Part 71 (1/2)
Yet the coa.r.s.e-faced person in authority who ran it, went gaily by without stopping, though I stood on the track almost, and waved my umbrella.
A hot flush of rage surged to my face. ”I wish you felt the blow you deserve,” said I, viciously, looking after the car. ”I wish you'd have to stop, and back to here, and open the door and apologize. I wish that would happen to all of you, every time you play that trick.”
To my infinite amazement, that car stopped and backed till the front door was before me. The motorman opened it. holding his hand to his cheek. ”Beg your pardon, madam!” he said.
I pa.s.sed in, dazed, overwhelmed. Could it be? Could it possibly be that--that what I wished came true. The idea sobered me, but I dismissed it with a scornful smile. ”No such luck!” said I.
Opposite me sat a person in petticoats. She was of a sort I particularly detest. No real body of bones and muscles, but the contours of grouped sausages. Complacent, gaudily dressed, heavily wigged and ratted, with powder and perfume and flowers and jewels--and a dog.
A poor, wretched, little, artificial dog--alive, but only so by virtue of man's insolence; not a real creature that G.o.d made. And the dog had clothes on--and a bracelet! His fitted jacket had a pocket--and a pocket-handkerchief! He looked sick and unhappy.
I meditated on his pitiful position, and that of all the other poor chained prisoners, leading unnatural lives of enforced celibacy, cut off from sunlight, fresh air, the use of their limbs; led forth at stated intervals by unwilling servants, to defile our streets; over-fed, under-exercised, nervous and unhealthy.
”And we say we love them!” said I, bitterly to myself. ”No wonder they bark and howl and go mad. No wonder they have almost as many diseases as we do! I wish--” Here the thought I had dismissed struck me agin.
”I wish that all the unhappy dogs in cities would die at once!”
I watched the sad-eyed little invalid across the car. He dropped his head and died. She never noticed it till she got off; then she made fuss enough.
The evening papers were full of it. Some sudden pestilence had struck both dogs and cats, it would appear. Red headlines struck the eye, big letters, and columns were filled out of the complaints of those who had lost their ”pets,” of the sudden labors of the board of health, and interviews with doctors.
All day, as I went through the office routine, the strange sense of this new power struggled with reason and common knowledge. I even tried a few furtive test ”wishes”--wished that the waste basket would fall over, that the inkstand would fill itself; but they didn't.
I dismissed the idea as pure foolishness, till I saw those newspapers, and heard people telling worse stories.
One thing I decided at once--not to tell a soul. ”n.o.body'd believe me if I did,” said I to myself. ”And I won't give 'em the chance. I've scored on cats and dogs, anyhow--and horses.”
As I watched the horses at work that afternoon, and thought of all their unknown sufferings from crowded city stables, bad air and insufficient food, and from the wearing strain of asphalt pavements in wet and icy weather, I decided to have another try on horses.
”I wish,” said I, slowly and carefully, but with a fixed intensity of purposes, ”that every horse owner, keeper, hirer and driver or rider, might feel what the horse feels, when he suffers at our hands. Feel it keenly and constantly till the case is mended.”
I wasn't able to verify this attempt for some time; but the effect was so general that it got widely talked about soon; and this ”new wave of humane feeling” soon raised the status of horses in our city. Also it diminished their numbers. People began to prefer motor drays--which was a mighty good thing.
Now I felt pretty well a.s.sured in my own mind, and kept my a.s.surance to my self. Also I began to make a list of my cherished grudges, with a fine sense of power and pleasure.
”I must be careful,” I said to myself; ”very careful; and, above all things, make the punishment fit the crime.”
The subway crowding came to my mind next; both the people who crowd because they have to, and the people who make them. ”I mustn't punish anybody, for what they can't help,” I mused. ”But when it's pure meanness!” Then I bethought me of the remote stockholders, of the more immediate directors, of the painfully prominent officials and insolent employees--and got to work.
”I might as well make a good job of it while this lasts,” said I to myself. ”It's quite a responsibility, but lots of fun.” And I wished that every person responsible for the condition of our subways might be mysteriously compelled to ride up and down in them continuously during rush hours.
This experiment I watched with keen interest, but for the life of me I could see little difference. There were a few more well-dressed persons in the crowds, that was all. So I came to the conclusion that the general public was mostly to blame, and carried their daily punishment without knowing it.
For the insolent guards and cheating ticket-sellers who give you short change, very slowly, when you are dancing on one foot and your train is there, I merely wished that they might feel the pain their victims would like to give them, short of real injury. They did, I guess.
Then I wished similar things for all manner of corporations and officials. It worked. It worked amazingly. There was a sudden conscientious revival all over the country. The dry bones rattled and sat up. Boards of directors, having troubles enough of their own, were aggravated by innumerable communications from suddenly sensitive stockholders.
In mills and mints and railroads, things began to mend. The country buzzed. The papers fattened. The churches sat up and took credit to themselves. I was incensed at this; and, after brief consideration, wished that every minister would preach to his congregation exactly what he believed and what he thought of them.
I went to six services the next Sunday--about ten minutes each, for two sessions. It was most amusing. A thousand pulpits were emptied forthwith, refilled, re-emptied, and so on, from week to week. People began to go to church; men largely--women didn't like it as well. They had always supposed the ministers thought more highly of them than now appeared to be the case.
One of my oldest grudges was against the sleeping-car people; and now I began to consider them. How often I had grinned and borne it--with other thousands--submitting helplessly.