Pluck and Luck Read online

  There was a time when all you had to do to entertain the kiddies was to string some festoons of red paper from the chandelier to the corners of the table and cry “Surprise, surprise!” when they came into the room. Then perhaps some of those godawful snapping arrangements with paper hats and mottoes concealed inside a percussion cap would throw the young folks into such a state of excitement that they couldn’t eat for a week afterward. Those who were able to stand up after this enervating sport were allowed to indulge their sex appetites in a game of “Post-Office.” And when their parents came for them at a quarter to nine, it was voted that a delirious time had been had and thank you very much, Mrs. Hosmer.

  But if you want to hear the merry sound of children’s mocking laughter, just try one of those parties on them today. The chances are that they will start throwing rolls and olive pits at you and leave the house with curses on their lips. The children who are coming home from school today for the holidays are built of sterner stuff. They want red meat. The holidays mean to them something like what King Manuel of Portugal used to go off on when he would disappear from home and not show up for ten days.

  In view of this change in standards of entertainment, it would perhaps be well to line up a few ways of keeping the young folks happy while they are in our midst celebrating the Nativity. For, after all, we must keep in touch with the children, because some day they will get all of Grandma’s money.

  This is one of the most successful entertainments for boys and girls just home from the exacting confinement of school. It is called a “Paul Jones” party, because Paul Jones was a notorious souse. It was even whispered at one time that he was the father of the American navy, but no one was ever able to prove it.

  In order to prepare the house for this party, it will be necessary to take down all the pictures and draperies and move all the furniture out. The corners in every room should be banked and a tarpaulin stretched over the floors.

  A lemonade should be prepared, consisting of lemon juice, gin, vermouth, bitters, and a little crushed mint. For the older children something with bacardi is nice, or perhaps, if they are children from the neighborhood whom you know very well, just straight Scotch.

  Begin the party at 11:30, which will give them time to go to the theater first. Do not be discouraged at their scornful air as they enter the house. They are that way to everybody. The lemonade will soon fix that, and before the evening is over they may warm up to the extent of coming over and speaking to you personally.

  Paul Whiteman’s orchestra should have been imported from New York for the occasion and should be made to play continuously. Nothing short of Paul Whiteman’s will do, and if even they aren’t playing their best, considerable comment will be elicited from the tiny guests.

  After sufficient dancing has been indulged in, the big game of the evening may be suggested. The company is divided into couples and each couple is provided with a high-powered roadster. Starting in relays from the porte-cochère, they should be sent off in different directions. The idea of the game is to see which couple can stay out the longest. The winners will be presented with a marriage license and their flat silver.

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  “Howdy, Neighbor!”

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  Among the inhabitants of North America there is a queer tribal custom which persists in spite of being universally unpopular. Its technical name is “paying a call.” The women of the tribe are its chief priests, but once in a while the men are roped in on it and it is then that the lamentations and groans may be heard even in the surrounding villages.

  Among the women-folk the procedure is as follows: The one who is to “pay a call” puts on what she considers her most effective regalia, collects ten or a dozen engraved cards bearing her name and twice that number bearing her husband’s (he doesn’t even know that he has any cards, let alone that they are being thrown around the neighborhood every Wednesday afternoon), and sets out with the bit between her teeth.

  The idea is to call on as many other women as she thinks will not be at home. Ringing the doorbell at each house on her list, she inquires of the maid if her mistress is in. On receiving a favorable answer (“No”) she drops the required number of cards and runs down the street to her car or bicycle or whatever she came in, and rushes off at top speed lest the maid should suddenly discover that her mistress is at home after all. The chances are, however, that the maid has had instructions to say “no” from the lady of the house herself, who is at that moment standing at the head of the stairs waiting for the door to shut.

  The social amenities having been satisfied in this manner at perhaps ten other houses, the caller returns home, where she sinks into a chair, pulls off her gloves, and sighs: “Thank Heaven, that’s done!”

  It is on those rare occasions when the men of the tribe are impressed into service in this paying of calls that the thing assumes its most horrible aspect. Let us take a peek into a typical celebration of the rite.

  The man returns home from the office at night, all set for an evening with a motor-boat catalog in front of the fire.

  “I thought we might run up and call on the Grimsers tonight We’ve owed them a call for a long time now.”

  “The Grimsers?” queries the husband.

  “Yes, you know them. He’s the little short man we saw in the drug-store the other night. She is quite pleasant, but rather fast, I understand. She told me that her husband was very anxious to know you better.”

  “What is he – in the insurance business?”

  “No, he isn’t. He’s a very nice man. And she is just mad about you. ‘Mrs. Tomlin,’ she said to me, ‘you don’t mean to tell me that that nice-looking husband of yours is forty years old! He looks about twenty-five. And such nice hair!’”

  “Well,” says the husband, not unmoved by this bit of strategy, “I suppose if we must, we must. Do I have to get dressed up?”

  And so they start out for a call on the Grimsers, with whom they have no more in common than the same milkman.

  Their reception is more or less formal in tone, as the Grimsers had planned on going to bed early, Mr. Grimser even having gone so far as his dressing-gown.

  “Do sit over here,” urges Mrs. Grimser, indicating her husband’s favorite cavity in the corner of the divan, “that rocker is so uncomfortable.”

  “It just suits me,” lies Mrs. Tomlin. “Ed says that he is glad that I like chairs like this, as it leaves all the comfortable ones in the house for him.”

  Everyone looks at Ed as the author of this pleasantry, and there is general, albeit extremely moderate laughter.

  “Well, did you ever see such weather?” This might come from anybody. In fact, two or three are likely to say it at once. This leads to an account on the part of Mrs. Grimser of what the dampness has done to her jelly in the cellar, and a story by Mrs. Tomlin illustrating how hard it is to keep a maid contented during a rainy spell. Mr. Tomlin leads off with one he heard at the club about the farmer who prayed for rain, but noticing a sudden tightening of his wife’s lips accompanied by a warning tapping of her right foot, he gathers that probably Mrs. Grimser’s father was a clergyman or something, and trails his story off into a miserable series of noises.

  This is a signal for Mrs. Grimser to say: “I just know that you men are dying to get off in a corner and talk to each other. Harry, why don’t you show Mr. Grimser the plans for the new garage?”

  The two men are then isolated on a window-seat, where they smoke and try to think up something to say next. Mr. Tomlin, knowing nothing about blueprints and caring less about the Grimsers’ garage, is forced to bend over the sheets and ask unintelligent questions, cooing appreciatively now and then to show that he is getting it. They finally are reduced to checking up on mutual acquaintances in the automobile business, summarizing each new find with: “Yes, sir, George is a great old scout,” or “Yes, sir, Nick is a great old scout.” Everyone possible having been classified as a great old scout, th
ey just sit and puff in silence, frankly talked out.

  The ladies, in the meantime, have been carrying on much the same sort of line, except that each has her eye out for details outside the conversation Mrs. Grimser is trying to make out just how Mrs. Tomlin’s transformation is tied on, and Mrs. Tomlin is making mental notes of the material in Mrs. Grimser’s under-curtains. Given nothing to talk about, women can make a much more convincing stab at it than men. To hear them from a distance, you might almost think that they were really saying something.

  When all the contestants are completely worn out and the two men reduced to a state of mental inertia bordering on death, Mrs. Tomlin brightens up and says that they must be going. This throws a great wave of relief over the company, and Mr. Tomlin jumps to his feet and says that he’ll run ahead and see if the engine is working all right. The Grimsers very cautiously suggest that it is early yet, but unless the Tomlins are listening very carefully (which they are not) they will not hear it.

  Then, all the way home, Mrs. Tomlin suggests that Mr. T. might be a little more agreeable to her friends when they go out of an evening, and Mr. Tomlin wants to know what the hell he did that was wrong.

  “You know very well what you did that was wrong, and besides, what a story to start telling in front of Mrs. Grimser!”

  “What story?”

  “The one about the farmer who prayed for rain.”

  “What’s the matter with that story?”

  “You know very well what’s the matter with it. You seem to think when you are out with my friends that you are down in the locker-room with George Herbert.”

  “I wish to God I was down in the locker-room with George Herbert.”

  “Oh, you make me sick.”

  The rest of the ride home is given over to a stolid listening to the chains clanking on the pavement as the wheels go round.

  This is known in the tribe life of North America as being “neighborly,” and a whole system has been built up on the tradition. Some day a prophet is going to arise out of some humble family and say, “What’s the use?” and the whole thing is going to topple over with a crash and everyone is going to be a lot happier.

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  Holiday! Holiday!

  A Christmas Story

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  The hot sun beat down on the Plaza. Little Miguel O’Rourke felt terrible. Those huijos! That old caballerizo! He should never have touched them. They were not meant for little boys five years old. But on the night before the Feast of the Seven Mittens one must do something, even if it is only to kill one’s uncle and throw his legs away. August was the month of the Feast of the Seven Mittens, and August is the month of love the world over.

  Suddenly Miguel was awakened by a rough shout, and looking behind him he saw a lumberjack who had evidently lost his way. The poor thing was so frightened that he was darting back and forth, not knowing whether he was afoot, horseback, or good red herring. Lumberjacks usually live in Maine, you know, and here it was nearly half-past eight.

  “Where are you going, Doctor Melcher?” asked Miguel. Miguel always called strangers “Doctor Melcher” because it was Doctor Melcher who had once given him that nasty medicine.

  The rough old lumberjack looked down at the little boy. “Wa-a-ll, pardner,” he said, “I ain’t much on sentiment, as you ought to know by this time, but it just kinder seemed to me that I ought to bring something to Little Wheel-Dust, the golden-haired daughter of my old side-kick who was left with me for dead that night eleven years ago in the old shack in Calgary.” So saying, the old miner pulled out of his pocket a tiny torpedo with “I Love You” painted on it. “It’s for Little Wheel-Dust,” he said simply, and fainted.

  Now this was a trying situation for a young lad of Miguel O’Rourke’s age, whatever it was. To be left with a torpedo would be bad enough, but to have an old lumberjack lying in the hot sun of the Plaza was unthinkable. And on St. Valentine’s Day, too!

  Little Miguel sat sorrowfully by the tiny pile of faded flowers which had once been men like himself. “Thanksgiving,” he murmured. “I wish I had some cozy home to go to on this day of all days. I wish I had some turkey.”

  Hardly had he spoken when with a great swish a rug appeared before him on which was seated a little old man in the uniform of a Chief Petty Officer. “I have just heard your wish, Little Orson,” he said.

  “Little Miguel,” corrected Miguel.

  “Little Miguel,” said the C.P.O. “My mother’s name was Orson,” he explained, “Ruth Orson; and every Eastertide I find myself calling people ‘Orson.’”

  “That’s quite all right,” said Miguel; “my mother’s name was Ruth Orson, too, so I know how it is.” And he smiled a crooked little smile.

  “I have just heard your wish, Orson,” continued the little old man, “your wish that you might have a Thanksgiving turkey, and so I hopped on my rug right away to come and tell you that we haven’t got a turkey left in the house. How about a little roast-beef? It’s very nice today.”

  “I would love some roast-beef,” said Miguel, “if you will see to it that all the pits are taken out first. I choked on a pit once.”

  “Before we go,” said the C.P.O., “I want you to make sure that you are dressed warmly enough. Remember what day it is, and in all your merrymaking don’t forget that you are alive and happy today because one hundred and fifty years ago now your great-great-grandfather and his brave associates met in Philadelphia and drew up that document which was to establish liberty in America and insure you and me against tyranny from an English king. I think that the least we can do before opening up the bottle is to bow our heads and think very hard for three minutes on the bravery and devotion of Amerigo Vespucci.”

  And, as they stood with tears streaming down their little faces, suddenly a clash and clang of chimes rang out on the frosty air and the glorious cadence of “Integer Vitae” filled their very being with its grandeur.

  “A Merry Christmas,” said the little old man.

  “And a Merry Christmas to you, too,” said Little Miguel.

  Clash – clang! Clash – clang!

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  Index of Titles

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  A • B • C • D • E • F • G • H • I • J • K • L • M • N • O • P • Q • R • S • T • U • V • W • Y

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  A

  “Advice to Investors”

  Article on Fishing

  “Ask that Man”

  TOP

  B

  “Bicycling,” the New Craze

  Big Bridegroom Revolt, The

  Biography by Inches

  Blue Sleeve Garter, The

  TOP

  C

  Cell-Formations and Their Work

  Checking Up on the Prophets

  Chemists’ Sporting Extra!

  Christmas Pantomime, A

  Church Supper, The

  TOP

  D

  Drama Cleansing and Pressing

  TOP

  E

  Early View of Broadway at Astor Place, New York City

  Editha’s Christmas Burglar

  Evolution Sidelights

  TOP

  F

  For Release Monday

  French for Americans

  Future (The) of the Class of 1926— North Central Grammar School

  TOP

  G

  Gay Life Back-Stage

  Goethe’s Love Life

  TOP

  H

  Here Come the Children

  Holiday! Holiday!

  Horse-Sense Editorial

  How It Can Be Done

  How Much Does the Sun Jump?

  How One Woman Kept the Budget from the Door

  How to Watch Football

  “Howdy, Neighbor!”

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  I

  In the Beginning

&nbs
p; Is This the Missing Link?

  TOP

  J

  John Dwanley: A Life

  Justice for Mussels!

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  K

  Kiddie-Kar Travel

  “King of Razbo-Jazbo, The”

  TOP

  L

  Last Day, The

  Looking Shakespeare Over

  Lost Language, The

  TOP

  M

  Mid-Winter Sport Carnival, A

  Museum Feet

  Musical Clubs’ Concert, The

  TOP

  O

  On the Floor of the Reebis Gulf

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  P

  Prize Breeding

  TOP

  R

  Romance of Digestion, The

  TOP

  S

  Story of a Lady, The

  TOP

  T

  Teaching the Old Idea to Skate

  Traveling in Peace

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  V

  Visitors’ Day at the Joke Farm

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  W

  Whoa!

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  Y

  Young Folks’ Day, The

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