The Patient Observer Part 3

Of course, there are women who are serious and all that. There are a lot in the postgraduate department and some in the optional literature courses. But you ought to see them! And such grinds. None of us fellows stands a ghost of a chance with them. They take notes all the time and read all the references and learn them by heart. You can't jolly _them_. They wouldn't know a joke if you led them up to one and told them what it meant. I think coeducation is all played out, don't you?

Home is the only place for women, anyhow. Do you like your cigarette?"

The Patient Observer, it may possibly have been gathered before this, is somewhat of a sentimentalist. He liked his cigarette very well, but through the blue haze he looked at Philip and could not help thinking of the time--only two short years ago--when he, the Patient Observer, with his own eyes saw Philip borrow a dollar from his mother before setting out for an ice-cream parlour in the company of two girl cousins. The Patient Observer has changed little in the last two years; his hair may be a little thinner and his knowledge of doctors' bills a little more complete. But in Philip of to-day he found it hard to recognise the Philip of two years ago. And the marvels of the law of growth which he thus saw exemplified moved the Patient Observer to throw open the gates of pent-up eloquence. He lit his pipe and began to discourse to Philip on the world, on life, and on a few things besides.

And when it was time for both of us to go to bed, Philip stood up and said, "I wish I came every day. You don't know what a bore it is, listening to that drool the 'profs' hand you out up there." His fervent young spirit would not be silent until, with one magnificent gesture, he had swept the tobacco jar to the floor and shattered two electric lamps.

Then he went to his room and left me wondering at the vast mysteries that underlie the rough surface of the soph.o.m.ore's soul.

X

THE COMPLETE COLLECTOR--I

"I have given up books and pictures," said Cooper. "I now devote myself entirely to collecting samples of the world's wisdom."

"Proverbs, do you mean?" I asked.

"No, but the facts on which proverbs are based. You see, I grew tired of pictures when it got to be a question of bidding against millionaires for the possession of spurious old masters. The break came when Downes proved that my Velasquez was painted in 1896. His own, it turned out, was done in 1820; but even then, you see, he had the advantage over me.

So I concentrated on books. But I could not resist the temptation of glancing through my first editions now and then, and the pages began to give way. Then I tried Chinese porcelains. There, again, I had to compete against Downes, who ordered his agent to buy two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Chinese antiquities for the Louis XIV. room in his new Tudor palace. And, besides, this rather disconcerting thing happened: I had as my guest a mandarin who was pa.s.sing through New York on his way to Europe, and I showed him my collection of jades. 'There was only one collection like this in China some years ago,' I told him.

'Yes,' he replied, 'it was in my house when the foreign troops entered Peking in 1900.' So I decided to sell my porcelains.

"But of course I had, as you say, to collect something, and for a long time I could think of no field in which a cultivated taste and personal effort could make way against the compet.i.tion of mere brute millions.

And then, all at once, I hit upon proverbs. The suggestion came in a rather peculiar fas.h.i.+on. It seems that there was an eccentric old poet on Long Island who spent many years in collecting all sorts of inanimate freaks, odds and ends, and rubbish. When he died they found among his treasures a purse made out of a sow's ear and a whistle made from a pig's tail. I saw my opportunity at once. The eccentric old man, by acquiring two such extraordinary _objets d'art_ had indulged himself in a sneer at the world's proverbial wisdom. I would come to the rescue of our threatened stock of experience by gathering the facts that upheld it. I would make it, besides, more than the selfish hobby of the private collector who gives the world only a very little share of the pleasure he tastes. I would make my collection a museum and a laboratory. Instead of reading about the wise ant and the busy bee people should come and see them in the life. It was the difference between reading about animals in a book and seeing them in the life."

"And have you succeeded?" I asked.

"Beyond all expectations," he replied. "Come, I will take you through my galleries," and he showed the way into the queerest garden I have ever seen. It was as if a menagerie and a museum had been brought together in the open air. Between enclosures and cages which harboured animals of all species, ran long tables supporting gla.s.s cases like those used for exhibiting coins or rare ma.n.u.scripts.

"Now here," he said, stopping before a small chest with a gla.s.s top, "here is my collection of straws."

"Straws?" I said.

"Yes. It is small but select. Here, for instance, is the last straw that broke the camel's back. Some one suggests that it must have been a Merry Widow hat, but that's jesting, of course. This again is the straw that showed which way the wind blew and enabled a politician to change sides and get a reputation as a reformer. We will see the politician further on." I noticed then for the first time that the iron-barred cages contained human beings as well as beasts. "Here is a handful of straws which an entire conference of theologians spent three months in splitting. This," pointing to a little mannikin about four inches high, "is the man of straw whose defeat in debate gave one of our United States Senators his brilliant reputation. And this, finally, is a handful of straws out of the pile on which Jack Daw slept when he gave up his bed to buy his wife a looking-gla.s.s, or, as some one has suggested, an automobile.

"And now observe the advantages of my method. The student, having been shown the straw that broke the camel's back, will, if he is a cautious student, well drilled in the methods of modern research, demand to see the camel. Well, here it is," and Cooper turned toward a large enclosure where several members of the family _Camelidae_ were peacefully browsing, with the exception of one that lay in a corner with drooping head and closed eyes, apparently lifeless. "It's been hard work, of course, and expensive, keeping a broken-backed camel alive, but, encouraged by such examples of the remarkable vitality of animals as may be seen for instance in the Democratic donkey, I have persisted and succeeded. This rather thin-legged creature near the fence is the camel that tried to pa.s.s through the needle's eye, and the one close beside him is the one swallowed by the man who strained at a gnat. Harrington a.s.serts that he has never been able to see how either phenomenon is possible, but the problem is only half as difficult as it appears. For it is evident that if a camel were small enough to pa.s.s through the eye of a needle, there would be comparatively little trouble in swallowing him. And, speaking of needles, it has been a constant regret that my collection is still without a needle found in a haystack."

I have not the s.p.a.ce to enumerate one t.i.the of what Cooper showed me. As we hurried past the cages containing numerous specimens of _h.o.m.o Sapiens_, he contented himself with pointing out a physician who had failed to cure himself by psycho-therapeutics; a shoemaker who by sticking to his last failed to become a railroad president, though in the course of time he could tell where every man's shoe pinched; an importer who, in defiance of the Pure Food law, put new wine into old bottles, and labelled them Bordeaux; and a harmless-looking man of middle age, who continued to smile and smile, and had played Iago, Macbeth, and Hamlet's uncle. Before a st.u.r.dy-looking man dressed in working-clothes Cooper stopped for a moment and said, "Mr. C. W. Post and Mr. James Farley a.s.sure me that this is the rarest item in my collection."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"It is a union labourer who is worthy of his hire," Cooper said.

XI

THE EVERLASTING FEMININE

I am convinced that the easiest business in the world must be the writing of epigrams on Woman. I have been reading, of late, in a new volume of "Maxims and Fables." It came to me with the compliments of the author, in lieu of a small debt which he has kept outstanding for several years. Although the writer contradicts himself on every third or fourth page, I am justified in calling the book a very able bit of work for the reason that the ordinary book on this subject contradicts itself on every other page. No one who glances through this volume will fail to understand why the psychology of Woman should be a favourite subject with very young and very light thinkers. It is the only form of literature that calls for absolutely no equipment in the author. Writing a play, for instance, presupposes some acquaintance with a few plays already written. No one can succeed as a novelist without a fair knowledge of the technique of millinery or a tolerable mastery of stock exchange slang. The writer of scientific articles for the magazines must have fancy, and the writer of advertis.e.m.e.nts must have poetry and wit.

But to produce a book of epigrams on Woman requires nothing but an elementary knowledge of spelling and the courage necessary to put the product on the market.

The secret of the thing is so simple that it would be a pity to keep it from the comparatively few persons who have failed to discover it. It consists entirely in the fact that whatever one says about Woman is true. And not only that, but every statement that can possibly be made on the subject is sure to ring true, which is much better even than being true. On every other subject under the sun there is always one opinion which sounds a little more convincing than every other opinion.

There are, for example, people who insist that birds of a feather do not necessarily flock together more frequently than birds of a different feather do; and they will a.s.sert that if you step on a worm with real firmness the chances of his turning are much less than if you did not step on him at all. Nevertheless, there is undeniably a truer ring about the a.s.sertion that birds do flock together than about the a.s.sertion that they do not, and we accept more readily the worm that turns than the worm that remains peaceful under any provocation. But this is not the case with aphorisms about the gentler s.e.x. There, everything sounds as plausible as everything else.

Let me be specific. Right at the beginning of the volume to which I have alluded, I came across the following apothegm: "Long after Woman has obtained the right to vote she will continue to face the wrong way when she steps from a street-car." "How true," I said to myself. Well, a few days later, while glancing through the pages at the end of the volume, my eye fell on the following lines: "Now that Woman is learning to face the right way when she steps from a street-car, she has demonstrated her right to the ballot." "How true." But I had scarcely expressed my approval when it occurred to me that I had read the same thing elsewhere in the book. And when I searched out the earlier pa.s.sage and compared the two and found that they did not say the same thing, but quite the opposite thing, it did not seem to make a very great difference after all. They both sounded plausible. I recited one sentence aloud and then the other, and they rang equally true; and the more I repeated them the truer they rang.

Delighted with my chance discovery I proceeded to make a thorough study of "Maxims and Fables" with the object of bringing together the author's widely scattered observations on the same topic under their appropriate heads. The work went slowly at first; but after a little while I found I could pick out a maxim and turn almost instinctively to one that directly contradicted it. The occupation is fascinating as well as instructive. It sheds a new light on the conditions of human knowledge and the workings of the human mind. Consider, if you will, the following half-dozen sentences that I succeeded in compiling in less than ten minutes. They all deal with the question of a woman's age:

"A woman is as old as she looks.

"A woman is as old as she says.

"A woman is as old as she would like to be.

"A woman is as old as the only man that counts would have her be.

"A woman is as old as any particular situation requires.

"A woman is as old as her dearest woman friends say she is."

Let any one read these maxims to himself quietly, and admit that not only would each of them impress him as true if found standing by itself, but that they all ring quite as true when taken together. But that is by no means all. It may be shown that if all these propositions are true, taken singly or together, the negative of each and all of these propositions is also true. Thus:

"A woman is seldom as old as she looks.

"A woman is never as old as she says.

"No woman is just the age she would like to be.

"A woman is rarely as old or as young as the one man that counts would have her be.

"Few women are ever of the age that a particular situation requires.

"No woman is as old as her dearest woman friends say she is."

How all these opposites can be equally true, I will not undertake to explain. It is probably inherent in the very nature of the subject. The French, a people wise in experience, knew what they were about when they laid it down that if you have a mystery to solve, you must look for the woman. What they meant was, that, having found a woman, you may make any statements you please about her; the world will accept them unquestioningly and your puzzle will consequently be solved.

Sometimes, however, it has seemed to me that a possible reason for this very curious fact may be found in the established fas.h.i.+on of speaking about men as individuals and about women as a cla.s.s and a type. And that cla.s.s or type we saddle with all the faults and virtues of all its individual members. When Smith tells me that his automobile cost him three times as much as I know he has paid for it, I record my impressions by telling Jones as soon as I meet him that the man Smith is an incorrigible liar. But when Mrs. Smith tells me that her family is one of the oldest in Ma.s.sachusetts, which I have every reason to believe is not so, I invariably say to myself or to some one else, "A woman's appreciation of the truth is like her appreciation of music; she likes it best when she closes her eyes to it."

Or Smith may be a very straightforward man, given to plain-speaking, and when you ask him how he liked your last dinner he may say that in his opinion the wine was better than the conversation. In that case you will probably tell your wife that Smith has shown himself to be an insufferable a.s.s, and that you have decided to cut his acquaintance. But when Mrs. Smith tells you that your expensive dinners are rather beyond what a man of your modest income should go in for, you merely writhe and smile; only on the train the next day you will say to Harrington, "Has it ever occurred to you that a woman loves the truth, not because it is the truth, but because it hurts? Take a cigarette."

For these reasons I would urge every one who can possibly find time, to write a book of maxims about Woman, provided he has not done so already.

In the first place, as I have shown, it is an easy and delightful occupation, which, for that very reason, is in danger of becoming overcrowded. But there is another reason for losing no time in the matter. Now and then I have the foreboding that some day in the near future the world may suddenly lose its habit of believing that, where women are concerned, two and two are four and are not four at the same time. And then there will be no more writing of epigrams on Woman. For it is evident that there can be no point to an epigram if its a.s.sertions must be qualified. The situation will become impossible when students of psychology, instead of writing, "Woman likes the truth for the same reason that she likes olives--to satisfy a momentary craving," will be compelled to write, "Some women tell the truth, and some women do not,"

"Some women mean yes when they say no, and some women mean no," "Some women think with their hearts, and some think with their minds." That little word "some" will settle the epigram writer's business, and an interesting form of literature will disappear.

Not that in some respects its disappearance will fail to arouse regret.