Part 14 (1/2)

But she was too utterly dense to take it up. She never even turned her head. All through dinner that a.s.s talked --he and that silly young actor they're always asking there that is perpetually doing imitations of the vaudeville people. That kind of thing may be all right, for those who care for it--I frankly don't--outside a theatre. But to my mind the idea of trying to throw people into fits of laughter at a dinner-table is simply execrable taste.

I cannot see the sense of people shrieking with laughter at dinner. I have, I suppose, a better sense of humour than most people. But to my mind a humourous story should be told quietly and slowly in a way to bring out the point of the humour and to make it quite clear by preparing for it with proper explanations. But with people like that I find I no sooner get well started with a story than some fool or other breaks in. I had a most amusing experience the other day--that is, about fifteen years ago--at a summer hotel in the Adirondacks, that one would think would have amused even a shallow lot of people like those, but I had no sooner started to tell it--or had hardly done more than to describe the Adirondacks in a general way--than, first thing I know, my hostess, stupid woman, had risen and all the ladies were trooping out.

As to getting in a word edgeways with the men over the cigars--perfectly impossible! They're worse than the women. They were all buzzing round the infernal Englishman with questions about Flanders and the army at the front.

I tried in vain to get their attention for a minute to give them my impressions of the Belgian peasantry (during my visit there in 1885), but my host simply turned to me for a second and said, ”Have some more port?” and was back again listening to the asinine Englishman.

And when we went upstairs to the drawing-room I found myself, to my disgust, side-tracked in a corner of the room with that supreme old jacka.s.s of a professor--their uncle, I think, or something of the sort. In all my life I never met a prosier man. He bored me blue with long accounts of his visit to Serbia and his impressions of the Serbian peasantry in 1875.

I should have left early, but it would have been too noticeable.

The trouble with a woman like that is that she asks the wrong people to her parties.

BUT,

(V) HIS LITTLE SON

You haven't seen him? Why, that's incredible. You must have. He goes past your house every day on his way to his kindergarten. You must have seen him a thousand times. And he's a boy you couldn't help noticing. You'd pick that boy out among a hundred, right away. ”There's a remarkable boy,” you'd say. I notice people always turn and look at him on the street. He's just the image of me. Everybody notices it at once.

How old? He's twelve. Twelve and two weeks yesterday.

But he's so bright you'd think he was fifteen. And the things he says! You'd laugh! I've written a lot of them down in a book for fear of losing them. Some day when you come up to the house I'll read them to you. Come some evening. Come early so that we'll have lots of time. He said to me one day, ”Dad” (he always calls me Dad), ”what makes the sky blue?” Pretty thoughtful, eh, for a little fellow of twelve? He's always asking questions like that.

I wish I could remember half of them.

And I'm bringing him up right, I tell you. I got him a little savings box a while ago, and have got him taught to put all his money in it, and not give any of it away, so that when he grows up he'll be all right.

On his last birthday I put a five dollar gold piece into it for him and explained to him what five dollars meant, and what a lot you could do with it if you hung on to it. You ought to have seen him listen.

”Dad,” he says, ”I guess you're the kindest man in the world, aren't you?”

Come up some time and see him.

IX. More than Twice-told Tales; or, Every Man his Own Hero

(I)

The familiar story told about himself by the Commercial Traveller who sold goods to the man who was regarded as impossible.

”What,” they said, ”you're getting off at Midgeville?

You're going to give the Jones Hardware Company a try, eh?”--and then they all started laughing and giving me the merry ha! ha! Well, I just got my grip packed and didn't say a thing and when the train slowed up for Midgeville, out I slid. ”Give my love to old man Jones,”

one of the boys called after me, ”and get yourself a couple of porous plasters and a pair of splints before you tackle him!”--and then they all gave me the ha! ha!

again, out of the window as the train pulled out.

Well, I walked uptown from the station to the Jones Hardware Company. ”Is Mr. Jones in the office?” I asked of one of the young fellers behind the counter. ”He's in the office,” he says, ”all right, but I guess you can't see him,” he says--and he looked at my grip. ”What name shall I say?” says he. ”Don't say any name at all,” I says. ”Just open the door and let me in.”

Well, there was old man Jones sitting scowling over his desk, biting his pen in that way he has. He looked up when I came in. ”See here, young man,” he says, ”you can't sell me any hardware,” he says. ”Mr. Jones,” I says, ”I don't _want_ to sell you any hardware. I'm not _here_ to sell you any hardware. I know,” I says, ”as well as you do,” I says, ”that I couldn't sell any hardware if I tried to. But,” I says, ”I guess it don't do any harm to open up this sample case, and show you some hardware,” I says. ”Young man,” says he, ”if you start opening up that sample case in here, you'll lose your time, that's all”--and he turned off sort of sideways and began looking over some letters.

”That's _all right_, Mr. Jones,” I says. ”That's _all right_. I'm _here_ to lose my time. But I'm not going out of this room till you take a look anyway at some of this new cutlery I'm carrying.”