Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley

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They have got so used to going about all summer in bathing suits and
shirts open at the neck that they look like professional wrestlers in
stiff collars and seem to be on the point of bursting out at any minute.
And they always make a great deal of noise getting off the train.

"Where's Bessie?" they scream, "Ned, where's Bessie?... Have you got
the thermos bottles?... Well, here's the old station just as it was when
we left it (hysterical laughter).... Wallace, you simply must carry your
pail and shovel. Mamma can't carry _everything_, you know.... Mamma told
you that if you wanted to bring your pail and shovel home you would have
to carry it yourself, don't you remember Mamma told you that,
Wallace?... Wallace, listen!... Edna, have you got Bessie?... Harry's
gone after the trunks.... At least, he _said_ that was where he was
going.... Look, there's the Dexter Building, looking just the same. Big
as life and twice as natural.... I know, Wallace, Mamma's just as hot as
you are. But you don't hear Mamma crying do you?... I wonder where Bert
is.... He said he'd be down to meet us sure.... Here, give me that cape,
Lillian.... You're dragging it all over the ground.... _Here's Bert!...
Whoo-hoo, Bert_!... Here we are!... Spencer, there's Daddy!... Whoo-hoo,
Daddy!... Junior, wipe that gum off your shoe this minute.... _Where's
Bessie_?"

And so they go, all the way out into the street and the cab and home,
millions of them. It's terrible.

And when they get home things are just about as bad, except there aren't
so many people to see them. At the sight of eight Sunday and sixty-two
daily papers strewn over the front porch and lawn, there are loud
screams of imprecation at Daddy for having forgotten to order them
stopped. Daddy insists that he did order them stopped and that it is
that damn fool boy.

"I guess you weren't home much during July," says Mamma bitterly, "or
you would have noticed that something was wrong." (Daddy didn't join the
family until August.)

"There were no papers delivered during July," says Daddy very firmly and
quietly, "at least, I didn't see any." (Stepping on one dated July 19.)

The inside of the house resembles some place you might bet a man a
hundred dollars he daren't spend the night in. Dead men's feet seem to
be protruding from behind sofas and there is a damp smell as if the
rooms had been closed pending the arrival of the coroner.

Junior runs upstairs to see if his switching engine is where he left it
and comes falling down stairs panting with terror announcing that there
is Something in the guest-room. At that moment there is a sound of
someone leaving the house by the back door. Daddy is elected by popular
vote to go upstairs and see what has happened, although he insists that
he has to wait down stairs as the man with the trunks will be there at
any minute. After five minutes of cagey manoeuvering around in the hall
outside the guest-room door, he returns looking for Junior, saying that
it was simply a pile of things left on the bed covered with a sheet.
"Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Then comes the unpacking. It has been estimated that in the trunks of
returning vacationists, taking this section of the country as a whole,
the following articles will be pulled out during the next few weeks:

Sneakers, full of sand.

Bathing suits, still damp from the "one last swim."

Dead tennis balls.

Last month's magazines, bought for reading in the grove.

Shells and pretty stones picked up on the beach for decoration purposes,
for which there has suddenly become no use at all.

Horse-shoe crabs, salvaged by children who refused to leave them behind.

Lace scarfs and shawls, bought from itinerant Armenians.

Remnants of tubes formerly containing sunburn ointment, half-filled
bottles of citronella and white shoe-dressing.

White flannel trousers, ready for the cleaners.

Snap-shots, showing Ed and Mollie on the beach in their bathing suits.

Snap-shots which show nothing at all.

Faded flowers, dance-cards and assorted sentimental objects, calculated
to bring up tender memories of summer evenings.

Uncompleted knit-sweaters.

Then begins the tour of the neighborhood, comparing summer-vacation
experiences. To each returning vacationist it seems as if everyone in
town must be interested in what he or she did during the summer. They
stop perfect strangers on the streets and say: "Well, a week ago today
at this time we were all walking up to the Post-Office for the mail.
Right out in front of the Post-Office were the fish-houses and you ought
to have seen Billy one night leading a lobster home on a string. That
was the night we all went swimming by moon-light."

"Yeah?" says the stranger, and pushes his way past.

Then two people get together who have been to different places. Neither
wants to hear about the other's summer--and neither does. Both talk at
once and pull snap-shots out of their pockets.

"Here's where we used to take our lunch--"

"That's nothing. Steve had a friend up the lake who had a launch--"

"--and everyday there was something doing over at the Casino--"

"--and you ought to have seen Miriam, she was a sight--"

Pretty soon they come to blows trying to make each other listen. The
only trouble is they never quite kill each other. If only one could be
killed it would be a great help.

The next ban on immigration should be on returning vacationists. Have
government officials stationed in each city and keep everyone out who
won't give a bond to shut up and go right to work.

XXXIV

ANIMAL STORIES

_How Georgie Dog Gets the Rubbers on the Guest Room Bed_

Old Mother Nature gathered all her little pupils about her for the daily
lesson in "How the Animals Do the Things They Do." Every day Waldo
Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus came to Mother Nature's
school, and there learned all about the useless feats performed by their
brother and sister animals.

"Today," said Mother Nature, "we shall find out how it is that Georgie
Dog manages to get the muddy rubbers from the hall closet, up the
stairs, and onto the nice white bedspread in the guest room. You must be
sure to listen carefully and pay strict attention to what Georgie Dog
says. Only, don't take too much of it seriously, for Georgie is an awful
liar."

And, sure enough, in came Georgie Dog, wagging his entire torso in a
paroxysm of camaradarie, although everyone knew that he had no use for
Waldo Lizard.

"Tell us, Georgie," said Mother Nature, "how do you do your clever work
of rubber-dragging? We would like so much to know. Wouldn't we,
children?"

"No, Mother Nature!" came the instant response from the children.

So Georgie Dog began.

"Well, I'll tell you; it's this way," he said, snapping at a fly. "You
have to be very niftig about it. First of all, I lie by the door of the
hall closet until I see a nice pair of muddy rubbers kicked into it."

"How muddy ought they to be?" asked Edna Elephant, although little
enough use she would have for the information.

"I am glad that you asked that question," replied Georgie. "Personally;
I like to have mud on them about the consistency of gurry--that is, not
too wet--because then it will all drip off on the way upstairs, and not
so dry that it scrapes off on the carpet. For we must save it all for
the bedspread, you know.

"As soon as the rubbers are safely in the hall closet, I make a great
deal of todo about going into the other room, in order to give the
impression that there is nothing interesting enough in the hall to keep
me there. A good, loud yawn helps to disarm any suspicion of undue
excitement. I sometimes even chew a bit of fringe on the sofa and take a
scolding for it--anything to draw attention from the rubbers. Then, when
everyone is at dinner, I sneak out and drag them forth."

"And how do you manage to take them both at once?" piped up Lawrence
Walrus.

"I am glad that you asked that question," said Georgie, "because I was
trying to avoid it. You can never guess what the answer is. It is very
difficult to take two at a time, and so we usually have to take one and
then go back and get the other. I had a cousin once who knew a grip
which could be worked on the backs of overshoes, by means of which he
could drag two at a time, but he was an exceptionally fine dragger. He
once took a pair of rubber boots from the barn into the front room,
where a wedding was taking place, and put them on the bride's train. Of
course, not one dog in a million could hope to do that.

"Once upstairs, it is quite easy getting them into the guest room,
unless the door happens to be shut. Then what do you think I do? I go
around through the bath-room window onto the roof, and walk around to
the sleeping porch, and climb down into the guest room that way. It is
a lot of trouble, but I think that you will agree with me that the
results are worth it.

"Climbing up on the bed with the rubbers in my mouth is difficult, but
it doesn't make any difference if some of the mud comes off on the side
of the bedspread. In fact, it all helps in the final effect. I usually
try to smear them around when I get them at last on the spread, and if I
can leave one of them on the pillow, I feel that it's a pretty fine
little old world, after all. This done, and I am off."

And Georgie Dog suddenly disappeared in official pursuit of an
automobile going eighty-five miles an hour.

"So now," said Mother Nature to her little pupils, "we have heard all
about Georgie Dog's work. To-morrow we may listen to Lillian Mosquito
tell how she makes her voice carry across a room."

ANIMAL STORIES

II

_How Lillian Mosquito Projects Her Voice_

All the children came crowding around Mother Nature one cold, raw
afternoon in summer, crying in unison:

"Oh, Mother Nature, you promised us that you would tell us how Lillian
Mosquito projects her voice! You promised that you would tell us how
Lillian Mosquito projects her voice!"

"So I did! So I did!" said Mother Nature, laying down an oak, the leaves
of which she was tipping with scarlet for the fall trade. "And so I
will! So I will!"

At which Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus jumped with
imitation joy, for they had hoped to have an afternoon off.

Mother Nature led them across the fields to the piazza of a clubhouse on
which there was an exposed ankle belonging to one of the members. There,
as she had expected, they found Lillian Mosquito having tea.

"Lillian," called Mother Nature, "come off a minute. I have some little
friends here who would like to know how it is that you manage to hum in
such a manner as to give the impression of being just outside the ear
of a person in bed, when actually you are across the room."

"Will you kindly repeat the question?" said Lillian flying over to the
railing.

"We want to know," said Mother Nature, "how it is that very often, when
you have been fairly caught, it turns out that you have escaped without
injury."

"I would prefer to answer the question as it was first put," said
Lillian.

So Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus, seeing that there
was no way out, cried:

"Yes, yes, Lillian, do tell us."

"First of all, you must know," began Lillian Mosquito, "that my chief
duty is to annoy. Whatever else I do, however many bites I total in the
course of the evening, I do not consider that I have 'made good' unless
I have caused a great deal of annoyance while doing it. A bite, quietly
executed and not discovered by the victim until morning, does me no
good. It is my duty, and my pleasure, to play with him before biting, as
you have often heard a cat plays with a mouse, tormenting him with
apprehension and making him struggle to defend himself.... If I am using
too long words for you, please stop me."

"Stop!" cried Waldo Lizard, reaching for his hat, with the idea of
possibly getting to the ball park by the fifth inning.

But he was prevented from leaving by kindly old Mother Nature, who
stepped on him with her kindly old heel, and Lillian Mosquito continued:

"I must therefore, you see, be able to use my little voice with great
skill. Of course, the first thing to do is to make my victim think that
I am nearer to him than I really am. To do this, I sit quite still, let
us say, on the footboard of the bed, and, beginning to hum in a very,
very low tone of voice, increase the volume and raise the pitch
gradually, thereby giving the effect of approaching the pillow.

"The man in bed thinks that he hears me coming toward his head, and I
can often see him, waiting with clenched teeth until he thinks that I am
near enough to swat. Sometimes I strike a quick little grace-note, as if
I were right above him and about to make a landing. It is great fun at
such times to see him suddenly strike himself over the ear (they always
think that I am right at their ear), and then feel carefully between his
finger tips to see if he has caught me. Then, too, there is always the
pleasure of thinking that perhaps he has hurt himself quite badly by the
blow. I have often known victims of mine to deafen themselves
permanently by jarring their eardrums in their wild attempts to catch
me."

"What fun! What fun!" cried Edna Elephant. "I must try it myself just as
soon as ever I get home."

"It is often a good plan to make believe that you have been caught after
one of the swats," continued Lillian Mosquito, "and to keep quiet for a
while. It makes him cocky. He thinks that he has demonstrated the
superiority of man over the rest of the animals. Then he rolls over and
starts to sleep. This is the time to begin work on him again. After he
has slapped himself all over the face and head, and after he has put on
the light and made a search of the room and then gone back to bed to
think up some new words, that is the time when I usually bring the
climax about.

"Gradually approaching him from the right, I hum loudly at his ear.
Then, suddenly becoming quiet, I fly silently and quickly around to his
neck. Just as he hits himself on the ear, I bite his neck and fly away.
And, _voila_, there you are!"

"How true that is!" said Mother Nature. "_Voila_, there we are!... Come,
children, let us go now, for we must be up bright and early to-morrow to
learn how Lois Hen scratches up the beets and Swiss chard in the
gentlemen's gardens."

XXXV

THE TARIFF UNMASKED

Let us get this tariff thing cleared up, once and for all. An
explanation is due the American people, and obviously this is the place
to make it.

Viewing the whole thing, schedule by schedule, we find it indefensible.
In Schedule A alone the list of necessities on which the tax is to be
raised includes Persian berries, extract of nutgalls and isinglass. Take
isinglass alone. With prices shooting up in this market, what is to
become of our picture post-cards? Where once for a nickel you could get
a picture of the Woolworth Building ablaze with lights with the sun
setting and the moon rising in the background, under the proposed tariff
it will easily set you back fifteen cents. This is all very well for the
rich who can get their picture post-cards at wholesale, but how are the
poor to get their art?

The only justifiable increase in this schedule is on "blues,
in pulp, dried, etc." If this will serve to reduce the amount
of "Those Lonesome-Onesome-Wonesome Blues" and "I've Got the
Left-All-Alone-in-The-Magazine-Reading-Room-of-the-Public-Library Blues"
with which our popular song market has been flooded for the past five
years, we could almost bring ourselves to vote for the entire tariff
bill as it stands.

_Schedule B_

Here we find a tremendous increase in the tax on grindstones.
Householders and travelers in general do not appreciate what this means.
It means that, next year, when you are returning from Europe, you will
have to pay a duty on those Dutch grindstones that you always bring back
to the cousins, a duty which will make the importation of more than
three prohibitive. This will lead to an orgy of grindstone smuggling,
making it necessary for hitherto respectable people to become
law-breakers by concealing grindstones about their clothing and in the
trays of their trunks. Think this over.

_Schedule C_

Right at the start of this list we find charcoal bars being boosted.
Have our children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without
Hershey's charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride
through the country-side than a band of gypsum encamped by the road
with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple
folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff
insists on raising the tax on gypsum?

_Schedule D_

A way to evade the injustice of this schedule is in the matter of marble
slabs. "Marble slabs, rubbed" are going to cost more to import than
"marble slabs, unrubbed." What we are planning to do in this office is
to get in a quantity of unrubbed marble slabs and then rub them
ourselves. A coarse, dry towel is very good for rubbing, they say.

Any further discussion of the details of this iniquitous tariff would
only enrage us to a point of incoherence. Perhaps a short list of some
of the things you will have to do without under the new arrangement will
serve to enrage you also:

Senegal gum, buchu leaves, lava tips for burners, magic lantern strips,
spiegeleisen nut washers, butchers' skewers and gun wads.

Now write to your congressman!

LITERARY DEPARTMENT

XXXVI

"TAKE ALONG A BOOK"

There seems to be a concerted effort, manifest in the "Take Along a
Book" drive, to induce vacationists to slip at least one volume into the
trunk before getting Daddy to jump on it.

This is a fine idea, for there is always a space between the end of the
tennis-racquet and the box of soap in which the shoe-whitening is liable
to tip over unless you jam a book in with it. Any book will do.

It is usually a book that you have been meaning to read all Spring, one
that you have got so used to lying about to people who have asked you if
you have read it that you have almost kidded yourself into believing
that you really have read it. You picture yourself out in the hammock or
down on the rocks, with a pillow under your head and pipe or a box of
candy near at hand, just devouring page after page of it. The only thing
that worries you is what you will read when you have finished that. "Oh,
well," you think, "there will probably be some books in the town
library. Maybe I can get Gibbon there. This summer will be a good time
to read Gibbon through."

Your trunk doesn't reach the cottage until four days after you arrive,
owing to the ferry-pilots' strike. You don't get it unpacked down as far
as the layer in which the book is until you have been there a week.

Then the book is taken out and put on the table. In transit it has tried
to eat its way through a pair of tramping-boots, with the result that
one corner and the first twenty pages have become dog-eared, but that
won't interfere with its being read.

Several other things do interfere, however. The nice weather, for
instance. You start out from your room in the morning and somehow or
other never get back to it except when you are in a hurry to get ready
for meals or for bed. You try to read in bed one night, but you can't
seem to fix your sun-burned shoulders in a comfortable position.

You take the book down to luncheon and leave it at the table. And you
don't miss it for three days. When you find it again it has large
blisters on page 35 where some water was dropped on it.

Then Mrs. Beatty, who lives in Montclair in the winter time (no matter
where you go for the summer, you always meet some people who live in
Montclair in the winter), borrows the book, as she has heard so much
about it. Two weeks later she brings it back, and explains that Prince
got hold of it one afternoon and chewed just a little of the back off,
but says that she doesn't think it will be noticed when the book is in
the bookcase.

Back to the table in the bedroom it goes and is used to keep unanswered
post-cards in. It also is convenient as a backing for cards which you
yourself are writing. And the flyleaf makes an excellent place for a
bridge-score if there isn't any other paper handy.

When it comes time to pack up for home, you shake the sand from among
the leaves and save out the book to be read on the train. And you leave
it in the automobile that takes you to the station.

But for all that, "take along a book." It might rain all summer.

XXXVII

CONFESSIONS OF A CHESS CHAMPION

With the opening of the baseball season, the sporting urge stirs in
one's blood and we turn to such books as "My Chess Career," by J.R.
Capablanca. Mr. Capablanca, I gather from his text, plays chess very
well. Wherein he unquestionably has something on me.

His book is a combination of autobiography and pictorial examples of
difficult games he has participated in and won. I could understand the
autobiographical part perfectly, but although I have seen chess diagrams
in the evening papers for years, I never have been able to become
nervous over one. It has always seemed to me that when you have seen one
diagram of a chessboard you have seen them all. Therefore, I can give
only a superficial review of the technical parts of Mr. Capablanca's
book.

* * * * *

His personal reminiscences, however, are full of poignant episodes. For
instance, let us take an incident which occurred in his early boyhood
when he found out what sort of man his father really was--a sombre event
in the life of any boy, much more so for the boy Capablanca.

"I was born in Havana, the capital of the Island of Cuba," he says, "the
19th of November, 1888. I was not yet five years old when by accident I
came into my father's private office and found him playing with another
gentleman. I had never seen a game of chess before; the pieces
interested me and I went the next day to see them play again. The third
day, as I looked on, my father, a very poor beginner, moved a Knight
from a white square to another white square. His opponent, apparently
not a better player, did not notice it. My father won, and I proceeded
to call him a cheat and to laugh."

Imagine the feelings of a young boy entering his father's private office
and seeing a man whom he had been brought up to love and to revere
moving a Knight from one white square to another. It is a wonder that
the boy had the courage to grow up at all with a start in life like
that.

But he did grow up, and at the age of eight, in spite of the advice of
doctors, he was a frequent visitor at the Havana Chess Club. As he says
in describing this period of his career, "Soon Don Celso Golmayo, the
strongest player there, was unable to give me a rook." So you can see
how good he was. Don Celso couldn't give him a rook. And if Don Celso
couldn't, who on earth could?

In his introduction, Mr. Capablanca (I wish that I could get it out of
my head that Mr. Capablanca is possibly a relation of the Casablanca boy
who did the right thing by the burning deck. They are, of course, two
entirely different people)--in his introduction, Mr. Capablanca says:

"Conceit I consider a foolish thing; but more foolish still is that
false modesty that vainly attempts to conceal that which all facts tend
to prove."

It is this straining to overcome a foolish, false modesty which leads
him to say, in connection with his matches with members of the Manhattan
Chess Club. "As one by one I mowed them down without the loss of a
single game, my superiority became apparent." Or, in speaking of his
"endings" (a term we chess experts use to designate the last part of our
game), to murmur modestly: "The endings I already played very well, and
to my mind had attained the high standard for which they were in the
future to be well known." Mr. Capablanca will have to watch that false
modesty of his. It will get him into trouble some day.

Although this column makes no pretense of carrying sporting news, it
seems only right to print a part of the running story of the big game
between Capablanca and Dr. O.S. Bernstein in the San Sebastian
tournament of 1911. Capablanca wore the white, while Dr. Bernstein
upheld the honor of the black.

The tense moment of the game had been reached. Capablanca has the ball
on Dr. Bernstein's 3-yard line on the second down, with a minute and a
half to play. The stands are wild. Cries of "Hold 'em, Bernstein!" and
"Touchdown, Capablanca!" ring out on the frosty November air.

Brave voices are singing the fighting song entitled "Capablanca's Day"
which runs as follows:

"Oh, sweep, sweep across the board,
With your castles, queens, and pawns;
We are with you, all Havana's horde,
Till the sun of victory dawns;
Then it's fight, _fight_, FIGHT!
To your last white knight,
For the truth must win alway,
And our hearts beat true
Old "J.R." for you
On Capa-blanca's Day."

"Up to this point the game had proceeded along the lines generally
recommended by the masters," writes Capablanca. "The last move, however,
is a slight deviation from the regular course, which brings this Knight
back to B in order to leave open the diagonal for the Q, and besides is
more in accordance with the defensive nature of the game. Much more
could be said as to the reasons that make Kt - B the preferred move of
most masters.... Of course, lest there be some misapprehension, let me
state that the move Kt - B is made in conjunction with K R - K, which
comes first."

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