Seeing Things At Night Part 10

APRIL 6, 1920.--Some time ago I wrote a bitter attack on H. 3rd, the reactionary, in which I stated that his political emotions made it necessary for his parents to avoid the use of "proletariat" and such words except when disguised by the expedient of spelling out "p-r-o-l-e-t-a-r-i-a-t." And it is only fair to say that the device takes a good deal of the zest out of sedition. I also stated at the time that we had been able to keep the picture of Trotzky over the mantelpiece in the red room by mendaciously telling H. 3rd that it was a portrait of Nicholas Murray Butler.

It now becomes necessary for me to make a public apology to H. 3rd. It is perhaps a tasteless proceeding for me to drag his private political views into print, but the retraction ought to have as much publicity as the original slander. H. 3rd is not a reactionary. He is a liberal. It would have been perfectly safe for us to have said "proletariat" right out and to have confessed the ident.i.ty of Trotzky. H. 3rd might not have been altogether in support, but he would have been interested.

I discovered that he was a liberal early on Sunday morning while we were walking in Central Park. We happened to go near the merry-go-round and H. 3rd, drawn by the strains of "Dardanella," dragged me eagerly toward the pavilion. I supposed, of course, that he wanted to ride and had just time to strap him on top of a camel before the platform began to move.

No sooner were we in motion round and round, slow at first and then faster and faster as the revolutions increased in violence, than H. 3rd began to cry. As soon as possible I lifted him back to the firm and stable ground and briskly started to walk away from the scene of his harrowing experience. I thought he wanted to get as far away from it as possible, but after a few steps I noticed that he was not following me.

Instead he was hurrying back to the merry-go-round as fast as his legs would carry him. "Perhaps," I thought, "he intends to discipline his will and is going to ride that merry-go-round again just because he is so much afraid of it." I knew that people sometimes did things like that because I had read it in _The Research Magnificent_. H. 3rd is not among them. He howled louder than before when I tried to put him on the camel again. I even tested the fantastic possibility that it was the camel and not the carrousel to which he objected, but he yelled just as vigorously when offered a horse and later a unicorn.

Then, I ceased to interfere and resolved to watch. When the merry-go-round began to whirl H. 3rd edged up closer and closer with a look of the most intense interest which I have ever seen on his face. He was fascinated by the sight of men, women and children engaged in a wild and, perhaps, a debauching experiment. Hitherto he had observed that people went forward and back in reasonably straight lines, but this progress was flagrantly rotary. I could not get him away. He stood his ground firmly. He would not retreat a step, nor would he go any nearer.

In fact, he was already so close to the carrousel that he could have leaped on board with no more than a hop. By leaning just a little he could have touched it. But he did neither. He preferred a combination of the closest possible proximity and stability. And after a while I realized just what it was of which he reminded me. He was an editor of _The New Republic_ watching the Russian Revolution. The mad whirling thing lay right at his feet, but his interest in it and even its imminence never disturbed his tranquillity. The lines of communication with the safe and sane rear remained unbroken. He could retreat the minute the carrousel attempted to become overly familiar.

And so we knew that H. 3rd was and is a liberal.

APRIL 18, 1920.--The nurse said that H. 3rd had a fight in the park with one of his little playmates and won it. She was proud and partisan.

"Woodie," she said, using the fearful nickname which has fastened itself upon the child, "wanted to play with Archie's fire engine, and Archie wouldn't let him. Woodie hit him in the mouth and made it bleed, and Archie cried."

I said "Tut, tut."

"I think it's right," said the nurse. "I think children ought to stand up for their rights."

"But, after all," I reminded her, "it was Archie's fire engine."

"Archie's older than Woodie," she said; "he's two and a half and he's bigger."

"That sort of justification," I objected, "if carried far enough, would lead straight to criminal anarchy. After all, the bituminous miners might say that Mr. Palmer was bigger than they are."

"We didn't think they'd fight," she said, cleverly dodging the larger implications of the discussion. "We were watching them, and all of a sudden Woodie swung his left hand and hit Archie in the mouth."

"Which hand?" I exclaimed.

"His left hand," she said.

"Are you sure?" I insisted.

"Why, yes, sir. Didn't you ever notice Woodie always picks up things with his left hand?"

Before, I had been the cool, impartial judge, but it was impossible to maintain that att.i.tude. In a moment I had become again the parent, human and fallible to emotion. I motioned to the nurse to leave me. I wanted to be alone with my problem. I must face the fact with as much courage as I could muster. There seemed to be no shadow of doubt from which hope could spring. I was the father of a southpaw.

APRIL 20, 1920.--We decided not to let H. 3rd play with lead soldiers, for fear they might inculcate a spirit of militarism. Instead, he received an illuminated set of Freedom Blocks. We remember that among the t.i.tles were "Bill of Rights," "Free Speech," "Magna Charta" and "Habeas Corpus." The blocks have not been altogether a success. The set is badly depleted, for the child licked all the paint off "Free Speech"

and threw "Habeas Corpus" out of the window.

APRIL 21, 1920.--Although we don't know the exact legal form, we think we have seen announcements of somewhat the same sort. At any rate, we want to advertise the fact that on and after this date we will not be responsible for persons who may be injured by falling objects while pa.s.sing the apartment house on the west side of Seventh Avenue between Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth streets. Our first hint of the danger came when the hairbrush disappeared and could not be found. That was only circ.u.mstantial evidence, but on Monday we caught him in the act of tossing out a hand mirror.

It was our idea to dissuade him by trying to make him understand that breaking mirrors is bad luck, but R. says that it is best not to plant any superst.i.tions in the undeveloped mind of a child. The best we could do was to take the mirror away and shadow him closely. But yesterday a bronze vase disappeared and two books. So far no casualties have been reported. Although we live on the fifth floor, I don't believe the books could have hurt anybody very much. They were light fiction, but the vase is different. We told M. not to leave the stove unguarded for a moment, and we are seeking to perfect a device to padlock the piano to the wall.

As yet we have reached no plan to guard the books. Probably the best we can do is to allow any pa.s.serby who is. .h.i.t and hurt to keep the book. Of course, the point naturally arises as to whether a pa.s.serby who has been hit with the second volume of Gibbon's _Rome_ has a right to demand the whole set. We rather think there would be justice in that. At any rate, we are not disposed to be petty about the matter, because we realize that from the fifth floor even a single volume of Gibbon might be deadly.

A. W., who is frivolous, suggests that we lock up all but a certain number of suitable books which we shall allow H. 3rd to throw out the window without interference. His list includes _The Rise and Fall of the Dutch Republic, The Descent of Man, La Debacle, The Fall and Rise of Susan Lennox_, and then he would add, rather optimistically, we fear, _It Never Can Happen Again_.

What is getting into children these days, anyway? Frankly, we view their conduct with alarm. That spirit of destruction and unrest seems to have gripped them all. Where do they get it? Why has the Lusk committee failed to act in the matter? To us it seems a clear case of Bolshevist propaganda.

APRIL 23, 1920.--H. 3rd handed me a pencil, and then stood around as if he expected me to do something with it. I didn't suppose he wanted me to commit myself in writing about any recent plays or books, and I guessed that he desired something more pictorial. I drew a face and showed it to him. It wasn't any face in particular and I didn't know whether to call it the Spirit of the Ages or a young Jugo-Slav artillery officer. H. 3rd looked at it with interest and promptly said "baybay."

I let it go at that and was pleased that he had caught the general intent of the work. Unfortunately, I tried to show my versatility, and the next head was stuck underneath a pompadour and on top of a rather elaborate gown. But again he called it "baybay." I added trousers, a walking stick, a high hat, a fierce scowl and put a long pipe in the mouth, but he could see no difference. It was still a "baybay."

I was put in the quandary of setting H. 3rd down as a little unintelligent or stigmatizing my art as ineffective, until I suddenly came upon the correct explanation. These pictures of mine were direct, nave, unspoiled by any theory of life or composition. They were the natural expression of a creative impulse. In them was the spirit of spring, and freshets, and early birds, and saplings, and _What Every Young Man Ought to Know_ and all that sort of thing. "Baybay," said H.

3rd, and he was quite right. I couldn't fool him by putting Peter Pan in long trousers.

MAY 5, 1920.--This is the story of the low-cut lady and the lisping tot.

It is contained in _The Menace of Immorality_, by the Rev. John Roach Straton, in a chapter ent.i.tled "Slaves of Fashion":

"I once heard one of the most famous reform workers of this city explain why she gave up low-cut gowns," writes Dr. Straton. "She explained how she was ready to start for the theater one night in such a dress, when her little boy of five said to her, 'But, mother, you are not going that way? You are not dressed.' And then, with trembling voice, she told us how all the evening through, as she sat in the playhouse she kept hearing that sweet childish voice saying 'Not dressed! Not dressed! Not dressed!' until at last, with the blush of shame mantling to her cheeks, and with the realization that a Christian mother should dress differently from the idle and G.o.dless women of the world, she drew her cloak about her and went home, dressed--or rather undressed--for the last time in such a costume!"

Nothing we have read in a month has been quite so disturbing to us as this simple little tale. Before it our theories tremble and fall. Upon many an occasion we have set down the conviction that little children should never be spanked under any provocation whatsoever. And yet if we had been that low-cut lady we would certainly have given that interfering and priggish little youngster a walloping. Even in the case of H. 3rd we are minded to make an exception in our program. He may rampage and roar and destroy without laying himself open to corporal punishment, but he will do very well to refrain from any comment of any sort about our clothes or personal appearance. We do not purpose to come home in our cloak from any show with our evening entirely spoiled by the fact that a sweet childish voice has been saying in our ear, "Not shaved! Not shaved! Not shaved!"

JUNE 3, 1920.--Of late I am beginning to notice with perturbation a distinctly sentimental streak in H. 3rd. Nothing else will account for his tenderness toward Goliath. When we first began to talk about him he was treated by common consent rather scornfully. He was known to us as "Ole Goliath he talks too much." Even in those early days it cannot be said that Goliath was treated with special spite, for as the story grew in the telling he fared not much worse than David. Somehow or other I eventually came into the incident myself. Just now I can't remember whether it was at the special invitation of H. 3rd or my own egotistic urge.

At any rate, it seems that David, after knocking Goliath down, grew overbearing in his att.i.tude to all the world. Goliath, it must be explained, was not killed, since death would involve explanations beyond the comprehension of H. 3rd. Goliath was merely hit in the chest and fell. The chest was stressed, since it is necessary every now and then to halt H. 3rd in his most playful moments with the admonition that hitting casual visitors in the face is not a friendly act. We pride ourselves on our old-fashioned Brooklyn hospitality.

However, as we had said, David followed up his victory with the boast, "I can beat any man in the world," at which point H. 3rd is supposed to chime in, "And lick 'em." In response to this challenge Heywood 2d appeared, and when David picked up another rock and threw it H. 2d cleverly put up his hands and caught the missile. He threw it back at David and knocked him down. Rollo offered the further amendment that he himself then appeared and knocked Heywood 2d down. "And," he told the child, "I didn't need a rock. I used a snappy retort."

He even went so far as to draw a picture of the occurrence, but it met with no favor from H. 3rd, who exclaimed, "Heywood second did not fell.

He did not fell."

I was much touched by this display of loyalty until I found that his feelings were just as much engaged in the fate of Goliath. This love of his for the Philistine he indicated suddenly one evening when he asked me to tell him the story of "Sweet Goliath," and I found that nothing would satisfy him but the complete revision of the whole tale to the end that it should be Goliath who picked up the rock and vanquished David.

I have tried to lure him away from this unauthorized version in vain.

Only to-day I suggested hopefully "That ole Goliath he talks too much."

H. 3rd looked at me severely, but then his face brightened, and with all the unction of a missionary to China he said, "Goliath loves you."

JUNE 11, 1920.--"Perhaps you can answer the challenge to American educational inst.i.tutions contained in this letter from H. G. Wells,"

writes Floyd Dell. "I can't (neither am I able to think of anything to reply to the question which he counters to my 'Were You Ever a Child?'--'Were You Ever a Parent?' But that won't embarra.s.s you)."

I'm afraid that by dint of writing now and again about H. 3rd I have managed to pa.s.s myself off as a chronic parent. For all the a.s.surance with which I have put forth certain theories on the care and education of the young, many of them mere reflections of Dell's book, I admit at the outset no qualification to answer the challenge of Wells even if I were sure that an answer were possible. For all I know H. 3rd will grow up to rob a bank and curse me that he was not spanked with due moralizing and ceremony three times a week. However, the letter from Wells is as follows:

"Dear Floyd Dell: Yours is a good, wise book--so far. But there is a devil--several devils--of indolence in a child. Have you ever been a parent? That too is useful.