Complete Stories - Dorothy Parker Part 39

Her attire admirably expresses Miss Oddie's personality. She is given to neutral tones, to self-effacing styles, to modest little tuckers, and un.o.btrusive hats. She wears a tender little smile, which from constant use has become a trifle set, and her eyes are finely wrinkled at the corners, as if from the effects of a constant glare.

It comes, perhaps, from looking too persistently on the sunny side.

MRS. SYDNEY SWAIN.

The extraordinary thing about Mrs. Swain is the perpetual state of exhaustion in which she exists. No human eye has ever beheld her when she felt fresh and rested. Her head droops with weary grace as she relates, in her soft, tired voice, how completely worn out she is. She is constantly having to go and lie down, and it is no unusual occurrence for her to have to give up everything and go away for a good rest.

Exactly what it is that has so tired her or just what she is resting up for has never been cleared up, for all strain has been removed from her life by the force of Mr. Swain's inherited money, and she need face no greater drain upon her strength than the lifting to her mouth of her limousine's speaking tube.

Perhaps it is her maternal cares that have so heavily taken their toll of her vitality. Mrs. Swain's is what might be called an indirect motherhood, carried on by a chain of nurse, governess and aunt, but she is the nominal head of the system and, as such, has a full sense of her responsibilities. She often observes that no one in the world has any idea what a care young children are.

Which does seem as if she were somewhat misinformed in her statistics.

MISS FRANCES PARSONS.

Mrs. Swain's goodness to her elder sister, Miss Frances Parsons, is one of the favorite topics of conversation among members of our club. They love to recall how Frances was slaving away in a bank, as secretary to the president, when Sydney Swain married her sister; how the new Mrs. Swain insisted on Frances' leaving her position and coming to live in the big Swain house; how Mrs. Swain allowed Frances to plan all the meals, to supervise the servants, to a.s.sume charge of all the household accounts; how, in addition to even that important position, now that there are two little Swains, Frances has been a.s.signed to the post of resident maiden aunt and, as such, is a.s.sured of a home and every luxury and has absolutely nothing to worry about-well, until the children grow up, anyway.

The club members are continually finding fresh evidences of Mrs. Swain's generosity. When Mrs. Swain got her new fur coat Frances came to the very next club meeting wearing the old one. Now that the Swains take the children with them on their trips to New York, they take Frances along, too, and she stays with them at the very best hotels and goes to all the most exclusive shops with Mrs. Swain and the children.

Her very presence in the club is due to her sister. When one of the members moved out of town, and the club was confronted with the necessity of finding someone to take her place, Mrs. Swain was the first to suggest Frances. It really is a great thing for Frances. She loves society and it gives her a chance to get out once in a while. Frances doesn't go out in the evening; but then, as Mr. Swain is at the office all day, the only opportunity that Mrs. Swain and he have to go out together is in the evening, and Mrs. Swain is, by her own admission, far too good a mother to leave her children alone with the servants.

So Frances is in the club and, whenever it meets at the Swain house, Mrs. Swain lets her see about the refreshments and buy the prizes. It has come to be a popular saying among members of the club: "Well, Frances Parsons certainly is a lucky girl!"

But there! Isn't it true that some people never know when they are well off? When Mrs. Throop walked into her room unannounced the other day, there was Frances crying her eyes out, with her head on the cover of that old typewriter that she used to have down at the bank.

MRS. PERCY PUGH.

Mrs. Pugh specializes in youthfulness; she is a professed Peter Pan. She acknowledges, frequently, that she just never will grow up. She gleefully relates somewhat tenuous anecdotes, all a trifle anti-climactical as to point, dealing with occasions when she has been mistaken for her own daughter. The club members listen to these enthusiastic recitals with the not entirely undivided attention one lends to an oft-heard tale.

It is, doubtless, her extreme naivete that creates the impression of guileless youth in Mrs. Pugh. Her naivete is like some cherished heirloom, not only in that it has been in the family for years, but in that it is carefully guarded, proudly exhibited, the subject of many quaint narratives, told, it must be added, by Mrs. Pugh herself, who can do them full justice. She is perhaps at her best when retailing the startlingly unstudied things she has said and their effect upon certain staid listeners. She is simply bubbling over-the phrase is her own-with ingenuousness. Though she has had the usual education, she receives every stray bit of information with little cries of wonder that such things can be out in the great, big world.

Mrs. Pugh has constantly to fight against temptations that do not often trouble other women. When she pa.s.ses children coasting down a hill, she exclaims that she would give anything to coast with them; when her daughter goes off to schoolgirl parties Mrs. Pugh affirms that it nearly makes her cry because she can't go too. However, she makes the best of things by bringing a prettily childlike manner to her own grown-up entertainments. She claps her hands and jumps up and down in her seat quaintly when the refreshments appear, and she a.s.sumes a cunning pout if she fails to win a prize. Into her conversation she injects piquant words of youthful slang, and, while she has never quite dared baby talk at firsthand, Mrs. Pugh frequently makes opportunity to quote literally from remarks of infants of her acquaintance.

It is really a concession on Mrs. Pugh's part to belong to our club at all. Indeed, it is only her youthful enthusiasm for games that has brought her into the club and kept her there. As she repeatedly observes, her idea of fun isn't staying indoors with a lot of grown-ups; if she had her way she would be with the young people all the time.

Quite a formidable barrier to her ever attaining her wish is the feeling of the young people in the matter.

MRS. LUCIUS KING.

Mrs. King has an amazingly wide acquaintance among the newly departed. She never picks up a newspaper without finding some familiar name among the obituary notices; it is an off day for her when she can discover only one or two. It need not necessarily be one of her immediate circle; although the name be only that of some relation by marriage of a distant acquaintance, say, or even that of some person whom she has heard vaguely mentioned at some time, Mrs. King takes as flatter ingly personal an interest as if it were one of her own relatives. Naturally, when the obituary column yields her such a lavish supply of absorbing current events, Mrs. King confines her newspaper reading almost entirely to it, although her attention may occasionally wander over to the front page, if any particularly striking fatalities are reported thereon.

In her attire, Mrs. King strikes a prolonged minor note. She runs to heavy veils, somber draperies, gun-metal ornaments and black gloves. It almost seems as if she were holding herself ready, so that if she were ever called upon to attend a funeral at a moment's notice, she would be perfectly dressed for the occasion. She carefully h.o.a.rds crepe veils and black-bordered handkerchiefs, for, as she so justly says, one never can tell what may happen and it does no harm to be prepared. Mrs. King even carries this admirable truism into her most intimate feminine concerns; carefully put away, in an obscure bureau drawer, is a complete outfit, simple yet becoming, in which she has given explicit directions that she shall be arrayed when her own hour comes.

Mrs. King has a turn of observation which, although it has become almost mechanical to her, is inclined to render those about her somewhat subdued in spirit. For example, at a large social gathering, Mrs. King will look mournfully around and sighingly wonder how many of the a.s.sembled guests will still be alive and well ten years hence. At the theater, although the play may be a side-splitting farce, Mrs. King injects a somber note by the reminder that, for all the audience knows, the actors' hearts may be breaking beneath their gaudy costumes. When asked to make any engagement for the near future, Mrs. King never fails to include in her acceptance the stipulation "if I'm spared," although it would seem, to the captious, as if that contingency might be taken for granted.

The best of company is Mrs. King when in an anecdotal mood; her listeners never know a moment's boredom. Her stories keep one on the edge of one's chair, nerves taut, hair erect, eyes glazed with horror. She enjoys a large circle of friends whose lives have been singularly rich in blood-curdling tragedies. Her tales are all of their hideous experiences-how this one's husband went suddenly mad at the dinner table; how that one's child accidentally hanged itself with a jumping rope; how a third, while fainting from the shock of the news of an uncle's demise, fell into the bathtub and was drowned. Such as these are only the mildest of Mrs. King's repertory. Never repeating herself, she can wander on for hours along these lines.

After a period of her society, the listener is apt to wonder if Mrs. King ever knew any people who lived normally healthy, pleasant, un-marred lives, terminating restfully in bed. If she ever did, Mrs. King obviously doesn't consider them worth talking about.

Ladies' Home Journal, July 1920.

As the Spirit Moves.

Any day, now, I expect to read in the paper that Sir Oliver Lodge, or somebody else who keeps right in touch with all the old crowd, has received a message from the Great Beyond announcing that the spirits have walked out for a forty-four-hour week, with time and a half for overtime, and government control of ouija boards. And it would be no more than fair, when you come right down to it; something ought to be done to remedy the present working conditions among the spirits. Since this wave of spiritualism has broken over the country it has got so that a spirit doesn't have a minute to himself. The entire working force has to come trooping back to earth every night to put in a hard night's labor knocking on walls, ringing bells, playing banjos, pus.h.i.+ng planchettes round, and performing such parlor specialties. The spirits have not had a quiet evening at home for months. The Great Beyond must look as deserted as an English lecture platform.

No spirit could object to coming back now and then in the way of business, so to speak, through a professional medium. That sort of thing is more or less expected; it's all in an eternity, as you might say. But the entrance of all these amateurs into the industry has been really too much. It is the ouija-board trade in particular that is so trying. Now that every family has installed its own private ouija board and expects immediate service on it at any hour of the day or night, the sting has been put into death. It's enough to wear a poor spirit to a shadow, that's what it is.

THE AGE OF THE OUIJA BOARD.

Of course there may not be any particular connection, but nation-wide spiritualism seems to have come in like a lion at just about the time that nation-wide alcoholism was going out like a lamb. The seance room has practically become the poor man's club. After all, people have to do something with their evenings; and it can always be argued on the side of the subst.i.tute pastime that it does not cut into the next morning, anyway. There was a time when ouija-board operating was looked upon only as an occupation for highly unmarried elderly ladies of p.r.o.nounced religious tendencies; prohibition was regarded in much the same light, if you remember. And now the ouija board has replaced the corkscrew as the national emblem. Times surely do change, as I overheard someone saying only yesterday.

It has certainly been a great little fiscal year for stockholders in ouija-board plants. A census to show the distribution of ouija boards would prove that they average at least one to a family. There is every reason for their popularity as a family inst.i.tution; their initial cost can soon be sc.r.a.ped together, their upkeep amounts to practically nothing, they take up little s.p.a.ce, and anybody can run them. They are the Flivvers among psychical appliances. No home can conscientiously feel that it is supplied with all modern conveniences, lacking one; there is even some talk, I hear, of featuring built-in ouija boards in the more luxurious of the proposed new apartment houses.

A strong factor in the popularity of the ouija board as a domestic utensil is the prevalence of ouija-board agencies throughout the country. No shopping round is necessary; you can buy one anywhere, from a notion counter to a used-car emporium. Its purchase used to involve much secret diplomacy. You had to worm the manufacturer's address from some obscure acquaintance who was rumored to go in for all that sort of thing, and then you had to send to some vague place in the West, whence your ouija board came to you, f. o. b., in a plain wrapper. Now there is not the slightest hitch-you can pick one up anywhere on the way home. Our own corner drug store has been celebrating Ouija Week for the past month or so, and I understand that the boards are going like hot cakes-after all, you can't better the old similies. They certainly make a tasteful window display, combined, as they are, with garlands of rubber bath hose, with notes of color introduced by a few hot-water bags here and there. I imagine that the exhibit was arranged by the same person who thinks up names for the drinks served at the soda fountain.

What a simple matter this thing of communicating with the spirits has turned out to be, since the ouija board made its entrance into the great American family life. There is practically nothing to it-anybody can do it in the privacy of his own room. Look at the results that the members of our little circle have been getting, for instance, since we took up the ouija board in a really thorough way. And we never had a lesson in our lives, any of us. It has been a rough season, locally, for the professional-medium trade; I doubt if the professionals have even made expenses, since we learned that we could do it ourselves.

Home spirit communication has completely revolutionized our local social life. I often wonder what we should ever do with our evenings if it weren't for the spirits. Since they have taken to dropping in for an informal chat over the ouija board we never lack a lively parlor game for one and all-metaphysical, yet clean.

And then just look at the money we save on amus.e.m.e.nt taxes! You know how it is yourself; the minute you leave home to make an evening of it, it runs right into expense. What with the cost of theater tickets, cabaret food and taxicab charter-good night, as the saying goes. Even such wholesome community activities as interapartment poker games, wives welcome, come under the head of outgo sooner or later. Of course this is a relatively free country, and no one has a better right than you to your own opinion of the ouija board as a medium of communication with the next world; but considering it solely as a means of after-dinner entertainment you must concede that the price is right, anyway.

Where would our little circle be of an evening if the spirits had not grown so clubby? Sitting round, that's where we would be, trying to figure out if the William Hart picture round at the Elite Motion-Picture Palace was the same one that they showed the week before over at the Bijou Temple of Film Art. Since we got our ouija board I have so completely lost touch with the movies that Theda Bara may have got religion, for all I know about it.

WHEN THE BRIDGE HOUNDS WERE UNLEASHED.

Of course, we did have our bits of the higher life once in a while in the old days. Whenever the husbands could be argued into it we used to take up the rugs and devote the evening to Terpsich.o.r.e, as the boys say. But we got little or nothing out of it, considering all the effort involved. The talent for dancing among the male element of our set would, if pooled, be about equal to the histrionic ability of Mr. Jack Dempsey. The only one who really worked up any enthusiasm about it was old Mr. Emery, who as a parlor Maurice had one foot in the grave and the other on his partner's instep. He had taken up dancing along about the time that the waltz was being condemned by press and pulpit, and his idea of a really good jazz number was "Do You See My New Shoes?"

The community dances never went over really big, that you could mention; by the time the second fox trot had reached the place where the record was scratched the men had all gathered in one corner and were arguing about how long you ought to let it stand before you put it in the still; and the women were settled along the other side of the room, telling each other how you could reduce without exercising or dieting. Those evenings were apt to cause hard feeling between husband and wife, and one word frequently led to another on the way home.

Then there was the time that we went in rather heavily for bridge. The bridge hounds were unleashed on Tuesday evenings, and at eleven o'clock chicken salad and lettuce sandwiches would be served and the one who had the highest score could choose between a blue gla.s.s candy jar with a gla.s.s crab apple on its top, and a hive-shaped honey pot of yellow china with china bees that you'd swear were just about to sting you swarming all over it; in either case what was left went without any argument to the holder of the next highest score.

On the next Tuesday the club would meet again, and play till eleven o'clock, at which time chicken salad and cream cheese and olive sandwiches would be provided, and the winner had to make up his mind between one of those handy little skating girls made of painted wood with a ball of colored twine instead of a bodice, and a limp-leather copy of Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore, the well-known hyphenated Indian.

The bridge club would doubtless have still been tearing things wide open every Tuesday, but the ouija board came in, and the hostesses' imagination in the selection of prizes gave out, at about the same time.

Mrs. Both, who is awfully good at all that kind of thing, tried to inaugurate a series of Sunday evening intellectual festivals, but they were never what you could really call a riot. The idea was that everyone should meet at her house, and the more gifted among us should entertain and at the same time elevate the majority. But Mrs. Both could never get enough backing from the rest of the home talent. She herself read several papers that she had written on such subjects as "The New Russia, and Why"; and "Modern Poetry-What of Its Tomorrow?"

HENRY G. TAKES TO VERSE.

And Mrs. Curley, who is always so agreeable about doing anything like that, did some of her original child impersonations, in her favorite selections, "Don't Tell the Daisies I Tolded You, 'Cause I Pwomised Them Not to Tell"; and "Little Girls Must Always Be Dwessed up Clean-Wisht I Was a Little Boy." As an encore she always used to give, by request, that slightly rough one about "Where Did Baby Bruvver Tum Fwom, That's What Me Wants to Know," in which so many people think she is at her best. Mrs. Curley never makes the slightest change in costume for her specialty-she doesn't even remove her chain-drive eyegla.s.ses-yet if you closed your eyes you'd really almost think that a little child was talking. She has often been told that she should have gone on the stage. Then Mr. Bliss used to sing "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," and would gladly have done more, except that it was so hard to find songs that suited his voice.

Those were about the only numbers that the program ever comprised. Mr. Smalley volunteered to make shadow pictures and give an imitation of a man sawing wood, including knots, but Mrs. Both somehow did not quite feel that this would have been in the spirit of the thing. So the intellectual Sunday evenings broke up, and the local mental strain went down to normal again.

Mrs. Both is now one of the leaders in the home-research movement. She has been accomplis.h.i.+ng perfect wonders on the ouija board; she swung a wicked planchette right from the start. Of course she has been pretty lucky about it. She got right in touch with one spirit, and she works entirely with him. Henry G. Thompson, his name is, and he used to live a long time ago, up round Cape Cod way, when he was undeniably a good fellow when he had it. It seems that he was interested in farming in a small way, while he was on earth, but now that he has a lot of time on his hands he has taken up poetry. Mrs. Both has a whole collection of poems that were dictated to her by this spirit. From those that I have seen I gather that they were dictated but not read.

But then, of course, she has not shown me all of them.

Anyway, they are going to be brought out in book form in the fall, under the t.i.tle Heart Throbs From the Hereafter. The publishers are confident of a big sale, and are urging Mrs. Both to get the book out sooner, while the public is still in the right mood. But she has been having some sort of trouble with Henry, over the ouija board. I don't know if I have it quite straight, but it seems that Henry is behaving in a pretty unreasonable way about the percentage of royalties that he insists must go to the Thompson estate.

But aside from this little hitch-and I dare say that she and Henry will patch it up between them somehow-Mrs. Both has got a great deal out of spiritualism. She went about it in the really practical way. She did not waste her own time and the spirits' asking the ouija board questions about who is going to be the next President, and whether it will rain tomorrow, and what the chances are for a repeal of the Vol stead Act. Instead she sat right down and got acquainted with one particular spirit, and let him do the rest. That is really the best way to go about it; get your control, and make him work your ouija board for you, and like it. Some of our most experienced mediums agree that that is the only way to get anywhere in parlor spiritualism.

But when you come right down to it there are few who can get more out of a ouija board than our own Aunt Bertha. Her work is not so highly systematized as that of Mrs. Both, but it is pretty fairly spectacular, in its way.

I knew that Aunt Bertha was going to get in some snappy work on the ouija board; I could have told you that before I ever saw her in action. She has always been good at anything anywhere nearly like that. Now you take solitaire, for instance. I don't think I ever saw a prettier game of solitaire than that which Aunt Bertha puts up. You may be looking over her shoulder while she deals out the cards for a game of Canfield, and from the layout before her you would swear that she had not a chance of getting more than one or two aces up, at most. In fact, it looks so hopeless that you lose interest in the game, and go over to the other end of the room to get a magazine. And when you come back Aunt Bertha will have all the cards in four stacks in front of her, and she will smile triumphantly and exclaim: "What do you think of that? I got it again!"

AUNT BERTHA'S SNAPPY WORK I have known that to happen over and over again; I never saw such luck in my life. I would back Aunt Bertha against any living solitaire player for any amount of money you want, only providing that the judges leave the room during the contest.

It was no surprise to me to find that she had just the same knack with a ouija board. She can take a ouija board that would never show the least signs of life for anybody else and make it do practically everything but a tail spin. She can work it alone or she can make a duet of it-it makes no difference to her. She is always sure of results, either way. The spirits seem to recognize her touch on the board immediately. You never saw such a remarkable thing; it would convert anybody to spiritualism just to see her.

Aunt Bertha asks a question of the spirits, and the words are no more than out of her mouth when the planchette is flying about, spelling out the answer almost faster than you can read it. The service that she gets is perfectly wonderful. And, as she says herself, you can see that there is no deception about it, because she does not insist upon asking the question herself; anyone can ask whatever he can think of-there are no limits. Of course, the answers have occasionally turned out to be a trifle erratic, but then, to quote Aunt Bertha again, what does that prove? The spirits never claimed to be right all the time. It is only human of them to make a slip once in a while.

She can go deeper into the affairs of the Other Side than a mere game of questions and answers, if you want her to. Just say the word, and Aunt Bertha will get you in touch with anybody that you may name, regardless of how long ago he or she may have lived. Only the other night, for instance, someone suggested that Aunt Bertha summon Noah Webster's spirit, and in scarcely less time than it takes to tell it, there he was talking to her on the ouija board, as large as life. His spelling wasn't all that it used to be, but otherwise he seemed to be getting along splendidly.

Again, just to show you what she can do when she sets her mind to it, she was asked to try her luck at getting connected with the spirit of Disraeli-we used up Napoleon and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar and all the other stock characters the very first week that Aunt Bertha began to work the ouija board, and we had to go in pretty deep to think up new ones. The planchette started to move the minute that Aunt Bertha put her hands on it, if you will believe me, and when she asked, "Is this Disraeli?" it immediately spelled out, "This is him." I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes. Uncanny, it really was.

There seems to be n.o.body whom Aunt Bertha cannot make answer her on the ouija board. There is even a pretty strong chance that she may be able to get Central, after she has had a little more practice.

Mrs. Crouch, too, has been having some pleasant chats with the spirits. And it is only natural that they should treat her as practically one of the family, for she has been doing propaganda work for the Other Side for years. I often think that one of the big undertaking corporations is overlooking a great little advance agent in Mrs. Crouch. She has a way of asking you how you feel that would make you swear you could smell lilies.

Mrs. Crouch frequently states that she takes but little interest in the things of this world, and she dresses the part. There is a quaint style about her which lends to everything that she wears an air of its having been bequeathed to her by some dear one who went over round 1889.

There is a certain snap to her conversation, too, for which she is noted among our set. Perhaps her favorite line is the one about in the midst of life, which she has been getting off for so long that she has come to take an author's pride in it. You never saw anyone so clever as Mrs. Crouch is at tracing resemblances to close friends of hers who pa.s.sed on at what she calls, in round numbers, an early age; you would be surprised at the number of persons with whom she comes in contact who have just that same look round the eyes. In fact, you might call Mrs. Crouch the original Glad Girl, and not be much out of the way.

So the ouija-board operations have been right along in her line. Scarcely a day pa.s.ses, she tells me, that she does not receive a message from at least one of her large circle of spirit friends, saying that everything is fine, and how is she getting on, herself? It has really been just like Old Home Week for Mrs. Crouch ever since she got her ouija board.

Miss Thill is another of our girls who has made good with the spirits. Spiritualism is no novelty to her; she has been a follower of it, as she says, almost all her life, and by now she has fairly well caught up with it. In her case, also, it is no surprise to find her so talented with the ouija board. She has always been of a markedly mediumistic turn of mind-there are even strong indications of clairvoyant powers. Time and time again Miss Thill has had the experience of walking along the street thinking of some friend of hers, and whom will she meet, not two hours afterward, but that very same friend! As she says, you cannot explain such things away by calling them mere coincidence. Sometimes it really almost frightens Miss Thill to think about it.

You would know that Miss Thill was of a spiritualistic trend only to look at her. She has a way of suddenly becoming oblivious of all that is going on about her and of looking far off into s.p.a.ce, with an intent expression, as of one seeking, seeking; materialists, at their first sight of her in this condition, are apt to think that she is trying to remember whether she really did turn off the hot water before leaving home. Her very attire is suggestive of the occult influence. What she saves on corsets she lavishes on necklaces of synthetic jade, carved with mystic signs, which I'll wager have no good meaning behind them if the truth were known.

Miss Thill is a pretty logical candidate for the head of the local branch of the Ouija Board Workers of the World. She has an appreciable edge on the other contestants in that she once attended a lecture given by Sir Oliver Lodge himself. Unfortunately she chose rather an off day; Sir Oliver was setting them right as to the family life of the atom, and it went right on over Miss Thill's head; she couldn't even jump for it. There were none of those little homy touches about Sir Oliver's intimacies with the spirits which Miss Thill had been so eager to hear, and I believe that there was quite a little bitterness on her part about it. She has never felt really the same toward Sir Oliver since. So far as she is concerned he can turn right round and go back to England-back to his old haunts, as you might put it.

HARDENED HUSBANDS.

By means of her ouija board Miss Thill, as might have been expected, has worked her way right into the highest intellectual circles of spirit society. As if recognizing an equal some of the greatest celebrities of the Great Beyond have taken her up. It seems that it is no uncommon occurrence for her to talk to such people as Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott on the ouija board; she has come to think scarcely anything of it. I hear that she has been receiving several messages from Shakspere only lately. His spirit is not what a person could call really chatty, as I understand it; he doesn't seem to be one to do much talking about himself. Miss Thill has to help him out a good deal. She asks him one of her typically intellectual questions, such as what he thinks of the modern drama, and all he has to do to answer her is to guide the planchette to either "Yes" or "No"; or, at most, both. Still, his spirit is almost an entire stranger to her, when you stop to think of it, so you really cannot expect anything of a more inside nature just yet, anyway.

Unfortunately several of the husbands among our little circle have been markedly out of sympathy with the spirit movement. They have adopted a humorous att.i.tude toward it which has seemed to be almost coa.r.s.e to the more enthusiastic of the women workers. They use the ouija board only to ask it such frivolous questions as "Where is the nearest place where you can still get it?"-which is particularly trying to those who realize the true seriousness of the thing. It is small wonder that they get no answer from the spirits when they go about it that way; no spirit is going to stand for that sort of stuff. There are too many demands on the spirits' time for them to bother about calls which are not absolutely necessary.

Attempts to convince the more hardened husbands of the supernatural powers of the ouija board have ended in nothing. Some of them when told, by way of positive proof, of the amazing messages which their own wives have received from the board, have even made open accusations of pus.h.i.+ng, which have almost led to an even division of the children, and a parting of the ways. Not since the dance craze came in has there been so much really notable matrimonial friction as there is over this matter of spirit communication. The ouija board is not without-or, in fact, is with, if you do not mind plain speaking-its somber side.

TOO MUCH IS ENOUGH.

Personally I find that I am rather out of things at the neighborhood social festivals. When the others gather round to exchange bright sayings of their ouija boards I am left nowhere as regards adding anything to the general revelry. The spirits have not done the right thing by me; I can never get any action on the ouija board. It isn't as if I had not given the spirits a fair chance. No one was any readier than I to be one of the boys; the flesh was willing, but the spirits weakened, if you could put it that way. There I was, so anxious to make friends with them, and find out how all the folks were, and if they were still with the same people, and how they liked their work. And they would never even say so much as "Haven't we had a poisonous winter?" to me. So if that is the way they are going to be about it-why, all right. I can take a hint as well as the next one.

As for the community ouija boards, any time the research workers want to store them away in the spare bedrooms with the rest of the bird's-eye-maple furniture it will be quite all right for me. I am willing to call it a day and give the spirits a rest any time that the others are. I am not fanatical about the ouija board; I am perfectly able to take it or let it alone. In fact, I think that a reasonable amount of daily exercise on it is a good thing. It is not the actual manual labor that I object to-it is the unexpurgated accounts of all the messages received and their meanings, if any.

Sometimes I even feel that I could moil along through life if I never had to hear another discourse on the quaint things that some local ouija board has said. To put it in so many words-at a rough estimate-I am just about all through.

In fact, if I thought that you would stand for it I would even go so far as to say that I am ouija bored.

The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, May 22, 1920.

A Dinner Party Anthology.

MRS. CHARLES FRISBIE.

As hostess, Mrs. Frisbie is present at the dinner table in body only; her spirit wings afar to the unseen realms of kitchen and pantry, where she fain would be. For, as she sadly explains, only if she were there to supervise could she be a.s.sured that things would go smoothly. Un-watched by a stern eye, the cook is apt to serve the fish after the roast or, whimsically, to omit the salad altogether. True, Mrs. Frisbie's cook, during their four years' cooperation, has always faithfully followed the old traditions in such matters, but that, according to Mrs. Frisbie, is no proof of what she might do. It would not be the slightest surprise to Mrs. Frisbie to have her break out into the wildest unconventionalities at any moment. Servants, she avers, would do anything; they cannot be trusted to do the simplest task correctly unless you stand right over them while they are doing it.

One is inclined to wonder just why Mrs. Frisbie considers the giving of a dinner party worth while, for the wear and tear upon her nervous system which it entails must be appalling. With hawklike intensity she watches every movement of the waitress, waiting breathlessly for a mistake. A moment's delay in the service brings her to the verge of a mental breakdown; she bursts into rapid, irrelevant discourse, while her eyes are fixed in a desperate glare and her fingers play soundless tarantellas on the tablecloth. She apologizes continually to her guests for mishaps which have not yet occurred, plaintively relating how hopeless it is for one so handicapped by her servants to attempt any form of hospitality. It is impossible for the more sensitively organized among Mrs. Frisbie's guests not to take all this to heart and feel depressingly guilty about it.

But it is not alone at dinner parties that the behavior of her servants so affects Mrs. Frisbie. Her whole life, one gathers from her conversation, has been practically wrecked by their caprices. So heavy is the pall that they have cast over her that she can talk of nothing else. She has an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes ill.u.s.trating their grotesquely unreasonable demands-how a certain one insisted upon a room to herself; how another reserved the top of the bottle for her own coffee; how still another wanted to be always running off to church. Each transitory chambermaid or fleeting laundress that pa.s.ses through her employ serves as the heroine of another narrative.

With the piteous air of those whose spontaneous generosity has met only with imposition in this world, Mrs. Frisbie admits that all her trouble with servants is directly traceable to the fact that she is too good to them; she really feels, she says, that the only way to get anything out of them is to treat them as so many cattle. Sometimes, she adds wistfully, she yearns to give up her entire menage and go to live in some little shanty in the backwoods where she could do all her own work and be freed from any effort at entertaining.

It would really amaze Mrs. Frisbie to learn how many people of her acquaintance are wholly in sympathy with the idea.

MR. CHARLES FRISBIE.

Mr. Frisbie's Christian name was a truly superb bit of foresight by his parents; one cannot imagine his answering to any other appellation than Charlie.

Mr. Frisbie has built up for himself quite an enviable local reputation as an amateur comedian. And, a.s.suredly, there is no one more deserving of success in this line; it is the result of years of earnest endeavor and unflagging application. He is an inspiring example of what hard work can accomplish. Never, in the memories of those who know him, has he let slip the opportunity for a pun or a dialect story.

The real point of Mr. Frisbie's humor lies in its expectedness. There is a soothing certainty about all his quips; one can see them coming minutes ahead. He is also unsparing of himself in his jesting; though he may have made the same joke a hundred times before, he unflinchingly goes all through it again should a chance offer. No one could estimate what a boon prohibition and a certain motor car have been to him; it would almost seem as if they had both been inst.i.tuted solely to afford him a field for drolleries.

Mr. Frisbie is also adept at the playing of elfish pranks. It is at the telephone, perhaps, that this quality best a.s.serts itself. He never prosaically gives his correct name over the wire; he invariably waggishly announces himself as some national celebrity, such as Charlie Chaplin or William Jennings Bryan. He still tells about the time when he called up Mr. Partridge at three o'clock in the morning and, having brought him stumbling sleepily down through the drafty darkness from his top-floor bedroom, roguishly told him to go back to bed again. This feat probably marked the climax of Mr. Frisbie's career. Some people, indeed, feel that he has gone downhill since.

Naturally Mr. Frisbie revels in his opportunities as host at the dinner. Between sallies he performs quaint tricks with olives, silverware and lumps of sugar, leading the laughter on every occasion. Well may his guests remark, as they frequently do, that Charlie is a regular case.

But of what they neglect to add.

MRS. LEWIS WILc.o.x.

The authority with which Mrs. Wilc.o.x settles all questions of what is, or is not, the correct thing to do would lead one to believe that she must have collaborated on the drawing up of the conventions. To her it is not life that matters; it is the etiquette with which one faces it that counts. The pangs of birth mean, to her, worrying over whether the announcement cards will be correctly engraved; the fear of death is the dread that the funeral may not be conducted according to the best usage.

She is in constant terror of being forced into contact with those who are not her social equals; she must be ceaselessly on guard lest any of the bourgeoisie worm their way into her visiting list. This dread of the middle cla.s.ses she feels not only for herself but for her family.

The Wilc.o.x children lead practically cloistered lives for fear that, in the regrettable democracy of childhood, they may become acquainted with little ones less well-bred than themselves. For it is upon good breeding that Mrs. Wilc.o.x plumes herself; it is a topic of which she seems never to tire. To the overcritical, it seems, perhaps, as if good breeding is much like a sense of humor, in that its possessor never considers it necessary to call attention to it. But any such caviling may doubtless be set down to jealousy of Mrs. Wilc.o.x's exalted position.