Complete Stories - Dorothy Parker Part 40

Mrs. Wilc.o.x herself would be the first to ascribe it to that cause.

MR. LEWIS WILc.o.x.

There is no more accurate summary of Mr. Wilc.o.x in appearance, habits and opinions than his own word picture of himself. In his graphic, though somewhat redundant, phrase, he is a he-man.

From listening to his dissertations upon the topic one might gather that Mr. Wilc.o.x was a publicity agent for the cold bath. He talks of it with salesmanlike enthusiasm, rather as if he were seeking to popularize it. It would seem from the way he speaks as if he were the only living exponent of its daily use. His contempt for those cheats who underhandedly temper their baths with warm water is beyond the power of even his bluffest Anglo-Saxon words to express.

Mr. Wilc.o.x prides himself-and with justice-upon the size of his appet.i.te. He speaks almost boastfully of the hordes of chops which he habitually consumes at breakfast, of the pounds of thick red meat which regularly buoy him up at lunch and dinner. Given time, he will enlarge upon the subject and cite complete menus of typical repasts as examples of his prowess. It is not necessary to inquire directly as to Mr. Wilc.o.x's habits in order to elicit this information; he volunteers it gladly, without needing any reference to the topic to start him upon his recital.

Mr. Wilc.o.x is for open air openly arrived at. His first action on entering a room is to fling up the windows, letting in great blasts of wholesome atmosphere. That this might cause hard feeling on the part of others in the room never deters him in his activities; he loudly explains to the discomforted ones that the air will do them good, and lets them enjoy a good, healthful s.h.i.+ver. It is characteristic of Mr. Wilc.o.x that he feels himself cramped by ornaments and dim lights. He can breathe freely only when he has turned on every light in the room and has swept aside with an impatient hand all flowers, vases, pillows and such fripperies as may be near him. Any sensitiveness that the hostess may display on such occasions Mr. Wilc.o.x n.o.bly disregards.

His red-blooded exuberance is carried into his business life. Mr. Wilc.o.x never speaks of his employment as work. Ask him his occupation and he will breezily reply that he is in the adding-machine game. Thus lightheartedly does he speak of any industry-the ball-bearing game, the renewable-fuse game, the motor-truck-belting game-as if it were some great national sport.

Mr. Wilc.o.x stands unalterably for law and order; he is even willing to resort to violence to bring them about; he is, in fact, an earnest advocate of the firing squad as a corrective for social unrest. Mr. Wilc.o.x goes on record as saying, two or three times a day at least, that the only way to treat these Bolsheviki is to shoot them. The vast breadth of this statement can be appreciated only when one understands that under the term Bolsheviki-which form of the word he uses interchangeably for both the singular and the plural-Mr. Wilc.o.x lists anybody who asks for a raise in wages.

In his zeal for order Mr. Wilc.o.x strongly urges military discipline. In fact, he verges on the fanatical on this subject. He ardently believes that the louder an argument is uttered the more convincing it is; therefore, he is wont almost to shout, with accompanying virile thumps on a neighboring table, that the only thing which can save this country from ruin is three months' compulsory military training, annually, for all men between the ages of eighteen and forty.

Mr. Wilc.o.x was forty-one last January.

MRS. HOMER PARTRIDGE.

Motherhood claims Mrs. Partridge's undivided attention. She concentrates exclusively upon Homer Partridge, Junior, aged six; t.i.tus Partridge (Mrs. Partridge was a Miss t.i.tus), aged four; and Whittlesley Partridge (the maiden name of Mrs. Partridge's mother was Whittlesley), aged eighteen months. She takes not the faintest interest in anything outside of their concerns; she makes not the least pretense, as she often confesses, of keeping abreast of anything that is going on in the world beyond their nursery. Mrs. Partridge makes this confession in no spirit of apology; on the contrary, it is her proudest boast. There may be some women, she admits, who are able to combine with their motherhood an interest in current events, both local and international, but her tone indicates that, if indeed such women do exist, she would not care to make their acquaintance.

All those about her are regarded by Mrs. Partridge merely in the relation in which they stand to her children. She never calls or refers to any one of her friends just by his or her first name; she always prefaces the name with the word "Auntie" or "Uncle," which purely courtesy t.i.tle the children are wont to employ. Her husband is known to her only as "Daddy."

On those rare occasions when she tears herself from a cribside long enough to attend a social gathering, Mrs. Partridge takes part in the conversation only when it touches upon her progeny. She will address the entire dinner party upon the boys, ranging in her discourse from the deeply serious, such as excerpts from the doctor's report on Junior's adenoids, to the light and frivolous, such as accounts of the reactions of little t.i.tus to his first day in Sunday school. Warming to her theme, she will even give impersonations of the baby making cooing sounds in his bathtub. Delightful as this performance no doubt is in the original, much of the illusion is unfortunately lost in the imitation.

Should the conversation veer to more general topics, Mrs. Partridge becomes restless and preoccupied. Only when the talk is brought back to her young-by her own efforts if necessary-does Mrs. Partridge really give herself over to enjoying the evening; she can go on indefinitely, never losing any whit of her interest in the subject.

In which respect she is wholly unique among those present.

MR. HOMER PARTRIDGE.

It is always with a start of surprise that one recalls Mr. Partridge's presence in the room. He has a way of effacing himself so completely that, without straining the memory, it is almost impossible to bear in mind that he is among the company. He has probably been addressed by more names that are not his own than has any other man of like age in the community. Try as they may, people seem to be wholly unable to remember what his name is.

His most frequently recurring experience is that of being put, by some mutual friend, through the ceremony of an introduction to someone whom he has met several times before. Not for worlds would he chance causing any embarra.s.sment by suggesting that they have already been repeatedly introduced. He politely shakes hands, sincerely glad to meet the one in question on each separate occasion, yet knowing that as soon as he goes away his new acquaintance's mind will retain absolutely no impression of him and the whole process will only have to be gone through again. In the same way, Mr. Partridge is too desirous of saving discomfort to correct those who miscall him. Rather, he will answer willingly to any name whatever, thankful at being addressed at all.

If one determinedly seeks out Mr. Partridge in his un.o.btrusive corner at some social gathering and draws him into conversation, he will be found the most sympathetic of companions. He hangs on every syllable, making little wordless murmurs of commiseration, approbation or amazement as the nature of the recital prompts, laughing long and heartily at humorous touches and nearly breaking down over strokes of pathos. One leaves Mr. Partridge reluctantly, vowing to seek him out again at the very next opportunity and have another good long talk.

The unfortunate part of it is that one forgets all about him long before the next opportunity of seeking him out occurs.

MRS. MORRIS PRESSEY.

The trouble with Mrs. Pressey-for, as she a.s.sures you, it is really a great trouble to her-is that she has too much soul. Her soulfulness is continually getting in her way, causing her to feel things and to yearn for things of which the more materially minded are totally unconscious. Other painful afflictions of Mrs. Pressey's are her extreme sensitiveness and her too highly strung nerves.

Besides all this, Mrs. Pressey is psychic to a high degree. It is no unusual occurrence for her to dream about some friend from whom she has not heard for a long time and then within the very next week to receive a letter from that friend. Mrs. Pressey has become accustomed to such phenomena as this. She has come to accept them as only additional evidences of her intense spirituality. This quality, which so differentiates her from those about her, she would like to express in her dress, but has met with little if any encouragement in her desires. In a town of less than one hundred thousand people it is difficult to wear garments which interpret one's soul without causing talk. So Mrs. Pressey is forced to content herself with leaving off hair nets and having her gowns made with mildly flowing sleeves.

Mrs. Pressey is given to sitting alone at twilight, gazing out over the darkening world. If spoken to suddenly at such times she starts and has some difficulty in bringing herself back to everyday affairs. It is understood that she is thinking great thoughts on these occasions. Many of her friends are firm in their belief that Mrs. Pressey could create a furore in the literary world should she ever commit her impressions to paper; indeed, Mrs. Pressey acknowledges that she would write if only she had the time.

But what with her walking to school with the children in the morning, calling for them at noon and having only the remainder of the day to herself, it looks as if Mrs. Pressey's Alice-blue quill pen must stand forever idle in its gla.s.sful of buckshot.

MR. MORRIS PRESSEY.

The present seems to hold nothing for Mr. Pressey and the future can offer but little promise. He dwells entirely in the roseate past, in that glorious period when he used to live in Chicago. True, it was for only two brief years, but it was enough.

A change in his business, marriage and the desirability of bringing up the children in the semicountry air conspired, in the order mentioned, to bring Mr. Pressey to the town of his present residence and to keep him there. But his ten years' establishment has in no degree robbed him of his metropolitan viewpoint. Mr. Pressey has not become as the other inhabitants; his att.i.tude is that of a transient visitor from some mighty city.

Of course, knowing as they do Mr. Pressey's feelings toward their efforts, his a.s.sociates strain to pa.s.s muster in his sophisticated sight. They labor to carry off all their activities-particularly those of a social nature-in such a manner that Mr. Pressey may not be too deeply struck with the difference in the way those things are done in Chicago. Curiously enough, the decade which has elapsed since he was in direct contact with the whirl of life in a great city has not clouded his memory in the least; as a matter of fact, with the pa.s.sing of time he grows more and more authoritative in his statements of what is done in the Windy City.

His metropolitan residence has given Mr. Pressey quite a standing as an authority on the stage and its people, and the ladies of his acquaintance depend upon him for bits of information as to who is who, and why, in Chicago society. A further result of his experience is his election to the office of president of the country club, a position which he holds with indulgent good nature, as a grown-up humors children by taking part in their game.

Only once has the glamour which surrounds Mr. Pressey been dimmed in the eyes of the townspeople. That was the time when the Frisbies had as a house guest a man who had lived for sixteen years in New York.

Ladies' Home Journal, August 1920.

A Summer Hotel Anthology.

MISS ABBEY FINCH.

In this self-centered world it is indeed refres.h.i.+ng to chance upon one so insistently altruistic as Miss Finch. Her entire life is given lavishly over to the furthering of innocent merrymaking for others; her whole endeavor is to draw together all those about her and to plunge them into a happy round of stimulating yet impeccable divertis.e.m.e.nts. To Miss Finch that day is counted as practically thrown away whose sunset finds her unsuccessful in having imbued some of her fellow creatures with the get-together spirit. A predilection on the part of anyone to sit quietly apart, reading or merely resting, she regards as little short of unwholesome; her conscience gives her no rest until she has approached such a one and, with her cheery smile and playfully commanding manner, induced him or her to drag over a rocking-chair and join some convivial game or neighborly tourney of gossip.

As surely as welcome summer comes around again each year Miss Finch blossoms forth, reliable as one of the hardier annuals, each season a little more energetic, a little more executive, a little more determinedly brisk and cheerful, than the season before. Voluntarily she a.s.sumes all responsibility for the organizing and carrying out of the hotel's social activities; it is almost as if she regarded herself as the hostess, so conscientiously does she strive to see to it that the guests are provided with congenial entertainment. Indeed, more than one new arrival, until definitely set right, has labored under the delusion that Miss Finch is the proprietress of the establishment.

It is Miss Finch who instigates the biweekly bridge parties, collecting the entrance fees-in itself no mean undertaking-and selecting the prizes. It is she who engineers the various tournaments of the more active sports; who soothes the usual hard feeling caused by the handicap awards; who presents the silver-finished cups, accompanying each by a humorously apt speech, composed of sly yet inoffensive hits at the prize winner. She arranges the annual straw ride, the beach party, the moonlight sail, cheerfully deferring each from the appointed date to the next clear night; she intimidates faint-hearted male guests into attending the midsummer masquerade. If a time arrives for which no special event is scheduled, Miss Finch collects a gathering about the hotel piano and, seating herself firmly upon the stool, plays formerly popular airs strictly according to note and in rigid time, thus endeavoring to inspire a spontaneous outburst of song.

In short, Miss Finch gives unstintingly of her time, spirits and ingenuity, so that every moment of the long summer may be replete with entertainment. It is safe to say that the social life of the hotel would be virtually nowhere without her. And it is pleasant to record that her efforts are thoroughly appreciated by the guests. One could walk scarcely half the length of the porch without overhearing some tribute to her abilities. Perhaps the compliment oftenest repeated is that Miss Finch's gift for bringing people together amounts to a real talent.

Where she soars to positive genius is in her unerring instinct for bringing together those who, from their first glimpse of one another, have been straining every effort to keep apart.

MRS. HENRY LARKIN.

There is but one interest in life for Mrs. Larkin; she admits freely that nothing else can ever be of the slightest importance to her. She exists solely, as she almost constantly explains, for the sake of her daughter. Her own life, continues the gently flowing recital, is, as a unit, not worth the living, so cruelly straitened is it by the extreme delicacy of her health. Year after year Mrs. Larkin visits the hotel, seeking in vain for recovery in the abundant sea air. There is, fortunately, nothing organically wrong; hers is an intangible affection, hopelessly permanent, which necessitates complete rest, congenial surroundings, soothing medicines, tempting food, exemption from any responsibility or worry, and the elimination of all effort.

It is a lesson by which many a one might profit to see how courageously Mrs. Larkin bears up; it plucks at the heartstrings to see her resting wearily in her rocking-chair, fragile as fine porcelain in her semi-invalid robes of delicate lavender, yet always wearing a brave little smile as she answers: "Not any worse, thank you," to anxious inquiries about her condition. She feels that she must make the best of it, as she tells one, so that her daughter may not be made unhappy. Sometimes, while the tears rise becomingly to her slightly faded blue eyes, Mrs. Larkin even hints that were it not for her little girl-as she tenderly, though in an entirely reminiscent sense, refers to her daughter-she would give up the struggle and pa.s.s almost imperceptibly away.

What little can be done to make things more bearable for Mrs. Larkin her friends conscientiously try to do. There is always a solicitous group about her chair, seeking to beguile her with chat or with rubbers of bridge. It is amazing what a revivifying effect this seems to have upon Mrs. Larkin; she joins animatedly in the talk or plays an exceptionally shrewd game. Yet, in quiet moments during some rare interval when the group about her has dispersed, she will take one into her somewhat overcrowded confidence and explain that such things would mean nothing to her had she not her daughter's happiness always on her mind. It is only that she feels she must nerve herself up to seeing people for her little girl's sake. Then, too, Mrs. Larkin admits that her friends would be wholly at a loss should she not see them. Were it not for disappointing them Mrs. Larkin often says that she would much prefer to be left quietly alone.

How true it is that a great sacrifice is grossly unappreciated in this world.

MISS ANNA LARKIN.

It is difficult to pa.s.s on any definite description of Mrs. Larkin's daughter. There is an indistinct impression as of a mild someone in the last twenties, with neatly un.o.btrusive dress and rapidly forgotten features, but anything clearer is almost impossible to discern; she never remains still long enough to permit study. Her chair is usually empty, still rocking violently from her last hurried exit. Almost as soon as she regains her place in it Miss Larkin jumps up again, in obedience to a plaintively sweet request, and runs up to their fourth-floor suite to fetch her mother's scarf, her mother's sweater, her mother's embroidery silk, her mother's book or her mother's digestive tablets.

In the brief intervals between her dashes upstairs Miss Larkin knits desperately, as if making up for time out, on other scarfs or sweaters, all in that pale tint of lavender which is so subtly flattering to Mrs. Larkin's exquisitely delicate pallor. When each garment is finished Mrs. Larkin gracefully accepts it; it then becomes one more thing that her daughter may run upstairs to fetch. Upon infrequent occasions Miss Larkin has stolen time from her usual knitting to make a baby carriage robe for one of her school friends; Mrs. Larkin's wistful smile during these periods of neglect rends the heart of the beholder.

Outside interests are palpably impracticable for Miss Larkin; they would cut in too heavily on her personal messenger service. If, in a spirit of mild and kindly meant roguery, someone playfully mentions matrimony in connection with Miss Larkin, tears start in Mrs. Larkin's eyes and her lips tremble piteously with unspoken appeals.

It ends, always, in Miss Larkin's having to put down her knitting and run upstairs to bring her mother a fresh handkerchief and the smelling salts.

MRS. VIRGIL COMEE.

Mrs. Comee is unanimously admitted to be the outstanding figure in hotel intellectual circles. She is, as she herself not infrequently concedes, a woman of broad knowledge and high cultural attainments. This, she acknowledges with a deprecatory smile, is not solely due to her natural gifts; she owes not a little of it to her habitual environment of lofty culture and her exceptional opportunities of keeping in touch with the great contemporary minds.

From her plentiful discourse on the fascinating subject one learns that Mrs. Comee's home suburb-that favored place where she spends all of her year save the two hottest months-is inhabited almost entirely by people who do things. The verb to do and the noun things are not, in this connection, to be taken in any merely physical sense; it is understood that they refer to intellectual pursuits. As but a few examples of the types of intelligentsia who are her fellow residents in the community Mrs. Comee cites an artist whose drawings ornament some of the most widely circulated mail-order catalogues; an auth.o.r.ess who writes the descriptive rhapsodies under the pictured costumes in an important fas.h.i.+on magazine; and a composer, more than one of whose songs have been used as encores by a professional singer. Mrs. Comee speaks of these personages with perfect composure; it is plain to see that such people are her accustomed acquaintances.

And even among such lions one understands that Mrs. Comee has no difficulty in holding her own. She speaks with natural pride of the culture club of which she is the presiding officer, and which suspends its activities during her absence, thus giving the less intellectual members a chance to relax the mental strain during the torrid months. Mrs. Comee seldom tires of describing the notable work accomplished by the club. Its members have taken up, and, one gathers, put lingeringly down again, art, literature, eugenics, the drama and civic improvement. Logically, since Mrs. Comee has thus thoroughly plumbed these subjects, hers is the last word upon the porch on all of them.

But there is an even greater glamour about her. She has had the inestimable advantage of travel. Shortly after her honorable graduation from high school Mrs. Comee spent the month of July, 1896, in touring Europe. It follows, therefore, that she is a recognized authority upon European history, geography and customs, and she often gives little impromptu lectures upon them, while rocking gently on the porch. When really warmed to her subject Mrs. Comee will even fetch her photograph alb.u.m and give ill.u.s.trated travelogues. In the snapshots Europe figures chiefly as a background for Mrs. Comee, wearing the costume of her post-high-school period. She is shown feeding the doves in front of St. Mark's, standing by the lion of Lucerne, about to climb the Eiffel Tower, just completing the descent of the Eiffel Tower, and doing countless other appropriate and instructive things. These views do much to give the Continent that note of personal interest which one so often misses in professional photographs.

The hotel guests say that it is indeed a treat to listen to Mrs. Comee's conversation. Mrs. Comee, herself, generously grants one every possible opportunity of enjoying the privilege.

MRS. EARLE STALEY.

Almost immediately after one has met Mrs. Staley-with but the conventional interlude for the usual speculation that the day must be a scorching one in the city, and the customary concurrence in the opinion that humidity is infinitely harder to cope with than heat-she will put aside all generalities and explain, at some length, that the most arresting thing about her is her remarkable frankness. Half jokingly, she warns new acquaintances that they had best avoid her, if they are seeking for pleasing flattery; it is her invariable habit to speak her mind. In more serious vein Mrs. Staley goes on to say that it is at once her pride and her comfort always to know that, be the remainder of the world as deceitful as it may, her mind will, so long as she retains her faculties, be spoken.

It may not always be pleasant, Mrs. Staley avers, but she is not the one to let that cow her. She refuses to cover her true opinions with any cloak of evasion or ambiguity merely for the sake of easing some one's foolishly sensitive feelings. Thus, should her judgment of a friend's new frock be solicited, Mrs. Staley, if she thinks it unbecoming, promptly speaks her mind; more, she adds gratuitous bits of frankness by declaring that the color is unflattering, the material unattractive, the cut unskilled; and she ends by remarking that her friend must have been mentally unbalanced to have made such an ill-advised purchase.

If, on the contrary, Mrs. Staley does approve of the dress, she does not hesitate to admit it, frankly saying that it is infinitely less unsightly than many another in the friend's wardrobe. Should any friend not be looking her best, Mrs. Staley tells her of it immediately, with her refres.h.i.+ng bluntness. This procedure may, and often does, cause some little hard feeling, but Mrs. Staley generously overlooks it. As it is her whimsy to phrase it, if people don't like her frankness they can lump it. She must either speak her mind or else she must not speak at all.

There are many who feel that she makes an unfortunate choice.

MRS. WILMOT HOPPING.

Her health, so Mrs. Hopping says, is the main thing. Obviously, she deems any other consideration so poor a second that she does not even admit it into her scheme of living. Her life is arranged to the sole end of fostering that enviably excellent health with which beneficent nature has so liberally endowed her.

Naturally a life of such devotion entails its sacrifices. At the table, for instance, Mrs. Hopping can take no part in the light conversation around her. Her attention is concentrated upon choosing only those foods which go directly into nourishment, upon masticating each mouthful an impressively high number of times, and upon keeping score of the exact number of calories which she consumes at a sitting. On the porch Mrs. Hopping cannot settle down to soothing idleness; her daily schedule has it otherwise. She must spring up, when the time set for exercise arrives, and take a rapid walk, always over the same course, which she enlivens by inhaling deeply for six steps and exhaling grudgingly during the next six.

When her daily bathing hour, scheduled at just the correct distance from her last meal, comes around, Mrs. Hopping does not permit herself any indulgence in haphazard immersion. She walks determinedly to the water's edge, and stooping over-without bending the knees-applies a handful of the salt liquid to each wrist and to her forehead; not till then does she feel that she can safely give herself over to Neptune. While she disports herself amid the health-giving billows, a daughter, stationed on the beach with a watch, sees that she does not overstay her allotted time.

The most diverting entertainment cannot hold Mrs. Hopping one minute past her self-appointed bedtime; nor can she linger blissfully in bed of a morning. She bounds up immediately, when the tinkle of her alarm clock tells her that the last second of the hours of sleep necessary to perfect health has elapsed. Her rising and retiring, as everything else throughout her day, must be done at the physiological moment.

Mrs. Hopping shows herself a woman of adamant will power in her rigid adherence to the stringent regime under which she has placed herself. But it has its rewards, as Mrs. Hopping so proudly enumerates, in her cheerily brisk circulation, her imperturbable blood pressure, her un deviatingly correct pulse and her lavishly open pores. Indeed, if one were to make the deduction solely from her conversation, one would think that to Mrs. Hopping there were no other events of importance in the world. There are times, truthfully, when one finds oneself wis.h.i.+ng that she might, if but for a brief interval, touch upon some other, and perhaps some more general, topic of the day.

But her health, so Mrs. Hopping says, is the main thing.

MRS. RAMSAY BRACKET.

Her truly remarkable memory is perhaps the most striking of the many admirable traits with which Mrs. Bracket is equipped. It must undoubtedly have been of unusual retentiveness congenitally, and she has so developed it by many summers of rigorous training that she is now able to perform, without an effort, feats of recollection which are little short of startling. With never a moment's brain racking Mrs. Bracket can give you the name, address, approximate age, marital condition, social status and financial rating of every guest in the hotel, down to the most obscure transient; she can even add to each account intimate details of the subject's most personal concerns-details so minute that they would slip unperceived from any memory less highly schooled.

Figures themselves hold no terror for her; she has all the latest statistics at her tongue's tip-the number of times an evening that the Hopping girl dances with the Comee boy; the number of suitors imported from the city by the elder Miss Staley; the number of hours, to date, that the visiting belle from New Orleans has spent on the moonlit pier. Mrs. Bracket, as she sits at her pleasant task of punching holes in a potential centerpiece and carefully sewing them up again, is cordially ready to quote you the correct figures in any of such cases.

It is Mrs. Bracket who is the acknowledged head of the rocking-chair board of censors.h.i.+p. Thus far, none among the hotel guests has been stamped with her approval.

In fact, the only guest upon whom she can conscientiously bestow her thorough approval in every way is Mrs. Ramsay Bracket.

MR. GEORGE WILLIS.

It would be in no way overstating the case to call Mr. Willis, as many another admirer has called him before, the life of the hotel. It is impossible to conjure up a mental picture of the hotel front without visualizing his figure in its specially reserved rocking-chair on the end.

The gay frocks and sweaters of the ladies are given value by the dark note of his blue serge suit. To show that he has a fitting sense of appropriate attire for a seaside resort Mr. Willis affects navy blue serge suits, vaguely suggestive in cut of the uniform of a sea captain. He heightens this effect by wearing a crisp white yachting cap with a glistening black vizor and, as a concession to the summery weather, completes his costume with such cool touches as white canvas shoes and a white necktie fresh from the capable hands of the laundress.

No business drags him away to the city; an adequate income a.s.sures his being dependably on hand all summer long, standing ever ready to fetch a chair, to open a parasol, to pick up a dropped knitting needle, to make a fourth at bridge, to hold yarn, or to read aloud from the headlines-and to do it all with a geniality that verges on the jocose.

In fact, as a joker he is highly thought of. His humor depends almost entirely upon his personality; it is not, as the ladies agree, so much what Mr. Willis says as the way he says it. He has a trick of looking upon a sunny sky and saying: "A pretty nice day, if I do say so myself," which fairly convulses his hearers; while his dry dismissal of a rainy day as "Fine weather-for ducks" must really be heard to be appreciated.

He is in no way appalled by being oftentimes, for a stretch of midweek days, the only man about the porch; indeed, Mr. Willis seems to thrive on it. It is with enormous tact that he distributes his attentions, so that no one lady may read unintended meanings into them. Common talk has it that many wily spinsters have sought to draw him into matrimony, and some of the more optimistic element even hold to the idea that he will succ.u.mb yet.

But the summers flit by, changing Mr. Willis' hair from an interesting gray to a distinguished white, and he still doggedly remains a bachelor-thus conferring an inestimable boon upon some fortunate woman.

Ladies' Home Journal, September 1920.

An Apartment House Anthology.

THE GROUND FLOOR.

Mr. and Mrs. Cuzzens much prefer living on the ground floor, they often say. Sometimes, when Mrs. Cuzzens is really warmed up to it, she puts the thing even stronger, and announces to the world that she would turn down flat all offers to live on an upper floor, in this or any other apartment house in New York City, even if you were to become desperate at her firmness and present her with an apartment rent free.

In the first place Mrs. Cuzzens is never wholly at her ease in an elevator. One of her liveliest anecdotes concerns an aunt of hers on her mother's side who was once a pa.s.senger in an elevator which stopped short midway between floors, and doggedly refused to move either up or down. Fortunately it all ended happily. Cries for help eventually caught the attention of the janitor-it seemed little short of providential that he had always had quite a turn for messing around with machinery-and he succeeded in regulating the power so that Mrs. Cuzzens' aunt reached her destination practically as good as new. But the episode made a terrific impression on Mrs. Cuzzens.

Of course it is rather dark on the ground floor, but Mr. and Mrs. Cuzzens regard that as one of the big a.s.sets of their apartment. Mrs. Cuzzens had a pretty nasty example of the effects of an oversuns.h.i.+ny place happen right in her own family. Her sister-in-law-not, Mrs. Cuzzens is careful to specify, the wife of the brother in the insurance business, but the wife of the brother who is on the road for a big tire concern, and is doing very well at it-hung some French-blue draperies at her living-room windows. And in less than a year the sunlight turned those curtains from their original color to an unwholesome shade of greenish yellow. Why, the change was so marked that many people, seeing them in this state, almost refused to believe that they had ever been blue. Mrs. Cuzzens' sister-in-law, as is perfectly understandable, was pretty badly broken up about it. Naturally Mrs. Cuzzens would hate to have a thing like that happen in her own home.

There is another advantage to living on the ground floor. The rent there is appreciably smaller than it is on the stories above, although Mr. and Mrs. Cuzzens seldom if ever work this into the conversation. Well, it is easy to overlook it, in the press of more important reasons for occupying their apartment.

A Mean Eye for Freak News Mrs. Cuzzens has a fund, to date inexhaustible, of clean yet stimulating anecdotes, of which the one about the elevator and the one about the curtains are representative. She specializes in the unique. Hers is probably the largest collection in the country of stories of curious experiences, most of them undergone by members of her intimate circle. She is generous almost to a fault in relating them too. About any topic that happens to come up will be virtually certain to remind her of the funny thing that once happened to her Aunt Anna or the queer experience her Cousin Beulah had that time in Springfield.

Her repertory of anecdotes undoubtedly had much to do with attracting Mr. Cuzzens to her, for Mr. Cuzzens leans heavily to the out-of-the-ordinary himself. In his after-dinner reading of the newspaper he cheats a bit on the front-page items, just murmuring the headlines over, and gathering from them a rough idea-if you could really speak of Mr. Cuzzens as harboring a rough idea-of what is going on in the way of the conventional hold-ups and graft inquiries. But he casts a mean eye over the oddities in the day's news. He never misses the little paragraph about the man in Winsted, Connecticut, who intrusts a family of orphaned eggs to the care of a motherly cat, with gratifying results to one and all; or the report of the birth on an ocean liner, to a couple prominent in steerage circles, of a daughter, named Aquitania Wczlascki in commemoration of the event.

These specialties of Mr. and Mrs. Cuzzens work in together very prettily. They provide many an evening of instructive and harmless entertainment, while so far as expense goes, the only overhead is three cents for an evening paper.

Mr. Cuzzens puts on the slippers he got last birthday, and Mrs. Cuzzens unhooks a bit here and there as the evening wears on and she can feel reasonably sure that no one will drop in. As they sit about the grained-oak table in the glow of the built-in chandelier Mr. Cuzzens will read aloud some such fascinating bit of current history as the announcement of the birth, in Zanesville, Ohio, of a calf with two heads, both doing well. Mrs. Cuzzens will cap it with the description, guaranteed authentic, of a cat her mother's cousin once possessed which had a double set of claws on each foot.

Clever Mr. Cuzzens When the excitement of this has died down Mr. Cuzzens will find an item reporting that a famous movie star has taken a load off the public's mind by having her eyelashes insured for one hundred thousand dollars. That will naturally lead his wife to tell the one about the heavy insurance her Uncle David carried, and the perfectly terrible red tape his bereaved family had to go through before they could collect.

After twenty minutes or so pa.s.sed in their both listening attentively to Mrs. Cuzzens' recital, Mr. Cuzzens' eye, sharpened by years of training, will fall on an obscure paragraph telling how an apple tree near Providence was struck by lightning, which baked all the fruit. Mrs. Cuzzens will come right back with the story of how her little nephew once choked on a bit of the core of a baked apple, and the doctor said it might have been fatal if he had got there half an hour later.

And so it goes, back and forth, all evening long.