The Wit and Humor of America Volume IX Part 24

"Teach little babies their a b c's? I'm afraid that isn't your specialty, heart of mine. Now if you could teach other women the art of making a man believe that he has cornered the entire visible supply of ecstatic thrills in marrying the woman of his choice--by Jove, now!

there's an idea!"

Now Jimaboy had no idea in particular; he never had an idea that he did not immediately coin it into words and try to sell it. But Isobel's eyes were suspiciously bright, and the situation had to be saved.

"I was just thinking: the thing to do successfully is the--er--the thing you do best, isn't it?"

She laughed, in spite of the unpaid bills.

"Why can't you put clever things like that into your stories, Jimmy, dear?"

"As if I didn't!" he retorted. "But don't step on my idea and squash it while it's in the soft-sh.e.l.l-crab stage. As I said, I was thinking: there is just one thing we can give the world odds on and beat it out of sight. And that thing is our long suit--our specialty."

"But you said you had an idea," said Isobel, whose private specialty was singleness of purpose.

"Oh--yes," said Jimaboy. Then he smote hard upon the anvil and forged one on the spur of the moment. "Suppose we call it The Post-Graduate School of W. B., Professor James Augustus Jimaboy, princ.i.p.al; Mrs.

Isobel Jimaboy, a.s.sistant princ.i.p.al. How would that sound?"

"It would sound like the steam siren on the planing mill. But what is the 'W. B.'?"

"'Wedded Bliss,' of course. Here is the way it figures out. We've been married three years, and--"

"Three years, five months and fourteen days," she corrected.

"Excellent! That accuracy of yours would be worth a fortune on the faculty. But let me finish--during these three years, five months and fourteen days we have fought, bled and died on the literary battle-field; dined on bath-mitts and _cafe hydraulique_, walked past the opera-house entrance when our favorite play was on, and all that.

But tell me, throb of my heart, have we ever gone shy on bliss?"

She met him half-way. It was the spirit in which they had faced the bill collector since the beginning of the period of leanness.

"Never, Jimmy, dear; not even hardly ever."

"There you are, then. Remains only for us to tell others how to do it; to found the Post-Graduate School of W. B. It's the one thing needful in a world of educational advantage; a world in which everything but the gentle art of being happy, though married, is taught by the postman. We have solved all the other problems, but there has been no renaissance in the art of matrimony. Think of the ten thousand divorces granted in a single state last year! My dear Isobel, we mustn't lose a day--an hour--a minute!"

She pretended to take him seriously.

"I don't know why we shouldn't do it, I'm sure," she mused. "They teach everything by mail nowadays. But who is going to die and leave us the endowment to start with?"

"That's the artistic beauty of the mail scheme," said Jimaboy, enthusiastically. "It doesn't require capitalizing; no buildings, no campus, no football team, no expensive university plant; nothing but an inspiration, a serviceable typewriter, and a little old postman to blow his whistle at the door."

"And the specialty," added Isobel, "though some of them don't seem to trouble themselves much about that. Oh, yes; and the advertising; that is where the endowment comes in, isn't it?"

But Jimaboy would not admit the obstacle.

"That is one of the things that grow by what they are fed upon: your ad.

brings in the money, and then the money buys more ad. Now, there's Blicker, of the _Woman's Uplift_; he still owes us for that last story--we take it out in advertising s.p.a.ce. Also Dormus, of the _Home World_, and Amory, of the _Storylovers_--same boat--more advertising s.p.a.ce. Then the _Times_ hasn't paid for that string of s.p.a.ce-fillers on 'The Lovers of All Nations.' The _Times_ has a job office, and we could take that out in prospectuses and application blanks."

By this time the situation was entirely saved and Isobel's eyes were dancing.

"Wouldn't it be glorious?" she murmured. "Think of the precious, precious letters we'd get; real letters like some of those pretended ones in Mr. Blicker's correspondence column. And we wouldn't tell them what the 'W. B.' meant until after they'd finished the course, and then we'd send them the degree of 'Master of Wedded Bliss,' and write it out in the diploma."

Jimaboy sat back in his chair and laughed uproariously. The most confirmed sentimentalist may have a saving sense of humor. Indeed, it is likely to go hard with him in the experimental years, if he has it not.

"It's perfectly feasible--perfectly," he chuckled. "It would be merely pounding sand into the traditional rat-hole with all the implements furnished--teaching our specialty to a world yearning to know how. You could get up the lectures and question schedules for the men, and I could make some sort of a shift with the women."

"Yes; but the text-books. Don't these 'Fit-yourself-at-Home' schools have text-books?"

"Um, y-yes; I suppose they do. That would be a little difficult for us--just at the go-off. But we could get around that. For example, 'Dear Mrs. Blank: Replying to your application for membership in the Post-Graduate School of W. B., would say that your case is so peculiar'--that would flatter her immensely--'your case is so peculiar that the ordinary text-books cover it very inadequately. Therefore, with your approval, and for a small additional tuition fee of $2 the term, we shall place you in a special cla.s.s to be instructed by electrographed lectures dictated personally by the princ.i.p.al.'"

Isobel clapped her hands. "Jimmy, love, you are simply great, when you are not trying to be. And, after a while, we could print the lectures and have our own text-books copyrighted. But don't you think we ought to take in the young people, as well?--have a--a collegiate department for beginners?"

"'Sh!" said Jimaboy, and he got up and closed the door with ostentatious caution. "Suppose somebody--Lantermann, for instance--should hear you say such things as that: 'take in the young people'! Shades of the Rosicrucians! we wouldn't 'take in' anybody. The very life of these mail things is the unshaken confidence of the people. But, as you suggest, we really ought to include the frying size."

It was delicious fooling, and Isobel found a sketch-block and dipped her pen.

"You do the letter-press for the 'collegiate' ad., and I'll make a picture for it," she said. "Hurry, or I'll beat you."

Jimaboy laughed and squared himself at the desk, and the race began.

Isobel had a small gift and a large ambition: the gift was a cartoonist's facility in line drawing, and the ambition was to be able, in the dim and distant future, to ill.u.s.trate Jimaboy's stories.

Lantermann, the _Times_ artist, whose rooms were just across the hall, had given her a few lessons in caricature and some little gruff, Teutonic encouragement.

"Time!" she called, tossing the sketch-block over to Jimaboy. It was a happy thought. On a modern davenport sat two young people, far apart; the youth twiddling his thumbs in an ecstasy of embarra.s.sment; the maiden making rabbit's ears with her handkerchief. Jimaboy's note of appreciation was a guffaw.

"I couldn't rise to the expression on those faces in a hundred years!"

he lamented. "Hear me creak:"

DON'T MARRY

until you have taken the Preparatory Course in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. Home-Study in the Science of Successful Heart-Throbs. Why earn only ten kisses a week when one hour a day will qualify you for the highest positions? Our Collegiate Department confers degree of B. B.; Post-Graduate Department that of M. W. B. Members of Faculty all certificated Post-Graduates.

A postal card brings Prospectus and application blank.

Address: The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.

Isobel applauded loyally. "Why, that doesn't creak a little bit! Try it again; for the unhappy T. M.'s, this time. Ready? Play!"

Her picture was done while Jimaboy was still nibbling his pen and scowling over the scratch-pad. It was a drawing-room interior, with the wife in tears and the husband struggling into his overcoat. To them, running, an animated United States mail-bag, extending a huge envelope marked: "From the Post-Graduate School of W. B."

Jimaboy scratched out and rewrote, with the pen-drawing for an inspiration:

HEARTS DIVIDED BECOME HEARTS UNITED

when you have taken a Correspondence Course in Wedded Bliss. A Scholarship in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. is the most acceptable wedding gift or Christmas present for your friends. Curriculum includes Matrimony as a Fine Art, Post-Marriage Courtship, Elementary and Advanced Studies in Conjugal Harmony, Easy Lessons in the Gentle Craft of Eating Her Experimental Bread, Practical a.n.a.lysis of the Club-Habit, with special course for wives in the Abstract Science of Honeyfugling Parsimonious Husbands. Diploma qualifies for highest positions. Our Gold Medalists are never idle.

The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.

N. B.--Graphophone, with Model Conversations for Married Lovers, furnished free with lectures on Post-Marriage Courtship.

They pinned the pictures each to its "copy" and had their laugh over the conceit.