Nonsenseorship Part 7

well done to 'imself."

The wowzers are more active in Hawaii, the most temperate portion of Polynesia, than in the Maori isles of New Zealand. A law pa.s.sed at the last session of the Hawaiian legislature prohibits "any person over fourteen years of age from appearing upon the streets of Honolulu in a bathing suit unless covered suitably by an outer garment reaching at least to the knees." There is a ferment in Honolulu over the arrest and punishment of offenders against this new censors.h.i.+p. It is the result of the control by the spiritual, or perhaps, lineal, descendants of the first South Sea censors, of the great grand-children of those men who wore the girdles of leaves at the landing of the Marlboro school teacher a hundred years ago. The girdle-wearers are members of the Hawaiian legislature--soon to be succeeded by j.a.panese-native-born--and the censors, likely, are wives of financiers and sugar factors. Again the feeble remnant of the Hawaiian race voted against the girdle.

A friend of mine, grandson of the estimable missionary and his bride of the New England of a century ago, thus comments upon the law in a paper sent to me:--

The facts which caused the pa.s.sage of the law were, that certain residents of Waikiki were donning their bathing suits at home, walking across and along the public streets to the sea and returning in the same state of undress.

If the bathing suits had been of the old-style no objection to this would have been made. The woman's bathing suit of the olden days were a c.u.mbrous swaddling garment, high-necked, long-sleeved, full-skirted, bloomer-breeched and stockinged.

Simultaneously with the outbreak of the street parade era, above noted, there came with spontaneous-combustion-like rapidity, a radical change in the style of female bathing suits "on the street at Waikiki."

First the sleeves, then the stockings, then the skirts, then the main portion of the garment covering the legs, successively disappeared, until the low-necked, sleeveless, legless one-piece suit became "the thing"; and women clad in garments scantier than the scantiest on the ballet stage, were parading Kalakaua avenue in the vicinity of the Moana hotel, to the scandal and disgust of some; the devouring gaze of others; and the interested inspection of whomsoever chose to inspect!

It was a startling sight to the uninitiated--probably unduplicated in any other civilized country.

The South Pacific or the heart of Africa would probably have to be visited to find virtuous women so scantily clad, making such exhibition of their persons in public-more particularly on the public streets.

This scantiness of dress became the subject of protest, of justification, of discussion in press, in public and in private throughout the community.

The practice was violently attacked as tending to lewdness and scandal; as vigorously defended as a question of personal taste and liberty, and as a matter concerning safety and comfort in swimming.

Those "old-style suits" he refers to, "full-skirted, bloomer-breeched"

were the G.o.dly ones brought to Hawaii by the censors, but which gradually disappeared with the influx of rich tourists from America, and the importation by Honolulu merchants of the flimsier and less concealing kind. This new generation of whites that has sought escape from the "c.u.mbrous, swaddling garment" embraces the flapper, who at Waikiki is a beautiful and wholesome sight. Browned by years of exposure to the beach sun, charmingly modelled, and with the grace and freedom of limb of the surf-board rider and canoeist, she has no consciousness of guilt in her emergence dripping from the sea, in her lying in the breeze upon the sand, nor in her walks to and from her bungalow nearby. And she refuses to be censored.

The commentator, proprietor of the oldest newspaper in the islands, and himself a noted diplomat, lawyer and revolutionist--he took up a rifle against Liliuokalani--says so:--

The law has been observed by a few, ignored by a few, and caricatured by the many. It is not an uncommon thing to see a woman walking the streets in Waikiki in the scantiest of bathing suits, with drapery of the flimsiest suspended from her shoulders and floating behind upon the breeze.

The police have made a few feeble and spasmodic attempts to persuade observance of the law, with some ill-advised attempts to enforce individual ideas of propriety on the beach itself.

On the whole, the law is either openly and flagrantly violated or rendered farcical by the contemptuous manner of its semi-observance.

And, cautiously but firmly, the grandson of the first missionaries to Hawaii, himself living six decades in Honolulu, a church member and supporter of all evangelical and commercial progress, gives advice to the people of his territory. Urging that those opposed to the bathing suit law try legally to secure its repeal, but that all obey it while it is on the statute books, he says:--

As to the question of attire on the beach, there are modest and immodest women to be found everywhere, regardless of their clothes. It is impossible to legislate modesty into a person who is innately immodest, and it is therefore useless to try and do so. The attire of a woman on the beach at Waikiki as well as her conduct elsewhere, should therefore be left to the individual woman herself.

That is the last word of a very shrewd, wealthy, experienced, religious son of censors. But wowzerism dies hard in America or in the South Seas. The Anglo-Saxon American has it in his blood as an inheritance from the rise of Puritanism four hundred years ago, while with many it is an idiosyncrasy to be explained by the glands regulating personality. In fact, I feel that this is the enemy the would-be free must fight. We must attack and extirpate the wowzerary gland.

REFORMERS: A HYMN OF HATE

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dorothy Parker hating Reformers.]

DOROTHY PARKER

I hate Reformers; They raise my blood pressure.

There are the Prohibitionists; The Fathers of Bootlegging.

They made us what we are to-day-- I hope they're satisfied.

They can prove that the Johnstown flood, And the blizzard of 1888, And the destruction of Pompeii Were all due to alcohol.

They have it figured out That anyone who would give a gin daisy a friendly look Is just wasting time out of jail, And anyone who would stay under the same roof With a bottle of Scotch Is right in line for a cozy seat in the electric chair.

They fixed things all up pretty for us; Now that they have dried up the country, You can hardly get a drink unless you go in and order one.

They are in a nasty state over this light wines and beer idea; They say that lips that touch liquor Shall never touch wine.

They swear that the Eighteenth Amendment Shall be improved upon

Over their dead bodies-- Fair enough!

Then there are the Suppressors of Vice; The Boys Who Made the Name of Cabell a Household Word.

Their aim is to keep art and letters in their place; If they see a book Which does not come right out and say That the doctor brings babies in his little black bag, Or find a painting of a young lady Showing her without her rubbers, They call out the militia.

They have a mean eye for dirt; They can find it In a copy of "What Katy Did at School,"

Or a snapshot of Aunt Bessie in bathing at Sandy Creek, Or a picture postcard of Moonlight in Bryant Park.

They are always running around suppressing things, Beginning with their desires.

They get a lot of excitement out of life,-- They are constantly discovering The New Rabelais Or the Twentieth Century Hogarth.

Their leader is regarded As the representative of Comstock here on earth.

How does that song of Tosti's go?-- "Good-bye, Sumner, good-bye, good-bye."

There are the Movie Censors, The motion picture is still in its infancy,-- They are the boys who keep it there.

If the film shows a party of clubmen tossing off ginger ale, Or a young bride dreaming over tiny garments, Or Douglas Fairbanks kissing Mary Pickford's hand, They cut out the scene And burn it in the public square.

They fix up all the historical events So that their own mothers wouldn't know them.

They make Du Barry Mrs. Louis Fifteenth, And show that Anthony and Cleopatra were like brother and sister, And announce Salome's engagement to John the Baptist, So that the audiences won't go and get ideas in their heads.

They insist that Sherlock Holmes is made to say, "Quick, Watson, the crochet needle!"

And the state pays them for it.

They say they are going to take the sin out of cinema If they perish in the attempt,-- I wish to G.o.d they would!

And then there are the All-American Crabs; The Brave Little Band that is Against Everything.

They have got up the idea That things are not what they were when Grandma was a girl.

They say that they don't know what we're coming to, As if they had just written the line.

They are always running a temperature Over the modern dances, Or the new skirts, Or the goings-on of the younger set.

They can barely hold themselves in When they think of the menace of the drama; They seem to be going ahead under the idea That everything but the Pa.s.sion Play Was written by Avery Hopwood.

They will never feel really themselves Until every theatre in the country is razed.

They are forever signing pet.i.tions Urging that cigarette-smokers should be deported, And that all places of amus.e.m.e.nt should be closed on Sunday And kept closed all week.

They take everything personally; They go about shaking their heads, And sighing, "It's all wrong, it's all wrong,"-- They said it.

I hate Reformers; They raise my blood pressure.

PROHIBITION

[Ill.u.s.tration: Frank Swinnerton contemplating, from the Tight Little Isle, the two cla.s.ses of prigs developed by Prohibition; those who accept it and those who rebel.]

FRANK SWINNERTON

I shall never forget the shock I received when an American woman, newly arrived in England, gave me her impressions of London. She was distinctly pleased with the town, and when I rather foolishly asked if she had been terrified by our celebrated policemen, she said, "Why, no. I was in a taxicab yesterday, and the driver went right on past the policeman's hand, stealing round where he'd no business to go. And the policeman just said, 'Here, where you going? D'you want the whole of England?' Why, in New York, if he'd done that, he'd have been in prison inside of five minutes!"