Pluck and Luck Read online

  This, of course, takes no notice of the Ural-Altaic group. That is quite all right. No one ever does. This group includes the Lappish, Samoyed, Magyar and Tartar, and, as Dr. Kneeland Renfrew says in his “Useless Languages: Their Origin and Excuse”: “There is no sense in bothering with the Ural-Altaic group.”

  So Professor Nunsen has some authority for disregarding the question of grammatical gender, and it is on this point that he bases his discovery of the existence of the Semi-Huinty languages. These languages, he says, are monosyllabic and have no inflections, the tone used in uttering a word determining its meaning. In this it is similar to the Chinese tongue, which is one of the reasons why China is so far away from the European continent.

  Thus the word reezyl, uttered in one tone, means “Here comes the postmen”; in another tone, “There is a button off this pair,” and, in still a third tone, “you” (diminutive).

  It will be seen from this how difficult it is for the philologist to do anything more than guess at just what the lost languages were really like. He is not sure that they are even lost. If they were not really lost, then the joke is on Professor Nunsen for having gone to all this trouble for nothing.

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  Museum Feet

  A Complaint Contracted by Over-zealous Parents

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  There is one big danger in the approach of Autumn, and that is that the snappy weather may excite us into making plans for doing things we ought to have done long ago. Those of us who are parents are likely to decide that we haven’t been paying enough attention to the children, that we ought to take them out more to places of interest and instruction. More of a pal than a father, is what we feel we ought to be, and yet withal an instructor, steering them into enlightening byways and taking them on educational trips to fisheries and jute manufactories, etc.

  Now this is just a manifestation of Fall Fever, and will die down, so don’t give in to it. Let the children educate themselves. You haven’t done such a swell job with yourself that you should undertake to show someone else how to do it. And, above all, never take the kiddies to a natural history museum. Taking them to a natural history museum is one of the things a parent first feels coming on when the crisp Autumn days send the blood tingling through his veins, and it’s one of the last things he should do.

  I, myself, in a burst of parental obligation last Fall, decided to take the boys through the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. I would have picked a bigger place if there had been one in the country, but the Smithsonian was the biggest I could get. As a result I contracted a bad case of what is known in medical circles as “Smithsonian feet,” that is, a complete paralysis of the feet from the ankles down, due to standing on first one foot and then the other in front of exhibition cases and walking miles upon miles up and down the tessellated corridors of the museum. The boys suffered no ill effects from the trip at all.

  The sad thing about a trip through a museum with the children is that you start out with so much vigor and zip. On entering the main entrance lobby, you call back Herbert who takes a running slide across the smooth floor, and tell him that he must stay close to Daddy and that Daddy will show him everything and explain everything. And what a sap that makes of Daddy before the day is done!

  In your care not to miss anything, you stop and examine carefully the very first tablet in the entrance lobby, deciding to work to the left and look at everything on the left side of the building, and then take up the right side.

  “Look, boys,” you say, “it says here that this building was built by the Natural History Society of America in 1876 – Oh, well, I guess that isn’t very important.” And you ask the attendant at the door which is the most satisfactory way to see the museum, a foolish question at best. He tells you to begin with the Glacier Hall over there at the right. This upsets your plans a little, but what difference does it make whether you see the right or left side first?

  “Come on, boys,” you call to both of them who are now sliding back and forth on the floor. “Here is the room where the glaciers are. Come on and look at the glaciers.”

  The boys by this time are very hot and sweaty, and probably less interested in glaciers than in anything else in the world. You, yourself, find nothing particularly thrilling about the rocks which are lined up for inspection in the room as you enter. However, it is a pretty important thing, this matter of glacial deposits, and both you and the boys would be better off for knowing a little something about them.

  “Look, Herbert,” you say. “Look, Arthur! See here where the glacier went right over this rock and left these big marks.”

  But Herbert is already in the next hall, which for some mysterious reason is devoted to stuffed rats demonstrating the Malthusian Doctrine – and Arthur has disappeared entirely.

  “Where’s Arthur, Herbert?” you yell.

  “Look, Daddy,” replies Herbert from across the hall. “Come here quick! Quick, Daddy!” There evidently is some danger that the stuffed rats are going to get away before you arrive, and you have to run to hush Herbert up, although you had much rather not look at stuffed rats, Malthusian Doctrine or no Malthusian Doctrine.

  Arthur has, by this time, appeared several miles down the building in the Early American Indian Room and screams:

  “Come quick, Daddy! Look! Indians!”

  So you and Herbert set off on a dog trot to the Early American Indian Room.

  “You boys must not yell so in here,” you warn. “And stop running, Arthur! We’ve got all day (God forbid!).”

  “Where did these Indians live, Daddy?” asks Herbert.

  “Oh, around Massachusetts,” you explain. “They fought the Pilgrims.”

  “It says here they lived in Arizona,” reads Arthur. (Whoever taught that boy to read, anyway?)

  “Well, Arizona too,” you crawl. “They lived all over.”

  “What are these, Daddy?”

  “Those? Those are hatchet-heads. They used them for heads to their hatchets.”

  “It says here they are flint stones that they struck fire on.”

  “Flint stones, eh? Well, they’re funny-looking flint stones. They must have used them for hatchet-heads, too.”

  “What did they use these for, Daddy?”

  “If you can read so well, why don’t you read what it says and not ask me so much? Where’s Herbert?”

  Herbert is now on the point of pushing over a little case of Etruscan bowls in an attempt to get at the figure of a Bœotian horse in the case behind it.

  “Here, Herbert, don’t push that like that! Do you want to break it?”

  “Yes,” replies Herbert, giving you a short answer. “Well, we’ll go right straight home if you are going to act that way.” (Here a good idea strikes you: Why not go right straight home and blame it on Herbert?)

  The first evidences of “Smithsonian feet” are beginning to make themselves felt. You try walking on your ankles to favor the soles of your feet, but that doesn’t help. And you haven’t even struck the second floor yet.

  By actual count, the word “look” has been called out eighty-two times, and each time you have looked. Forty-three questions have been asked, forty of which you have answered incorrectly and thirty-four of which you have been caught answering incorrectly. It is high time that you did go home.

  But the boys are just beginning. They spot another room at the end of the wing and rush to it. You trail after them, all your old fire gone. It turns out to be Glacier Hall again.

  “We’ve been in here before,” you say, hoping that this will discourage them. “There’s the door to the street over there. How about going home and coming again tomorrow?”

  This suggestion is not even heard, for the boys are on their way up the big flight of stairs leading to the second floor. If you can make half the flight you will be doing well. By the time you reach the first landing, you are in a state of collapse.

  “Look, Daddy! ” you hear the little voices calling
from above. “Come quick, Daddy! Skeletons!”

  And skeletons they are, sure enough. Mastodon skeletons. Herbert, turning the corner hurriedly, comes suddenly on one and is thrown into a panic. Not a bad idea! Perhaps they might both be frightened into wanting to go home. But Nature herself comes to your rescue. At the end of the mastodon room Herbert comes and whispers to you.

  “I don’t know,” you reply hopefully. “Perhaps we had better go home.”

  “No,” screams Herbert. “I want to stay here.”

  “Well, come along with me then, and we’ll see if we can find it. Come on, Arthur. Come with Herbert and Daddy.”

  So, on the pretext of locating the section of the building in question you lead the boys down stairs and out the back way.

  “Over here, I guess,” you say. “No, I guess over there.”

  By this time, you are at the street and within hailing distance of a taxi. It is but the work of a minute to hit Herbert over the head until he is quiet and to yank Arthur into the cab along with you.

  “Drive quickly to 468 Elm avenue,” you say to the driver. That would be your home address.

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  Traveling in Peace

  The Uncommercial Traveler and His Problems

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  Even in an off year, the conversational voltage is very high on the trans-Atlantic greyhounds (ocean liners). There is something in the sea air which seems to bring a sort of kelp to the surface even in the most reticent of passengers, and before the ship has passed Fire Island you will have heard as much dull talk as you would get at a dozen Kiwanis meetings at home. And the chances are that you, yourself, will have done nothing that you can be particularly proud of as a raconteur. They tell me that there is something that comes up from the bilge which makes people like that on shipboard.

  I myself solved the problem of shipboard conversation by traveling alone and pretending to be a deaf-mute. I recommend this ruse to other irritable souls.

  There is no sense in trying to effect it if you have the family along. There is no sense in trying to effect anything if you have the family along. But there is something about a family man which seems to attract prospective talkers. Either the Little Woman scrapes up acquaintances who have to have their chairs moved next to yours and tell you all about how rainy it was all spring in East Orange, or the children stop people on the deck and drag them up to you to have you show them how to make four squares out of six matches, and once you have established these contacts, you might as well stay in your stateroom for the rest of the voyage.

  Once you are alone, you can then start in on the deaf-mute game. When you go down to dinner, write out your order to the steward and pretty soon the rest of the people at your table will catch on to the fact that something is wrong. You can do a few pleasant passes of sign language if the thing seems to be getting over too slowly. As a matter of fact, once you have taken your seat without remarking on the condition of the ocean to your right-hand neighbor, you will have established yourself as sufficiently queer to be known as “that man at our table who can’t talk.” Then you probably will be left severely alone.

  Once you are out on deck, stand against the rail and look off at the horizon. This is an invitation which few ocean-talkers can resist. Once they see anyone who looks as if he wanted to be alone, they immediately are rarin’ to go. One of them will come up to you and look at the horizon with you for a minute, and then will say:

  “Isn’t that a porpoise off there?”

  If you are not very careful you will slip and say: “Where?” This is fatal. What you should do is turn and smile very sweetly and nod your head as if to say: “Don’t waste your time, neighbor. I can’t hear a word you say.” Of course, there is no porpoise and the man never thought there was; so he will immediately drop that subject and ask you if you are deaf. Here is where you may pull another boner. You may answer: “Yes, very.” That will get you nowhere, for if he thinks that he can make you hear by shouting, he will shout. It doesn’t make any difference to him what he has to do to engage you in conversation. He will do it. He would spell words out to you with alphabet blocks if he thought he could get you to pay any attention to his story of why he left Dallas and what he is going to do when he gets to Paris.

  So keep your wits about you and be just the deafest man that ever stepped foot on a ship. Pretty soon he will get discouraged and will pass on to the next person he sees leaning over the rail and ask him if that isn’t a “porpoise ’way off there.” You will hear the poor sucker say, “Where?” and then the dam will break. As they walk off together you will hear them telling each other how many miles they get to a gallon and checking up on the comparative sizes of the big department stores in their respective towns.

  After a tour of the smoking-room and writing-room making deaf-and-dumb signs to the various stewards, you will have pretty well advertised yourself as a hopeless prospect conversationally. You may then do very much as you like.

  Perhaps not quite as you like. There may be one or two slight disadvantages to this plan. There may be one or two people on board to whom you want to speak. Suppose, for instance, that you are sitting at one of those chummy writing desks where you look right into the eyes of the person using the other half. And suppose that those eyes turn out to be something elegant; suppose they turn out to be very elegant indeed. What price being dumb then?

  Your first inclination, of course, is to lean across the top of the desk and say: “I beg your pardon, but is this your pen that I am using?” or even more exciting: “I beg your pardon, but is this your letter that I am writing?” Having been posing as a deaf-mute up until now, this recourse is denied you, and you will have to use some other artifice.

  There is always the old Roman method of writing notes. If you decide on this, just scribble out the following on a bit of ship’s stationery: “I may be deaf and I may be dumb, but if you think that makes any difference in the long run, you’re crazy.” This is sure to attract the lady’s attention and give her some indication that you are favorably impressed with her. She may write a note back to you. She may even write a note to the management of the steamship line.

  Another good way to call yourself to her attention would be to upset the writing desk. In the general laughter and confusion which would follow, you could grab her and carry her up on deck where you could tell her confidentially that you really were not deaf and dumb but that you were just pretending to be that way in order to avoid talking to people who did not interest you. The fact that you were talking to her, you could point out, was a sure sign that she, alone, among all the people on the ship, did interest you; a rather pretty compliment to her, in a way. You could then say that, as it was essential that none of the other passengers should know that you could talk, it would be necessary for her to hold conversations with you clandestinely, up on the boat deck, or better yet, in one of the boats. The excitement of this would be sure to appeal to her, and you would unquestionably become fast friends.

  There is one other method by which you could catch her favor as you sat looking at her over the top of the desk, a method which is the right of every man whether he be deaf, dumb or bow-legged. You might wink one eye very slowly at her. It wouldn’t be long then before you could tell whether or not it would be worth your while to talk.

  However it worked out, you would have had a comparatively peaceful voyage.

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  The Big Bridegroom Revolt

  All Honor to Hershey, the Emancipator

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  June, nineteen hundred and twenty-five, was the year of the Revolt of the June Bridegrooms. It marked the beginning of the independence of the male member of the nuptial team who, hitherto, had been kept in absolute subjection until after the ceremony was over. In the days before the revolt, the first official act of the groom that had any legal standing at all was the signing of the check for the first month’s rent. Up until the t
ime when he was allowed to do this he was kept in chains in the cellar with the caterer’s men.

  From the old records and letters of prospective bridegrooms to their men friends which have recently come to light we are able to reconstruct the process by which the groom was reduced to a condition of servility equalled only by that of the captives who were led through the streets in ancient Rome.

  During the courtship there was evidently some semblance of equality between the young man and the young woman. He suggested things which were sometimes carried out and, if he protested against certain courses of action, they were occasionally abandoned. This, however, we now know to have been simply expediency on the part of the young lady. She was saving up for a better day.

  Once the engagement was announced and the date set for the wedding, the young man suddenly found himself with a gunny-sack over his head, locked in the trunk-room. Occasionally, when they opened the door to hand him in his meals, he heard plans being made by the girl and her mother for the wedding, plans which made him break out into a cold sweat with apprehension. One time in 1923, a young man in St. Louis dashed out of the closet on overhearing the line of march down the aisle as it was being drawn up, and yelled: “Here, there! I’ve got something to say about this!” But he was unarmed and was easily overcome by the Praetorian Guard and thrown into a dungeon, where he was given fifty lashes with the whip.

  From Lackey, in his “Slavery in the United States after 1865,” we have an account of what it must have been like to be a bridegroom before the Revolution. “Church weddings,” writes Lackey (p. 458), “were the particular form of torture inflicted on the helpless grooms. The larger the church wedding, the more the young man suffered and, as large church weddings were the delight of the young ladies of the day, the suffering among the men was almost universal and terribly intense.”