Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley

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_What are the objections to face-cloths as a means of bathing children?_

They are too easily swallowed, and after six or seven wet face-cloths
have been swallowed, the child is likely to become heavy and lethargic.

_Under what circumstances should the daily tub-bath be omitted?_

Almost any excuse will do. The bath-room may be too cold, or too hot, or
the child may be too sleepy or too wide-awake, or the parent may have
lame knees or lead poisoning. And anyway, the child had a good bath
yesterday.

CLOTHING

_How should the infant be held during dressing and undressing?_

Any carpenter will be glad to sell you a vise which can be attached to
the edge of the table. Place the infant in the vise and turn the screw
until there is a slight redness under the pressure. Be careful not to
turn it too tight or the child will resent it; but on the other hand,
care should be taken not to leave it too loose, otherwise the child will
be continually falling out on the floor, and you will never get it
dressed that way.

_What are the most important items in the baby's clothing?_

The safety-pins which are in the bureau in the next room.

WEIGHT

_How should a child be weighed?_

Place the child in the scales. The father should then sit on top of the
child to hold him down. Weigh father and child together. Then deduct the
father's weight from the gross tonnage, and the weight of the child is
the result.

FRESH AIR

_What are the objections to an infant's sleeping out-of-doors?_

Sleeping out-of-doors in the city is all right, but children sleeping
out of doors in the country are likely to be kissed by wandering cows
and things. This should never be permitted under any circumstances.

DEVELOPMENT

_When does the infant first laugh aloud?_

When father tries to pin it up for the first time.

_If at two years the child makes no attempt to talk, what should be
suspected?_

That it hasn't yet seen anyone worth talking to.

FEEDING

_What should not be fed to a child?_

Ripe olives.

_How do we know how much food a healthy child needs?_

By listening carefully.

_Which parent should go and get the child's early morning bottle?_

The one least able to feign sleep.

XX

THE COMMITTEE ON THE WHOLE

A new plan has just been submitted for running the railroads. That makes
one hundred and eleven.

The present suggestion involves the services of some sixteen committees.
Now presumably the idea is to get the roses back into the cheeks of the
railroads, so that they will go running about from place to place again
and perhaps make a little money on pleasant Saturdays and Sundays. But
if these proposed committees are anything like other committees which we
have had to do with, the following will be a fair example of how our
railroads will be run.

The sub-committee on the Punching of Rebate Slips will have a meeting
called for five o'clock in the private grill room at the Pan-American
Building. Postcards will have been sent out the day before by the
Secretary, saying: "Please try to be present as there are several
important matters to be brought up." This will so pique the curiosity of
the members that they will hardly be able to wait until five o'clock.
One will come at four o'clock by mistake and, after steaming up and down
the corridor for half an hour, will go home and send in his resignation.

At 5:10 the Secretary will bustle in with a briefcase and a map showing
the weather areas over the entire United States for the preceding year.
He will be very warm from hurrying.

At 5:15 two members of the committee will stroll in, one of them saying
to the other: "--so the Irishman turns to the Jew and says: 'Well, I
knew your father before that!' Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! 'I knew your father
before that!'"

They will then seat themselves at one end of the committee-table, just
as another member comes hurrying in. Time 5:21.

One of the story-tellers being the Chairman, he will pound
half-heartedly on the table and say: "As some of us have to get away
early, I think that we had better begin now, although Mr. Entwhistle and
Dr. Pearly are not here."

"I met Dr. Pearly last night at the Vegetarian Club dinner," says one of
the members, "and he said that he might be a little late today but that
he would surely come."

"His wife has just had a very delicate throat operation, I understand,"
offers a committeeman who is drawing concentric circles on his pad of
paper.

"Bad weather for throat operations," says the Secretary.

"That's right," says the Chairman, looking through a pile of papers for
one which he has left at home. "But let's get down to business. At the
last meeting the question arose as to whether or not it was advisable to
continue having conductors punch the little hole at the bottom of rebate
slips. As you know, the slip says, 'Not redeemable if punched here.'
Now, someone brought up the point that it seems silly to give out a
rebate slip at all if there isn't going to be any rebate on it. A
sub-committee was appointed to go into the matter, and I would like to
ask Mr. Twing, the chairman, what he has to report."

Mr. Twing will clear his throat and start to speak, but will make only
an abortive sound. He will then clear his throat again.

"Mr. Chairman, the other members of the sub-committee and myself were
unable to get exactly the data on this that we wanted and I delegated
Mr. Entwhistle to dig up something which he said he had read recently in
the files of the _Scientific American._ But Mr. Entwhistle doesn't seem
to be here today, and so I am unable to report his findings. It was,
however, the sense of the meeting that the conductors should not."

[Illustration: "That's right," says the chairman.]

"Should not what?" inquires Dr. Pearly, who has just sneaked in,
knocking three hats to the floor while hanging up his coat.

Dr. Pearly is never answered, for the Chairman looks at his watch and
says: "I'm very sorry, gentlemen, but I have an appointment at 5:45 and
must be going. Supposing I appoint a sub-committee consisting of Dr.
Pearly, Mr. Twing and Mr. Berry, to find Mr. Entwhistle and see what he
dug out of the files of the _Scientific American._ Then, at the next
meeting we can have a report from both sub-committees and will also hear
from Professor McKlicktric, who has just returned from Panama.... A
motion to adjourn is now in order. Do I hear such a motion?"

After listening carefully, he hears it, and the railroads run themselves
for another week.

XXI

NOTING AN INCREASE IN BIGAMY

Either more men are marrying more wives than ever before, or they are
getting more careless about it. During the past week bigamy has crowded
baseball out of the papers, and while this may be due in part to the
fact that it was a cold, rainy week and little baseball could be played,
yet there is a tendency to be noted there somewhere. All those wishing
to note a tendency will continue on into the next paragraph.

There is, of course, nothing new in bigamy. Anyone who goes in for it
with the idea of originating a new fad which shall be known by his name,
like the daguerreotype or potatoes O'Brien, will have to reckon with the
priority claims of several hundred generations of historical characters,
most of them wearing brown beards. Just why beards and bigamy seem to
have gone hand in hand through the ages is a matter for the professional
humorists to determine. We certainly haven't got time to do it here.

But the multiple-marriages unearthed during the past week have a
certain homey flavor lacking in some of those which have gone before.
For instance, the man in New Jersey who had two wives living right with
him all of the time in the same apartment. No need for subterfuge here,
no deceiving one about the other. It was just a matter of walking back
and forth between the dining-room and the study. This is, of course,
bigamy under ideal conditions.

But in tracing a tendency like this, we must not deal so much with
concrete cases as with drifts and curves. A couple of statistics are
also necessary, especially if it is an alarming tendency that is being
traced. The statistics follow, in alphabetical order:

In the United States during the years 1918-1919 there were 4,956,673
weddings. 2,485,845 of these were church weddings, strongly against the
wishes of the bridegrooms concerned. In these weddings 10,489,392 silver
olive-forks were received as gifts.

Starting with these figures as a basis, we turn to the report of the
Pennsylvania State Committee on Outdoor Gymnastics for the year
beginning January 4th, 1920, and ending a year later.

This report being pretty fairly uninteresting, we leave it and turn to
another report, which covers the manufacture and sale of rugs. This has
a picture of a rug in it, and a darned good likeness it is, too.

In this rug report we find that it takes a Navajo Indian only eleven
days to weave a rug 12 x 5, with a swastika design in the middle. Eleven
days. It seems incredible. Why, it takes only 365 days to make a year!

Now, having seen that there are 73,000 men and women in this country
today who can neither read nor write, and that of these only 4%, or a
little over half, are colored, what are we to conclude? What is to be
the effect on our national morale? Who is to pay this gigantic bill for
naval armament?

Before answering these questions any further than this, let us quote
from an authority on the subject, a man who has given the best years, or
at any rate some very good years, of his life to research in this field,
and who now takes exactly the stand which we have been outlining in this
article.

"I would not," he says in a speech delivered before the Girls' Friendly
Society of Laurel Hill, "I would not for one minute detract from the
glory of those who have brought this country to its present state of
financial prominence among the nations of the world, and yet as I think
back on those dark days, I am impelled to voice the protest of millions
of American citizens yet unborn."

Perhaps some of our little readers remember what the major premise of
this article was. If so, will they please communicate with the writer.

Oh, yes! Bigamy!

Well, it certainly is funny how many cases of bigamy you hear about
nowadays. Either more men are marrying more wives than ever before, or
they are getting more careless about it. (That sounds very, very
familiar. It is barely possible that it is the sentence with which this
article opens. We say so many things in the course of one article that
repetitions are quite likely to creep in).

At any rate, the tendency seems to be toward an increase in bigamy.

XXII

THE REAL WIGLAF: MAN AND MONARCH

Much time has been devoted of late by ardent biographers to
shedding light on misunderstood characters in history, especially
British rulers. We cannot let injustice any longer be done to King
Wiglaf, the much-maligned monarch of central Britain in the early
Ninth Century.

The fall of the kingdom of Mercia in 828 under the the onslaughts
of Ecgberht the West-Saxon, have been laid to Wiglaf's untidy
personal habits and his alleged mania for practical joking. The
accompanying biographical sketch may serve to disclose some of the
more intimate details of the character of the man and to alter in
some degree history's unfavorable estimate of him.

Our first glimpse of the Wiglaf who was one day to become ruler of
Mercia, the heart of present-day England (music, please), is when at the
age of seven he was taken by Oswier, his father's murderer, to see Mrs.
Siddons play _Lady Macbeth._ (Every subject of biographical treatment,
regardless of the period in which he or she lived, must have been taken
at an early age to see Mrs. Siddons play _Lady Macbeth._ It is part of
the code of biography.)

While sitting in the royal box, the young prince Wiglaf was asked what
he thought of the performance. "Rotten!" he answered, and left the place
abruptly, setting fire to the building as he went out.

Beobald, in citing the above incident in his "Chronicles of Comical
Kings," calls it "an hendy hap ichabbe y-hent." And perhaps he's right.

Events proceeded in rapid succession after this for the young boy and we
next find him facing marriage with a stiff upper-lip. Mystery has always
surrounded the reasons which led to the choice of Princess Offa as
Wiglaf's bride. In fact, it has never been quite certain whether or not
she _was_ his bride. No one ever saw them together.[1] On several
occasions he is reported to have asked his chamberlain who she was as
she passed by on the street.[2]

And yet the theory persists that she was his wife, owing doubtless to
the fact that on the eve of the Battle of Otford he sent a message to
her asking where "in God's name" his clean shirts had been put when they
came back from the wash.

We come now to that period in Wiglaf's life which has been for so many
centuries the cause of historical speculation, pro and con. The
reference is, of course, to his dealings with Aethelbald, the ambassador
from Wessex. Every schoolboy has taken part in the Wiglaf-Aethelbald
controversy, but how many really know the inside facts of the case?

Examination of the correspondence between these two men shows Wiglaf to
have been simply a great, big-hearted, overgrown boy in the whole
affair. All claims of his having had an eye on the throne of Northumbria
fade away under the delightful ingenuousness of his attitude as
expressed in these letters.

"I should of thought," he writes in 821 to his sister, "that anyone who
was not cock-ide drunk would have known better than to of tried to walk
bear-foot through that eel-grass from the beech up to the bath-house
without sneekers on, which is what that ninn Aethelbald tryed to do this
AM. Well say laffter is no name for what you would of done if you had
seen him. He looked like he was trying to walk a tide-rope. Hey I yelled
at him all the way, do you think you are trying to walk a tide-rope?
Well say maybe that didn't make him sore."

Shortly after this letter was written, Wiglaf ascended the throne of
Mercia, his father having disappeared Saturday night without trace. A
peasant[3] some years after said that he met the old king walking along
a road near what is now the Scottish border, telling people that he was
carrying a letter of greeting from the Mayor of Pontygn to the Mayor of
Langoscgirh. Others say that he fell into the sea off the coast of Wales
and became what is now known as King's Rocks. This last has never been
authenticated.

At any rate, the son, on ascending the throne, became king. His first
official act was to order dinner. "A nice, juicy steak," he is said to
have called for,[4] "French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee." It is
probable that he really said "a coff of cuppee," however, as he was a
wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as the next king.

We are now thrown into the maelstrom of contradictory historical data,
some of which credits Wiglaf with being the greatest ruler Mercia ever
had and some of which indicates that he was nothing but a royal bum. It
is not the purpose of this biography to try to settle the dispute. All
we know for a fact is that he was a very human man who had faults like
the rest of us and that shortly after becoming king he disappears from
view.

His reign began at 4 P.M. one Wednesday (no, Thursday) afternoon and
early the next morning Mercia was overrun by the West-Saxons. It is
probable that King Wiglaf was sold for old silver to help pay expenses.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lebody. _Witnesses of the Proximity of Wiglaf to Offa._ II. 265

[2] Rouguet. _Famous Questions in History._ III. 467

[3] _Peasant Tales and Fun-making._ II. 965.

[4] _Fifty Menus for August._--46.

XXIII

FACING THE BOYS' CAMP PROBLEM

The time seemed to have come to send Junior away to a boys' camp for the
summer. He was getting too large to have about the house during the hot
weather, and besides, getting him out of town seemed the only way to
stop the radio concerts which had been making a continuous Chautauqua of
our home-life ever since March.

I therefore got out a magazine and turned to that section of the
advertising headed, "Summer Camps and Schools." There was a staggering
array. Judging from the photographs the entire child population of the
United States spent last summer in bathing suits or on horseback, and
the pictures of them were so generic and familiar-looking that there was
a great temptation to spend the evening scrutinizing them closely to see
if you could pick out anyone you knew.

"Come on, read some out loud," said Doris in her practical way.

"'The Nooga-Wooga Camps,'" I began. "'The Garden Spot of the Micasset
Mountains. Tumbling water, calls of birds, light-hearted laughter,
horseback rides along shady trails, lasting friendships--all these are
the heritage of happy days at Nooga-Wooga.' ... I don't think much of
the costumes they give the boys to wear at Nooga-Wooga. They look rather
sissy to me."

"That's because you are looking at the Camps for Girls, dear," said
Doris. "Those are girls in Peter Thompsons and bloomers."

Hurriedly turning the page, I came to Camps for Boys.

"'Camp Wicomagisset, for Manly Boys. On famous Lake Pogoniblick in the
heart of the far-famed Wappahammock district. Campfire stories, military
drill, mountain climbing, swimming, wading, hiking, log-cabins,
sailing--' they say nothing about horseshoeing. Don't you suppose they
teach horseshoeing?"

"That probably comes in the second year for the older boys," said Doris.
"I wouldn't want Junior to plunge right into horseshoeing his first
season. We mustn't rush him."

"'Camp Wad-ne-go-gallup on the shores of Crisco Bay, Maine. Facing that
grandest of all oceans, the Atlantic. Located among the best farms where
fresh and wholesome food can be had in abundance'--yes but _is_ it had,
my dear? That's the question. Anyway, I don't like the looks of the boat
in the picture. It's too full of boys."

"'Opossum Mountain Camp for Boys. Unusual sports and trips'--Ah,
possibly condor stalking! That certainly would be unusual. But
dangerous! I'd hate to think of Junior crawling about over ledges,
stalking condors. And it says here that there is a dietitian and a
camp-mother, as well."

"Camp-mother?" Doris sniffed, "Probably she thinks she knows how to
bring up children--"

Just then Junior came in to announce that he had signed up for a job for
the summer, working on the farm of Eddie Westover's uncle. So in view of
this added income, I felt that I could afford a little vacation myself,
and am leaving on July 1st for Camp Mionogonett in the foothills of the
Rokomokos, "a Paradise for Manly Men."

XXIV

ALL ABOUT THE SILESIAN PROBLEM

So much controversy has been aroused over Silesia it is high time that
the average man in this country had a clearer idea of the problem. At
present many people think that if you add oxygen to Silesia you will get
oxide of silesia and can take spots out of clothes with it.

A definite statement of the whole Upper Silesian question is therefore
due, and, for those who care to listen, about to be made.

The trouble started at the treaty of Noblitz in 1773. You have no idea
what a perfectly rotten treaty that was. It was negotiated by the Grand
Duke Ludwig of Saxe-Goatherd-Cobalt, whose sister married a Morrisey and
settled in Fall River. The aim and ambition of Ludwig's life was to
annex Spielzeugingen to Nichtrauschen, thereby augmenting his duchy and
at the same time having a dandy time. And he was the kind of man who
would stop at nothing when it came time to augment his duchy.

In this treaty, then, Ludwig insisted on a clause making Silesia a
monogamy. This was very clever, as it brought the Centrist party in
Silesia into direct conflict with the party who wanted to restore the
young Prince Niblick to the throne; thereby causing no end of trouble
and nasty feeling.

With these obstacles out of the way, the greed and ambition of Ludwig
were practically unrestrained. In fact, some historians say that they
knew no bounds. Summoning the Storkrath, or common council (composed of
three classes: the nobles, the welterweights, and the licensed pilots)
he said to them: (according to Taine)

"An army can travel ten days on its stomach, but who the hell wants to
be an army?"

This saying has become a by-word in history and is now remembered long
after the Grand Duke Ludwig has been forgotten. But at the time, Ludwig
received nothing short of an ovation for it, and succeeded in winning
over the obstructionists to his side. This made everyone in favor of his
disposition of Silesia except the Silesians. And, as they could neither
read nor write, they thought that they still belonged to Holland and
cheered a dyke every time they saw one.

The question remained in abeyance therefore, for a century and a
quarter. Then, in 1805, three years after the accession of Ralph
Rittenhouse to the throne of England, the storm broke again. The
occasion was the partition of Parchesie by the Great Powers, by which
the towns of Zweiback, Ulmhausen and Ost Wilp were united to form what
is known as the "industrial triangle" on the Upper Silesian border.
These towns are situated in the heart of the pumice district and could
alone supply France and Germany with pumice for fifty years, provided it
didn't rain. Bismarck once called Ost Wilp "the pumice heart of the
world," and he was about right, too.

It will therefore be seen how important it was to France that this
"industrial triangle" on the Silesian border should belong to Germany.
At the conference which designated the border line, Gambetta,
representing France, insisted that the line should follow the course of
the Iser River ("iser on one side or the other," was the way he is
reported to have phrased it), which would divide the pumice deposits
into three areas, the fourth being the dummy. This would never do.

Experts were called in to see if it might not be possible to so divide
the district that France might get a quarter, Germany a quarter and
England fifty cents. It was suggested that the line be drawn down
through Globe-Wernicke to the mouth of the Iser. As Gambetta said, the
line had to be drawn somewhere and it might as well be there. But Lord
Hay-Paunceforte, representing England, refused to concede the point and
for a time it looked like an open breach. But matters were smoothed over
by the holding of a plebiscite in all the towns of Upper Silesia. The
result of this plebiscite was taken and exactly reversed by the council,
so that the entire Engadine Valley was given to Sweden, who didn't want
it anyway.

And there the matter now stands.

XXV

"HAPPY THE HOME WHERE BOOKS ARE FOUND"

By way of egging people on to buy Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf of books,
the publishers are resorting to an advertisement in which are depicted
two married couples, one reading together by the library table, the
other playing some two-handed game of cards which is evidently boring
them considerably. The query is "Which One of These Couples Will be the
Happier in Five Years?" the implication being that the young people who
buy Dr. Eliot's books will, by constant reading aloud to each other from
the works of the world's best writers, cement a companionship which will
put to shame the illiterate union of the young card players.

Granted that most two-handed games of cards _are_ dull enough to result
in divorce at the end of five years, they cannot be compared to
co-operative family reading as a system of home-wrecking. If this were a
betting periodical, we would have ten dollars to place on the chance of
the following being the condition of affairs in the literary family at
the end of the stated time:

(_The husband is reading his evening newspaper. The wife appears,
bringing a volume from the Five Foot Shelf. Tonight it is Darwin's
"Origin of Species_.")

WIFE: Hurry up and finish that paper. We'll never get along in this
Darwin if we don't begin earlier than we did last night.

HUSBAND: Well, suppose we didn't get along in it. That would suit me all
right.

WIFE: If you don't want me to read it to you, just say so ...
(_after-thought_) if it's so far over your head, just say so.

HUSBAND: It's not over my head at all. It's just dull. Why don't you
read some more out of that Italian novel?

WIFE: Ugh! I hate that. I suppose you'd rather have me read "The Sheik."

HUSBAND (_nastily_): No-I-wouldn't-rather-have-you-read-"The Sheik." Go
on ahead with your Darwin. I'm listening.

WIFE: It's not _my_ Darwin. I simply want to know a little something,
that's all. Of course, _you_ know everything, so you don't have to read
anything more.

HUSBAND: Go on, go on.

WIFE: That last book we read was so far over--

HUSBAND: Go on, go on.

WIFE: (_reads in an injured tone one and a half pages on the selective
processes of pigeons_): You're asleep!

HUSBAND: I am not. The last words you read were "to this conclusion."

WIFE: Yes, well, what were the words before that?

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