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Title: HOW TO BE A HERMIT or, A BATCHELOR KEEPS HOUSEAuthor: WILL CUPPY* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.: 0607881h.htmlLanguage: EnglishDate first posted: October 2006Date most recently updated: August 2017This eBook was produced by: Malcolm FarmerProject Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online athttp://gutenberg.net.au/licence.htmlTo contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thankthe new york heraldtribune, mc call'smagazine andmorrow's almanack for permission toreprint the articles in this book. They are not responsible for thesecond thoughts—some of them highly inflammable—strewnrecklessly through the original pieces, nor for the several addedstarters.
I DISCOVER MY ISLAND
BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE
LIVING FROM CAN TO MOUTH
MY KITCHEN BEAUTIFUL
CONFESSIONS OF A SARDINEFIEND
HARD-BOILED RECIPES
THE HOME IN BUM TASTE
COFFEE, PLEASE!
DIOGENES, OR THEFUTURE OF HOUSEKEEPING
THE SECRET OF FREDERICKBARBAROSSA
THE HERMIT'S EMERGENCYSHELF
THE DUKE'S DILEMMA
A FEW HINTS ON ETIQUETTE
SPINACH AND THE GOODLIFE
LITERATURE AND OTHERSPINACH
WATCH YOUR BUDGET
SIMPLIFIED CLAMS
BEDROOMS ARE WHAT YOU MAKETHEM
CONSIDER THE LETTUCE
A PLEA FOR BETTER BATTER
PERILS OF THE HOME
DOWN WITHBRILLAT-SAVARIN!
HOW TO ENTERTAIN
SO WHY BE PRESIDENT?
WHAT CABBAGE HAS MEANT TOME
NEXT TO GODLINESS
IF CHRISTMAS COMES
THE FEAST OF THE BEAN
IF YOU HAVE TEARS
All was excitement that June morning among the clams of Jones'sIsland (pronounced, by your leave, in two good healthy syllables,thus: Jone'-zez). Softies by the bushel dug themselves deeper intothe shoreward mud, and whimpering little quahogs out in their waterybeds clung closer to their mothers as they heard the dread newsrelayed by their kinsfolk of Seaman's Neck, Black Banks Channel,Johnson's Flats and High Hill Crick. To say that uneasiness pervadedthe community would be putting it far too mildly. Those clams werescared plumb out of a week's growth; which, as the clam flies, is alot of growth. In a word, panic reigned, if not pandemonium.
And well it might, for the scouts along the meadows, the deepwater observers and the liaison officers on the sandbars hadforwarded marine intelligence of no mean importance. As one clam theyreported the swift approach by rowboat across Great South Bay of asinister stranger, by every sign a very devil for chowder, raging androaring in the throes of starvation and flying the strange device,"Jones's Island or Bust!" Yes, downright terror gripped even thehardest of the clams. "He ought to be here at any moment!" shuddereda visiting cherry-stone.
And see! Even now the hellish bark rounds Hawkins's Point,splashes its desperate way through the shallows and crashes intoSavage's Dock with a sickening thud, hurling the oarsman from hisposition amidships to a point which may be defined as galley-west.Dizzily the skipper regains his feet, and as he rises to the generalview his singular and touching appearance sends thrills of relief upand down the calcareous shells of the bivalves still on watch. DameRumor is wrong again! Here is no demon with murder in his heart. Hereis no devil incarnate. For there in the full sunshine, the cynosureof every clam, he weeps, the stranger weeps. Anon, he sneezes, andagain his eyes drip blinding tears. 'Tis plain some nobler grief thanthe want of a square meal is bothering this chap. All told, it waspretty pathetic.
The sorrowful newcomer seemed, truly, a man distrait, as he stoodthere sniffling and snorting into his red bandanna, uttering violentand wicked words, shaking his free fist at nothing in particular andbehaving generally as one bereft of all earthly solace and thegreater part of the cerebellum. (But don't get too much worked upabout this, dear reader; it turns out in a minute that it was onlyme, arriving at Jones's Island with my rose cold.) Ever and again hemoved as though to cast himself and his afflictions into a low tidepuddle, always he drew back in time. Then, extracting a small compassfrom his pocket, he made a few rapid calculations and, tossing astray lock from a thoughtful brow, began running due South. And as heran, he wept; and weeping, sneezed.
Some furlongs on his way, about where he would catch sight ofsomething blue and wonderful between the beach hills, he was heard toshout, "Thalassa! Thalassa!" which is as much as to say inplain English, "The sea!" and repeat. "Eureka!" he criednext—"Excelsior!"—"Gallia est omnis divisa inpartes tres!" So, naturally, the clams, after thinking it over,decided that he was perfectly harmless. Each happy shellfish,according to his individual lights, sank back into a sort of nervouslethargy or went about his own or his neighbor's business, forgettingas best he could the horrid threat of a clambake. "I told you therewas not the slightest danger," squizzed the visiting cherry-stone."He's only another goof come to look at the ocean—probably atypical New Yorker," he added, tapping his forehead significantly.Whereupon he and the other clams, like the solitary horseman innovels, only rather more clammily, disappeared from the picture. I'mafraid I had ruined their day.
It was thus, or near enough, that I began my long and extremelypleasant relations with the Atlantic, an association which neither ofus, I trust, has had cause to regret. You must forgive me for yelling"Thalassa!" and "E Pluribus Unum!"—especially"Thalassa!" since I have no Greek, and just got it out of abook. But I was all excited. I had waited so long! My early yearningfor the sea had never been completely satisfied during my boyhood inthe Middle West. Later I found Lake Michigan marvelous, but fresh;and seeing my ocean at long last, it struck me all of a heap, like. Ihope my readers will permit me to skip what I saw that morning as Istood on the southern shore of Jones's and peered horizonward. I'mnot so good in purely descriptive passages, and I believe theAtlantic has quite a number of sterling qualities which we need notargue about. Suffice it that stout Cortez hadn't a thing on me whenwith eagle eye he got into the wrong poem—it was really acouple of other explorers.
I, too, was silent and just stared. Strangely silent, it occurredto me, after letting my Viking spirit run wild for an hour or two.Mark you well—for here the plot thickens—I had notsneezed once in all that time, nor sniffed, nor sniveled, nor wishedthat I had ne'er been born, nor any of the things one does when oneis subject to rose cold. I had arrived at Jones's Island a humanwreck, if that; just one more poor, underpaid book reviewer harriedand hunted by hay fever's hideous little cousin. And here I stood, myvision clear, my smeller busy with salt fragrance, whole in mind andnose, thinking in terms of high romance, all of a glorious June day;convinced for the mad moment, I confess it, that Pippa was not ahalf-wit at all. For a nickel I'd have burst into song. Some subtleseaside virus was coursing through my system, sweeping out dustyclouds of landlubberly notions and raising merry hell with my logicalfaculties—I always hated them. "It would be sheer foolishnessever to leave this sneezeless island with its own private ocean," Itold myself. "And it is our bounden duty as reasonable creatures toshun and turn from folly, at least once in a while, especially whenthe avoidance is so pleasant as this." So I philosophized. Already Iwas half a hermit.
That afternoon I wandered back of the beach hills, seeking amongthe swamps and meadows of the interior some aspect of animate orinanimate Nature that might bring on a return of my tragedy, for asyet I could not believe that this Fortunate Isle contained no germsof rose cold. Though rose cold is mostly caused by the machinationsof evil spirits, flowers are part of it, too, and the victim mustwatch them like so many wild animals. Flowers are very pretty, yes;and don't they know it? But the best of them are full of pollen, asubstance used by Mother Nature to produce rose cold and hay feverwhen she might be in better business. In a world whereAmbrosiaartemistæfolia turns out to be common ragweed, you can't betoo careful.
Proceeding, then, upon my usual assumption that every leaf and budthat blows is my deadly enemy until it can prove that it isn't, Iadventured boldly into the unknown hinterland. Each humble, namelesssprout of green I firmly challenged and encountered, sniffing towindward and leeward, reconnoitering stealthily from ambush, doublingin my tracks and charging suddenly to prevent trickery. I found noactual flowers, if memory serves; but one homely creeper, apparentlysome low and depraved form of sweet pea, showed a dangerous tendencyto bloom. I walked straight up to it, looked it in the eye and gaveit glare for glare. Nothing happened. I passed on, spasmless. Well,well!
Here, obviously, were none of my vegetable enemies, and a manmight be at peace. A body might live here without an utterly ruinoussupply of red bandannas. Later there might be goldenrod, but let itcome. I am not affected by goldenrod, a fact which accounts for mycocky leers whenever I meet a mess of that flaunting, cruel plant;the joke is on the goldenrod, and so far as I'm concerned it mayflaunt its head off. At that I am not one of those happy, carefreepicnickers who carry heaping armfuls of goldenrod into railway trainsand subways on the off chance of finding some poor hay fever addictand ending a perfect day with a good laugh. It might do theseexcursionists a great deal of good if they sat down in a clump ofpoison ivy some time. Speaking of hot Sitz baths, I had my troublesthat first day with the Jones's Island beach grass, a species ofimproved hatpin, but that thrill was as nothing compared to my epicdiscovery of the Zachs Inlet Coast Guard Station.
That's where I met Portygee Pete and Comanche and Pokamoke Bennyand Buttercup and Uncle John and, in the ways of seven or eightyears, some dozens of others who became my friends and privycounselors, financial advisers, pump fixers, putters-on of typewriterribbons and bulwarks against melancholia. 'Twas there I first sampledthe most excellent cuisine of Hot Biscuit Slim, the second of thathonored name. Slim plied us all with stew, and afterwards stayed uswith pancakes, his own special brew, compounded of main strength, afertile imagination and a ladle of soda. Boy, that was food, and notmerely something to titillate a jaded palate. If your palate is jadedat Jones's, you better move.
It was doubtless fate that drew me there; we cannot, the wisestamong us, prove the contrary. And fate, as a great writer has put it,kept right on working. For towards evening, having dined at five, Icame by a crooked little path to a crooked little house about threehundred yards from the station. I saw that it was my house, and hadbeen mine from the dim beginnings. Somewhere it was written. In akind of joyful amazement I opened my mouth and spoke, saying, "I havebeen here before"; and I care not if the alienists have a long,insulting name for that particular feeling. I added, for the benefitof the small black kitten following close at my heels, "This is myancient home, from which I strayed long since. But now I am back frommy faring, and here I shall live and abide."
"Well, I'm glad you have come to your senses at last," said thekitten. "I picked you for a hermit all the time."
"Come on inside," said I to the kitten, who leaped ahead into thecrooked little kitchen and settled politely on the stove.
"Do you like it?" demanded my inky familiar.
"I love it, all four rooms, furniture and all," I shouted from theparlor. "But just what do you mean," I inquired, returning from myhasty inspection, "you picked me for a hermit?"
"You'll have to take my word for things," smiled my companion."You were born in Auburn, Indiana, on August 23, 1894, making you aVirgo character, with strong leanings towards Leo. Right?"
"The year's not quite right," said I; "but I can see you're amighty smart kitten. What's your name, anyway?"
"Finnegan."
"Well, Mr. Finnegan—"
"Just Finnegan to you," said the kitten.
"But itis Mister, I suppose?"
"Yes, if you must know," said Finnegan. "Well, Mr.—"
"Call me Bill," said I.
"Well, Bill," resumed Finnegan, "I only meant that you areobviously the island type, not the ordinary, crude oaf one meetsashore in this darned old Riveting Age."
"You got out of that pretty nicely, you flatterer," said I. "Whatelse?"
"You hate noise? I thought so. You have a slight touch of auditoryhyperæsthesia, which might easily develop into schizophrenia.In the quiet of Jones's Island you would probably write much betterbook reviews. Don't you want to?"
"Yes," I admitted. "I have a passionate, flamelike, all-consumingdesire to do that very thing, so as to have my wages raised."
"You'll get over that," said Finnegan, "once you're a hermit."
"I'm not sure that I can be one," said I. "There's civilization toconsider."
"I doubt it," said Finnegan. "Anyway, if you will pardon anepigram, a hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failedto adjust itself."
"Did you think that up all by yourself?" I demanded, with mountingadmiration.
"I may have seen it in the National Geographic," said Finnegan."The Coast Guards saved a millionaire and his yacht from drowninghere lately, and he sent us a few back numbers as areward—wonderful reading, so broadening. As I was saying, letsomebody else worry about civilization."
"But I hate to be called a misfit!" said I. "Even now science ishard at work on the cause and cure of hermits, and what withpsycho-analysis and all, the poor hermits soon won't have a pillar tostand on."
"Nonsense!" laughed Finnegan. "Of course there are some hermitswho haven't all their buttons, but we are speaking of the other kind.There have been some grand ones. It is, I assure you, in no idle veinthat I mention such names as Theodosius of Cappadocia, James ofMesopotamia, Epiphanius of Salamis, Hospitius of Villafranca andClaudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis, not forgetting Robinson Crusoe.There was also the Abbot Paphnutius—"
"The friend of Thaïs?" I interrupted.
"I didn't mean to mention him," said Finnegan. "It just slippedout. Too bad about him—a mere matter of glands, and no gooddoctors."
"Do you mean he had too many glands, or not enough, or what?" Iinquired.
"We needn't go into that," said Finnegan.
"Well," said I, "I'm not so sure about the place of asceticism inmodern life. Morality, you know, is essentially social.Life—"
"A lot you know about life," said Finnegan. "Life is within and noman hath seen it. I guess I read that somewhere, too. Anyway, you'renot going to be so damned ascetic!"
"Right," I agreed. "I really don't want to be a cenobite or aneremite just at present. I want to be good, in moderation, but you'llhave to let me go to literary teas in New York every few weeks. Isuppose I must live in a cave?"
"Cave, nothing!" said Finnegan with some show of emotion. "You'lllive right here in this house. That's exactly where so many hermitsmake their big mistake—living in caves. Caves are damp, darkand full of bats; it costs a small fortune to fix one of them so it'sat all habitable. All thinking hermits to-day deplore the cave habit.Besides, I always say what is home without a house? It doesn't haveto be steam-het, either."
"Steam what?"
"Steam-het," said Finnegan. "It doesn't have to be. You'll beperfectly comfortable with this kitchen range, and you can write yourbook reviews on that table, and if any visitors come to disturb you,I'll bite them. I know the man who owns this shack, and I'll arrangethe business end of it; just leave it all to me. You'll find after afew weeks that your auditory hyperæsthesia will clear up andyou'll lose that pale onshore look; in no time we'll have you amem sana in corpore sano, or near enough to it for allpractical purposes."
"Maybe all I need," I replied, "is a good eye, ear, nose, throatand brain specialist."
"What is to be will be," said Finnegan. "And if you want any morecats, I have thirty-nine brothers and sisters—"
"The die is cast!" I exclaimed, and groped my way to the tatteredblanket in the bedroom.
Soon we fell into a dreamless sleep, from which Finnegan was towake a speechless but no less sapient cat. At dawn I struck for themainland, returning at sunset with all that was mine or that myfriends would spare. And the evening of that day was the morning ofmy hermiting. By and large, that was about how the fit took me. Somethink it passing strange that I should change my way of life socompletely because of a silly rose cold, a mere ocean, more or less,the twilight look of a little crooked house in the sand and theravings of a temporarily enchanted cat. They say it doesn't stand toreason. I reply, what does? But how can you argue with people whohave never loved at sight?
Sure, it's only Jones's where I live; just good old homelyJones's. It isn't the Balearics, though it has often occurred to methat there is something decidedly Balearic about theplace—there are ways of looking at islands. We have noslingers, and maybe that's just as well; book reviewers have enoughon their minds without Balearic slingers and Gaditanian dancers andsuch. Life can't be all slinging and dancing.
Time was when I planned to cast anchor not nearly so close to themainland. I started for some unsuspected isle in far-off seas; theCyclades, perhaps, if not the Hyades, and why not even Atlantis, if Ihad to fish it up myself? Then the wind shifted, as the wind will,and I'd have compromised on the Greater and Lesser Antilles. Anyway,I got to Jones's, and that's something. Hermits cannot be choosers,as Singapore Sam, just up from Hatteras, brought home to me as I waswriting this very piece.
"Have you ever been to Coney Island, Bill?" he inquired—he'ssaving up for the trip.
"Yes," I told him, truthfully; "but only once, and that was yearsago."
"Well," said he, "I suppose that's more for the upperclasses."
Let's leave it at that.
There has been much loose talk about my hermiting shack. I can'tsee where it's so awful. Various persons from New York who have daredthe waves and the weather for a view (through no fault of my own, Imay say) have compared it, seldom to its advantage, with theParthenon, the mansion of Krazy Kat and the original home of theJukes family. I like it.
What seems to worry these people is art. Conventional painters,including the house-and-barn type, generally greet my shack withfrank smiles of incredulity, followed by partial coma. And thearchitects! I hear there's a movement among them to use my bungalowas a textbook example of what's wrong with their business. The soonerthe better—that will give the dome of St. Paul's a rest. Oneexpert tells me that my home, in the small space of 20 by 20 feet andup a ways, exhibits in a hitherto unknown mixture all but three ofthe worst features of the Early Greek, Byzantine, Gothic, Egyptianand Chester A. Arthur schools of thought, at the same time lackingevery essential mentioned in Ruskin's "The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture." I still like it.
Well, fun is fun, and my villa seems to do its share in that way.One amateur wit, somehow asked for the week-end, dropped his suitcaseand rolled on the sand in strong hysterics when I proudly announced,"There it is!" He pretended he had just seen an extremely comical cowin a nearby pasture, but I saw through that—we have no cows.Later, he described his visit in the madcap line, "I came, I saw, Iwent"; but I noticed he stayed his time out, ate like a horse andtried to come again. He also invented that crack about the Jukeses.Jukeses, indeed! I have met some very nice Jukeses, by and large,with better manners, too.
As for art, my house represents the practical rather than theabstract side of that subject. It may be said to serve, howeverfaultily, the eternal principle of utility; it is, or comes nearbeing, in some respects, adequate to the purpose for which it waserected—to shelter an insolvent mortal from the blast. Let usadmit that somehow the lines, spaces and masses failed to jell. Itwas built for comfort; if something went wrong, we can't haveeverything. If it does not figure forth the vaulting spiritualaspirations of the carpenter, it keeps most of the rain out, anyway.If it does not evoke the cathedral mood, at least it's a place toflop. A snippy author is fond of remarking that its architectureshows a quality of brute force rather than an association of manyintellects. Yes, and I have more than a suspicion that if theintelligentsia had designed my residence it wouldn't be here to tellthe tale.
Who did build it? Scoff if you will, but I have felt, ever since Ifirst came to Jones's, that maybe Inigo was guilty. Or is it only astrange coincidence? If I am right in my little daydream, it isprobable that my shack betokens Inigo's earlier phase, before he hadgot the knack of constructing human habitations, or perhaps somelater period when he was suffering from a nervous breakdown. Still,why hang it on Inigo, when many another Jones, alive and able todefend himself, is fully capable of the deed? Besides, Inigo wouldhardly have survived this youthful error, and he became a famous man.Maybe one of the Chippendales did it, Heaven knows it's wabblyenough. Whoever he was, I am sure that my unknown architect was agenius. No disaster less complete and irremediable will account forthe symptoms. Looking upon his handiwork, the thoughtful observer canbut realize that even genius can be badly bent by a few decades ofconstant exposure to Mother Nature at her worst. At least, it canhere on Jones's Island.
Perched none too securely upon a slight eminence, a good yard anda half above sea level, as far as possible from the boardwalk of asmall and transient summer colony and within hailing distance of theCoast Guards (without about nine of which as near neighbors a hermitwould be in a pretty pickle), the site of my shack combines theadvantages of frequent assistance with comparative safety from floodtides and company. Shielded from the distant view by the governmentstation and the bayberry bushes, my Castle in Spain bursts suddenlyupon the sight of occasional explorers with results alreadyindicated. Oh, these hilarious trippers! They seem to think thathermits are deaf, or have no feelings, or both.
Doubtless my chimney causes some of the wisecracks. True, it leansfour ways at once and rather dominates the substructure and thelandscape; but the jokers simply show their ignorance of hermitingand of air currents, especially during blizzards. How else would itlook, composed as it is of two lengths of tile, two pieces ofstovepipe and an extra bit of bonnet, all fighting desperately fortheir very lives in all kinds of weather, and the devil take thehindmost? How would these people themselves look in similar case? Tome that chimney's anything but funny. The mere hanging together ofits component parts, half-seas over as the effect may be, strikes meas a noble and heartening instance ofesprit de corps, moraluplift and civic betterment.
And here I beg leave to deny a report circulated by some enemy,presumably on the evidence of the spectacular wire network whichprevents my chimney from blowing, as the saying goes, to hell andgone. The charge is that I have a radio. I need not assure my closefriends, who know how I adore the perfectly silent arts, that that isa plain, unvarnished lie. When hermits take to radios we shall,indeed, have reached a fine state of affairs.
I should have the whole house described by this time, of course,but there's little to describe. Moreover, in all stories dealing withhorror—and that's the way the world chooses to look at myhouse—one avoids the crassly concrete. Too, I'm sensitive.About all I care to admit is that my bungalow is growing old, andnone too gracefully, that it has known adversity in many forms, thatit has repeatedly arisen from the blows of destiny with badlywrenched timbers and with a head unbowed, that it leaks, sways in thepassing breeze, sometimes seems about to rise on its hind legs andend it all in the ocean or the bay and that I'm very fond of it. It'snot what it was. Its marked departures from the vertical and thehorizontal speak all to poignantly of a youth that is fled, of anautumn lurking round the corner. At that, it's a long way yet fromsenile decay.
I find it possible to cope with these few weaknesses. When itrains I keep reasonably dry by moving myself and manuscripts hastilyfrom spot to spot according to the whims of the dear old roof. In awintry hullabaloo I fool the icy drafts that whiz through the floorby wrapping my feet in my overcoat and hot bricks. Some day I plan torepair the roof, the walls, the four sides and the underpinning, notfrom love of unbridled luxury, but in answer to insistent warnings ofmy instinct to survive. My shack is a house, all right, but you couldjust as well call it the great outdoors.
Speaking of weather, I must explain that my hermitage occupies astrategic point. My little hill seems to be the meeting place of thewinds mentioned in Gayley's "Classic Myths," and that includeseverything from a moderate breeze (fishing smacks carry all canvaswith good list), through a fresh gale (all smacks make for harbor) toa storm, what I mean storm (just hope for the best and keep yourkindling dry).
If, gentle reader, you have ever noticed a goofier than usualparagraph in one of my book reviews, ten to one it was due to thesudden collapse of a portion of my home, with resulting fierceeffects upon the critical frenzy. Too often in the midst of literarylabors I have to rush out into the night to hold down the parlor, toanchor the bedroom more securely to the clothes pole, to see whetherthat fearful racket is a herd of mad bull elephants trying to breakinto the kitchen, or only the mizzen-mast at it again. How can I keepmy mind on a book when the loud tempests rave in such a place? Howfollow the rajah's ruby with my starboard braces twisting, the deckat an angle of fifty degrees, the buckets awash, lee scuppersdrowned, shipping water with every lurch, expecting each moment to beon our beam ends, me and mine sunk without a trace in thirty fathomsof sand? Why, rounding the Horn is child's play! And it certainlyraises Cain with one's onomatopœia. No, I have no quatrefoils,rosettes, gussets, gargoyles or Mexican drawnwork on my house, noteven a caryatid. And a good thing, too, for some young, inexperiencedcaryatid—she'd last about two minutes.
Small wonder, I suppose, that city folk shudder at and in myhouse. I suggest that all those who cannot cope with a few rough,untutored elements remain snug at home in the inglenook with theirloved ones and their aspirin. That would save them telling me storiesabout the Aged Recluse Found Frozen in Hut. I wonder if they haven'tan eye out for that million dollars hidden inside my mattress, thebags of gold under the flooring and the bank books showing depositsin seventeen banks! Well, they won't get a penny of mine unless theychange their ways. What hurts is that my shack does rather resemblethe hut where the Aged Recluse was found, if not the spot where thecyclone reached its maximum violence. I thought paint would fix that,but the trouble is, people never give hermits enough paint of onekind—always remnants. So now I have blue sides, a yellow roof,an apple green rear and a bright red piazza. And all it got me wasanother headline about an Aged Color-Blind Recluse.
Sure, I own it; why wouldn't I? I bought it. Not outright, youunderstand. By fits and starts. Nor do I regret the long, lean yearsspent in the paying. Starting with dollar book reviews, my affairsprospered, just as Finnegan had predicted, until to-day, with a tenor a fifteen dollar check arriving every couple of weeks, I canafford to laugh at those early struggles. Came the day when the lastof that two hundred dollar debt was canceled and the property was inmy possession. Now it is mine, all mine, and will so remain untilsomebody comes along and kicks me off. Titles to land being what theyare out here, and the rage for turning God's pleasant places intopicnicking dumps for people with Fords being whatit is, itbegins to look as though that might be almost any day now.
For the moment I'm sitting pretty on my own domain, consisting, Ishould say, complete with grounds and outbuilding, of several squarerods; of course, the ocean goes with it. There are times, naturally,when one feels land poor. Only last year, during a spell of blackfamine, I came near burdening the estate for the purpose of buyingvitamins. The urgent need for something to put in my pantry drove meto approach a wealthy summer colonist about a mortgage. He thought itwas only one of my jokes and laughed fit to kill, so there I was. Andthat very evening, as luck would have it, I got a birthday cake fromshore. The crisis was safely past.
One word more, patient reader, about the æsthetic aspects ofhermiting. If art is what you seek at Jones's, take a look at mybrick outbuilding, out back of my bunkhouse. Not so bad. I built itto shelter my rejected and unfinished manuscripts from fire, flood,moths, rust and infantile traumas in general; 'twill serve. It's ahome for my brain-tots, bless their hearts, all three dozen! Oceanmay bear me away in the night on a perigy tide, meadow blazes scorchme to cinders, and welcome, but if anything happens to thosebrain-tots, I'm sunk. Myself, I live rather sketchily, but thechildren of my fancy are something else again. As long as I can wielda brick and a hod they shall have the best of everything, if I haveto do without chocolate almond bars. I'm going to give them what Imissed.
I swore I'd house those kiddies comfortably, and I did. I began tobuild, not unambitiously, with the Temple of Karnak in mind, butswitched to the Petit Trianon for reasons having to do with a limitedfoundation—5 by 6 feet, to be exact. I wanted it to looksomething like a Norman keep, too, but who knows what that lookslike? Then the bag of cement gave out when the walls had risen nomore than a yard and a half, and it developed that Portygee Pete, myassistant, had been using the Coast Guard potato cellar as a model,anyway. Mere fragment of a dream that it is, the great curved roof,with its round arch composed of galvanized iron, old tin, tar-paper,pebbles and putty, strikes me as nothing short of swell. They call itCuppy's Folly, but on moonlit nights it reminds me a lot of the TajMahal. Sometime, when the dust and strife are o'er, when I'vereviewed my last detective tale, when I've said good-by to theclams—who knows? We can't all wind up in Grant's Tomb.
Meanwhile the brain-tots rest in peace, awaiting the millennialdawn of a new kind of magazine, one devoted fearlessly andsacrificially, if need be, to the small joys and sorrows of Jones'sIsland. Sunshiny days I open the door of the coop, brush off themildew, administer tonics to the ailing tots and soundly drub theworst examples of arrested development. Then we go for a walk on thebeach, proud father bowing to right and left and informing thecurious that we are the complete works of Ralph WaldoEmerson—the children must have their little joke! Regularlittle hermits, all of them! So I suppose our home is a happy home,as such things go. And not sodarned humble, at that.
Supposing you lived, so to speak, on such a sandbar as mine, farfrom the beaten track of travel, chain stores and one-arm lunches, inorder to ponder in peace some of the easier riddles of our curiousplanet—supposing all this and more, how, where and what wouldyou eat? You may reply that in such a fix, God forbid, your keeperwould probably feed you; but I meanalone. Starting the lessonall over again, I repeat: If you lived where I said, what, ifanything, would you eat? And, if so, why?
Well, I seem to make out. Indeed, people ashore are always askingme how I manage to look so fit (meaning fat), implying that any onewho would move to Jones's in the first place couldn't possibly haveenough sense to think of proper food. Apparently these persons havenever heard of the Sea Dyaks of Sarawak, the Winamwanga of NorthernRhodesia, the Whazzits of the Torres Straits and the M'Benga of theGaboon. Besides, I am only seven pounds overweight, just as I havebeen these many years, yet the cruel rumor persists that I breakfast,dine and sup entirely upon dried apples and water. Some, noting mycrimson countenance among the landlubbers, give out that I battenupon blubber, raw polar bear, codliver oil and maybe Mellin's Food,when it's all due to actinic rays or ultra-violet or something. Ofcourse, that leads to worse and more of it: I that have always longedto look pale, thin, hurt and a little wistful—in a word,poetical!—I am pointed out when ashore as one of the chiefmodern examples of the sanguine temperament, as opposed to thephlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. As for retiring to Jones's tostuff myself, why, I eat like a bird—naturally, one of thelarger birds.
How do I do it? It is true that I live where food must be luggedan hour's journey oceanward from the southern Long Island shore, butno one need starve, even so. To-day, for instance, my dinner wentsomething like this:
Chicken Soup with Croutons
Boiled Leg of Veal with Caper Sauce
Fresh Lima Beans Potatoes à la Gregory
Lettuce and Tomato Salad with Mayonnaise
Orange Layer Cake Floating Island
Chocolate Creams
Luckies Coffee
More Cake
Not so bad for an isolated hermit, eh? I treated myself to thisdelightful repast at Mrs. Gregory's, who lives away up the beach atthe summer colony. At other times Mrs. Gregory has roast chicken,strawberry shortcake, doughnuts, caramels, corn on the cob, macaroniand Camels. If not, Mrs. Prodgers has fried eels, bran muffins,chocolate cake, ham sandwiches, cookies, beefsteak and secondhelpings of everything. So have the Tappens.
You see which way the wind blows during the summer months,glorious but all too brief. My experience tends to show that anyJones's Island hermit who is willing to devote a ridiculously smallamount of time each day to learning the dinner hours of the variousfamilies up the beach, keeping track of the boats for new arrivalsand departures, listening in at the grocery store and finding outabout parties need never suffer from the diseases ofundernourishment. He can and does obtain with a minimum of effortchoice cuts of this and that, clam chowder and what not, includinghome-made fudge, all of which may be consumed on the spot, wrapped upfor future reference, or both. It is really astonishing how summerresorters acquire such marvelous things to eat, considering the manydifficulties of refrigeration, transportation, checkbooks andmiscellaneous items that are all Greek to hermits.
There are, of course, minor problems in a career of this sort,none of which need stump the book reviewer who goes after them with awill. He must not overdo things at first. He must consider theconstant danger of social ostracism, yet must balance against thisthe horrors of a bachelor diet of beans, bayberries and beach grass;for Mother Nature seems to have made no provision at Jones's for theedible lichens, Arctic moss, breadfruit and other blessings showeredso generously upon critics of other climes. Those South Seaintelligentsia have it pretty soft.
Moreover, if the hermit is gifted with persistency and an ordinaryamount of plain human cunning he will fall heir to ten bottles ofketchup, five cans of beans, the remains of two pot roasts, a Masonjar of piccalilli and nine oranges in good condition when the summerpeople leave for home after Labor Day. When I waved good-by to mysummer chums last year I kept back the tears by blinking rapidly andforcing my thoughts to dwell upon their contributions to the largecardboard grocery box which I had previously placed in a conspicuousposition on the dock in such a manner as practically to block theonly passage to the boat. It got me, if memory serves, the usualketchup, half a jar of German mustard, one-third parcel of bakingsoda, seven of free-running salt, one-half pie com-plete withpie-tin, one bottle of household ammonia, one-third bottle ofnon-alcoholic French vermouth, two lemons, three boxes of soapflakes, nine cakes of soap, three pairs of shoestrings, one damagedportrait of a Cunard liner, one carton of birdseed, one package ofstove and furnace cement, eleven clothespins, a copy of "800 ProvedPecan Recipes" and a pint of rhubarb and soda mixture.
Now it is clear that half a pie, two lemons and a small supply ofbirdseed will not last forever, and some kind friend may wonder whatI do from Labor Day until the middle of the following June. Well,when dependent upon my own cuisine, I'm afraid I am, scientificallyspeaking, one of the byproducts of the Machine Age. My one culinarytalent lies in thinking up new, novel and palatable ways of openingtin cans. When I glance out my window at the appalling pile of thesame which I seem to have thrown out, I am moved to forswear thecrude reality and utterly deny to myself and others that I ever hadanything to do with them, let alone ate what they once contained.It's the only decent thing to do. I explain my empty cans in the sameway that I explain my red felt lambrequin with the green birdoutlined in tinsel and my green felt lambrequin with the red birdoutlined in ditto—they were there when I bought the house. I'mgetting so I believe it myself.
Yet I must be responsible, in some measure, for that hideous metalmountain in my backyard, unless my neighbors at the Zachs Inlet CoastGuard Station sneaked it over some dark night. About that Pelion oftin cans I am more sorry than I can possibly say. It gives a totallywrong impression. I'm not like that at all. I'm all against thisawful Machine Age with its materialistic, soul destroying inventions,yet here I am, one of the main reasons why the annual consumption ofcanned beans in the United States must be measured in light years.Alas, the successful hermit of to-day, existing spiritually though hemay be in times less crass than our own, must compromise. Almostwithout exception, such hermits eventually become eaters of cannedbeans. I like to think that my tin cans are but a temporary expedientuntil I can have my own garden, start a campaign for another kind ofcivilization altogether and—oh, a lot of things! 'Tis but forthe moment that I find myself, as some joker had the nerve to say,living from can to mouth.
The psychology of the tin can, its folklore and its sex life aresubjects that would well reward further study, although there isalready a considerable literature in this field. I have stoppedreading about the coal-tar dyes and fatal preservatives that one buysalong with the most innocent-appearing string bean; I never believeda word of it, but it does give one the creeps. I think there is somegossip, too, about the salts of tin that come with iron rations, andwhy not? I may not be getting all my minerals, but if any dietitianasks me, "Have you had your tin to-day?" I can look her straight inthe face and answer, "You said it."
I've been in rather a panic lately about some of my canned goodsjust because I started reading an article on the household page. Saidthe professor, "A good can should have slightly concave ends andshould give forth only a dull sound when struck on the top orbottom," while convexity and a hollow drumlike response mean theworst. Since then neither I nor the cans, some of which I've had foryears, have known much joy of life. Sometimes the cans look perfectlyconcave and then again there are moments when nothing could wellappear more poisonously convex; they do and they don't. Occasionallythe tapping of the whole Coast Guard crew upon the rows of tomatoes,corn, peas, beans and sundry results in dullness unrelieved; otherdays we get the most terrifying medley of sepulchral moans, groansand death rattles. The brave Coast Guards love this sport, but it hasleft me in a condition bordering upon acute neurasthenia, certainlywith marked hallucinatory symptoms, both aural and ocular.
One probably should not judge these cans too hastily. Personally,I feel that it is no outsider's business what goes on in a can ofsuccotash from season to season, so long as it harms no one else, butof course that's the whole point. I hate to visit destructivecriticism uponbacillus botulinus for what it probably cannothelp—did it ask to be born?—but there is a limit. Somenights while reading detective stories I get slightly desperate, whatwith the toxicology and all. Follow regular Edgar Wallace dreams,full of nothing but germs. Then morning comes, the jocund day, andsense. What is to be will be, especially at Jones's.
As for my Ossa of tin, it may be all for the best. Nowadays somevery useful things are being made out of—guess what? Justlittle old used tin cans! They are said to make wonderfulcooky-cutters, candlesticks, geranium sprinklers, ash trays,mousetraps, watch fobs, ear muffs, bedroom slippers and modernfurniture; I see no reason why the house itself may not be built ofthe same material. Persons with that kind of mind who come out toJones's—and I'll be right there waiting—will find meready and tickled to help them realize their artistic ideals; partcash and the rest in Wall Street. Still, I may buy a goat.
We have clams, of course. Without clams the salt water or seashorehermit of our North Temperate Zone (classified in technical usage asthe Greater American sand, marsh or beach hermit) would not be whathe is to-day. Inevitably, I might almost say ineluctably, if I werethat sort, he knows his bivalves. To deny the very close relationshipexisting between the two species would ill become one who has earneda certain limited celebrity around High Hill Crick as The LittleBrother of the Clams. Clams are a subject very close to my stomachand some day I shall strive to celebrate them in suitable prose.Another time, good friends! To-night as I listen to the chowderbubbling on the hob—not really the hob, just the stove—mythoughts turn pensively to fish. Oh, you fish!
Fish, you know, are good for the brain, unless I am thinking oflettuce. This has been denied by some of our leading collegeprofessors who have lived on a fish diet for years without tangibleresults owing to the fact—well, why rub it in? Why try to befunny by opining that those fish had nothing to work on? In thisconnection I may explain that while any resident of Jones's Islandmay be said to be entirely surrounded by fish, try and get them. Fishalso contain iodine, which is grand for goiter. My tragedy is thatthough I live between Great South Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, withina hop, step and jump of either, my craving for fish iodine is all tooseldom satisfied. When I feel it coming on the easiest way is tosignal a passing ship, sail for New York City and orderfilet defluke.
One has, of course, one's moments. Many a flounder, presented byvisiting baymen, has entered my kitchen to depart no more; full manya September snapper, caught by obliging trippers, has gone the way ofall fish. October and November, however, are my fishiest months, forthen the frostfish come up out of the ocean on nipping nights, liedown in any convenient spot and wait for hermits to bag them. Goodeating, too! Maybe you'd rather have a broiled bluefish, anaristocratic smelt or one of those Lucullan carp steeped in water ofroses; but they suit me down to the ground. At a party I once gave inmy shack the guests simply loved them, though several fainted when Itold them that I found the fish. It seems that in New York to findone'spièce de resistance is considered extremelygauche.
Just why they come up on the beach nobody knows; that is to saythe Coast Guards know, but I can't get it straight. Rattlesnake Nedtells me it has something to do with the offshore or the onshorewind, or with going North or South in the late fall, or vice versa;perhaps also with the temperature, the tides and the mean averagehumidity. I gather that for frostfish navigation is risky as well asbroadening; travel is their undoing, since for them it means just onehermit after another. At any rate they come up, the hermit arrives,they struggle for a little space, they engage in futile attempts tofoil they know not what, they try to carry on, they give up, gasp,expire—and who doesn't? And maybe they're better off.
After not a little research I have succeeded in identifying theJones's Island frostfish as nothing more nor less than the Tomcod(Microgadus tomcodus), take the word of that best ofthrillers, the New English Dictionary; it need not surprise you thatseveral other undeserving fish are also called Tomcod, such as youngcodfish, adult male codfish and, of all things, the Jackfish ofCalifornia. Collating the N.E.D. with a standard work on nutrition Inext discovered that the frostfish boasts 81.5 per cent of water,17.1 per cent of protein, 0.4 per cent of fat, 1.0 per cent of ashand a fuel value of 328 calories per pound—a more thanrespectable showing, as respectability goes. True, the alewife, anAmerican fish closely allied to the herring and suspected of somesort of sinister affiliation with the shad, has a fuel value of 552calories to the pound. But where would I get an alewife?
I do not regard the Tomcod as just something more to eat; there'sthe spiritual side, too. The sight of a beachful of frostfishshimmering opalescently under the full moon of a November midnight,if there is such a thing, makes me think of parables, of pictures inthe Metropolitan, of poems yet unborn and of how I'd like to have adollar for each fish. Not everybody, it seems, is affected in thismanner. What shall we say of the lady at Long Beach who is alleged tohave bammed another lady over the head with a two-poundtomcodus when she—the second lady, or fishee—triedto take it away from her? I never heard the sequel, but I am far fromrecommending the frostfish as a weapon. It is too slippery, it laughsat form and it leaves clues. Moreover, it merely stuns; the victim islikely to revive and come back with a horseshoe crab or an octopus,and then where are you? Don't be greedy and quarrelsome. As youjourney through life share your fish with others, if theywillbutt in. Far better to gather only a bushel or two, sit down in thesand with your dreams and wait for Portygee Pete to come by on patroland carry them home. He doesn't know his own strength.
People sometimes ask me how I manage to keep my kitchen soimmaculate, so spick and span, so all that they seem to think akitchen ought to be. They gaze in positive unbelief at my row ofshining dippers, my spotless sink, my perfect pump with the pinkribbon on the handle. They come to scoff, like as not, and theyremain to applaud. Some of them get quite flattering.
How do I do it? Well, I don't, very often; only on those fairlyrare occasions when friends inclined to slumming make the arduoustrip from shore, or when the summer folk wade through the meadows andthe mosquitoes to take a look. If my dazzling kitchen bowls them overthey have only themselves to blame, as ten to one I didn't invitethem.
Careless of the great world's judgment as I try to be, I am notyet above putting up a good front when I practically have to do so.Some dormant respect for public opinion, some remnant of unhermiticalpride stirs within me when I hear that company is coming. And, sinceguests mostly enter my abode by the kitchen door, that is why I cleanthe place up when I find they are actually on the way and cannot bestopped by malicious animal magnetism or any other legal means that Ihave discovered. They come in by the kitchen, and first impressionsmean so much. Once they have looked upon my aluminum they go aboutthenceforth squelching the rumor—Lord knows how itstarted—that I live in a state of disorder bordering onfrenzy.
Now for the secret of my resplendent kitchen, my scintillantskillets, my dazzling dippers—it was bound to come out sometime, and it might as well be while I'm here to explain it all. Assoon as I learn through accredited channels that my guests areapproaching I race to the Coast Guard Station and commandeer such ofthe boys as are not reading the Blue Book or trying in other ways toincrease the efficiency of our federal government. Returning to myshack at top speed, we completely dismantle the kitchen, placing thecontents in an old blanket in the adjoining bedroom. An observermight well be astonished at the swiftness with which we accomplishthis bit of routine; sober second thought will assure the reader thatwhen three or four Coast Guards and an able-bodied hermit loose theirdestructive tendencies in an enclosed space measuring six by eightfeet, something is bound to give. We work rhythmically, to the swingof a Coast Guard chanty consisting of obsolete and deleted wordswhich we need not go into at present.
We now have a completely bare kitchen to deal with. Open flies thedoor under the sink, and up on the walls go the aforementionedsplendiferous utensils, kept for the occasion and as innocent of sootand the scars of this world as when they first came from Macy'sbasement. The more stunning of these objects are three graduatedaluminum dippers, three ditto frying pans and three assorted tinvessels with lids to match. Draped effectively about in attitudes ofstudied carelessness are the aluminum tea-egg and the coffeestrainer. There's one especially gorgeous item which may possibly bea combination slaw-cutter, button hook and picture frame, and thenagain it may be a spaghetti-stretcher or the young of a gyroscope.Nobody ever asks what it is. Nobody dares. But it is obvious at aglance that no home is complete without one and that the home withone is not, and never can be, quite like other homes. As a producerof awe and humility in the onlooker this gadget is reallymarvelous.
That is the way we produce our grand transformation scene, and Idare say that Belasco in his palmiest days never thought up a betterone. The effect upon the company seldom, if ever, varies. One andall, you could knock them over with the tea-egg. A popular societyleader of East Orange who is noted for her housekeeping, her husbandand her eyes exclaimed, "Why, they look like new!" "Uh-huh!" Ireturned, noncommittally. "Howdo you keep all that aluminumsoclean?" she inquired (the italics are hers), shifting herlorgnette momentarily from the dippers to me. I hope no one will betoo much shocked to learn that I murmured, "Brillo!" I didn't shoutit. I merely murmured it, without any verbs or gestures, and I stillcan't see the harm. Anybody is likely to murmur a word sometimeswithout meaning anything much, and, besides, Brillo would do it if Igave it the chance.
The question may arise of some larger, more inclusive hypocrisy inthe whole procedure. I do not regard my emergency kitchen as in theleast hypocritical. Certainly it is no worse than many of the otherthings one does in order to appear a little brighter and more shiningthan one really is. In arranging my kitchen for company inspection Iam merely putting my best pan forward, against my own æsthetictastes, simply to please others. Nobody maunders about hypocrisy whenyou decorate the ballroom with rubber plants and carnations. Is it acrime to decorate the kitchen with aluminum? Morally, I can face thething with a clear conscience. I show my guests what they want tosee, and I believe that is as firmly grounded in true kindness andsacrificial selflessness as is my practice of telling them what theywant to hear. It's only polite.
Assuming that the tourists leave after a few moments—andthey do—the scene is immediately struck. The Coast Guardshaving returned to their scientific studies, I dismantle the dreamkitchen, put back into their hiding place the glittering shams thathave served their little day, restore the battered tin and crackedagate ware to their familiar haunts, and begin the long, laborioussorting of the débris in my bedroom for traces of my articles,book reviews, memoranda, pencils and miscellaneous household effects.With luck, I can finish this job in one week. You may ask, "What ifthe guests remain for supper?" They don't.
Restored to its normal state, my kitchen, for reasons which itwould be useless to elaborate, even if I knew them, is not as otherkitchens. It is where I live, because it is where the stove and tableare. My other rooms are only for the overflow, such as wood and coal,food, clothing, books, silver, cut glass and linen, so to speak. Thekitchen is where I read, write, wash, iron, eat, worry about myinsurance premiums and generally have my being, such as it is. It isa place for beautiful thoughts, not for pots and pans. It is, inbrief, my workroom. As soon as I get to making more money I hope tocall it my sanctum sanctorum. If the money goes to my head I may callit my den, or even my studio. Just now it's only the kitchen.
And I feel that it's not at its loveliest when all puffed up withvain aluminum and pink ribbons. True beauty in a kitchen inheres notin a vulgar bedizenment which can at best but titillate the grossersenses; rather, in a temperate and practical adaptation of means toend. And the end I seek is to get through life with as little fussand feathers as I can, to shun extravagant and ostentatious neatnessso far as in me lies, to be able to move about from pump to table tostove without falling over all three, to avoid black starvationand—though it is too much to ask, life being what itis—to get a little work finished, or, at least, fairly started.You may not be able to eat off the floor of my kitchen, but who wantsto?
Let me add a word of advice to hermits who are planning kitchens.If you hope to get anywhere in hermiting, the first thing to avoid issuperfluity. Experience has taught me that among the thingsabsolutely inessential and never required in a bachelor kitchen arethe following: One set jelly cake tins, one skimmer, one woodenbutter ladle, one dozen patty pans, one dozen tartlet pans, oneramekin and one coarse gravy strainer. In my kitchen you would belucky to get any gravy at all, coarse or refined.
Glancing about me, I see that articles much more likely to proveuseful include: One large iron frying pan, one large dipper, one washbasin, one pair rubber boots, one oilskin outfit, one gallonkerosene, one large box Gold Dust, one package Uneeda Biscuits, onealleged shaving mirror, one table for literary works, one pack BullDurham and one can-opener. Small wooden boxes, such as the onesthrown overboard by passing ships, may be attached to the walls tohold hammers, nails, hacksaws, gimlets, hinges, fishhooks, paintbrushes, buttons, needles and thread, mousetraps, egg beaters and oldFord parts. If you have a patty pan through no fault of your own,forget it.
If we learn our most valuable lessons here below from horribleexamples, as some thinkers hold, I suppose I deserve a medal. I'vedone a lot of good that way, yet people don't seem to get that aspectof my housekeeping, and I'm not sure I do myself. Well, I hope theywill feel differently when on some lonely, windswept dune or 'neath aclump of bayberries in the swamp they come across my epitaph insuppliant capitals: "EXCUSIT PLEASE"—or I may just use thesimple English motto, "I'm Sorry." I really am, too, but it wasn't myfault. I couldn't help it. I meant it all for the best. Or did I?
Take sardines, now. In the ways of several seasons at Jones's I ambecome little better than a sardine addict, all because RattlesnakeNed, a neighboring hermit, rowed over from Goose Crick that fatefulFriday the Thirteenth to borrow my clam rake and a batch of sanitaryflour. Pulling three or four cans of his favorite fish from thepockets of his pea-coat without so much as predicting the weather, hewhisked off the covers with his patent dujingus, called for a coupleof chairs, some man-size onions and a hunk of bread, and the partywas on. In what followed I need hardly state that my all toosuggestible nature led me to take a prominent part.
Very probably it was never Rattlesnake Ned's intention todisarrange my whole notion of feeding so violently and so thoroughlyas he did on that occasion; but he did. Hitherto I had looked uponthe sardine as merehors-d'œuvres, a nuance, atantalizing hint of joys to come rather than a full six-coursedinner. I had not thought of it as something to take the place ofbeans and pancakes in my life, nor dreamed that it was fraught, asthe saying goes, with such potentialities for weal or woe, a finnydemon that might seize upon the imagination of a hermit in his celland do with him what it would. You never know!
I'm not blaming good old Ned, as fine a hermit as ever dug a clam;he'd give you his last cent if only he had it himself. I had reachedan age when the law held me responsible for my acts. I had no moreillusions than most of my kind. What I did that day was for thethrill I expected to get out of it—and, more's the pity, did.True, Ned encouraged me in my madness. There were sardine and onionorgies on the deserted shore of Great South Bay, and ichthyophagousrites up the beach, far from the prying eyes and nostrils ofrespectable citizens, where I proved an all too apt pupil. Shortly Ireached the point where I would as soon gulp down two cans of thelittle devils as look at them, and succeeding years have meant to me,more than I could wish to confess, just one sardine after another.They've got me, so why not say so? Aware as I am of the fascinationsof the insidious sardine, I hesitate to start my readers upon a roadthat may have no turning back. So fatally easy, once you fall, is thejump to the stack of sardines in the pantry—and here I ampractically urging you to take the leap! Unless you are very sure ofyourselves, pray regard this article as pure mathematics rather thanas household hints, or you may get thrown out of your bridge club.With an ordinary amount of caution, self-control and luck on yourpart, my recipe for the sardine and onion sandwich of Jones's Islandmay help you over more than one hungry moment in the kitchen; or, atleast, keep you out of such mischief as frying bananas or puttingsugar in the tomatoes. In broadcasting my recipe I shall try toavoid, so far as possible, the use of technical terms and the deadlanguages, the more certainly to bring my message home to the greatmasses of our American house-keepers. Go forth, little sandwich!There's plenty more where you came from.
First, obtain in some honorable manner a loaf of bread, preferablyof the white persuasion—forget your mineral salts for a minute,will you?—and dissect out two sizable slices. Butter withbutter or its equivalent and let stand for a moment. Next overpower,peel, draw, quarter and hamstring one large, ferocious onion, and useit as a thick veneer over one of the slices of bread the instant it(the onion) has reached a state of comparative coma; and don't botherto peel the onion under water, as the cook book advises, unless youlive in the Hippodrome; leave that sort of thing to AnnetteKellerman. Keep your head, salt, and as you were. So far we have thehumble onion sandwich of commerce and Second Avenue, to be used hereas a mere substructure for some modern engineering.
EnterClupea pilchardus, orClupea harengus, as theycall them up in Maine, but don't let that scare you; after all,sardines belong to the herrings, Latin or no Latin. Drape them in anymanner your fancy may suggest upon their luscious couch of onion, asclose together as you may wish. Me, I feel that they have been socribbed and cabined up to now that they should repose in comfort, sayabout twelve to a slice. Then lay on a heavy cement of Teutonicmustard, add slices of pickle, put on the roof and repeatadlib.
That is my regulation model, but I am willing to go further. Inreckless mood I often add bits of bacon, a cold pork chop, what cameout of the stew and half a tomato to the confection, though there isseldom room for all these if I have already included cauliflower inmustard—that prince of pickles!—instead of theconventional dill. Unless you go in for disorderly conduct, beginnerswill do well to stick to the standard model, leaving the skyscrapertype to veteran connoisseurs and boa constrictors. Try it, folks! Youwill find that the surface simplicity of this sandwich is out of allproportion to its total displacement, mean average horsepower andfar-reaching after effects. It stays by you, I'll say that much.Devil-may-care callers who have tackled one or more of them on whatthey supposed was an equal footing have departed, if able, with a newrespect for the machinery inside of allegedly decrepit hermits. Theone who threatened to notify the Health Department—well, deadmen tell no tales.
Yes, it has come to this; and the awful part is, I like it. Ishall not go so far as to say that I have swapped modern civilizationfor a mess of sardines and onions, yet, in a way, my sandwich hasmore than a little symbolic value in my life. It is the fragrant flagof my freedom. As I was saying to Ned, if I could afford acoat-of-arms, or whatever they are, I should probably choose asardine rampant with sinister onions on a field of cauliflower; andNed said make it the same for him, but throw in some fried eels, asteak, a dime's worth of good, strong Java and a cartoon ofsmokes.
The onion part of this discourse may pain some gentle souls whom Iwouldn't distress for worlds. There seem to be people who hold withonions and people who do not, and we of the true faith can do nothingabout the abstainers but watch and wait, hoping that they will seethe light. Some pretty hard things have been said about onions,although they belong to the lily family and their name derives fromthe Latin word meaning pearl of great price. According to Diodorus,Pliny and Strabo, they were highly popular among the AncientEgyptians. They're grand for insomnia, too, but the catch is thatthey're likely to keep the other lodgers awake; how the Egyptians gotaroundthat I don't know, unless they both ate them. I do knowthat persons who refuse onions are often up to no good.
Just what certain portions of the American public have againstsardines is more of a problem; maybe it was the onions that riledthem. Anyway, when I recently mentioned my sandwich in a book reviewwithout explaining how delicious it really is, I was showered, notwith thanks, not with rich gifts and wreaths of flowers, but withcontempt and obloquy. I received a boatload of letters full ofdefamatory epithets, veiled insults, threats of bodily injury,miscellaneous vilification and cheap humor, all of which material isnow in the hands of my lawyer. I shan't have any of these peoplearrested, but I intend to scare them, and serve them right. I hadhoped to awaken a wholesome and healthful interest in something veryclose to my stomach, by no means to cause a national uprisingresembling in some respects the worst days of the French Revolution.I had supposed that in this great country, for which our forefathersfought and fell, there was still room for a calm, dispassionatesalute to the sardine. I wonder!
My secretaries and I have succeeded in dividing my detractors intothree characteristic groups, always active at the birth of greatinventions and iconoclastic ideas. The first, consisting largely ofpeople who know what they like, charges that the sardine and onionsandwich of Jones's Island is a tissue of barefaced lies from startto finish, wholly without precedent and inimical to the bestinterests of the home. The most unreasonable member of this groupsays there is too much sex in sardines, when we all know there isn'tnearly enough. Such ravings as these are too ridiculous to answer. Ishrug and pass on.
Next come some disgruntled and embittered highbrows who say thereis nothing new in it at all. One housewife signing herself "Beware"states that my sandwich was a staple article of diet in Ur of theChaldees, was a well known food among the lower classes of the lostcontinent of Atlantis and figures to-day at every state banquet ofthe Ipi-Ipi tribe in Central Africa. "Furious" writes that the fossilremains of a sardine and onion sandwich, even to the cauliflowerpickle, were discovered in Java beside the jaw-bone ofPithecanthropus erectus, the famous ape-man, and now rest in aglass case at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A visit to theinstitution failed to corroborate this report.
More difficult to cope with are those, mostly cranks and fanatics,inventors of perpetual motion machines, squarers of the circle and soon, who admit that my sandwich might go far if it were completelychanged according to enclosed plans and specifications. "Pro Bono"strongly advises the substitution of apple jelly for the onions and afried egg for the sardines. "Brown Eyes" suggests that I stuff mysardines with raisins, spinach, chestnuts, truffles and prunes, andother recipes were just as bad. What is the history, what will be thefate, of a mind capable of conceiving sardine dumplings? What of sucha person's family, friends and neighbors? I am almost tempted to tell"Mrs. X.Y.Z.," who recommends a cocktail composed of equal parts ofgin, vermouth and sardine juice, with a dash of bitters, that ourpenitentiaries and homes for the feeble-minded are full ofhousekeepers who have let their thoughts run upon things not half somonstrous. To reflect upon such recipes as these is to gaze into theabyss and darned near to fall in. No good can come of these obviousdistortions of fact, these triflings with fundamental logic, thisutter lack of respect for what is fitting and proper. (Don't let melose track of you, "Brown Eyes.")
Moreover, the lady who wrote that my sandwich is already in thecook book is wrong. There are plenty of recipes for sardinesandwiches, but they all begin, "Skin the animal, pound the remainderto an unrecognizable pulp, add lemon juice and call it somethingelse." That's not my sandwich. Nothing distresses me like seeingsardines gas-piped, tortured, mutilated and put through meat-choppersas though they were but senseless gobbets of cat-meat. I know ofchefs who have wasted the best years of their lives trying tomake a sardine look and taste like a candied violet. All one can sayof them is that their idiosyncrasy may have kept them frommaltreating some other poor fish. I see no immediate danger in thispsychosis and would not seek to stop it unless the patient becomesunmanageable. Nor do I wish to interfere with the pleasure of thosehousewives who glorify our hero with all the trappings of romance,such as bouquets, pink icing, ostrich plumes and electric lights. Itmay be different in the city, but out here the sardines themselvesdon't expect it. To me such goings-on indicate a totalmisunderstanding of the nature of the infant herring.
For they are but infants, if not in actual age, as the herringflies, at least in comparison with great, hulking us. My heart goesout with something akin to pity as I behold a flock of them in theirtin kimono, poised, it might almost be, for a sportive gambol intheir native element. You get the same effect when they are gentlyplaced upon their slices of cool and iridescent onion. There theylie, bless their hearts, shining like so many brilliant butterflies,ensorceled untimely into frozen immobility, a picture by a masterhand. Where are the eyes of our painters that they can rush from sucha sight in search of the nearest stray sheep or cow? Why must everystill-life consist of a pitcher, a banana and a deceased quail? Whynot sardines for a change?
I shall be fully repaid for an afternoon of creative agony if Ishall have contributed in however small a degree to the revival ofthe sardine. Too often it is looked down upon by fish who haven't afraction of its charm and brains. Imagine a Long Islandfluke—the dumb thing!—high-hatting a can ofClupeapilchardus. People are prone to pass it by with the thoughtlessremark, "Oh, it's only a sardine!" To-day it is but a modest,hard-working, unassuming little creature, the butt of unfeeling jokesand the plaything of destiny. To-morrow—who can say?Personally, I consider the sardine the fish of the future. Alreadythere are signs and portents. I see by my almanac for 1912 that therewere in that year fifty-five sardine factories operating along thecoast of Maine alone, the total annual output being between125,000,000 and 200,000,000 cans. That's the spirit! Let the goodwork go on, until there are plenty for every growing girl and boy inthis land!
In closing, I would disabuse my readers of any lingering suspicionthat the sardine is a lowborn, illiterate or otherwise sociallyundesirable fish. You may be surprised to learn that it is namedafter Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean Sea measuring 164 by61 miles and containing a population of 9,308 when my reference booklast heard. In the original Greek a sardine sounds exactly like aquotation from Homer. The peripatetic philosophers ofantiquity—perhaps Aristotle himself—held it in muchesteem as an aid to high-pressure cerebration, while legendattributes much of the oratorical skill of the great Demosthenes tohis habit of holding a couple of sardines in his mouth whilepracticing.
Yet it is not for its glorious past, not for the glamour of thenoble line from which it sprang, that I sing the sardine. I am nosnobbish climber of that sort. Pomp and circumstance have nothing todo with my friendships. I take a fish as I find it, and I've neverbeen fooled yet. Well, hardly ever!
I may have mentioned that my cooking is not so hot. A great dealof my intake is raw or already prepared for the human pantry by themanufacturer, so that I have found it unnecessary to do muchstove-work. My usual course is simply to buy or borrow the food, andeat it; warming it up or not depends largely upon the weather, theamount of time I have to spare, my idea of what is important in lifeat the moment and previous condition of servitude. I find that mostthings can be managed without all this stewing, boiling and fryingthat goes on in so many homes—hard, unyielding substances canbe soaked to advantage before chewing.
I suppose what I do is plain cooking. I really have no culinarysecrets to pass on, not what you would call culinary (pertaining tothe culinary art), unless it's the little first aid rule I happenedto discover by chance and couldn't do without: When you smell itburning, it's done. That is why I offer herewith none of my ownkitchen inventions, but some recipes kindly provided, after muchcoaxing, by the crew of the Zachs Inlet Coast Guard Station, visitingclammers and miscellaneous inhabitants of Great South Bay and theopen spaces thereabouts and appertaining. These recipes may explainwhy Coast Guards can tie a half-hitch or merely why there is alwaysgood eating and plenty of it at government stations and such; and theboys better not get sore about it, either, for they agreed for thegood of the service.
Fire Island Hoorah!—This virile dish, as described by aconstant user, may account for not a few of the brilliant feats ofseamanship out where the liners run aground every so often. Sliceyour salt pork, cut fine in small giblets, fry it out. Slice yourpotatoes, either fine or in eight pieces. Slice your onions. Cookyour potatoes ten minutes. Add your onions and cook twenty minutes.Then if you want pastry, or what we call slippery slats, in it, addyour slippery slats and cook ten minutes more. These slippery slatsare biscuit dough. Forty minutes all told. Add corned beef if youwant it. Ye scribe, who always becomes flustered and all mixed up atthe first word of a recipe, begged for further details, but PortygeePete insisted that any one who wouldn't understand the thing as itstood would never understand it if he explained all day.
Skimmer Chowder.—First catch your skimmers. These are largesea clams that come up on the surf in coolish weather. They must begathered in the early morning before the gulls get up or at nightwhile the gulls are out somewhere. Use the heart and the eyes (anypassing beachite will explain this). Grind in chopper. Warm yourkettle and put in finely chopped salt pork until fried out. Addchopped onions, get them brown, and if you want a gallon of chowderadd about five potatoes or so and cook until these are done. Add yourskimmers (forty or fifty) and boil fifteen or twenty minutes. Addlarge can of tomatoes and cook as long as you want to, as it getsbetter and better. Then knock off work and call it a day. The factthat skimmer chowder appears to involve moving to the seashore andstaying up all night to obtain the major premise need not deter thechowder addict. It's worth it.
Condensed Milk Sandwiches.—You almost have to be a hermit ora Coast Guard to have these, unless you can go to a wreck in ablizzard, miss a couple of meals and find the ingredients in thepartially submerged galley of the sinking ship. Just slice the bread,open the can of condensed milk with a rusty nail, combine and thankyour lucky stars. Toasted, five cents extra. Whoever sneers at thisdelicious concoction has never frozen three toes while engaged in athrilling rescue at sea, as Pete did and was, and I got pretty coldwatching it all. I may add that in the Argentine they do much thesame thing in their sober senses, only they take two days to it andcall itdulce de leche—and it isn't half as good. Thirtymillion sandwiches are consumed daily in this country, and I see noreason why they must all contain apple sauce, nasturtiums, gooselivers, prunes and shredded pineapple. Pete thought condensed milksandwiches too humble to mention, but I say credit where credit isdue. Still, there's nothing like a ham on rye.
Poor Man's Duff.—Take six cups flour, four teaspoons bakingpowder, pinch of salt, and sift all together. Mix one cup molassesand one cup hot water and pour into the sifted flour, stir to a thickpaste, add enough cold water to thin the paste a little. Grease panwith butter and pour in the batter. Bake forty minutes—youought to put a dash of butter into the batter, too. You can steamthis in a duff pan if you can get one—two or three hours; ifso, better add some suet and raisins and maybe some ground nutmeg.Swell. This is fine for keeping hermits good-natured, if it isn't allgone by that time. When you come on Comanche wangling one of thesepones you may well guess that he has the last West patrol and thatthe tide is raising all Hades and all the flashlight batteries havebeen dead for two weeks. It sort of makes life worth living.
Lima Bean Treat.—Throw one pound of lima beans into a kettleof water, add about a quarter of a pound of salt pork, salt to taste,and cook about three hours. Then put them into a pan or baking dish,add about two tablespoons of molasses and plenty of water, placestrips of bacon over the beans and bake another hour. If some highercritic says they're not done yet, grin—there's always asuspicion in government mess-rooms that somebody forgot to put on thebeans until just before dinner. Lima bean treat provides a welcomevariant of the most persistent motif in beach cookery. It gives yousomething out of the ordinary, without encouraging a dangeroustendency towards rare and exotic foods. It's a novelty, yet at thesame time it's not beefsteak smothered in mushrooms. Don't we knowit?
Able Seaman Custard.—Take eight eggs. Beat up. Put in yourmilk and water. Stir it up. Put in pan. If you make it out ofcondensed milk, you put in only one tablespoon sugar; if not, usemore. Take it out as soon as it gets thick. If you don't take it outthen, it goes to water. You can put flavoring in, too, but if you do,it's liable to go to water. This makes about half a gallon. Thisverbatim recipe by one who has actually done it for years is not tobe sneezed at. All that about going to water if you flavor it soundsextremely odd, but who knows? Why have it at all if it isn'tflavored? I get the feeling that in this custard perfection of formhas been achieved at the expense of soul. What I say is, let it go towater; at least you have the vanilla. If you're willing to eatunflavored custard for fear of a little water, why not just forget itand eat something else altogether, such as pickled pigs' feet ortomato soup? The catch in this recipe is that I have eaten it and itwas grand.
Cape Hatteras Pie.—The custard problem at Jones's Island wasrecently thrown into the wildest confusion by a pie, if such it maybe called, baked by Shanghai, a normal youth of twenty-one with nopathological history and only one deck court against hisrecord—for an error in conduct having nothing whatever to dowith pies. The main point wherein this custard pie differed from allother custard pies ever observed on this stretch of the Atlanticseaboard by the most experienced pie-observers, was that the crust,which Shanghai swears he last saw in the conventional place in thebottom of the pan, finished on top and half an inch thick at that;and what with the custard going to water, it had to be handled, if atall, as a spoon food. It is probably not worth while trying to solvethe mystery whether Exhibit A resulted from improper manipulation ofthe ingredients at birth, a faulty conception of oven temperatures,or both, with complications. Shanghai is hazy about the details, ashe was taking care of the horse at the time, and couldn't give thepie his full attention. Anyway, he was never meant for achef,and only tried it because he had tired for the nonce of climbing theflagpole, jumping off the barn, putting the fifty-pound weight andwalking on his hands. He's not the pie-making type. The worst of itis, Shang says he got this creepy item out of my own cook book. Henever! I have no pie recipes calling for gunpowder, cylinder oil,blue paint and a traveling crust.
Zachs Inlet Bread Pudding.—First you get about eight or nineslices of bread, see? Just regular white bread, maybe stale, and youbreak that up into small pieces, put in a baking dish and pour abouttwo cups of milk over it. Then you get another dish and break up fiveeggs and put in a cup of sugar and a tablespoon of vanilla and beatit all up together. Then you put eight cups of milk in with that andstir it all up together and pour it all over the bread and milk inthe baking dish, see? Sprinkle a little cinnamon over it and put inthe oven with a hot fire for about thirty minutes. Then you let itcool, and it's done. This will do for a crew of about eight men. Theskipper likes it, and he ought to know. This could probably be eatenhot, but the boys seem to want it cold, as it was cold the firsttime. See? Sure, you could pour on some kind of dip when you eat it,but what's the use? This is a very popular dessert at Jones's Island,and all the Anti-Bread Pudding Leagues on earth can't stop us.
Hog Island Potatoes.—Under this somewhatoutrétitle lurks nothing more astonishing than half a peck of friedpotatoes. But what fried potatoes! The outstanding feature of thisrecipe is that you needn't worry about the temperature of thegrease—there's a deal of superstition in all this scientifictalk of having the grease smoking or not smoking, whichever it is,before you hop off. Just fill the bottom of a gigantic skillet withlarge lumps of shortening, wait until this is partly melted and addyour heap of sliced boiled or raw spuds. Prod from time to time;don't stir too violently, or you'll be recovering most of your mealfrom the stove and the floor. Pretty soon they're done. If you neverate these, you don't know you're living. Giving the grease and thetubers an even start seems to add a certain staying power to thedish, and I am convinced that the extra nourishment obtained in thisway is of economic importance, so much of the Crisco soaks in.Anyway, Hog Island potatoes are guaranteed to warm your gizzard as itwill never be warmed by a portion of effete French fried, especiallyif you garnish with ketchup. We cook plenty, our ideal being a slightsuperfluity rather than the elegant insufficiency you mostly getashore. If some of my readers prefer to think that the charm of HogIsland fried is due to certain inborn characteristics of the potatorather than to the sheer culinary skill of the Zachs Inlet boys, welland good. It's pretty hard to ruin a potato, I must admit—ithas so darned much sense. By the way, what's become of potatosoup?
Codfish Chincoteague.—All writers on piscatology areexpected to mention the fact that the great Vatel,maîtred'hôtel to the Prince de Condé, committed suicidebecause the fish did not arrive in time to serve it to Louis XIV.Consider it mentioned. We don't have that kind of fish here, and ifLouis XIV ever came to Jones's expecting more than his share, he'dprobably hear some home truths that would do him no harm. I mighteven go so far as to repeat the old saw, "The Bourbons have learnednothing and forgotten everything." My directions for codfishChincoteague are rather vague, as Pete was in a hurry, but readbetween the lines. If you find a big codfish on the beach, and itsgills are red, it's a good one. Lug it home, cook some potatoes untilnearly done, boil the fish in another pot until ditto and unite thetwo, adding onions, carrots and rutabagas. The net result is a prettykettle of fish, one I wouldn't trade for two of those tunny omelettesthat Brillat-Savarin made such a fuss about. Codfish Chincoteague isreally a dish fit for a king, at least one of the smaller kings;anyway, it goes great with bos'n's mates, and even with warrantofficers.
Roast Duck.—Rattlesnake Ned says you clean your black duckand put him in a pot of water with pepper and salt and parboil himuntil he begins to get tender—about an hour. Then take him outand put him in a pan with a little water, pepper and salt, stuffed orunstuffed, stick him in the oven for two hours, adding a little waterfrom time to time to keep him from scorching. You can stuff him withoysters, onions and potatoes if you want to. But Ned says the bestway to cook a duck is to stew him. The first thing you do is cut himup in small pieces and put him in a pot half full of water withpotatoes and turnips and let him cook until you have a thick gravy,and if you're smart enough you add biscuit dough for dumplings. Thestew is fine, but somehow I run to roast ducks, which I eat at thestation in season. I love ducks, but by the time I prepare one forroasting, the first wild desire to eat the bird has passed forever.It takes the romance all out of the duck. Besides, ducks have toomany feathers. Chickens have enough, but ducks! Figure two roastducks to a man.
These few recipes ought to start the beginner on the right road. Ionly wish I could remember how Buttercup fixed Minnie the Muskrat thetime that Uncle John ate her, thinking she was stewed rabbit. Ishould like to publish Harvey's biscuit directions, but he's left theservice and is probably making some woman a grand cook. More fragrantmemories arise of the superb slumgullion created by Rockaway Red outof the less said the better, and God knows where he is now. I havenot tested these recipes in any germ-proof laboratory, nor countedtheir calories and vertebræ by the latest standards, but I cantestify that I have weathered many a storm, many a cruel blow offate, by consuming them in carloads in their native haunts. The menwho have eaten them for years in quantities which by every rule ofcubic contents should prove fatal, are alive and well. I can assureyou that instead of going to hospitals and morgues in perfect droves,they keep right on rowing out to wrecks and taking sick dietitiansashore to the doctor. It may be the sea air.
What I say is, take a chance. Try some of these on your friendsand enemies. Real for-sure cooking calls for nerve, the kind of nervethat drove our hardy forefathers across a continent in search ofgold, that freed us from the tyrant's yoke, that buoyed upChristopher Columbus and Genghis Khan and Maria Theresa and CarrieNation and all that sort of thing. I only hope I have not balled upthe contents too much. It is surprising what a difference leaving outtwo or three essential ingredients will make in something to eat;it's even worse than putting in four or five wrong ones. Here'shoping!
I am constantly reminded by articles in the old newspapers andmagazines left at Jones's by duck hunters and such that theInartistic Home is one of the crying evils of the times. Now what,exactly, do these writers mean by this concerted attack upon sovenerable an institution? Reluctantly and with a heavy heart I amforced to conclude that they mean me. In fact, a good ninetenths ofthe contemporary movements for state, federal, mental, moral andunclassified reform seem to be aimed directly at your humble hermit.How about it? I was going to write a rather refined essay on theBungalow Beautiful before I realized, at the last moment, that Imyself was probably one of the main obstacles to the progress of thehome in this country. I blush to admit that I then thought ofdeceiving the public. I was all ready to describe the interior of myshack as though it were the real, original corner stone of theAmerican Renaissance, simply bursting with Old Masters, expensivechenille hangings, bibelots and all that—if I have anyincunabula, it's not intentional and they must have been brought bysome visitor (Memo: Look up incunabula; they may not be what Ithink). I was about to begin, "The outside of my shack is not sogood, but once you step inside, ah!"
Well, all that is out. After wrestling with the demon oftemptation all one morning and consulting several standardauthorities in the afternoon I had to confess that my qualificationsand possessions entitled me to write nothing more stuck-up than apiece on the House Horrible or words to that effect. It is my firmintention to do better from now on. Meanwhile, in what follows, I begthe patient customer to read between the lines a sincere sorrow formy past, apologies for the present and glowing prophecies of the dawnof a new day for interior decorating on Jones's Island. It will taketime to change the whole nature of a bungalow that has grown upwithout the faintest notion that it was breaking the heart ofProfessor Santayana and other experts on æsthetic theory, but Ibelieve it can be done—though it may not come in our day. I amcheered onward by the words of a famous consultant who once declared,"There never was a house so frightful that it could not be made overby the exercise of time, money, brains, patience and luck intosomething considerably less hideous." That's the spirit!
Not that I was in complete ignorance of the vast and splendidliterature of the subject. The trouble seems to be that the books onhome furnishing never apply very well to the place where I happen tobe living at the time, if I may except that useful work, "Hints andDon'ts for Decorators." What would be right and fitting for the HotelRambouillet or Madame de Pompadour's boudoir at Versailles mightappear affected, bizarre or actually effete at Jones's Island. Peoplewould talk. They might act. Lately I've been trying to straighten upthe place, but I wonder how the net results would strike, say, Elsiede Wolfe, whose excellent volume is on my shelves. Just between youand me, I doubt if she would be greatly shocked. She'd be sure tofind me a good excuse under suitability, adaptation to environment,habeas corpus or some such thing. The blow seems to fallhardest upon those who were brought up in a barn. There, I hope thatwill stop a few of the sarcastic remarks!
I never said that my house looked like Tiffany's window, but I domaintain that it is homey. When I gaze upon the scene in my livingroom I feel most poignantly the full force of the old saying thatthere is no place like home. You can tell it has been lived in, andit takes a heap o' livin' to make a house look the way mine does. Analleged humorist once countered this favorite observation of minewith the crack, "Yes, it looks as though it had been lived in by theWild Man of Borneo." I had to laugh at that myself, but the fellowdidn't get far if he was trying to draw me out about my early days. Isimply took him by the ear and led him to a newspaper clippingshowing that Silvester Hendershot, the original Wild Man of Borneo,recently passed away in his home town, Plattesville, Wisconsin, atthe age of eighty-two, proving that I could not possibly be the sameperson. Some confusion exists on this point because Silvester livedin a shack, seldom shaved, had been quite a dude in his youth, took adrink now and then, once helped a man to sell fish and died in thepoorhouse. Why, I never even met Al Ringling.
Perhaps a few words on my living room, modest as it is, will bewelcomed by those who are planning to spend the summer at theseashore. My dear old living room! It is here the family would gatheron chilly evenings (in case they had nowhere else to go) beside thegreat open fireplace, if I had a family and believed in open fires inbungalows. As one who has fought several beach conflagrations justbecause some sentimental souls love to conjure pretty pictures in theflames and watch the varicolored sparks from the driftwood set thingsafire, I confine my sparks to the kitchen range, where they belong,and advise others to do likewise. I do my plain and fancy conjuringwith the assistance of a cast-iron stove, and have had no complaints.I believe the fires I mentioned started outdoors, but the principleremains. Furthermore, I wish to make public announcement, in responseto practically continuous inquiries, that the reason I have no greatopen fireplace in my living room is that I do not want one. Is thatplain enough?
Entering this main room, then, directly from the kitchen, myguests seldom fail to register strong emotion. I much prefer hearty,ringing laughter to the hollow groans a few of the critics feelcalled upon to emit. The extremely low wooden ceiling gives a few ofthese sensitive souls a painful premonition of impending doom,somewhat as if they had been struck on the dome with a heavy, bluntinstrument, and doubtless the impression of being picked on fromabove is intensified if something heavy falls on them from theshelves which peep coyly out atop the lintel. Perhaps I ought to asksomebody what kind of paint would give the effect of height to thisroom, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work. When a ceiling practicallyhits you on the head it seems a feeble joke to strive for an illusionof height with mere color. Supposing I painted it a light ceruleanhue, as has been suggested, you would only feel that the sky hadfallen on you. Personally, I admire the natural wooden walls andceiling. They remind me of the old Georgian paneled libraries in J.S. Fletcher's detective stories, but others get the feeling that theyare hopelessly imprisoned in a large drygoods box. I had quite a bitof trouble with the first few claustrophobes who entered thisenclosed space; it took hours of psycho-analysis and the threat of nosupper to bring them around.
You will note that I have avoided the term "drawing room," but theapartment may be so designated on state occasions, as when an editoror a rich relation hits the beach. It may serve as well as a parlor,plain salon, or even saloon. Observed in its hours of ease, it isbest thought of as a combination gymnasium, prize ring, tannery formusk-rats and minks, fish market, delicatessen and jumble sale. Ifyou prefer to call it just a place to throw things into, see if Icare.
I advise hermits and other beachites to struggle desperatelyagainst overcrowding in their living rooms. Mine is a trifle too fullfor a place that was much too small to begin with. Such permanentfeatures as the large ship's table that floated in one stormy night,the kerosene cooker that I got from Perc Arnold, the huge Elizabethansea-chest that Harvey made me to keep my sheet in (Memo: Get anothersheet, in case—it's simply ridiculous to have only one sheet),the tool chest, spare stove, china closet, wood pile, clothesline,book shelves, wash tubs and chairs, not to mention the smaller loosefurniture, take up more mileage than can be spared, and rather huddlethe foreground from any point of view. I've had to give up allthought of adding a day bed, chaise-longue, sofa and hatrack.
Mental torture and physical injury are bound to result from such aclutter. My ideal is so different, too. Where simple dignity and OldWorld spaciousness are the desiderata, I am forced to navigate amongmy treasures with an electric torch and a cane even in broaddaylight. Yes, the problem that confronts the hermit of to-day is howto achieve a classically serene interior, keep the kindling in out ofthe rain and give shelter to the tons of impedimenta needed for thefour seasons. The clothing alone essential to the first-class, up andcoming hermit, exclusive of town wear, is roughly the equivalent ofthat required for five trips to Europe. Naturally, the general effectof my living room is more Gothic than Greek and more Hester Streetthan either. On a busy day it looks more than I could wish like theyoung of a couple of pushcarts.
I don't worry much about the dogma that too much furniture swampsthe owner, all I ask is to get around without breaking my neck. Ican't see that it matters whether it's the furniture that swamps you,or something else. Nor do I care whether or not certain pieces offurniture tend unduly to dominate the personality of the owner; whatI say is, if the furniture has the more striking individuality, letit go ahead and dominate—that's life.
I have possessed but one really important piece of furniture, andnow that, too, has vanished. I was awfully fond of my piano, but ithad to go during the blizzards of '26, when I had run out of fuel. Inthat grim hour I was forced to choose between art and immediatefreezing, and I left art flat. I decided to live on and try to helpothers, if I ever found any one worse off than myself. For the pianoit was a noble end. It had seen everything, contributing in fullestmeasure to the joy and gloom of existence, first as an eager, rompingaspirant in vaudeville, then in a worthy Long Island family, later asa main attraction at Savage's Dance Casino and finally in thatsinister port of missing pianos, a hermit's lowly cot. Anyway, mostof its strings had snapped in the sea air, all of the keys stuck butthree and it had never been the same since the field mice moved intoit. But I'm all out of practice. I will not say, like Paderewski orsomebody, that missing a single day's practice fatally flaws mytechnique, but three or four years does certainly cramp one's style.I believe my touch is not entirely ruined. My chromatic scale isstill a marvel of its kind, on a straightaway I am as loud as ever,but my arpeggios are not what they were. And my grace notes!
So now I can put my two chairs where the piano was. When I havemore than one guest the house is sold out. The chairs represent noparticular period, as I am no slave to that sort of thing, myinvariable rule being to take whatever is offered and no questionsasked. In that way I have worked up in the summer colony quite a nicelittle opposition to the Salvation Army; going in for periods wouldcomplicate things a lot. That's why my house seems a little weak onSheratons, Duncan Phyfes, and Louis Quatorze, whatever they are, andlong on Early Jones's, Tenth Avenue and Mid-Flatbush. Some day Ishall have a roomy, upholstered Queen Wilhelmina chair and otherevidences of altered fortunes: a Chippendale here, a Hepplewhitethere, with perhaps a few priceless bits of Cinque Cento, William andMary, Will and Isabel, and so on. Just at present I comfort myselfwith the reflection that somewhere, sometime, there may have been aperiod that looked like my house. There must have been. If therewasn't, there is now.
Anyway, no one can say that in furnishing my shack I have beenmotivated by the vulgar desire to impress people with my wealth andsocial prominence. Such things as I have I just scatter about in amanner that strikes me as sort of Baroque without being Rococo; thatSmart Aleck said it reminded him of the fashion in Rome just beforeit fell. As for antiques, I am a skeptic. I might get an old Spanishtriptych, just for the fun of it, but would I know where to stop?When I read in a recent novel of a Gothic side-chair with volutedears, cabriole legs, carved knees and ball-and-claw feet, I couldonly ask myself: Whither are we drifting? I can understand livingwith voluted ears, and carved knees are all right in their place. Onemight, or might not, get used to ball-and-claw feet. But there hasnever been a cabriole leg in my house, and, God willing, there neverwill be.
In my own home and in those of the friends whom I sometimes adviseon art, I am inclined to a kind of informal conventionality in mymanagement of background, balance, abstract design, boule work,calcimine, Chinoiserie, egg-and-darts, dadoes, gros pointe, galloons,light, shade, movement, portieres, ruffles and love-seats. I can bedaring in these matters, but I prefer the cautious, pseudo-accidentalapproach—it gets you more in the long run. Or maybe I just letnature take its course. Harking back to periods, my six biscuit boxeswith their glass covers and their red and green paper jacketsrepresent modern progress, as does my emergency shelf of gaylycaparisoned tin cans; over against these sensational accents thedecrepit, rusty gas-heater speaks in no uncertain terms of the richheritage of the past. I don't go in much for mirrors, having only theone over the kitchen sink for shaving purposes—a single, chasteexpanse of waves-of-ocean glass, and I can't standthat muchlonger, as I've told everybody these last five years and more. Isuppose I could wangle some grand spots of color if I joined the MakeYour Own Lampshades movement, but somehow I don't. Or I could seeabout some more paint. The trouble is, when you're using remnants ofgift paint on things that other people have thrown out for a verygood reason, you get kind of discouraged about art.
Throughout my home I have been very sparing in my use of chintzes;indeed, of all drapes, throws, spreads, doilies, antimacassars andlace and other curtains. My only exhibits of that kind are my twobeloved felt lambrequins with the tinsel birds, my pair of pillowshams embroidered in a Medusa-like pattern of writhing serpents andthe remains of a luncheon set neatly stamped with a frieze of poisonivy. I mean to do something with the piece of rare old chintz orpercale I found in the attic, but I always lose my nerve. It is avery artistic chintz in red and brown tones, apparently illustratinga plague of scorpions in the mating season. Another quaint greenishscrap seems to be the seven-year locusts alighting on a field ofspinach or the defeat of the Armada. I guess I'll save them tillChristmas.
Doubtless I should add a word on myobjets d'art. I amquite devoted to the knickknacks I have picked up along the oceanfront, such as bottles, boxes, baskets, toys and miscellaneouswhittled items. I like to think that they have floated through theSeven Seas straight to my little shack, and I always take it amisswhen people tell me that these prized souvenirs have obviously comeoff the municipal garbage scows. My walls are too full of oldovercoats to permit of anything like a representative collection ofRembrandts. I have hung a few quietly garish Christmas cards, aframed photograph of the Aquitania, and a vigorous still-life of someof Mr. Burpee's sweet peas. That's about all; and don't let any onetell you that I have a stuffed fish.
Some of the faithful may be moved to ask whether, after all, myhouse has meaning. Who knows? I have never sought to pry into itssecret. If it has one, I consider it none of my business. Does myliving room, as one curious theorist inquired, expressme? Isincerely hope not, but I'll think it over some day when I'm feelingmuch, much stronger and more optimistic. Some say that a man isjudged by his lambrequins, but I'm not so sure. It all dependswhether we are what we are—and there are some very glibarguments in favor of that position—or what we want to be.Well, I certainly want to rid up the shack. And, so help me, I'll doit yet. Still, it does seem as though we are what we are! I wish Ihadn't mentioned that.
As the chief object of my house and its contents is to help mewrite book reviews and sundry away from the maddening superfluitiesand confusion of modern city conditions, you may wonder where Iperform my typewriting prodigies in the midst of the phantasmagoricalmess that is my dwelling. The answer is, wherever I can temporarilyclear off a square foot of space among the millions of things I havelugged out here from New York to simplify my life with. Mostly on thekitchen table, between the soup, the clams, yesterday's dishes, abucket of laundry and nervous prostration.
Five million housewives—or is it ten?—are asking everymorning, as regular as clockwork, "What shall we have for breakfast?"Of course, I don't really believe it any more than you do, but that'swhat I saw in an ad. All history goes to prove that many of theseladies would be asking other things at the time: do they look likeslaves? is this Russia? what did they ever see in you, anyway? andwhy don't you get up and get your own breakfast, you great big lazyloafer? Some would not be speaking to the family at all, and otherswouldn't be home yet.
The fact remains that if only four and five-tenths housewives (Godbless 'em!) are wondering what to have for breakfast, steps should betaken. You can't expect them all to eat Dusto; and if they did, theirmatutinal riddle would remain unsolved. Dusto is all right in itsway, it's a welcome change from Gritto, but it hasn't brought themillennium.
It seems a little strange to a certain bachelor that the husbandsof all these housewives, with their (the husbands') more impressivecranial measurements, have not done something to answer or otherwisesilence this eternal query. If I were married to a housewife whoasked me each dewy morn, as I was trying to get a wink of sleep,"What shall we have for breakfast?" I would simply reply "What haveyou got?" or "Anything you want, dear!" If she kept it up I shouldadd, "Look in the pantry, darling, and act accordingly, and you maybe sure that whatever you bring me on my tray will be perfectly okaywith me, and would you mind slipping me the morning paper,Angel-face?" A technique for stubborn cases may easily be improvisedfrom what we know of the Cro-Magnons and Henry VIII.
Poor single creature that I am, with no domestic catechism torouse me from my sodden slumbers, no silvery children's voiceshappily and loudly demanding their fodder at peep of dawn, not even ahound dog to inform me with playful barks, howls, yowls, yelps andyips that I ought to be up and eating, and hence with no great storeof wisdom about the family breakfast problem in its more unfortunateaspects, how can I hope to bring a little sunshine into the lives ofthese five million bewildered housewives, some of them very pretty,too? Well, at least I can tell what the years have taught me aboutbreakfast for one, trusting that in some mysterious way the seed willfall upon—will fall—I mean—Oh, you know what Imean!
Myself, just to make it harder, I happen to be a breakfast hater.Arising promptly on the stroke of noon, unless the mosquitoes, greenflies, birds, cats and nightmares desire otherwise, I drag myself byforce of habit a couple of yards to the breakfast room, aliassolarium or kitchen, seat myself at the table, relax, and worry aboutthings in general for ten or fifteen minutes, unless it's too cold toworry sitting down. In freezing weather I carry on the same line ofthought while splitting some kindling to build a fire to melt thetea-kettle to thaw out the pump to get a drink of water—aroutine which seldom fails to confirm me in my morning outlook uponlife and love. I just seem to be like that. After reading fifteensuccess books and subscribing to a go-getter magazine I am stillunable to face returning consciousness with anything approaching thegladsome grin recommended by the authors. I only know that all islost, and that nothing can help me unless I inherit money, strike oilor go to work.
It was not ever thus. My memory is not what it was, but surely Irecall a lad who used to greet each newborn day with paganpæans and miscellaneous minstrelsy as he leapt like a younglamb or a gazelle or something for the nearest cereal, and the deviltake the hindmost. He would gobble up scruts by the quart, he'd assoon ruin half a peck of oats as look at them. Let us waste no tearsupon him. He was a foolish youth enough, and he knew not half as muchas I know. Orwas I thataway? No, now that I think it over, Inever was. These people who rise so happy and gay get worse as timegoes on. You can't cure a thing like that.
May no uncharitable reader judge me too harshly for hatingbreakfast. I have my lovable moments. Grant me forgiveness for thoseten awful ones while I am trying to cope with things as they are andwondering what, if anything, can be done. Some mornings it is not sobad, as when somebody has written to me and told me that if I keep onreviewing detective stories for fifteen or twenty years moreeverything will be all right. But as a rule I'm terrible. You wouldswear that nothing but a miracle could make me human, and you wouldhit the nail precisely on the head. I keep a supply of miracles onthe shelf right over the kitchen sink.
Coffee! With the first nip of the godlike brew I decide not tojump off the roof until things get worse—I'll give them anotherweek or so. With the second I think I see a way of meeting my monthlyinsurance premium, and I simultaneously forgive the person I heardsaying that I was not half as funny as I thought I was. From then onI get foolisher and foolisher, or wiser and wiser, according to thepoint of view. As I drain the last fragrant drop I am conquering theworld single-handed by the invincible force of my own wits, buildinga palatial yacht to sail the Seven Seas with a large party of mydearest friends and leaving at home the ones who never appreciated mewhen I was poor and practically starving to death. Honest, I'm notnearly so unbearable when I am in my cups.
Even more marked effects are likely to appear as I imbibe mysecond beaker and light my seventh Lucky from the ashes of my sixth.Perhaps I might be seen to smile or heard to chuckle softly at someinvisible good thing in the circumambient air. I think of aphilosophical gambit which, with a little tinkering, will do toimpart to some one worthy of the gift, dash nimbly to the portableand write it to a long-suffering friend, colleague, severe critic andfavorite novelist whose name may be indicated by the cabalisticletters Is-b-l P-t-rs-n. I should be reviewing a book or choppingwood, but what do I care? Why reck of to-morrow when to-day is herewith all its infinite promise and I am full of coffee? I've reallymuch to be thankful for. It might be worse. I'm perking on allfour.
That's about all there is to my breakfast, and those who care toclassify me as a coffee lover rather than a breakfast hater arewithin their rights. I prefer the gentler epithet as more suited tomy generally fair and mildish disposition afternoons and evenings.The intense pleasure I derive from my favorite beverage—you cankeep your old gin!—will probably strike some readers as a markof luxury and decadence akin to the worst excesses of Vitellius, thelusts of Claudius and Commodus, the nameless debauches of the Regencyand the unbridled orgies of Park and Tilford. I don't mean it thatway. I get a lot of fun out of my two cups of breakfast coffee, butat the same time I try to restrain myself. I can't see the harm solong as I confine the parties to my own kitchen.
There are numerous ways of making coffee (magic berry, aromaticdraught, amber beverage, fragrant libation, ambrosial potion, etc.,etc.—If I had the nerve I could burst into an ode beginning, "Omore than Heliconian fount! O super-bean!"—but it wouldn't do).Many the methods, and each and every one of them goes with me.Whatever answers to the name of coffee and can deliver the kick thatproves its royal birth is always sure of a welcome in my interior. Idrink it as the good Lord meant us to drink it, without any suchatrocities as milk, cream or sugar. I take it hot and strong, but Ishan't shatter your illusions with any other portion of my recipe; itmight turn out that I use a powdered brand, in order to avoidgrounds, extra dishwashing and other agony. Add boiling water andgulp.
People exist, of course, who must have the right old pedigreedJava or Mocha. They roast it in their own homes, and for all I knowthey go to Asia and pick it themselves, to see that there's nononsense. Most of their days are spent in strange grindings,distillations, filterings, white of egg and other mental quirks. Forthem several hundred kinds of coffee-pots have been invented,patented, tried and thrown away, showing what the perpetual motionboys do in their spare time. Perhaps the best of these devicescontains a condenser in the lid to catch the aroma, a stabilizer toprevent lateral tipping, a triple magneto to carry off the volatileoils, shock absorbers to modify the coal-tar by-products and a talkieattachment to save more steps for mother. Is this sort of thing to goon, fellow citizens? All I say is, Voltaire had no such coffee-pot,nor Balzac; no, not Napoleon himself, a coffee-bibber in the trueheroic mold.
In the good old days, when dietetics was in its infancy, coffeewas much esteemed as a digester, and it seldom failed to do the work.Lately a famous authority has found that it somewhat retards theprocess of peptic transmogrification, though only slightly in thecase of ham and eggs, the inhibitory effects being due entirely tothe tannic acid and the favorable ones to the caffeine. Mygrandfather found just the opposite. The most striking pronouncementI have seen on the subject says that "1,000 grains of the wood,leaves and twigs of the coffee tree yield 33 grains of ashes, or 3.3per cent"—a rather minor triumph of research, but one to bekept carefully in mind. The fact is that coffee is not so good forgout, but I never have gout. Tea-tasters are said to get quite jumpyat times as the result of too much tannic acid (about the same amountas in coffee), but in the natural course of events they wouldprobably get jumpy, anyway.
Supposing that coffee is bad for very sick folks, the main thingis to keep well enough to handle your six cups a day. If that is toomuch, what's medicine for? It is my firm conviction, founded uponmany years of practical observation, fairly wide reading and partialbaldness, that everything we poor mortals do, eat, drink, smoke orchase, especially the nicest things, bring us just that much nearerthe dread, inevitable end at about a mile a minute, so why not takeour choice as we go along? It seems unreasonable of the doctors toexpect us to totter to our graves in a perfectly healthy condition.Anyway, in my opinion these perfectly healthy people are full ofprunes.
The caffeine is what I'm after. Delightful alkaloid! It would illbecome me to dilate upon its virtues as a brain stimulant, a suresoftener of every angularity and asperity of character, a charmingbegetter of geniality, generosity, good looks and high moralstandards. Its effect upon the cerebral cortex is especially notable,and I believe that as soon as the human brain has improved a bit someworthwhile results are bound to follow. Its influence upon literaturehas been tremendous. Under the strong nervous excitement caused bycoffee, some of the worst drivel extant has been conceived andwritten; but there have been many exceptions. Use more caffeine, myfriends. And if nothing happens, don't blame the coffee.
"If you want to improve your understanding," wrote Sydney Smith,"drink coffee." A seventeenth century author states, "Surely it mustneeds be salutiferous, because so many of the wittiest sort ofnations use it so much." And a contemporary essayist, Mr. P. MortonShand, taking issue with De Quincey, a tea-addict, tells us that"coffee has always been considered the drink of intellectuals." Whatis much more important and deeply fraught with social significance,another authority, writing in 1872, brings news that coffee "hassuppressed to a great extent that excessive indulgence in inebriatingdraughts that so frequently dishonored the banquets and prodigalhospitalities of former times." And as luck will have it, ProfessorBinz finds that dogs which have been rendered comatose by alcohol maybe aroused by the administration of coffee. Doesn't that just showhow all things work together for good?
I wonder who started it all. It seems that on its native heath thecoffee bean, consisting of two halves placed face to face andenclosed in a toughish husk, is found inside the fruit of theCaffæa arabica, and how any one ever had sense enough totake it out, husk it, dry it, roast, grind, boil and drink it isbeyond me. What if he had given up, lost his hunch, picked some otherfruit, stepped on a bee's nest? How do people find out these things?Some say it was goats; that a poor Dervish of Arabia Felix, noticinga singular hilarity in his goats upon their return to camp eachevening, followed them and found them chewing the berries in a highstate of illumination, so he tried it and passed it on. So much forthe goats.
Another legend ascribes the discovery to Hadji Omer, who stewedsome of the berries while hiding from the police near Mocha in 1285.He was acquitted, presented with a purse of gold and turned into asaint. Others say coffee came from Abyssinia. However, according tothe account of Schehabeddin Ben, an Arabian scribe of the ninthcentury of the Hegira (and a merry old robber he was, too), the truediscoverer of our berry was none other than Gemal Eddin, a Mufti ofAden, who ran across it in the Persian pharmacopœia. Threerousing cheers for all of them, for Schehabeddin Ben and Gemal Eddinand Hadji Omer and Abyssinia and the goats! And we mustn't forgetSoliman Aga, the Turkish Ambassador who introduced coffee at thecourt of Louis XIV. One of my favorite pictures shows Soliman in hisnifty palace at Constantinople, reclining not unvoluptuously upon asinfully upholstered sofa with his whiskers, his chibouk and hismemories, about to receive a cup of his special brew from a damselwho may be a Nubian slave, but who looks suspiciously like a houri.Pretty soft!
Coffee, I may say, is the one bond between me and that none toomoral monarch, Louis XV, who, when he entertained that mischievousbaggage, Du Barry, always treated her to a potful. Said he on arather too frequently mentioned occasion, as he downed his brimmingbowl, "What would life be without coffee?" Then, casting a roguishglance at the lady, he added, "What is itwith coffee?" Ratherneat as abon mot, of course. The ideology is sound, the witand humor are grand; but I think the king might have reserved hiswise-crack for a more appropriate audience. Goodness knows Du Barrywas doing her best, as usual, at considerable risk to her reputation,too, and he might at least have thought up something more chivalrous,such as "A cup of coffee underneath the bough, another cup and thou."Still, that's not so elegant, either. The whole incident must beregarded as decidedly distressing.
As I am about to close I get the uneasy impression that thesebreakfast suggestions may not prove so helpful to the five millionhousewives as I had intended. Coffee seems to be all I want, butsometimes, when faced by unexpected guests, I bring out the pancakes.My constant craving for cinnamon buns can be gratified only on tripsto New York, but I see no reason why others should not breakfast uponthem. Furthermore, my reference works show that people of all timesand places have managed to get through the first meal of the day onsuch items as baked apples, prunes, raspberry jam, dehydratedpeaches, synthetic apricots, oatmeal, hominy, fried mush, warmed-overpotatoes, kidneys, kedgeree, codfish balls, crumpets, veal hash,pickled pigs' feet, ham, Sally Lunn and fritters regardless. And Ibelieve somebody has suggested eggs. My notes also reveal the use ofcanned spinach by an eccentric citizen who was shot the same day. Itmay have been just a coincidence.
You may not believe it, but there are people in this world whowant more and better housekeeping. They are all about us. They havetheir secret codes, their private meeting places and an organizationas utterly ruthless as it is efficient. They will stop at nothing.Their propaganda, spreading hither and yon through a vast network ofunderground channels, begins to permeate the practically impermeablepopulace. Are we, brother and sister housekeepers of America, goingto let them put it over? We probably are.
Still, that needn't prevent us from taking a firm stand.I—drat that old first person singular pronoun, anyway! Ugh! Icould almost say Ugh-h-h!—I have a plan. I have somehousekeeping secrets of my own, and it's just dumb luck that I didn'tcarry them with me to the grave. I've held out against the publicityof it for years, but as some one has put it so splendidly: What arewe here for, if not to help others? So I've decided to hand on thetorch. It may not do much good, but I hope it worries some of thesepure and spotless domestic scientists.
The trouble is, my system of home administration is so unusual,not to say daring and sensational, that I can hardly look foranything but muttered curses and vindictive backchat from thehidebound pedants who dominate this branch of learning. Taboos andconventions are so omnipresent and powerful in this field that my endwill doubtless be that of every idol breaker of the past. To thatconsummation, however, I have long been reconciled. For the finalreckoning I am content to await some distant epoch when civilization,as we know it to-day, shall have changed quite a bit; when, as someof us fondly trust, it shall have disappeared altogether.
What I call, if I may do so without overstepping the bounds ofmodesty, the Cuppy Plan of Motionless Housekeeping, has one grandcentral purpose in view: the salvaging of many hours each day for thepoor drudges who find themselves caught in the domestic treadmill forone reason or another (but chiefly the latter) which it is now toolate to laugh off. The hours thus saved may be spent in going tomovies, playing bridge, listening to the radio, attending auctions,jawing the family, annoying the neighbors, explaining the symbolismof Ibsen's dramas or in any other delightful and educational sport.Myself, I employ the minutes snatched from the maw of time incomposing filler for the newspapers, replying diplomatically to mycreditors, wondering what everybody has against me, anyway, and inplain, fancy and miscellaneous hermiting. Pretty slick, eh?
Visitors to our island are always wondering how I get my houseworkdone. "He's always taking a sun bath on the sand, or wading in thebay, or chasing the birds with a club or talking to himself as hesplashes in the surf," they will tell you. "Or else he's shut up inhis shack writing all day and all night until four o'clock in themorning. He positively never does a single lick of work." Little dothey suspect that the hermit of Jones's sails through life with themagic assistance of Motionless Housekeeping, or Swaraj, based upon apolicy of complete noncooperation with external objects. No wonder mycareer is one long holiday, without a care in the world. It's mysystem.
Like all big scoops in the sphere of ideas, my scheme is simple,almost to a fault. It verges upon the simplicity often observed incertain innocent villagers, but I like to think that it escapes thepathological by the hair's breadth that makes all the difference. Tocome to the point, the Cuppy Plan stresses the elimination of uselessmotions, a technique not wholly unknown to the elders, but neverhitherto developed beyond the rudimentary stages; thus, while lookingfearlessly towards the future, it is based upon that foundation ofpetrified precedent without which nothing, however snappy, can hopefor ultimate success. Its intrinsic novelty inheres in the fact thatI carry the theory and practice much farther than other authorities;indeed, to its logical conclusion. Where the pioneers sought merelyto reduce the number of motions involved in the traditional householdtasks, I cut out the tasks themselves. I issue the bold and sweepingchallenge: Why make any motions at all?
I became interested in Swaraj some years ago while reading a bookon how to systematize the loading of pig iron. As pig iron is notindigenous to Jones's Island, and as I was at that time perfectlyunacquainted with any pig iron loaders, the volume, though inspiring,left me about where I was in regard to ways and means. Then, oneeventful day, I chanced upon a monograph which applied the same lineof reasoning to the boiling of eggs. Some fortunate iconoclast, byone of those mysterious associations rightly known as genius, hadbridged the gap between pig iron and eggs. Gosh, how it all comesback to me!
There it was in black and white, proof positive that anyable-bodied adult could cook three eggs with only fifteen movementsinstead of the customary twenty-seven, merely by employing a firelesscoddler and scrapping the old-fashioned stove and dipper. Since Iowned only two eggs and no fireless coddler (and I am far from surethat I approve of such a queer, to say the least, contraption), Ipassed an active morning testing this great invention in a saucepan.Laboratory conditions weren't just right, of course, but theexperiment taught me that once you start counting your movements youmight as well abandon all pretense to spiritual freedom. We aren'tadding machines, now, are we?
Well, I got so balled up trying to omit motions that cannotpossibly be omitted, and so nervous trying to remember which was myright hand and not to look at the clock and not to repeat theeleventh motion that I fell over the broom handle, broke the eggs andwent hungry. The next time I boiled eggs I dragged in a lot of newuseless motions just for spite. Nevertheless, the adventure left itsmark; I began to realize that one must save a part of one's energyfor fun and not use it all up boiling eggs. I fry them now, and anydomestic scientist who doesn't like it can lump it. Coddling,indeed!
Once I had conquered the habit of boiling eggs I found it easy togive up more and more of the inside jobs which have done so much tomake the home what it is. For instance, I applied MotionlessHousekeeping to the making of beds. I understand that in mostfamilies one day of the week is set aside for the making of beds. Igain this whole precious day by omitting the festival and all itsworks. At one blow I annihilate the two million motions which theaverage housekeeper expends yearly upon this drab and tiresomeproceeding. While others are making beds I am making money byreviewing books. Some day, when they are in Bellevue from tucking insheets and fluffing one pillow too many, I shall be in Wall Street.What on earth is the use? Make your bed, if you will, lavish upon itall the skill of all the bed makers since time began, then govirtuously to sleep in it, and next morning where are you? Right backwhere you started.
More priceless moments are gained by forgetting to sweep. Whydisturb the rhythm of a glorious day with this hideous, dusty andfrightfully uninteresting rite? Sweeping may be left for occasionalfits of neatness which overtake even hermits at odd intervals. Thealleged dirt on my floor which several society leaders have beentactless enough to point out is perfectly clean dirt, such as oldnewspapers, magazines, detective stories, pencil ends, orange peels,lettuce leaves, eggshells, small lumps of coal, kindling, shavings,sawdust and sand. What's so disgraceful in that? There isn't a germin the whole heap, or you may be sure I'd fire it right outdoors andlet it shift for itself.
Those who adopt the Cuppy Plan will do well to operate at first ona regular day-by-day schedule, until the little grooves getestablished in the brain. Divide the week into seven equal partscalled Monday, Tuesday and so on, toss overboard all that you weretaught during your formative years and act accordingly. Well, then.Monday washing is optional. If we Motionless Housekeepers prefer notto do Monday's wash, we don't wet a hand; and that disposesdefinitely of Tuesday's ironing. On Wednesday, do not mend. There'shalf the week gone already in good, constructive achievement.
We agreed, I think, about Thursday's sweeping, and I need not warnmy disciples against starting anything whatever on a luckless Friday.Bachelor housekeepers mostly devote Saturday to much needed rest andrecreation; the ladies, certainly those who want to stand well withW.C., will get up bright and early, dash to the kitchen and bake atleast one gigantic strawberry shortcake, or I won't guaranteeany kind of housekeeping—and there's no law againstsending it to some deserving hermit.
It may prove helpful, and the moral harm practically nil, to spenda part of each Sunday in searching for household necessities thathave been lost in the shuffle. That's the one little weakness of theCuppy Plan, you never know where the can-opener is. Short ofattaching it to one's person with a piece of stout cord and draggingthe rest of the essentials about on a leash, there is no way ofgetting around that sort of thing—you just have to put up withit. Why not make capital of this small fault? You need neversubscribe to a memory strengthening course if you try to rememberthat the nail that pries open the pantry door is probably under thenewspapers in the corner behind the stove, that the salt water soapdoubtless got mixed up in the winter woolens and extra bedding on thetool chest (where it's as good as in a safe-deposit vault), that thereview of J. S. Fletcher's latest must have blown out the window andthat the Coast Guards borrowed the camphorated oil summer before lastthat time Comanche had the lumbago. I couldn't swear to where much ofanything is in my house, but it's not as if I had spectacles to lose.I haven't the faintest where my dustrag is, and I care less. Ihaven't seen it in the last six months, and good riddance.
My official list of things not to do in the kitchen alone wouldfill volumes. Censored activities include making your own mayonnaise,chopping raisins, putting things through food-grinders, dropping apinch of flour into the hot fat to keep it from sputtering (Goodland, let it sputter!), scalding milk, dropping the white of an egginto the soup to clarify same, wrapping a damp cloth around thecheese to keep it moist, adding melted butter to the pancakes so thatyou won't have to grease the griddle—you will, anyway—andsifting the flour. There are a few natural born flour sifters whosimply cannot be stopped, unless you hide the sieve on them. Theysift anywhere from six up to ten and twelve times. Let them havetheir fun in their own way. They can't help it.
Then there is the menace of beaten biscuits. "Beat thirtyminutes," "Beat two hours," "Beat three days," the experts will tellyou. Do no such thing, if you have to eat cake. I know it isconsidered very elegant to cram your guests with beaten biscuits, butthe strain is really too great, as many an ambitious climber hasdiscovered. Many a fine old Southern family has dwindled, drooped andfinally disappeared from history's page just on account of thiswidespread evil. Many a Kentucky and Virginia belle in the prime oflife has gone the biscuit route. Beautiful, charming and talented asthey were, where are they now? They're one with Ozymandias, that'swhat. Just fragrant, fleeting memories, martyred before their time tothe beaten biscuit tradition. And how could it be otherwise, havingto leap out of bed in the middle of the night to lash the eternalbatter for breakfast? It is not too much to say that all the labor ofthose millions of Egyptian slaves who built the Great Pyramid ofGizeh was as nothing to the vital energy expended on beating biscuitsevery day in this broad land of ours. Won't you help?
I may also mention the ungodly amount of parsley scattering thatgoes on in our homes. Picking parsley apart and strewing itregardless here, there and everywhere over the table has done itsshare in retarding the progress of evolution. The place for thisplant is in a bouquet or a wreath, as the Early Greeks were aware.Crowned with a dime's worth of parsley and maybe a few violets, aboutthe last thing an Early Greek hero thought of was Vitamin B. Warmingthe plates for the rest of the family is another thanklesstask—who do they think they are? Rolling fish in bread crumbsbefore frying is also on the index, as is rinsing the dishes inboiling, soapless water. Of these two futile jobs, rinsing is perhapsthe more pernicious. When I meditate upon what everybody might havebeen accomplishing all these centuries instead of rinsing thedishes—well, old worrier that I am, I get to brooding. I forgotto say that worrying, in moderation, is part of the Cuppy Plan. Worrya little every day, folks, I mean it. If you find it difficult, takea good, square look at some of the people who never, never worry, noteven about split infinitives. That's exactly what ails them.
Glancing back over this article, I fear that the heat of passionhas led me to exaggerate in spots. The truth is that the Cuppy Planof Motionless Housekeeping is as yet rather a glowing ideal to beheld ever before the mind's eye than an accomplished fact in all itsdetails and ramifications. I have gone only a part of the way, but Iretire each night with the pleasing consciousness that I have balledup the domestic science program as thoroughly as lies within mypowers. At present all I have to do in the morning before sittingdown to write is to find some wood, call a Coast Guard to fix thepump, wash a cup for the coffee, clear off the supper table, mend thewindow, hang out the wash, empty the ashes, tack a new leg on thechair, look for the pencil and paper and feed the cat. I can alwaysfind time between paragraphs to fill the lamp, gather more driftwood,clean up what I spill, soak the beans, do a little baking, run overto Crow Island on an errand, put out a few meadow fires and swat themosquitoes. Later, I hope for complete success. I may move into anice, new tent.
If had it to do over, knowing what I know now—well,naturally, I'd do the same thing all over again, only more so. Oneboon, however, I should beg of fate. Instead of reviewing books, Ishould ask to be appointed owner of a ham and egg store, so that aconstant supply of my favorite food might be always at my beck andcall. And every time I went bankrupt I'd hide a part of the stock forfuture reference.
Not just for solitary gorging, either, though solitary gorging hasits place in any harmonious and well rounded existence. It would bemy aim to harness this peerless provender to the remnants of the playinstinct which have come down to us from the laughing childhood ofthe race in spite of all the laws of those Medes and Persians. Ishould amuse myself every few evenings by giving banquets of ham andeggs to all comers, the noise whereof would rise and drown out thestuck-up protests of the fancy feeders of to-day, and the trimmingsof which would do much to make my guests and neighbors forget thedisappearance of the corner saloon.
I dare say that with a little shopping at the chain stores and acouple of varlets presiding at the kitchen range while I acted asmaître d'hôtel, my banquets might have surpassed,at least in quantity, those of the celebrated gourmands of antiquity.Had things been different, who knows but that the name of a certainhermit might have gone down to future ages somewhat as that ofLucullus with his sacred mullets and that of Heliogabalus with hisspiders in aspic; it would be synonymous with ham, as, in our ownday, Edward W. Bok immediately suggests asparagus with nutmeg and asthe mere mention of Roy L. McCardell evokes visions of eggsmushroomette.
Predestination, however, seems to have spoken in no uncertainterms. A wholesale ham and egger I can never be, but must remain aneternally frustrated hawker of these gorgeous groceries. Whenever Isee a happy proprietor in his store I must be content to murmur,"There, but for my unkind stars, go I!" I must live out this thwartedportion of my life on paper, and though I am not one to pour out rawemotions to the public view, I care not if you say I wear my ham onmy sleeve.
I shouldn't have thought, until lately, that ham and eggs requireda champion. I had been going along as usual, lulled into a falsesense of security by my own inherent optimism, supposing that ham andeggs were getting on fine and could take care of themselves. Howlittle we know of the troubles of others! In fact, as Portygee Petewas saying to me only yesterday, "If knowledge was power, Bill, you'dbe helpless!" Imprimis, it has come to my attention that a famousexpert recently launched a savage and totally unprovoked attack uponthem, describing them as the last drivelings of the mind of a lowgrade moron and using other language which I do not care torepeat.
Let us turn to the statistics, which prove that since thisill-advised ultimatum the intake of ham and eggs among the middle andfairly upper classes of America has fallen to an alarming extent.Thousands of our ambitious countrymen have quit the stuff, evidentlybelieving that total abstention will magically make themhighgrade morons and qualify them for social success. Have there been anytangible results? There have not, excepting that throughout thisbroad and fertile land there are mobs of uneasy and bewilderedstomachs that should have known better than to turn against an oldfriend on the say-so of a perfect stranger. And the pity of it isthey didn't get into the Four Hundred after all.
I do not intend to lose my temper at the moment, trusting that theneed for violent words—and deeds!—will not become acuteonce the better nature of my opponents has had time to assert itself.I have faith that the sturdy, protein-fed backbone of the nation willnot buckle without a fight before the voluptuaries who are seeking tosubstitutemousse jambon à la Tuileries en casserole,œufs à la Espagnol and other foreign folderol foryou know what. Ordered exposition, the mechanical marshaling of vitalstatistics, the latest findings of our research scientists, theevidence of Grimm's Law—what are all these beside the livingsenses of all sane citizens? It will be a sorry day for civilizationwhen the majority of folks think otherwise.
Let us put our trust in intuition rather than in a mass ofcold-blooded statistics that wouldn't lend you a nickel for carfare.Let us come out boldly and admit that ham and eggs are responsiblefor very much of the so-called progress of our species. I wouldalmost go so far as to say that the race has experienced two suprememoments. When the first man stood upright upon two legs and cast hisquadrupedal heritage to the four winds of heaven, there, my friends,was front page news. Was it not a far, far better thing than he hadever done when his wife conceived the idea of cooking some ham andsome eggs on the same hot stone, inquiring the while in paleolithicpoetry, "How'll you have 'em, straight up?" I pause for a reply. Asfor facts, if they do not string along with us, so much the worse forfacts. If the whole scientific fraternity should come out here toJones's Island, beat on the front door of my shack and demand myproofs that ham and eggs are one of the prime causes of high thinkingand beautiful living, I should step quietly to my front porch, raisemy hand for silence, and quote the memorable words of a hermit ofold, "Credo quia impossible est!" I guess that would holdthem.
Who has not loved them? I believe that if all the secret memoriesof our great geniuses could be brought to light, if we could look, asthe gods do, into the inmost hearts of our poets, if we even owned anencyclopædia or an anthology, we should find more than onesplendid tribute to the dish we celebrate. I recall few, if any,indisputable references to ham and eggs, as such, among the earlyGreeks, though they knew their ham. So little of Sappho's workremains that we cannot speak of her views; we only know that shejumped off the cliff, and even that isn't so. The Stagirite preservessilence upon this single point, a circumstance not without deepsignificance to students of psychology. Of certain obscure anddoubtful remarks by Simonides of Ceos, Meleager of Syria andPhilippus of Thessalonica I say nothing, permitting the intelligentreader to draw his own conclusions. If the weight of all thisaccumulated testimony does not convince the skeptic, what has he tosay in answer to Æsop's superb fable, "The Pig and theHen"?
When I think how the authors of our own day neglect this subject Iam moved to wonder what we are coming to, if, indeed, we have notalready arrived. A world wide questionnaire of some time backrevealed but one writer courageous, far-sighted andæsthetically sound enough to come out for ham and eggs as hisfavorite tipple. That was Mr. Will Irwin. Would that he and histrenchant pen might take up the good fight where I leave off; I feelthat a book by him on this matter would express much better than anyword of mine the true Spirit of the Frying Pan. Herewith I reproducehis recipe, preserved for all time in the pages of "The StagCookbook"—may it go sizzling down the ages as it so welldeserves. Lookit:
"Take a frying pan and some ham. Cook the ham in its own fat inthe frying pan; cook until the ham is well dappled with golden brown,or until it is cooked enough. Then break some eggs. Take out the hamand put it on a hot platter, then put in the eggs. Baste them a bitwith the hot ham fat. Put a cover on the pan and let the eggs cook inthe hot pan with no fire. A minute or two will do—then servethe eggs with the ham and—oh, boy! For the very best resultsuse the best ham you can get and plenty of day old eggs."
Other famous Wills are notoriously fond of the same. Bill Williamsof Fire Island, Will Midget of Amagansett and Willie Watson of theZachs Inlet Coast Guard Station practically live on it. Dr. WillDurant has not been interviewed, but he is too much of a philosopherto spurn a dish that was once described—was it byNietzsche?—as the very corner stone of the new ethics. Youcan't tell me that Will Shakespeare overlooked this bet; the sonnetsalone prove the contrary. Among other users I need but mentionChristopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, Alta May Coleman, Ninon deLenclos, Copernicus, Rutherford B. Hayes, Lois Blaker, Josephine BellHorton, Mr. and Mrs. Eugene R. Tappen, Henri DésiréLandru and Dr. and Mrs. August J. Raggi. Perhaps I have made it clearthat the fans are almost always persons possessed not only ofdistinguished ability in the arts, sciences and miscellaneous, but ofdecided personal beauty and charm. A safe rule is that nine out often persons who like ham and eggs have It.
This brings us by a process of elimination, ornonsequitur, or something, to Frederick Barbarossa, history's mostoutstanding example of ham and egg addiction. That is, the oldchroniclers say he was passionately fond of ham, and it is my theorythat they forgot the eggs. Only upon the supposition that FrederickBarbarossa called loudly for ham and eggs at certain strategic pointsin his career do the moot problems about the Holy Roman Empire becomechildishly simple. Only so does Frederick become a human beinginstead of a mere abstraction with the title of Holy Roman Emperor, ared beard and some frightfully hard dates.
If it can be shown that eggs as well as ham were obtainable inFrederick's early environment, I think my contention may safely beaccepted as a working hypothesis, such as the well known hypothesisthat the planets revolve about a central sun in orbits, or ellipticalblack lines; it need hardly be pointed out that so intelligent aperson as Frederick Barbarossa was quite capable, even in childhood,of putting two and two together. Well, his father was the Duke ofSwabia, a place fairly reeking with eggs; the young Frederickprobably spent many a happy summer vacation on the farm of hisgrandfather, Henry the Black, in Bavaria, another hotbed of poultryproducts. What's more, the boy's mother (the daughter of Henry theBlack) was a Welf, while the other side of the family wasthoroughbred Waiblingen; truly a weird heritage, accounting for someof the inhibitions, warring factions and morbid strains inFrederick's personality. Fortunately ham and eggs was the one thingthe Welfs and the Waiblingens were not continually fighting about, soour hero was spared that, at least. But if, as I strongly suspect,the Welfs and the Waiblingens were the same as the Guelphs and theGhibellines, the poor child had enough troubles trying to figure outwhich was which—in our day a completely lost art. Through itall he grew up, waxed strong and flourished mightily. He knew what heliked.
Frederick's subjugation of Italy fits right in with my thesis. TheLombards put up a game struggle, but he fixed them in the end; whatwould the Lombards win on, anyway—broccoli? It was only whenFrederick's supplies gave out that he encountered his few defeats.His crusade against Saladin was not so much, but you can't take hamand eggs on a crusade! On the whole Frederick Barbarossa made awonderful showing, and I repeat that it was ham and eggs that turnedthe trick among all those powers and principalities, potentates,podestàs and palatinates, schisms, suzerainties, HanseaticLeagues and other infidels. He may be one of the Seven Sleepers, butin his day very little got by him. Where shall we find his like forstirring precepts, noble deeds and real, honest to goodness horsesense?
He was a great one for making laws, Frederick was, and I wish he'dmade one about the sale of ham and eggs in restaurants. Step into anattractive food palace in New York, my friends, place your order, ifyou can elbow your way to the front, and what happens? "Ham andcountry!" sings out the neat clerk behind the glass counter, as youpick out an easy chair, get your glass of water from the cooler,corral a paper napkin and sit back in a fool's paradise to await whatis to be, gazing blankly betimes at the pyramid of green bananas overthere by the pie. "Ham and country!" finally yodels the clerk againwith even more promising inflections in his Judas-like voice. Rushingto the scene one discovers that the ham isboiled! Not thesmoked and then fried article on which our pioneering ancestors grewfat and frisky, butboiled and fried, with results that wouldnot nourish even a Lombard. Country, my word!
This tragedy occurs thousands of times each day, even in thebetter class of one-arms, where strong men go to get strong men'snourishment to help them fight the battles of life. They ask forhe-food; they get an emaciated shaving of disenchanted and savorlesspork on which Jack Dempsey himself couldn't lick a flea. Here atJones's all that's different. We cook it right, eat it right and callfor another round. Portygee Pete maintains that though he has had todoctor for it several times he has never had his full want. Samehere. Pete and I have never counted the pieces nor had enough eggs tosquander, so we really don't know our capacity. Rattlesnake Ned'sofficial record is said to be an hour and a half, elapsed time, usingthe Goose Crick overhand—but he's southpaw.
Let me add a word to the young housewife who is just starting outto get her hands ruined. Keep a good big supply of h. and e. in thepantry. You'll find it something to cling to in the midst ofimpermanence and all but chaos, something to lean up against whileyou consider what is next to be done. Otherwise the day will surelycome when you'll sit down in the middle of the kitchen floor andscream and yell at the ghastly, damnable futility of it all. It will,anyway, but why rush to meet it? And here's a household hint, in caseyour better half ever tells you that his dinner is fit for a king.Remember what I told you about Frederick Barbarossa, and if hesprings that one on you, you just up and say, "Fit for a king, hell!It's fit for a Holy Roman Emperor!"
Since this piece concerns what to do when company comes, let's zipright into the plot without bothering about fancy grammar. Thesubject calls for action rather than mere rhetoric. Company, as youmay be aware, is a thing that might happen to any of us any minute,and probably will. How are you going to meet the situation, brotherhermits of America?
Whoever replies "I'm going to run!" or "I'm going to jump underthe bedclothes and hide!" lays himself open to the suspicion offlippancy, and utterly fails to reach the seat of the evil. Companyis no laughing matter. What to do, then, when a gay bevy of one'sdear friends invade the home with glad welcoming cries provided bythemselves? For one's friends, if you will forgive my putting thematter in aphoristic form—one's friends are those persons whoalways feel perfectly welcome in one's home.
Not that all guests are hungry (a conservative estimate figuresthe practically starving ones at 99.7 per cent), but I'm thinking ofthe kind of whom a wise man of antiquity remarked that they appear toexist for no other purpose than to eat honest, God-fearing folk outof house and home. The optimistic hermit is likely to interpret theeager look in their eyes to extreme interest in how his rheumatism isgetting along. The disillusioned veteran, noting their furtiveglances about the shack, their sniffs to windward and theirsignificant prowlings hither and yon, knows only too well that theyare trying to find out where he keeps his emergency shelf.
There you are! The emergency shelf is the answer to the wholeproblem, as you should have known all the time. Not that the shelfalone does the trick. You might go on having an emergency shelf untilyou are blue in the face, it will get you nothing without a systemand a little spare change. I hope I may hurt nobody's feelings when Iconfess that I have been in many homes where they had the shelf, allright, but couldn't seem to make up their minds what to do with it. Ifeel more sympathetic towards my ravenous callers when I think ofwhat has occasionally happened to me. Don't be that way, dearreaders. You never know what gnawing sorrows your visitor may beharboring under his belt.
It is really discouraging how few housekeepers ashore makeadequate arrangements for serving the unbidden guest with meals atall hours. The imagination of many otherwise charming ladies who ownlovely emergency shelves soars boldly and beautifully to teabiscuits, falters in mid-air, clutches wildly at more tea biscuitsand plunges to earth with a dull thud. Naturally, all you get in suchplaces is tea biscuits. That is no way to act in a world that isjammed and crammed with good things to eat, such as—well,anyway, what about peanut butter and—and—oh, oceans ofthings (I'm no A and P bargain list!). If worst comes to worst, theycan always feed hermits what they have in the icebox, but whenhermits have company, it's not so easy. Hermits have no iceboxes.
If I speak briefly of my own emergency shelf, it is in the hopethat other hermits on other sandbars may draw from the account somesterling lesson, which is more than I can do. A year or so ago, withthe assistance of Ned and Pete, I constructed a rather elegant one,loaded it with a caviar canapé, a canned snail and a trufflefor the use of a certain critic and novelist not a thousand milesfrom Hell's Kitchen, New York City, and proceeded to town to fetchthe lady. The impish creature refused to budge. She had long declinedto come, but I chose not to believe her. She proved it to me. Shenever did show up—and oh, how I had been yearning for some ofthose long, uninterrupted moonlit talks about Dostoievsky.
By that time, naturally, the canape was a pretty sight, and thetruffle but the shell of its former self. If I may intrude my privateaffairs, the capricious authoress may visit me as soon as I canarrange to have the ocean done over. She requires a special seashorewith a velvet Arcadian greensward richly pied with Elizabethan posiesand lambkins, a giant plane tree against God's own sunlight,fountains running dandelion wine, a palatial yacht riding at anchorhard by, and, if possible, a couple of mountains in the distance. I'mworking on all that now, but when and if my fair tormentor ever comesout here, she'll have to take her chances on that snail.
Since then the poor old shelf has suffered a gradualretrogression, not to saydégringolade. From trufflesit declined to mere spuds, and of late I am afraid—I will notactually say in so many words that I have done this, but I am afraidthat I have furnished it with the canned goods that I am none toosure about, prunes that look awfully funny and cereals that haveoutlived their allotted time. These things may be perfectly allright, but then again, who knows? Certainly I should never think ofoffering them to my guests unless I were forced to it by the urgentdemands of true hospitality. My emergency shelf is more or less of anindoor junk heap at present, but you know how you hate to throwthings out that you have had for years and years.
Most of the canned goods is that half-case of spinach that Hilaryof the Coast Guards purchased ashore several seasons ago, presumablyduring a spell of mind wandering, since Coast Guards are swornenemies of spinach, lettuce, celery and suchlike horse foods rich inmineral salts and vitamins. As it was Hilary's turn in the kitchenthat week, he served a can of it at the regular eleven o'clockdinner, with results that amounted roughly to mutiny in themess-room; granted that there is something revolting in the thoughtof canned spinach at eleven o'clock in the morning, still, that wasthe official dining hour, and if soup, why not spinach? Therefollowed an informal deck court for Hilary and a hurried trip to thegrocery lady at the summer colony, who flaunted the stuff on hershelves all season without so much as a nibble. It passed eventuallyinto my possession, partly because I felt kind of sorry for the poorspinach, and partly because hermits cannot say no. The rustier thosecans get, the wider berth I give them. If it be my destiny to dig mygrave with my can-opener, I'll be darned if spinach is going to havethe last word.
Fortunately—please watch this part of the narrativeclosely—those who brave Great South Bay to visit me havelearned by trial and error to lug along a few bulging hampers. Theproblem of what to do thus resolves itself into the question whetherI shall dive at once into the goodies or restrain myself until someenterprising guest has set the table. Before I had my system workingon its present basis there were a few pretty sad parties at my shack.Now it is well understood by all concerned that when company comes toJones's I am the emergency. Get the idea?
I try to be reasonable about what people bring to my shack, butawkward incidents are bound to occur. Take the chum who arrived withtwo dozen sacred eggs laid by a hen that had taken a prize at a dogshow. We did for twelve. When he left he attempted to take the otherdozen with him, and yet he wonders why I talk about him. Anotherdeparted with contusions about the face and head, but really, threemeals of alligator pears hand running is a little too much. If I musteat these foods that are eaten for the sole purpose of astonishingthe middle classes, an artichoke is about as far as I'll go. And Ionly do that for the companionship. I've long ceased worrying aboutthe people who bring their own knives, forks, spoons, plates,napkins, sheets and pillow slips; I just relax and wonder, withoutcaring much either way, why they came at all if they thought I hadbubonic plague. Anyway, it saves my napkin.
I believe I have demonstrated that it is possible to traincompany, if you bring enough patience, zeal and courage to the task.I have worked hard to perfect my system, but every lick has paid. Ican lean back now and feel fairly certain that if company comes I'llget fed up for a while. And life being what it is, that's something.Had I let things drift I shouldn't be sitting here now munching ahunk of fruit cake with frosting—and candy on the frosting. Ifthis true story enables some other poor bachelor to get a piece offruit cake even half as good, my efforts shall not have been invain.
So much the world already knows or has guessed about myhospitality, and I suppose some of you hermits, on the watch forconstructive advice, thought it a fairly open secret to be makingsuch a fuss about—now didn't you? Well, I haven't sprung thereal central plot yet, and the truth is I was trying to get out ofit. There is, indeed, another side to the picture—a sinisterside, you may say, but one which a starkly realistic autobiographermay not blink. The answer is that the emergency shelf in my shack isonly a dummy, a sympathy catcher furnished with malice aforethoughtfor the furtherance of my system, and by that I might mean anything.The real one, containing a considerable array of much more ediblefood-stuffs, is outdoors in the cellar, its existence not so much asimagined by my friends from the mainland. It and its contents arestrictly for myself and other islanders, hermits and dwellers in thewaste and solitary places who, for one reason or another, I could dowith a snack; not for trippers who live right next to delicatessensand yet go gallivanting about the globe in search of quaint places toeat in.
Before you condemn me unheard for this piece of manifestchicanery—and I know how indefensible it must seem at firstblush to every decent reader—before you call me a disgrace tomy Southern ancestry, I ask you calmly to consider a few vitalstatistics. In the first place, it would be quite impossible for meto survive upon the provisions brought and left (Ha! Ha!) by incomingguests. The report that I spend most of my time scanning the horizonfor richly laden argosies of company is a mistake. No, my friends,horizon-scanning is not all it is cracked up to be, and any opinionto the contrary involves a fatal misconception of the whole art andscience of hermit housekeeping. Even during the few summer months Iderive less than one per cent of my total nourishment from such asource, and but twenty-three per cent from the summer colonists ofJones's Island. I would be in a fine fix if I depended upon companyfor calories when Great South Bay is frozen over for the winter andpeople with money in the bank and anything remotely approachingordinary horse sense stay safe at home on shore where you don't haveto thaw out your ears every so often. These are the hard, cold factswhich I have come to realize more and more as life goes on, and whichmy well-to-do acquaintances—I say it in no reproachfulspirit—must reconcile with their own consciences.
All of which indicates plainly that the bachelor hermit who liveson a sandbar, surrounded in the ways of the ever-changingseasons—and I often wonder which is the worst—either byimpassable icebergs or unendurable mosquitoes, must have moregumption than he commonly gets credit for. What would happen if hefailed to lay up a box of fodder for the long Arctic night? What ifhe gave it all to visitors, and couldn't get ashore again until toolate? What if he told everything he knew about his emergency shelf?Well, whatwould happen? He might or he might not bediscovered next season in one of the tertiary tin can strata of hisbackyard by some optimist mining for Scotch. There would be a briefparagraph in the press advancing a new theory about Neanderthal Manthat wouldn't have a leg to stand on. After a pathetically shortinterval business would go on as usual.
So it comes that I have something packed away in that old Haig andHaig case in the cellar. Sometimes I take out my electric flash andexamine the cache with all the frenzy a rather unenthusiastic misermust feel over his gold. To tell the truth, the kick is not what itshould be this year. Evaporated milk labels cease to thrill after awhile, and there seems to be an ungodly amount of canned corn for thesize of the box. Why it is that there is always so much canned cornin my supplies, loathing the stuff as I do, must be looked intosometime. I suppose it's just one of those things. Also, whence camethose serried ranks of shredded codfish, when, as all Jones's Islandknows, if there is one fish more than another—no, I won't sayit. The corned beef is all right, if it comes to that, but the futurewould be black indeed if I didn't know that down in the bottom of thebox, under the succotash, is a big, beautiful can of—tuna fish!But don't get me started on that.
Still, to clean up as we go along, I'm very fond of tuna, andthere's really no comeback to that, is there? Yet people persist inclouding the issue with all sorts of specious arguments. A lady toldme not long since that she regarded tuna fish as a very inferiorimitation of chicken, to which I replied, "Oh, you do?" I wish I hadread that lady a lecture on the inadvisability of mixing up theanimal kingdom in that way; the tuna never pretended for one momentto be a bird. She might better have called it a very superiorsubstitute for cat-salmon, and even that fails to express myadmiration. If I ever give up hermiting, I shall probably come toterms with some one who knows 1,000 ways to feed me tuna fish, noquestions asked.
For bachelor housekeepers the one drawback to this food is that alarge can of it is likely to become, temporarily, one's wholeexistence. You have to use it all up, and you string it out long,long after the first sharp ecstasy has fled. Tuna salad for lunch anddinner is fine, so is the tuna sandwich at bedtime, but by the secondday the routine begins to pall and come to-morrow you don't care ifyou never see the fish again. How well I know the raptures, the lucidintervals, the inevitable awakenings! But give me a day or two torecuperate, and if I hear of a tuna fish in the vicinity, there I am,waiting in line like a great big brainless ninny, for too much of agood thing. I don't even attempt to cure myself any more. I justadmit that I like it. I must.
I hope no jealous codfish fan will take my words amiss. I hate towound any of God's creatures, a category in which we are taught toplace not only shredded codfish but those who feed upon them, not tosay batten. In fact, I had some myself only yesterday, and I'm up andaround again. We ought to bear in mind that the poor fish was notalways desiccated. It got that way through no fault of its own, andthere is no use holding a grudge.
I'm sorry I spoke that way about canned corn, too. Many a poorstarving heathen would be glad to eat it, and so shall I be, too,some day when a bout of wood-splitting has roused the brute within meand weakened my will to resist. I think I shall resolve this year tobe kinder to all foodstuffs, whatever their station in life. Itshould be a lesson to me, out here on Jones's Island, that once inthe folly of youth I felt put upon because a dear old great-aunt ofmine used to bake me apple pies (with cinnamon on them!) somewhat toooften for my jaded taste. Idiot that I was, I thought that applepies, even with cinnamon, were not quite high-toned enough for me. Tostir my interest took peach at the very least, and to win a smile mygreat-aunt had to take a day off and throw a lemon meringue.
Ah, well! We live and learn, or, anyway, we live. I mean to say,right now I wouldn't speak ill of a prune. Did it ask to bestewed?
"He had been Duke of Savoy, and after a very glorious reign, tookon him the habit of ahermit, and retired into this solitaryspot." You'll find that quotation (from Addison) right in Webster'sDictionary, under the word "hermit"; and somehow it strikes me asimportant. It thrills me like discovering a new family of clams downby the Coast Guard dock or an epidemic of tar blocks for my kitchenrange. I often read it to myself when I get to brooding overcivilization in my shack—I don't mean that the civilization isin my shack.
Not that Dukes, as such, impress me greatly, though, goodnessknows, I have nothing against them—it takes all kinds. But Ican't help thinking that there was a certain something about thisparticular one. To have earned so fine a compliment from Mr. Addisonmore than hints of sterling qualities, and getting into thedictionary must also be accounted no mean feat, as feats go; it isneither here nor there that the ornithorynchus, or duck-billedplatypus of Australia, got in, too. The Duke of Savoy had real stuff,and his turning hermit surely clinches the argument.
They tell me I'm a bit hipped on the Duke of Savoy, just because Isometimes work him into the conversation when ashore. Perhaps I am,but it is not true that I ever posed as his full cousin; how couldthat be when he probably lived away back in the Middle Ages? Ifpeople choose to regard me as royalty because I'm always saying "theDuke this" or "the Duke that," it's their own lookout. Nor have I, asthe rumor goes, been pestering the authorities for permission to callmyself the Duke of Jones's Island. That's all gossip. It's not true,either, that I have got the Duke and myself so mixed up that I can'ttell us apart. In writing this brief sketch of my hero's life I mustconfess that since I have never looked him up, either in Mr. Addisonor the Encyclopædia Britannica, for fear that I might find theshadow of a fault (for such is the malice of history), the learnedreader may notice a few technical inaccuracies; none, I trust, thatmatter. Worse, I must risk the suspicion of vanity in dealing at allwith one whose career, in some of its humbler aspects, so strangelyresembled my own. Some will say that this article is but a secondversion of my own hermiting—a thinly veiled autobiography. Letthem say.
Begin we on that fateful day when the great and puissant, thoughnot really fat Duke of Savoy, sitting on his bejeweled throne,surrounded by a seething mob of jongleurs, performing apes, bedesmen,almoners, hereditary fiefs and Got wots, suddenly felt again in hisinmost soul that he was fed up with being the Duke of Savoy, and assuddenly knew—he didn't just suppose it; he knew it—thatas quickly as possible he must become a hermit or bust. He was awarethat one more conference with the ducal seneschals, pantlers andquhairs would be the death of him. As luck would have it, at thatvery moment the court jester, a dwarf of uncanny wisdom, who aloneknew the secret that was slowly but surely undermining his master'shealth and spirits, edged up behind the throne and whispered thatwhereas and notwithstanding there were only twenty-four hours a dayin Savoy, there were forty-eight in a certain enchanted sandbaryclept Smith's Island, according to signs and portents just revealedto the ducal astrologer, who had been working on the problem formonths.
"The die is cast!" whispered the Duke in return, smiling thefamous smile which, only a few years before, ere the fatal secret hadembittered him, had caused not a few hearts about the court to beat alittle faster. "I hereby appoint the astrologer Count of Gex," headded, "with all the rights, privileges and perquisites appertainingthereunto; and you may regard yourself as chief official underskinnerto my successor, whoever he is."
Then he arose with dignity, sauntered slowly through the crowd ofsycophants and snoods, so as not to disturb their simple pleasures,turned a sharp corner and streaked it hellbent for the ducalapartments. At the very portals he hesitated at sight of amarvelously beautiful damsel who was weaving a tapestry celebratinghis own martial adventures. Pausing only to assure himself that thedetails were correct and ignoring the subtle advances of the lovelymaid, he spun on his heel and rushed into the antechamber, lustilyclapping his hands.
"What ho, varlet!" he cried. "Bring me the habit of a hermit, andbestir thyself!" And to the astonished varlet who, in a trice, hadarrayed him neatly in the Middle Age equivalent of a pea-coat, armybreeches, hip boots and white hat, he merely said: "Gramercy, varlet.I suppose you think I'm getting up another of those damfool charades,but I'm not. I'm going to Smith's Island to be a hermit, so fare theewell and alackaday."
Shortly thereafter a figure of distinguished mien, albeit quaintlyaccoutered, might have been seen departing by the postern gate. Inhis left hand the Duke (for it was he) carried a little basketcontaining cold cuts, a few lentils, an oaten loaf and a smallquantity of salt and hyssop. Under his right arm, firmly clutched asthough it held his soul's salvation, as, in a manner of speaking, ittruly did, there rested a mysterious black box that might once havecontained something no more romantic than a pair of shoon—butnow! Essaying one last backward glance at his old, futileenvironment, he saw the beauteous damsel of the tapestry riding apacetowards him upon a snow-white palfrey, and ever she wept and madegreat dole. "It is now or never," said the Duke to himself, as heclosed the gate against her, and locked it. For him there could be noturning back. Onward he strode, pressing still more closely to hisside the enigmatic black parcel, the box of mystery.
The scene now shifts to the wild and desolate sands of Smith'sIsland, where our hero finally arrived, what by water and what byland, with the assistance of a small shallop, trireme, felucca orsomething manned by a gang of rollicking neatherds who were goingthat way; it had never occurred to him before that neatherds mightrollick, but these did. The neatherds, who dwelt on a neighboringislet and were later to prove the exile's boon companions andadvisers, refused to leave him until they had seen him safely insidea half-portion furnished bungalow providentially provided, it wouldseem, for the purpose. And there in his little crooked house the Dukeabode in comparative peace and content, considering the thing he hadcome to do. The view was delightful, and his rose cold, strangelyenough, had entirely left him. On clear days he could just make outthe sea-coast of Bohemia; in the evenings, when he was not engaged athis consecrated task, he might count the stars or watch the flashingof the great beacon light reared upon yonder rocks. He seldom eventhought of Savoy as he sat eating his favorite sardine sandwiches,raw cabbage and clams.
For in the Duke's new life clams of all sorts and sizes served asthe helpful animals so necessary to every hermit. He liked themsteamed, chowdered or alive and kicking. He also adored fried clams,a dish which Lucullus or maybe Apicius has compared unfavorably withfricassee of rubber galoshes. Clams really are a great convenience tothe marine, island or otherwise amphibious hermit. When all elsefails, when life seems dull and savorless, when one more bean wouldmake the difference between right reason and the padded cell, one canalways go out and catch a clam. In recognition of this self-evidenttruth the Duke one day chuckled, "Clams are more than coronets!" Hemeant it, too.
Sometimes, of course, he had to visit the dentist; and gosh, howhe dreaded those trips to Savoy. A person of charming mannershimself, he was always surprised and embarrassed when chance-metcourtiers demanded to know why on earth he had become a hermit. "'Tis passing strange," he would muse, "that people who would not dreamof inquiring 'Why are you a bee-inspector?' 'Why do your ears stickout like that?' or 'Why does your aunt have fits?' feel no hesitationin asking 'Why are you a hermit?'" It got to be rather a sore pointwith the Duke.
Natheless he stood his ground. He would not, come what might,disclose his darling secret to these curious oafs. Not though thewhole of Savoy went nutty over the riddle would he reveal until theproper moment—and would that moment ever come?—thecontents of the ducal shoe-box. He used to enrage his acquaintancesby remarking, "I am a hermit because I like being one," a statementwhich all agreed would not hold water for an instant. And once, whenhis toothache was pretty bad, he so far forgot himself as to roar atthe venerable Bishop of Piedmont, "Gadzooks, it's none of yourdeleted business!" In merrier mood he might explain, "It was a galan' the red-eye," or report that he was squaring the circle, wheneverybody knew that he hadn't enough mathematical talent to mend hisown pump. To a few whom he really cared for he said, quite simply,"It is written," or, if they persisted, "The stars have spoken." Theygave him up. Small wonder, the great world being what it is, that mentapped their foreheads and said the devil had entered into His Grace,the Duke of Savoy.
He let it go at that. And ever, as soon as he finished with thedentist, he would hasten down a side street to the waterfront,avoiding as well as he could the too ripe pomegranates and pricklypears hurled after him by the ignorant little Savoyards, andsometimes by the ignorant big Savoyards. A strange, unearthly gleamin his ice-blue eyes, he would leap into his frail craft, seize theoars and pull like one possessed for the open sea. Maybe he wasn'tglad, on these occasions, to be going back to his shack, what bywater and what by land, back to the sun and the stars and the sandand the silence, back to the infinitely understanding clams, whonever asked him why he was a hermit, but just took it for granted.Back, above all, to that cryptic repository, the mysterious shoe-box.That very evening, by the light of his torch of dolphin oil, heplanned to lift it reverently from its hiding place under the kitchensink, remove the cover and take out—the rajah's ruby? I shouldsay not! "And the world well lost!" he would shout in the face ofwind and wave, laughing the while with mighty, oceanic laughter. Madhe seemed, truly; and mad, perhaps, he was.
Wonderful, passionate nights! He often felt they were worth all ofhis ten thousand nights ashore, with the possible exception of abouttwo hundred which he had written up in his diary and often read overwith considerable emotion. The kindly neatherds, seeing his torchstill flaring in the dawn, knew well that the man of mystery washaving another spell with his devil-box, for they had often crept upand watched him taking scraps of paper out of it, tearing up some ofthem, writing upon others with his pen of purple samite, sorting andunsorting, laughing, weeping and chattering to himself as the endlesstask went on; at such times they stole silently away again, leaving afresh quarter of neat beside the shack and maybe a couple of fish fora change. They wasted very little time on the profound psychologicalpuzzle that was the Duke, believing, as their descendants do to thisday, that the proper study of mankind is neats—and who knows?Still, they kept their eye on him, and sometimes returned in theevening to fix the pump.
Those long, intense nocturnal sessions filled with deliciousagonies and joys, intoxicating séances that might have brokena less rugged constitution, seemed to agree with the Duke. Next dayhe would rise in the early afternoon, have brunch, neglect hishousework and proceed to do whatever he darn pleased. The mere factthat he had no corner stones to lay used to amuse him no end. "By myhalidome," he once observed, "life in Savoy consists almost entirelyin killing time before it is time to go somewhere one would rather beshot than go." Again he reflected, "Of course, the trouble withSmith's Island is that one is sometimes lonely; but the trouble withSavoy is that one is never lonely." Making middling epigrams of thatsort was the good Duke's weakness, if he had one. In Savoy there hadbeen a lot of people who hated his epigrams. "Oh, well," he had saidto one such, "there are only two kinds of people: those who hateepigrams and those who can make them." As for loneliness, he likedit. He was quite an introvert; and loneliness meant more nights withthe devil-box, and more.
Now surely that's enough suspense for one biography. The fact is,the Duke was writing a play, as you probably guessed all along;secretly, because nine-tenths of the other inhabitants of the dukedomwere also writing plays, all of which were bound to be verybad—and his was different. The thing had become a publicscandal; he had often been compelled to incarcerate his own PrimeMinisters and Lord High Almoners for composing the most frightfuldramatic atrocities—the best of them mere box-office successescatering to a low interest in sex and having no permanent effectwhatever upon the Commedia dell' Arte. He just couldn't bear to puthimself on their level by telling what he was up to, so he keptpegging along in the privacy of his bedchamber, such as itwas—and you know how it is with Dukes. What with the eternalbanquets, joustings, pageants, processions and parties for visitingrulers, he seldom found a moment for adding a scene, a line or evenan unfinished wise-crack to the mass of cluttered scraps in the blackshoe-box concealed under his Byzantine couch, let alone a whole nightin which to consider such vital problems as metonymy, synecdoche,architectonics, osmosis, dénouement and fainting in coils. Thebeautiful damsel of the snow-white palfrey might have cheered him on,but she was writing a novel and didn't sympathize with his theatricalambitions—and you see whatthat got her.
So there's the whole plot in a nutshell of the Duke's sensationalelopement from his court, the sinister shoe-box, the hermit'smysterious nights of feverish pain and still more feverish bliss atSmith's Island. My crystal does not show the ultimate fate of ourhero's drama. I see nothing resembling even a completed draft of ActI, the scenario of which originally called for a metaphysical debatebetween two atoms in the void, later switched to some characterscalled He and She and then again included a few musical numbers, arope-walking artist and fireworks. I only know that he kept theshoe-box under the sink, and every time he thought of something goodhe tossed it in among the rest of the index cards, old cuffs andcrumpled bits of papyrus. His faith remained unshaken that some day,when the characters and the action and the dialogue had got a littleclearer in his mind, it would all fit in.
And maybe it did. The Duke was slow but sure, and not nearly sodumb as he looked. At least he laid definite plans for sorting outthe box completely and writing the first scene down on fair,unspotted parchment. Each dawn he vowed to tackle the job at sunset.Perhaps it was as well that he delayed. His was a sensitive spirit,and so long as the play remained unfinished and unseen—I shallnot say unstarted—well, nobody could tell him that it wasterrible. As the years fled by—and they did, even with theforty-eight hours a day—he learned to look upon his undertakingin a way that seemed to him sufficient, as an end in itself ratherthan a practical means of reforming the little theater movement inSavoy. "At court," he said to himself, "I could never have comewithin a mile of it; here at Smith's I have come within half a mile."For all that, he kept on throwing thoughts under the sink, on thetheory that you're never licked till you quit.
Meanwhile life was not so bad. The Duke did not require a greatdeal of amusement. He'd had his fun, enough to last for years, andsome of it splendid material for the play. As he explained toPiedmont Pete, the neatherd, "People never become hermits until theyhave been around and seen a lot that no right-thinking person oughtto see; otherwise, they'd be afraid of missing something, and theywould be perfectly right." So he had his memories; emotionsrecollected in tranquillity were a hobby with him. "I have a past,and no one can take that from me," he told Pete. "Thank God, I havesomething to regret." "Lord lumme," he would add, in reminiscentmood, "I certainly had some wonderful, undesirable friends ashore."Yet this playful old party, who had been such a son of a gun in hisyouth, and who invented the morally subversive literary maxim, "Goodauthoring and a clear conscience will not mix," was wont to declare,"There comes a time when a quiet life can be quite as thrilling assin itself!"
Though he loved this quiet like good wine, and had always hatedthe loud noises the Savoyards continually made, apparently from puremeanness, it is not true that the Duke insisted upon absolute silencethroughout his island domain. He did throw things at the birds tomake them stop yelping, and tried to cure Pete of whistling, butsometimes he felt just like having a musical evening in the shack. Hehad brought his lute with him, and a theorbo and a cithern and apsaltery, upon all of which he performed with a pensivecharm—he had never got the hang of the sackbut or the shawm, sohis recitals were always a little weak in the wood winds. Invariablythe neatherds would arrive in a body after the first selection andoblige with folk-tunes on the cymbal, timbrel, ocarina and zambomba,and like as not it would turn into quite a party.
The plaudits of the great world meant nothing to this man, thoughhe would not have minded taking a bow at a certain first night heoften thought of. After all, he had been Duke of Savoy! He hadreigned gloriously for a time, and you can hardly beat that forpublicity of the right sort. Distinguished throughout Christendom forwisdom, justice, temperance and personal appeal, he had left behindan honored name when he up and adopted the life of Reilly. That henever tarnished, though he did little or nothing to keep his legendalive. When the Savoyards sent special messengers to Smith's Islandbegging him to mediate between powers and principalities, or whenambassadors prayed him to accept the kingship of some orphanednation, he simply told them to go chase themselves and not comebothering him with such nonsense. He never gave up his rank (such washis common sense), but held himself in readiness, should nothing evercome of the play, to consider any reasonable offer from thepoliticians—but none of your small kingdoms or empires withtheir long hours, short pay and try and get it. "In Savoy," he wouldreflect, "I was a big toad in a big puddle; out here I am a smalltoad in a small puddle, or vice versa, and I can't see that it makesthe slightest difference about the sizes of toads and puddles,anyway—you can't take 'em with you!"
Speaking of the Duke's conversational remains, I cannot refrainfrom quoting another of those sagacious phrases which have done somuch to perpetuate the fame of the grand old guy.
"Why be a hermit?" asked one of those pests to whom I have alreadyreferred.
"Why not?" said the Duke.
I forgot to mention that the neatherds and other denizens of thatpart of the ocean never thought of him, much less addressed him, asthe Duke of Savoy. They called him, in their own tongue, Guglielmodell' Isole—which is as much as to say, Will o' the Isles.
Etiquette, or dog, in the original Coptic, means behaving yourselfa little better than is absolutely essential. The ancient Copts weregreat sticklers for form, and you see what it got them. It is owingentirely to the Copts, as we know from hieroglyphics deciphered bycertain scholars to their own satisfaction, that to-day at our statebanquets and in our more exclusive American homes we do not eat piewith a knife.
Whether that is a good or a bad thing it is no part of my presentpurpose to go into. I'm not looking for trouble. It is not myintention to take sides on the pie question, but merely to clear up afew popular fallacies about minor problems of good form as applied tobachelors, especially if they happen to be book reviewers living onJones's Island. I am convinced that grave misunderstandings abound inthis branch of learning. So would you be if you got a letter from afair unknown ending, "P. S.—Do you wear a bib?"
Perhaps the postscript was meant in jest, but it hurt, pointing soheartlessly at what is generally believed to be the bachelor hermit'sweak spot, namely, his table manners. Evidently my correspondentfeels that an inhabitant of Jones's Island would not be likely tograsp the subtle difference between dining and just shoveling in theprovisions. Meanwhile I thank her for her recipe for warmed-overbeans, her gift of a patent can-opener and her sympathy, and assureher that I do not wear a bib. I have a napkin. She would be surprisedthough, if she knew how many prominent peopledo wearbibs.
Moreover, napkin technique in my shack differs only slightly fromthat in respectable circles ashore. I favor the red bandanna type. Itdoesn't show the soup, and it makes a gay spot of color wherever ithappens to be left about the house. My napkin has seen its best days,but who hasn't, for that matter? I'm not one to switch to a bluebandanna just because it is said to be very chic with a deep-dishhuckleberry pie. At Jones's, as elsewhere, the napkin is partlyunfolded, if it ever was folded, and laid unostentatiously across theright knee of the overalls. Then let nature take its course.
Being so much alone, though, and with one thing and another, it isan undoubted and more or less deplorable fact that hermits dooccasionally let down in their etiquette. This is because hermits,especially those of metaphysical bent, sometimes get to feeling, ifonly subconsciously, that where there is no eye to see it, there isno etiquette. Supposing, to put it in the classical manner, that ahermit is eating soup at a distance of several miles from the nearesthuman ear—his own doesn't count, as he is absorbed in a book;can the sound waves resulting from the operation be said really toexist in the sense that—that—in the sense that—Oh,well, take it or leave it. According to the paradox of Zeno—No,that was about Achilles and the tortoise, and when I first heard thatone I said that Achilles would eventually overtake the tortoise, andI still say it. In brief, can social errors be committed where thereis no society? Does etiquette itself exist in such a situation?Indeed, hermits often get to wondering whether they themselves exist.They try to reassure themselves by repeating, "I think, therefore Iam," and even then some still, small inward voice is only too likelyto whisper, "But do you?"
Where life is lived amid such uncertainties and complications, youcan see how etiquette is bound to suffer. Take the book-reviewinghermit who is trying to eat a plate of lettuce salad and read "TheMystery of the Haunted Tooth" at one and the same time withoutmissing a thrill or a mouthful, and perhaps write it up to boot.Sooner or later that hermit is going to cast aside the centuries ofetiquette, tell the ancient Copts to forget it and cut up his lettucewith a knife and fork. After all, he figures, the main idea is toconvey the nourishment from the plate to the alimentary canal with aminimum of accidents, and a writer is never at his best with thesalad trimmings cluttering up his stock in trade, with perhaps asprig of catnip or smilax worrying one ear and maybe a stray fishthickening the plot of his review.
At first my whole soul revolted at the notion of cutting up mylettuce before dinner merely that I might read, write and eat incomparative peace and content, with a fair degree of synchronization;but I got to thinking. It would be so easy, and who would ever know?And then, one day, I did it! I was without the pale, but nothinghappened. In fact, my fortunes took a temporary turn for the better,as I managed to produce from two to five more book reviews per meal,not to speak of the saving in flying parsley, lettuce and sardines.Naturally, I take a vicious delight now in attacking my salad with abutcher knife when I am in a jam with my articles. "Ha! Ha!" I laugh."One simply doesn't do it, eh? Well,I do it!"
There is another, a darker side. Having once cut up his lettuce,and all for the sake of worldly success, one cannot escape theinevitable regrets. Blue devils assail one, hissing of what thefuture may bring forth. Shall I finally take to hacking my pancakes,my ham and eggs, my very clam fritters into small hunks—for acareer? Shall I come to blowing in my soup, drinking out of mysaucer, spilling crumbs on the floor and stacking my dishes? Shall I,in a word, become an out-and-out Goop?
I suppose the ever present realization of my own fault has made mesomething of a liberal in the matter of downing the trickier foods.Knowing but too well that I have failed in the ordeal by lettuce, myheart goes out to the millions of my fellow creatures who may betrying at this moment to consume asparagus, corn-on-the-cob,watermelon and squab in the manner prescribed by those tiresomeCopts. Some of our best brains have literally worn themselves outinventing ways to eat green corn so that horrified observers willspeak to them afterwards, and nothing much has come of it but blastedhopes and souls forsworn and ruined bridge-work. One keen thinkersuggests having the others present blindfold themselves in the beliefthat it's all a game, and then fall to. My own system is to yell"Fire! Murder!" at the psychological moment and have a gorgeous timewith the corn under cover of the excitement.
As for asparagus, the Copts themselves were rather vague, but itshould be evident to all that there is small æsthetic value inthe widespread sword swallowing or trained seal method. Any one whohas seen Mr. Ringling's sea elephant having a snack will probablyagree that everything humanly possible—particularlyfish—should be treated as a fork food. Experience, however, hasconvinced me that to inhale a squab or other small bird in a way atonce sufficient unto the censors and the basal metabolism is quiteimpossible. Wait until you're among friends. Many such tacticalproblems arise in the eternal battle between the instinct ofself-preservation and the urge to beauty. And since we have beencountless ages learning to eat a lamb chop without getting more thanhalf of it into our system, it would be kind of a shame to lose theart, wouldn't it?
I fear that hermits, when out in company, are likely to eat toofast and too much, to grab the largest piece of chicken, spill thewater right off the bat, play tunes on the glassware and dispose ofgrape-seeds in a manner of which the less said the better. But Ithink the Copts go too far in expecting the guest to take the pieceof chicken nearest him when it is passed. Such a rule may impress thebesotted, taboo-ridden social climber, but it will never frighten theable-bodied hermit who possesses any sense of fair play. Somehostesses are fully capable of fixing the platter so that they willget all the white meat. I think, therefore, that a little picking andchoosing is allowable, and if anybody objects, tell him that you'relooking for the smallest piece.
I have gradually cured Rattlesnake Ned, the hermit of Crow'sIsland, of all his worst gaucheries except using his pocket combbetween courses, throwing butts into the finger bowl and leaving hisspoon in his cup. When these things occur at luxurious functions amere whisper, "Ship your oar, Ned!" or "Do you want to get us thrownout?" quickly mends matters for the time being. It is true that herecently assaulted and severely bit a wax pear that had beenpresented to our hostess's grandmother by one of Queen Victoria'sladies-in-waiting, but I had to laugh at that myself. I prefer not totell what Ned did the time he got the mouthful of hot escallopedcorn—probably the hottest thing on earth excepting hotescalloped tomatoes. At least, they might have let me explain.
I should never have set up as an authority on etiquette but forthe fact that I've read it and Ned hasn't; it's in the back of mycook book, complete from ordinary neighbors on through ministersplenipotentiary and papal nuncios up to kings, queens and magazineeditors. If I sometimes err when it comes to a showdown, I reallyknow better. I have the book. I find, however, that hasty perusal ofthe full directions just before going to a dinner party has atendency to confuse the hermit so that he's certain to do somethingawful. My advice is to watch the hostess, but even then the hermit'sfurtive glancing about, shifting of food from the wrong to the rightplate, juggling with forks and generally spasmodic behavior gets himpractically nowhere. Finally, when the attention of the wholebejeweled throng has concentrated itself upon the poor goof and hisstrange antics, the only thing left to do is to cut his own throat.Personally, I try to hold fast to the thought that the fork is neverused for the thinner soups and that the drinking glass should neverbe raised to the perpendicular and rested upon the nose in the effortto drain the last drop unless the host or hostess has specially askedyou to do a trick.
Remember, fellow hermits, clam diggers and oyster tenders, thatthe way you eat shows how you were raised, and that is a thing to beavoided at any cost. The main idea is to give the impression thatfood means less than nothing to you, that you'd as soon go hungry asnot, and at the same time keep rolling it in. While I by no meansadvocate anarchy at the table, I cannot agree with my cook book thatdaintiness is the sum and substance of refined eating. Dainty is asdainty does. But let's resolve, one and all, to become a little lessuncouth during the coming year. I'm going to try, if I have to feedmyself a bean at a time.
scene:Mrs. Paterson's salon inHell's Kitchen, New York City.
Cuppy. Is it true, O thou wise Diotima, that you are veryfond of spinach?
Paterson. Of that, Socrates, you may be assured. But whotold you?
Cup. Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus.
Pat. I thought perhaps it was Metrodorus of Lampsacus, orStesimbrotus of Thasos, or Burton Rascoe of Larchmont.
Cup. The fact is, I knew it all the time.
Pat. You ought to.
Cup. Then pleasure is not the same as good fortune, or painthe same as evil fortune, and therefore the good is not the same asthe pleasant?
Pat. Have it your own way.
Cup. But is not the good also the beautiful?
Pat. Well, is it?
Cup. And is not the State greater than the individual?
Pat. Some States. But you told me you wished to use GeorgeMoore's "Conversations in Ebury Street" as a model for thisinterview.
Cup. So I did. Ah, here is Mabel with the tea.
Pat. Where?
Cup. Nowhere. But George Moore is always saying, "Ah, hereis Mabel with the tea."
Pat. Who is this Mabel?
Cup. Now don't have one of your tantrums. I tell you thereis no Mabel. Ah, here is Mabel with the tea.
Pat. Perhaps you had better just speak English. Anyway,George Moore does not discuss spinach.
Cup. He discusses George Eliot!
Pat. And, after all, you are not George Moore.
Cup. Don't be too sure of that.
Pat. Ho hum!
Cup. May I bore you with some figures for a moment?
Pat, For a moment, yes.
Cup. A learned mathematician has discovered that one-halfcupful of cookedSpinacia oleracea—
Pat. What?
Cup. You heard me, you ain't blind. One-half cupful ofcookedSpinacia oleracea, belonging to the natural orderChenopodiaceæ—
Pat. Do you call that English?
Cup. —known to the Persians asaspanakh and tothe aborigines of Jones's Island as hay, or timothy—well,one-half cupful, weighing four ounces, contains twenty-sevencalories. The usual one-hundred calorie portion, therefore, wouldhave to be two cupfuls, weighing one pound, and in order to obtainhis daily two thousand calories an adult living entirely uponspinach, as you are said to do, would be forced to eat forty cupfuls,weighing twenty pounds, or the rough equivalent of a fleet of movingvans overloaded with the stuff.
Pat. Your facts, figures, premises and conclusions are opento argument, but it could be done. I knew a man once who did it. Whata man!
Cup. You do take up with the darndest people.
Pat. You should be the last to remind me of that.
Cup. Where did my pencil go when I fell off the sofa justthen?
Pat. Here it is.
Cup. Please don't do that again.
Pat. You were about to advance the quaint view that spinachis not nourishing. Nobody said it was.
Cup. What is it, then?
Pat. It is edifying.
Cup. Prove it!
Pat. It is a thing you cannot prove statistically. I merelyask you to consider this, whether or not spinach conduces to thehigher life and the general happiness. Its entertainment value isvery great. Spinach eaters are invariably people you would like to beseen walking down Park Avenue with.
Cup. But once you take up spinach, you have no time to walkdown Park Avenue. You must stay home and wash it.
Pat. Yes, unless you make a life work of it, you don't getanywhere, but that is true of everything.
Cup. You said it. Would you mind telling me exactly how youcope with spinach? Have you a system?
Pat. Indeed I have. There is only one right way. On somesubjects, such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, there may be legitimatedivergence of opinion, but not with spinach. In the Ideal State,degenerate minds who do not follow my plan will be segregated orbanished.
Cup. I recall no such stringent proposals in Plato's"Republic."
Pat. No, all those boys did was sit around and talk aboutthe good life, instead of eating their spinach.
Cup. Nor in Sir Thomas Browne's "Utopia."
Pat. Doubtless you mean Sir Thomas More's "Utopia"?
Cup. I guess so—go ahead.
Pat. Well, then! On the principal spinach days you must getup at five in the morning, otherwise you'll get nothing else done.Proceed to the garden, if you have a spinach garden, as everybodyought to have, and cut spinach for about two hours—that is, forone person.
Cup. How about the family?
Pat. The rule is two hours for each. Of course, if you livein New York, drive to the market in your largest town car, fill itwith spinach and bring it home.
Cup. Is that what you do?
Pat. Yes. And you must have a proper kitchen, withtubs.
Cup. Spinach tubs?
Pat. No, just tubs. Then take the spinach, a leaf at atime, and look at it. Yes, each leaf; only that way lies safety.
Cup. That way lies madness, I should say. Still, it does,anyway, so why worry?
Pat. Throw away all the bad leaves, the roots and soon—that will be about one-third discarded.
Cup. Do you cut off the stem?
Pat. About half of it.
Cup. They say there isn't so much iron in the stems,anyway.
Pat. Bother the iron. People who want iron in their dietshould become sword swallowers and be done with it. Then throw theremaining leaves into a tub of water.
Cup. Great heavens, weren't they in water all thistime?
Pat. No, it is more agreeable to pick them over dry first.Then lift them out of the tub into the sink, which has been scrubbedfor the purpose, and run more water over them, stirring vigorously toget the sand out. Then put them back into the tub, put on morewater—da capo.
Cup. How long does this go on, by and large?
Pat. At least eight times, without stopping for meals.
Cup. Is it clean now?
Pat. Comparatively. As you know, perfection is hardly to behoped for.
Cup. I can see how life might be like that. The trouble is,I should think you could hardly see the trees for the spinach.
Pat. Are you trying to be funny?
Cup. Yes.
Pat. Try harder.
Cup. It seems there were two Irishmen, Cup and Pat.
Pat. Then cram the spinach into your largest kettle, placeon the fire and pour boiling water over it, with a spoonful of salt.I should have mentioned that any that falls on the floor must bebathed again, unless you have stepped on it.
Cup. Do you step on much?
Pat. Not so much now. Remember that if you put the spinachon in cold water it will heave up and all over the stove as it getshotter, a fact which has discouraged a lot of beginners. Boil fortwenty minutes, actual boiling time. Twenty-five minutes won't hurt,but more is too much.
Cup. Lucrezia Borgia was very fond of spinach.
Pat. Do you know that for a fact, or did you just hearit?
Cup. I know it for a fact.
Pat. Then lift it out of the pot with a fork—bylifting instead of pouring, a few grains of sand will remainbehind—into a press colander, and press out all the water youpossibly can. Sloppy spinach is dreadful, it's the chief reason whyso many people hate spinach. It should not be minced or creamed oranything of the kind. Put it in a warm dish with a little freshbutter on top. Don't mix the butter in, and don't mess itup—also some freshly ground pepper. Then eat it.
Cup. At last!
Pat. The anti-spinach propaganda is promulgated and keptgoing simply by people who are too lazy to prepare it correctly. Ilay the present outbreak of lawlessness to the fact that not nearlyenough people follow the proper procedure. You can see for yourselfthat if they did, they'd have no time left for any criminaloccupations.
Cup. Brillat-Savarin tells of a Canon Chevrier who wouldnever have spinach served up on Friday that had not been cooked theSunday before and put every day on the fire, with a new addition ofbutter.
Pat. I am not surprised at anything that Canon Chevriermight do.
Cup. Spinach can be made very attractive by molding it intothe shape of birds and animals and trimming it with a border ofcandy-tuft and maidenhair fern. Would you object to that?
Pat. I consider it mere trifling, but I do not seriouslyobject.
Cup. The advantage is that you can always eat theborder.
Pat. Ha! Ha!
Cup. But surely you have other preferences in the way offood?
Pat. Certainly. The ideal menu for the spinach eater beginswith a clam-juice cocktail, with the conventional olives and celeryashors-d'œuvres, followed by broiled brook trout andguinea hen stuffed with truffles—unless you object?
Cup. The sky's the limit.
Pat. Asparagus, green peas, potatoes souffléd.SPINACH. Watercress salad, strawberries and caramel ice cream.
Cup. Why not strawberry shortcake?
Pat. Of course, and coffee and apricot brandy. Champagne tobe served throughout the dinner.
Cup. Just what is the subtle affinity I have noticedbetween spinach and champagne?
Pat. Both conduce to cheerfulness. The Burgundies andclarets, the great wines, are admirable, certainly, but they tend tosolemnity. Specialists in them almost always become unduly serious.In moderation, yes; but taken to excess—
Cup. How about champagne to excess?
Pat. That is impossible. In the first place, you can't getit. Secondly, if you could, whatever you had would be just barelyenough. Ah, here is Edith with the tea.
Cup. We cracked that joke before.
Pat. But you see her now, don't you? Edith, please bringsome of the same. Two lumps?
Cup. Nothing in mine, thanks.
Pat. You don't care much for tea?
Cup. Not much, but this spinach is really delicious. Yourown make?
Pat. Yes, do have some more. I believe in time you willbecome a true spinach eater.
Cup. After all, why not? We live but once, if that. May Ihave a third helping? Do you like being interviewed, Pat?
Pat. I love it, Jake.
Cup. What is your favorite flower?
Pat. Pansies, lilacs, roses, nasturtiums andmignonette.
Cup. What do you think of New York?
Pat. I don't know. I'm a stranger here myself.
Cup. May I tell my readers, then, that you attribute yoursuccess to spinach?
Pat. What success?
scene:A subway shuttle-train plyingbetween Times Square and the Grand Central Station, New YorkCity.
Paterson. But you've interviewed me about spinach oncealready, don't you remember?
Cuppy. Could I forget?
Pat. I wouldn't put it past you. But I've too much work onhand to-day. I have to write "Turns With a Bookworm" and two articlesand a chapter of the novel and go to a party and deliver a lectureand—
Cup. Do you call that work?
Pat. Well, it cuts into the afternoon.
Cup. Then why go clear from Times Square to the GrandCentral after more spinach, when you have enough for nine peopleright here in this enormous bag?
Pat. They're having a sale. Shall I carry it?
Cup. No, I can manage it nicely with your brief-case andbooks and umbrella and parcels, by hanging this little one on myear.
Pat. Let me hang it on. There!
Cup. I heard many compliments on our first interview aboutthe capture, initiation ceremonies, compulsive bathing and secretculinary rites pertaining toSpinacia oleracea, orspinach.
Pat. Yes, it was in your best classic manner.
Cup. Nonsense! I mean the funny things you said in it.
Pat. But you said all the funny things.
Cup. Oh, what a fib! I did not! I thought I gave you abreak.
Pat. Did you?
Cup. This is gratitude, when I'm always telling you howbrilliant you are.
Pat. Oh, but I'm not. I'm only a plain, simple littlething. You are the brilliant one. Why else do I have you around?
Cup. I had hoped—
Pat. I wish these people would quit stepping on me.
Cup. What do you think of tripe?
Pat. I don't think of it.
Cup. I feel that I should give you my tripe recipe inreturn for your spinach directions.
Pat. I'm in no state of mind just now to hear anytripe.
Cup. But it would go so well in the article.
Pat. As for articles, I always say keep your mind on themain subject and the tripe will take care of itself.
Cup. Take two heads of fresh, young tripe—
Pat. Two heads of tripe?
Cup. Two heads are better than one. Boil forty-eight hours,add chlorate of lime and—Oh, well!
Pat. I warned you.
Cup. Would you care to discuss the economic aspects ofspinach?
Pat. With pleasure. Some of our great American fortunes arefounded upon spinach.
Cup. Where can I get some?
Pat. That man stepped on me again.
Cup. You have been heard to express the opinion thatspinach has its literary side.
Pat. It has hardly anything else. Great writers have alwaysknown that, instinctively. Spinach and literary genius go hand inhand, as it were.
Cup. Would you say that the spinach causes the genius, orthat the genius causes the spinach?
Pat. Genius is born, but it requires spinach and otherfavorable conditions to bring it out. That is all one can say aboutgenius.
Cup. Put case a young person who develops acutecacoëthes scribendi, or the uncontrollable itch to writethings down on paper and try to get them printed. Should he be fedupon a diet of spinach? Would that make his productions lesshorrible?
Pat. If spinach won't help him, nothing can—it is thewill of Allah. In the Ideal State a skilled physician will firstdetermine whether the youth has truecacoëthes scribendior merely scarlatina. If it is only scarlatina he will be cured bymeans of herbs and simples and turned into a useful member of societyas a husbandman, weaver, smith, neatherd, goatherd, shepherd,bootlegger or judge.
Cup. But if it is reallycacoëthesscribendi?
Pat. Spinach is indicated. One of the wisest of the elderswill then be appointed to read the youth's works and decide whetherto administer more spinach or some form of euthanasia, or painlessannihilation.
Cup. I suppose I ought to eat more spinach. If I did, doyou think I would be a better reviewer of detective stories?
Pat. Your problem would then work itself out in anotherway.
Cup. You mean that I wouldn't review them at all?
Pat. Did I say so?
Cup. Detective stories serve a worthy purpose. They restthe mind.
Pat. Sure they do, if you have that sort of mind.
Cup. You think detective authors should eat morespinach?
Pat. No, more strychnine.
Cup. Who are some of these great writers who eat spinach,anyway?
Pat. Well, you seem to eat quite a bit of it, man andboy.
Cup. Oh, I'm not bragging.
Pat. Robert Browning was a natural born spinach eater. Hegot plenty. That accounts for his cheery, warbling note, his feelingthat God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, the snail's onthe thorn and all that.
Cup. Who's this—Eddie Guest?
Pat. No—Robert Browning.
Cup. For me, Browning represents the triumph of mind overspinach, or vice versa. I also detect a trace of deadly nightshade inhis work.
Pat. Dante, on the other hand, never got enough, withresultant depression and gloom. He really belongs, of course, butcircumstances were against him. The "Inferno" clearly shows the lackof Vitamins A and B.
Cup. Vitamin A is also found in alfalfa and clover.
Pat. Young clover is delicious.
Cup. Dr. Johnson——
Pat. Distinctly non-spinach.
Cup. Yet Boswell says that Dr.Johnson ate spinach once.
Pat. Dr. Johnson was exactly the kind of man who would eatspinach once.
Cup. He had soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach on April11, 1773.
Pat. Mutton, probably. Carlyle, though, was the realringleader of the opposition, the head and front of the anti-spinachparty. This stubborn obsession of his made him utterly impossible tolive with and caused him to write in such a style that nobody to thisday has been able to read him and find out what it was all about. Heabsolutely never ate spinach, and it would have done him no good ifhe had.
Cup. You seem a little shy of positive examples of spinachaddiction in history.
Pat. History, is it? The whole cause of the suddenmarvelous efflorescence of genius that took place in the great Tudordays was simply that Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, who,being Spanish, introduced salad and spinach into England. She hadalways been used to green vegetables at home and insisted upon havingthem at the English court, so they became fashionable. But she couldnever get Henry to eat any spinach, and that's the reason he turnedout the way he did. Ultimately, of course, it broke up themarriage.
Cup. That's just another negative example. Bring on yourspinacharians.
Pat. You can read in any authority that Queen Elizabeth atepractically nothing else.
Cup. She was a distant relative of Henry's, wasn't she?
Pat. Only his daughter. That succory pottage that thehistorians mention was spinach. They speak of her making a whole mealof a manchet of bread and some succory pottage, that is to say,spinach.
Cup. What are your grounds for thinking that succorypottage is spinach?
Pat. Why—everybody knows that!
Cup. You wouldn't mislead me about it, would you, Pat?
Pat. Gosh, no, Jake, you know I wouldn't. So it wasn't longuntil the spinach habit had spread throughout the land, and you gotShakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe and all the magnificent company ofElizabethan dramatists, singers and what not.
Citp. And the explorers?
Pat. I haven't completed my investigations yet, so I can'tsay whether they left home in search of newer varieties of spinachand better places to grow it, or in order to get away from it.
Cup. I'm surprised you'd admit that possibility.
Pat. Unfortunately, there is such a thing as unregeneratehuman nature, and you have to reckon with it. I have told mysecretaries to go ahead with the research as soon as I can get anappropriation passed to pay their salaries, and if the argument goesagainst me, well and good—but it won't.
Cup. I suppose that's why Henry VIII beheaded his eightwives?
Pat. Only two, I believe.
Cup. Is that all?
Pat. You feel that beheading only two out of six is rathera low average?
Cup. Well, yes, for a king, who could do as he pleased. Ihad always regarded him as a sort of champion in that way.
Pat. You admire him, then?
Cup. Only as a thinker. He was the first to advance thetheory that woman's place is on the chopping block. Queen Elizabethwas pretty mean about her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, wasn'tshe?
Pat. You mean her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots?
Cup. Just how far do you think Queen Elizabeth went withall those men?
Pat. I think her diet sufficiently refutes those ancientslanders.
Cup. Do you care to enlarge upon Shakespeare's love ofspinach, with perhaps something in the way of evidence and a fewwell-chosen quotations?
Pat. That is a subject upon which one has no need toenlarge. There are the plays! They speak for themselves.
Cup. Well, that brings the history of spinach up to 1515,the date of Shakespeare's death.
Pat. It is not the generally received opinion thatShakespeare died in 1515.
Cup. You mean he didn't?
Pat. He didn't.
Cup. I may be dumb, but really, I do know that much. I onceput in three hard, grinding years of graduate study on theElizabethan period, the whole thing leading up to the one central,outstanding fact that Shakespeare died in 1515. If I learned anythingwhatever at college, it was that. Are you trying to insult myintelligence?
Pat. Your what?
Cup. You can always remember dates if you associate themwith little jingles, such as
In fourteen hundred and ninety-three
Columbus sailed the deep blue sea.
Pat. Shakespeare was born in 1564. He bought New Place atStratford in 1597 for sixty pounds. The Globe Theater was finished in1599, Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and the First Folio appeared in1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death.
Cup. Well, that proves that Shakespeare died in 1616, justas I've been trying to tell you.
Pat. Life is very hard at times. Will youpleasequit stepping on me, Mister?
Cup. That's not the same man. That's a couple of otherfellows.
Pat. Oh, I apologize! Go right ahead, boys.
Cup. Speaking of "Hamlet," how did you happen to take upspinach, anyway?
Pat. It was when I was having difficulties with my firstnovel.
Cup. And since then everything has been jake?
Pat. Swell!
Cup. Am I right in feeling that there is veiled spinachpropaganda in your Elizabethan novel, "The Fourth Queen"?
Pat. Yes, of course. It's in the form of a cryptogram. I'mleaving it for posterity to decipher.
Cup. Hell, I wish I was rich.
Pat. Why didn't you get a job?
Cup. Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore.
Pat. That does complicate matters.
Cup. There's evolution to consider, too.
Pat. What are you leading up to?
Cup. Eohippus, the Dawn Horse. It seems likely that spinachprevented stringhalt inEohippus, Orohippus andEpihippus in the Eocene,Mesohippus andMiohippus in the Oligocene,Parahippus, Protohippus andHypohippus in the Miocene,Pliohippus in the—
Pat. It is also good for morbid conditions of the cerebralcortex in certain Primates, such as the Simiidæ, or man-likeapes.
Cup. You win. It seems terrible, though, thatEohippus, the Dawn Horse, is extinct. The poor little thingwas only about the size of a cat. Its fore limbs had four functionaldigits, the second to fifth, while the first was completely lost. Thehind legs were three-toed, the first and fifth being merely vestigialremains—cute, eh? Do you think we came from monkeys?
Pat. What do you mean, came?
Cup. I hold that if birds came from reptiles, anythingmight happen. Have you anything to say about the Mendelian bean?
Pat. Not for publication.
Cup. We haven't mentioned Neanderthal Man.
Pat. I know him personally.
Cup. Do you believe in epigenesis in ontogeny?
Pat. I suppose it's all right if one has nothing better todo.
Cup. That just about covers the subject of evolution. Whatdo you think of trilobites?
Pat. There seem to be millions of them in thisshuttle-train. What do they mean rushing about and fighting eachother this way? Ouch!
Cup. This is the rush hour. Maybe we'd better get off thistrip.
Pat. Do you mean to say you've let me sit here and rideback and forth all afternoon in this subway?
Cup. I couldn't bear to interrupt you.
Pat. Come on, now! Step lively.
Cup. My God, I've been robbed!
Pat. Whazzat?
Cup. Your brief-case! Your books! The parcel on my ear! Allgone!
Pat. The bag of spinach?
Cup. Here it is, still clutched firmly in my arms, if weever get out of here alive.
Pat. My hero! You have saved my spinach! Please don't worryfor a single moment about that silly brief-case and the otherthings—it was only some unfinished manuscripts and my bank bookand some stocks and bonds and my passport and my watch and a few oldfamily necklaces. I was tired of them, anyway.
Cup. I'll get you some more necklaces.
Par. You'll do no such thing.
Cup. Angel! Watch your step!
Pat. Whew! Where are we now?
Cup. Times Square.
It is a commonplace among thinking economists that a dollar billwill go just so far and no farther at a given time and place, thesame law of Nature holding true for bills of other denominations,such as $2 bills, $5 bills, and so on, and even truer for the morefamiliar nickel, dime and quarter. This doubtless accounts, or let usso assume, for the widespread use of budgets, which have been definedas financial estimates, filled with characteristic dotted lines,embodying plans for the ensuing year. Budgets were well known to theancients, and frequently have been found alongside the mummies inEgyptian tombs.
Anyway, it may not come amiss—and this is what I'm drivingat—to relate my own budget experiences for those in the samefix. Though based roughly upon such scientific factors as supply anddemand, entrepreneurs and unearned increment, my observations are notput forth as strictly professional. There is nothing hidebound oracademic about them. All I intend is to offer a few hints to hermits,hack writers and other morbid bachelors on how to sustain life or itsequivalent upon a very moderate income, if that—in a word, howto become efficient without a chance in the world.
I made my first budget a year ago, without appreciable results.Having read in a book that a budget is a machine guaranteed toconvert the raw material, or income, into whatever one desires to getout of life, I constructed such a machine designed to get perhapsmore than can be got all of a sudden. I based my calculations tootrustfully upon the way things would be if they were the way theyought to be. I included practically everything there is in life,quite overlooking the catch in the whole business, to wit: theincome. The budget was a good one, as budgets go, but this oneweakness seriously undermined its practical value. Still, there was awild, untrammeled charm to that budget that I just loved.
Without unduly catering to a cowardly and pessimistic prudence,and with the tacit understanding between it and me that something mayturn up this year, my new budget takes more account of actualconditions in the here and now. It remains fluid or elastic,existing, as it were, in a state of flux, subject to unexpected jumpsin income, invitations out, birthday presents, discovery of a goldmine and possible adoption by a wealthy couple in search of a steady,reliable, deserving and middle-aged hermit who will take care of hisown room and not expect much pin money. Let us now examine itbriefly.
Taking up the various budget divisions in the regular order offood, shelter, clothing, operating costs and advancement, we arefaced at the outset with the old bogey of starvation, which it isalways to a book reviewer's advantage to hold off as long as possiblewhile hoping against hope that some one may discover potential geniusin his paragraph on the back pages of literary journals and dosomething. Although a certain amount of suffering is said to be justfine for the spiritual development of writers, the harried bookreviewer is inclined to draw the line at hunger pains. He feels thatin justice to his editor he must eat. But how?
Well, supposing that the hypothetical hermit has saved up $10 forthe purchase of food, he will find the daily budget an excellentcontrivance for helping him spend it. The following memorandum isrecommended for marketing of this nature: One ham (the same ham thathe has wanted for years), probably about $5; fresh green vegetablesfor vitamins, about $1; whole wheat flour for mineral salts,somewhere around $0.25; package pancake flour, maybe $0.50; coffeefor inspiration, $0.50; carton Luckies for ditto, $1.35 or some suchprice; twelve chocolate almond bars, large size, $1.20; two canshoney, about $1 or less; miscellaneous, $1. Tucking this list insidehis seven sweaters, he sets out blithely for shore in the teeth of athreatening snowstorm.
It may be noted that this budget foots up to $12.95, instead of$10. It turns out not to matter, since one finds that one owes thegrocer $8.15, anyway, leaving a total of $1.85 for current supplies.There goes the ham again. Hurriedly tearing up the budget, thehermit's next move is to return to Jones's Island in a ragingblizzard with a soaking wet bundle containing one pack smokes, $0.15;one tube tooth paste, $0.45; stamps, $0.50; one almond bar, $0.10,and potatoes (very filling), $0.55. This leaves a surplus of $0.10and incipient pneumonia.
I have outlined an extreme case, which need discourage nodetermined hermit. The fact is, if he can find some way to get ashoreand back, and if he possesses sufficient powers of persuasion, he canalways charge his groceries, a nice basket of which can be obtainedin this way for from $5 to $10, depending upon the size of the basketand the price of the foods. So why worry about this phase of theproblem? The grocery lady will soon be back at Jones's Island and thesummer colonists will be along eventually and Rattlesnake Ned has agood idea about making vitamins out of eel grass and seaweed. And forthat matter, the Coast Guards would never see me starve.
I find that it does not pay to burden my mind with the actual costof the various items of diet—surely life has enough interestswithout that. But it is probable that the typical hermit's meal wouldgo something like this: Clams, $0.00; corn muffins, $0.02; butter,$0.01; coffee, $0.01; water, $0.00; laundry, $0.00; breakage, $0.00;one can corn, presented by E. R. Tappen, $0.00; one can sardineskindly sent by Franklyn Fisher, $0.00; overhead, $0.00; one onion,forget it. Total, $0.04. I think I shall be able to cut my foodexpenses still lower if I can learn to live on soy beans. Of course,when I entertain I am as likely as not to break out a jar of figs insyrup or a can of shrimp, but as a rule I try to keep my Blue Platedinners within reason, say about $0.09. Only last week, however, Igave a party that ran well into two figures.
Shelter and operating costs for the family of one may be groupedtogether. As I own my own country estate, I suppose I get shelterfree—at least, that is my understanding of the arrangement.Upkeep on my house and outbuilding has probably amounted to $3.30,but that isn't much for seven or eight years. Under operation thisyear I lay out to get two ten-gallon cans of kerosene forillumination, a ton of coal for next winter, a new mosquito-nettingcanopy for my bed, a large bottle of citronella for the guest chamberand a set of washers for the pump. I must also see if Mrs. Prodgerscan spare another lamp, as mine smokes, leaks and has dizzy spells.All in all, exclusive of the coal, which will doubtless disappearfrom the budget when the time comes, operating costs should come toabout $4.35. As for coal, there is much to be said for the popularfeeling that hermits were intended to burn driftwood. Thecircumstance that, by some hideous freak of fate, there isn't any onJones's Island in the winter explains why one hermit talks tohimself.
Clothes, of course, one can't get away from. The weather beingwhat it is, and it is certainly all of that, we of Great South Bayrequire a lot of good durable clothes; though, truth to tell, thechanging fashions do not disturb us at all. Why should we be slavesto some dim arbiter in Paris, who couldn't tell a stiff gale from acyclone? What do they know in Paris of the needs of High Hill Beach,Goose Crick and Crow Island? The hermit will do well to leave to thevery last his pink pajamas, silk socks and suchlike, including firstin his budget the best obtainable grade of hip boots, oilskins,flannel shirts and woolen breeches—that's where the money goes.And if the Rue de la Paix objects, he can tell the rue to lumpit.
During the long winter evenings at Jones's the Coast Guards and Iare wont to admire, without precisely aspiring to the elegantcostumes in the ads. Soup and fish, patent leathers—they arehardly for us, but there's no harm in looking. We mostly have enoughclothes already, what with the large and varied assortment on thestation hooks, for these are a common possession to be used by thefirst comer, like the station harmonium. We really solve this problemat a minimum expense by wearing each other's clothes. It's a wisebeachite who knows his own pants.
Occasionally I add to the general wardrobe some items of apparelwhich I keep in mothproof bags in my spare room on the theory that ifthings get much worse I may be glad to wear them out in company. Asthe rest do the same, we are always becomingly, if not gaudily,arrayed. This year I do plan to have a new bathing suit, but younever can tell. A bathing suit will always last one season more, ifyou bathe away up the beach where chance spectators are likely to bein the same predicament. In this way the hermit not infrequently getsthe full effect of the ultra-violet rays where they will do the mostgood. A couple of dollars, then, for beach clothes, and a plentifulsupply of socks will come to about a dollar more.
But what of the hermit who goes occasionally to New York, wheremen are fashion plates? What about Sunday clothes? How is he tocompete with the Coast Guards, beside whom, when they go ashore, thelilies of the field may be said to be practically nowhere? As BillWilliams may need his overcoat ere I return and Slim may miss hisshoes, it comes down to maintaining a more or less stylish outfit ofmy own. My budget policy, here as elsewhere, is to let itride—in short, wait and see what may happen.
My next town suit, for instance, depends upon what Chase Horton,the celebratedbon vivant of Greenwich Village, is going to doabout the brown tweed which he refused to sell me last year.Discovering that I wanted the suit, he took a sudden liking to it,and as he has worn it almost continuously since then—though hehas eleven other suits—it is hardly likely that he would havethe nerve to charge much for it at this late day. And right herearises the possibility that in some future, fairer age persons ofquality and the well-to-do classes in general will give literaryhermits a thought before they go tossing suit after suit out thewindow just because they (the suits) are a little bit thin in theseat. I must say for Chase that he has always been most reasonableabout that sort of thing.
Next comes the important matter of advancement; under this headingmay be grouped, in various pleasing arrangements, such items asvacation, travel at home and abroad, amusements, college for thekiddies, gifts to church and charities, insurance, savings,investments and yachts. Here also belong books, magazines, lectures,cut flowers, illness, postage stamps, napery and Chautauqua courses.It is from no wish to remain coarse and brutal that I manage to savequite a tidy sum on these folderols. The forward-looking budgeteercan always cut out the advancement. Nobody can force you to berefined if you can't afford it.
Now in re doctors. Since this is neither the time nor the place todwell upon my bodily ailments, suffice it that I am at some pains topreserve such limbs and faculties as have been spared to me and thatthis must be a considerable strain upon somebody. By a happycoincidence my physician in chief, who has given lavishly of histime, luncheons, spare rooms and dinners to assure me that mydiseases are all in my head, seems to be far above all sordid,mercenary motives. Little does Dr. Raggi suspect that I intend todischarge my heavy obligation by mentioning him prominently in mywill.
Dentists come a little higher. Mine has already done for me aboutall that his branch of learning has thought up since the invention ofthe original hydraulic gimlet, and $30 will nicely cover all that Iowe him at the moment. Dr. Steeves has opened vistas I hardly dreamedof and has given me plain and fancy feelings compared to which beingin love is a positive pleasure. All this costs money, at least onpaper, and it would be well for the hermit to add the round sum of$30 to his list as a permanent fixture. And about $5 for runningamuck in drug stores. It is fortunate that persons obsessed with anungovernable passion for practically everything they see in drugstores—and most hermits must confess to thispeculiarity—are automatically protected from total ruin by thefact that drug stores demand spot cash.
We live in an age of travel, so one must spare something for thisbroadening influence. It costs me anywhere from $0.99 to $1.14 everytime my soul succumbs to wanderlust and nostalgia for the far places,this being the fare to the Penn Station from my various points ofembarkation, once I get ashore. Then there are the nickels for thesubway. Hermits loose in Manhattan use more of these than thenatives, since they are likely to drop another one in the dujinguswhen they exit, from sheer inability in the excitement to knowwhether they are going or coming. Speaking of uplift, I shouldn'tmind owning a second-hand copy of the encyclopædia, either.It's an awful strain having to make up my own learned referencesabout all kinds of science as I go along, and sooner or later it'sgoing to get me fired from something. I should also like themoon.
I thought of starting a bank account, but I am informed by thehermit of Crow's Island that this is easier said than done. He saysthat once you do get $17 over and above urgent current expenses, andtake it to a bank, they mumble something about a deposit of $200 andwink at each other right before your eyes. Ned may have confused thechecking and savings departments in some way, but there's a good dealof fundamental truth in his argument. As a principle, the family ofone should probably concentrate on the institution of borrowing,which offers a shorter cut to advancement than savings do. Moreover,the saving type is not in the best odor out here. The fellow whodoesn't spend his check before he gets it is bad pay, and that doesno one's reputation any good. We prefer to treat our money as thoughwe really owned it. If we want to shoot a dime for a chocolate almondbar, we shoot it and reck not of the future. If we couldn't do that,we'd as soon be in jail.
I wish I could do more for charities. I should like to giveliberally to Chinese missions, the Anti-Noise movement, the Societyfor Being Kind to Hermits and many other worthy causes, and make somevery good looking people independent for life. For the present I haveto curb this side of my nature at every turn. Yet I do what I can. Ihave for some years made it a practice, whenever occasion offers, tosmile at old crossing sweepers, assist crippled beggars through thetraffic, force my attentions upon apple and gum sellers and be asnice as pie to shabby and forbidding ancients who look as though theymight own apartment buildings and be searching for a beneficiary oftheir vast wealth. If that is not striving for advancement, what isit?
In closing, let me advise the family of one not to take itsexpense account too seriously. When you are making out a budget,don't include everything you absolutely need, but on the other hand,don't skimp yourself too much. Do the thing right. I find it anexcellent plan to do one's budgeting weekly instead of yearly, and asI am just starting ashore for a while, I append a sample budgethastily contrived to cover the next seven days:
| One felt hat for street wear ........ | $ 10.00 |
| One extra large ham ............. | 9.00 |
| One new typewriter ............ | 112.00 |
| Pay S. K. F. Chicago ............ | 45.00 |
| Beach expenses, general, from last summer.................. | 7.85 |
| One dictionary, simply must ........ | 3.00 |
| One dozen chocolate almond bars .. | 1.20 |
| Scattering ...................... | 257.00 |
| Christmas cards, don't forget this year ........... | .30 |
| Second-hand encyclopædia .... | 50.00 |
| ———— | |
| Total ......... | $495.35 |
It will be observed that the element of chance must be allowed forin the above estimate. Indeed, nothing short of some giganticupheaval of nature or a total change in the financial system, orboth, can help me come out even this week. And what of that, when youcome right down to it? I sometimes think that wishing is an end initself. As for cold, hard facts, it may be that whatever you want inthis world, ten to one you won't get it; but, Lord love you, thatneedn't stop a body from making a budget.
Perhaps no single component of our modern, highly advancedcivilization [laughter] is so little understood by the layman andlaywoman as the common, or soft clam(Mya arenaria), unlessit's the hard clam, or Freud. Some authorities attribute this to thegradual movement of all intelligent persons towards New York Cityafter the Repeal of the Corn Laws; others blame the widespread lossof respect for custom and tradition following the introduction ofgin. Both sides would benefit a lot by taking a teaspoonful ofthyroid three times a day—there's nothing like it for thattouch of cretinism.
I lay the whole thing to a conspiracy of silence, a policy ofsuppression which has kept the boys and girls of to-day in almostcomplete ignorance of the facts, and scared Nature authors intowriting about the birds, the flowers and how pretty the sunset is,whether it is or not. Essayists who wish to reveal the true state ofaffairs find themselves balked at the start, for Roget's Thesaurus ispathetically vague on the subject; and as for "How to SellManuscripts"! The real lowdown on clams is jealously guarded by theEncyclopædia Britannica, which is owned by people who do nothave to write about clams. At their death the complete set and thecase it came in passes by due process of law to still other personswho don't know what it is to miss a meal. Gawd, it's tough!
Indeed, what have we about clams in all literature—what havewe that will live, I mean—excepting several sporadic studies ofthe love life of this species by writers with few if any scruples,who have stressed the erotic at the expense of the more seriousaspects, if there are any? Many of my readers will immediately thinkof Fr-nk S-ll-v-n and R-b-rt B-nchl-y—and I may state thatneither of these gentlemen invented the clam. And what have theydiscovered, beyond the elementary fact that clams have a fullydeveloped philoprogenitive tendency, to put it that way, or, to comeright out with it, a grasp of fundamentals surpassed only by some ofthe mammalian bipeds, such as business men, politicians and any oneelse with the time and money? I wish, however, to express myindebtedness to Mr. S-ll-v-n's valuable monograph on a Long Beachclam named Elsie; without it I should never have met Elsie's sisterAgnes, now my next-door neighbor at Jones's Island.
He jests at clams who never—who never— At any rate, itis well to remember, before sneering at any of theMollusca,that they are older citizens of our planet than some of the landanimals that pretend to be so much. Scholars tell us that they had acomplete culture and a really wonderful civilization of their ownmillions of years (262 millions, to be exact) before you and I wereever heard of, or maybe I am thinking of the Chinese. In the huntingfield, where success so often depends upon a superior quality ofcerebral neurons, a fairly clever soft clam is often more than amatch for an athletic hermit. The pity of it is that he has aone-track mind and knows but a single direction—straightdown—a peculiarity which has led certain of our biologists toadvocate crossing him with the rabbit. If this can be done, I believethat a new day will dawn for the clams. We'll have them chasing thehermits instead of the other way round. And that will be news.
I saw in the paper that the young, or larval, clams rotatespirally as they move through the water, reminding one of a flock ofyoung lambs frisking merrily about the dam. That is to say they donot actually remind one of young lambs, since lambs do not reallyrotate spirally, but lambs might easily give that impression,especially if one were rotating spirally oneself at the time; thepoint is hardly worth fighting about, as you can't see the larvalclams, anyway—they are only one four-hundredth of an inch long.I simply mean to indicate that there is something essentially playfuland appealing in a larval clam for which it seldom gets credit.
Note what life does to these happy, carefree creatures. Afterrotating for a few brief days, with no very tangible results, theysink to the bottom and glue themselves to old shells or what not,seldom moving from their chosen anchorage; when they attain thelength of one-half inch they dig farther down into the mud andnever rise to the surface again! They're through. I wonderwhether this is the clam's natural and inescapable destiny, orwhether it is the result of false conventions, of dogmas enforcedupon the young of the species by venal leaders for their ownsufficient reasons. Whichever it is, it shows an unfortunatehypertrophy of the herd instinct—the sheep motif again. Itseems not improbable that sheep, as we know them to-day, are directdescendants of the clam. The bivalves also display a curious likenessto the ostrich, which similarly buries its head in the sand(ostriches do not do this, but so many people think so that it seemsa shame to deny it—besides, I shouldn't be surprised if theyreally do, there's so much talk). On the other hand, fossil clamshave been found many miles from the nearest fossil water, so theyprobably get around more than we imagine.
The psychology of the clam is still in its infancy. Hard clam fansfind a decided kick in the somewhat aggressive, masterful nature ofthe quahog, as opposed to the gentler, rather whimsical personalityof the humble softie. I have never known either kind to attack ahuman without due provocation, and even then fear, rather than puremeanness or the desire to make an extra nickel, was the rulingfactor. The incurably vicious clam is in the vast minority. As forfurther research into the soul secrets of this interesting animal, Ifavor applying the behavioristic system of Dr. John B. Watson, in thefirm belief that some sense might come of it.
People often ask me if I keep any clams as pets. No, I do not. Ihave never kept even a fish. Having been born and brought up inland,I seem not to have acquired the usual infantile fixations upon fish.They seldom stir me. As companions fish can be awfully tiresome afterthe first few sessions, and they have never struck me as nearly solovable as some of the other vertebrates. Their complete lack ofresponse finally wounds one's vanity past bearing, and all bets areoff, if you want to save the last remnants of your self-respect.Clams are even worse. Platonic is no name for their utterly blahindifference, their self-sufficiency and conceit. Who do they thinkthey are?
Besides, the clam's span of life is so short that if you didbecome deeply attached to one you'd suffer something fierce. Yourexistence would be just one clam after another, which, for somepeople, might be pretty thrilling—but you have to be the type.Such affairs seldom come to light, as the appearance of the clam isall against it for anything approaching intimate relations. For whatbecomes of high romance when you can't tell whether the small exposedportion of the other party is its foot or its face? I pause for areply.
It is really surprising what may be done in the home with a smallcan of paint, if you aren't careful. A little paint is all that isneeded when the average hermit gets to feeling that he can no longercope with the mosquitoes and the rejection slips and stark realism ingeneral. At least so the experts say, and you know what elegantresults have been obtained by color lately in the treatment of themore complicated neuroses and psychoses, such as most of us probablyhave. I heard of a case where a single quart of common barn paintcured a Middle Western hermit-author of delusions of dialect,toothache and bad grammar in one application. After the second coathe quit mumbling to himself, turned cheerful as anything and stoppedtrying to think up homely and horrible people to write about.
In other words, I'm going to paint my bedroom. The recent officialinvestigation of conditions in my shack by myself and the Zachs Inletcrew convinced us, as it would doubtless convince any fair-mindedjury, that the main trouble lay in the color scheme. This bit ofreform should come as good news to the summer resorters of High HillBeach, who sometimes pass my bedroom windows on their way to gathermythical cranberries in the uncharted marshes back of my bungalow. Icaught a bevy of these ladies peering into my sleeping quarters onemorning, as I played dead under the blanket, and heard one of themsay that the place ought to be advertised as one of the plague spotsof Long Island.
I wish I'd been up to answer that woman, but I'm always justgetting to sleep when the slummers see fit to visit my part of theisland, or, for that matter, when anything else of interest orimportance happens. Since my bedroom is an open book, having twowindows abutting on what might be called the main thoroughfare to theswamp, it offers a tempting mark to the general public during Julyand August. As a summer menagerie I may consider myself a greatsuccess, and I suppose I am lucky that nobody has yet chopped off anear or a toe as a souvenir. I have nothing much to conceal, but ifthis goes on much longer I swear I'll get window shades for mybedroom.
I must admit that the view of the interior from the windows isslightly distressing. The foreground appears a trifle huddled, butthat will be all right as soon as I can do something about thedismantled spare bed, the parts of a porch swing, the steamer chair,that old trunk and the canned goods that I have to keep in this roomin addition to my own bed, bureau, table and clothing. Besides, itwill look entirely different when I get the rug. In time I hope tohave a chastely Hepplewhite bedroom, but just now, as that ladyrather cruelly went on to giggle, it shows the marked influence ofAttila, the Scourge of God. She must be right. Even Rattlesnake Nedsays that my boudoir reminds him irresistibly of the Death House atSing Sing. You may well wonder how, in the midst of such a shambles,with its clutter of unfortunate furniture and its air of chaos comeagain, I have managed to insinuate a modicum of that modest andunpretentious charm which is always to be met with in the bedroom ofthe man who knows. Well, maybe I haven't.
The trouble is that the color of the walls andceiling—identified by an artistic visitor as one of the moretrying shades of dying prune—invariably induces in all but themost callous constitutions acute symptoms of eighteenth centuryspleen, contemporary vapors and sometimes the Jones's Island horrors,or slight manic-depressive seizures attended by vertigo. In the onespot where I should be able to relax, forget the facts and sink intorestful, dreamless slumber, all I can do is lie awake, staringbitterly into the blackness of an all too certain future, shudderingwith thoughts of the inevitable Judgment Day and wondering what evilgenius with a kink in his brain produced that particularly hideoushue, that dire insult to the ruddier side of the spectrum which it ismy ambition to eradicate from off the face of the earth or perish inthe attempt. It came with the house.
The color is one of those rare accomplishments in art whichproduce their own proof of malicious intent. Yet it seems impossiblethat one lone criminal, guided by a libido however sadistic, couldhave turned the trick without calling in outside help; so maybe itwas a gang. Still, Jones's being Jones's, I should not be surprisedif the whole thing was simply the result of a former owner's mixing agallon of pigmentary odds and ends found in the tool chest withanother gallon of something else discovered under the porch. If so,my bedroom is a brilliant example of the Early—andLate—Zachs Inlet school of thought, the object of which is notso much to chase the nuance as to get it over with as soon as you canand start smearing up something else so that it's own mother wouldn'tknow it.
I am none too familiar with any of the colors, excepting red, blueand green, and this one has me licked. I spoke of dying prune, butthat's too good for it. Decayed raspberry is also fulsome flattery.Is it a particularly vicious petunia? A disillusioned magenta?Perhaps it would be more charitable to name it a baffled mulberry, orto think of it as a not quite bright verbena. All of these togethermay serve to impress upon a few attuned and sympathetic intelligencessome vague notion of what I have suffered. I try to be fair, but Ihave reached the conclusion, after mature deliberation, longcontinued self-communion in the watches of the night and severalcat-fits in the morning, that this color is what caused the Fall ofRome. In that bedroom Pollyanna herself would begin crossingbridges.
I haven't picked the new color yet. Some pretty deep research inthe literature of the subject has left me just that much older. Onebook strongly advises a combination of ivory, yellow, green andviolet; another holds out for gray and periwinkle blue; a third forlavender, robin's egg and peach. None of these seems exactly right.Orchid is out on the principle—well, on any principle. The sameis true of shrimp. There is a place for shrimp, and it is not in thebedroom. Nor should I care to hold myself accountable in a mauvebedroom stippled with turquoise on a ground of salmon. I knew ahermit once who used that color scheme, and only the other day Iheard they had put him away.
A man's bedroom should be masterful without lookingaggressive—bold, if you will, and full of personality, but notnoticeably fresh. The ideal paint should appear to compromise withlife's little ironies, yet possess a mind of its own—somethingsuggestingdolce far niente, with nevertheless a sort ofseeming accidental note ofCarpe diem. So why not red—agood, honest red? I love red, and I understand that a timid,supersensitive nature can often develop courage, poise and worldlysuccess by wallowing in it. Still, my favorite color is blue, andthat would be nice, too. Even so, it's got to be red, for I see thatred is a warm, advancing color, while blue is cold and retreating.I'd rather have blue, but I'll not have it said, hermit or no hermit,that my bedroom is cold and retreating. I'll paint some other roomblue.
All the rest of the room needs is an overhauling and a fewoperations. Take my bed. When I rescued it from a pile of abandonedhousehold effects in the hills, it wasn't much to look at. Rusty,rheumatic, totally unattractive as it was, I recognized some bondbetween us and took it home. Painted a tasteful pink, it is now theenvy of all visitors who have to sleep on the floor and the despairof every decorator who has seen it. Once junk, it may now be said tohave succeeded in life. You would think twice before you threw it outor gave it to your sister-in-law.
Having always regarded the French Empire style as suitable forbachelors, it was my intention to build around this bed somethingswell in that line. Obviously of the Coolidge period, however, itstubbornly resisted my every effort to make it or anything else inthe same room look Napoleonic. You can't carve pineapples,cornucopias and bees on a castiron bedstead, so I had to be satisfiedwith draping my mosquito netting over it in rather an EmpressJosephine manner. If I can ever get any one to embroider the imperial"C" all over the netting, I shall have something not unimpressive inthe way of a bunk.
So pretentious a bed is at its best on a dais, but I don't know.There is something about a dais that just naturally puts the beholderin his place, but out here at Jones's it might be thought a trifleaffected. For the present the bed must stand on its own three legsand the bricks, and I'd rather have a new mattress, anyway. "But whydo you put sawdust on the floor?" people often ask me. I don't; it'sthe mattress. That's also the answer to the question, "Why do I getup with lumbago, double neuritis and internal injuries?" Really, mymattress is only fit for a guest room. Or maybe it's the springs.They looked fine when I found them under a summer bungalow. Theyproved to be the kind you have to live with before you discover theirreal nature. I often become discouraged when I think of the posturesinto which I am gouged by these springs in my efforts to snatch somesleep. In order to go on I concentrate on the tricks done by Hindufakirs, such as standing on one leg for ninety years. If they can doit, I say to myself, so can I. Let us all, fellow hermits, try tolook at life in this manner. On the other hand, let's make heroicefforts to get some new springs and mattresses.
To end on a cheerful note, it will soon be time to get out the oldfeather bed. That will help a lot. I know that some authorities callfeather beds unhygienic. Well, they keep you from getting struck bylightning! Is that hygienic, or isn't it?
First catch your lettuce (from the GreekLettuce, meaninglettuce). There, in simple, untechnical language, is the garneredwisdom of the ages about salad—and for once I agree with it. Tomanufacture salad that is really salad with a mission and not justsomethingpour passer le temps, first catch your lettuce. Isuppose every one will admit that.
As a matter of fact I suppose no such thing. I know only too wellthat there exists to-day a growing and influential body of publicopinion upholding the notion that a ring of canned pineapple with aball of Grade A putty in the hole and a small American flag stuck inthe putty is an honest to God salad. Patriot as I am, whenever I meetthis particular tidbit out in company I feel impelled to ask: Whitherare we drifting? Have we lost all sense of moral obligation andresponsibility, all trace of Old World courtesy, all connection withEarly Victorian values in our mad scramble after the almighty dollar?Are we, in short, reverting to a state of primitive savagery, inwhich the passions are finally to overpower what little intelligencewe have left? I could ask a lot more of these, but what's theuse?
What I say is, even if the pineapple and putty item were trimmedwith George Washington in fireworks, it would still not be salad. Itmight be wonderful in its way, but not salad. Never one forhalf-measures, I advise that when and wherever this atrocity is metup with it be instantly hurled straight at the shirtfront of Higgsthe butler. It would be a lesson.
Naturally, my readers will demand proof of my theory that allsalad should contain lettuce; the day has gone by when a domesticscientist could write just anything foolish that came into his headand expect to get away with it. Well, I started to work it outmathematically, but you know how that goes, with all one's houseworkto do. Suffice it to say for the present that several statistics havealready been obtained and that the net results will be announced indue time; and you may rest assured they will be in favor oflettuce.
Meanwhile I beg everybody to keep cool and act accordingly. Aboveall, refuse to be stampeded by the jeers of a few flippant,wise-cracking sophisticates who will tell you that lettuce is rabbitfood. This argument, all the more fiendish in that rabbits are saidto possess the smallest mammalian brains in captivity, will not holdwater for a moment—because it isn't so. In a state of nature,if there is such a thing, rabbits never touch lettuce, subsistingentirely upon roots, berries and the products of the chase. Andsupposing they did, there are worse things than rabbits. Rabbits areamong the few remaining vertebrates which neither bark, sing,whistle, play the piano, lecture nor invent new machines to make moreof the same or other loud noises. They should be encouraged.
At any rate, the younger hostesses of to-day are not doing rightby lettuce. They seem to take a wicked, irreligious delight inbanishing it from their menus, a procedure which may be attributed inpart to a widespread loss of respect for the older Vegetables, inpart to a dangerous enthusiasm for the new and untried, and in partto certain obscure pathological conditions of themedullaoblongata, or posterior brain. A radish rose, a celery curl, adeviled bean or a fluted cucumber, and they think they have satisfiedthe conventions. It remains, nevertheless, a self-evident truth thatno amount of dicing, cubing, shredding, fluting, hemstitching,jig-sawing and brow-beating the vital vegetables can make up for thelack of the one ingredient without which a salad is only a patheticbunch of left-overs, a jumble of odds and ends. Where, I ask you, isthe melodic line? In the mayonnaise? No, too often mayonnaise butcovers a multitude of sins.
As for fluting one's cucumbers, that may be well enough, if onehas nothing else to do, but it can easily become a menace. At best itoffers an occupational novelty to those jaded housewives who havespent years of their lives rubbing two severed portions of a cucumbertogether in the fond belief that thereby they are extracting a deadlypoison and saving the whole family. Me, I omit cucumbers altogether.They cramp my style.
I really think that if things go on this way we're in for a waveof rickets, if not beri-beri. Lettuce is anti-scorbutic, too. I can'tstop you if you've made up your mind to be scorbutic, but remember Iwarned you; the novelty soon wears off and you'll wish you'd neverheard of it. It is no secret that lettuce cures rickets, though itmay not be common knowledge that it also strengthens the pituitarygland, tones up the cerebral lobes and does wonders for theosinnominatum, or am I thinking of ultraviolet rays? Moreover, thecourtesans of Alexandria used external applications of lettuce forsoftening and whitening the skin, considering it much better for thissinister purpose than turnip-tops, eggplant, vegetable marrows orSwiss chard.
Up to a point I understand and sympathize with those who refuse totake advice, especially from food experts. What so robs existence ofits romantic glamour, nay, of self-respect? Time was when I, too,scorned lettuce because it was healthful. Conformity seemed likegiving over all my youthful dreams of rum, riot and rebellion, opensedition and piracy on the high seas. Now I'm more orthodox, whetherfrom some subtle stirring of the instinct of self-preservation, thewisdom and tolerance of advancing years, or both, who knows? Perhapsit was the spiritual side of lettuce that won me. Eating my lettucegives me the distinct impression that though my past may not havebeen spotless, though I made mistakes, though I sowed false steps andbankruptcy and blasted hopes and stomach-aches as thick as summerflies, yet am I not all bad. I feel virtuous. I feel that sooner orlater I may succeed in life, that after all something may turn up,and if not, there's always the county. If a feeling like that isn'tworth fifteen cents, what is?
There are drawbacks to lettuce, too, but hermits are seldomexposed to the most insidious and horrible of them all, a form ofvegetable mania known as lettuce fondling. It is seldom possible toobtain enough lettuce for this purpose at Jones's Island. In thewarmer months the grocery store at High Hill Beach carries lettuce,but try and get it before the women folks have been there. For onereason or another, chiefly the latter, it is necessary for hermits tosublimate their desire for lettuce, so that the affliction mentionedremains, if at all, in a latent or incipient stage. Ashore, theseeing eye can pick out many a bachelor lettuce fondler, but let'snot be too harsh with them; let's remember that even Balzacconfessed, in his famous letter to the Duchesse d'Abrantes that hefelt within himself the capacity to become one of the worst.
It seems likely, on the whole, that this type of person will soonbe a thing of the past. Throughout the age of Victoria—andsporadically since then—he devoted the major portion of hisspare time to mixing salad dressings, often in plain view of thepublic, his face illumined the while with a secret and sinfulsmile—and Freud has taught us the meaning ofthat! Oneof the prominent remaining specimens is Dear Old Charlie in EugeneO'Neill's "Strange Interlude," and to my mind the most significantmoment in the play was when the leading lady told Dear Old Charlie tocome behind the scenes and mix his favorite salad dressing. Youshould have seen him go. I am not at liberty to reveal the completerecipe, but the first thing Dear Old Charlie did after he was behindthe scenes was to rub his left ear with a clove of garlic handed tohim by the leading lady with fire-tongs. And from then on!
The cleaning and care of lettuce is a legitimate householdactivity, not to be confused with compulsive fondling. Most expertswash each leaf separately, rubbing briskly with a calico lettucecloth at right angles to the wrinkles; some probably use vanishingcream and an astringent composed of equal parts benzoin and creosote.I just hold the lettuce under the pump to remove the larger and morevicious microbes, the main trouble with that being that my well wateris full of much larger and more horrible things. From the splinters,animalculæ, fossil remains and unidentified souvenirs that comeout of my pump, it seems likely that the pipe connects with anabandoned sawdust mine, or perhaps with a kitchen midden of theJones's Island aborigines (Pottawatomies). We can't haveeverything.
The next two steps are draining and drying the lettuce. Hermitshave no lettuce drainers, so they squeeze it gently or brandish itvigorously to and fro, an act involving quite a bit of dampness forall concerned. Dry with an embroidered lettuce rag if you are thatsort, then place in a knitted lettuce bag before sending to coldstorage. It is a source of regret to me that I have no knittedlettuce bag; it would be so wonderful for clothespins. As things are,my clothespins are thought to be out under the clothesline, but whenI go after them, they turn out to be those wooden parcel handles.What becomes of all the clothespins?
I might put the lettuce in the icebox then, if I had the icebox,but my experience is that lettuce ought to be kept fairly warm. It'sfrozen on me too often. If, dear reader, you have ever tried to keepa head of lettuce in a seaside bungalow in zero weather, you realizethat said employment comes under the head of vain ideals and lostcauses. You retire in good order after tucking it into its crib, andthat very night, the worst since the blizzard of '88, the kitchenstove gives out. Comes the dawn, and your cherished head of lettuceis only one more item to take out and bury.
I have often been urged to go ahead and eat the lettuce before ithas had time to thaw, but that's easier said than done. Liquefactionsets in as soon as you build the fire. Melted lettuce is much lesspalatable than it sounds, and it sounds awful; too, its appearance,at once anæmic and utterly blah, is all against it. Have youever noticed the reproachful look of a head of lettuce that hadtrusted you? It doesn't bear thinking of, much less eating. Let ustrust that some day science will tell us how to revive a head oflettuce that has gone the way of all vegetables; at present chafingwith handfuls of snow and frostbite drill by the Coast Guard crewonly complicate matters.
I'm rather surprised to find myself so worked up about thissubject; I hadn't realized how I cared. Strange, for the truth isthat the emotional kick of lettuce is not so good; it lackssomething. Lettuce has a fundamentally lovable nature, within limits,but it doesn't knock you all of a heap, like. I'm all for thelightning stroke myself, as opposed to the lambent fireside glow ofunderstanding comradeship. Electrocution's the word! Strike me pinkand I'm happy. My affection for lettuce is not like that. With me itseems to arouse the instincts of pity and protection. I want to guardit against life's pitfalls, save it from the many dangers of thisjazz-mad age and see that it doesn't go making a fool of itself. Iwant to feel sure that after I have been out at a conference I havesomething pretty nice, after all, to come back to, something I canrespect. The place for lettuce is in the home.
As for the other contents of my salads, I favor the full mealmodel, preferably of the protein or carnivorous type. With anexclusively vegetarian salad I always feel that somehow I am notexperiencing nearly all life has to offer. The lettuce, tomatoes,carrots and what not of the main dish are all the better for somecanned fish, potted meat or cold boiled eggs. Such a combination, iflarge enough, goes very well with a snack of bread and butter, coldbeans, crackers and cheese, bread and molasses, cigarettes, coffee,bread and jam, clam chowder and more bread and jam. I don't care whatyou put on it. Personally, I do not live in the odor of garlic.
I suppose salads ought to be beautiful, but I can't seem to getthe knack of those artistic rainbow creations you see in the ads.Lately I saw a highly colored composition of green peas, gratedcarrots, tomato jelly, shrimp, maidenhair fern and pimiento which Iregarded as little, if at all, inferior to the Mona Lisa. A cherryhere, a prune there, makes all the difference. Anyway, my saladsseldom reach the table, for by the time I should have the whole thingassembled and strategically piled at the old feeding place I mostgenerally have eaten the color scheme as I went along. I may suggest,however, that a few almonds, pecans, filberts or pistachios scatterednegligently about will serve admirably to give your salads that nuttyappearance. Still, looks aren't everything. The kind of salad I yearnfor is the kind they used to have at the Presbyterian socials inAuburn, Indiana. It consisted, in part, of potatoes, spring onions,boiled eggs, celery, lettuce and parsley—the rest was genius. Iunderstand there are still branches of the same lodge in Hicksville,Ohio, and White Pigeon, Michigan—how about it, Aunt Eliza?
And speaking of thrills—oh, you celery! There can neverpossibly be too much celery. That is why I often plan, as I sitthinking my thoughts and watching the steam dredges and civilizationcreep closer and closer to my hermitage, to move to Kalamazoo. If onemust be civilized, one might as well go where the celery is. Stilland all, I may decide on Hershey, Pa.
Dear "Worried":
I shall be delighted to correspond with one who seems to take sucha deep interest in all that pertains to the habits, customs andfolklore of the pancake. Your letter has touched me in the rightspot, for, as you doubtless know, we hermits are almost solelydependent upon pancakes for our enzymes, hormones, amino-acids,migraine and miscellaneousjoie de vivre. It must be fate thathas brought us together, if I can ever get over to Staten Island, butare you sure you gave me your real name? Are you in the telephonebook? But now let's dispose of unfinished business.
You tell me that you are very, very fond of pancakes, and wish toknow if I approve. Am I, you ask, in favor of the pancake whenemployed as human food? At first blush I feel inclined to reply, asusual, yes—and no. But I am weary of that age-old, fool-proofanswer, though it is probably the best one ever invented up to now.Let us have done with such halting dubieties. Let us cast off theshackles of doubt and take our stand for the moment upon aneverlasting Yea! Let's have pancakes if we want them.
I mean by this, my dear "Worried," that of course it's all rightto have pancakes if you like them and if they harm nobody else verymuch. But right here we bump against the moral issue, since you implythat though you thrive upon the succulent flapjack, your husband andseven children have a furious and ungovernable aversion to same as asteady diet. Anybody who has ever been in a family can butsympathize. As I often remark, laughingly, families are a publicnuisance. I mean it is often hard to see the home for the family.
It looks to me, "Worried," as though you are suffering from a NewEngland conscience or some severe infantile trauma, or both. I amrunning enough lives as it is, but let me remind you that we passthis way but once. I suggest that you take up the philosophy ofAristippus of Gyrene, in which you will find good excuses for almosteverything that's a lot of fun, with just enough Marcus Aureliusthrown in so that you can cast a free and untrammeled balance betweenthe pleasure you actually derive from pancakes and the annoyance towhich you are subjected in listening to the complaints and shootingcramps of your loved ones. Look at the matter in a detached andsensible way, as if you were still happy and single.
If you decide then that griddle cakes are what you really want inthis life, go to it. If you crave pancakes more than the rest of thevain shams of the world, eat them—all you can get, up to theseventeen per sitting allowed by the leading insurance companies.Give all you own for griddle cakes. We have our special ways ofpraising the Lord, and if such be your desire and destiny, say itwith pancakes. As dear old sentimental Baudelaire would have advisedyou, be drunken, if only on pancakes. Thus and only thus will you beable to murmur, as an exit line, "Well, I ate every gosh-blamedpancake I could stow away, and I glory in it!"
Yes, I know, all the time your poor family will be eating them,too, growing meaner and meaner, and perhaps staggering in and out ofthe dining room in loud tortures of acute double-jointed gastritis.Still, if they weren't kicking about pancakes, it would be parsnips,or baked apples, or codfish balls. In concentrating their violenceupon pancakes you will be providing them with a comparativelyharmless outlet for the baser passions and helping the crimesituation. They will simply take it out on pancakes, instead of theirfellow creatures.
And yet, "Worried," and yet— Too surely the day will comewhen you will recover from this passing fancy. You will awake somemorning, suddenly, just like that, with the exclamation, "Heavens,how I detest pancakes!" The very thought of batter will be bitter.You will wonder what you ever saw in them in the first place, and, byGod's mercy, pancakes will seem even a little bit ridiculous. Youwill take up the shattered pieces of your past and pass on, I hope,to less monotonous and maybe higher things.
Believe me, whether you then join the vast army of prune fans orthe orange juice and dry toast addicts, you will find either pleasantenough in its way. Perhaps never again will you recover the mad,godlike frenzy of your pancake phase. Nor can I promise that you willbe a bigger woman, for pancakes are fattening—had you thoughtof that? But you will have gazed into your interior and made yourpeace with prunes, and I think, all said, that you will be happier.You will have come safely through the Neo-hedonists and arrived atthe Aristotelian mean, bless its old practical heart. You can livewith it. And what's more, your family can live with you.
In advising you to go ahead, I have only meant to suggest thatuntil the pancake problem works itself out naturally and inevitablyin your inmost soul, without external compulsion, don't weaken. Whileyou are young and able to fight your husband and seven children oneven terms, have a good time in your own way. But there's alimit—Oh, remember that! Don't keep it up too long. Else sometragic morn you are likely to face an empty breakfast table and avacant hearth and to hear through receding bursts of mocking laughterthe fatal cry, "You made your batter—now lie in it!"
I can best answer your other questions, "Worried," by telling youabout the Inter-Sandbar Pancake Convention held in my shack lastweek. As a good time was had by all, we hope to make it an annualaffair. The first session was only an informal gathering consistingroughly of the hermit of Goose Crick, a game warden from shore(America, as we often call it), an oyster tender from Whale-neckPoint and one of the boys from Snappin' Island, who rowed over for achat and a shot at something that might go good in a stew. And, ofcourse, over the Orange Pekoe and Fig Newtons the subject nearest allour hearts was bound to come up.
For instance, about lumps in the batter. I have been franticallychasing those lumps around my pet dipper for years without tangibleresults. No man on earth has put more downright industry—nay,passion—into his job. And what has it got me? I have stalkedthem with a fork and squeezed them with the back of a spoon, I havewaited until they came round again and swatted them with a knife, asmall trowel, with what not? I have done everything but dive into thedipper and engage in hand-to-hand conflict, only to decide again andagain that there is something about lumps in the batter that we poormortals were not meant to understand, let alone do anythingabout.
No sooner had I mentioned those lumps, casual-like, to the hermitof Goose Crick, than I was conscious of a new feeling in my kitchen.A tense, telepathic, electric, throbbing change came over thosestrong silent baymen sitting in the sink, on the floor and in mychair. I thought for a moment that Pete, who had come over from theCoast Guard Station, would burst into tears at the sheer poignancy ofit all. We were moved as by a trumpet call or a dinner bell. We hadall been chasing those same lumps for years. How alike we are infundamentals! Or are we?
And then, dear "Worried," it came to me in a flash of what we bookreviewers jokingly call inspiration. Suddenly I remembered somepriceless words of Miss Florence Brobeck's in one of those recipesshe thinks up for millionaires with model kitchens—perhaps itwas in her classic essay on ketchup. Well, I just waved my Fig Newtonin the air and repeated her magic phrase, "Put through acolander!"
I will spare you the scene of almost indescribable confusion thatfollowed the release of all that pent-up emotion. Suffice it to saythat I gave Florence Brobeck full credit, and henceforth, whereverhermits ply their trade in the chill dawn of Great South Bay,wherever Coast Guards are to be observed at 6a.m. putting their pancakes through a fine-toothedcolander, Miss Brobeck will be known as a full-fledged life-saverwith the freedom of the flats and the rank of admiral. Unfortunatelyfor hermits, this lady likes her pancakes Russian, with caviar andsour cream, and expects them to be surrounded by chicken FlorentineMoray, clams Duxberry, Hawaiian curry with Major Gray's Indianchutney, cottage cheese, gooseberry jam, gingerbread, a cheeseslipover consisting of a deep-dish apple pie with a Welsh rabbitmelted over it, lobster stuffed and baked, broccoli Parmesan, crispendive with Roquefort dressing, baked Alaska, coffee with gratedorange peel and a clove, a Bacardi swizzle and a bottle of Fiora delAlpina, with a cashew nut to nibble and any other expensive or out ofseason comestibles obtainable or not. Ah, well!
All the boys have promised to get colanders as soon as the springthaws arrive, so something is sure to come of it unless they forget.I happen to have a colander of my own, which came with the shack andhas been lying fallow all this time. It's not what it was, but Ibelieve it can be restored to its pristine vigor and an entirely newfield of usefulness with a few bits of string and glue. I must reportthat there was one dissenting voice, as there always is in anyiconoclastic and forward-looking movement. Said Singapore Sam, thehardest-boiled of the Coast Guards, "I guess your appetite must beall in your head if you can't stand a few lumps in your records." Outhere we call them records, and that is the real origin of the popularphrase, "Put on another record."
At our next meeting we hope to tackle the problem of how to mixpancakes without mixing enough for a family of twenty-nine. You knowhow it is. In the effort to obtain a proper consistency of batter oneis always pumping too much water into the dipper and then adding toomuch flour to make it come out even again. As the batter grows byleaps and bounds, the nest of yellow bowls and a part of the floorare soon full and overflowing, with resultant waste and mental agony.It is almost enough to make one give up hermiting.
"This thing has got to stop!" I often say to myself as I try tostem the tide, but try and do it. The worst of it is that once youhave obtained a practicable thickness or thinness of the batter youmust act with lightning speed. Turn your back an instant, the stuffchanges on you and the whole nerve-racking, soul-shattering procedurebegins all over again. I suppose the thing to do is simply to take achance on the first stirring, have the griddle hot, pull yourselftogether, dump in the batter, trust to luck and watch for thebubbles.
I forget what humane author first wrote, albeit guardedly, in fearand trembling, of housekeeping as a dangerous profession. Guardedly,because this is one of those delicate subjects over which thegoverning classes, through centuries of oppression and for reasonsthat would hardly bear investigation, have cast a veil of illusion,of obscurantism, of downright falsehood. Most essayists who so muchas mention it are never heard of again; others are kidnapped and heldfor ransom, with no takers. And we housekeepers have stood for it alllike a flock of fish.
Surely the times are ripe for—I mean to say, it seems asthough we ought to take steps, and no halfway ones, either. Let usget together and give our opponents a bit of lip about the perils ofthe home. After all, talking back is about all one can hope toaccomplish in this mortal vale. Much good it does, too, though itoften saves a visit to the psycho-analyst and otherwise helps to cutdown the manic-depressive statistics. The majority of housekeepershave hysterics in the butler's pantry simply and solely because theydon't come right out and tell the world what a fix they're in.
I look for no immediate improvement in conditions. Philanthropyhasn't got to us yet. Social science is too busy building fencesaround complicated and rather silly industrial machines which havebeen invented, apparently, for the one purpose of having fences builtaround them. What does it care if we unprotected kitchen mechanicssit down on a red-hot stove? Hermits can do next to nothing aboutsuch a state of affairs, but there are plenty of others who can.Decent legislation may come eventually, or it may not, if youhousekeepers who are in a position to do so begin at once to nag andkeep on nagging until something happens. Persistent nagging, myfriends, has achieved more victories here below than all the armiesof the military geniuses and kings and potentates combined. It wouldbe a sad day if this, practically the only weapon remaining to alarge proportion of our citizens in this age of—this ageof—well, if they lost it all of a sudden.
My own contribution to the cause, consisting of data collectedduring quite a spell of home work at Jones's, is put forward as amere feeler, on the chance that it may call forth the testimony ofthose who have been crippled up, cut, scratched, gouged, banged andbettered even more than I have; thus a dormant public opinion may bearoused and we may all live to see a situation known in legalparlance as thestatus quo. Not yet a complete and incurablewreck from the so-called pleasures of steering the domestic craft, Ifeel in my bones what is coming; I fear there are millions to whom ithas already come.
I believe the fiendishness of inanimate objects is familiar to allwho have ever been chummy with a kitchen stove. My own stove isperhaps my proudest possession, but, like so many other things onecares for, it can be cruel. It has taught me to think kindlier of theheroines of novels and plays who burn their fingers the minute theytry to cook a biscuit or its equivalent for the hero. I used toregard the heroine who did this as a low form of half-wit who shouldbe taken out and shot. I still think that a big grown-up girl shouldbe able to shoot a biscuit without yelling bloody murder, but now Ican see her side of it, too. I suggest that young women who blisterthemselves once or twice be let off with a warning; after that,anything goes.
The suspicion remains that they do it to be cute. Stop it, girls!You don't see seasoned housewives who can bake strawberry shortcakeand all that giving way to these fits of temperament. I suppose thatafter they have manufactured some tons of biscuits for a family ofabout eleven over a stretch of years the desire to be cute in thatparticular way sort of wears off. Still, occasionally they gettheirs, in spite of woman's intuition and the really uncanny skillwith which she learns to coax an incandescent and reluctant muffininto her clutches. Lacking as they are in patience, finesse, sympathyand Christian charity, male housekeepers find the problem prettyfierce. You know them by their bandages.
Or take frying pans. Some joker has gone to the trouble ofinventing one with a trick wooden handle which revolves upon itsaxis, or vice versa, at the psychological moment, dashing thesimmering contents upon all and sundry. I have one. The perenniallyunsuspectingchef who tries to carry a panful of boiling bacongrease from the stove to the sink is out of luck nine times in ten.The artistic effects are even worse than the shooting pains along theexposed flank. Nobody likes to see a mess of fried eggs on hisspotless floor; it might be spotless but for these very tragedies. Ameal of creamed codfish in the same posture is quite asgauche. Pancakes may be dusted off, generally rehabilitatedand bolted as usual, but a skillet of dried beef gravy that has oncefallen is just fallen dried beef gravy. Just something else to mopup. More small talk, more vows of deadly vengeance, more maniacallaughter in the face of pitiless destiny.
My frying pan will look as though it had not a thought in theworld but to make me happy and gay, then—Bam! go the Frenchfried. Plainly I foresee the day when I'm going to spill a quart ofhot clam stew down the back of some haughty dowager, just after Ihave become engaged to her homely but wealthy daughter. You may wellshudder. The dowager will start reprisals and one of us will get thebum's rush.
Yet hermiting is not commonly classed as a hazardous occupation.True, out here at Jones's one can't get run over by an automobile,gaspiped by thugs or pushed under a subway train, but within thesacred portals of the home (and why shouldn't hermits have sanctityin their homes, like anybody else?) the risks are quite asomnipresent and grave as in Manhattan itself, or Indiana. Here aselsewhere one has the towel rack to gouge out portions of the humanface, the hanging lamp to extract divots from the invaluable scalp,lamp chimneys to slice off hunks of one's favorite finger, coffeecups to bounce on your bean from the top shelf, needles and pins toturn up in totally unexpected regions of the torso and all the otheraccompaniments of the cloistered career. Every move a pain.
The peculiar maimed and mangled appearance of hermit housekeepers,as distinguished from the civilized, is in part attributable towood-splitting, a sport which compares favorably with the betterclass of explosions and earthquakes. It is extraordinary the way alog of driftwood will leap up and soak you in the beak at theslightest provocation; which leads me to pass on to married persons ahint I found in an old newspaper under the bedroom carpet. It seemsthat a lady who was wont to lecture her husband daily for his sinswhile he was chopping the firewood got gorgeously biffed in the eyeby a large flying wedge of hickory, with resultant syncope andtemporary impairment of the vocal cords, glottis and epiglottis. Shecomplained that he had been trying to do that very identical thingfor forty years. The judge let him off.
Yes, what with tripping over the coal scuttle into tubs of wash,stepping on tacks, grappling with splinters and fishhooks, gettingstuck in the wringer, barking our shins on the tool chest, drowningin dishwater while ramming the mop into the milk bottle, losing ourfront hair in gasoline explosions, slipping in the bathtub andfalling up and down stairs with armfuls of this and that, wehousekeepers do our bit towards keeping modern life picturesque. Forus existence is one long procession of adhesive tape, rubber fingers,iodine, arnica, chloroform liniment, hot water bottles and weakgruel. And what does it get us? Admiration? Don't make me laugh.People will gape by the hour at a parachute-jumper in the curiousbelief that by comparison we in the home are a lot of timid,unenterprising worms, if not actually slackers, cowards and caitiffs(Memo: Must look up caitiffs). What I say is, in a parachute at leastyou know where you are.
I trust I have not exaggerated the risks run gayly andhigh-heartedly by so many of us. Let us seek the silver lining. It istrue that we have chosen, perhaps none too wisely, between retainingthe use of most of our original faculties and doing the housework.But—and here's the point—we know the thrill of adventure!We have escaped the drab lot of laborers in TNT factories and ofsitters upon volcanoes, of the tamers of man-eating lions and of thehuman flies who climb the Woolworth Building with their fingernails.We have felt the exaltation of real danger. We have lived. Besides,there are savage tribes in Africa which greatly esteem and honor suchbumps and blemishes, scratches, scarifications and mutilations as wehousekeepers regularly acquire in the line of duty. If we ever moveto the jungle that might mean a lot in a social way.
It's getting so a body cannot mention food or eating without beingcalled, among other things, the Brillat-Savarin of his time. Let butsome mute, inglorious hermit babble of condensed milk sandwiches, hewill immediately be tagged as a gourmet or a gourmand (whichever iswhich), a connoisseur, aban vivant and a prominentsalad-mixer. From there 't is but a step to the name of Sybarite,trilobite, hellgramite and worse. That's the way it goes in thisbusiness.
Well, my conscience is clear. I know and everybody knows who hasever visited me at Jones's Island that I amnotBrillat-Savarin; if others choose to insist I can only repeat thatit's all a terrible misunderstanding. Brillat-Savarin was a lawyer, aphysician, a philosopher, a diner-out, a high priest oftranscendental gastronomy, an inhaler of ortolans, and the finalauthority onpoularde de Bresse truffée à lapérigourdine. His pheasants had to be just so. I take myfood as I find it, no questions asked. That day seems afar off, and Ipray that it may never dawn, when I shall sneer at a hot dog. Ibelieve I may say without exaggeration that we represent two entirelydistinct schools of thought. That's only fair to both of us.
I seldom achieve ecstasy at my meals. I don't gloat enough over myfood to be really artistic. Still and all, I remain unconvinced thatin order to know anything whatever about the subject it is necessaryto have been christened Jean Anthelme Marie Henri Louis PhilippeMarie Hippolyte, to have written a volume entitled "Physiologie dugoût; ou, Méditations de gastronomic transcendante"and to have died in Paris, Feb. 2, 1826, after seventy-one years ofalmost continuous banqueting onpoularde de Bresse trufféeà la périgourdine. At times, when I have beengoaded past endurance by invidious comparisons, I feel that I couldcast off all restraint and state boldly, without fear or favor, thatBrillat-Savarin was full of truffles. There!
But let's get one thing straight. Before launching my viciousattack against Brillat-Savarin and his "Physiology of Taste" I wishto defend him against the charge of intemperance. It was the Marquisde Cussy, a contemporary observer, who wrote: "Brillant-Savarin atecopiously and ill; chose little, talked dully, had no vivacity in hislooks, and was absorbed at the end of a repast." Well, why wouldn'the be absorbed? In my opinion the Marquis de Cussy was jealous,auto-intoxicated and afflicted with a negativepoulardecomplex, if not with subconscious homicidal tendencies. SupposingBrillat-Savarin did overeat once in a way! I'm strongly in favor ofthat, if only to spite the Anti-Fun League. Things have come to apretty pass when a champion gourmand cannot overeat. And what was themarquis doing there? It looks as though he was not a total strangerhimself to what some cynic has called the pleasures of thetrough.
What riles me more, with its veiled insinuations and subtlepropaganda against Jones's Island and the Zachs Inlet Coast GuardStation, is the master's famous Fourth Aphorism, "Dis-moi ce quetu manges, je te dirai ce qui tu es"; which is as much as to say,"Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are." To this Isimply reply, "Non! Jamais de la vie!" which may be freelytranslated, He's crazy. Were this theory to be generally accepted,dear reader, it would make you bacon and eggs and sometimes chickenon Sunday. In a way it stands to reason, or almost. Perhaps the manwho eats a potato in its jacket does thereupon instantly become,through some strange doings of Dr. Albert Einstein, apomme deterre en robe de chambre—who am I to say? A pleasingwhimsy, but doubtless more strictly true in some dimension other thanthe first three. And what about prunes?
I could wish that Brillat-Savarin had been more charitable in thismatter. We can't all have the Blue Plate dinner. The person who feedsupon desiccated tripe is often a person, admirable in other respects,who has been driven by hereditary influences, environment, radio,women or the hellishness of life as a whole to feed upon desiccatedtripe. Show me a man toying with a side-order of parsnips and ninetimes out of ten he is a man who can't get roast turkey withdressing. Figure to yourself a hermit who lives exclusively uponstrawberry shortcake, and you're straining your imagination. And whatof him whom cruel destiny has forced to become omnivorous? Is he bythat token a cross between an ostrich and a goat? Well, then, M.Brillat-Savarin!
Moreover, I find it difficult, as I wrestle catch-as-catch-canwith the bean and other dietary problems, to forgive our author forremarking that "the empire of taste has also its blind and deafpeople." Thusly he rubs it in: "The sensation of taste residesprincipally in the papillæ of the tongue. But anatomy teachesus that every tongue has not the same number of them, and that insome tongues there are three times as many papillæ as inothers." You cannot miss the artful implication that he has morepapillæ than he really needs and that hermits have hardly any,a rumor against housekeeping bachelors from the day that the Egyptiancalled Antonios fled from the fleshpots of Heracleopolis with abasket of lentils, not to mention Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius,whose cupboard was even barer. They hadn't all their papillæ,forsooth! That seems to me too facile an explanation of the mysticway. What, then, were the real facts? Why was it that neither ofthese famous hermits would have stepped across the street for adouble order offilet de sole Marguéry? Well, they hadother fish to fry.
I am sorry to say that the dictionary lends partial support tothis absurd doctrine of papillæ, submitting that thepapillæ are known according to their shape as circumvallate,fungiform and filiform, and that the circumvallate and the fungiformbear taste buds. This is a pretty fix to be in, if you care for thatsort of thing. Taste buds, indeed! What next won't they invent?
A careful comparison of Brillat-Savarin's dates and my own wouldseem to indicate that he never heard of me, yet the whole innermessage of his book for the modern world is that eating is a lost artand that I lost it. I wonder! I hold no brief against theæsthetics of deglutition. There's room for all kinds in thisworld. All I'm saying is that in order to enjoy your three squaresrightly you don't have to win a pie-eating contest.
True, voluptuous nourishment is not encouraged at Jones's. Alreadythere have occurred regrettable incidents in the Zachs Inletmess-room, chiefly over stew; it would be too awful if the boys gotto demanding their plum duff on weekdays. For disciplinary reasonsCoast Guards who show the early symptoms of transcendental gastronomyare sent on cutter duty, shipped to the Siberian mines or ordered topaint the oil-house. While I remain their neighbor I must set anexample. Some day—who knows? I may even become a Sybarite, if Ican get the gardenia.
And I have another crow to pick with Brillat-Savarin, or shall Isay a potato? Observe the utter wrongness of this passage from hisMeditation XXI: "I look upon potatoes as a great preservative againstfamine; but, except that, they seem to me thoroughly insipid." Now Iseldom indulge in violent abuse, but at the risk of provoking a duelI declare that Brillat-Savarin says the thing that is not. Tomaintain that potatoes are tasteless is to maintain stark, staringlunacy. It all goes to show that people who brag about theirpapillæ only too often turn out sadly deficient, just patheticvictims of Adlerian organ inferiority; while people you'd swear hadnot a papilla to bless themselves with are likely to give you thesurprise of your life.
Economically as well as psychologically, an abhorrence of potatoesleads to no good. Many of those who scorn this humble vegetablebecause it is abundant and inexpensive wind up in the poorhouse,though it is but just to admit that about an equal number becomemillionaires—it's a poor potato that won't work both ways. Itis a not less significant fact that those who love potatoes,especially baked potatoes, are almost invariably a credit tothemselves, their community and their country.
Brillat-Savarin appears also to regard the potato as a deadlypoison, since he speaks of the necessary removal by the cook of its"deleterious qualities," doubtless referring to the valuable mineralsalts, vitamins and horoscopes in the skins. All this is hard tobear, what with M. Tissot's book proving that potatoes cause idiocy,palsy and leprosy, and the clamoring of those who stigmatize potatoesas unscriptural—they're not mentioned in the Bible. Worse(though it may be all newspaper talk), there are said to exist to-dayin our midst some very tiresome persons out to stop the constantcrossbreeding so essential to the health, happiness and reproductionof the potato on the ground that it is inimical to the morals of thetuber and will eventually undermine the home. What, they inquire,will happen to endogamy if all this exogamy is allowed to go on? Andwhat, I ask right back, will happen to hermits and Colorado beetlesif it isn't?
Let them rave. Let a froward generation of artichoke fans runafter their decadent groceries. Let Brillat-Savarin, swollen withinsensate pride and truffles, lash his whiskers in impotent fury, thefact remains and shall not go unheard while I have strength to yellthat baked potatoes are grand. What a dish, my friends, is this! Hownew in season! how exquisite in sapidity! in form and flavor howeasily digestible! with butter how like nothing else! with salt andpepper how perfectly damned gorgeous! the bachelor's delight! theparagon of edibles! I speak now, dear reader, of victuals that arevictuals. Tell me not, after I have eaten my full want of the same,that nobody loves me or that life's but an empty dream; I knowdifferent. It is tragic, is it not, that our English and Americanbards have not devoted more attention to this inspiring theme? Iconfess with something akin to sorrow that I know of no epic,excepting a few in Lithuanian and several in the ancient Coptic,dealing at all adequately with the baked potato.
If there is a better food, tell me what it is. You can't!—Ithought so. Any one who has done justice to an adult baked potatogarnished with a chopped raw onion, a poached egg, a scant handful ofHamburger, a few bits of crisp bacon, some gravy and extra butter maywell lean back in his chair and quote those lovely words of Bartlett,"Fate cannot harm me—I have dined to-day." I have a littletheory of my own which I might as well spring right now: I regard itas practically certain that the baked potato was the originalambrosia, the food of the gods mentioned so prominently by Mr.Bulfinch.
Alas, there are some unruly fans who refuse to eat the skins,either from a fear of germs, a nitrogen-phobia or pure meanness. Iftaken in time the most stubborn nitrogen-phobia can be cured; thepity is that more and more young victims are permitted to grow upwithout treatment, filling the world with more wife-beaters,absconding cashiers, theater coughers and people who say there is toomuch sex in Freud. Those who believe in bacilli may wash the potatobefore using—a good, durable potato-washer can be purchased atthe nicer shops for seven dollars.
The preparation of this dish involves a considerable risk to theperformer, but what doesn't that's any fun at all? Up to now ourinventors, clever as they are at measuring the diameter ofBetelgeuse, have not taught us potato bakers how to prevent severeburns, both going and coming. Many housekeepers manage to escapeserious injury while putting the potatoes in the oven, but gettingthem out again is not so simple. If the top of the oven doesn't getyou the door will, and if by some lucky chance you emerge in goodcondition, except for a blistered face and a soul forsworn, you stillhave three red-hot potatoes in each fist and a very vague notion ofwhere to put them. It seems advisable for all those who bake potatoesrather constantly to take a course in big-time juggling. What a sealcan do, you can do.
I hate to dwell upon these cosmic disharmonies, but I must add onemore warning, based rather upon my reading than upon personalexperience. It appears that the atoms of baked potatoes—andthis food is particularly rich in atoms—are so arranged thatthe potato is liable to burst with a terrific roar if fondled orsqueezed immediately after its stretch in the oven, scatteringpoultices of superheated pulp, volcanic steam and widespreaddestruction in its wake. A tradition exists that one ought to prickthe skin of the potato before baking, thus releasing a few billionsof the superfluous atoms and providing against some of the morespectacular explosions. Conservative potato-squeezers follow thistechnique, but most of us who belong to the war generation just takea chance—it's all in the game. If you are nervous and run down,however, it will do no harm to lay in a garden rake, some atom-proofgloves, a gas mask, a standard burn remedy, plenty of bandages andthe telephone number of a skilled physician—and keep yourinsurance paid up. If you will take these precautions, your paththrough life should be one long, sweet song; if not, you may neverknow what hit you.
Anyway, you see now that the potato, far from being a dull,insensitive clod, is wholly a creature of impulse, a passionate,high-pressure vegetable knowing no laws but those of its own free,untrammeled nature, as wholly irresponsible as all true genius everwas and will be. Insipid? The word does not fit into the picture. Ileave the potato in your hands, my friends, confident that it willreceive fair treatment from so broad-minded and good-looking ajury.
Does it not strike you as rather tragic that in so enlightened anage I must add to this article a systematic defense of roast turkey?Yet that such an emergency exists no person in his sober senses woulddream of denying—and all because of Brillat-Savarin.Fortunately, he left roast turkey with a few shreds of itsreputation, though he might have done better. His characterization ofthis noble creature as "the largest, and, if not the finest, at leastthe most savory of our domestic birds,"—savory is the word, butwhy not the finest, M. Brillat-Savarin?—is probably thegrandfather of some of the anti-turkey opinions circulated so freelynowadays by gastronomes and other society leaders. The most sagaciousessayist in this country, by and large, but recently described theturkey as "too big, too tough, too coarse grained." Did you ever hearthe like? It is the custom in some inner circles to raise an eyebrowat intruders who prefer turkey to chicken and are courageous enoughto say so. Hostesses seem to fear that oafs of that sort are likelyat any moment to throw the broiler out the window and shout for roastturkey—and if roast turkey, why not roast elephant or roastdiplodocus? Yet turkey-lovers can behave as well as any one else, andalways do so unless pushed too far.
I hear that in certain homes chicken, duck or goose is served evenon major feast days. We have ducks in plenty at Jones's, but it's notthe same; as for goose, one can only say that there are people whosesubtle affinity for goose is congenital andineradicable—nothing can be done about it, so why argue? Me andthe Coast Guards, give us turkey. The government and book reviewingwould be in a bad way on our island if the butcher and grocer onshore did not send us turkeys for Thanksgiving, Christmas and NewYear's; the energy and efficiency of the inhabitants would be allfrittered away with indignation meetings, their voices worn hoarseand haggard with the insistent cry, "We Want Turkey!" If the grocerand the butcher ever weaken, there will be reprisals, swift andterrible.
This brings us to osmazome, a mysterious and presumably deliciousingredient which Brillat-Savarin says is found in very smallquantities or not at all in the white meat of turkeys. "It is forthis reason," he chirps, "that real connoisseurs have alwayspreferred the thick part of the thigh." Have they, indeed? Be that asit may, upon white meat I take my everlasting stand—try andbudge me. These thigh fans often go to incredible lengths with theirfoolishness. Speaking of a smaller bird than our hero,Brillat-Savarin inquires, "Do we not see in our own days some thatcan distinguish by its superior flavor the thigh on which thepartridge leans while sleeping?" Sure, we do. We also see some whowill sell you Brooklyn Bridge.
To Brillat-Savarin, of course, a turkey without truffles was but apoor, homeless outcast, a veritable pariah fowl. This is hardly theplace, if there is such a place, to deal with truffles as they sorichly deserve. Our good Brillat-Savarin is known to have been morethan slightly hipped on them. He goes so far as to tell us, "Howevergood an entrée may be, it should always be accompanied bytruffles to set it off to advantage"; naturally, a turkey without astuffing of these subterranean fungi was utterly outside the pale.His one concession to the tight money situation is that persons ofmoderate income may upon occasion stuff theirs with Lyons chestnuts.For all that I hope that the sturdy peasantry of our land will longcontinue to riot in forbidden stuffing. I shall, for one, to the lastscrap of stale bread, salt pork, sage and maybe oysters. Add gibletgravy, and you can have your old stocks and bonds.
And another thing, should any of my readers remain unconvinced ofM. Brillat-Savarin's fallibility, I shall merely quote the followingsentence from the final pages of "The Physiology of Taste": "It wasthe Count de Laplace who discovered a very elegant way of eatingstrawberries, namely, of squeezing over them the juice of a sweetorange, or apple of the Hesperides." Have fairer names ever been putto a more dastardly use? Could a fiend from the pit devise a morediabolical plot to ruin one—nay, two!—of God's grandestfruits? I will bet anything within reason that this was the sameLaplace who balled up the nebular hypothesis so that they haven't gotit straightened out yet. I never liked that man's face. And where, Iask you, werehis papillæ?
You'd hardly believe that Dame Rumor would bother her silly oldhead about a mere hermit. Or would you? Well, Dame R. hath it thatshe heard from a friend of hers, who got it straight from some onewho ought to know, that I told another party that I hated havingcompany, and that I wished all the people who visit me, promise tovisit me or threaten to do so would stay at home where they belong,and not come pestering me at my seaside villa. That shows how thingsget garbled.
I may have muttered in some unguarded moment at the unexpected, orexpected, arrival of a fresh batch of week-end guests, complete withradio outfits, livestock, boatload of impedimenta and happy, carefreelaughter, when I was hoping against hope to finish a book review oran article, or at least get one started, that I moved to Jones'sIsland to be alone, and that running a more or less refined boardinghome from Thursdays to Wednesdays, excepting in January and February,however enjoyable it might be from some points of view, struck me asan exceedingly roundabout way of achieving that particular end. Isthat logic, or is it not? As for saying that persons who go merrilystirring up hermits in their chosen solitudes invariably lack one ormore hemispheres of the cerebrum (the little gadget that is supposedto make us think), I never! Nor did I state that ninety-nine per centof these hermit hunters are perfectly lovely people but practicallyhalf-witted.
I deny the whole thing. I love company. I never tire of askingeverybody I meet on the mainland to come and see me at the firstopportunity. If I seem a little less cordial when they actuallyarrive—well, I deny that, too. I trust I am not one to violatethe sacred laws of hospitality, even if it ruins my critical poise,wrecks the second act of my play and generally makes of my fondestdreams a hideous mockery. Why do you suppose I invite them, anyway?Just to get them to shut up? I did tell one or two people that Iloathed having company, but they thought that was only my way ofmaking advances.
It would be easy enough to prevent company from reaching my islandif I were that sort of host. All I'd need would be a littlearrangement of floating mines, barbed wire entanglements, a cordon ofnatives and a battery of trained scorpions, and I know a hermit whois working on that now. I consider it a mean trick to giveprospective guests elaborate traveling directions which will landthem eventually in Montauk Point, Alaska or the South Seas. If I haveever sounded vague about where Jones's is, that's partly because Ihave no bump of direction—the Coast Guards attend to that sortof thing—and because it is an ancient and inviolable rule forhermits not to tell exactly where they live. The truth is they hardlyknow themselves.
There are lots of nasty ways of getting rid of company, too.Personally, I take steps as soon as the guests begin remarking thatthe beach is so lovely and the sand so comfortable that they couldstay forever. I do nothing low, but manage to get the thought acrossthat they might be just as comfortable if they were on some otherbeach bothering somebody else. A policy of slow starvation isrecommended by many hermits. Arsenic is no longer in favor, as thecoroners are beginning to detect it right and left in returnedweek-enders. I merely mention these rather crude methods for whatthey may be worth.
Perhaps I do appear slightly distrait and moody before my arrivingguests, but that's only because my bungalow isn't ready for them.I've only lived in it seven years, and it isn't rid up yet. I haven'tgot settled. An expert tells me that the shanty is quite lacking inaccommodations for any but the less fussy Hottentots, the hardierNootka Indians and the more informal and backward Kamchatkans. Thatis why sensitive and cultured visitors who have left good homes tocome and see me often act so strangely. It explains why several of myformer friends have confessed at their departure that they felt as ifthey had just been released from a long stretch at Dannemora. I maymention here that it is not in the best taste to send one's weekendhost, instead of the usual clam chowder note, a comic Valentinedepicting a large and very repellent pig wallowing in the midst of anuntidy landscape labeled Jones's Island.
Speaking of how to act, I fancy I comport myself as well as someof my guests from the moment I meet them at the dock. No hermit,unless he has been called upon to welcome a mid-Victorian dowagerreeling to port after a hard night aground in Goose Crick inRattlesnake Ned's scooter, can rightfully claim that he has lived andsuffered, especially if she has frozen a few toes, got herself mixedup with the motor, sat in the tar or dropped her aspirin overboard.She is likely to say things. One of them recently read me myhoroscope with a richness of epithet that was supposed to have diedout with the Elizabethan pamphleteers and a few of the prettierduchesses at the court of Charles the Second. It wasn't as bad asthat, really, but she was pretty mad. She still believes that Ned hitthe mud on purpose and that I, as the King Canute of these parts,ordered the tide to wait until broad daylight. Week-enders, blesstheir innocent hearts, are firmly convinced that hermits cause theweather, the mosquitoes and all the other frightful phenomenaincidental to Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, though modernscience has gone out of its way to prove the exact opposite.
No, entertaining at the villa is not so simple as it might seem atfirst glance. The ordinary rules for the bachelor's shooting lodge orclam preserve hardly cover the ground, for I live here all the yearround and people expect something pretty polished. I used to strivefor a semblance of Old World gentility by awaiting my guests in thedrawing room (where the chairs are), as was always the custom at thelate Earl's place down in Kent, but I found that sooner or later I'dhave to chase down to the dock with the wheelbarrow, anyway. Now Ijust rush for the scene at the first sign of trouble, prepared totell all and sundry how glad I am that a virulent cyclone did notarise while they were in the middle of the bay and blow them all toAmagansett and gone.
I also omit tea, but each arrival is more than welcome to as muchas he can stand of the pot of strong black coffee kept simmering onthe rear of my kitchen range, you might say for generations. Thosewho prefer are shown at once to the sink to remove the marks oftravel; which is putting it optimistically, since the process wouldremove at the same time the greater portion of the epidermis. For theconvenience of such I always keep my guest towel hanging right by thepump, together with a supply of salt water soap, a good, durablequality of steel wool and a pint bottle of iodine. In entertaining,it's the little things that count.
Now, if it has stopped raining or snowing, we are all set for aspell of real old-fashioned glee, such as bathing, clamming, eating,clamming, bathing and eating. Ten to one the merry-makers will wantto carry their lunch to the surf and there consume it, whether from adesire to provide their gustatory joys with a background in a big wayor to express their love for the Atlantic by throwing egg-shells andbanana peelings into it I have been unable to determine. I supposethey mean it as a compliment. I'm not the type myself, and I amagainst dispersing the general effect of the Atlantic among a lot ofdill pickles and sandwiches. I feel that it deserves one's undividedattention—it's sort of earned it. Nevertheless, I trudge along,and run back to the shack for water, and eat and run back for stillmore water. Fun!
I recall one historic occasion when a visiting luncher smuggledsome canned music to the beach and, what's more, set it goingpresumably to drown out the sound of God's waves. Well, one may risesuperior even to such a blow of fate. We happened to have with us aprominent college widow of some seasons back, so she and I up andwaltzed, and if you want to see a certain eligible hermit give hiswell-known imitation of Prince Charming, just strike up "Kiss MeAgain!" I have heard the sinister whisper passed along at more thanone party on shore, "Oh, don't bother with him, he's only a waltzer!"I wear the insult gayly, like a plume. I glory in it! I could diewaltzing, and maybe I will yet.
As I delve into the secret memoirs of entertaining at Jones's, Iremember several happy afternoons, and I am not thinking of the day abevy of visitors made straight for the beach and got lost in the foguntil it was time to leave. For instance, it's all kinds of fun toguess what was in the old tin cans that wash ashore. I only wish thatRattlesnake Ned, who invented the game, would stop tasting the darnthings—it's taking unfair advantage of the fact that he's partostrich on his grandfather's side, and it makes week-enders nervous.As I have no other pastimes to offer, I fear I am a far from perfecthost, but is it my fault if people who want to go visiting have gotme and the Coast Guards mixed up with the Prince of Wales' set, justbecause we happen to live on the lunatic fringe of Long Island, theplayground of the rich?
One word to those who are planning to weekend with a hermit. Don'texpect too much; in fact, don't expect anything. Don't go aroundmuttering, "Never again!" Avoid making class-conscious remarks, suchas, "Well, well, so this is how the other half lives!" Some day youmight say that to the wrong hermit. When herded to your sleepingquarters, if such they may be called, don't bring up Houston Streetand the Bowery. If you feel any social or other qualms about theflopping arrangements, remind yourself that there is not room in myhouse for both company and the conventions. Just try to remember thatI have moved out of my own bedroom, that I will have to move backto-morrow and that with luck I may possibly get things fixed so thatI can start on that book review again by next Wednesday afternoon.And that I just love company.
If you expect the hermit to furnish such staples as bread andbutter, don't kick if they aren't Grade A. It is pretty crude torefer to the white bread served by the hermit as pumpernickel, but Isuppose you can't help knocking the butter. My butter is alwaysserved in beautifully firm hunks in the winter, but in hot weatherit's something else again. I started housekeeping with the idea thatkeeping ice in iceboxes is all foolishness, and I have stuck to mytheory, though the butter weakened. Besides, the top of my icebox isfull of books that all visitors so far classified would borrow ifthey got half a chance. Bear in mind also that jokes about thebiscuits are no longer playing the big cities. You may not be awarethat in ancient Greece, before the Age of Luxury, the Spartans livedon a simple dough of barley meal moistened with water and terriblewine, and that it wasn't cookedat all. And don't examine thatgreen spot on the can of evaporated milk too closely; if it's abacillus botulinus, you probably have it already—goquietly to your room, make your will and return without causing ascene. But really, I get fewer complaints on my meals than you mightexpect, considering. A recent guest was gracious enough to inform methat I had provided a regular Barmecide feast. That's the spirit totake on your week-ends!
All things come to an end, even company. Sooner or later the wetblanket is sure to break into the party with the long-awaited remark,"Well, Will, I guess we'd better be getting along." I fill in withsome neutral comment, such as, "I suppose I mustn't try to keep you,"or "It does look as though you'd have just enough time to get acrossthe bay before it rains," and they're off. Most authorities onetiquette agree that at parting neither the guest nor the host needspeak out all that is in his heart, yet I feel that a littlewell-chosen invective and a fist fight or two often serve admirablyto clear the air and speed up the progress of the race as a whole.And I beg to remind all hardworking hermits, everywhere, that if itweren't company, it would be something else. Keep smiling!
Who since the invention of printing by those heathen Chinese hasfitly sung the praise of cookery books? Alas, almost everybody! Andyet, the production and consumption of articles on this timelysubject being what they are, is there not always room and welcome forone more? Here again a strict regard for the plain, unvarnished truthmight compel us to answer, "No!"
So far the argument appears to leave us about where we were, butso do all arguments. We may as well proceed with the main topic ofthe day, to wit, the use of cook books by old bachelors; to put itmore concretely, the use of my cook book by me, or vice versa, sincethere are indications that the cook book has the upper hand.
Not that I am an abject slave to that or any other collection ofrecipes. For I have lost the innocence of perfect faith. Timewas—and those were happy days—when I believed in thedirect inspiration of all cookery books. Before that fatal occasionwhen some one introduced me to the tragedy of pure reason I believedthat recipes as a whole and in part, having originated in the brainof Mrs. Rorer herself, who ought to know, were not for the likes ofus to pull to pieces and debate. Ours not to reason why. Some daywe'd understand.
Always a trusting soul, as a child I had not sought to questionthe authority of revealed cooking as practiced by mother over a fireshe had presumably snatched from heaven for the sole benefit of yourhumble servant. There was something in it, too. I can testify as wellthat in spite of the Frenchified ways that even then were creepinginsidiously into our American kitchens, mother swung a mean sun-driedcherry, not to mention her masterly crisp-fried beefsteak, herchicken gravy with giblets, her mashed potatoes, her Charlotte Russe,her endless dinner array of pickles, quince jelly, cookies,strawberry shortcake and seven regular side dishes—nine forcompany. And they wonder why I am plump.
Martha Washington was mixed up in all that, though I found outlater that she didn't write the "White House Cook Book." Yes, our oldkitchen companion was an early edition of that splendid work,complete with our nation's Capitol and a view of the executivemansion stamped in shining silver on the white front cover, both andall now somewhat obscured by a rich patina of time and tomato soup.There was Mrs. Washington's picture on page ninety-nine, justopposite the directions for pot roast (Old Style), and much prettier,I thought, than the smaller insets of Mrs. James Monroe, A. Adams andMartha Jefferson Randolph. She and she alone inspired and guided myfirst childish steps towards the presidency.
Now that I own this rare volume and have leisure to study theseveral pages of our presidents' wives, I feel that I was right inpicking Martha Washington. Something of the old intimacy has fled,but she is still beautiful in her powder and her shawl, or whateverthat thing is she has on; to-day she reminds me not so much ofstrawberry shortcake as of some one I met at a masquerade. The othersare all right, too, though the sheik of our day might hesitate totake some of them out, handy as they might come in at charades.Lacking as one or two of them may be by the severest classictests—well, I'm sure their pictures don't do them justice,especially Dolly Madison. A grand lot of girls they were, and if Iknow a basque with jet passementerie when I see it I'll bet you theycould cook like a house afire; still and all, it seems there has beena great improvement in this branch of our government here lately.
Times, as I was saying, have changed. Since I brought the old bookto Jones's Island I have learned by trial and error to look upon it,if not with less reverence, at least with a clearer realization ofwhat it will do and what it won't. Much as I deplore the moderntendency to higher criticism, I have found several recipes which areobviously the survivals of some savage state of culture, others whichare certainly the work of commentators no brighter, to put itbluntly, than I myself. In a word, carking care, relativity, naturalselection and all the ironies of life, love and art have forced me toabandon the dogma of infallibility. Theoretically, that is. In atight place I seek the old book's guidance, just like the rest of uspoor hungry, baffled mortals. There's nothing quite like itsometimes. Yet I would warn the inexperienced bachelor to have a carein approaching any of the recipes which run above simple addition, toclose his eyes and ears to the seductions of those calling forlogarithms, square root and meringues.
Well for you, brother hermits, if you do not take the cook booktoo literally. It is rather wonderful, I know, to read of chickenpatties, timbale of macaroni, potato snow, muttonettes, royal sagopudding, syllabub, sweetbreadsà la Pompadour andfruites saumoné au beurre de Montpellier, but why letit get you? We have all heard of these things, but who has actuallyseen them? Who has made and eaten them? The use of a little commonsense right now will save the too optimistic hermit much uselessagony and vain regret, many a bitter longing for what exists,perhaps, only as the wishful fantasy of some impractical dreamer.Open your heart and your minds, my hermits, to the sheer lovelinessof the words, "sweetbreadsà la Pompadour" but don'tforget that what really counts is ham and eggs. Such a point of viewneed not poison for you the springs of beauty. If you have a cookbook, try to regard it as pure literature rather than as a guide toconduct; as poetry rather than dull, plodding prose. After all, itstrue value inheres in its symbolism. Much in life will still remainto you, whether or not Jonah swallowed the whale.
Though an expert might estimate the practical influence of my cookbook upon my basal metabolism at approximately zero, or nil, I mayhave picked up a thing or two just by luck. Without it I should neverhave managed that rakish something about my fried salt pork and Ishould be muddling along without escalloped corn. With it my lemonpie and chocolate blanc mange remain in the controversialfield—the blanc mange is not at all bad if you use yourimagination. The lemon pie was only a joke. Anyway, I had senseenough not to try apple dumplings. That way lies madness. In fact,was it not George III who went crazy wondering how the apple got intothe dumpling? And to this day nobody knows how it did get in!
I went into cooking, as we all do, with the laughing heart of achild, and emerged in the usual condition, after winning a hand ortwo. In baking, for instance, I found the elementary straightawaydirections easy, lucid, admirable in every respect. I learned to makecornmeal muffins without eggs; since then I have made them withoutmilk, without salt, without sugar, without baking powder and evenwithout cornmeal. A muffin will meet you halfway. It was a proud daywhen finally I mastered the muffin, and it might have been a prouderhad I not sought, filled as I was with vaulting ambition andvainglory, to scale the heights. "If muffins," I said to myself, "whynot marble cake, molasses fruit cake, chocolate layer? If chocolatelayer, why not sponge drops, why not lady fingers?" I well recallwhen I cried out in my invincible ignorance, "If lady fingers, whynot angel's food?"
I shall not distress you with a description of my attempt atangel's food. When I had worked my will upon the whites of eleveneggs, the cream of tartar and what not, I took the count. I waslicked, and forever. Finally reason came winging back, and I opened acan of beans. I can only say that if my recipe for angel's food isintended as wit and humor, it's all sticky. If I had needed anymucilage I would have turned to the proper page, after procuring theneedful amounts of gum dextrine, acetic acid, water and alcohol, if Ihad to rob the compass. 'Twas thus I came to discover the trueinwardness of cook books for the hermitical intelligence and toformulate my theory that they are to be considered as belonging tothe literature of escape.
Most of us can never hope to make an angel cake, yet need thatplunge us into dull despair? No; let us continue to read about allkinds of cake, even cocoanut jumbles, in the firm belief that theyhave a being in the Idea if not in the oven, upon some fairer planeif not in the here and now. Anything else can but lead to thedangerous materialism of Democritus as opposed to the teachings ofPlato.
There are also times when I permit myself a less orthodoxphilosophical frolic, when I prefer to look upon my cook book, withits recipes for lemon trifle, jelly kisses, apple puff, greengooseberry tart, ribbon cake and tutti frutti ice cream exactly as Ilook upon the "Egyptian Secrets" of Albertus Magnus, particularly hisremedy for the sweeny in man or beast, his amulet against cramp, whatto do if the cattle are bewitched, how to obtain money and how tomake yourself invisible. For this last "you must obtain the ear of ablack cat, boil it in the milk of a black cow, then make athumb-cover of it, and wear it on the thumb, and no one will be ableto see you." To get the cash, "take the eggs of a swallow, boil them,return them to the nest, and if the old swallow brings a root to thenest, take it, put it into your purse, and carry it in your pocket,and be happy." Mind you, I'm not saying that Albertus Magnus everwrote all the things attributed to him; he was far too sound onnominalism versus realism, universal ideas versus particulars and themanifold errors of Averroes to lose his head. I haven't finished his"Summa Theologiæ" yet, but I heard it was grand.
Lord knows the authors of my cook book are not to blame. Mrs.Fanny L. Gillette was one of the slickest pie wranglers of all time.She knew her muffins. Her collaborator, Herr Hugo Ziemann, wasnothing less than steward of the White House Itself, in just whichadministrations remains in doubt as we rush to press. He was,moreover, according to the preface, "at one time caterer for thatPrince Napoleon who was killed fighting the Zulus in Africa"; thoughwhere all these Zulus come in I can't see. He also reigned at theHotel Splendide in Paris, at the Brunswick Cafe in New York and atthe Hotel Richelieu in Chicago when Chicago was a wide open town, Imean wide open; 'twas at the Richelieu he laid "the famous spread towhich the chiefs of the warring factions of the Republican Conventionsat down in June, 1888, and from which they arose with asperitiessoftened, differences harmonized and victory organized," in fact,everything hotsy-totsy until next morning. I give these statistics insimple justice; those desiring further proof will find Hugo's pictureon page forty-three, together with a view of the White House kitchen,not inelegantly equipped with one dozen tin pans, one medium dipper,a rolling pin, a nutmeg grater and a regular Jones's Island coffeegrinder.
The hitch occurred when Mrs. Gillette and Herr Hugo beganministering to a hermit. They wrote at a time when housekeepersautomatically dropped three dozen eggs and two quarts of double creaminto each recipe as a mere starter, and for a clientele that seems tohave lived over a department store in the middle of a dairy farm andtruck garden. A hermit who seeks to emulate these fortunate cookswill find himself at the last moment with large quantities of staplegroceries completely wrecked, an immediate need for twenty-six otheringredients which grow only in Park and Tilford's front window, and awistful longing for a pinch of something known only to Theodore ofthe Ritz and a few of his trusted confidants.
You still think it isn't in nature to be so dumb about a cookbook? Well, I'll tell you. Tradition hath it that the good fairieswho presided over a certain hermit's birth away back in the pastforgot all about dowering him with the Order of the Skillet. Itcompletely slipped their minds. Observing which, a rather dissipatedbut kindly old hamadryad who was skulking about the place waved herwand and cackled shrilly, "He'll never be able to cook, but he'll eatpractically anything." The ancient prophecy has come true, and thensome; to this day I couldn't tell a ramekin from a lambkin if I wereto swing. I do wish that old hamadryad had thought up somethingsnappier, such as the magic gift of baking my own gingerbread insteadof the talent for gulping it by the acre about once every threeyears. She is the direful spring of all my troubles. All her faultthe morbid yearning for strawberry shortcake which, much as Istruggle against it, runs like a minor strain or a boll-weevilthrough my written works. Thence the Russian pity, theWeltschmerz, the wondering betimes whether, after all, SantaClaus isn't just a solar myth.
So my cooking is nothing to brag of. My humble efforts aim not somuch at the creation of new, novel and startling effects as atstirring up a pot of mush; I aspire no longer to achieve theineffable, but to avoid the utterly inedible. The net result is fullof good intentions, some have even called it grub. I have but onelasting regret: that I have furnished certain stuck-ups with evidencethat the American cuisine, as they go about raving, is punk. Doesthat give visiting wise-crackers leave to remark, "What's one man'spoison is chocolate blanc mangeà la Cuppy?" Is itpolite and seemly for my company from the city to spend their timeguessing whether my fritters are animal, vegetable or mineral?
I have saved for a final word the main secret of me and my cookbook. Read and ponder, hermits, but don't go shouting it out for allto hear. Go ahead and enjoy the esoteric pleasure I shall share withyou, but remember that for less, far less, some very nice people havebeen lured into red brick institutions and accommodated in rooms withcushioned walls—because, forsooth, they were a littledifferent! There's a way of thinking about your three squares. Buy acook book that contains, like mine, meals for every day in the year,all nicely cooked and arranged and everything. When your cuckoo clockstrikes the hour, turn to the proper page, loosen your belt andperuse. You'll be surprised at the added zest to hermiting. The habitwill grow on you; you'll find, as time goes on that you can't dowithout it. Go to it, but mum's the word if you see one of thosemental specialists around; he's sure to go talking about the flightfrom reality and regression to second childhood and acute anaphylaxisand the like of that. What do those birds know about reality? Theythink that reality is anything that's no fun.
To-day my cook book luncheon consisted of scrambled mutton, Welshrabbit, olives, hominy croquettes, currant jelly, molasses cup cakeand chocolate. To-night I dine upon oyster soup, roast loin of porkwith applesauce, boiled sweet potatoes, scalloped onions, stewedcarrots, pickled green peppers, royal sago pudding with sweet sauce,crullers, fruit, cheese and coffee. Wouldn't I be the fool to sniffat that?
As I've been working pretty hard, to-morrow I plan to splurge abit in time and space. I may go to Mrs. Cleveland's wedding lunch,though the layout there will be simpler than I'm usedto—nothing, really, except the snipes on toast and the mottoesfor dessert. I'd take in General Grant's birthday dinner, only itbegins with clams; besides I had squabs yesterday at the menu for sixcovers on page 463. The buffet for 1,000 people ought to be worthwhile, especially the cold saddle of venison, but maybe I ought toattend the state dinner at the White House—theirhors-d'œuvres are always splendid, and they offer someinteresting dishes called Haute Sauterne, Amontillado, RauenthalerBerg, Ernest Jeroy, Château Margause and Clos de Vougeot. No, Iwon't, either. I couldn't work afterwards, and besides, the wholebeauty of not being president is that you needn't attend thesetiresome formal banquets. I shall be content with the homey littlefamily dinner on page 429:
Oysters on Half Shell
Julienne Soup
Baked Pickerel
Roast Turkey Oyster Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes Boiled Onions
Baked Winter Squash
Cranberry Sauce Chicken Pie
Plain Celery Lobster Salad
Olives Spiced Currants
English Plum Pudding Wine Sauce
Mince Pie Orange Water Ice
Fancy Cakes Cheese Fruits
Nuts Raisins Confectionery
Coffee
That will be all for to-morrow excepting baked apples, hominy,broiled white fish, ham omelette, potatoesà laCrême, Parker House rolls, crullers and toast forbreakfast, and cold roast turkey, Boston oyster pie, celery salad,baked sweet potatoes, rusks, fruit cake and sliced oranges forsupper. The next day I hope to spend quietly at home, perhaps in thebedroom, reading the pages on barley water, weak oatmeal gruel,arrowroot porridge, molasses posset, boneset tea and Grandmother'sUniversal Liniment.
They kid me a lot about my cabbage. I take it raw, in rather largeand unusual quantities. Just the other day some joker sent me a hometalent painting of a head of cabbage with Russian dressing and blueeyes—a darned good likeness, too, though the nose was insultingand my ears don't flap that way. Let them have their fun. I lovecabbage, and I don't mean kohl-rabi.
I am not ashamed of my passion for cabbage. I know and the cabbageknows there is nothing in our relations which may not with thestrictest propriety go on between a God-fearing hermit and a greenvegetable. If at times our close companionship seems to stray outsidethe bounds of the completely abstract—well, my good gosh, we'remade like that, aren't we? Yet I've heard talk. Rumor has made muchmore than was necessary out of the fact that I slept with my cabbagea part of last winter to keep it from freezing; literally to save itslife, not to mention my own. I think that people who find food forgossip in that must have a strong tendency that way themselves. Itshows whattheir minds run on! Besides, it isn't as if I wasalone with the cabbage. There were plenty of potatoes in the samebedroom.
Cabbage is one of my hobbies, and I can't see why it is not justas respectable as chasing butterflies, raising Belgian hares,carrying a cane or piscatology in general; we need not speak of chessand philately, as I have no wish to hurt any one's feelings. Greenvegetables are fashionable, too, and even a hermit has to keep in theswim. I probably chose cabbage because it lasts longer than most andis less sensitive to the violent changes in temperature on Jones'sIsland. Mine is no blind and deaf infatuation, for I can see thecharm of the others. They are hard to get, however, and you can't gosleeping with a bedful of lettuce, beet leaves and turnip-tops halfthe time. I haven't come to that yet.
Indeed, I hope to branch out next winter with more or less freshthings that won't stay the night. One of the men on the steam dredgehas volunteered to be my endive bearer, and Rattlesnake Ned will actas tomato messenger when he comes from shore. I'm thinking up a humanchain and relay system that ought to do wonders, and if all goes wellI shall see Great South Bay dotted with swift ice-boats bringing methis and that. It ought to give me a much more wholesome outlook. Youknow a tomato here, a lemon there and so on soon count up.
I maintain that cabbage is worth the money. Not a few housekeepersdisparage it because it happens to be 91.5 per cent water in the rawstate. Why pay out cash for mere moisture, they inquire, especiallyif you have to chew it? Because of what they believe to be the highwatery content of cabbage they are inclined to look upon it more as abeverage. They are blissfully unaware that cauliflower is 92.3 percent water and that the official returns on asparagus, celery,lettuce and cucumbers are 94 per cent, 94.5 per cent, 94.7 per centand 95.4 per cent! It would be a good lesson if some professor toldthese people who object to the contents of cabbage exactly whatthey are made of! I suggest that all housekeepers looking forsomething dry take up a diet of cowpeas in a serious way—theyare only 13 per cent water. If I were mean enough I'd mentionevaporated carrots, perhaps the dryest substance known to science,only 3.5 per cent water.
Others deprecate our hero on the ground that a pound of it getsyou only 143 calories. Here again one runs into the significant factthat leeks provide only 125 calories to the pound and raw pumpkin but117. If mere calories are what you seek in life, why not dried beansat 1,564 calories? A pound of potato chips will put 2,598 caloriesunder your belt, the trouble being that a pound of potato chips, whenstowed away, is said to be nineteen and two-thirds times as heavy asa pound of feathers. If all else fails, a pound of shelled hickorynuts will turn the trick, for they average 3,238 calories to thepound. Unfortunately the person who tried to verify this by eatingseveral pounds at a sitting left no record of his sensations, it allhappened so quickly.
Of course, if you cook your cabbage, all this advice goes fornaught. The watery content, for instance, advances to the ruinous andreally unreasonable mark of 97.4 per cent. Why this is true, if it istrue, I cannot say. Perhaps the mathematicians include the soup intheir calculations. I had supposed that the water would sort of seepout of the cabbage while boiling, thus accounting for the familiarclinical picture (limpness), but seems not; apparently part of thewater you pour in seeps into the cabbage; the whole thing isdifficult and complicated, a problem understood in all of its aspectsonly by Dr. Albert Einstein and twelve other superior brains here andthere, chiefly the latter.
Other more ghastly evils follow the cooking of cabbage. For onething the revolutions of cooked cabbage upon its axis are thirtytimes as numerous as those of Welsh rabbit, not to speak of itssimultaneous whizzing around its orbit and the phenomenon of meanleft ascension. Plenty of people have lived through a sight of boiledcabbage, but don't ask me how. Its effect upon me is approximatelythat of equal parts strychnine and prussic acid. Toxicologists andcriminologists would do well to get wise to this side of theirprofession, for I am firmly convinced that all this raving ofratsbane, deadly nightshade, cyanide, dhatura and other subtle Hindupoisons in so many of our murder trials could be obviated by theapplication of a little common sense. The state would be saved a pileof money and many an innocent victim would escape the chair if onlyit were realized that in nine cases out of ten the whole trouble wasdue to boiled cabbage. It wasn't arsenic, it was simply cabbage. Idon't care if Apicius, the famous Roman man about town, did cook it.Apicius was the chap who used to stuff dormice with asafetida andthen eat them to an obbligato of choice Latin phrases; any one whowould do that will bear watching. His cabbage recipe in his "De ReCulinaria," which he probably did not write, begins: "Take only themost delicate and tender part of the cabbage, which boil, and thenpour off the water; season it with cummin seed, salt, old wine, oil,pepper, alisander, mint, rue, coriander seed and gravy." Other thingshe might add from time to time were onions, raisins, leeks, flour ofalmonds and olives, with perhaps a sprinkling of anise seed, hyssop,pennyroyal and birdseed; if he had any asafetida handy, that went in,too. I must admit that he had the right idea about disguising thispowerful food, but, personally, having been practically raised on it,I've done all for asafetida that I'm ever going to do. In my opinion,boiled cabbage will never come into its own until our researchexperts discover some entirely new principle of ventilation and oneor more disinfectants stronger than formaldehyde.
Later on, having spent a round four million dollars on hisalimentary canal, Apicius committed suicide because he had only halfa million left and was afraid of starving to death. As nobody everwent bankrupt on cabbage, I assume it was the dormice that ruinedhim—he'd better have stuck to his greens. Despite his example,I just chop mine into hunks with a knife and sometimes add salt andvinegar; as yet the technique of coleslaw eludes me, but that maycome in good time.
A correspondent signing herself "Maizie" is obsessed with thenotion that living as I do entirely upon raw cabbage (which I do not)I must soon find myself practically bedridden and unable to writebook reviews, if not a charge upon the community. Investigation showsthat there is something in what she says, though not much. It is heldin some quarters that cooking one's cabbage helps to rupture thelittle starch grains, thus making them more readily digestible, butout here at Jones's if the little starch grains remain unruptured,that's their hard luck. My time is worth money, or would be if Icould get it to do. If I had any to spare I'd rid up the kitchen, buyan encyclopædia on the instalment plan, read the Sunday papersand write a play; then I'd consider rupturing the starch grains.
"You'll be champing raw turnips next," submits the fair unknown.You flatter me, Maizie, I invented that sport. And, by the by, I wishsome of my dietetic colleagues would stop talking about choppedswedes, escalloped swedes, shredded swedes, swedesau gratinand so forth. It makes me nervous. If they mean rutabagas, why notsay so; better still, why not work off their sadistic impulses onmangel-wurzels? I don't care what happens to mangel-wurzels, but anyreference to French fried swedes never fails to give me a turn. Ifthere is a time and place for such, it's in a detective story, not acook book. No, Maizie, I'm not a vegetarian. I have nothing againstmeat, as such. If I dwelt on the mainland, next a butcher shop, mylife would probably be one long, delirious symphony of Hamburgerrare; as it is, a carbohydrate in the system is worth two proteidsacross the bay.
Doctors have always depended upon this wonderful plant inemergencies, so much that they often exclaim, "When in doubt,cabbage!" This remedy was used by Hippocrates upon his wealthiestpatients, sharing equal honors with such items as asphodel, bryony,henbane, hellebore, squills, poppy and mandragora, and with mostfelicitous results upon the blood, the phlegm, the bile and the blackbile; the fact that Hippocrates thought the earth was flat is neitherhere nor there. Cabbage shed a trifle of its prestige as a panaceawhen Asclepiades invented the Doctrine of Solids, as opposed to theDoctrine of Fluids, or Humors, but what it lost there it gained onthe roundabouts. Dioscorides, private physician to Antony andCleopatra, invariably succeeded with cabbage when petrified toadsfailed to do the work.
A few of the younger Greeks believed that this herb had anunfortunate effect upon the cerebrum, resulting in an acute form ofhedonism; it is too late now to find out whether it was that orsomething else. Possibly a long continued and exclusive diet ofcabbage might in time weaken the normal brain, but it is doubtfulwhether a normal brain would be caught in that galley. At any rate,Pythagoras urged cabbage upon his friends and enemies, and Cato theElder is said to have regarded it as a certain cure for the plague,the quinsy and chronic blindstaggers. Of late it has proved its worthin stubborn cases of hordeolum, or congenital baldness (Alopeciacongenitalia), where the child is born without hair, isn't thatkilling?
Among the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians and Babylonians cabbage washeld in high esteem, providing as it did a welcome change from theeternal barley, millet, sesame, locusts and wild honey. You all knowthe anecdote about King Sennacherib of Assyria and what it says inthe Code of Hammurabi, while King Nebuchadnezzar's fondness forgreens was notorious throughout Babylon, indeed, throughoutMesopotamia; it was Belshazzar, however, who spilled the beans. TheEgyptians fell into line, for all the popular fallacy that they ateonly lepidotus, nefareh, sagbosa, lotus and papyrus. To becomeconvinced of this one has but to study carefully the hieroglyphs ofthe falcon Horus, the dog Anubis and the ibis Thoth.
Prominent Egyptians whose names I associate with cabbage includeQueen Hatshepsut of the XVIIIth dynasty, who got such a bad break;Khufu, or Cheops, who built the Great Pyramid, and Prince Ptah-hotpeof the Cairo Ptah-hotpes. But my main exhibit is Amenhotep IV,otherwise Akhnaton, a veritable slave to the stuff; a ratherfascinating personality, though something of an impractical dreamer.Full of piety, good works and misfortune he was always munching ahandful of you know what and thinking beautiful thoughts while theHittites sneaked up on him from behind. It is a strange fact thatcabbage addicts are mostly of the visionary type and cursed with morethan their share of hard luck. They bear it all with Christianfortitude. When they see a lot of dumbbells running loose, impressingmagazine editors and making heaps of money, they just smile tenderlyand murmur, "Heaven bless those dumbbells. God is love and theeditors are right. Who am I? Nobody!" They act that way even whentheir rivals are obviously swinging from branch to branch by theirtails.
Naturally, Akhnaton was partly to blame for his troubles, though Ican't see just where the catch was. Josephus tells us that he wasvery homely, maybe that was it. Interested as he was in the seriousproblems, he never did find out what it was all about. I think hismind lacked a certain fundamental sanity; some of his contemporariesdid not hesitate to hint as much. He was obviously neurotic, and musthave been an awful strain on his wife, Queen Nefertiti the One-eyed,she that was the daughter of Ay and Ty and sister to Mutnothem, whomarried Harmhabi. You may recall that Akhnaton and Nefertiti hadseven daughters; one of them, Enkhsenpeaton, got married toTutankhamen. The other girls did well for themselves, too, whichought to stop the rumor that cabbage is a vulgar vegetable—forthat matter, it never pretended to be a calla lily. Moreover, thereis evidence all about us that plenty of cabbage came over in theMayflower.
How did Akhnaton get that way? How did I? Well, I suppose that Iincline my thoughts towards cabbage for the same reason that ImmanuelKant kept harping on the categorical imperative and that BishopBerkeley made such an object of himself, and object is putting itmildly; in all these cases the answer is infantile fixations, withme, mother's coleslaw. We would come at cabbage differently, that'sall. If I understand Bishop Berkeley, he held that cabbage was mostlyin his own head, or at any rate, that its being consisted entirely inbeing perceived; or, if that isn't plain enough, that itsessewaspercipe. Kant, on the other hand, insisted that it was aDing an Sich. At Jones's it's just cabbage and glad to get it.It stays by you, and that's a lot these days.
In the spring a housewife's fancy—if she has anyleft—lightly turns to you know what. House-cleaning! Magicword! At the very thought existence takes on a rosier hue and onefeels rich, indeed, in the blessings of love and all the finer thingsof the spirit. One night the housewife retires as usual. Comes thedawn, lightly she leaps forth, caroling, "Oh, goody, goody! Spring,the season of housecleaning, is here! How good to be alive! Howwonderful that I am a housewife with a dirty house to clean fromcellar to attic. Hooray! Hooray!! Hooray!!!"
A few take it harder. Here and there a housewife will merely rollover and mutter, "Spring has come! To hell with it!" To such thevernal equinox is only a pain in the neck, and they don't care whoknows it. Hermits are the same way. The average hermit requires onlyabout two minutes to decide that last year's housecleaning is goodfor another twelve months. And the pity is that most hermits' shackscould very well do with a dusting, if not a thorough coat ofwhitewash inside and out.
My own bungalow is much more vast in extent, and my housekeepingproblems therefore considerably larger, than most people seem torealize. All the talk about my tiny shanty must have started when Itold one of those New York interviewers that my shack measured 20 by20 feet, as, in fact, it does; I may state that he wasn'tinterviewing me at the time—we just happened to be lunching atthe same counter on one of my trips to the city. I see what must haveoccurred. This chap repeated to somebody else the dimensions of myfour-room domicile, and it got around that since the whole thingmeasured 20 by 20 feet, each of the four rooms must measure 5 by 5feet. Ask somebody to figure it, and listen.
Now I'm not going to argue. Any one who is willing to concentrate,brush up on arithmetic, call in the neighbors, draw a few diagrams orcome out to Jones's Island with a footrule will eventually find thateach room, supposing they were all the same shape, would measure 10by 10 feet. Nevertheless, either because the calculators stoppedschool in the third grade for obvious reasons or because the talentfor simple subtraction has died out in this country, I still getletters from sympathetic housewives telling me how to be efficient in5 by 5 rooms. It can't be done. One of my correspondents has gatheredthat the shack itself is a 5 by 5 affair and that each room is1¼ by 1¼ feet—another glaring example ofconfusing the participle with the gerundive. Next thing they'll haveme down a rabbit hole.
What I'm getting at is that I have all of 400 square feet of floorspace to be spotlessly cleaned each year, let alone the other springceremonies. Many words have been wasted on this subject by people whodo not seem to know that I own the largest private collection ofsoaps, washing powders, spot removers, magic scourers and scrubbingbrushes in our part of the ocean. And when the proper spring arrives,I shall put them to good use. I do not want to assume an air ofconscious merit, but whenever I look at my cleaning things I feel alittle thrill of satisfaction at the thought that my home would be asspick and span as any one's if only it had the proper care. And sohelp me, I'll do it yet, if I ever find the time. Last spring I didsweep—tons! But what the place needs is an utterly ruthlesssteam shovel in the prime of life, or a savage wrecking crew that hasbeen fed on raw meat, or both.
What I want to make clear is that I'm really a soap-and-waterhermit; but somehow, with one thing and another, I can't seem toprove it. Life is difficult enough for any homemaker, but rememberthat a book reviewing hermit on an island has to do—or ought todo—single handed, in the few moments allowed him at recess,what the whole of civilization, working in shifts on a twenty-fourhour schedule for some æons now, has but imperfectly achieved,that is to say keep house. Well I know that the price of cleanlinessis eternal vigilance, and even then people will talk—ask,maybe, whether you are sure you washed behind the pump. Anyway, Ihave one dear friend in New York who knows of my veritable passionfor chasing spots. She's always sending me presents of soap—andI'd call that good, wholesome romance.
I wash, too, whatever people may say. Summer colonists whocomplain that they never see any washing on my line are unaware of myindoor drying system—a little trick I learned from none otherthan Abigail Adams. My own East Room is always gay with shirts,socks, red bandannas, blue pants and what, if memory serves, used tobe pure white towels—I haven't been firm enough with thosetowels. And I can prove by visitors that I always have three bucketsof wash going, as has every hermit worthy of the name. I don't make alot of useless fuss with ammonia, borax, bluing and boiling, but thegood work goes on just the same. I simply soak, wring, hang andrepeat, though I have nothing against hermits with washing-mania whodevote every Monday to its traditional use. It's a good, clean mania,unless carried to excess. Of course I wash, as everybody ought toknow from my family motto, "Lux et Rinso!"
My windows are something else again. Whoever built my house was anardent advocate of those windows with twelve little panes of glass ineach, and how he managed to get six windows into one small shackbeats me. That makes seventy-two panes, all rattling at once. "Theymust be awfully hard to keep clean," a lady once observed, and Ioften wonder if she wasn't kidding me. It was the first time thataspect of the subject had occurred to your humble hermit. They mustbe, indeed. I must leave my readers to decide for themselves how Isolve this part of my housecleaning problem.
Though the spring riot seldom hits Jones's Island head on, I amfar from lacking a certain academic interest in the phenomenon. Ireviewed a book on the subject here lately, and I must say the authormade cleanliness sound very attractive. Take her cleaning closetde luxe, a dujingus made of white enameled steel, which may beobtained in varying sizes, priced from $60 to $495,000. It has flushconstruction, well-fitting doors, hardware of the finest quality,nickeled hooks and adjustable shelves re-introducing the centralmotif of enameled steel. And what is supposed to be kept in thiselegant, sanitary object? The family jewels? No, just mops and such,including suction cleaners, brushes and brooms in vast array, carpetsweepers, mop wringers, cleaning baskets, dusters, cleaning cloths,chamois doilies, window cleaners, tongs, floor waxers, stepladders,scrap baskets, soaps, liquid polishes and eyebrow-curlers.
This is truly a far cry from the yellow soap, ragbag and woodshedmethod prevailing at Jones's Island. I'm afraid that if I owned thatclosetde luxe I should be tempted to use it as a library andreception room, leaving the dustrags to their fate. One realizes,however, that times are changing. The old mop is not what it used tobe. The very pot scourers are demanding a more refined environmentand shorter hours. Personally, I'm old-fashioned. I like a mop tokeep its place, but at the same time I must try to compromise withthe age. Let's be pals with our mops, instead of tyrants. Only thusshall we arrive at a fuller understanding.
That book taught me a lot of other things, too, that you'll neverlearn in college. The author recommends a circular motion forscouring unfinished wood, prefers the overlapping stroke for dustingceilings and mentions favorably a correspondent's plea for theupward, instead of the downward, brushing of side walls. One who hassuffered makes bold to add that even the downward kind of brushing,with all its many faults, is immensely preferable to the deadly sideto side stroke employed by some wall brushers—and theAustralian crawl is even worse. The chapter on sweeping was also arevelation to a certain bachelor who has always employed the Kansascyclone method of removing debris, as was the kitchen section, thoughwhen the author speaks casually of the thrice a day cleaning of thesink she is out of my depth. This seems to border dangerously onfanaticism. On the other hand, how timely is her warning againstchipping ice in the sink. Who hasn't seen a perfectly swell sinkstarted on the downward path by a thoughtless blow from an ice pickin the clutch of some charming little woman who wasn't quite herselfat the time?
Although many other esoteric problems demand research andexposition (by more experienced hands and fancier pens), I mustcontent myself with a concluding word on feather catching, an artmuch neglected in our day but of prime importance to any one who ownsa feather bed, or even a pillow. Countless thousands will bear me outin my statement that one never knows what real excitement is untilthe feather bed bursts while being turned, beaten or let severelyalone. When this happens one gets, of course, a certain amount oftransient fun pretending that one is playing the snow scene from "TheTwo Orphans," but just as surely one finally decides that it cannotand must not go on forever. Something must be done, yet how fewhousekeepers, when called upon to sweep up a few bushels of featherswhich have run amuck, have the faintest notion of what to do beyondyelling for the police?
Successful feather catchers are not born, but made in the give andtake of actual experience, tried and tempered in the school of hardknocks, and life has taught them to beware of insensate violence intheir chosen field. Probably the only means that would instantlyquell an uprising of vigorous, adolescent goose feathers would be asurprise barrage of buckshot or a combined attack of several firedepartments, but time has proved both these techniques unwise. Norcan rampaging feathers on holiday be intimidated by wild leapings andcavortings with a broom and dustpan, since for pure impudence,irresponsibility and malicious gayety they are equaled amongso-called inanimate objects only by golf balls and collar buttons.When you fly aft in a fine frenzy of misguided confidence, they sailgracefully for'ard, and there you are. And therethey are, Imight even say.
Don't lose your head. Keep cool, and when the dam things appear tohave forgotten all about you, advance slowly upon them withoutstretched wet newspapers, enfold them gently and they'll neverknow what hit them, in case you did bag a few. And the moral of thatprobably is that feathers, in their way, are a symbol of this ourmortal life, which is always breaking out in some other direction theminute you think it's all set. Anyway, once the feathers got loose,the problem of exercise in the home is solved for the next week orso.
Here it is almost Christmas, and not even a list made out yet. No,that's hardly true. I did prepare my usual schedule of the presents Iwant, but I'm not going to send it around—and you can be thejudge who's to blame for it all. It looks very very much as thoughthere would be an empty sock in a certain hermit's shanty thisYuletide, and just when I was trying for a banner year!
Maybe I tried too hard. Anyway, all it got me to go flinging giftsright, left and sideways most of last spring and summer and part ofthis fall was the name of angling for return parcels this Christmas,an aspersion the more unfortunate in that I already had a slightreputation as a hinter—though I don't call it hinting to tellpeople to whom I have been properly introduced that I am fond of blueneckties. I repeat that I am fond of blue neckties, and blue necktiesI will have, one way or the other.
Those heavy suitcases, huge cardboard boxes and mysteriouspackages wrapped in old newspapers which I kept lugging ashore allyear were presents to friends in New York, that much is perfectlytrue. For these same friends I risked chronic lumbago and permanentlyweakened the rowing muscles of Portygee Pete. For them I weathered ablizzard, two cloudbursts and several fights with Long Island railwayconductors who tried to put me in the baggage car. At the cost of apretty penny, as pennies go at Jones's Island, I employed every meansof efficient distribution of presents known to modern science, shortof calling out Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, only todiscover—with Christmas at my very door!—that my friendsweren't much thrilled, if at all, by those boatloads of beach pebblesI took them. No matter how I found out. I can put two and twotogether when I am notified by a lot of people upon whom I have beenlavishing beach pebbles that they have just started on a trip aroundthe world and will be gone quite some time.
Well, I accomplished one thing. I did bring on a sudden andsensational epidemic of Chinese lilies in dozens of homes where allthey had ever known about botany was a pot of verbenas. These verbenafans were particularly hard to manage; there seems to be somethingabout that unassuming little plant that makes housewives positivelystubborn, or perhaps the verbenas are the effect rather than thecause. Yet I beat down all opposition, terrorized the coweringverbenas and saw to it that those housewives had Chinese lilies,willy-nilly; since, after all, about the only thing you can do with alarge consignment of pebbles, after the goldfish bowl is full and thechildren have taken their pick, is to put them in a shallow bowl andgo buy a bulb. And when my generosity was at its height, it took alot of bulbs to come out even. It was fun while it lasted, but Imight have known there was bound to be a reaction. I suppose they gotto thinking how they had neglected the verbenas; or perhaps theydecided the pebbles were not so hot, anyway, even if the Chinese lilyhad bloomed—life is like that.
To be sure, the Jones's Island pebbles are only small stones, notvery expertly colored. Yet, on their native beach, as the Atlanticsurf swirls coolly over them, they are translucent, opaline,iridescent and all that sort of thing. The pity is that in captivitythey lose much of their wild, free spirit. A pebble on the seashoreis really a wonderful phenomenon, but a pebble in a rolled oatscontainer looks like nothing so much as a pebble in a rolled oatscontainer. By the time it gets to town it is utterly disillusioned.It has lost its joy of living and most of its looks—all themore reason, say I, to give it a helping hand, a warm, old-fashionedwelcome in the home and some assurance of a better and brighterto-morrow in a shallow bowl with a bulb. Mere outward beauty isn'teverything, though I must admit it's a great deal.
Then look what happened to the tons of bayberries I gave away, notto mention the stone paper weights, the empty quart bottles suitablefor lamps and candlesticks, the little glass jugs to be used asvinegar cruets and the skimmer shells for the kiddies. I expected thebayberries to make more of a hit, seems like they used to. With alltheir faults I love bayberries. The gray, waxen pellets, when denudedof their leafage, make delightful decorations and will last foreverif you are careful to glue, sew or tack each berry to the stem;otherwise you will put in a lot of time sweeping them up. Theblighted specimens, of course, are not so pretty, and many personsobject to the little red worms that come with them. So my bayberryclients have started around the world, too. They seem to haveforgotten that I never gave them any umbrella stands full of pampasgrass!
Whatever happens Christmas morning—and I'll be up atdawn—my conscience is clear. My motives were good, as motivesgo; if I happened to think of Christmas once or twice whiledelivering my beach products, it was in a perfectly nice way and notwhat they say. I hold no malice. I make no secret of the fact that Ilove my friends and should like something to remember them by, and ifthey see eye to eye with me on this proposition, I can do nothing toprevent them. I'll even include the ones who called me a hintertrying to acquire Christmas merit and blue neckties by unloadinguseless Jones's Island junk all over their rugs. All I want thisyear, though, is for my friends ashore to have a gorgeous time andgive marvelous presents to each other and never think of the lonelyhermit in his hut. In this connection I am reminded of a favoritequotation from Wordsworth, immortalized by Mr. Bartlett:
"Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects thelore
Of nicely calculated less or more."
Good old Wordsworth!
Although I am not officially releasing my list this year, I maystate in a general way that hermits as a class, or sub-species, arenot very particular what they get for Christmas, so long as it'ssomething. One hermit, whose identity must not be disclosed, isalways tickled to receive shoes in fairly good condition, sizes8½ to 10, inclusive; dungarees, 34 waist; chest, unexpanded,38 inches; height, 5 feet 10½ inches; blue eyes and milddisposition unless riled. He's on the prowl all the year round, andnothing makes his eyes glisten with sheer mischief like divertingfrom its proper source a missionary box intended for the Patagonians,the Uap Islanders, the Binbinga of Northern Australia or the Wagogoof East Africa, unless it's obtaining access to a barrel of odds andends addressed to some community stricken by flood, earthquake orfamine—he's forever asking people if they have heard of anearthquake lately and who is going to send a box.
Since it happens to be extremely fashionable this season toprovide for hermits, I will add that presents need not be confined tocut flowers, sheet music and picture postcards of Anne Hathaway'scottage. Why not a beribboned carton of peanut brittle or a gaylypainted tin of glacéd prunes, both acceptable combinations ofart and nourishment and much more tactful than a great crate of breadand butter. A safe rule to go by is that hermits need about two ofeverything, and if I were rich I'd see that they got it. So far Ihave received but one Christmas present from a millionaire. It camein a grand envelope that must have cost a quarter all by itself, andwhen I opened it, out popped—what do you think?—awonderful paragraph just bursting with love, best wishes and goodadvice. Life is like that, too.
If you truly want to bring a little Yuletide joy into the lives ofothers, my friends, see any mail order catalogue. There's one at theCoast Guard station, and reading it of nights is almost as good asChristmas itself. I've just gone through it again, and if I lose mycritical reputation I call it the best book of the year and superioron every count to all but a few of the chosen classics of all time.It wasn't just thought up by some one who was no brighter than heshould have been. It has a message. And some day, when my ship comesin, I'm going to write to the author and tell him to rush me one ofeach. It will cut into the principal and sort of crowd the shack, butit will be, I flatter myself, a magnificent gesture.
I've given the matter quite a bit of thought, and about the onlythings in our catalogue that I can get along without are ageratumseeds, pickle forks, wind chimes, cuckoo clocks, bee traps, hot airaccelerators, artificial boutonnières, imported hand-paintedcookie dishes, chin rests for playing the violin, bird remedies,cream separators, sheep dip, asthma relief, air ferns and coinpurses. I can't decide about the genuine leather adjustable horsecollars for expressing and teaming, and the high quality, waterprooffly nets with straps to buckle around the hames. They're worthconsidering, but first I want to go thoroughly into the whole subjectof hames.
Meanwhile, Christmas is coming! And I, for one, shall be on mybest behavior until the last returns are in. I suspect that a greatmany people are secretly rejoicing in the fact that pebbles andbayberries are out of season. But who knows what a hermit may do whenthe Yuletide spirit seizes him like a frenzy and the joy of givingrouses all that is worst in his nature? I still have a few pebblesleft. I wonder!
History has recorded many famous banquets. Herodotus tells us, Iforget just what; but certainly there have been plenty of importantfeeds—Herodotus was nothing but an old liar, anyway. I know fora fact, and can prove by witnesses, that there recently occurred apretty large and vociferous dinner party at Jones's Island, and thatthose present, including myself, some of the hungrier Coast Guardsand a couple of visiting hermits from the Eastern marshes, fairlygroaned with viands. The repast was spread at and practically allover my shack, and a good time was had, if I do say it. I cooked itmyself and didn't lose a guest.
All persons from the mainland were barred by a rising vote of thetribe. We had a rank outsider at our last affair—a humoristfrom New York—and everything struck him as funny. He madeseveral unnecessary remarks about the food, such as, "Well, you don'tgo till your time comes!" and kept calling, "Come on in, Lucrezia!"and making other cracks about slow poison. He even looked up the listof antidotes on the back of my cook book. He got away.
That and similar experiences have shown the wisdom of admitting nocritical and, for all we know, cultured aliens to the Feast of theBean. I am afraid we of Jones's are not always careful to observe thedelicate line, if any, which differentiates the truly fastidiousgourmet from the Motumotu of New Guinea. The whole point of the orgyis quantity or bulk of intake, and individual success depends largelyupon the fine art of grabbing, which not infrequently brings out somenotable feats of strength and agility rather dangerous to those offrail physique. Sometimes we forget to eat as though we hated it.
I came through the ordeal all right by sticking closely to therather rigid ceremonial prescribed for the Feast of the Bean.Tradition requires the host, at the appointed hour, to seize thecommunal megaphone, expand his chest and yell repeatedly, "All hot!All hot!" adding, perhaps, by way of sentiment, "Come and get it!"Invited guests and others within earshot invariably flock in at therate of ten seconds flat to each hundred yards, whereupon the hostpoints silently to the festive oilcloth in sign of good faith, waveseach comer to his chair or its equivalent and puts everybody at hisease with the welcome words, "Eat hearty, boys, and give the ship agood name!" By that time the soup is about gone.
The soup was not clam chowder, for it is a point of honor amongbeachites to omit that grand but provincial dish sometimes, just fora change, particularly upon extraordinary occasions such as thereturn from the hunt, hauling in the catch, a tribal wedding or theFeast of the Bean. One can always serve clam chowder, but it is notevery host who provides consommé froid, consommé DuBarry, potageà la Bellevue, or split pea, any one ofwhich may be prepared by the initiates in about a day and a half,excepting Barsch with Ushka, the Polish national sport, which takestwo weeks without counting the Ushka, and generally involves a scoreof assistants and social ostracism. If I said we had any of these I'dbe fibbing like two hermits. I can make soup, if I have to, I'll saythat. In my day I have thought up some highly unusual ones, so muchso that many a visitor has exclaimed, "What a soup!" and turned myfirst course into a guessing game. They have guessed ectoplasm,beaver-board, paranoia and manic-depressive without a singlebull's-eye; ten to one it was only left-overs—no trouble atall, but it takes a knack. This time it was canned tomato.
Nor shall I apologize for dealing a patent brand of soup. Whenall's said, I can't help thinking that those fellows in the factory,who make it a life work, have hit upon a richer mixture than any poorefforts of mine have achieved to date. As for the manual labor, younever know what real, solid comfort is until you quit bucking thesoup trust. Mental agony you are spared as well, since people nolonger ask you, with sincere concern, whether you have lost yoursense of taste or smell, or both. Everybody's happy. Is thisspineless compromise? Is this weakly giving in to life? No, in mostcases it's just common decency. You may feel that your party's asuccess when your guests, as mine did, demand at least threehelpings—after that, anything goes. Thank goodness for cannedsoup!
Fortunately, the beans were swell. They had to be, for immemorialcustom decrees that they must oblige as fish, entrée, roast,salad, and sometimes dessert. Nothing is said in the by-laws abouthors-d'œuvres, and I spent many an anxious momentwondering whether to stage some such course; reason prevailed, and Ididn't. A literary correspondent whose help I enlisted, suggested,"Why notescargots à la Bourguignonne?" I simplyreplied by return mail, "Not inmy house!" Her next message,reading "Since when?" failed to alter my decision. For a while Iconsidered Bologna, but my enthusiasm dwindled. By and large, thewursts leave me cold. And pickled beet relish drives me crazymad.
I find it difficult to exercise restraint when I think of themisguided people whosehors-d'œuvres, day after day,year after weary year, consist of what?—pickled beets. I daresay that pickled beets, with their deadly, soul-sapping monotony,have torn more fond hearts asunder, broken up more happy homes andcaused more crimes of passion than any other three vegetables chosenat random. Picture to yourself the young artisan returning from thefoundry fairly sober, kissing his happy bride and inquiring with alight laugh, "What have we forhors-d'œuvres thisevening, sweet?" "Same old thing, pickled beets!" says she. "Fine!"exclaims the illuded youth, vouchsafed as yet no prevision of thetragedy that is to stalk in after years. If only they had realized!But they never did (not being very bright, anyway) until they met asstrangers in the bread-line during a blinding snowstorm, patheticvictims of ten thousand portions of pickled beet relish with all itsbrood of quarrels, flatirons and bricks. Better, far better, if theyhad done withouthors-d'[oeu]vres altogether. I could furnishmore frightful examples by the dozen, now that I have already ruinedmy plot with this one. Yet how often to-day we hear thecri ducœur from victim after victim of the pickled beet, "My God,I've married a moron!"
Beets in any form are, strictly speaking, a food for the roughersort of cow. Their one merit from the human point of view is thatalcohol may be extracted from them, and a few delightful housewiveshave the secret of coloring pickled eggs with their aid. The maintrouble is that beets contain 85 per cent of concrete. I once boileda couple of them during an entire afternoon without the slightestresult—if anything, they seemed to get harder. Turn, gouge andglare at them as I would, not one' single gleam of intelligence couldI get from those beets. In the evening I forked them again, but theyhad apparently made up their minds to be stubborn, and my own bloodwas up, too (cf. the old folk-saying, "As stubborn as abeet"). Finally I forgot the water and they were left high and dry. Ihave always felt that the joke was on them. I must confess that I amagainst beet soup, too, especially cold. Cold beet soup always givesme the decided impression that life is just a grim joke of the gods,and adding sour cream to it doesn't help much. The fact that thepeople who put sour cream in cold beet soup are Lithuanians seems avery flimsy excuse.
To return to the Feast of the Bean, another inflexible law, saidto have been rushed through by Old Zachs of Zachs Inlet himself,calls for as many beans as a crew of eight surfmen and a skipper canaccount for at a single sitting, or, as we of to-day interpret theancient ruling, infinity of beans, beans without end, let orhindrance. Whether the original intention was in this manner tosymbolize the fertility of Nature, the bean producer, or the capacityof man, the bean eater, will probably never be determined, obscuredas the finer points have been by generations of scribes, yeomen, clamdiggers and hermits. At any rate, beans it is.
And a good thing, too. The bean is all that the beet is not. Ihave small patience with people who are always sneering at the beanand insisting that it caused the Hundred Years' War. A prominentdietitian recently declared that the common or navy bean contains ingreat abundance every element needed to sustain life; he lost his jobthe next day, but there may be something in it. He who attacks thebean is threatening the very existence of the social order, at leasthere at Jones's. He is guilty of treason to the spirit of ourAmerican institutions. Such a one must take his chances before thetribunal of history, unless we catch him first.
Where would we be without the bean? Charles Darwin, the evolutionman, was a rabid vegetarian, a loyal bean fan. George Bernard Shawadores beans. William Salt, the eminent antiquarian, Egyptologist andauthority on mummies was inspired to some of his most heroic feats bybeans and beans alone. And what of those great human documents, MagnaCharta and the Declaration of Independence? What about the cotton ginand the spinning jenny, or is it the other way round? In my opinionShakespeare was an out-and-out beanist, though he denied it with someheat.
So many gifted authors have lavished their eloquence upon bakedbean recipes that my own humble, unassuming one—requested sooften that I dare no longer refuse—may come as an anticlimax.The method with which I have had most success, and remember that I'mnot bragging, goes something like this: First be sure your fire isburning like sixty and the dampers are properly adjusted for astrong, steady heat. Have your best bean-pan spotless and gleaming.Lock every door in the house, then sneak to the pantry, select aplump, full-grown, nicely rounded can of beans and use your ownjudgment. This may shock some of the veterans, but it's a secretevery bride should know, and may also stop the report that hermitsare too lazy to warm up their food. For the Feast of the Bean I usedtwo large cans to a man, with a dozen extra for possible shrinkage,and nobody reneged except Portygee Pete, who'd had his five squaresand could cope with a mere can and a half. As usual, Ned won,claiming a total of three flat. Of course, we had bread, too. We ofJones's hold the old-fashioned Ptolemaic, or pre-Copernican, viewthat white bread made from denatured flour is the staff of life, andnot the rank poison it's supposed to be nowadays. White bread wasgood enough for Old Zachs, and he lived to be ninety.
The one awkward moment came at the very end of the meal, for therumor of dessert had somehow got abroad; probably one of the boys sawme pricing plum puddings and imagined I had come into money. I havenever understood why dinner guests so often become violent about thedessert, when by every rule of physiology they should be reduced to astate of harmless complaisance and good will towards all. But no,they seem to get a new lease on life about that time, and are likelyto start a fight at the first glimpse of a baked apple or worse. Likeas not they expected floating island, filled cookies, or evensomething as sensational and improbable as a banana split or bakedAlaska, if not the Venus de Milo in Jello. Well, it passed over allright, but there was a dangerous look in more than one eye when Iproduced the coffee ring. Next time I'll certainly invest in thosecanned puddings, or see to it that the coffee ring has nuts on thetop—that seemed to be the main grievance. Rattlesnake Ned, withhis heart of gold, saved the situation by rustling griddle aftergriddle of his justly celebrated pancakes, reputed to be thefillingest this side of Montauk Point. After all, the Coast Guardmarches on its stomach, and some of the guests still had work to do.Thus was good humor restored and our congenial fellowship sparedanything so vulgar as a free-for-all over a coffee ring.
On the whole, and allowing for the dessert, I knew that my partyhad got across. Already the guests, if able, were rising from theirseats with symptoms of that postprandial languor which attests man'skinship to the boa constrictor. Comanche had that blissful look ofthe bayman who has eaten just a little too much, Ned had assumed theglassy stare with which he always succumbs to the processes ofdigestion, osmosis, transmogrification and apotheosis on suchoccasions, and the rest were trying their land-legs about the banquethall. All was as it should be, for while some epicures love to fancythat they have heard the rustling of angelic pinions with theirdinner, we like to feel that something has hit us, that we havesomething tangible under our belts and that the basal metabolism hasplenty to work on. And that's just what we felt. It was ten o'clockof a fair frosty night, sea calm, wind Northwest by North, and wewere fed up for another day, or would be after another snack atbedtime. The Feast of the Bean was over, except for rhubarb and sodaall round, bicarbonate where needed and a spoonful of Jamaica gingerfor Shanghai, the youngest. Shanghai can't stand much.
I'm not so sure that I want to be in a sideshow. I have spentyears, you might say, keeping out of one, and I hate to give up thestruggle. Still, it's time I was getting started at something.
I don't mean a regular sideshow in a circus, with good pay and achance to lay up a bit for old age. I never get offers like that.What I mean is—well, it's a very delicate matter, and I hope myreaders will forgive my mentioning it. The fact is—and rememberit's none of my doings—can I help it if certain persons want toturn my hut into a literary shrine? Of course, it wouldn't beStratford-on-Avon; anyway, not right at first. But in time—
To get at the plot, we must go back to the morning when I firstnoticed that peculiar throbbing sensation in my ears. It wasn'treally painful; just a sort of vaguely maddening pulsation only loudenough to poison the incoming air waves and evoke some pretty lowthoughts without driving a hermit completely nuts—not unlike aradio in the distance, except that radios sometimes stop, if theowner is shot. For a while I thought it must be a mosquito in theaural vestibule, or maybe in the Eustachian tube—and why myEustachian tubes are not always full of mosquitoes is more than Iknow.
Along towards evening, after first aid treatment with hot cylinderoil, iodine, Sloan's and ten-penny nails, I ruled out the mosquitoand flew to the family doctor book, as I always do when I want a goodscare. And there I read, as the wind howled mournfully outside andthe lightning struck everything but my humble cot, how I had not onlyelementary tinnitus, or noises in the ears, but acute otitis media,with secondary dislocation of the malleus, incus and stapes andrupture of the main drum (the ten-penny nails did that!), accompaniedby serious disturbance of the endolymph, complete functionalbreakdown of the auricle and the pinna and something frightfullywrong with, of all things, the cochlea—I never knew I had one!Well, I was fit to be tied.
Naturally, I took steps and practically everything else in themedicine chest, nor did I neglect to send up a few heartfeltpetitions to whatever gods there be—a little habit I have whenI'm sick, right reason or no right reason. All this modern scienceserved only to intensify the symptoms and bring on complications. Ibegan seeing things, too; and where I had pains you wouldn't believe.So I resigned myself to the worst, put my affairs in order and wentashore to the doctor. And, to make a long story short, he refused tooperate. This was just as well, for the noises turned out to be steamdredges in the bay.
Yes, steam dredges in the bay, quite a ways off as yet, butcreeping slowly and ever slowly towards my hermitage. And why? Youmay well ask.
I have decided to be very nice about these dredges and what theydid to my life. God bless them! They were, and still are, as I penthese words, engaged in pumping up sand to build a road, withbridges, across the bay, so that thousands upon thousands of utterlydelightful people can drive their automobiles right out to Jones'sIsland and up and down the length of same on a concrete boulevard. AsI live and breathe, a concrete boulevard. For it seems that as ajoint result of recent elections, modern philanthropy and what isknown in my family as the Luck of the Cuppys, Jones's Island is goingto be a State Park.
And God bless whoever thoughtthat up! Now all and sundrycan come right out to my shack and have picnics in my front yard withtheir banana peelings, cute little poodles, golden-haired infantswith pop-guns, canned music and firecrackers. God blessthem!To all concerned in this perfectly splendid scheme for bringing alittle sunlight into the lives of the masses and disrupting what isleft of my reason I wish the very best of everything in this greatbig beautiful world—would that they had but one neck. And yet,my friends, and yet! Was it for this that I—well, was it forthis?
At first I'm afraid I was selfish about the State Park. I talkedof sinking the dredges, blowing up the bridges, seizing the postoffice and murdering the politicians with subtle tortures that wouldmake Edgar Wallace look sillier. And I didn't mean a word of it.Through suffering I have come to realize that State Parks, as part ofthe glorious march of civilization—which is to say as part ofthe general conspiracy against hermits—will go on and on, andI'm through fighting them. I've done all I can against the gloriousmarch of civilization, and I haven't scratched the surface. Irealize, too, that the poor mainlanders with Fords must have sunlightand fresh air and a bath and hot dogs, and that the only place theycan get these is Jones's Island, and I'm sorry now that when I firstheard of their dire need I exclaimed, "Why don't they eat cake?" Godbless them again, and that goes double.
That's how I come to be planning a literary shrine for themultitude, just when I was getting started as a hermit—withprospects, too, such as they were. I am not pushing the idea in anyimmodest manner. I'm only saying that if it be the will of thepeople, if the sovereign state of New York so orders and decrees, I'mwilling to dicker. If, on the other hand, I am requested to move onto some other beach, and make it snappy, I won't answer for myneuroses. I'm not the migrating type, and it would be plain helltaking up with a lot of strange clams. I want to stay, even if I haveto be one of the Zips.
I must admit that my shrine would be the least worthy known tofame; and perhaps the only one featuring a reviewer of detectivestories. The park officials could ward off criticism on that score byposting large and conspicuous signs reading, "This Way To The World'sWorst Literary Shrine." I shall insist upon that. My shack doesn'tpretend to be Poe's Cottage or the last resting place of Alice andPhœbe Gary, and I shall make no such claim. Still, I see wherethey're fitting up a memorial for Henry Thoreau,who lived for twoyears by a mere pond up in Massachusetts, and if you ask me, he wasonly fair to middling. They have quite a shrine for John Burroughs,too, the famous peewit chaser of some time back, and what's so nobleabout chasing peewits I never could understand. Such facts lead me tohope that I might get over, on my merits. I'm not woodsy, likeThoreau and Burroughs, but I can wiggle my ears.
Really, I think my hut is rich enough in literary associations tomake a passable showing, when everything is set out in glass cases,with labels and dates and things. To the right as you enter would bemy herbarium of rejection slips from some of the leading magazines,with the actual manuscripts razzed and letters from the editorsexplaining in none too guarded terms just why I am not front pagenews—some of them very nice people, but natural-born hermithaters; also communications from prominent authors and newspaperreaders inquiring why I don't see a cranial surgeon, now thatoperations are nothing at all. And, of course, the First Folio,containing the complete authentic, unexpurgated text of all my books,namely, "How To Be a Hermit," together with notes by thecommentators, if there should be any.
I'm short on portraits and busts at present, but that's soonfixed; and I think I'll plant a mulberry tree, just in case. And whynot a small aquarium showing the seven ages of clams from the larvalstate to frittersà la Zachs? Later I'll arrangeparking space for the pilgrims who come in motor cars, wheel chairsand such; the rest will be a mere matter of a few guides, guards,interpreters, bouncers and barkers—that'll be Ned, who was bornwith a caul and a carnival.
And speaking of art, isn't there something said of a sixpence atStratford Church? If so, I wonder whether it is good form to collectwhile one is yet quick? I should certainly feel like a ninny takingdimes at the door, yet I think it only fair to charge a nominal fee.Perhaps Ned will relieve me of the sordid details on a commissionbasis—of course, the park officials will get theirs too. Evenat five cents a caller I believe my whole attitude towards visitorswould change for the better. Or would it be more in the spirit ofsimple dignity and classic traditions to have a hermit-box forvoluntary contributions? Frankly, I feel that it would not.
There would have to be a candy counter, but one thing I'm going tobe firm about. I'll not have the whole thing cheapened with a lot ofhigh pressure business. There will be no hot dogs in my shrine.They'll be outside, with the peanuts, popcorn, soft drinks, souvenirclam shells, photographs and autographed copies of "How To Be aHermit." And while we are on this embarrassing subject of money, Imay as well state that any hero worshipers who appear with offers ofbronze tablets, stained glass windows and illuminated scrollsattesting my influence upon the decline and fall of American letterswill be given fifty per cent off for the cash. Dividends may be slowat first, so I think I'll just sit in a corner, reviewing books,protected by a rope fence and a sign announcing, "Visitors AreStrictly Forbidden To Prod Or Feed The Hermit." I'm crazy aboutpeanuts, too, but you've got to keep order. Pilgrims who insist uponmeeting me, strictly for literary purposes, may do so for fifteencents extra, two for a quarter.
Of course, if I put on the act, my hut must have a name—andnot The Cuppy Hole, either. I did call it Villa Mon Repos one season,but I'd rather have something I can pronounce. Another year I hitupon Flotsam, and that only kept me explaining, with no very tangibleresults, what I had against Jetsam. I rather liked Flotsam, but youcan't be forever explaining the difference between flotsam andjetsam, with a dictionary that gives you practically no help; and Imay say that I'm in favor of clearing up the matter once for all bymaking jetsam the female of flotsam, or vice versa. Anyway, I finallypainted out the Flot and left Sam, which caused even more excitement;so one day Ned and I took Sam for a ride. That left me with aprominently displayed sign about Rabbits For Sail, but that was neverthe name of the shack, any more than last winter's Steam-Fitting AndPlumbing Done Here—just boards for patching the porch.
Kind friends have suggested plenty of names, but something iswrong with them all; and you can parse that to suit yourselves.Castle Terrabil sounds kind of grand and Arthurian, until you thinkit over, and the same is true of Moronia and Dumbbellton Grange.Bellevue is a nice name, too, but kind of ambiguous.Tottering-on-the-Brink is good. In fact, it is much too good. Youcan't tell me that the race has gone on for millions of years withoutthinking that up and using it long ago. If we are reasonable beingsin a reasonable scheme, dozens of hermits, created for that specialpurpose, must have lived, suffered, hoped in vain and died unwept inbungalows named Tottering-on-the-Brink. Otherwise, where are we?
For years and years I tried to think up something of the sort usedby the summer colonists, who run to such hospitable lengths as DewDrop Inn, Uneeda-Rest and Dowantogawa. I dallied with Keepa-Going,Go-Rite-On-By, Danger This Means You, and Smallpox, but lost mynerve. Same with Nobody Home, which could easily give the wrongimpression. Besides, I need something now that will draw the crowds.Heartbreak House might be over their heads, and so would Help Wanted,and Concha del Clam is perhaps too upstage for a ten-centattraction.
Ah, well! A part of the dream is dreamed out, and the rest will beas may be. The Fords have not actually arrived, and meanwhile I havesome names that I like to meditate upon as the bridge crawls closerto my hermitage. God bless that bridge! Perhaps my favorite, nokidding, is Fool's Paradise; to me it means a lot of things that Ihaven't time to explain. And sometimes my home is Joyous Gard,because of the Zachs Inlet crew, and sometimes Just An Idea, afterone of the Prince of Wales' horses. In more literary moments I thinkof it as one of those P. G. Wodehouse places, but I never can decidebetween East Wobsley, Little-Wigmarsh-in-the-Dell,Lower-Briskett-in-the-Midden andHiggleford-cum-Wortlebury-beneath-the-Hill. So now I just call itAugust Johnson, as you may verify by the huge gold curlicued lettersover my porch. Shanghai found the gorgeous sign on the beach anddragged it home, knowing my taste in art or its equivalent. It's aswell sign and an honest, respectable name, but I'm open toreason.
And to think that the very day before I heard of the State Park Iwas all set on Hermit's Snug Harbor. Pretty tough, what?
At the moment, I confess, I'm a hermit up in the air. To Zip ornot to Zip, that is the question. I know just how that poor fellowfelt when he couldn't make up his mind about whatever it was; butI'll never admit that he was mad, and if hewas a bit off, whywouldn't he be? What would he have done in my shoes? He'd have made afearful mess, one way or another, that's all we can be sure of, therest is silence. I'd better be asking, what would Anthony havedone—meaning, naturally, my favorite hermit, Antonios theEgyptian.
It's uncanny how I stumble along in the footsteps of that grandold guy, though falling rather more frequently beside the way. He hadhis Jones's Island, too—a pleasant breathing place beside theNile, whither he had retired from the foolish goings-on ofHeracleopolis and Alexandria. For twenty years he dwelt there ingreat peace and content in a little abandoned fort in the sand, andno man set eyes upon him; no, nor woman, neither, excepting thesomewhat persistent wraith of the Queen of Sheba, who wouldn't takeno for an answer. And one day, aware of unseemly commotion, hestepped forth, astonished, into that fierce light which beats upon ahermit. Did his eyes deceive him?
Nay, 'twas true enough. The place was alive with hermits, profanetourists, camels, donkeys and unclassified. Somebody had constructeda pilgrim road across the Nile, and now the little crooked fort inthe sand was become the center of a thriving settlement; and its namewas Aphroditopolis! You may read in the "Apophthegmata Patrum" of ourhero's horror. So Antonios of Egypt stood there, thinking long, longthoughts, and staggered back into the fort to think some more.
He bore it for a time, but finally, according to an ancientmanuscript, "he beat it to a more remote part of the desert." Infact, he never stopped running until he reached the Red Sea. I liketo think that he was happy there, meditating his fill, resisting somewonderful temptations and communing betimes with passingAnthropophagi, Cynocephali, Nisnas, Blemmyes and Sciapods. He was agreat one for the likes of that, Antonios was. You do meet someinteresting Blemmyes, considering that they have no heads, but Inever could abide those Sciapods, who lie fettered to the earth bytheir hair, with their umbrella-shaped feet in the air to keep offthe sun and the rain—I always get the feeling that they do iton purpose.
Of course, there were always the Sphinx and the Chimera toconverse with, and such pets as sadhuzags, basilisks, griffins andcatoblepases. All I have is a phœnix and a unicorn and adipsas—and the dipsas is pining away. I've always wanted acatoblepas, but I don't know. I might get all moved and wish I wasback. I suppose a catoblepas has its drawbacks, too.
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