Post Impressions Part 17

Let me exaggerate! For in exaggeration there is life and the punch that makes for progress. Whereas no man can manifestly qualify as a live wire who sees things as they are.

Let me exaggerate the number of millions of bacteria to the cubic centimetre in our morning milk; and the hosts of virulent bacilli that make their encampment on the unlaundered dollar-bill; and the anti-social micro-organisms that beset the common drinking-cup.

Let me exaggerate the virtue of a.s.siduously and courageously swatting the common house-fly.

Let me exaggerate the grey and monotonous life of the poor, forgetting the children who dance to the sound of the hurdy-gurdy; and the mothers who smile over their babies in tenement cradles, and the lovers in the parks, and the May parties, and the millions who patronise the moving-picture theatres, and the millions in Coney Island.

Let me exaggerate the grinding, crushing, withering speed of modern industry, forgetting the hundreds of thousands who throng the baseball parks and the additional millions who study the score boards on Park Row.

Let me exaggerate the number of children who go breakfastless to school, since nothing less than 25,000 gets into the newspaper headlines; and the wickedness of regularly ordained clergymen who marry people without asking for a physician's certificate; and the peril of helping an old lady up the Subway steps lest she turn out to be a recruiter of white slaves.

Let me exaggerate the blessings of an age when babies shall be born without adenoids and tonsils, and shall develop just as automatically into clear-eyed little Boy Scouts and Camp-fire Girls.

Let me exaggerate! Teach me that outlook upon life which the highbrow pragmatists describe as the will to believe, and the low-brow describes as pipe dreams! Save me from those twin devils, the Sense of Humour and the Sense of Proportion; for in common sense is stagnation and death, but progress lies in exaggeration!

x.x.xII

BY THE TURN OF A HAND

In seven different ways has the world been on the point of being regenerated since the Spanish-American War. For the completeness with which the world has been reconstructed consult the current files of the newspapers.

The world was to be made over by the bicycle. The strap-hanger was to abandon his strap and ride joyfully down the Broadway cable-slot, snapping his fingers at traction magnates and imbibing ozone. The factory-hand was to abandon his city flat and live in the open country, going to and from his work through the green lanes at fifteen miles an hour, with his lunch on the handle bars. The old were to grow young again and the young were to dream close to the heart of Nature. The doctors were to perish of starvation. But where is the bicycle to-day?

The world was to be made over by jiu-jitsu. Elderly gentlemen were to regain the waistline of their youth by ten minutes' attention every morning to the secrets of the Samurai. Slim young women, when attacked by heavy ruffians, were to seize their a.s.sailants by the wrist and hurl them over the right shoulder. The police were to discard their revolvers and their night sticks, and suppress rioters by mere muscular contraction. The doctors, as before, were to grow extinct through the rapid process of starvation. But where is jiu-jitsu to-day?

The world was to be regenerated by denatured alcohol. Congress had merely to remove the internal revenue tax and a new motive power would be let loose, far transcending the total available horsepower of our coal mines. Denatured alcohol was to drive the farmer's machines, propel our war automobiles, run our factories, and reduce the cost of living to a ridiculous minimum. But where is denatured alcohol to-day?

The world was to be redeemed by the bungalow. The landlord was to disappear and in his place would come a race of free-men bowing the head to no man and raising their own vegetables. Kitchen drudgery was to be eliminated by the simple device of abolishing the kitchen and calling it a kitchenette. With no more stairs to climb, rheumatism would pa.s.s into history. So would the doctors. The bungalow is still with us, and alas, so are the doctors.

The world was to be regenerated by sour milk; by the simple life; by sleeping in the open air. But where now are Prof. Metchnikoff and Pastor Wagner? And the pictures of rose-embowered sleeping porches in the garden magazines have been supplanted by pictures of colonial farmhouses transformed into charming interiors by two coats of white-wash and a thin-paper edition of the cla.s.sics.

Does this show that we must give up all hope of seeing a new world around us before 1915? By no means. We still have Eugenics.

x.x.xIII

THE QUARRY SLAVE

The tired business man leaves his home in the country just in time to catch the next train. By ten o'clock, at the latest, he is in his office, having ridden up to the thirteenth floor in an express elevator and so gained a distinct advantage over his London compet.i.tors who are in the habit of walking up to their offices on the third floor. He finds his mail opened and sorted on his desk. He glances over the most important letters, puts aside those requiring immediate attention, and has his shoes shined. At eleven o'clock he calls up on the telephone and, in the course of fifteen minutes' conversation, transacts a great deal of business which has to be confirmed by letter. His father would merely have written the letter.

Ignoring the primary rule of health which forbids the mingling of work and recreation, he makes a business appointment for lunch, and between one o'clock and half-past three he puts through a deal on which his father would have spent at least half an hour during his busiest hours.

Returning to his office he dictates several letters which he dictated the day before and into which a number of vital errors have been introduced in the course of transcription. This necessitates repeated reference to a card catalogue, an operation which takes some time because the young man in charge has been brought up on the phonetic system and experiences some difficulty in determining the proper place of the letter G in the alphabet. From 3:30 to 4:30 the business man is interviewed by an agent who demonstrates the merits of a new labour-saving letter file. Donning his overcoat hastily he runs to make an express which takes eight minutes to reach Grand Central Station, whereas the local trains sometimes take as much as eleven minutes.

Later, exhausted by his efforts of the day, he just manages to purchase two seats on the aisle from a speculator, and staggers to his chair at 8:30 as the curtain rises on the first act of "The Girl and the Eskimo."

x.x.xIV

MONOTONY OF THE POLES

(AT A FIVE O'CLOCK TEA)

The Lady: It's so good of you to come. It must be wonderful to have been at the Pole. Do you know, when the news first reached us, I was so excited I insisted on calling up all my friends on the telephone and asking them if they had heard. It must have been a wonderful trip. Won't you sit down and tell us all about it?

The Explorer: Thank you. We left our winter camp in lat.i.tude 83 degrees 7 minutes on October 24, with five men, four sledges, and thirty-two dogs. The long wait was spent in laying in stocks of seal-meat for the dogs, constructing sledges, breaking the dogs to harness, making meteorological observations, bathing, sleeping, and attending to the dogs. In the cold of the Polar night, work moves on rather slowly, but I always enjoyed the restful half-hour I devoted to winding up my watch.

On August 24 we caught the first sign of spring.

The Lady: Of course.

The Explorer: But it was not till October 24 that the sun rose and the Polar day began.

The Lady: How very interesting!

The Explorer: We had been getting impatient. We were afraid the dogs would grow too fat. We were glad when the edge of the sun's disk showed above the horizon.

The Lady: It must have been like the first day of creation; it must have been like the radiant illumination of a great love.

The Explorer: It was indeed. We immediately harnessed the dogs and set out. The sledges had been loaded several days before. The dogs were in excellent physical condition. The ice was smooth. The temperature was minus 28 degrees Centigrade. What this is when expressed in terms of Fahrenheit, madam, you will of course readily ascertain for yourself by multiplying by 9, dividing by 5, and subtracting 32.

The Lady: It is all too wonderful!

The Explorer: On our first day's march we covered forty-three kilometres, the kilometre being equal, as you are aware, to .62121 of a mile. Part of the way we rode upon the sledges. Then the ice grew rough, and we took to our skis. We camped in 83 degrees 29 minutes, and built an igloo, which you will recall is a hut made of ice-blocks and snow.

First we fed the dogs. The daily ration for the dogs was one and a half kilogrammes of seal-meat, the kilogramme, I need not tell you, being equal to 2.2046 pounds. Then we turned in.

The Lady: Your first night in the unknown!

The Explorer: As you say, madam. The next day we camped in 83 degrees 53 minutes, fed the dogs as usual, and built an igloo. The day after, we camped in 84 degrees 29 minutes and built another igloo, after feeding the dogs. Nothing happened for the next ten days. The dogs were in good condition. The sledges held well. We made an average daily march of 36 kilometres. But on the eleventh day, at the conclusion of a fairly good march, one of the dogs in sledge number 2--we called him Skraal--attacked and bit a dog we called Ragnar. We parted them with great difficulty. The two days that followed were uneventful, but on the third day Ragnar attacked and bit Skraal. We had to club them apart. On the fifteenth day out Ragnar and Skraal attacked and bit a third dog named Skalder, but he eventually recovered. That was in lat.i.tude 85 degrees 87 minutes, at an alt.i.tude of 3,700 feet, and the temperature was minus 27 degrees Centigrade. It occurred just after we had finished building an igloo and were preparing to feed the dogs.

The Lady: And always you were drawing nearer the goal!

The Explorer: Naturally, madam. All this time we were busy laying down depots of food for the dogs and the men. Because once we reached the goal we must, of course, get back as fast as we could. We built a depot at every degree of lat.i.tude, or, roughly speaking, every 100 kilometres.

Our depot in lat.i.tude 87 degrees 25 minutes was situated amidst very picturesque surroundings.

The Lady: In that wonderful landscape!

The Explorer: Yes, the spot had some very extraordinary ice-formations.

Setting out from that point we marched 37 kilometres over rough ice, fed the dogs, and built an igloo. The next day we marched 70 kilometres over smooth ice, and, having attended to the dogs, built another igloo. The next day we marched 50 kilometres over ice that was partly rough and partly smooth, and had a good night's rest, after putting up an igloo and caring for the dogs. The next day the ice was very soft, and the dogs hung back and complained. However, we managed to cover 27 kilometres that day, reaching 88 degrees 14 minutes. There we camped and--

The Lady: And built another igloo!