A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays Part 32

"That will do, young lady. But when you get another place, remember this: it is never your duty to entertain or to provide amus.e.m.e.nt for your employer."

He gave Annie a look which she did not clearly understand, although she p.r.o.nounced him a nasty old man as she hustled on her hat and jacket.

When Annie reached home she found w.i.l.l.y Steen sitting with her mother and sister at the dining-room table. This was the first day that Annie had gone to the office since Wanning's death, and her family awaited her return with suspense.

"h.e.l.lo yourself," Annie called as she came in and threw her handbag into an empty armchair.

"You're off early, Annie," said her mother gravely. "Has the will been read?"

"I guess so. Yes, I know it has. Miss Wilson got it out of the safe for them. The son came in. He's a pill."

"Was nothing said to you, daughter?"

"Yes, a lot. Please give me some tea, mother." Annie felt that her swagger was failing.

"Don't tantalize us, Ann," her sister broke in. "Didn't you get anything?"

"I got the mit, all right. And some back talk from the old man that I'm awful sore about."

Annie dashed away the tears and gulped her tea.

Gradually her mother and w.i.l.l.y drew the story from her. w.i.l.l.y offered at once to go to the office building and take his stand outside the door and never leave it until he had punched old Mr.

McQuiston's face. He rose as if to attend to it at once, but Mrs.

Wooley drew him to his chair again and patted his arm.

"It would only start talk and get the girl in trouble, w.i.l.l.y. When it's lawyers, folks in our station is helpless. I certainly believed that man when he sat here; you heard him yourself. Such a gentleman as he looked."

w.i.l.l.y thumped his great fist, still in punching position, down on his knee.

"Never you be fooled again, Mama Wooley. You'll never get anything out of a rich guy that he ain't signed up in the courts for. Rich is tight. There's no exceptions."

Annie shook her head.

"I didn't want anything out of him. He was a nice, kind man, and he had his troubles, I guess. He wasn't tight."

"Still," said Mrs. Wooley sadly, "Mr. Wanning had no call to hold out promises. I hate to be disappointed in a gentleman. You've had confining work for some time, daughter; a rest will do you good."

_Smart Set_, October 1919

PART II

REVIEWS AND ESSAYS

_Mark Twain_

If there is anything which should make an American sick and disgusted at the literary taste of his country, and almost swerve his allegiance to his flag it is that controversy between Mark Twain and Max O'Rell, in which the Frenchman proves himself a wit and a gentleman and the American shows himself little short of a clown and an all around tough. The squabble arose apropos of Paul Bourget's new book on America, "Outre Mer," a book which deals more fairly and generously with this country than any book yet written in a foreign tongue. Mr. Clemens did not like the book, and like all men of his cla.s.s, and limited mentality, he cannot criticise without becoming personal and insulting. He cannot be scathing without being a blackguard. He tried to demolish a serious and well considered work by publishing a scurrilous, slangy and loosely written article about it. In this article Mr. Clemens proves very little against Mr.

Bourget and a very great deal against himself. He demonstrates clearly that he is neither a scholar, a reader or a man of letters and very little of a gentleman. His ignorance of French literature is something appalling. Why, in these days it is as necessary for a literary man to have a wide knowledge of the French masterpieces as it is for him to have read Shakespeare or the Bible. What man who pretends to be an author can afford to neglect those models of style and composition. George Meredith, Thomas Hardy and Henry James excepted, the great living novelists are Frenchmen.

Mr. Clemens asks what the French sensualists can possibly teach the great American people about novel writing or morality? Well, it would not seriously hurt the art of the cla.s.sic author of "Puddin'

Head Wilson" to study Daudet, De Maupa.s.sant, Hugo and George Sand, whatever it might do to his morals. Mark Twain is a humorist of a kind. His humor is always rather broad, so broad that the polite world can justly call it coa.r.s.e. He is not a reader nor a thinker nor a man who loves art of any kind. He is a clever Yankee who has made a "good thing" out of writing. He has been published in the North American Review and in the Century, but he is not and never will be a part of literature. The a.s.sociation and companionship of cultured men has given Mark Twain a sort of professional veneer, but it could not give him fine instincts or nice discriminations or elevated tastes. His works are pure and suitable for children, just as the work of most shallow and mediocre fellows. House dogs and donkeys make the most harmless and chaste companions for young innocence in the world. Mark Twain's humor is of the kind that teamsters use in bantering with each other, and his laugh is the gruff "haw-haw" of the backwoodsman. He is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands on the river steamer and chewed uncured tobacco when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters. It is an unfortunate feature of American literature that a hostler with some natural cleverness and a great deal of a.s.sertion receives the same recognition as a standard American author that a man like Lowell does. The French academy is a good thing after all. It at least divides the sheep from the goats and gives a sheep the consolation of knowing that he is a sheep.

It is rather a pity that Paul Bourget should have written "Outre Mer," thoroughly creditable book though it is. Mr. Bourget is a novelist, and he should not content himself with being an essayist, there are far too many of them in the world already. He can develop strong characters, invent strong situations, he can write the truth and he should not drift into penning opinions and plat.i.tudes. When G.o.d has made a man a creator, it is a great mistake for him to turn critic. It is rather an insult to G.o.d and certainly a very great wrong to man.

_Nebraska State Journal_, May 5, 1895

I got a letter last week from a little boy just half-past seven who had just read "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer." He said: "If there are any more books like them in the world, send them to me quick." I had to humbly confess to him that if there were any others I had not the good fortune to know of them. What a red-letter-day it is to a boy, the day he first opens "Tom Sawyer." I would rather sail on the raft down the Missouri again with "Huck" Finn and Jim than go down the Nile in December or see Venice from a gondola in May. Certainly Mark Twain is much better when he writes of his Missouri boys than when he makes sickley romances about Joan of Arc.

And certainly he never did a better piece of work than "Prince and Pauper." One seems to get at the very heart of old England in that dearest of children's books, and in its pages the frail boy king, and his gloomy sister Mary who in her day wrought so much woe for unhappy England, and the dashing Princess Elizabeth who lived to rule so well, seem to live again. A friend of Mr. Clemens' once told me that he said he wrote that book so that when his little daughters grew up they might know that their tired old jester of a father could be serious and gentle sometimes.

_The Home Monthly_, May 1897

_William Dean Howells_

Certainly now in his old age Mr. Howells is selecting queer t.i.tles for his books. A while ago we had that feeble tale, "The Coast of Bohemia," and now we have "My Literary Pa.s.sions." "Pa.s.sions,"

literary or otherwise, were never Mr. Howells' forte and surely no man could be further from even the coast of Bohemia.

Apropos of "My Literary Pa.s.sions" which has so long strung out in the Ladies' Home Journal along with those thrilling articles about how Henry Ward Beecher tied his necktie and what kind of coffee Mrs.

Hall Cain likes, why did Mr. Howells write it? Doesn't Mr. Howells know that at one time or another every one raves over Don Quixote, imitates Heine, worships Tourgueneff and calls Tolstoi a prophet?

Does Mr. Howells think that no one but he ever had youth and enthusiasm and aspirations? Doesn't he know that the only thing that makes the world worth living in at all is that once, when we are young, we all have that great love for books and impersonal things, all reverence and dream? We have all known the time when Porthos, Athos and d'Artagan were vastly more real and important to us than the folks who lived next door. We have all dwelt in that country where Anna Karenina and the Levins were the only people who mattered much. We have all known that intoxicating period when we thought we "understood life," because we had read Daudet, Zola and Guy de Maupa.s.sant, and like Mr. Howells we all looked back rather fondly upon the time when we believed that books were the truth and art was all. After a while books grow matter of fact like everything else and we always think enviously of the days when they were new and wonderful and strange. That's a part of existence. We lose our first keen relish for literature just as we lose it for ice-cream and confectionery. The taste grows older, wiser and more subdued. We would all wear out of very enthusiasm if it did not. But why should Mr. Howells tell the world this common experience in detail as though it were his and his alone. He might as well write a detailed account of how he had the measles and the whooping cough. It was all right and proper for Mr. Howells to like Heine and Hugo, but, in the words of the circus clown, "We've all been there."

_Nebraska State Journal_, July 14, 1895

_Edgar Allan Poe_

My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting its roses, Its old agitations Of myrtles and roses.

For now, while so quietly Lying, it fancies A holier odor About it, of pansies-- A rosemary odor Commingled with pansies.

With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies.

--Edgar Allan Poe.

The Shakespeare society of New York, which is really about the only useful literary organization in this country, is making vigorous efforts to redress an old wrong and atone for a long neglect.

Sunday, Sept. 22, it held a meeting at the Poe cottage on Kingsbridge road near Fordham, for the purpose of starting an organized movement to buy back the cottage, restore it to its original condition and preserve it as a memorial of Poe. So it has come at last. After helping build monuments to Sh.e.l.ley, Keats and Carlyle we have at last remembered this man, the greatest of our poets and the most unhappy. I am glad that this movement is in the hands of American actors, for it was among them that Poe found his best friends and warmest admirers. Some way he always seemed to belong to the strolling Thespians who were his mother's people.