Love Conquers All by Robert C. Benchley

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It is lucky that Mr. Casablanca made that explanation, for I was being
seized with just that misapprehension which he feared. (Mr.
_Capablanca_, I mean.)

Below is the box-score by innings:

1. P - K4. P - K4.
2. Kt - QB3. Kt - QB3.
3. P - B4. P x P.
4. Kt - B3. P - K Kt4.

(Game called on account of darkness.)

XXXVIII

"RIP VAN WINKLE"

After all, there is nothing like a good folk-opera for wholesome fun,
and the boy who can turn out a rollicking folk-opera for old and young
is Percy MacKaye. His latest is a riot from start to finish. You can buy
it in book form, published by Knopf. Just ask for "Rip Van Winkle" and
spend the evening falling out of your chair. (You wake up just as soon
as you fall and are all ready again for a fresh start.)

Of course it is a little rough in spots, but you know what Percy MacKaye
is when he gets loose on a folk-opera. It is good, clean Rabelaisian
fun, such as was in "Washington, the Man Who Made Us." I always felt
that it was very prudish of the police to stop that play just as it was
commencing its run. Or maybe it wasn't the police that stopped it.
Something did, I remember.

But "Rip Van Winkle" has much more zip to it than "Washington" had. In
the first place, the lyrics are better. They have more of a lilt to them
than the lines of the earlier work had. Here is the song hit of the
first act, sung by the Goose Girl. Try this over on your piano:

_Kaaterskill, Kaaterskill,
Cloud on the Kaaterskill!
Will it be fair, or lower?
Silver rings
On my pond I see;
And my gander he
Shook both his white wings
Like a sunshine shower_.

I venture to say that Irving Berlin himself couldn't have done anything
catchier than that by way of a lyric. Or this little snatch of a refrain
sung by the old women of the town:

_Nay, nay, nay!
A sunshine shower
Won't last a half an hour_.

The trouble with most lyrics is that they are written by song-writers
who have had no education. Mr. MacKaye's college training shows itself
in every line of the opera. There is a subtlety of rhyme-scheme, a
delicacy of meter, and, above all, an originality of thought and
expression which promises much for the school of university-bred
lyricists. Here, for instance, is a lyric which Joe McCarthy could
never have written:

_Up spoke Nancy, spanking Nancy,
Says, "My feet are far too dancy, Dancy O!
So foot-on-the-grass,
Foot-on-the-grass,
Foot-on-the-grass is my fancy, O!_"

Of course this is a folk-opera. And you can get away with a great deal
of that "dancy-o" stuff when you call it a folk-opera. You can throw it
all back on the old folk at home and they can't say a word.

But even the local wits of Rip Van Winkle's time would have repudiated
the comedy lines which Mr. MacKaye gives Rip to say in which "Katy-did"
and "Katy-didn't" figure prominently as the nub, followed, before you
have time to stop laughing, by one about "whip poor Will"
(whippoorwill--get it?). If "Rip Van Winkle" is ever produced again, Ed
Wynn should be cast as Rip. He would eat that line alive.

* * * * *

Ed Wynn, by the way, might do wonders by the opera if he could get the
rights to produce it in his own way. Let Mr. MacKaye's name stay on the
programme, but give Ed Wynn the white card to do as he might see fit
with the book. For instance, one of Mr. MacKaye's characters is named
"Dirck Spuytenduyvil." Let him stand as he is, but give him two cousins,
"Mynheer Yonkers" and "Jan One Hundred and Eighty-third Street." The
three of them could do a comedy tumbling act. There is practically no
end to the features that could be introduced to tone the thing up.

The basic idea of "Rip Van Winkle" would lend itself admirably to
Broadway treatment, for Mr. MacKaye has taken liberties, with the legend
and introduced the topical idea of a Magic Flask, containing home-made
hootch. Hendrick Hudson, the Captain of the Catskill Bowling Team, is
the lucky possessor of the doctor's prescription and formula, and it is
in order to take a trial spin with the brew that Rip first goes up to
the mountain. Here are Hendrick's very words of invitation:

_You'll be right welcome. I will let you taste
A wonder drink we brew aboard the Half Moon.
Whoever drinks the Magic Flask thereof
Forgets all lapse of time
And wanders ever in the fairy season
Of youth and spring.
Come join me in the mountains
At mid of night
And there I promise you the Magic Flask_.

And so at mid of night Rip fell for the promise of wandering "in the
fairy season," as so many have done at the invitation of a man who has
"made a little something at home which you couldn't tell from the real
stuff." Rip got out of it easily. He simply went to sleep for twenty
years. You ought to see a man I know.

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading
of "Rip Van Winkle" may be given without first getting the author's
permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

XXXIX

LITERARY LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENT

With Scant Apology to the Book Section of the _New York Times_.

"OLD BLACK TILLIE"

H.G.L.--When I was a little girl, my nurse, used to recite a poem
something like the following (as near as I can remember). I wonder if
anyone can give me the missing lines?

"_Old Black Tillie lived in the dell,
Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!
Something, something, something like a lot of hell,
Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!
She wasn't very something and she wasn't very fat
But_--"

"VICTOR HUGO'S DEATH"

M.K.C.--Is it true that Victor Hugo did not die but is still living in a
little shack in Colorado?

"I'M SORRY THAT I SPELT THE WORD"

J.R.A.--Can anyone help me out by furnishing the last three words to the
following stanza which I learned in school and of which I have forgotten
the last three words, thereby driving myself crazy?

"'_I'm sorry that I spelt the word,
I hate to go above you,
Because--' the brown eyes lower fell,
'Because, you see, ---- ---- ----.'_"

"GOD'S IN HIS HEAVEN"

J.A.E.--Where did Mark Twain write the following?

"_God's in his heaven:
All's right with the world._"

"SHE DWELT BESIDE"

N.K.Y.--Can someone locate this for me and tell the author?

"_She dwelt among untrodden ways,
Beside the springs of Dove,
To me she gave sweet Charity,
But greater far is Love._"

"THE GOLDEN WEDDING"

K.L.F.--Who wrote the following and what does it mean?

"_Oh, de golden wedding,
Oh, de golden wedding,
Oh, de golden wedding,
De golden, golden wedding_!"

ANSWERS

"WHEN GRANDMA WAS A GIRL"

LUTHER F. NEAM, Flushing, L.I.--The poem asked for by "E.J.K." was
recited at a Free Soil riot in Ashburg, Kansas, in July, 1850. It was
entitled, "And That's the Way They Did It When Grandma Was a Girl," and
was written by Bishop Leander B. Rizzard. The last line runs:

"_And that's they way they did it, when Grandma was a girl_."

Others who answered this query were: Lillian W. East, of Albany; Martin
B. Forsch, New York City, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Nahant.

"LET US THEN BE UP AND DOING"

Roger F. Nilkette, Presto, N.J.--Replying to the query in your last
issue concerning the origin of the lines:

"_Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait_."

I remember hearing these lines read at a gathering in the Second Baptist
Church of Presto, N.J., when I was a young man, by the Reverend Harley
N. Ankle. It was said at the time among his parishioners that he himself
wrote them and on being questioned on the matter he did not deny it,
simply smiling and saying, "I'm glad if you liked them." They were
henceforth known in Presto as "Dr. Ankle's verse" and were set to music
and sung at his funeral.

"THE DECEMBER BRIDE, OR OLD ROBIN"

Charles B. Rennit, Boston, N.H.--The whole poem wanted by "H.J.O." is as
follows, and appeared in _Hostetter's Annual_ in 1843.

1

"'_Twas in the bleak December that I took her for my bride;
How well do I remember how she fluttered by my side;
My Nellie dear, it was not long before you up and died,
And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning_.

2

"_Oh, do not tell me of the charms of maidens far and near,
Their charming ways and manners I do not care to hear,
For Lucy dear was to me so very, very dear,
And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning_.

3

"_Then it's merrily, merrily, merrily, whoa!
To the old gray church they come and go,
Some to be married and some to be buried,
And old Robin has gone for the mail_."

"THE OLD KING'S JOKE"

F.J. BRUFF, Hammick, Conn.--In a recent issue of your paper, Lillian F.
Grothman asked for the remainder of a poem which began: "_The King of
Sweden made a joke, ha, ha!_"

I can furnish all of this poem, having written it myself, for which I
was expelled from St. Domino's School in 1895. If Miss Grothman will
meet me in the green room at the Biltmore for tea on Wednesday next at
4:30, she will be supplied with the missing words.

XL

"DARKWATER"

We have so many, many problems in America. Books are constantly being
written offering solutions for them, but still they persist.

There are volumes on auction bridge, family budgets and mind-training. A
great many people have ideas on what should be done to relieve the
country of certain undesirable persons who have displayed a lack of
sympathy with American institutions. (As if American institutions needed
sympathy!) And some of the more generous-minded among us are writing
books showing our duty to the struggling young nationalities of Europe.
It is bewildering to be confronted by all these problems, each demanding
intelligent solution.

Little wonder, then, that we have no time for writing books on the one
problem which is exclusively our own. With so many wrongs in the world
to be righted, who can blame us for overlooking the one tragic wrong
which lies at our door? With so many heathen to whom the word of God
must be brought and so many wild revolutionists in whom must be
instilled a respect for law and order, is it strange that we should
ourselves sometimes lump the word of God and the principles of law and
order together under the head of "sentimentality" and shrug our
shoulders? Justice in the abstract is our aim--any American will tell
you that--so why haggle over details and insist on justice for the
negro?

But W.E.B. Du Bois does insist on justice for the negro, and in his book
"Darkwater" (Harcourt, Brace & Co.) his voice rings out in a bitter
warning through the complacent quiet which usually reigns around this
problem of America. Mr. Du Bois seems to forget that we have the affairs
of a great many people to attend to and persists in calling our
attention to this affair of our own. And what is worse, in the minds of
all well-bred persons he does not do it at all politely. He seems to be
quite distressed about something.

Maybe it is because he finds himself, a man of superior mind and of
sensitive spirit who is a graduate of Harvard, a professor and a sincere
worker for the betterment of mankind, relegated to an inferior order by
many men and women who are obviously his inferiors, simply because he
happens to differ from them in the color of his skin. Maybe it is
because he sees the people of his own race who have not had his
advantages (if a negro may ever be said to have received an advantage)
being crowded into an ignominious spiritual serfdom equally as bad as
the physical serfdom from which they were so recently freed. Maybe it is
because of these things that Mr. Du Bois seems overwrought.

Or perhaps it is because he reads each day of how jealous we are, as a
Nation, of the sanctity of our Constitution, how we revere it and draw a
flashing sword against its detractors, and then sees this very
Constitution being flouted as a matter of course in those districts
where the amendment giving the negroes a right to vote is popularly
considered one of the five funniest jokes in the world.

Perhaps he hears candidates for office insisting on a reign of law or a
plea for order above all things, by some sentimentalist or other, or
public speakers advising those who have not respect for American
institutions to go back whence they came, and then sees whole sections
of the country violating every principle of law and order and mocking
American institutions for the sake of teaching a "nigger" his place.

Perhaps during the war he heard of the bloody crimes of our enemies, and
saw preachers and editors and statesmen stand aghast at the barbaric
atrocities which won for the German the name of Hun, and then looked
toward his own people and saw them being burned, disembowelled and
tortured with a civic unanimity and tacit legal sanction which made the
word Hun sound weak.

Perhaps he has heard it boasted that in America every man who is honest,
industrious and intelligent has a good chance to win out, and has seen
honest, industrious and intelligent men whose skins are black stopped
short by a wall so high and so thick that all they can do, on having
reached that far, is to bow their heads and go slowly back.

Any one of these reasons should have been sufficient for having written
"Darkwater."

It is unfortunate that Mr. Du Bois should have raised this question of
our own responsibility just at this time when we were showing off so
nicely. It may remind some one that instead of taking over a
protectorate of Armenia we might better take over a protectorate of the
State of Georgia, which yearly leads the proud list of lynchers. But
then, there will not be enough people who see Mr. Du Bois's book to
cause any great national movement, so we are quite sure, for the time
being, of being able to devote our energies to the solution of our
other problems.

* * * * *

Don't forget, therefore, to write your Congressman about a universal
daylight-saving bill, and give a little thought, if you can, to the
question of the vehicular tunnel.

XLI

THE NEW TIME-TABLE

The new time-table of the New York Central Railroad (New York Central
Railroad, Harlem Division. Form 113. Corrected to March 28, 1922) is an
attractive folder, done in black and white, for the suburban trade. It
slips neatly into the pocket, where it easily becomes lost among letters
and bills, appearing again only when you have procured another.

So much for its physical features. Of the text matter it is difficult to
write without passion. No more disheartening work has been put on the
market this season.

In an attempt to evade the Daylight-Saving Law the New York Central has
kept its clocks at what is called "Eastern Standard Time," meaning that
it is standard on East 42d Street between Vanderbilt and Lexington
Avenues. Practically everywhere else in New York the clocks are an hour
ahead.

It is this "Eastern Standard Time" that gives the time-table its
distinctive flavor. Each train has been demoted one hour, and then, for
fear that it would be too easy to understand this, an extra three or
four minutes have been thrown in or taken out, just, so that no mistake
can help being made.

In order to read the new time-table understandingly the following
procedure is now necessary:

Take a room in some quiet family hotel where the noise from the street
is reduced to minimum. Place the time-table on the writing-desk and sit
in front of it, holding a pencil in the right hand and a watch (Eastern
Christian Time) in the left. Then decide on the time you think you would
like to reach home. Let us say that you usually have dinner at 7. You
would, if you could do just what you wanted, reach Valhalla at 6:30.
Very well. It takes about an hour from the Grand Central Terminal to
Valhalla. How about a train leaving around 5:30?

* * * * *

Look at the time-table for a train which leaves about 2:45 (Eastern
Standard Time). Write down, "2:45" on a piece of paper. Add 150.
Subtract the number of stations that Valhalla is above White Plains.
Sharpen your pencil and bind up your cut finger and subtract the number
you first thought of, and the result will show the number of Presidents
of the United States who have been assassinated while in office. Then go
over to the Grand Central Terminal and ask one of the information
clerks what you want to know.

[Illustration: "Listen, Ed! This is how it goes!"]

They will be glad to see you, for during the last three days they have
been actually hungering for the sight of a human face. Sometimes it has
seemed to them that the silence and loneliness there behind the
information counter would drive them mad. If some one--any one--would
only come and speak to them! That is why one of them is over in the
corner chewing up time-tables into small balls and playing marbles with
them. He has gone mad from loneliness. The other clerk, the one who is
looking at the tip of his nose and mumbling Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address, has only a few more minutes before he too succumbs.

* * * * *

And that low, rumbling sound, what is that? It comes from the crowd of
commuters standing in front of the gate of what used to be the 5:56. Let
us draw near and hear what they are discussing. Why, it is the new
time-table, of all things!

"Listen, Ed. This is how it goes. This train that goes at 4:25 according
to this time-table is really the old 5:20. See? What you do is add an
hour"--

"Aw, what kind of talk is that? Add an hour to your grandmother! You
subtract an hour from the time as given here. This is Eastern Standard
Time. See, it says right here: 'The time shown in this folder is Eastern
Standard Time, one hour slower than Daylight-Saving Time.' See? One hour
slower. You subtract."

"Here, you guys are both way off. I just asked one of the trainmen. The
5:56 has gone. It went at 4:20. The next train that we get is the 6:20
which goes at 5:19. Look, see here. It says 5:19 on the time-table but
that means that by your watch it is 6:19"--

"By my watch it is not 6:19. My watch I set by the clock in the station
this morning when I came in"--

"Well, the clock in the station is wrong. That is, the clock in the
station is an hour ahead of all the other clocks."

"An hour ahead? An hour behind, you mean."

"The clock in the station is an hour ahead. I know what I'm talking
about."

"Now listen, Jo. Didn't you see in the paper Monday morning"--

"Yaas, I saw in the paper Monday morning, and it said that"--

"Look, Gus. By my watch--look, Gus--listen, Gus--by my watch"--

"Aw, you and your watch! What's that got to do with it?"

"Now looka here. On this time-table it says"--

"Lissen, Eddie"--

Whatever else its publishers may say about it, the new New York Central
time-table bids fair to be the most-talked-of publication of the
season.

XLII

MR. BOK'S AMERICANIZATION

If ever you should feel important enough to write an autobiography to
give to the world, and dislike to say all the nice things about yourself
that you feel really ought to be said, just write it in the third
person. Edward Bok has done this in "The Americanization of Edward Bok"
and the effect is quite touching in its modesty.

In "An Explanation" at the beginning of the book Mr. Bok disclaims any
credit for the winning ways and remarkable success of his hero, Edward
Bok. Edward Bok, the little Dutch boy who landed in America in 1870 and
later became the editor of the greatest women's advertising medium in
the country, is an entirely different person from the Edward Bok who is
telling the story. You understand this to begin with. Otherwise you may
misjudge the author.

"I have again and again found myself," writes Mr. Bok, "watching with
intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work....
His tastes, his outlook, his manner of looking at things were totally
at variance with my own.... He has had and has been a personality apart
from my private self."

The only connection between Edward Bok the editor and Edward Bok the
autobiographer seems to be that Editor Bok allows Author Bok to have a
checking account in his bank under their common name.

Thus completely detached from his hero, Mr. Bok proceeds and is able to
narrate on page 3, in the manner of Horatio Alger, how young Edward,
taunted by his Brooklyn schoolmates, gave a sound thrashing to the
ringleader, after which he found himself "looking into the eyes of a
crowd of very respectful boys and giggling girls, who readily made a
passageway for his brother and himself when they indicated a desire to
leave the school-yard and go home."

He can also, without seeming in the least conceited, tell how, through
his clear-sighted firmness in refusing to write in the Spencerian manner
prescribed in school, he succeeded in bringing the Principal and the
whole Board of Education to their senses, resulting in a complete
reversal of the public-school policy in the matter of handwriting
instruction.

The Horatio Alger note is dominant throughout the story of young
Edward's boyhood. His cheerfulness and business sagacity so impressed
everyone with whom he came in contact that he was soon outdistancing all
the other boys in the process of self-advancement. And no one is more
smilingly tolerant of the irresistible progress of young Edward Bok in
making friends and money than Edward Bok the impersonal author of the
book. He just loves to see the young boy get ahead.

* * * * *

It will perhaps aid in getting an idea of the personality and confident
presence of the Boy Bok to state that he was a feverish collector of
autographs. Whenever any famous personage came to town the young man
would find out at what hotel he was staying and would proceed to hound
him until he had got him to write his name, with some appropriate
sentiment, in a little book. In advertising the present volume the
publishers give a list of names of historical characters who feature in
Mr. Bok's reminiscences--Gens. Grant and Garfield, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Longfellow, Emerson and dozens of others. And so they do figure
in the book, but as victims of the young Dutch boy's passion for
autographs. Still, perhaps, they did not mind, for the author gives us
to understand that they were all so charmed with the prepossessing
manner and intelligent bearing of the young autograph hound that they
not only were continually asking him to dinner (he usually timed his
visit so as to catch them just as they were entering the dining-room)
but insisted on giving him letters of introduction to their friends.

Only Mrs. Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson neglected to register
extreme pleasure at being approached by the smiling lad. Both Mrs.
Lincoln and Emerson were failing in their minds at the time, however,
which satisfactorily explains their coolness, at least for the author.
In Mrs. Lincoln's case an attempt was made to interest her in an
autographed photograph of Gen. Grant. But "Edward saw that the widow of
the great Lincoln did not mentally respond to his pleasure in his
possession." Could it have been possible that the widow of the great
Lincoln was a trifle bored?

The account of the intrusion on Emerson in Concord borders on the
sacrilegious. Here was the venerable philosopher, five months before his
death, when his great mind had already gone on before him, being visited
by a strange lad with a passion for autographs, who sat and watched for
those lucid moments when then sun would break through the clouded brain,
making it possible for Emerson to hold the pen and form the letters of
his name. Then young Edward was off, with another trophy in his belt and
another stride made in his progress toward Americanization. Lovers of
Emerson could wish that the impersonal editor of these memoirs had
omitted the account of this victory.

* * * * *

Americanization seems, from the present document, to consist of, first,
making as many influential friends as possible who may be able to help
you at some future time; second, making as much money as possible (young
Edward used his position as stenographer to Jay Gould to glean tips on
the market, thereby cleaning up for himself and his Sunday-school
teacher at Plymouth Church), and third, keeping your eye open for the
main chance.

In conclusion, nothing more fitting could be quoted than the touching
caption under the picture of the author's grandmother, "who counselled
each of her children to make the world a better and more beautiful place
to live in--a counsel which is now being carried on by her
grandchildren, one of whom is Edward Bok."

Could detachment of author and hero be more complete?

XLIII

ZANE GREY'S MOVIE

The hum of the moving-picture machine is the predominating note in "The
Mysterious Rider," Zane Grey's latest contribution to the literature of
unrealism. All that is necessary for a complete illusion is the
insertion of three or four news photographs at the end, showing how they
catch salmon in the Columbia River, the allegorical floats in the Los
Angeles Carnival of Roses and the ice-covered fire ruins in the business
section of Worcester, Mass.

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