Part 4 (1/2)
And Furthermore, that t.i.tle to said Meal does not pa.s.s until the party of the second part has conveyed, of his mansuetude and proper charity, a gratuity, fee, honorarium, lagniappe, pourboire, eas.e.m.e.nt or tip of not less than 15 per cent of the price of said Meal; which eas.e.m.e.nt, while customarily spoken of as a free-will grant or gratuity, is to be constructively regarded as an entail and a necessary enc.u.mbrance upon said Meal.
And the said party of the first part covenants with the said party of the second part as follows: That the said C. D. is seized of the said Meal in fee simple, and shall quietly enjoy said Meal subject to the covenants and restrictions and enc.u.mbrances hereinbefore set out, subject to the good pleasure of the Head Waiter.
In Witness Whereof these presents are signed,
(LOC. SIG.)
ADVENTURES IN HIGH FINANCE
[Ill.u.s.tration]
There is no way in which one can so surely arouse the suspicions of bankers as by trying to put some money in their hands. We went round to a near-by bank hoping to open an account. As we had formerly dealt with an uptown branch of the same inst.i.tution, and as the cheque we wanted to deposit bore the name of a quite well-known firm, we thought all would be easy. But no; it seemed that there was no convincing way to identify ourself. Hopefully we pulled out a stack of letters, but these were waved aside. We began to feel more and more as though we had come with some sinister intent. We started to light our pipe, and then it occurred to us that perhaps that would be regarded as the gesture of a hardened cracksman, seeking to appear at his ease. We wondered if, in all our motions, we were betraying the suspicious conduct of the professional embezzler. Perhaps the courteous banker was putting us through some Freudian third degree ... in these days when the workings of the unconscious are so shrewdly canva.s.sed, was there anything abominable in the cellar of our soul which we were giving away without realizing ...
had we not thought to ourself, as we entered the door, well, this is a fairly decent cheque to start an account with, but we won't keep our balance anywhere near that figure ... perhaps our Freudian banker had spotted that thought and was sending for a psychological patrol wagon ...
well, how _could_ we identify ourself? Did we know any one who had an account in that branch? No.
We thought of a friend of ours who banked at another branch of this bank, not far away. The banker called him up and whispered strangely over the phone. We were asked to take off our hat. Apparently our friend was describing us. We hoped that he was saying ”stout” rather than ”fat.” But it seemed that the corroboration of our friend only increased our host's precaution. Perhaps he thought it was a carefully worked-out con game, in which our friend was a confederate. We signed our name several times, on little cards, with a desperate attempt to appear unconcerned. In spite of our best efforts, we could not help thinking that each time we wrote it we must be looking as though we were trying to remember how we had written it the last time. Still the banker hesitated. Then he called up our friend again. He asked him if he would know our voice over the phone. Our friend said he would. We spoke to our friend, with whom we had eaten lunch a few minutes before. He asked, to identify us, what we had had for lunch. Horrible instant! For a moment we could not remember. The eyes of the banker and his a.s.sistant were glittering upon us. Then we spoke glibly enough. ”An oyster patty,” we said; ”two cups of tea, and a rice pudding which we asked for cold, but which was given us hot.”
Our friend a.s.serted, to the banker, that we were undeniably us, and indeed the homely particularity of the luncheon items had already made incision in his hardened bosom. He smiled radiantly at us and gave us a cheque book. Then he told us we couldn't draw against our account until the original cheque had pa.s.sed through the Clearing House, and sent a youth back to the office with us so that we could be unmistakably identified.
As we left the banker's office someone else was ushered in. ”Here's another gentleman to open an account,” said the a.s.sistant. ”We hope he knows what he had for lunch,” we said to the banker.
ON VISITING BOOKSHOPS
[Ill.u.s.tration]
It Is a curious thing that so many people only go into a bookshop when they happen to need some particular book. Do they never drop in for a little innocent carouse and refreshment? There are some knightly souls who even go so far as to make their visits to bookshops a kind of chivalrous errantry at large. They go in not because they need any certain volume, but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them. Some wistful, little forgotten sheaf of loveliness, long pining away on an upper shelf--why not ride up, fling her across your charger (or your charge account), and gallop away. Be a little knightly, you book-lovers!
The lack of intelligence with which people use bookshops is, one supposes, no more flagrant than the lack of intelligence with which we use all the rest of the machinery of civilization. In this age, and particularly in this city, we haven't time to be intelligent.
A queer thing about books, if you open your heart to them, is the instant and irresistible way they follow you with their appeal. You know at once, if you are clairvoyant in these matters (libre-voyant, one might say), when you have met your book. You may dally and evade, you may go on about your affairs, but the paragraph of prose your eye fell upon, or the s.n.a.t.c.h of verses, or perhaps only the spirit and flavour of the volume, more divined than reasonably noted, will follow you. A few lines glimpsed on a page may alter your whole trend of thought for the day, reverse the currents of the mind, change the profile of the city.
The other evening, on a subway car, we were reading Walter de la Mare's interesting little essay about Rupert Brooke. His discussion of children, their dreaming ways, their exalted simplicity and absorption, changed the whole tenor of our voyage by some magical chemistry of thought. It was no longer a wild, barbaric struggle with our fellowmen, but a venture of faith and recompense, taking us home to the bedtime of a child.
The moment when one meets a book and knows, beyond shadow of doubt, that that book must be his--not necessarily now, but some time--is among the happiest excitements of the spirit. An indescribable virtue effuses from some books. One can feel the radiations of an honest book long before one sees it, if one has a sensitive pulse for such affairs. Its honour and truth will speak through the advertising. Its mind and heart will cry out even underneath the extravagance of jacket-blurbings. Some shrewd soul, who understands books, remarked some time ago on the editorial page of the _Sun's_ book review that no superlative on a jacket had ever done the book an atom of good. He was right, as far as the true bookster is concerned. We choose our dinner not by the wrappers, but by the veining and gristle of the meat within. The other day, prowling about a bookshop, we came upon two paper-bound copies of a little book of poems by Alice Meynell. They had been there for at least two years. We had seen them before, a year or more ago, but had not looked into them fearing to be tempted. This time we ventured. We came upon two poems--”To O, Of Her Dark Eyes,” and ”A Wind of Clear Weather in England.” The book was ours--or rather, we were its, though we did not yield at once. We came back the next day and got it. We are still wondering how a book like that could stay in the shop so long. Once we had it, the day was different. The sky was sluiced with a clearer blue, air and sunlight blended for a keener intake of the lungs, faces seen along the street moved us with a livelier shock of interest and surprise. The wind that moved over Suss.e.x and blew Mrs. Meynell's heart into her lines was still flowing across the ribs and ledges of our distant scene.
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the book-lover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone messages, and insists on his friends writing down the t.i.tle of the find.
Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, ”I want you to love her, too!” It is a jealous pa.s.sion also. He feels a little indignant if he finds that any one else has discovered the book, too. He sees an enthusiastic review--very likely in _The New Republic_--and says, with great scorn, ”I read the book three months ago.” There are even some perversions of pa.s.sion by which a book-lover loses much of his affection for his pet if he sees it too highly commended by some rival critic.
This sharp ecstasy of discovering books for one's self is not always widespread. There are many who, for one reason or another, prefer to have their books found out for them. But for the complete zealot nothing transcends the zest of pioneering for himself. And therefore working for a publisher is, to a certain type of mind, a never-failing fascination.
As H. M. Tomlinson says in ”Old Junk,” that fascinating collection of sensitive and beautifully poised sketches which came to us recently with a shock of thrilling delight:
To come upon a craft rigged so, though at her moorings and with sails furled, her slender poles upspringing from the bright plane of a br.i.m.m.i.n.g harbour, is to me as rare and sensational a delight as the rediscovery, when idling with a book, of a favourite lyric.
To read just that pa.s.sage, and the phrase _the bright plane of a br.i.m.m.i.n.g harbour_, is one of those ”rare and sensational delights” that set the mind moving on lovely journeys of its own, and mark off visits to a bookshop not as casual errands of reason, but as necessary acts of devotion. We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own enc.u.mbered soul.