Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley

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

"'Oh, Linny,' called out Dungeon over her shoulder, 'you young minx! Why
didn't you tell us that you were reading a paper on Birth Control at the
next meeting of the Spiddix? Twiller just told me today. It's too
ripping of you!'

"'Silly goose,' panted Linny, stumbling over a hedgerow, 'how about what
the vicar said the other night about your inferiority complex? It was
toppo, and you know it.'

"'It won't be long now before we'll have disenfranchisement through,
anyway,' muttered Grandpa Willetts, crashing down into a stone quarry,
at which exhibition of reaction a loud chorus of laughter went up from
the entire family, who by this time had reached Nogroton and were
bursting with health."

LX

BOOKS AND OTHER THINGS

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.

LXI

"MEASURE YOUR MIND"

"Measure Your Mind" by M.R. Traube and Frank Parker Stockbridge, is apt
to be a very discouraging book if you have any doubt at all about your
own mental capacity. From a hasty glance through the various tests I
figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating "Low
Average Ability," reserved usually for those just learning to speak the
English language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while
another man hits it. If they ever adopt the "menti-meter tests" on this
journal I shall last just about forty-five minutes.

And the trouble is that each test starts off so easily. You begin to
think that you are so good that no one has ever appreciated you. There
is for instance, a series of twenty-four pictures (very badly drawn too,
Mr. Frank Parker Stockbridge. You think you are so smart, picking flaws
with people's intelligence. If I couldn't draw a better head than the
one on page 131 I would throw up the whole business). At any rate, in
each one of these pictures there is something wrong (wholly apart from
the drawing). You are supposed to pick out the incongruous feature, and
you have 180 seconds in which to tear the twenty-four pictures to
pieces.

* * * * *

The first one is easy. The rabbit has one human ear. In the second one
the woman's eye is in her hair. Pretty soft, you say to yourself. In the
third the bird has three legs. It looks like a cinch. Following in quick
succession come a man with his mouth in his forehead, a horse with cow's
horns, a mouse with rabbit's ears, etc. You will have time for a
handspring before your 180 seconds are up.

But then they get tricky. There is a post-card with a stamp upside down.
Well, what's wrong with that? Certainly there is no affront to nature in
a stamp upside down. Neither is there in a man's looking through the
large end of a telescope if he wants to. You can't arbitrarily say at
the top of the page, "Mark the thing that is wrong," and then have a
picture of a house with one window larger than all the others and expect
any one to agree with you that it is necessarily _wrong_. It may look
queer, but so does the whole picture. You can't tell; the big window may
open from a room that needs a big window. I am not going to stultify
myself by making things wrong about which I know none of the facts. Who
am I that I should condemn a man for looking through the large end of a
telescope? Personally, I like to look through the large end of a
telescope. It only shows the state of personal liberty in this country
when a picture of a man looking at a ship through the large end of a
telescope is held before the young and branded as "wrong."

* * * * *

Arguing these points with yourself takes up quite a bit of time and you
get so out of patience with the man that made up the examination that
you lose all heart in it.

Then come some pictures about which I am frankly in the dark. There is a
Ford car with a rather funny-looking mud-guard, but who can pick out any
one feature of a Ford and say that it is wrong? It may look wrong but
I'll bet that the car in this picture as it stands could pass many a big
car on a hill.

Then there is a boy holding a bat, and while his position isn't all that
a coach could ask, the only radically wrong thing that I can detect
about the picture is that he is evidently playing baseball in a clean
white shirt with a necktie and a rather natty cap set perfectly straight
on his head. It is true he has his right thumb laid along the edge of
the bat, but maybe he likes to bunt that way. There is something in the
picture that I don't get, I am afraid, just as there is in the picture
of two men playing golf. One is about to putt. Aside from the fact that
his putter seems just a trifle long, I should have to give up my guess
and take my defeat like a man.

But I do refuse to concede anything on Picture No. 22. Here a baby is
shown sitting on the floor. He appears to be about a year and a half
old. Incidentally, he is a very plain baby. Strewn about him on the
floor are the toys that he has been playing with. There are a ball, a
rattle, a ring, a doll, a bell and a pair of roller-skates. Evidently,
the candidate is supposed to be aghast at the roller-skates in the
possession of such a small child.

The man who drew that picture had evidently never furnished playthings
for a small child. I can imagine nothing that would delight a child of a
year and a half more than a pair of roller-skates to chew and spin and
hit himself in the face with. They could also be dropped on Daddy when
Daddy was lying on the floor in an attempt to be sociable. Of all the
toys arranged before the child, the roller-skates are the most logical.
I suppose that the author of this test would insist on calling a picture
wrong which showed a baby with a safety-razor in his hand or an
overshoe on his head, and yet a photograph of the Public Library could
not be more true to life.

That is my great trouble in taking tests and examinations of any kind. I
always want to argue with the examiner, because the examiner is always
so obviously wrong.

LXII

THE BROW-ELEVATION IN HUMOR

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly
difficult for his publishers to get out a new book by him each year.
Without recourse to the ouija board, Harper & Brothers manage to do very
well by Mark Twain, considering that all they have to work with are the
books that he wrote when he was alive. Each year we get something from
the pen of the famous humorist, even though the ink has faded slightly.
An introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine and a hitherto unpublished
photograph as a frontspiece, and there you are--the season's new Mark
Twain book.

This season it is "Moments With Mark Twain," a collection of excerpts
from his works for quick and handy reading. We may look for further
books in this series in 1923, 1924, 1925, &c., to be entitled "Half
Hours With Mark Twain" (the selections a trifle longer), "Pleasant
Week-Ends With Mark Twain," "Indian Summer With Mark Twain," &c.

There is an interesting comparison between this sample bottle of the
humor of Mark Twain and that contained in the volume entitled "Something
Else Again," by Franklin P. Adams. The latter is a volume of verse and
burlesques which have appeared in the newspapers and magazines.

In the days when Mark Twain was writing, it was considered good form to
spoof not only the classics but surplus learning of any kind. A man was
popularly known as an affected cuss when he could handle anything more
erudite than a nasal past participle or two in his own language, and any
one who wanted to qualify as a humorist had to be able to mispronounce
any word of over three syllables.

Thus we find Mark Twain, in the selections given in this volume, having
amusing trouble with the pronunciation of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da
Vinci, expressing surprise that Michael Angelo was dead, picking flaws
in the old master's execution and complaining of the use of foreign
words which have their equivalent "in a nobler language--English."

There certainly is no harm in this school of humor, and it has its
earnest and prosperous exponents today. In fact, a large majority of the
people still like to have some one poke fun at the things in which they
themselves are not proficient, whether it be pronunciation, Latin or
bricklaying.

* * * * *

But there is an increasingly large section of the reading public who
while they may not be expert in Latin composition, nevertheless do not
think that a Latin word in itself is a cause for laughter. A French
phrase thrown in now and then for metrical effect does not strike them
as essentially an affectation, and they are willing to have references
made to characters whose native language may not have been that noblest
of all languages, our native tongue.

That such a school of readers exists is proved by the popularity of
F.P.A's verses and prose. If any one had told Mark Twain that a man
could run a daily newspaper column in New York and amass any degree of
fame through translations of the "Odes of Horace" into the vernacular,
the veteran humorist would probably have slapped Albert Bigelow Paine on
the back and taken the next boat for Bermuda. And yet in "Something Else
Again" we find some sixteen translations of Horace and other
"furriners," exotic phrases such as "eheu fugaces" and "ex parte" used
without making faces over them, and a popular exposition of highly
technical verse forms which James Russell Lowell and Hal Longfellow
would have considered terrifically high-brow. And yet thousands of
American business men quote F.P.A. to thousands of other American
business men every morning.

* * * * *

Can it be said that the American people are not so low-brow as they like
to pretend? There is a great deal of affectation in this homespun frame
of mind, and many a man makes believe that he doesn't know things simply
because no one has ever written about them in the American Magazine. If
the truth were known, we are all a great deal better educated than we
will admit, and the derisive laughter with which we greet signs of
culture is sometimes very hollow. In F.P.A. we find a combination which
makes it possible for us to admit our learning and still be held
honorable men. It is a good sign that his following is increasing.

LXIII

BUSINESS LETTERS

A text-book on English composition, giving examples of good and bad
letter-writing, is always a mine of possibilities for one given to
ruminating and with nothing in particular to do. In "Business Man's
English" the specimen letters are unusually interesting. It seems almost
as if the authors, Wallace Edgar Bartholomew and Floyd Hurlbut, had
selected their examples with a view to their fiction possibilities. It
also seems to the reader as if he were opening someone else's mail.

For instance, the following is given as a type of "very short letter,
well placed":

* * * * *

Mr. Richard T. Green,
Employment Department,
Travellers' Insurance Co.,
Chicago, Ill.

Dear Mr. Green:

The young man about whom you inquire has much native ability and while
in our employ proved himself a master of office routine.

I regret to say, however, that he left us under circumstances that
would not justify our recommending him to you.

Cordially yours,

C.S. THOMPSON

* * * * *

Now I want to know what those "circumstances" were. And in lieu of the
facts, I am afraid that I shall have to imagine some circumstances for
myself. Personally, I don't believe that the "young man" was to blame.
Bad companions, maybe, or I shouldn't be at all surprised if he was
shielding someone else, perhaps a young lady stenographer with whom he
was in love. The more I think of it the more I am sure that this was the
secret of the whole thing. You see, he was a good worker and had, Mr.
Thompson admits, proved himself a master of office routine. Although Mr.
Thompson doesn't say so, I have no doubt but that he would have been
promoted very shortly.

And then he fell in love with a little brown-eyed stenographer. You know
how it is yourself. She had an invalid mother at home and was probably
trying to save enough money to send her father to college. And whatever
she did, it couldn't have been so very bad, for she was such a nice
girl.

Well, at any rate, it looks to me as if the young man, while he was
arranging the pads of paper for the regular Monday morning conference,
overheard the office-manager telling about this affair (I have good
reason to believe that it was a matter of carelessness in the payroll)
and saying that he considered the little brown-eyed girl dishonest.

At this the young man drew himself up to his full height and, looking
the office-manager squarely in the eye, said:

"No, Mr. Hostetter; it was I who did it, and I will take the
consequences. And I want it understood that no finger of suspicion shall
be pointed at Agnes Fairchild, than whom no truer, sweeter girl ever
lived!"

"I am sorry to hear this, Ralph," said Mr. Hostetter. "You know what
this means."

"I do, sir," said Ralph, and turned to look out over the chimney-pots of
the city, biting his under lip very tight.

And on Saturday Ralph left.

* * * * *

Since then he has applied at countless places for work, but always they
have written to his old employer, Mr. Thompson, for a reference, and
have received a letter similar to the one given here as an example.
Naturally, they have not felt like taking him on. You cannot blame them.
And, in a way, you cannot blame Mr. Thompson. You see, Mr. Hostetter
didn't tell Mr. Thompson all the circumstances of the affair. He just
said that Ralph had confessed to responsibility for the payroll mix-up.
If Mr. Thompson had been there at the time I am sure that he would have
divined that Ralph was shielding Miss Fairchild, for Mr. Thompson liked
Ralph. You can see that from his letter.

But as it stands now things are pretty black for the boy, and it
certainly seems as if in this great city there ought to be some one who
will give him a job without writing to Mr. Thompson about him. This
department will be open as a clearing-house for offers of work for a
young man of great native ability and master of office routine who is
just at present, unfortunately, unable to give any references, but who
will, I am quite sure, justify any trust that may be placed in him in
the future.

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