Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley

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HUSBAND: How should I know? I'm not learning the thing to recite
somewhere, am I?

WIFE: Well, it's very funny that you didn't notice when I read the last
sentence backwards. And if you weren't asleep what were you doing with
your eyes closed?

HUSBAND: I got smoke in them and was resting them for a minute. Haven't
I got a right to rest my eyes a minute?

WIFE: I suppose it rests your eyes to breathe through your mouth and
hold your head way over on one side.

HUSBAND: Yes it does, and wha'd'yer think of _that_?

[Illustration: "If you weren't asleep what were you doing with your eyes
closed?"]

WIFE: Go on and read your newspaper. That's just about your mental
speed.

HUSBAND: I'm perfectly willing to read books in this set if you'd pick
any decent ones.

WIFE: Yes, you are.

HUSBAND: Wha'd'yer mean "Yes you are"?

WIFE: Just what I said.

(_This goes on for ten minutes and then husband draws a revolver and
kills his wife_.)

XXVI

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

There is a growing sentiment among sign painters that when a sign or
notice is to be put up in a public place it should be written in
characters that are at least legible, so that, to quote "The Manchester
Guardian" (as every one seems to do) "He who runs may read."

This does not strike one as being an unseemly pandering to popular
favor. The supposition is that the sign is put there to be read,
otherwise it would have been turned over to an inmate of the Odd Fellows
Home to be engraved on the head of a pin. And what could be a more fair
requirement than that it should be readable?

Advertising, with its billboard message of rustless screens and
co-educational turkish-baths, has done much to further the good cause,
and a glance through the files of newspapers of seventy-five years ago,
when the big news story of the day was played up in diamond type easily
deciphered in a strong light with the naked eye, shows that news
printing has not, to use a slang phrase, stood still.

But in the midst of this uniform progress we find a stagnant spot.
Surrounded by legends that are patent and easy to read and understand,
we find the stone-cutter and the architect still putting up tablets and
cornerstones, monuments and cornices, with dates disguised in Roman
numerals. It is as if it were a game, in which they were saying, "The
number we are thinking of is even; it begins with M; it has five digits
and when they are spread out, end to end, they occupy three feet of
space. You have until we count to one hundred to guess what it is."

Roman numerals are all right for a rainy Sunday afternoon or to take a
convalescent's mind from his illness, but to put them in a public place,
where the reader stands a good chance of being run over by a dray if he
spends more than fifty seconds in their perusal, is not in keeping with
the efficiency of the age. If for no other reason than the extra space
they take, involving more marble, more of the cutter's time and wear and
tear on his instruments, not to mention the big overhead, you would
think that Roman numerals would have been abolished long ago.

Of course, they can be figured out if you're good at that sort of
thing. By working on your cuff and backs of envelopes, you can translate
them in no time at all compared to the time taken by a cocoon to change
into a butterfly, for instance. All you have to do is remember that "M"
stands for either "_millium_," meaning thousand, or for "million." By
referring to the context you can tell which is more probable. If, for
example, it is a date, you can tell right away that it doesn't mean
"million," for there isn't any "million" in our dates. And there is
one-seventh or eighth of your number deciphered already. Then "C," of
course, stands for "_centum_," which you can translate by working
backwards at it, taking such a word as "century" or "per cent," and
looking up what they come from, and there you have it! By this time it
is hardly the middle of the afternoon, and all you have before you is a
combination of X's, I's and an L, the latter standing for "Elevated
Railway," and "Licorice," or, if you cross it with two little horizontal
lines, it stands for the English pound, which is equivalent to about
four dollars and eighty-odd cents in real money. Simple as sawing
through a log.

But it takes time. That's the big trouble with it. You can't do the
right thing by the office and go in for Roman numerals, too. And since
most of the people who pass such inscriptions are dependent on their
own earnings, why not cater to them a bit and let them in on the secret?

Probably the only reason that the people haven't risen up and demanded a
reform along these lines is because so few of them really give a hang
what the inscription says. If the American Antiquarian Turn-Verein
doesn't care about stating in understandable figures the date on which
the cornerstone of their building was laid, the average citizen is
perfectly willing to let the matter drop right there.

But it would never do to revert to Roman numerals in, say, the
arrangement of time-tables. How long would the commuter stand it if he
had to mumble to himself for twenty minutes and use up the margins of
his newspaper before he could figure out what was the next train after
the 5:18? Or this, over the telephone between wife and husband:

"Hello, dear! I think I'll come in town for lunch. What trains can I
get?"

"Just a minute--I'll look them up. Hold the wire.... Let's see, here's
one at XII:LVIII, that's twelve, and L is a thousand and V is five and
three I's are three; that makes 12:one thousand.... that can't be
right.... now XII certainly is twelve, and L ... what does L stand
for?... I say; what--does--L--stand--for?... Well, ask Heima.... What
does she say?... Fifty?... Sure, that makes it come out all right....
12:58.... What time is it now?... 1 o'clock?... Well, the next one
leaves Oakam at I:XLIV.... that's ..." etc.

Batting averages and the standing of teams in the leagues are another
department where the introduction of Roman numerals would be suicide for
the political party in power at the time. For of all things that are
essential to the day's work of the voter, an early enlightenment in the
matter of the home team's standing and the numerical progress of the
favorite batsman are of primary importance. This information has to be
gleaned on the way to work in the morning, and, except for those who
come in to work each day from North Philadelphia or the Croton
Reservoir, it would be a physical impossibility to figure the tables out
and get any of the day's news besides.

CLVB BATTING RECORDS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Games At Bat Runs B.H. S.B. S.H. Aver.

Detroit CLII MMMMMXXCIX DCLIII MCCCXXXIII CLXVIII CC CCLXII
Chicago CLI MMMMCMXL DLXXI MCCXLVI CLXXIX CCXXI CCLII
Cleveland CLII MMMMCMXXXVII DCXIX MCCXXXI CL CCXXI CCXLIX
Boston CLI MMMMDCCCLXXIV DXXXIV MCXCI CXXXVI CCXXV CCXLV
New York CL MMMMCMLXXXVII DLIV MCCXXX CLXXV CLXV CXLVII
Washington CLIII MMMMCMXXVIII DV MCXC CLXIII CLXV CCXDI
St. Louis CLV MMMMMLXV DLXXIV MCCXXI CCVII CLXII CCXLI
Philadelphia CXLIX MMMMDCCCXXVI CCCCXVI MCXLIII CXLIII CLV CCXXXVII

YOU CAN'T DO RIGHT BY THE OFFICE AND GO IN FOR
ROMAN NUMERALS TOO.

On matters such as these the proletariat would have protested the Roman
numeral long ago. If they are willing to let its reactionary use on
tablets and monuments stand it is because of their indifference to
influences which do not directly affect their pocketbooks. But if it
could be put up to them in a powerful cartoon, showing the Architect and
the Stone-Cutter dressed in frock coats and silk hats, with their
pockets full of money, stepping on the Common People so that he cannot
see what is written on the tablet behind them, then perhaps the public
would realize how they are being imposed on.

For that there is an organized movement among architects and
stone-cutters to keep these things from the citizenry there can no
longer be any doubt. It is not only a matter of the Roman numerals. How
about the use of the "V" when "U" should be used? You will always see it
in inscriptions. "SVMNER BVILDING" is one of the least offensive.
Perhaps the excuse is that "V" is more adapted to stone-lettering. Then
why not carry this principle out further? Why not use the letter H when
S is meant? Or substitute K for B? If the idea is to deceive, and to
make it easier for the stone-cutter, a pleasing effect could be got from
the inscription, "Erected in 1897 by the Society of Arts and Grafts",
by making it read: "EKEATEW IZ MXIXLXIXLXXII LY THE XNLIEZY OF AEXA ZNL
ELAFTX." There you have letters that are all adapted to stone-cutting;
they look well together, and they are, in toto, as intelligible as most
inscriptions.

XXVII

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

Some well-known saying (it doesn't make much difference what) is proved
by the fact that everyone likes to talk about his experiences at the
dentist's. For years and years little articles like this have been
written on the subject, little jokes like some that I shall presently
make have been made, and people in general have been telling other
people just what emotions they experience when they crawl into the old
red plush guillotine.

They like to explain to each other how they feel when the dentist puts
"that buzzer thing" against their bicuspids, and, if sufficiently
pressed, they will describe their sensations on mouthing a rubber dam.

"I'll tell you what I hate," they will say with great relish, "when he
takes that little nut-pick and begins to scrape. Ugh!"

"Oh, I'll tell you what's worse than that," says the friend, not to be
outdone, "when he is poking around careless-like, and strikes a nerve.
Wow!"

And if there are more than two people at the experience-meeting,
everyone will chip in and tell what he or she considers to be the worst
phase of the dentist's work, all present enjoying the narration hugely
and none so much as the narrator who has suffered so.

This sort of thing has been going on ever since the first mammoth gold
tooth was hung out as a bait to folks in search of a good time. (By the
way, when _did_ the present obnoxious system of dentistry begin? It
can't be so very long ago that the electric auger was invented, and
where would a dentist be without an electric auger? Yet you never hear
of Amalgam Filling Day, or any other anniversary in the dental year).
There must be a conspiracy of silence on the part of the trade to keep
hidden the names of the men who are responsible for all this.

However many years it may be that dentists have been plying their trade,
in all that time people have never tired of talking about their teeth.
This is probably due to the inscrutable workings of Nature who is always
supplying new teeth to talk about.

As a matter of fact, the actual time and suffering in the chair is only
a fraction of the gross expenditure connected with the affair. The
preliminary period, about which nobody talks, is much the worse. This
dates from the discovery of the wayward tooth and extends to the moment
when the dentist places his foot on the automatic hoist which jacks you
up into range. Giving gas for tooth-extraction is all very humane in its
way, but the time for anaesthetics is when the patient first decides
that he must go to the dentist. From then on, until the first excavation
is started, should be shrouded in oblivion.

There is probably no moment more appalling than that in which the
tongue, running idly over the teeth in a moment of care-free play, comes
suddenly upon the ragged edge of a space from which the old familiar
filling has disappeared. The world stops and you look meditatively up to
the corner of the ceiling. Then quickly you draw your tongue away, and
try to laugh the affair off, saying to yourself:

"Stuff and nonsense, my good fellow! There is nothing the matter with
your tooth. Your nerves are upset after a hard day's work, that's all."

Having decided this to your satisfaction, you slyly, and with a poor
attempt at being casual, slide the tongue back along the line of
adjacent teeth, hoping against hope that it will reach the end without
mishap.

But there it is! There can be no doubt about it this time. The tooth
simply has got to be filled by someone, and the only person who can
fill it with anything permanent is a dentist. You wonder if you might
not be able to patch it up yourself for the time being,--a year or
so--perhaps with a little spruce-gum and a coating of new-skin. It is
fairly far back, and wouldn't have to be a very sightly job.

But this has an impracticable sound, even to you. You might want to eat
some peanut-brittle (you never can tell when someone might offer you
peanut-brittle these days), and the new-skin, while serviceable enough
in the case of cream soups and custards, couldn't be expected to stand
up under heavy crunching.

So you admit that, since the thing has got to be filled, it might as
well be a dentist who does the job.

This much decided, all that is necessary is to call him up and make an
appointment.

Let us say that this resolve is made on Tuesday. That afternoon you
start to look up the dentist's number in the telephone-book. A great
wave of relief sweeps over you when you discover that it isn't there.
How can you be expected to make an appointment with a man who hasn't got
a telephone? And how can you have a tooth filled without making an
appointment? The whole thing is impossible, and that's all there is to
it. God knows you did your best.

On Wednesday there is a slightly more insistent twinge, owing to bad
management of a sip of ice water. You decide that you simply must get in
touch with that dentist when you get back from lunch. But you know how
those things are. First one thing and then another came up, and a man
came in from Providence who had to be shown around the office, and by
the time you had a minute to yourself it was five o'clock. And, anyway,
the tooth didn't bother you again. You wouldn't be surprised if, by
being careful, you could get along with it as it is until the end of the
week when you will have more time. A man has to think of his business,
after all, and what is a little personal discomfort in the shape of an
unfilled tooth to the satisfaction of work well done in the office?

By Saturday morning you are fairly reconciled to going ahead, but it is
only a half day and probably he has no appointments left, anyway. Monday
is really the time. You can begin the week afresh. After all, Monday is
really the logical day to start in going to the dentist.

Bright and early Monday morning you make another try at the
telephone-book, and find, to your horror, that some time between now and
last Tuesday the dentist's name and number have been inserted into the
directory. There it is. There is no getting around it: "Burgess, Jas.
Kendal, DDS.... Courtland--2654". There is really nothing left to do but
to call him up. Fortunately the line is busy, which gives you a
perfectly good excuse for putting it over until Tuesday. But on Tuesday
luck is against you and you get a clear connection with the doctor
himself. An appointment is arranged for Thursday afternoon at 3:30.

Thursday afternoon, and here it is only Tuesday morning! Almost anything
may happen between now and then. We might declare war on Mexico, and off
you'd have to go, dentist appointment or no dentist appointment. Surely
a man couldn't let a date to have a tooth filled stand in the way of his
doing his duty to his country. Or the social revolution might start on
Wednesday, and by Thursday the whole town might be in ashes. You can
picture yourself standing, Thursday afternoon at 3.30 on the ruins of
the City Hall, fighting off marauding bands of reds, and saying to
yourself, with a sigh of relief: "Only to think! At this time I was to
have been climbing into the dentist's chair!" You never can tell when
your luck will turn in a thing like that.

But Wednesday goes by and nothing happens. And Thursday morning dawns
without even a word from the dentist saying that he has been called
suddenly out of town to lecture before the Incisor Club. Apparently,
everything is working against you.

By this time, your tongue has taken up a permanent resting-place in the
vacant tooth, and is causing you to talk indistinctly and incoherently.
Somehow you feel that if the dentist opens your mouth and finds the tip
of your tongue in the tooth, he will be deceived and go away without
doing anything.

The only thing left is for you to call him up and say that you have just
killed a man and are being arrested and can't possibly keep your
appointment. But any dentist would see through that. He would laugh
right into his transmitter at you. There is probably no excuse which it
would be possible to invent which a dentist has not already heard eighty
or ninety times. No, you might as well see the thing through now.

Luncheon is a ghastly rite. The whole left side of your jaw has suddenly
developed an acute sensitiveness and the disaffection has spread to the
four teeth on either side of the original one. You doubt if it will be
possible for him to touch it at all. Perhaps all he intends to do this
time is to look at it anyway. You might even suggest that to him. You
could very easily come in again soon and have him do the actual work.

Three-thirty draws near. A horrible time of day at best. Just when a
man's vitality is lowest. Before stepping in out of the sunlight into
the building in which the dental parlor is, you take one look about you
at the happy people scurrying by in the street. Carefree children that
they are! What do they know of Life? Probably that man in the
silly-looking hat never had trouble with so much as his baby-teeth.
There they go, pushing and jostling each other, just as if within ten
feet of them there was not a man who stands on the brink of the Great
Misadventure. Ah well! Life is like that!

Into the elevator. The last hope is gone. The door clangs and you look
hopelessly about you at the stupid faces of your fellow passengers. How
can people be so clownish? Of course, there is always the chance that
the elevator will fall and that you will all be terribly hurt. But that
is too much to expect. You dismiss it from your thoughts as too
impractical, too visionary. Things don't work out as happily as that in
real life.

You feel a certain glow of heroic pride when you tell the operator the
right floor number. You might just as easily have told him a floor too
high or too low, and that would, at least, have caused delay. But after
all, a man must prove himself a man and the least you can do is to meet
Fate with an unflinching eye and give the right floor number.

Too often has the scene in the dentist's waiting-room been described for
me to try to do it again here. They are all alike. The antiseptic smell,
the ominous hum from the operating-rooms, the 1921 "Literary Digests,"
and the silent, sullen, group of waiting patients, each trying to look
unconcerned and cordially disliking everyone else in the room,--all
these have been sung by poets of far greater lyric powers than mine.
(Not that I really think that they _are_ greater than mine, but that's
the customary form of excuse for not writing something you haven't got
time or space to do. As a matter of fact, I think I could do it much
better than it has ever been done before).

I can only say that, as you sit looking, with unseeing eyes, through a
large book entitled, "The Great War in Pictures," you would gladly
change places with the most lowly of God's creatures. It is
inconceivable that there should be anyone worse off than you, unless
perhaps it is some of the poor wretches who are waiting with you.

That one over in the arm-chair, nervously tearing to shreds a copy of
"The Dental Review and Practical Inlay Worker." She may have something
frightful the trouble with her. She couldn't possibly look more worried.
Perhaps it is very, very painful. This thought cheers you up
considerably. What cowards women are in times like these!

And then there comes the sound of voices from the next room.

"All right, Doctor, and if it gives me any more pain shall I call you
up?... Do you think that it will bleed much more?... Saturday morning,
then, at eleven.... Good bye, Doctor."

And a middle-aged woman emerges (all women are middle-aged when emerging
from the dentist's office) looking as if she were playing the big
emotional scene in "John Ferguson." A wisp of hair waves dissolutely
across her forehead between her eyes. Her face is pale, except for a
slight inflammation at the corners of her mouth, and in her eyes is that
far-away look of one who has been face to face with Life. But she is
through. She should care how she looks.

[Illustration: You would gladly change places with the most lawless of
God's creatures.]

The nurse appears, and looks inquiringly at each one in the room. Each
one in the room evades the nurse's glance in one last, futile attempt to
fool someone and get away without seeing the dentist. But she spots you
and nods pleasantly. God, how pleasantly she nods! There ought to be a
law against people being as pleasant as that.

"The doctor will see you now," she says.

The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words
than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to
the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on."
That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For
continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor
will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to
consider other possibilities.

Smiling feebly, you trip over the extended feet of the man next to you,
and stagger into the delivery-room, where, amid a ghastly array of
death-masks of teeth, blue flames waving eerily from Bunsen burners, and
the drowning sound of perpetually running water which chokes and gurgles
at intervals, you sink into the chair and close your eyes.

* * * * *

But now let us consider the spiritual exaltation that comes when you are
at last let down and turned loose. It is all over, and what did it
amount to? Why, nothing at all. A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Nothing at all.

You suddenly develop a particular friendship for the dentist. A splendid
fellow, really. You ask him questions about his instruments. What does
he use this thing for, for instance? Well, well, to think, of a little
thing like that making all that trouble. A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!... And the
dentist's family, how are they? Isn't that fine!

Gaily you shake hands with him and straighten your tie. Forgotten is the
fact that you have another appointment with him for Monday. There is no
such thing as Monday. You are through for today, and all's right with
the world.

As you pass out through the waiting-room, you leer at the others
unpleasantly. The poor fishes! Why can't they take their medicine like
grown people and not sit there moping as if they were going to be shot?

Heigh-ho! Here's the elevator-man! A charming fellow! You wonder if he
knows that you have just had a tooth filled. You feel tempted to tell
him and slap him on the back. You feel tempted to tell everyone out in
the bright, cheery street. And what a wonderful street it is too! All
full of nice, black snow and water. After all, Life is sweet!

And then you go and find the first person whom you can accost without
being arrested and explain to him just what it was that the dentist did
to you, and how you felt, and what you have got to have done next time.

Which brings us right back to where we were in the beginning, and
perhaps accounts for everyone's liking to divulge their dental secrets
to others. It may be a sort of hysterical relief that, for the time
being, it is all over with.

XXVIII

MALIGNANT MIRRORS

As a rule, I try not to look into mirrors any more than is absolutely
necessary. Things are depressing enough as they are without my going out
of my way to make myself miserable.

But every once in a while it is unavoidable. There are certain mirrors
in town with which I am brought face to face on occasion and there is
nothing to do but make the best of it. I have come to classify them
according to the harshness with which they fling the truth into my face.

I am unquestionably at my worst in the mirror before which I try on
hats. I may have been going along all winter thinking of other things,
dwelling on what people tell me is really a splendid spiritual side to
my nature, thinking of myself as rather a fine sort of person, not
dashing perhaps, but one from whose countenance shines a great light of
honesty and courage which is even more to be desired than physical
beauty. I rather imagine that little children on the street and grizzled
Supreme Court justices out for a walk turn as I pass and say "A fine
face. Plain, but fine."

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