Part 2 (1/2)
”Well, aren't they?” asked the Idiot. ”Every blessed daughter of Eve in that melee yesterday was armed, one might almost say, to the teeth.
There wasn't one in the whole ninety-seven thousand of them that didn't have at least two hatpins thrust through the middle of her head with their sharp-pointed ends sticking out an inch and a half beyond her dear little ears; and every time a head was turned in any direction blood was shed automatically. All I had was the stiff rim of my derby hat, and even that fell off inside of three minutes, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of it since. Then what the hatpins failed to move out of their path other pins variously and strategically placed would tackle; and as for auxiliary weapons, what with sharp-edged jet and metal b.u.t.tons sprouting from one end of the feminine form to the other, up the front, down the back, across the shoulders, along the hips, executing flank movements right and left, and diagonally athwart every available inch of superficial area elsewhere, aided and abetted by silver and steel-beaded handbags and featherweight umbrellas for purposes of a.s.sault, I tell you every blessed damozel of the lot was a walking a.r.s.enal of destruction.
All one of those women had to do was to whizz around three times like a dervish, poke her head either to the right or to the left, and gain three yards, while I might twist around like a pinwheel, or an electric fan, and get nothing for my pains save a skewered nose, or a poke in the back that suggested the presence of a member of the Black Hand Society.
In addition to all this I fear I have sustained internal injuries of serious import. My teeth are intact, save for two feathers that are so deeply imbedded at the back of my wisdom teeth that I fear I shall have to have them pulled, but every time I breathe one of my ribs behaves as if in some way it had got itself tangled up with my left shoulder blade.
Why, the pressure upon me at one time was so great that I began to feel like a rosebud placed inside the family Bible by an old maid whose lover has evaporated, to be pressed and preserved there until his return. This little pancake that is about to fulfill its destiny as a messenger from a cold and heartless outside world to my inner man, is a rotund, bulgent, balloon-shaped bit of puffed-up convex protuberance compared to the way I felt after that whirl of feminity had put me through the clothes-wringer. I was as flat as a joke of Caesar's after its four thousandth semiannual appearance in London Punch, and in respect to thickness I was pressed so thin that you could have rolled me around your umbrella, and still been able to get the cover on.”
”You never were very deep, anyhow,” suggested the Bibliomaniac.
”Whence the wonder of it grows,” said the Idiot. ”Normally I am fathomless compared to the thin, waferlike quality of my improfundity as I flickered to the floor after that dreadful pressure was removed.”
”How about women getting crushed?” demanded the Landlady defiantly. ”If a poor miserable little wisp of a woman can go through that sort of thing, I don't see why a big, brawny man like you can't.”
”Because, as I have already said,” said the Idiot, ”I wasn't dressed for it. My clothes aren't divided up into airtight compartments, rendering me practically unsinkable within, nor have I any steel-constructed garments covering my manly form to resist the pressure.”
”And have women?” asked Mrs. Pedagog.
The Idiot blushed.
”How should I know, my dear Mrs. Pedagog?” replied the Idiot. ”I'm no authority on the subtle mysteries of feminine raiment, but from what I see in the shop windows, and in the advertising pages of the magazines, I should say that the modern woman could go through a courts.h.i.+p with a grizzly bear and come out absolutely undented. As I pa.s.s along the highways these days, and glance into the shop windows, mine eyes are constantly confronted by all sorts of feminine under-tackle, which in the days of our grandmothers were regarded as strictly confidential. I see steel-riveted contraptions, marked down from a dollar fifty-seven to ninety-eight cents, which have all the lithe, lissom grace of a Helen of Troy, the which I am led to infer the women of to-day purchase and insert themselves into, gaining thereby not only a marvelous symmetry of figure hitherto unknown to them, but that same security against the bufferings of a rude outside world as well, which a gilt-edged bond must feel when it finds itself locked up behind the armor-plated walls of a Safe Deposit Company. Except that these armorial undergarments are decorated with baby-blue ribbons, and sporadic, not to say spasmodic, doodads in filmy laces and chiffon, they differ in no respect from those wonderful combinations of slats, chest-protectors, and liver pads which our most accomplished football players wear at the emergent moments of their intellectual development at college. In point of fact, without really knowing anything about it, I venture the a.s.sertion that the woman of to-day wearing this steel-lined chiffon figure, and armed with seventy or eighty different kinds of pins from plain hat to safety, which protrude from various unexpected parts of her anatomy at the psychological moment, plus the devastating supply of b.u.t.tons always available for moments of aggressive action, is the most powerfully and efficiently developed engine of war the world has yet produced. She is not only protected by her unyielding figure from the onslaughts of the enemy, but she fairly bristles as well with unsuspected weapons of offense against which anything short of a herd of elephants on stampede would be powerless. Your modern Amazon is an absolutely irrefragable, irresistible creature, and it makes me shudder to think of what is going to happen when this war of the s.e.xes, now in its infancy, really gets going, and we defenseless men have nothing but a few regiments of artillery, and a division or two of infantry and cavalry standing between us and an advancing column of super-insulated shoppers, using their handbags as clubs, their hatpins glistening wickedly in the morning light, as they tango onward to the fray. When that day comes, frankly, I shall turn and run. I had my foretaste of that coming warfare in my pursuit of Christmas gifts yesterday afternoon, and my motto henceforth and forever is Never Again!”
”Then I suppose we need none of us expect to be remembered by you this Christmas,” said the Doctor. ”Alas, and alas! I shall miss the generous bounty which led you last year to present me with a cold waffle on Christmas morn.”
”On the contrary, Doctor,” said the Idiot. ”Profiting from my experience of yesterday I am going to start in on an entirely new system of Christmas giving. No more boughten articles for me--my presents will be fas.h.i.+oned by loving hands without thought of dross. You and all the rest of my friends at this board are to be remembered as usual. For the Bibliomaniac I have a little surprise in store in the shape of a copy of the _Congressional Record_ for December 7th which I picked up on a street car last Friday morning. It is an absolutely first edition, in the original wrappers, and will make a fine addition to his collection of Americana. For Mr. Brief I have a copy of the New York Telephone Book for 1906, which he will find full of most excellent addresses. For my dear friend, the Poet, I have set aside a charming collection of rejection slips from his friends the editors; and for you, Doctor, as an affectionate memento of my regard, I have prepared a little mixture of all the various medicines you have prescribed for me during the past five years, none of which I have ever taken, to the vast betterment of my health. These, consisting of squills, cod-liver oil, ipecac, quinine, iron tonic, soothing syrup, spirits of ammonia, horse liniment, himalaya bitters, and calomel, I have mixed together in one glorious concoction, which I shall bottle with my own hands in an old carboy I found up in the attic, on the side of which I have etched the words, When You Drink It Think of Me!”
”Thanks, awfully,” said the Doctor. ”I am sure a mixture of that sort could remind me of no one else.”
”And, finally, for our dear Landlady,” said the Idiot, smiling gallantly on Mrs. Pedagog, ”I have the greatest surprise of all.”
”I'll bet you a dollar I know what it is,” said the Doctor.
”I'll take you,” said the Idiot.
”You're going to pay your bill!” roared the Doctor.
”There's your dollar,” said the Idiot, tossing a silver cartwheel across the table. ”Better hand it right over to Mrs. Pedagog on account, yourself.”
IV
AS TO THE INCOME TAX
”Well, Mr. Bib,” said the Idiot cheerfully, as he speared a lonely prune and put it out of its misery, ”have you made your return to the income tax collector yet?”
”I both rejoice and regret to say that my income is not large enough to come under the provisions of the act,” said the Bibliomaniac, ”and consequently I haven't bothered my head about it.”
”Then you'd better get busy and send in a statement of your receipts up to January first, or you'll find Uncle Sam after you with a hot stick.
For the sake of the fair name of our beloved home here, sir, don't delay. I'd hate to see a federal patrol wagon rolling up to our door for the purpose of taking you to jail.”
”But I am exempt,” protested the Bibliomaniac. ”I don't come within a thousand dollars of the minimum.”
”That may be all true enough,” said the Idiot. ”You know that, and I know that, but Uncle Sam doesn't know it, and you've got to satisfy him that you are not a plutocrat trying to pa.s.s yourself off as a member of one of those respectable middle-cla.s.s financial families in which this land is so pleasingly rich. You've got to lay a statement of your financial condition before the government whether your income is ninety-seven cents a minute or forty-seven thousand dollars an hour.