight when I find myself sitting opposite to him. He is an Italian, I take it, from his appearance, and from Naples, to judge by his accent, which, though I have never heard his voice, is depicted as plainly as the nose on his face.

Neither do I know his name, but I call him Signor Pizzicato, for it is quite evident that nature intended him for an Operatic career. How he ever came to be a barber, I cannot imagine. Perhaps he sang in the Barber of Seville and lost his voice and became a realist, as some painters lose their sense of form and become cubists or futurists. Whatever he should have been or might have been or was, a barber is what he is now, and I gaze upon him in fascination as with a priceless gesture of thumb and forefinger he extols to his customer and to you, the bouquet so ravishing of the hair tonic he holds in his other hand, on the sale of which he presumably receives a large commission.

All I will tell you about her, gentle reader, is that she has fringed gentian eyes with a look in them that says quite plainly nothing would gratify her more than to play the same trick upon you.

All this chatter, I am aware, has nothing to do with Art, that is to say the "Art of Painting"; that large, severe-looking female you sometimes see crouched in an uncomfortable position on a still more uncomfortable cornice of a public building, wearing a laurel wreath and a granite peplum, and holding in her hand a huge stone palette.

But sometimes this severe female climbs down from her stone perch and takes a day off, Coney Island-wise, on the billboards and street cars, and then if she is not always at her best, she is often very amusing.

And just because a goddess isn't stuck up it doesn't prove that she isn't a goddess--does it?

THE LURE OF THE "AD"

Kipling once, when sojourning in a far country, complained bitterly of the thoughtlessness of his friends at home in sending him a batch of magazines shorn of all the advertisements. Which shows that the most grown-up of artists may still have the heart of a child.

For my part, if I were forced to make choice between the advertising pages and the reading matter , I should in nine periodicals out of ten choose the former.

To the grown-up child the advertising section of the magazine takes the place of the Shop-Window of infancy through which, with bulging eyes and mouth agape, like some mazed minnow staring at the submerged Rhine-Gold, he once gazed at the tinsel treasure so bitterly beyond his penny's reach.

And now, just as far out of reach as ever, in the display-window of the advertising page, the grown-up child gazes at the miraculous Motor-Car gliding, velvet shod, through palmy solitudes reflecting the rays of the setting sun with a splendor out-Solomoning Solomon.

Again it is the magical cabinet that brings into your very lap as it were the Galli-Curci, the Tetrazzini or any other "ini," "owski" or "elli" it may please your fancy to pick from its golden perch in the operatic aviary.

And what a relief to turn from the magazine pictures of the slick-haired hero and the slinky heroine of fiction --to turn from these to the very attractive, intelligent-looking girls of the advertising pages, girls exquisitely coiffed, gowned and silk-hosed and ever happily employed in some useful task: this one joyously propelling a vacuum-cleaner, this mixing the ingredients for a custard pie in a forget-me-not-blue Wedgwood bowl, and this, not less lovely than either of her sisters, polishing a bathtub with some magic powder till it glistens like a Childs' restaurant.

And this is only one of the many lessons that are to be learned from the advertising pages. Who can look at the busy little Dutch lady in the blue frock and white cap and apron, stick in hand, chasing the Demon Dirt in street cars, subway and elevated stations, billboards and electric signs, all over town, all over the continent for that matter--who can look at the determined back of that fierce little lady without inwardly swearing that wherever Demon Dirt may show his face, whether it be on the stage, the picture screen or the printed page of fiction he will do unto him even as doth the Little Dutch Lady with the big stick--

Or is it a rolling pin?

LOOK BEFORE SHE LEAPS

The Fourteenth of February in Leap Year is a dread-letter day for the shrinking bachelor and the shy grass widower.

The butterfly-winged statue of Femininity that, for three happy leapless years, he worshiped from a safe distance , has come to life, has climbed down from its vestal perch, changed fearfully from cool quiet marble to something of the consistency of warm india rubber--from an adorable image to--the female of the species.

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