A Book of Burlesques Part 6

"Yes, I grant you that brickwork _looks_ good. But what of it? So does a cheap cotton night-shirt--you know the gaudy things those Theban peddlers sell to my sand-hogs down on the river bank. But does it _last_? Of course it doesn't. Well, I am putting up this pyramid to _stay_ put, and I don't give a d.a.m.n for its looks. I hear all sorts of funny cracks about it. My barber is a sharp n.i.g.g.e.r and keeps his ears open: he brings me all the gossip. But I let it go. This is _my_ pyramid. I am putting up the money for it, and I have got to be mortared up in it when I die. So I am trying to make a good, substantial job of it, and letting the mere beauty of it go hang.

"Anyhow, there are plenty of uglier things in Egypt. Look at some of those fifth-rate pyramids up the river. When it comes to shape they are pretty much the same as this one, and when it comes to size, they look like warts beside it. And look at the Sphinx. There is something that cost four millions if it cost a copper--and what is it now? A burlesque!

A caricature! An architectural cripple! So long as it was _new_, good enough! It was a showy piece of work. People came all the way from Sicyonia and Tyre to gape at it. Everybody said it was one of the sights no one could afford to miss. But by and by a piece began to peel off here and another piece there, and then the nose cracked, and then an ear dropped off, and then one of the eyes began to get mushy and watery looking, and finally it was a mere smudge, a false-face, a scarecrow. My father spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, but what good did it do? By the time he had the nose cobbled the ears were loose again, and so on. In the end he gave it up as a bad job.

"Yes; this pyramid has kept me on the jump, but I'm going to stick to it if it breaks me. Some say I ought to have built it across the river, where the quarries are. Such gabble makes me sick. Do I look like a man who would go looking around for such _child's-play_? I hope not. A one-legged man could have done _that_. Even a Babylonian could have done it. It would have been as easy as milking a cow. What _I_ wanted was something that would keep me on the jump--something that would put a strain on me. So I decided to haul the whole business _across_ the river--six million tons of rock. And when the engineers said that it couldn't be done, I gave them two days to get out of Egypt, and then tackled it myself. It was something new and hard. It was a job I could get my teeth into.

"Well, I suppose you know what a time I had of it at the start. First I tried a pontoon bridge, but the stones for the bottom course were so heavy that they sank the pontoons, and I lost a couple of hundred n.i.g.g.e.rs before I saw that it couldn't be done. Then I tried a big raft, but in order to get her to float with the stones I had to use such big logs that she was unwieldy, and before I knew what had struck me I had lost six big dressed stones and another hundred n.i.g.g.e.rs. I got the laugh, of course. Every numskull in Egypt wagged his beard over it; I could hear the chatter myself. But I kept quiet and stuck to the problem, and by and by I solved it.

"I suppose you know how I did it. In a general way? Well, the details are simple. First I made a new raft, a good deal lighter than the old one, and then I got a thousand water-tight goat-skins and had them blown up until they were as tight as drums. Then I got together a thousand n.i.g.g.e.rs who were good swimmers, and gave each of them one of the blown-up goat-skins. On each goat-skin there was a leather thong, and on the bottom of the raft, spread over it evenly, there were a thousand hooks. Do you get the idea? Yes; that's it exactly. The n.i.g.g.e.rs dived overboard with the goat-skins, swam under the raft, and tied the thongs to the hooks. And when all of them were tied on, the raft floated like a bladder. You simply _couldn't_ sink it.

"Naturally enough, the thing took time, and there were accidents and setbacks. For instance, some of the n.i.g.g.e.rs were so light in weight that they couldn't hold their goat-skins under water long enough to get them under the raft. I had to weight those fellows by having rocks tied around their middles. And when they had fastened their goat-skins and tried to swim back, some of them were carried down by the rocks. I never made any exact count, but I suppose that two or three hundred of them were drowned in that way. Besides, a couple of hundred were drowned because they couldn't hold their breaths long enough to swim under the raft and back. But what of it? I wasn't trying to h.o.a.rd up n.i.g.g.e.rs, but to make a raft that would float. And I did it.

"Well, once I showed how it could be done, all the wiseacres caught the idea, and after that I put a big gang to work making more rafts, and by and by I had sixteen of them in operation, and was hauling more stone than the masons could set. But I won't go into all that. Here is the pyramid; it speaks for itself. One year more and I'll have the top course laid and begin on the surfacing. I am going to make it plain marble, with no fancy work. I could bring in a gang of Theban stonecutters and have it carved all over with lions' heads and tiger claws and all that sort of gim-crackery, but why waste time and money?

This isn't a menagerie, but a pyramid. My idea was to make it the boss pyramid of the world. The king who tries to beat it will have to get up pretty early in the morning.

"But what troubles I have had! Believe me, there has been nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble from the start. I set aside the engineering difficulties. They were hard for the engineers, but easy for me, once I put my mind on them. But the way these n.i.g.g.e.rs have carried on has been something terrible. At the beginning I had only a thousand or two, and they all came from one tribe; so they got along fairly well. During the whole first year I doubt that more than twenty or thirty were killed in fights. But then I began to get fresh batches from up the river, and after that it was nothing but one fight after another. For two weeks running not a stroke of work was done. I really thought, at one time, that I'd have to give up. But finally the army put down the row, and after a couple of hundred of the ringleaders had been thrown into the river peace was restored. But it cost me, first and last, fully three thousand n.i.g.g.e.rs, and set me back at least six months.

"Then came the so-called labor unions, and the strikes, and more trouble. These labor unions were started by a couple of smart, yellow n.i.g.g.e.rs from Chaldea, one of them a sort of lay preacher, a fellow with a lot of gab. Before I got wind of them, they had gone so far it was almost impossible to squelch them. First I tried conciliation, but it didn't work a bit. They made the craziest demands you ever heard of--a holiday every six days, meat every day, no night work and regular houses to live in. Some of them even had the effrontery to ask for money! Think of it! n.i.g.g.e.rs asking for money! Finally, I had to order out the army again and let some blood. But every time one was knocked over, I had to get another one to take his place, and that meant sending the army up the river, and more expense, and more devilish worry and nuisance.

"In my grandfather's time n.i.g.g.e.rs were honest and faithful workmen. You could take one fresh from the bush, teach him to handle a shovel or pull a rope in a year or so, and after that he was worth almost as much as he could eat. But the n.i.g.g.e.r of to-day isn't worth a d.a.m.n. He never does an honest day's work if he can help it, and he is forever wanting something. Take these fellows I have now--mainly young bucks from around the First Cataract. Here are n.i.g.g.e.rs who never saw baker's bread or butcher's meat until my men grabbed them. They lived there in the bush like so many hyenas. They were ten days' march from a lemon. Well, now they get first-cla.s.s beef twice a week, good bread and all the fish they can catch. They don't have to begin work until broad daylight, and they lay off at dark. There is hardly one of them that hasn't got a psaltery, or a harp, or some other musical instrument. If they want to dress up and make believe they are Egyptians, I give them clothes. If one of them is killed on the work, or by a stray lion, or in a fight, I have him embalmed by my own embalmers and plant him like a man. If one of them breaks a leg or loses an arm or gets too old to work, I turn him loose without complaining, and he is free to go home if he wants to.

"But are they contented? Do they show any grat.i.tude? Not at all.

Scarcely a day pa.s.ses that I don't hear of some fresh soldiering. And, what is worse, they have stirred up some of my own people--the carpenters, stone-cutters, gang bosses and so on. Every now and then my inspectors find some rotten libel cut on a stone--something to the effect that I am overworking them, and knocking them about, and holding them against their will, and generally mistreating them. I haven't the slightest doubt that some of these inscriptions have actually gone into the pyramid: it's impossible to watch every stone. Well, in the years to come, they will be dug out and read by strangers, and I will get a black eye. People will think of Cheops as a heartless old rapscallion--_me_, mind you! Can you beat it?"

_V.--THE ARTIST_

_V.--The Artist. A Drama Without Words_

CHARACTERS:

A GREAT PIANIST A JANITOR SIX MUSICAL CRITICS A MARRIED WOMAN A VIRGIN SIXTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE OTHER WOMEN SIX OTHER MEN

PLACE--_A City of the United States._

TIME--_A December afternoon._

(_During the action of the play not a word is uttered aloud. All of the speeches of the characters are supposed to be unspoken meditations only._)

_A large, gloomy hall, with many rows of uncushioned, uncomfortable seats, designed, it would seem, by some one misinformed as to the average width of the normal human pelvis. A number of busts of celebrated composers, once white, but now a dirty gray, stand in niches along the walls. At one end of the hall there is a bare, uncarpeted stage, with nothing on it save a grand piano and a chair. It is raining outside, and, as hundreds of people come crowding in, the air is laden with the mingled scents of umbrellas, raincoats, goloshes, cosmetics, perfumery and wet hair._

_At eight minutes past four,_ THE JANITOR, _after smoothing his hair with his hands and putting on a pair of detachable cuffs, emerges from the wings and crosses the stage, his shoes squeaking hideously at each step. Arriving at the piano, he opens it with solemn slowness. The job seems so absurdly trivial, even to so mean an understanding, that he can't refrain from glorifying it with a bit of hocus-pocus. This takes the form of a careful adjustment of a mysterious something within the instrument. He reaches in, pauses a moment as if in doubt, reaches in again, and then permits a faint smile of conscious sapience and efficiency to illuminate his face. All of this accomplished, he tiptoes back to the wings, his shoes again squeaking._

THE JANITOR

Now all of them people think I'm the professor's tuner. (_The thought gives him such delight that, for the moment, his brain is numbed. Then he proceeds._) I guess them tuners make pretty good money. I wish I could get the hang of the trick. It _looks_ easy. (_By this time he has disappeared in the wings and the stage is again a desert. Two or three women, far back in the hall, start a halfhearted handclapping. It dies out at once. The noise of rustling programs and shuffling feet succeeds it._)

FOUR HUNDRED OF THE WOMEN

Oh, I do _certainly_ hope he plays that lovely _Valse Poupee_ as an encore! They say he does it better than Bloomfield-Zeisler.

ONE OF THE CRITICS

I hope the animal doesn't pull any encore numbers that I don't recognize. All of these people will buy the paper to-morrow morning just to find out what they have heard. It's infernally embarra.s.sing to have to ask the manager. The public expects a musical critic to be a sort of walking thematic catalogue. The public is an a.s.s.

THE SIX OTHER MEN

Oh, Lord! What a way to spend an afternoon!

A HUNDRED OF THE WOMEN

I wonder if he's as handsome as Paderewski.

ANOTHER HUNDRED OF THE WOMEN

I wonder if he's as gentlemanly as Josef Hofmann.

STILL ANOTHER HUNDRED WOMEN

I wonder if he's as fascinating as De Pachmann.

YET OTHER HUNDREDS

I wonder if he has dark eyes. You never can tell by those awful photographs in the newspapers.

HALF A DOZEN WOMEN

I wonder if he can really play the piano.

THE CRITIC AFORESAID

What a h.e.l.l of a wait! These rotten piano-thumping immigrants deserve a hard call-down. But what's the use? The piano manufacturers bring them over here to wallop their pianos--and the piano manufacturers are not afraid to advertise. If you knock them too hard you have a nasty business-office row on your hands.

ONE OF THE MEN