Love Conquers All Read online

  “Well, how do you like your school?”

  “I suppose you have plenty of time for pranks, eh?”

  “What a good time you boys must have! It isn’t so much what you get out of books that will help you in after life, I have found, but the friendships made in college. Meeting so many boys from all parts of the country – why, it’s a liberal education in itself.”

  “What was the matter with the football team this season?”

  “Let’s see, how many more years have you? What, only one more! Well, well, and I can remember you when you were that high, and used to come over to my house wearing a little green dress, with big mother-of-pearl buttons. You certainly were a cute little boy, and used to call our cook ‘Sna-sna.’ And here you are, almost a senior.”

  “Oh, are you 1924? I wonder if you know a fellow named – er – Mellish – Spencer Mellish? I met him at the beach last summer. I am pretty sure that he is in your class – well, no, maybe it was 1918.”

  After an hour or two of this Edgar is willing to go back to college and take an extra course in Blacksmithing, Chipping and Filing, given during the Christmas vacation, rather than run the risk of getting caught again. And, whichever way you look at it, whether he spends his time getting into and out of his evening clothes, or goes crazy answering questions and defending his mode of dress, it all adds up to the same in the end – fatigue and depletion and what the doctor would call “a general run-down nervous condition.”

  * * *

  The younger you are the more frayed you get. Little Wilbur comes home from school, where he has been put to bed at 8:30 every night with the rest of the fifth form boys: and has had to brush his hair in the presence of the head-master’s wife, and dives into what might be called a veritable maelstrom of activity. From a diet of cereal and fruit-whips, he is turned loose in the butler’s pantry among the maraschino cherries and given a free rein at the various children’s parties, where individual pound-cake Santas and brandied walnuts are followed by an afternoon at “Treasure Island,” with the result that he comes home and insists on tipping everyone in the family the black spot and breaks the cheval glass when he is denied going to the six-day bicycle race at two in the morning.

  Little girls do practically the same, and, if they are over fourteen, go back to school with the added burden of an affaire de coeur contracted during the recess. In general, it takes about a month or two of good, hard schooling and overstudy to put the child back on its feet after the Christmas rest at home.

  Which leads us to the conclusion that our educational system is all wrong. It is obvious that the child should be kept at home for eight months out of the year and sent to school for the vacations.

  * * *

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  How to Understand

  International Finance

  * * *

  It is high time that someone came out with a clear statement of the international financial situation. For weeks and weeks officials have been rushing about holding conferences and councils and having their pictures taken going up and down the steps of buildings. Then, after each conference, the newspapers have printed a lot of figures showing the latest returns on how much Germany owes the bank. And none of it means anything.

  Now there is a certain principle which has to be followed in all financial discussions involving sums over one hundred dollars. There is probably not more than one hundred dollars in actual cash in circulation today. That is, if you were to call in all the bills and silver and gold in the country at noon tomorrow and pile them up on the table, you would find that you had just about one hundred dollars, with perhaps several Canadian pennies and a few peppermint life-savers. All the rest of the money you hear about doesn’t exist. It is conversation-money. When you hear of a transaction involving $50,000,000 it means that one firm wrote “50,000,000” on a piece of paper and gave it to another firm, and the other firm took it home and said “Look, Momma, I got $50,000,000!” But when Momma asked for a dollar and a quarter out of it to pay the man who washed the windows, the answer probably was that the firm hadn’t got more than seventy cents in cash.

  This is the principle of finance. So long as you can pronounce any number above a thousand, you have got that much money. You can’t work this scheme with the shoe-store man or the restaurant-owner, but it goes big on Wall St. or in international financial circles.

  This much understood, we see that when the Allies demand 132,000,000,000 gold marks from Germany, they know very well that nobody in Germany has ever seen 132,000,000,000 gold marks and never will. A more surprised and disappointed lot of boys you couldn’t ask to see than the Supreme Financial Council would be if Germany were actually to send them a money-order for the full amount demanded.

  What they mean is that, taken all in all, Germany owes the world 132,000,000,000 gold marks plus carfare. This includes everything, breakage, meals sent to room, good will, everything. Now, it is understood that if they really meant this, Germany couldn’t even draw cards; so the principle on which the thing is figured out is as follows: (Watch this closely; there is a trick in it).

  You put down a lot of figures, like this. Any figures will do, so long as you can’t read them quickly:

  132,000,000,000 gold marks

  $33,000,000,000 on a current value basis

  $21,000,000,000 on reparation account plus 12-1/2% yearly tax on German exports

  11,000,000,000 gold fish

  $1.35 amusement tax

  866,000 miles. Diameter of the sun

  2,000,000,000

  27,000,000,000

  31,000,000,000

  Then you add them together and subtract the number you first thought of. This leaves 11. And the card you hold in your hand is the seven of diamonds. Am I right?

  * * *

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  ’Twas the Night

  Before Summer

  (An Imaginary Watch-Night

  with the Weather Man)

  * * *

  It was 11 o’clock on the night of June 20. We were seated in the office of the Weather Bureau on the twenty-ninth floor of the Whitehall Building, the Weather Man and I, and we were waiting for summer to come. It was officially due on June 21. We had the almanac’s word for it and years and years of precedent, but still the Weather Man was skeptical.

  It had been a hard spring for the Weather Man. Day after day he had been forced to run a signed statement in the daily papers to the effect that sometime during that day there would probably be showers. And day after day, with a ghastly consistency, his prophecy had come true. People had come to dislike him personally; old jokes about him were brought out and oiled and given a trial spin down the road a piece before appearing in funny columns and vaudeville skits, and the sporting writers, frenzied by the task of filling their space with nothing but tables of batting averages, had become positively libellous.

  And now summer was at hand, and with it the promise of the sun. The Weather Man nibbled at his thumb nail. The clock on the wall said 11:15.

  “It just couldn’t go back on us now,” he said, plaintively, “when it means so much to us. It always has come on the 21st.”

  There was not much that I could say. I didn’t want to hold out any false hope, for I am a child in arms in matters of astronomy, or whatever it is that makes weather.

  “I often remember hearing my father tell,” I ventured, “how every year on the 21st of June summer always used to come, rain or shine, until they came to look for it on that date, and to count from then as the beginning of the season. It seems as if—”

  “I know,” he interrupted, “but there have been so many upsetting things during the past twelve months. We can’t check up this year by any other years. All we can do is wait and see.”

  A gust of wind from Jersey ran along the side of the building, shaking at the windows. The Weather Man shuddered, and looked out of the corner of his eye at the anemometer-register which stood on a table in the middle of the room. It
indicated whatever anemometers do indicate when they want to register bad news. I considerately looked out at the window.

  “You’ve no idea,” he said at last, in a low voice, “of how this last rainy spell has affected my home life. For the first two or three days, although I got dark looks from slight acquaintances, there was always a cheery welcome waiting for me when I got home, and the Little Woman would say, ‘Never mind, Ray, it will soon be pleasant, and we all know that it’s not your fault, anyway.’

  “But then, after a week had passed and there had been nothing but rain and showers and rain, I began to notice a change. When I would swing in at the gate she would meet me and say, in a far-away voice, ‘Well, what is it for tomorrow?’ And I would have to say ‘Probably cloudy, with occasional showers and light easterly gales.’ At which she would turn away and bite her lip, and once I thought I saw her eye-lashes wet.

  “Then, one night, the break came. It had started out to be a perfect day, just such as one reads about, but along about noon it began to cloud over and soon the rain poured down in rain-gauges-full.

  “I was all discouraged, and as I wrote out the forecast for the papers, ‘Rain tomorrow and Friday,’ I felt like giving the whole thing up and going back to Vermont to live.

  “When I got home, Alice was there with her things on, waiting for me.

  “‘You needn’t tell me what it’s going to be tomorrow,’ she sobbed. ‘I know. Everyone knows. The whole world knows. I used to think that it wasn’t your fault, but when the children come home from school crying because they have been plagued for being the Weather Man’s children, when every time I go out I know that the neighbors are talking behind my back and saying “How does she stand it?” when every paper I read, every bulletin I see, stares me in the face with great letters saying, “Weather Man predicts more rain,” or “Lynch the Weather Man and let the baseball season go on,” then I think it is time for us to come to an understanding. I am going over to mother’s until you can do better.’”

  The Weather Man got up and went to the window. Out there over the Battery there was a spot casting a sickly glow through the cloud-banks which filled the sky.

  “That’s the moon up there behind the fog,” he said, and laughed a bitter cackle.

  It was now 11:45. The thermograph was writing busily in red ink on the little diagrammed cuff provided for that purpose, writing all about the temperature. The Weather Man inspected the fine, jagged line as it leaked out of the pen on the chart. Then he walked over to the window again and stood looking out over the bay.

  “You’d think that people would have a little gratitude,” he said in a low voice, “and not hit at a man who has done so much for them. If it weren’t for me where would the art of American conversation be today? If there were no weather to talk about, how could there be any dinner parties or church sociables or sidewalk chats?

  “All I have to do is put out a real scorcher or a continued cold snap, and I can drive off the boards the biggest news story that was ever launched or draw the teeth out of the most delicate international situation.

  “I have saved more reputations and social functions than any other influence in American life, and yet here, when the home office sends me a rummy lot of weather, over which I have no control, everybody jumps on me.”

  He pulled savagely at the window shade and pressed his nose against the pane in silence for a while.

  There was no sound but the ticking of the anemometer and the steady scratching of the thermograph. I looked at the clock. 11:47.

  Suddenly the telegraph over in the corner snapped like a bunch of firecrackers. In a second the Weather Man was at its side, taking down the message:

  NEW ORLEANS, LA

  NHRUFKYOTLDMRELPWZWOTUDK

  HEAVY PRECIPITATION SOUTH WESTERLY GALES LETTER FOLLOWS

  NEW ORLEANS U S WEATHER BUREAU

  “Poor fellow,” muttered the Weather Man, who even in his own tense excitement did not forget the troubles of his brother weather prophet in New Orleans, “I know just how he feels. I hope he’s not married.”

  He glanced at the clock. It was 11:56. In four minutes summer would be due, and with summer a clearer sky, renewed friendships and a united family for the Weather Man. If it failed him – I dreaded to think of what might happen. It was twenty-nine floors to the pavement below, and I am not a powerful man physically.

  Together we sat at the table by the thermograph and watched the red line draw mountain ranges along the 50 degree line. From our seats we could look out over the Statue of Liberty and see the cloud-dimmed glow which told of a censored moon. The Weather Man was making nervous little pokes at his collar, as if it had a rough edge that was cutting his neck.

  Suddenly he gripped the table. Somewhere a clock was beginning to strike twelve. I shut my eyes and waited.

  Ten-eleven-twelve!

  “Look, Newspaper Man, look!” he shrieked and grabbed me by the tie.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the thermograph. At the last stroke of the clock the red line had given a little, final quaver on the 50 degree line and then had shot up like a rocket until it struck 72 degrees and lay there trembling and heaving like a runner after a race.

  But it was not at this that the Weather Man was pointing. There, out in the murky sky, the stroke of twelve had ripped apart the clouds and a large, milk-fed moon was fairly crashing its way through, laying out a straight-away course of silver cinders across the harbor, and in all parts of the heavens stars were breaking out like a rash. In two minutes it had become a balmy, languorous night. Summer had come!

  I turned to the Weather Man. He was wiping the palms of his hands on his hips and looking foolishly happy. I said nothing. There was nothing that could be said.

  Before we left the office he stopped to write out the prophecy for Wednesday, June 21, the First Day of Summer. “Fair and warmer, with slowly rising temperatur.” His hand trembled so as he wrote that he forgot the final “e”. Then we went out and he turned toward his home.

  On Wednesday, June 21, it rained.

  * * *

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  Welcome Home –

  And Shut Up!

  * * *

  There are a few weeks which bid fair to be pretty trying ones in our national life. They will mark the return to the city of thousands and thousands of vacationists after two months or two weeks of feverish recuperation and there is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.

  In the first place, they are all so offensively healthy. They come crashing through the train-shed, all brown and peeling, as if their health were something they had acquired through some particular credit to themselves. If it were possible, some of them would wear their sun-burned noses on their watch-chains, like Phi Beta Kappa keys.

  They have got so used to going about all summer in bathing suits and shirts open at the neck that they look like professional wrestlers in stiff collars and seem to be on the point of bursting out at any minute. And they always make a great deal of noise getting off the train.

  “Where’s Bessie?” they scream, “Ned, where’s Bessie? . . . Have you got the thermos bottles? . . . Well, here’s the old station just as it was when we left it (hysterical laughter). . . . Wallace, you simply must carry your pail and shovel. Mamma can’t carry everything, you know. . . . Mamma told you that if you wanted to bring your pail and shovel home you would have to carry it yourself, don’t you remember Mamma told you that, Wallace? . . . Wallace, listen! . . . Edna, have you got Bessie? . . . Harry’s gone after the trunks. . . . At least, he said that was where he was going. . . . Look, there’s the Dexter Building, looking just the same. Big as life and twice as natural. . . . I know, Wallace, Mamma’s just as hot as you are. But you don’t hear Mamma crying do you? . . . I wonder where Bert is. . . . He said he’d be down to meet us sure. . . . Here, give me that cape, Lillian. . . . You’re dragging it all over the ground. . . . Here’s Bert! . . . Whoo-hoo, B
ert! . . . Here we are! . . . Spencer, there’s Daddy! . . . Whoo-hoo, Daddy! . . . Junior, wipe that gum off your shoe this minute. . . . Where’s Bessie?”

  And so they go, all the way out into the street and the cab and home, millions of them. It’s terrible.

  And when they get home things are just about as bad, except there aren’t so many people to see them. At the sight of eight Sunday and sixty-two daily papers strewn over the front porch and lawn, there are loud screams of imprecation at Daddy for having forgotten to order them stopped. Daddy insists that he did order them stopped and that it is that damn fool boy.

  “I guess you weren’t home much during July,” says Mamma bitterly, “or you would have noticed that something was wrong.” (Daddy didn’t join the family until August.)

  “There were no papers delivered during July,” says Daddy very firmly and quietly, “at least, I didn’t see any.” (Stepping on one dated July 19.)

  The inside of the house resembles some place you might bet a man a hundred dollars he daren’t spend the night in. Dead men’s feet seem to be protruding from behind sofas and there is a damp smell as if the rooms had been closed pending the arrival of the coroner.

  Junior runs upstairs to see if his switching engine is where he left it and comes falling down stairs panting with terror announcing that there is Something in the guest-room. At that moment there is a sound of someone leaving the house by the back door. Daddy is elected by popular vote to go upstairs and see what has happened, although he insists that he has to wait down stairs as the man with the trunks will be there at any minute. After five minutes of cagey maneuvering around in the hall outside the guest-room door, he returns looking for Junior, saying that it was simply a pile of things left on the bed covered with a sheet. “Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”