Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley

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[Transcriber's note: Footnotes moved to end of story]

[Illustration: They look him over as if he were a fresh air child being
given a day's outing.]

LOVE CONQUERS ALL

BY ROBERT C. BENCHLEY

ILLUSTRATED BY GLUYAS WILLIAMS

1922

Printed October, 1922

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author thanks the editors of the following publications for their
permission to print the articles in this book: _Life, The New York
World, The New York Tribune, The Detroit Athletic Club News, and The
Consolidated Press Association_.

CONTENTS

I THE BENCHLEY-WHITTIER CORRESPONDENCE

II FAMILY LIFE IN AMERICA
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

III THIS CHILD KNOWS THE ANSWER--_DO YOU_?

IV RULES AND SUGGESTIONS FOE WATCHING AUCTION BRIDGE

V A CHRISTMAS SPECTACLE

VI HOW TO WATCH A CHESS MATCH

VII WATCHING BASEBALL

VIII HOW TO BE A SPECTATOR AT SPRING PLANTING

IX THE MANHATTADOR

X WHAT TO DO WHILE THE FAMILY IS AWAY

XI "ROLL YOUR OWN"

XII DO INSECTS THINK?

XIII THE SCORE IN THE STANDS

XIV MID-WINTER SPORTS

XV READING THE FUNNIES ALOUD

XVI OPERA SYNOPSES
I Die Meister-Genossenschaft.
II Il Minnestrone
III Lucy de Lima

XVII THE YOUNG IDEA'S SHOOTING GALLERY

XVIII POLYP WITH A PAST

XIX HOLT! WHO GOES THERE?

XX THE COMMITTEE ON THE WHOLE

XXI NOTING AN INCREASE IN BIGAMY

XXII THE REAL WIGLAF: MAN AND MONARCH

XXIII FACING THE BOYS' CAMP PROBLEM

XXIV ALL ABOUT THE SILESIAN PROBLEM

XXV HAPPY THE HOME WHERE BOOKS ARE FOUND

XXVI WHEN NOT IN ROME, WHY DO AS THE ROMANS DID?

XXVII THE TOOTH, THE WHOLE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH

XXVIII MALIGNANT MIRRORS

XXIX THE POWER OF THE PRESS

XXX HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

XXXI HOW TO UNDERSTAND INTERNATIONAL FINANCE

XXXII 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE SUMMER

XXXIII WELCOME HOME--AND SHUT UP

XXXIV ANIMAL STORIES
I Georgie Dog
II Lillian Mosquito

XXXV THE TARIFF UNMASKED

LITERARY DEPARTMENT

XXXVI "TAKE ALONG A BOOK"

XXXVII CONFESSIONS OF A CHESS CHAMPION

XXXVIII "RIP VAN WINKLE"

XXXIX LITERARY LOST AND FOUND DEPT.

XL "DARKWATER"

XLI THE NEW TIME-TABLE

XLII MR. BOK'S AMERICANIZATION

XLIII ZANE GREY'S MOVIE

XLIV SUPPRESSING "JURGEN"

XLV ANTI-IBANEZ

XLVI ON BRICKLAYING

XLVII "AMERICAN ANNIVERSARIES"

XLVIII A WEEK-END WITH WELLS

XLIX ABOUT PORTLAND CEMENT

L OPEN BOOKCASES

LI TROUT-FISHING

LII "SCOUTING FOR GIRLS"

LIII HOW TO SELL GOODS

LIV "You!"

LV THE CATALOGUE SCHOOL

LVI "EFFECTIVE HOUSE ORGANS"

LVII ADVICE TO WRITERS

LVIII "THE EFFECTIVE SPEAKING VOICE"

LIX THOSE DANGEROUSLY DYNAMIC BRITISH GIRLS

LX BOOKS AND OTHER THINGS

LXI "MEASURE YOUR MIND"

LXII THE BROW-ELEVATION IN HUMOR

LXIII BUSINESS LETTERS

ILLUSTRATIONS

They look him over as if he were a fresh air child being given a day's
outing.

The watcher walks around the table, giving each hand a careful scrutiny.

"'Round and 'round the tree I go"

"Atta boy, forty-nine: Only one more to go!"

For three hours there is a great deal of screaming.

He was further aided by the breaks of the game.

Mrs. Deemster didn't enter into the spirit of the thing at all.

"That's right," says the chairman.

"If you weren't asleep what were you doing with your eyes closed?"

You would gladly change places with the most lawless of God's creatures.

I am mortified to discover that the unpleasant looking man is none other
than myself.

"I can remember you when you were that high"

She would turn away and bite her lip.

"Listen Ed! This is how it goes!"

They intimate that I had better take my few pennies and run 'round the
corner to some little haberdashery.

I thank them and walk in to the nearest dining-room table.

"Why didn't you tell us that you were reading a paper on birth control?"

LOVE CONQUERS ALL

I.

THE BENCHLEY-WHITTIER CORRESPONDENCE

Old scandals concerning the private life of Lord Byron have been revived
with the recent publication of a collection of his letters. One of the
big questions seems to be: _Did Byron send Mary Shelley's letter to Mrs.
R.B. Hoppner_? Everyone seems greatly excited about it.

Lest future generations be thrown into turmoil over my correspondence
after I am gone, I want right now to clear up the mystery which has
puzzled literary circles for over thirty years. I need hardly add that I
refer to what is known as the "Benchley-Whittier Correspondence."

The big question over which both my biographers and Whittier's might
possibly come to blows is this, as I understand it: _Did John Greenleaf
Whittier ever receive the letters I wrote to him in the late Fall of_
1890? _If he did not, who did? And under what circumstances were they
written_?

I was a very young man at the time, and Mr. Whittier was, naturally,
very old. There had been a meeting of the Save-Our-Song-Birds Club in
old Dane Hall (now demolished) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Members had
left their coats and hats in the check-room at the foot of the stairs
(now demolished).

In passing out after a rather spirited meeting, during the course of
which Mr. Whittier and Dr. Van Blarcom had opposed each other rather
violently over the question of Baltimore orioles, the aged poet
naturally was the first to be helped into his coat. In the general
mix-up (there was considerable good-natured fooling among the members as
they left, relieved as they were from the strain of the meeting)
Whittier was given my hat by mistake. When I came to go, there was
nothing left for me but a rather seedy gray derby with a black band,
containing the initials "J.G.W." As the poet was visiting in Cambridge
at the time I took opportunity next day to write the following letter to
him:

Cambridge, Mass.
November 7, 1890.

Dear Mr. Whittier:

I am afraid that in the confusion following the Save-Our-Song-Birds
meeting last night, you were given my hat by mistake. I have yours and
will gladly exchange it if you will let me know when I may call on you.

May I not add that I am a great admirer of your verse? Have you ever
tried any musical comedy lyrics? I think that I could get you in on the
ground floor in the show game, as I know a young man who has written
several songs which E.E. Rice has said he would like to use in his next
comic opera--provided he can get words to go with them.

But we can discuss all this at our meeting, which I hope will be soon,
as your hat looks like hell on me.

Yours respectfully,

ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.

I am quite sure that this letter was mailed, as I find an entry in my
diary of that date which reads:

"Mailed a letter to J.G. Whittier. Cloudy and cooler."

Furthermore, in a death-bed confession, some ten years later, one Mary
F. Rourke, a servant employed in the house of Dr. Agassiz, with whom
Whittier was bunking at the time, admitted that she herself had taken a
letter, bearing my name in the corner of the envelope, to the poet at
his breakfast on the following morning.

But whatever became of it after it fell into his hands, I received no
reply. I waited five days, during which time I stayed in the house
rather than go out wearing the Whittier gray derby. On the sixth day I
wrote him again, as follows:

Cambridge, Mass.
Nov. 14, 1890.

Dear Mr. Whittier:

How about that hat of mine?

Yours respectfully,

ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.

I received no answer to this letter either. Concluding that the good
gray poet was either too busy or too gosh-darned mean to bother with the
thing, I myself adopted an attitude of supercilious unconcern and closed
the correspondence with the following terse message:

Cambridge, Mass.
December 4, 1890.

Dear Mr. Whittier:

It is my earnest wish that the hat of mine which you are keeping will
slip down over your eyes some day, interfering with your vision to such
an extent that you will walk off the sidewalk into the gutter and
receive painful, albeit superficial, injuries.

Your young friend,

ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.

Here the matter ended so far as I was concerned, and I trust that
biographers in the future will not let any confusion of motives or
misunderstanding of dates enter into a clear and unbiased statement of
the whole affair. We must not have another Shelley-Byron scandal.

II

FAMILY LIFE IN AMERICA

PART I

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state
that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not
include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who
spills food down the front of his vest. If this school progresses, the
following is what we may expect in our national literature in a year or
so.

The living-room in the Twillys' house was so damp that thick, soppy moss
grew all over the walls. It dripped on the picture of Grandfather Twilly
that hung over the melodeon, making streaks down the dirty glass like
sweat on the old man's face. It was a mean face. Grandfather Twilly had
been a mean man and bad little spots of soup on the lapel of his coat.
All his children were mean and had soup spots on their clothes.

Grandma Twilly sat in the rocker over by the window, and as she rocked
the chair snapped. It sounded like Grandma Twilly's knees snapping as
they did whenever she stooped over to pull the wings off a fly. She was
a mean old thing. Her knuckles were grimy and she chewed crumbs that
she found in the bottom of her reticule. You would have hated her. She
hated herself. But most of all she hated Grandfather Twilly.

"I certainly hope you're frying good," she muttered as she looked up at
his picture.

"Hasn't the undertaker come yet, Ma?" asked young Mrs. Wilbur Twilly
petulantly. She was boiling water on the oil-heater and every now and
again would spill a little of the steaming liquid on the baby who was
playing on the floor. She hated the baby because it looked like her
father. The hot water raised little white blisters on the baby's red
neck and Mabel Twilly felt short, sharp twinges of pleasure at the
sight. It was the only pleasure she had had for four months.

"Why don't you kill yourself, Ma?" she continued. "You're only in the
way here and you know it. It's just because you're a mean old woman and
want to make trouble for us that you hang on."

Grandma Twilly shot a dirty look at her daughter-in-law. She had always
hated her. Stringy hair, Mabel had. Dank, stringy hair. Grandma Twilly
thought how it would look hanging at an Indian's belt. But all that she
did was to place her tongue against her two front teeth and make a noise
like the bath-room faucet.

Wilbur Twilly was reading the paper by the oil lamp. Wilbur had watery
blue eyes and cigar ashes all over his knees. The third and fourth
buttons of his vest were undone. It was too hideous.

He was conscious of his family seated in chairs about him. His mother,
chewing crumbs. His wife Mabel, with her stringy hair, reading. His
sister Bernice, with projecting front teeth, who sat thinking of the man
who came every day to take away the waste paper. Bernice was wondering
how long it would be before her family would discover that she had been
married to this man for three years.

How Wilbur hated them all. It didn't seem as if he could stand it any
longer. He wanted to scream and stick pins into every one of them and
then rush out and see the girl who worked in his office snapping
rubber-bands all day. He hated her too, but she wore side-combs.

PART 2

The street was covered with slimy mud. It oozed out from under Bernice's
rubbers in unpleasant bubbles until it seemed to her as if she must kill
herself. Hot air coming out from a steam laundry. Hot, stifling air.
Bernice didn't work in the laundry but she wished that she did so that
the hot air would kill her. She wanted to be stifled. She needed torture
to be happy. She also needed a good swift clout on the side of the face.

A drunken man lurched out from a door-way and flung his arms about her.
It was only her husband. She loved her husband. She loved him so much
that, as she pushed him away and into the gutter, she stuck her little
finger into his eye. She also untied his neck-tie. It was a bow
neck-tie, with white, dirty spots on it and it was wet with gin. It
didn't seem as if Bernice could stand it any longer. All the repressions
of nineteen sordid years behind protruding teeth surged through her
untidy soul. She wanted love. But it was not her husband that she loved
so fiercely. It was old Grandfather Twilly. And he was too dead.

PART 3

In the dining-room of the Twillys' house everything was very quiet. Even
the vinegar-cruet which was covered with fly-specks. Grandma Twilly lay
with her head in the baked potatoes, poisoned by Mabel, who, in her turn
had been poisoned by her husband and sprawled in an odd posture over the
china-closet. Wilbur and his sister Bernice had just finished choking
each other to death and between them completely covered the carpet in
that corner of the room where the worn spot showed the bare boards
beneath, like ribs on a chicken carcass. Only the baby survived. She had
a mean face and had great spillings of Imperial Granum down her bib. As
she looked about her at her family, a great hate surged through her tiny
body and her eyes snapped viciously. She wanted to get down from her
high-chair and show them all how much she hated them.

Bernice's husband, the man who came after the waste paper, staggered
into the room. The tips were off both his shoe-lacings. The baby
experienced a voluptuous sense of futility at the sight of the
tipless-lacings and leered suggestively at her uncle-in-law.

"We must get the roof fixed," said the man, very quietly. "It lets the
sun in."

III

THIS CHILD KNOWS THE ANSWER--DO YOU?

We are occasionally confronted in the advertisements by the picture of
an offensively bright-looking little boy, fairly popping with
information, who, it is claimed in the text, knows all the inside dope
on why fog forms in beads on a woolen coat, how long it would take to
crawl to the moon on your hands and knees, and what makes oysters so
quiet.

The taunting catch-line of the advertisement is: "This Child Knows the
Answer--Do You?" and the idea is to shame you into buying a set of books
containing answers to all the questions in the world except the question
"Where is the money coming from to buy the books?"

Any little boy knowing all these facts would unquestionably be an asset
in a business which specialized in fog-beads or lunar transportation
novelties, but he would be awful to have about the house.

"Spencer," you might say to him, "where are Daddy's slippers?" To which
he would undoubtedly answer: "I don't know, Dad," (disagreeable little
boys like that always call their fathers "Dad" and stand with their feet
wide apart and their hands in their pockets like girls playing boys'
roles on the stage) "but I _do_ know this, that all the Nordic peoples
are predisposed to astigmatism because of the glare of the sun on the
snow, and that, furthermore, if you were to place a common ordinary
marble in a glass of luke-warm cider there would be a precipitation
which, on pouring off the cider, would be found to be what we know as
parsley, just plain parsley which Cook uses every night in preparing our
dinner."

With little ones like this around the house, a new version of "The
Children's Hour" will have to be arranged, and it might as well be done
now and got over with.

_The Well-Informed Children's Hour_

Between the dark and the day-light,
When the night is beginning lo lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupation
Which is known as the children's hour.
'Tis then appears tiny Irving
With the patter of little feet,
To tell us that worms become dizzy
At a slight application of heat.
And Norma, the baby savant,
Comes toddling up with the news
That a valvular catch in the larynx
Is the reason why Kitty mews.
"Oh Grandpa," cries lovable Lester,
"Jack Frost has surprised us again,
By condensing in crystal formation
The vapor which clings to the pane!"
Then Roger and Lispinard Junior
Race pantingly down through the hall
To be first with the hot information
That bees shed their coats in the Fall.
No longer they clamor for stories
As they cluster in fun 'round my knee
But each little darling is bursting
With a story that he must tell me,
Giving reasons why daisies are sexless
And what makes the turtle so dour;
So it goes through the horrible gloaming
Of the Well-informed Children's Hour.

IV

RULES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR WATCHING AUCTION BRIDGE

With all the expert advice that is being offered in print these days
about how to play games, it seems odd that no one has formulated a set
of rules for the spectators. The spectators are much more numerous than
the players, and seem to need more regulation. As a spectator of twenty
years standing, versed in watching all sports except six-day bicycle
races, I offer the fruit of my experience in the form of suggestions and
reminiscences which may tend to clarify the situation, or, in case there
is no situation which needs clarifying, to make one.

In the event of a favorable reaction on the part of the public, I shall
form an association, to be known as the National Amateur Audience
Association (or the N.A.A.A., if you are given to slang) of which I
shall be Treasurer. That's all I ask, the Treasurership.

This being an off-season of the year for outdoor sports (except walking,
which is getting to have neither participants nor spectators) it seems
best to start with a few remarks on the strenuous occupation of watching
a bridge game. Bridge-watchers are not so numerous as football watchers,
for instance, but they are much more in need of coordination and it will
be the aim of this article to formulate a standardized set of rules for
watching bridge which may be taken as a criterion for the whole country.

NUMBER WHO MAY WATCH

There should not be more than one watcher for each table. When there are
two, or more, confusion is apt to result and no one of the watchers can
devote his attention to the game as it should be devoted. Two watchers
are also likely to bump into each other as they make their way around
the table looking over the players' shoulders. If there are more
watchers than there are tables, two can share one table between them,
one being dummy while the other watches. In this event the first one
should watch until the hand has been dealt and six tricks taken, being
relieved by the second one for the remaining tricks and the marking down
of the score.

PRELIMINARIES

In order to avoid any charge of signalling, it will be well for the
following conversational formula to be used before the game begins:

The ring-leader of the game says to the fifth person: "Won't you join
the game and make a fourth? I have some work which I really ought to be
doing."

The fifth person replies: "Oh, no, thank you! I play a wretched game.
I'd much rather sit here and read, if you don't mind."

To which the ring-leader replies: "Pray do."

After the first hand has been dealt, the fifth person, whom we shall now
call the "watcher," puts down the book and leans forward in his (or her)
chair, craning the neck to see what is in the hand nearest him. The
strain becoming too great, he arises and approaches the table, saying:
"Do you mind if I watch a bit?"

No answer need be given to this, unless someone at the table has nerve
enough to tell the truth.

PROCEDURE

The game is now on. The watcher walks around the table, giving each hand
a careful scrutiny, groaning slightly at the sight of a poor one and
making noises of joyful anticipation at the good ones. Stopping behind
an especially unpromising array of cards, it is well to say: "Well,
unlucky at cards, lucky in love, you know." This gives the partner an
opportunity to judge his chances on the bid he is about to make, and is
perfectly fair to the other side, too, for they are not left entirely in
the dark. Thus everyone benefits by the remark.

[Illustration: The watcher walks around the table, giving each hand a
careful scrutiny.]

When the bidding begins, the watcher has considerable opportunity for
effective work. Having seen how the cards lie, he is able to stand back
and listen with a knowing expression, laughing at unjustified bids and
urging on those who should, in his estimation, plunge. At the conclusion
of the bidding he should say: "Well, we're off!"

As the hand progresses and the players become intent on the game, the
watcher may be the cause of no little innocent diversion. He may ask one
of the players for a match, or, standing behind the one who is playing
the hand, he may say:

"I'll give you three guesses as to whom I ran into on the street
yesterday. Someone you all know. Used to go to school with you, Harry
... Light hair and blue eyes ... Medium build ... Well, sir, it was Lew
Milliken. Yessir, Lew Milliken. Hadn't seen him for fifteen years. Asked
after you, Harry ... and George too. And what do you think he told me
about Chick?"

Answers may or may not be returned to these remarks, according to the
good nature of the players, but in any event, they serve their purpose
of distraction.

Particular care should be taken that no one of the players is allowed to
make a mistake. The watcher, having his mind free, is naturally in a
better position to keep track of matters of sequence and revoking. Thus,
he may say:

"The lead was over here, George," or

"I think that you refused spades a few hands ago, Lillian."

Of course, there are some watchers who have an inherited delicacy about
offering advice or talking to the players. Some people are that way.
They are interested in the game, and love to watch but they feel that
they ought not to interfere. I had a cousin who just wouldn't talk while
a hand was being played, and so, as she had to do something, she hummed.
She didn't hum very well, and her program was limited to the first two
lines of "How Firm a Foundation," but she carried it off very well and
often got the players to humming it along with her. She could also drum
rather well with her fingers on the back of the chair of one of the
players while looking over his shoulder. "How Firm a Foundation" didn't
lend itself very well to drumming; so she had a little patrol that she
worked up all by herself, beginning soft, like a drum corps in the
distance, and getting louder and louder, finally dying away again so
that you could barely near it. It was wonderful how she could do it--and
still go on living.

Those who feel this way about talking while others are playing bridge
have a great advantage over my cousin and her class if they can play the
piano. They play ever so softly, in order not to disturb, but somehow or
other you just know that they are there, and that the next to last note
in the coda is going to be very sour.

But, of course, the piano work does not technically come under the head
of watching, although when there are two watchers to a table, one may go
over to the piano while she is dummy.

But your real watcher will allow nothing to interfere with his
conscientious following of the game, and it is for real watchers only
that these suggestions have been formulated. The minute you get out of
the class of those who have the best interests of the game at heart, you
become involved in dilettantism and amateurishness, and the whole sport
of bridge-watching falls into disrepute.

The only trouble with the game as it now stands is the risk of personal
injury. This can be eliminated by the watcher insisting on each player
being frisked for weapons before the game begins and cultivating a good
serviceable defense against ordinary forms of fistic attack.

V

A CHRISTMAS SPECTACLE

_For Use in Christmas Eve Entertainments in the Vestry_

At the opening of the entertainment the Superintendent will step into
the footlights, recover his balance apologetically, and say:

"Boys and girls of the Intermediate Department, parents and friends: I
suppose you all know why we are here tonight. (At this point the
audience will titter apprehensively). Mrs. Drury and her class of little
girls have been working very hard to make this entertainment a success,
and I am sure that everyone here to-night is going to have what I
overheard one of my boys the other day calling 'some good time.'
(Indulgent laughter from the little boys). And may I add before the
curtain goes up that immediately after the entertainment we want you all
to file out into the Christian Endeavor room, where there will be a
Christmas tree, 'with all the fixin's,' as the boys say." (Shrill
whistling from the little boys and immoderate applause from everyone).

There will then be a wait of twenty-five minutes, while sounds of
hammering and dropping may be heard from behind the curtains. The Boys'
Club orchestra will render the "Poet and Peasant Overture" four times in
succession, each time differently.

At last one side of the curtains will be drawn back; the other will
catch on something and have to be released by hand; someone will whisper
loudly, "Put out the lights," following which the entire house will be
plunged into darkness. Amid catcalls from the little boys, the
footlights will at last go on, disclosing:

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