TURNS ABOUT TOWN
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY

By ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY

Turns About Town

Men and Books and Cities

Broome Street Straws

Walking-Stick Papers

Peeps at People

Booth Tarkington

The Memoir To:
Joyce Kilmer: Poems
Essays and Letters

TURNS ABOUT
TOWN

BY
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY

NEW

YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1921,
By George H. Doran Company
Printed in the United States of America

CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING
THE
DEDICATION
OF THIS BOOK
TO JOHN BUNKER, ESQ^RE

The Players,
16 Gramercy Park,
New York City,
June 10, 1921.

Dear John:

I am, with your permission, dedicating to you a new book of mine—that it, on condition that you help me read the proofs. The book is to be called "Turns About Town." It will be published sometime this autumn.

Ever yours,
Bob.

To: John Bunker, Esq^re

New York,
521 West 148th Street,
June 12, 1921.

Dear Bob:

You can't intimidate me by any such threat. On the contrary, I think I shall be secretly (and tremendously) pleased. As for the proofs, all I have to say is (in the words of the stage villain), "Produce your proofs!"

Always, dear Bob,
Sincerely yours,
John.

To: Robert Cortes Holliday, Esq^re

FOREWORD

MORE than half of these pieces were syndicated in a number of American newspapers by The Central Press Association of New York. Several others of them originally appeared in The Bookman. "Literary Lives" has been amplified since it was written for the New York Times as a review of the "Dictionary of National Biography," Second Supplement, Volumes II and III. "Only She Was There" and "Former Tenant of His Room" are reprinted from the New York Evening Post. "The Sexless Camera" was contributed to a magazine called The International. "I Know an Editor" was written at the invitation of a gentleman whose name I cannot recall, and whether or not he ever used it in whatever publication it was with which he was connected I do not know.

I thank all these friends of mine for permitting me to here reprint these articles.

R. C. H.

New York, 1921.

CONTENTS

TURNS ABOUT TOWN

CHAPTER I
THE HOTEL GUEST

SOME people just go to a hotel (sometimes referred to as "an hotel") and stay awhile and go away again. And think nothing about the matter.

Of course, some may complain more or less at the place about the "service." Or swank round outside about the address, saying carelessly: "Oh! yes: at the Blackstone, you know." Or again, if it's a rather inexpensive place, remark to friends: "Isn't it a funny hole! But the cuisine is excellent. You'd be surprised! That's why I stop there. And then it's much more homey, too, than those garish places."

Now I myself am a fan for hotels.

If I was a rich man I'd do like an aristocratic and restless young man I know, who used to go to one New York hotel about twelve at night (after the evening's entertainment) and leave a call for ten in the morning, when he would get up and drive to another hotel, check in, eat lunch and dinner there, and move on to a third New York hotel that night. A cheerful way he had of adding variety to his life.

He was a highly agreeable youth, this chap. Always "wore" a silver-headed cane. I'm sorry to have to say that he is now in jail. Yep! You see, he had many attractive qualities, but dependability was not a feature of his equipment. However, his is a resilient nature, and, fortunately, he is an epicure by temperament. I was rather distressed, myself, when I heard that he was in jail; and other of his friends that I met also were decidedly disturbed about him. One day one of them got a letter from him (it was in France, you know, that he was then in jail), a bubbling, delightful letter (just like the youth), in which he declared with much gusto that the jail he was in had the best menu of any jail in France.

But about hotels. Oh, yes!

I always like those huge, brown-paper laundry bags they have hanging up, pressed beautifully flat, in the rooms, closets or bathrooms of hotels. You can't roll up your laundry all in one wad and thrust it into one of these bags, because this would tear the bag. The way to do is to put in, for instance, first your collars, then, say, your sox, follow perhaps with your shirts, and so on. In hotels of the very first water, you have observed, a neat little pocket is attached to the outside of the bag, into which you have the fun of pinning your laundry slip, all elaborately made out.

Next thing, of course, is to get your laundry started on its way. And here come up a view of the nice nuances of hotels. You gotta watch your Ps and Qs in these matters or you're likely to get a black-eye at your hotel. All right in a modest sort of place just to holler down the telephone for a boy. Then you say to boy, waving hand toward objects: "Laundry to go down, suit to be pressed, hat to be ironed, shoes to be polished, letters to be mailed," and so forth. Boy gathers up miscellaneous collection of articles and proceeds upon these divers assignments. Presto! Nothing further to detain you.

But suppose you have gone in for a little more class in the matter of your hotel—Statler, or something like that. Then you find much more of a ritual to life. To accomplish your existence requires thought, a clear head—and time. You pay the penalty of the dignity of pomp and circumstance. No large, off-hand, free and easy manner about sending up a boy. The "operator" knows nothing of boys. In the matter of your laundry you may request her to connect you with the "bell captain," through whose agency (but not otherwise) a boy may be procured. One message. In the matter of your suit you may request to be connected with the "valet service." Message two. And so on.

Then you sit you down and await the procession. Or, if you prefer, contemplate the spectacle of life by looking out at the window.

You fee Buttons. Lapse of time.

Boots (as Dickens calls him) arrives—what probably here is a porter—for shoes. Then you have an excellent opportunity (which may not occur again during the day) for a slight period of philosophical meditation, or to whistle a tune, before the valet appears.

In such places as I am describing it is not etiquette at all (though it may seem to you the simplest way of doing the thing) to call a bellboy to get down your bag. The porter does that—and through the correct channel, that is by way of the freight elevator. And, say, something goes wrong with your ice-water pipe. You are not to outrage hotel decency here. What is necessary for you to procure is a waiter. Waiters attend to your inner wants.

I like best the character of valet when he is English (either so by birth, or this by self-cultivation); wears a skirt coat, immaculately pressed, and a "buttonhole"; advances into the room in the attitude of a bow, and comes to a pause in the pose of one listening with deep and profoundly respectful attention to the haughty utterance of a stage earl. Though, indeed, there is an element of disquiet in your being thus elevated to the Peerage if, as with me, the suit you turn over to this unexceptionable servitor is of Hirt, Snuffler and Muss manufacture, and growing a trifle frail in the seat.

The same thing is true of bath-rooms. I don't, of course, mean that bath-rooms perform the valet act. But that the more aristocratic in hotels you get the more likely you are, so to say, to get into hot water in bath-rooms. Like this:

If you get into a bathtub which is not quite the last word in bathtubs, that is a bathtub which has legs and spigots to turn on the water, you know where you are at all the while. You turn on the hot water in the amount desired. It comes out of the hot water spout. As desired you turn on the cold water. Out of the cold water spout comes it.

But, as you know, the last word in bathtubs is not simple and democratic like that. It is built onto the floor and has a clock-like dial on the wall. Dial marked at different points: "Cold," "Medium," "Hot," "Off." Turn little handle to regulate temperature and flow of water. All out of same pipe. Yes—but—dial untruthful—very. "Off" scalds you; "Medium" freezes you. Bad time trying to take last word in baths.

"Tub or shower?" Maybe you say "shower." And draw one of those police-court cells. Except the door, no opening in the little, square, completely cement room but the small hole in the center of the floor through which the water runs away. But that's not the way to look at it. These little catacomb-like chambers are æsthetic in their ascetic character. You may entertain yourself by fancying that you are St. Jerome, or somebody like that. In here nothing that it will hurt can get wet, and you can have a fine time making the whole room a merry-go-round of splashes. One disturbing thought may occur to you. If the door should stick you might not be found until the hotel got worried about your bill, when perhaps it would be too late.

Still, I think the chummiest bath-rooms are those with a bay-window; very reprehensible those which have no hooks on which to hang your pajamas and razor strop.

Then there are those hotels so far-seeing into the possibilities of evil chance and so solicitous of your equanimity that they provide your pin cushion with one suspender button. I suppose the thought is to impress you with the idea that nothing for your comfort, even down to the smallest detail, is forgotten. Still, though I do not know that such an untoward incident ever happened, it is within the range of human possibility that a man might be shorn of two suspender buttons at once. If, further, the hotel management were co-ordinated with the gentlemen's underwear business a safety pin would be served along with the suspender button—in view of the singular fact that, until your wife has taken a reef in them, all nether garments are much too great in girth for any figure at all approximating normal.

Working, however, as it does, with human material no hotel can get away with perfection. For, as Dr. Johnson observed, "a fallible being will fail somewhere." It was in San Francisco recently that three days were required for me to recover a suit sent in the morning to be pressed by that afternoon. This mischance was occasioned by three circumstances. To wit: goblins (presumably) made away with the ticket attached to it; the hotel tailor fell indisposed with (I hope) leprosy; and his assistant had a slight mental infirmity, in other words he was seven times an idiot.

Reverse English in Los Angeles a few days later. When one night I found neatly hung on the coat frame in my closet a suit of excellent material, of fashionable design, and seemingly of virgin character. I reported the matter to the third assistant manager. One criticism only I have to make of that suit. It was too confoundedly tight.

Then, of course, even at the best places (I almost think particularly in the best places) you are likely any time to find under your door in the morning a telephone message stamped "Rush," directing you to call so-and-so "as soon as possible"—and dated 5:17½ two days earlier. Or, on coming in you are handed by the clerk a memorandum which states that Mr. Cohan telephoned. Such matters, you reflect, are retrogressive. If you are unacquainted with any gentleman of the name of Mr. Cohan, so it may very well be that the guest here who is a friend of Mr. Cohan received notice that your friend Mr. Sloan telephoned. And there you are!

My friend Harry Heartydrop (who, I declare! looks rosier even than before the middle of January, 1920) has adopted a hotel life altogether of late. He explains to me that the advantage of this is the new side-line activity of numerous compassionate bell captains, who, it seems—but that would be telling.

One of the pleasantest things, I think, about hotels is the "night maid service" furnished at fashionable places. When you come in you find your light burning and so do not break your shins, and your bed is "turned down" for you. Very softening to the spirit, this. In a kind of a sort of a hazy way one's thoughts turn back to the maternal solicitude which used to "tuck" one "in."

Good night!

CHAPTER II
A HUMORIST MISFITS AT A MURDER TRIAL

ARE you in on the great Crime Wave, brother? Almost everybody is, I guess, in one way or another. What's your particular line? Murderer, bandit, burglar, mortally wounded innocent bystander, juror, witness, or victim? The police are in on it, too; every once in awhile one of them gets blackjacked, or something like that.

I had the flu bad enough, when that was the big thing going; but somehow so far I myself have escaped being caught in the Crime Wave. This gives me the great advantage over most people of being a detached spectator of the rollicking game.

I have a friend, though, who was caught up just a few days ago. He has been telling me all about it. Murder case.

This fellow is a sort of author. He had served a time or two as a juror in the Supreme Court of New York County. In that building down by the City Hall. But he says those cases bored him terribly. They were chicken-feed sort of rows, generally concerned with the question of how many dollars and fractions thereof X had occasioned the loss of to Z by reason of his failure to deliver such and such a quantity of (say) beeswax before the drop in the market of 39.7¼ cents, as called for by telephone agreement, possibly. The "Court" (a nice, pink and grey old fellow) would go to sleep, with his mouth open, during the drone of the legal argument, and be awakened automatically (apparently by some change in atmospheric conditions) at the moment required for him to begin his charge to the jury. Occasionally, he would come semi-to for an instant before this, and indistinctly utter the words, "Objection sustained."

My friend's chief impression of these proceedings is his recollection of one phenomenon which he observed. Not long after the opening of the presentation of X's side of the case he saw very clearly that Z hadn't a leg to stand on. It was ridiculous that he had the face to come into court with an attempt to question the truth of facts which were as apparent to the naked eye as the Woolworth Building. My friend felt it needless to pay any further attention to the foolish formalities of the argument. If he had not had an uneasy feeling that he might get pinched for this, he would have gone to sleep, like the Judge.

But those were dull days in the jury business.

A little later my friend gets some sort of a ticket instructing him to call and talk things over with a gentleman having the university degree of Commissioner of Jurors. This gentleman asks my friend if he has ever been arrested on a criminal charge, if he is opposed to capital punishment, and if he has any prejudice against Episcopalians. My friend is a man of liberal mind, and replies that he would just as soon hang an Episcopalian as anybody else. "You're on," said the gentleman, reaching for a blotter; and signed him up. My friend didn't know exactly for what. But the gentleman said everything was all right, they might not call on my friend for a long time, and then perhaps it would be a short case.

Sometime back was all this. My friend had almost forgotten about his acquaintance with the Commissioner. Then all of a sudden the gong sounds and the great Crime Wave is on. Detectives dash madly about with shotguns. A jeweller is shot every day after lunch and a subway ticket-seller is robbed directly after every train starts. My friend hurries home early because everybody is fined who is caught on any paved street after dark, and there in his letter-box is the summons from his old friend the Commissioner, who apparently has borne him in mind all this while.

On the document is printed by a printing-press, "Jack Hammond vs. The People of the State of New York." And on it is written with a pen my friend's name, before the printed words "Special Juror." It very urgently invites my friend to appear at ten o'clock four days distant at the Criminal Courts Building and there "await further order of the Court."

You get off the subway at Brooklyn Bridge, you know, and go, past the Municipal Building, up Centre Street. A district around behind the "lanes" (as they say of steamship travel) of general traffic, and one infrequently traversed by my friend. He was much interested in the spectacle hereabout. Buildings labelled Public Health on this hand, buildings labelled Public Records on that. Then you come to that prison as gruesome in its name as the Tower of London is romantic in its connotation—the Tombs. The structure itself, a cluster of rather slender wings, rises from behind its dark walls with an element of grace, in contrast to that chill, squat, mouldering pile which begot and bequeathed the historic name. Ugh! though, those barred windows, row upon row, give a fellow such qualms as do the ugly symbols of our mortality. Even though you ain't done nothin', make you feel sorta faint like inside!

There in the south wall is a little door, like a rabbit burrow, with a little group about it, and quite a small bustle going on. Standing in this bit of a doorway, as though she had something to do in the way of belonging there, is a queer, oval body who looks much as though she might be what is called an "apple woman." Marked "Visitors' Entrance," this door. What is it all the people on this side of the street are pausing to look at over there?

A cab is drawn up. From this lightly steps (or flashes) a dizzy dream. "Floppy" hat, scant skirt awhirl, pink-hued stockings gleaming to the height of the full curve behind the knee, tall satin pump-heels dancing the wearer on her toes—she swirls through the dark doorway. "They all have their wimmin," remarks a blousy-looking loiterer to my friend.

At the north, three stories up, the prison connects with the courts building by that fabled structure the "bridge of sighs."

Lively scene before the main entrance to this edifice on Centre Street. Streams of figures hurrying up the broad front steps—on their way to a busy day at the height of the crime season. Taxis flying up and discharging chattering groups as at a theatre. Open pops a taxi door, out leap three. A couple of very hard-looking young men, of that sawed-off, stocky stature frequently observed in this type of very hard-looking young man. Elegantly dressed, these; between them one of "Oh!-you-beautiful-doll" type. Rapidly they make their way up the steps, as though very well acquainted with the place.

Regular jam inside. My friend learned from an attendant that his particular destination was two flights up. Great crush wedging into the elevator. Elevator man calls out merrily to an acquaintance he observes outside his door: "It's a great life if you don't weaken!"

Threads his way, my friend, around the balcony, so to say, upstairs. Centre of building open from ground floor to roof. Effect: spacious, beautiful, ornamented in the richness of a house of grand opera. Finds the right door. Card on the wall nearby. Several persons (tough-looking youths in caps and soft collars) reading it. It lists previous day's proceedings in this court room. Says: So-and-so; Murder; Indicted (or something like that). Then the names of attorneys for the defense given. Second line: So-and-so; Murder; etc. Third line: So-and-so; Murder. Fourth line: So-and-so; Grand Larceny. Next line: So-an-so; Rape. Next: Murder. And so on. Sure, my friend thinks, I've got to the real shop this time. He has a few moments yet, and so he strolls over to a door at the opposite side of the building. 'Nother card there. Same sort of thing: murder, murder, grand larceny, homicide, murder, murder. (If you don't believe it, go down there and look at those cards.) "Holy cat!" says my friend to himself, "comparatively little of this crime stuff gets into the papers, after all, don't it? I never heard of any of these cases."

Enters court room. Takes a seat. Room soon filled. Now in my friend's experience as a petit juror he had found himself among a rather grotesque company of very small characters, frequently somewhat seedy in outward effect. Here he was much struck by the decidedly first-rate quality in appearance of practically every man in the room. Also, before, he had observed with a good deal of annoyance that a court of law could consume about twenty-nine times the time in accomplishing a very simple matter that would be devoted to a thing of similar consequence in any practical business office. Here in this flourishing mill for dealing with capital crime the clerk of the court (or whatever you call him) began to call the roll of jurors present fifteen minutes before the hour set for opening of court. And so did affairs proceed with well-oiled despatch.

"Oyez-mumble-jumble-jabber-jabber-yah-meow-wow-jumble-jabber-jumble" (or whatever the devil it is), sang out the attendant who cries out that. Everybody at once gets to his feet. In comes his corpulent Honor, swinging along briskly, his gown flowing out behind, and mounts to his wooden-canopied throne. A large, glossy, rather handsome face, neatly cropped dark moustache, eye-glasses swinging from a broad black ribbon. General effect what might be called that of a heavy-weight "club man," looks as if he might be quite a hearty fellow when out with "the boys."

Door opens at back of room. Sound of marching steps. Then are seen coming along through a zoo-like cage round two sides of the room three figures, burly civilian-clothed one in the middle, uniformed officer fore and aft. They line up this side of a rail fencing the jurors off from an area before the Judge. Burly figure is very well dressed. Stands solidly on his feet, eyes trained directly on the Judge. Holds a dark soft hat in his hands which he clasps behind his back. What from a position somewhat to the rear can be seen of the side of his face reveals a heavy scar, the result evidently of a knife slash across one cheek. The Judge puts his palms together and addresses this person. "You are charged with murder," he begins. He says it rather gently, in a somewhat chiding manner, as though he had said, "Bad fellow, bad fellow." Just then, "For the defendant!" calls out an attendant, and another figure hurries forward.

The defendant's attorneys have not appeared, it seems. Their case is not quite prepared. A postponement is asked. "Why is it not prepared?" asks the Judge. The defendant speaks out. Declares his attorney has not been paid. Judge's reply is that the attorney provided for him is an able man, who will see that all his rights are observed. Grants postponement until the next morning, positively no further. Officer by his side plucks defendant's coat tail, and starts him off back through the cage. As he goes he is heard to say that his attorney will not be there in the morning either.

And as he turns, my friend gets, with a shock, a full-face view of him. He had never expected anybody off the melodramatic stage to look so much like a murderer. Scarey, that face, a countenance almost majestic in its ruthlessness and force: gangster, gunman, typically personified.

Jurors excused until ten-thirty next day. As they move toward the door, two attractively dressed young women arise from the rear. "Who are the ladies?" asks one. "Friends of the defendant," says another.

Next day, game called sharp on the stroke of the clock. Following preliminaries of the day before, attendant spins that little roulette wheel sort of an affair. Looks at slip thus drawn. "John Cole," he cries. Mr. Cole passes round behind jury box, reappears in far corner at left of Judge. "Rigmarole-rigmarole-solemnly swear, rigmarole," chaunts attendant there, thrusting very dilapidated Bible before him. Mr. Cole takes what later will be the witness chair.

Assistant district attorney arises and explains the case to him. The charge is murder in the first degree. The prosecution must rely largely on the testimony of an accomplice.

Defendant sits in whispered consultation with his attorney, his arm almost around him. As prosecutor seats himself, attorney for the defense gets up to put Mr. Cole through his paces. A fat, oily-looking man, with (it is evident) a browbeating manner in reserve.

Has Mr. Cole, or anyone "near and dear" to him, recently met with any "accident" at the hands of robbers? No. He will not, then, have a revengeful feeling toward any person charged with crime? Not at all. Would he give the same weight to the "story" of a "self-confessed thief and murderer" that he would to the testimony of a "man of probity"? Probably not. Now, doubtless, Mr. Cole is a reader of newspapers. He has, of course, seen this "literature" (with a sneer), this "newspaper hysteria" about a "c-r-i-m-e wave" (tongue in cheek). Well, can Mr. Cole go into the jury box and look at this case detached from the "atmosphere" now "being created by the newspapers"? Finally, is Mr. Cole acquainted with anyone connected with the police department?

Mr. Cole, for some reason, strikes out.

Third man accepted. He comes around from behind it to enter the jury box. At the gateway, while defendant stands and faces him, some more rigmarole-mumble-jumble business.

Suddenly my friend is called. His business? asks district attorney. A writer, he replies. Defendant and his attorney exchange strange glances. Undoubtedly there is something low and suspicious about a fellow with such a business. Attorney for the defense comes forward hurriedly. Soon takes my friend in hand. He at once adopts the sarcastic. My friend's work must require unusual "observation." He must be "gifted" with "great powers of de-duct-shun" (said out of one corner of his mouth). Of course, he has too a "fine imagination." By the way, what is the nature of his writing? Has he written any novels?

No, my friend says, he is a humorous writer. "A what?" exclaims the lawyer, his mouth remaining open. Then, "Like Don Markee?" "Somewhat," says my friend. Lawyer visibly pales. Withdrawing toward counsel table, looks back at the accused, who vigorously shakes his head.

"Excused by per-emptory challenge," utters lawyer, dropping into his chair.

CHAPTER III
QUEER THING, 'BOUT UNDERTAKERS' SHOPS

QUEER thing, that, about undertakers' shops! I don't remember to have been struck by undertakers' shops in San Francisco. Maybe they have none there—because, as you'll see, it's a queer thing about them.

Now in Indianapolis undertaking is a very fashionable affair. People there, apparently, want "class" in the matter of being finally disposed of. They believe, evidently, with the author of the popular little idyl, "Urn Burial," that "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the tomb."

The most aristocratic street in that city is named North Meridian Street. A street, until a short time ago, entirely of stately lawns and patrician homes—mansions. Of late, a little business, shops of the most distinguished character, has been creeping up this street from down-town. Notably, de luxe motor car salesrooms, studios of highly æsthetic photographers, and particularly palatial undertaking establishments. They are, these last, wondrous halls, which surely none could enter but those who (in life) had been rich in treasure. Features of the city are they—"sights."

But here's the riddle:

Strolling about New York, from river to river, uptown and down, one might readily fancy that here only the poor pass out of the world. Or that if the rich and fashionable ever die their bodies are mysteriously spirited away to destinations unknown; or are secretly preserved (presumably by some taxidermal process) in their homes.

Why? Well, where on Fifth Avenue is an undertaker's? True, a man I know declares there is a single one there. I am unable to find it. Where on any fine street of the metropolis? Why, yes; as a rare phenomenon. You do know, of course, that enormous place on upper Broadway. Sign says branches in Paris, London, Berlin, Petrograd.

Viewed through the great windows interior presents somewhat the effect of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In foreground large harp, equally huge Chinese vase—probably of the Tang Wang period, on great marble pedestal enormous bronze of a mounted Diana repelling with spear attack of ferocious animal resembling tiger. Appropriateness of this sculpture somewhat puzzling. On wall, somewhat further within, immense tapestry. One door labelled "Delivery Entrance." All of this, of course, is magnificence as much as even the most covetous would crave.

But in New York this august undertaking hall is an anachronism. Here, for some reason mysterious, it is in shabby neighborhoods that the "parlors" of undertakers abound. You may find them sprinkled all about the lower East Side. Frequent on Hudson Street, and, say, on Varick. Quaint and curious places, these. Very human in their appeal. Tiny places, most of them.

One such cozy crib I know on Greenwich Avenue. Has a stained glass screen in the window, suggesting a good deal the style of window ornamentation popular with that American institution lately deceased—the saloon. The social spirit rife in small undertaking shops, at least in some of them, is pleasant to observe. Business there not being pressing, and life moving in these inns of death in a leisurely and quiet current, neighborly amenities appear to be much cultivated.

This place of which I speak has, particularly in the evenings, much the air of a club, where choice spirits of the locality foregather to discuss politics, it may be, and the more engrossing forms of sport, such as boxing. And perhaps relish a little game at cards. I often pass this place at night and feel a warmth of spirit at the hum of jovial social contact within.

I like, too, the way the undertakers' shops of the humble and obscure carry on cheek by jowl with the familiar, homely, friendly things of life. This gives Death a neighborly sort of air. On my walks in that quarter I always give a friendly glance to the windows of a "Cremation Ass'n" on Eighth Avenue, on one side of it a delicatessen shop, on the other a "loan office," in the basement below a plumber.

Attractive, too, is it to consider how founders of tidy undertaking houses have become personages and are held in revered esteem. For they are not, it would seem, like unto those who have established just ordinary businesses. This I will show you:

At a corner of Twenty-third Street, over a telegraph office, is an establishment of some caste. Window legend reads: "Undertakers—Cremations—Night and Day—Interments in all Cemeteries." The last phrase reminds me of the way my old friend James Huneker used to date his letters to me from Brooklyn. They began, "Flatbush by the C—emeteries." But that's not the point. It's a pity the alert English writer who recently visited us and discovered a statue of General Grant in Grant Park, overlooking the Blackstone (where nobody had ever seen one before), and that the huge bust of Washington Irving in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, was an effigy of Father George Washington—it's a rotten shame E. V. Lucas missed this corner while here.

Because when you go round this corner you are to look up just above the level of your head. (Though I'm afraid you neglect to do this.) There on a ledge is a grand sight. It's a bust of God. Fact! Anyhow, looks just like pictures of God William Blake used to make. Old gentleman. Noble brow. Patriarchal beard, flowing out in a pattern of rhythmical waves—most realistically mildewed by time and weather.... But, no; inquiry reveals that it's a likeness of the founder of this "old established" undertaking concern.

Then there's that place a short step down Eighth Avenue. It declares on its sign that it is the "original" house bearing the name of the Reverend gentleman who conducts it. When you look through the glass in the door you view just within, displayed on an ornamental easel, a life-size crayon portrait, enlarged from a photograph, of a distinguished-looking person wearing brown Dundreary whiskers and a top hat. One corner of the portrait is gracefully draped in an American flag.

Yes; you'd be surprised how strong undertakers are on patriotism. Hard by here, next door to a dentist advertising "painless extraction," you find a firm of "Funeral Directors" where conspicuous among such ornaments as tall, bronze lamps with big shades, a spittoon, a little model of a casket and an urn, is a large bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln. A plate says: "No Charge for Rooms or Chapels for Funerals." And above stairs is seen a row of somewhat ecclesiastical stained-glass windows. Though we are given to understand by an advertisement that the atmosphere of these chapels is "non-sectarian."

Then over on Third Avenue (where there are lots and lots of undertakers) is a place. Always sitting just within the doorway, very silent, a stout, very solemn individual wearing a large, black derby hat and big, round, green-lens spectacles. Above him on the wall a framed lithograph in colors of George Washington—beside it a thermometer. In the window a rubber-plant. Rubber-plants varying in size from infant to elephant are in the windows of all undertakers. The symbolism of this decoration I know not. Beside the plant an infant's white casket, proclaimed by a poster which leans against it to be composed of "purity metal." In some places the casket, perhaps not of purity metal, is protected by being enclosed in a glass case. The name of the proprietor of this shop, as given on his sign, ends in "skey." Set in the door-frame is the usual "Night Bell." And, as always in undertakers' shops, the card of a "notary public" is displayed. Next door "Family Shoes" are featured.

Only yesterday afternoon I was looking in at the window of an undertaker on Second Avenue, one I had just found. Along the curb before the door a string of rather frayed and wobbly-looking "hacks," with a rusty-black hearse at the head. Horses to these vehicles drowsy in disposition, moth-eaten in effect as to pelt, and in the visibility of their anatomical structure suggesting that they might have been drawn by Albert Dürer in some particularly melancholy mood.

In groups along the edge of the sidewalk, conversing in subdued tones, the Dickensesque drivers of this caravan. Tall and gaunt, some; short and stout, others. Skirt coat on one, "sack" coat on another. Alike in this: frayed and rusty and weather-beaten, all. And hard, very hard of countenance. Each topped by a very tall, and quite cylindrical hat of mussed, shoddy-black, plush texture. Hangovers, so to say, these figures, from New York's hansom-cab days, or the time in London of the "four-wheeler."

No, not altogether. There was something piquant—Villonesque, or jovial—Rabelaisian, about the pickpockets of that tribe. These solemn mummers strike a ghoulish note. But at the same time, out here in the sane and cheerful sunlight, they don't look real. Create an odd impression. Strikes you as about as queer, this bunch, as if a lot of actors from a melodrama should turn up in the street with their makeup on and gravely pretend to belong to real life.

"Perhaps," I thought, "there is a funeral, or something, going on inside, and I should not be gaping in at this window."

Out of doorway pops little, rotund man, oily countenance. "Are you looking for anybody?" he asks.

"Here," I said inwardly, "is where I get moved on." No, I told him, I was just observing his window.

"Ah!" he cried, immensely flattered. He waved his hand back toward a couple of little, marble crosses with hearts carved in relief on the base. "You don't often see that, do you? Do you, now? They're sixty years old. Made out of a single piece!"

But the saddest thing about undertakers' shops is to go by where was one long familiar to you and find it gone. There was a splendid little place which it was a great consolation to me to admire. That building is now given over to an enterprise called "The Goody Shop." Its lofty dignity and deep eloquence are gone! It looks like a department store. It is labelled, with the blare of a brass band, "The Home of Pussy Willow Chocolates."

CHAPTER IV
THE HAIR CUT THAT WENT TO MY HEAD

I did not expect anything in particular when I went in. Though, indeed, it is a very famous place. That is, the hotel is—the Brevoort.

The name itself, Brevoort, is very rich in romantic Knickerbocker associations. Probably you know all about that. Or, possibly, you don't know—or have forgotten. Well, you do know how Broadway curves around there at Tenth Street. That ought to recall Hendrick Brevoort to you. His farm was all about this neighborhood. Caused this kink, he did, so it is said.

This valorous descendant of the old burgher defied the commissioners to destroy his homestead, which lay in the proposed path of Broadway. Or to cut down a favorite tree which blocked the intended course of Eleventh Street. Stood at his threshold with a blunderbuss in his trembling old hands (so the story has it), when the workmen arrived to carry out their instructions to demolish the house—and carried his point so effectively that Broadway was deflected from its course, while Eleventh Street between Broadway and Fourth Avenue was never completed. Grace Church, which now stands at about where valiant Henry stood that day, was built by a descendant of his, the architect also of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

I like to think of these matters sometimes when I enter the cool cream beauty of this ancient frame hostelry.

Also of another Henry Brevoort, a descendant of the original proprietor of the farm in New Netherland, who built the substantial old double house at the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. Fine iron balconies, pillared door, within a small green enclosure, and a walled garden to one side: all preserved.

Here was held (in 1840) the first masked ball given in New York. An affair of picturesque celebrity, on account of the occasion it furnished a famous beauty of the day, Miss Mathilda Barclay, daughter of Anthony Barclay, the British consul, to elope in fancy dress, domino and mask with a certain young Burgwyne of South Carolina, of whom her parents had unamiable views. She went as Lalla Rookh and he as Feramorz, and in this disguise they slipped away from the ball, at four in the morning, and were married. That, it seems to me, is the way for a man who does not enjoy solemn ceremonies to be happy while getting married.

Across the way, at the corner of Eighth Street, the mellow white hotel maintains the distinguished name, and touches "the Avenue" with a very aromatic French flavor. Famous for its cuisine, largely patronized by the transient French population of the city, a habitual port of call of many painters and writers, the scene of the annual Illustrators' Ball, and so on.

I like within the frequent spectacle of gentlemen of magnificent bulk and huge black beards, in general effect impressively suggesting the probability of their all being Academicians. I like the fact (or the hypothesis) that all the waiters are Looeys and Sharses and Gastongs. I like the little marble-top tables with wire spindle legs. I like the lady patrons (Oh! immensely) who are frequently very chic (and with exquisite ankles). I like the young gentlemen customers, who (many of them) look exactly as though their faces were modelled in wax, and who wear the sort of delicate moustaches that are advertised in Vanity Fair.

But even more I like the quaintness of the scene without doors. There along the curb, you recall, stand (in summer beneath the pleasant greenery of drooping trees), awaiting hire, a succession of those delightful, open, low-swung, horse-drawn vehicles, victorias, which were the fashionable thing at the period named by Mrs. Wharton "The Age of Innocence." The romantically leisurely drivers of these unbelievably leisurely craft are perfectly turned out to be, so to say, in the picture. They affect coachmen's coats (piquantly tempered by age) with large silver buttons and, in mild weather, top hats constructed of straw, painted black. In some instances these coachmen are "colored"—which is a very pleasant thing, too, I think.

This hotel, naturally, has figured in a number of pieces of fiction. In Samuel Merwin's novel "The Trufflers" it is the Parisian, where Greenwich Village, when in funds, dines, lunches, breakfasts in the little rooms which you enter from the Avenue, directly under the wide front steps, or from the side street through the bar, and where Upper West Side, when seeking the quaintly foreign dissociated from squalor, goes up the steps into the airy eating rooms with full length hinged windows to dine. And where (in this book) the young lady whose blooming presence in the barber shop in the basement invites you to manicure attentions gives rise to some very dramatic occurrences. The place, this shop, of Marius (as called in the story), "the one barber in New York who does not ask 'Wet or dry.'"

Now I had plumb forgotten about this barber's celebrity in fiction when the other day I entered this shop. And I was struck with embarrassment by the immediate attentions of so very distinguished a figure as that which sprang forward to assist me out of my coat. I thought surely this gentleman must be some kind of an Ambassador, who had perhaps mistaken me for the President. A slimmish man, obviously very French. Amazingly, overwhelmingly polite. Fine, a very fine beard. Long. Swept his chest. Pointed. Auburn. Wavy. Silken. Shot delicately with grey. Beautifully kept. Responded gently to the breeze—waving softly to and fro. A most beautiful beard—oh, my! And a glorious crown of hair! It rose from the line of its parting in a billowing wave, then fell with a luxuriant and graceful sweep to his ear. Only when he had tucked me in the chair could I realize that this must be the head barber. I had never before had the honor of being served by, or even of having seen himself, the proprietor here.

Then I mentioned Mr. Merwin's book. He took from a drawer several copies of The Saturday Evening Post, in which periodical the story had appeared serially, proudly to exhibit them to me. So it was we fell to chatting of his place. He had been here some sixteen or eighteen years. Before he had opened his shop this room had been several tiny rooms; Cleveland Moffett had for a time occupied them as a residence, and had here written his first book. My friend gayly produced a copy of an old magazine article by Mr. Moffett in which mention was given the shop.

* * * * * * *

Shaved, I was straightened up to have my hair trimmed. And, being for a moment free to look about. I spied a card on the wall. It said:

SILK HATS IRONED
25¢
COUP-DE-FER-AU CHAPEAU

But, my goodness! That was not all. No, indeed!

This very man who was cutting my hair had cut the hair of General Joffre—when he had his hair here in the United States. At "Mr. Frick's house," where they were guests, he had attended the distinguished party on its mission here. He would go in the morning, stay until they had gone forth for the day; return in the afternoon, and spruce them up for their evening out.

And what did they say, these great men of might?

Well, Joffre didn't say much. They were always out late—hurry out again. He shaved some of them "almost in the bath." That fellow, the Blue Devil,—one leg—cane—but back and forth from his bath quick like anybody. He was the most talkative:

"I could not but laugh at what he told me. I asked, 'Do you speak English?' 'No,' he said, 'but I ought to.' 'How is that?' I asked. 'Because,' he said, 'I'm half American.' 'Oh!' I said, 'your father then was American and your mother French?' 'No,' he said. 'Ah!' I say, 'then your mother was American and your father was French.' Do you understand? I say that to him. 'No,' he say; 'no.' 'What then?' I ask. 'Why,' he say, 'I have one leg in France and one leg in America.' I could not but laugh. Do you understand?"

When the visitors had departed Mr. Frick asked my friend for his bill. "Oh, no!" he said; "he would take nothing but the great honor for his little services."

My hair cut was finished. As I paid him (there being in this case, I felt, no such great honor for his little services), he showed me a drawing on the wall of a poodle he had one time owned. It had died. Very sad. He was very fond of dogs. Of bred dogs, that is. He bred them himself. He handed me his card as a professional dog fancier. It read:

CHINK A TU KENNELS
CHOW CHOWS, PEKINGESES, POMERANIANS, ALL COLORS
FROM PRICE WINNING STOCK
MINIATURE SPECIMENS
AT STUD. PEKINGESE, WONDERFUL SON OF WENTY
OF HYDEGREE. FEE REASONABLE.
AT STUD. LORD CHOLMONDELEY III SON OF CHAMPION
LORD CHOLMONDELEY II.
TOY DOGS BOARDED
MME. HENRI GRECHEN

Yes, that morning he had done "some manicure work" for his dogs. She looked up, the manicurist (milk-white blonde, black velvet gown), and said, "Do you use the clippers?"

He: "Yes, of course. But not powder and polish. Quick, they want. Not hold hands for hour—conversation about best show in town."

He bowed, very low, as I crossed his threshold. I turned and bowed, very low, to him. A man of many parts and a barber illustrious in his profession. It was some time before my head cooled off.

CHAPTER V
SEEING MR. CHESTERTON

SOMEWHAT later in this article I am going to present an "interview" (or something like that) with Gilbert K. Chesterton. At least I hope I am going to present it. Yesterday it looked as though I might have to get up my interview without having seen Mr. Chesterton. Though today the situation appears somewhat brighter. "Seeing" Mr. Chesterton (on his visit over here, at any rate) seems to be a complicated matter.

As anything which gives some view of the workings of the Chestertonian machinery ought to be of interest to all who can lay claim to the happy state of mind of being Chestertonites, I'll begin by telling the proceedings so far in this affair. Then as matters progress to supply me with more material (if they do progress) I'll continue.

I one time wrote an article in which I told with what surprising ease I saw Mr. Chesterton several years ago in England. Without acquaintances in England, some sort of a fit of impudence seized me. I wrote Mr. Chesterton a letter, communicating to him the intelligence that I had arrived in London, that it was my belief that he was one of the noblest and most interesting monuments in England; and I asked him if he supposed that he could be "viewed" by me, at some street corner, say, at a time appointed, as he rumbled past in his triumphal car. Mrs. Chesterton replied directly in a note that her husband wished to thank me for my letter and to say that he would be pleased if I cared to come down to spend an afternoon with him at Beaconsfield. Mr. Chesterton, I later recollected, had no means readily at hand of ascertaining whether or not I was an American pickpocket; but from the deference of his manner I was led to suspect that he vaguely supposed I was perhaps the owner of the New York Times, or somebody like that.

This escapade of my visit to Overroads I suppose it was that put into the head of the editor of The Bookman the notion that I was a person with ready access to Mr. Chesterton. So I was served with a hurry-up assignment to see him and to deliver an article about my seeing him for the March number of the magazine before that issue, then largely in the hands of the printers, got off the press. Thus my adventures, the termination of which are at present considerably up in the air, began.

I at once wrote to Mr. Chesterton at the hotel where at the moment he was in Boston. At the same time I wrote to Lee Keedick ("Manager of the World's Most Celebrated Lecturers") at his office in New York. I had picked up the impression that a lecture manager of this caliber owned outright the time of a visiting celebrity whom he promoted, and that you couldn't even telephone the celebrity without the manager's permission. I didn't know that you couldn't telephone him anyway. Or that you couldn't telephone the manager either.

Mr. Keedick very promptly replied that he would be very glad to do everything that he could to bring about the interview. Or at least I received a very courteous letter to this effect which bore a signature which I took to be that of Mr. Keedick.

Mr. Chesterton was not to be back in New York until after a couple of days. On the day set for his return to town I attempted to communicate with Mr. Keedick by telephone. I am (I fear) a bit slow at the etiquette of telephones, and I so far provoked a young woman at the other end of the wire as to cause her to demand rather sharply, "Who are you?" This matter adjusted amicably, Mr. Keedick it developed was so utterly remote from attainment that I am not altogether sure such a person exists. However, another gentleman responded cordially enough. Still, it seemed to me (upon reflection) that in a matter of this urgent nature I had been at fault in having failed to obtain more definiteness in the matter of an appointment. So I went round to the manager's office. Very affably received. Presented to a gentleman fetched for that purpose from another room, where he had been closeted with someone else. Mr. Widdecombe, this gentleman's name. Introduced as Mr. Chesterton's secretary. A pronounced Englishman in effect. Said very politely indeed, several times, that he was "delighted." Mr. Chesterton, however, was going away tomorrow. Would return two days hence. Made, Mr. Widdecombe, very careful memorandum of my address.

In due course of time thought I'd better look up Mr. Widdecombe again—his memorandum might have got mislaid. Telephoned lecture bureau. Satisfied young lady of honorable intentions. Explained matters all over again to owner of agreeable masculine voice. Received assurance that Mr. Widdecombe would be reminded at once of pressing state of affairs. Disturbed by uneventful flight of time, called in at lecture bureau once more. Learned that Mr. Widdecombe had not yet turned up. They, however, would try to get him on the wire at the Biltmore for me. Yes, he was there, but the fourth floor desk of the hotel said he had just gone into Mr. Chesterton's room, and so (as, apparently, everyone ought to know) could not be communicated with just now. He would call up shortly. Lecture people suggested that I go round to the hotel. If Mr. Widdecombe called in the meantime they'd tell him I was on my way over.

Thought I recognized the gentleman stepping out of the elevator at the fourth floor. I did not know whether or not it was at all what you did to lay hold of an Englishman in so abrupt a fashion, but concluded this would have to be done. Mr. Widdecombe was all courtesy. The point, however, was that "Mr. Chesterton had had an hour of it this morning. Had had an hour of it." This afternoon he was getting off some work for London. Then tomorrow, of course, would be his lecture. My matter did seem to be urgent. But what could "we" do? Mr. Chesterton was a "beautiful man." He had been so hospitable to the gentlemen of the press. But if we should go in to him now he would say, "Dear me! Dear me!" I readily saw, of course, that this would be an awful thing, still....

Mr. Widdecombe was somewhat inclined to think that we "could do" this: Suppose I should come to the Times Square Theatre the next afternoon, at about a quarter to five, call for him at the stage entrance. Yes, he thought we could arrange it that way. I could talk to Mr. Chesterton in the taxi on the way back to the hotel. Perhaps detain him for a few moments afterward. Mr. Widdecombe smiled very pleasantly indeed at the idea of so happy a solution of our difficulties. And I myself was rather taken by the notion of interviewing Mr. Chesterton in a cab. The fancy occurred to me that this was perhaps after all the most fitting place in the whole world in which to interview Mr. Chesterton.

So everything seems to be all right.

* * * * * * *

New complications! (This is the following day.) In the morning mail a letter from Mrs. Chesterton, saying so sorry not to have answered my letter before, but it had been almost impossible to deal with the correspondence that had reached them since they arrived in America. Her husband asked her to say he would very much like to see me. And could I call at the hotel round about twelve o'clock on Sunday morning? No difficulty about meeting Mr. Chesterton in the kindness of that. But Sunday might be quite too late for the purpose of my article. So I'll go to the theatre anyway, and I'll certainly accept all Chesterton invitations.

* * * * * * *

A colored dignitary in a uniform sumptuously befrogged with gold lace who commanded the portal directed me to the stage entrance. I passed into a dark and apparently deserted passage and paused to consider my next step. Before me was a tall, brightly lighted aperture, and coming through this I caught the sound, gently rising and falling, of a rather dulcet voice. A slight pause in the flow of individual utterance, and directly following upon this a soft wave as of the intimate mirth of an audience wafted about what was evidently the auditorium beyond. Just then a figure duskily defined itself before me and addressed me in a gruff whisper. I was directed to proceed around the passage extending ahead, to Room Three. I should have passed behind a tall screen (I recognized later), but inadvertently I passed before it, and suddenly found myself the target of thousands upon thousands of eyes—and the unmistakable back of Mr. Chesterton looming in the brilliance directly before me.

Regaining the passage, I found a door labelled A 3. Receiving no response to my knock, I opened it; and peered into a lighted cubby-hole about one-third the size of a very small hall bed-room. The only object of any conspicuousness presented to me was a huge, dark garment hanging from a hook in the wall. It seemed to be—ah! yes; it was a voluminous overcoat with a queer cape attached. So; I was in the right shop all right.

I thought I ought to look around and try to find somebody. I wandered into what I suppose are the "wings" of the theatre. Anyway, I had an excellent view, from one side, of the stage and of a portion of one gallery. The only person quite near me was a fireman, who paid no attention whatever to me, but continued to gaze out steadily at Mr. Chesterton, with an expression of countenance which (as well as I could decipher it) registered fascinated incomprehension. I attempted to lean against what I supposed was a wall, but to my great fright the whole structure nearly tumbled over as I barely touched it. Perceiving a chair the other side of the fireman, I passed before him, sat down, and gave myself over to contemplation of the spectacle.

My first impression, I think, was that Mr. Chesterton was speaking in so conversational a key that I should have expected to hear cries of "Louder!" coming from all over the house. But from the lighted expressions of the faces far away in the corner of the gallery visible to me he was apparently being followed perfectly. I did not then know that at his first public appearance in New York he had referred to his lecturing voice as the original mouse that came from the mountain. Nor had I then seen Francis Hackett's comment upon it that: "It wasn't, of course, a bellow. Neither was it a squeak." Mr. Hackett adds that it is "the ordinary good lecture-hall voice." I do not feel that this quite describes my own impression of it the other afternoon. Rather, perhaps, I should put the matter in this way. My recollection of the conversation I had with him in 1914 at Beaconsfield is that there was a much more ruddy quality to his voice then than the other day, and more, much more, in the turn of his talk a racy note of the burly world.

Perhaps he feels that before a "representative" American audience one should be altogether what used to be called "genteel." At any rate, I certainly heard the other day the voice of a modest, very friendly, cultivated, nimble-minded gentleman, speaking with the nicety of precision more frequently observed among English people than among Americans. There was in it even a trace of a tone as though it were most at home within university walls. Though, indeed, I am glad to say, Mr. Chesterton did not abstain from erudite, amused, and amusing allusions to the society most at home in "pubs." And I cannot but suspect that perhaps he would have been found a shade more amusing even than he was if ... but, no matter.

One gentleman who has written a piece about his impressions of Mr. Chesterton's lectures here felt that his audience didn't have quite as much of a good time as the members of it expected to have. I heard only a brief, concluding portion of one lecture. The portion of the audience which came most closely before my observation were those seated at the well filled press table, which stood directly between the speaker and me. These naïve beings gave every evidence of getting, to speak temperately, their money's worth.

Though Mr. Chesterton turned the pages of notes as he spoke, he could not be said to have read his lecture. On the other hand, it was clear that he did not appreciably depart from a carefully prepared disquisition.

The tumbled mane which tops him off seemed more massive even than before. It did not, though, appear quite so tumbled. I think there had been an effort (since 1914) to brush it quite nicely. Certainly it is ever so much greyer. I think in my earlier article I said something like this: "Mr. Chesterton has so remarkably red a face that his smallish moustache seems lightish in color against it." While Mr. Chesterton's face today could not be described as pale, it looks more like a face and less like a glowing full moon. The moustache is darker against it; less bristling than before, more straggly.

A couple of our recent commentators upon Mr. Chesterton have taken a fling at the matter of his not being as huge as, it seems to them, he has been made out to be. I remember that when I saw him before I was even startled to find him more monstrous than even he had appeared in his pictures. He appears to take part a good deal in pageants in England; and recent photographs of him as Falstaff, or Tony Weller, or Mr. Pickwick, or somebody like that, have not altogether squared up with my recollection of him. True, he has not quite the bulk he had before; but it is a captious critic, I should say, who would not consider him sufficiently elephantine for all ordinary purposes.

He was saying (much to the delight of the house) when I became one of the audience, that he would "not regard this as the time or the occasion for him to comment upon the lid on liquor." A bit later in the course of his answer to the question he had propounded, "Shall We Abolish the Inevitable," he got an especially good hand when he remarked: "People nowadays do not like statements having authority—but they will accept any statement without authority." He concluded his denunciation of the idea of fatalism with the declaration: "Whatever man is, he is not in one sense a part of nature." "He has committed crimes, Crimes," he repeated—with gusto in the use of the word,—"and performed heroisms which no animal ever tried to do. Let us hold ourselves free from the boundary of the material order of things, for so shall we have a chance in the future to do things far too historic for prophecy."

I darted back toward Room Three, ran into Mr. Widdecombe, we wheeled, and saw the mountain approaching. Whereas before, this off-stage place had been deserted, now the scene was populous—with the figures of agitated young women. Mr. Widdecombe, however, with much valiance secured Mr. Chesterton. "Yes, yes," he said, and (remarkable remark!), "I had the pleasure of meeting you in England." He glanced about rather nervously at the dancing figures seeking to obtain him, and led the way for me into the dressing room. Mr. Widdecombe pulled the door to from without.

I am far from being as large as Mr. Chesterton, but the two of us closeted in that compartment was an absurdity. Mr. Chesterton eclipsed a chair, and beamed upon me with an expression of Cheeryble-like brightness. Upon his arrival in New York he had declared to the press that he would not write a book of his impressions of the United States. I asked him if, after being here a week or so, he had changed his mind as to this determination. "Not definitely," he said, "not definitely. But, of course, one could never tell what one might do." He might write a book about us, then? Yes, he might. Did he think it at all likely that he would take up residence over here? A very joyous smile: "One's own country is best," he said. Rumors had several times been afloat that he had entered the Roman Catholic Church. Would he say whether there was any likelihood of his doing this? He was an Anglican Catholic, he replied. Not a Roman Catholic—yet. That was not to say that he might not be—if the English Church should become more Protestant. What was his next book to be? Had he any project in mind of going to Turkey, or Mexico, or some such place? No; the only books he was working on at present were a new volume of short stories and a book (smiling again widely) on eugenics. He knew Mr. Lucas, of course? "Yes, fine fellow." Did he know Frank Swinnerton? No. What was.... But the door was popped open. Several persons were waiting for him, among them Mrs. Chesterton. I helped him into the cape-coat. Stood behind the door so that when it was opened he could get out. "You know Mr. Holliday," he said to Mrs. Chesterton. "Thank you, so much," he said to me. And was whisked away.

* * * * * * *

Sunday at the hotel. He was late in arriving. I thought it would be pleasanter to wait a bit out in front. Expected he would drive up soon in a taxi. Then I saw him coming around the corner, walking, rolling slowly from side to side like a great ship, Mrs. Chesterton with him—a little lady whose stature suggested the idea of a yacht gracefully cruising alongside the huge craft. I wonder if, nowadays when most writers seem to try to look like something else, Mr. Chesterton knows how overwhelmingly like a great literary figure he looks.

When we were seated, I asked if he had any dope on his "New Jerusalem" book. He began to tell me how surprised he had been to find Jerusalem as it is. But the substance of this you may find in the book. He expressed sympathy with the idea of Zionism. Remarked that he "might become a Zionist if it could be accomplished in Zion." All that he could find to tell me about his "New Jerusalem" was that it had been "written on the spot." Seemed very disinclined to talk about his own books. Said his feeling in general about each one of them was that he "hoped something would happen to it before anybody saw it."

His surprise at Jerusalem suggested to me the question, Had he been surprised at the United States—what he had seen of it? But he dodged giving any "view" of us. His only comment was on the "multitudinous wooden houses."

Had he met many American authors? The one most recently met, a day or so ago in Northampton, though he had met him before in England, was a gentleman he liked very much. He was so thin Mr. Chesterton thought the two of them "should go around together." His name? Gerald Stanley Lee.

But there is not a particle more of time that I can spend on this article.

CHAPTER VI
WHEN IS A GREAT CITY A SMALL VILLAGE?

HOW many times you have noticed it! Regular phenomenon. Suddenly, within a few hours, the whole nature of the great city is changed—your city and mine, New York or Chicago, or Boston or Buffalo or Philadelphia.

Though nobody seems to say much about it afterward. Just sort of take the thing for granted.

It is just like Armistice Night, every once in awhile. Total strangers suddenly begin to call each other "Neighbor." Voices everywhere become jollier. Numerous passersby begin to whistle and sing. People go with a skip and a jump. Catcalls are heard. Groups may be seen all around going arm in arm, and here and there with arms about necks. Anybody speaks to you merrily. Merrily you speak to anybody. All eyes shine. Roses are in every cheek. Hurry is abandoned. Small boys run wild. Nobody now objects to their stealing a ride. It is fun to see their swinging legs dangling over the tail of every wagon. Sour human nature is purged. Good humor reigns. Hurrah!

I mean on the night of a big snow.

This year it looked for long as though we were going to be done out of this truly Dickensean festival. Seemed like we were going to be like those unfortunate people in Southern California, who never have any winter to cheer them up. How tired they must get of their wives and neighbors, with it bland summer all the time. Perhaps that is the reason there is such a promiscuous domestic life out there.

Young Will Shakespeare had the dope. He piped the weather for jollity and pep. "When blood is nipp'd"—"a merry note!"

You remember how it was this time: Spring all winter—and spring fever, too, a good many of us had all the while. (My doctor said it was "malaria" with me.) We were congratulating ourselves that we were going to "get by" without any "blizzards" at all this year. We became "softy." We guarded ourselves with our umbrellas against the shower. We became prudent. And what is it Stevenson says of that? "So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlors with a regulated temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of thin shoes and tepid milk."

Then one night there came a tinkle in the temperature as of sleigh bells. And the town, the world sank into a soft blanket of white. Were you out then? Ah! you should have been. You were not, I hope, in a parlor with a regulated temperature.

Well, anyhow, everybody else was out. The cross streets of the big city had "all to oncet" taken on the air of a small town "sociable." Shadowy multitudes seemed to sprout up out of the ground. The sidewalks, especially those usually so deserted at this hour, now ahum with dark busy bowing figures, rang and clanged gayly with the sound of scoop and shovel. In the democratic, jovial, village-like spirit of the occasion, many of the workers (those more staid and portly ones) removed their coats. Every here and there an areaway held, in a holiday effect, a cluster of bare-headed maid-servants—the "gallery" of the shovellers, whose presence tended to make of the task of clearing the sidewalk a night-hour lark.

Voices in the street, as you know, and laughter there, is never so musical as above snow-stilled pavements. Then, too, cheery echoes are abroad among the recesses between the houses, in the courts and down the ways where packages are delivered. The shovellers good-naturedly banter one another and pass a cordial jest with those who travel by. And every here and there the rich contralto of negro mirth is heard.

I do not know that the city's parks are not a finer spectacle under snow than in the summer—their dark glistening branches laden à la Christmas card, and, after dark, their festoons of lamps more twinkling and more yellow than at any other time.

Along Broadway what a whirl! The street like an arena, hordes of gladiators in doughty combat with the onslaught of the storm, snow-carts banging and backing about (horses seem to stomp and snort and rear more in a snowstorm than at any other time), new ridiculously miniature "caterpillar tractors" performing like toy tanks at war, traffic in a hilarious tangle, street cars crawling along looking more than ever before like prodigious cat-eyed bugs. Here with a terrific buzz comes one all dark furiously thrashing the snow from side to side by means of revolving brooms beneath. The crowds an animated silhouette against the whitened air. One wants to hop and shout one feels so much alive.

Lots of funny things happen. A taxicab there has got stuck in a drift. It whirs in a passion. Wallows forward. Runs its nose up a little hillock of hard crusted snow. Stops. Makes a fine hubbub. Slides back, stilled, exhausted. Tries again. Same thing repeated. A pounding is heard on the inside of the door. Chauffeur reaches back his hand to turn handle of door. Something is wrong. He climbs down. Pulls at door. Nothing doing. Door has apparently been sprung somehow. Taxi is now observed to be a bit listed to one side. Pounding, louder than before, again heard from inside. Conductor from nearby car comes to side of chauffeur. Also policeman. All lay hold of each other and pull with united effort at taxi door. Door flies open. Closely knit group of chauffeur, conductor and policeman nearly tumbles backward into snow. From cab door descends tall, elegant figure in evening clothes and top hat. Followed by even more elegant figure of slender lady in opera cloak. For some reason she appears to be very angry, and shakes her fist at her three humble liberators. The couple seek some path, from the trampled oasis where they stand, through the drifts to the sidewalk. There is none. Her dazzling skirt she has caught high from the mess about her feet. Perhaps a yard of pale yellow silken hose is revealed above her satin pumps. Finally in desperation the two plunge forward, taking gigantic steps, sinking knee-deep at every onward move, tottering, swaying and at length fairly scrambling toward the haven of the curb. The dozens along the sidewalk who have been held spellbound by what they have found to be so delicious a comedy turn to one another with delighted smiles—and move along again on their way.

It is things like this always happening all about which make snow-storm nights in the city such a hippodrome affair, and all the world akin.

Over on the Avenue busses are busily pushing plows hitched on before. There one has got stalled in a drift. It whirs and buzzes and backs and starts and whirs and buzzes over and over again. No use, it seems. Still, draped along the curb, the spectators stand, unmindful of the gale, as absorbed as if at a Yale-Princeton game. Buzzzzzzzzz—Whirrrrrrrrrrr—and away. She's off! A feeble cheer goes up. And everybody starts onward again in better humor with himself for having seen so entertaining a show.

It snowed the night through.

In the morning banks of snow breast-high through the side streets. Through a narrow aisle down the middle of the roadway trucks cars and wagons slowly go in single file. Moving thus all in a single line they have something the effect of a circus parade—elephants and lion cages and so on.

And lions remind me. It is always well to look at public statues and outdoor pieces of sculpture the morning after a heavy snow. You are likely to find them very comical apparitions. The celebrated literary lions before the New York Public Library, for instance, wore throughout the day after the first big snow of this winter ridiculous tall caps pulled down very rakishly over their eyes.

Streaming from the direction of the railroad station were coming the swarms of our commuter friends, the legs of many of them hoisting along those prodigious "arctics" which are all the vogue nowadays. Isn't it curious? There was a time when if you were obliged to wear glasses you got them as nearly invisible as possible. If you were a man you felt there was something shameful about having "weak" eyes. If a woman, you "just knew" that glasses made you look "horrid." And when you wore overshoes you got them as inconspicuous as possible. Now you affect shell spectacles that can be seen a block away, and having huge lenses. Now there is nothing smarter, apparently, than for a young woman with a trim foot to come into town swaddled in floppers which fit her slim ankles like a bucket.

Men are still shovelling and scraping away at the streets, a motley army. What is it so many persons are pausing to smile at, others hurrying on but with grinning faces turned back? It is at a gentleman shoveller. Here recruited somehow among this gang of husky laborers is a slim eccentric figure in a—yes, a frock coat, a derby hat, kid gloves, and very tight trousers ... a quaint picture of the shabby genteel. Walking very briskly back and forth, very upright in carriage, the small of his back curved inward, he pushes his scraper before him holding it by the very tip of the long handle—and as well as can be observed doesn't scrape anything at all. His fellow workers regard him with surly disgust and roughly bump into him at every opportunity. What story is there, in that absurd, pathetic scene, what O. Henry tale of mischance in a great city?

A wagon on a side street has got its wheels ground into the snow bank at the side of the narrow cleared way. Such accidents are all about, and everywhere men may be seen leaving their own affairs to give a helping hand to a fellow being in sore straits. The visitation of a great snow storm strikingly unites the bonds of the brotherhood of man.

Stalled for interminable periods in suburban trains and in traffic jams hurried men give themselves up cheerfully to the philosophic virtue of patience.

Vagabonds sent on errands two miles away return after three hours with tales of the awful slowness of trolley cars. And on days of great snow storms meet with Christian forgiveness.

CHAPTER VII
THE UNUSUALNESS OF PARISIAN PHILADELPHIA

I DISCOVERED the other day that Philadelphia is a very great deal nearer to Paris than New York is.

How do I figure out that?

Plain enough. It's because New York women, buds and matrons, thinking they are got up (or as the English say, "turned out") smart as anything, are parading around in fashions today altogether passée.

You know the New York scene. And how for some considerable time now its most—well, most apparent feature has been a—er, a hosiery display ... unparalleled off the gay stage of musical comedy. Very, so to speak, exhilarating that once was—the glistening spectacle of, moving all about, those symmetrically tapering lines of pink and rose and orange and pearl and taupe and heather tan and heather green and purple wool and sheen of black and gloss of mottled snake and—and all that.

But, I am afraid, the eye over-long accustomed to the great Metropolitan movie thriller of the fashionable streets had become somewhat dulled.

The Parisienne knew about the peculiar character of the eye, and that it ceases to see with any emotional response at all that which remains within its range of vision for any extended length of time. So she (roguish witch!) alertly changed the picture.

I picked up by chance, during my two-hour run on the train, a copy of one of our most dashing fashion journals. It was the "Forecast of Spring Fashions" number. I opened it, at random, at the headline: "The Short Skirt Has Had Its Day in Paris." Below was a jolly photograph (of a stunning lady at the latest races at Auteuil) illustrating "the new skirt length." Visible beneath the hem—a trim foot, and a bit of tidy ankle.

Who was the fellow (with a gifted eye for the lasses) who spoke with such delight of the tiny feet that "like little mice run in and out"? And there was that other poet (what was his name? I declare! my literature is getting awful rusty), who sang with such relish the charm of feminine drapery "concealing yet revealing." Anyhow, you know what I'm getting at.

I closed the magazine and forgot about the matter—until shortly after I had come out of the Broad Street Station.

The modish scene I apprehended was, to an eye accustomed steadily for some time to the natty abbreviations of Fifth Avenue, a refreshing, a charming spectacle. I seemed suddenly to have left my "orchestra seat." And to have returned again to a view of, so to put it, ladies in private life.

Though, indeed, occasionally in the distance I caught a flashing glimpse of, according to Paris decree, the obsolete skirt length.

Come to think of it, isn't this so, too: that there are in Philadelphia more rose-cheeked damsels of hearty figure and athletic-heel swing than you usually come across in other cities?

At any rate, there are quite a number of very unusual things about "Phila," as I believe intimate friends of the city affectionately call the place. Things which it may be you have not noticed lately—perhaps because you haven't been there recently, or maybe because you live there, and so see them every day.

One of the unusual things about Philadelphia is that so many ladies and "gem'men" who do light housekeeping on and around Manhattan Island (in other words "New Yorkers") apparently find it easier frequently to get to Chicago, or Palm Beach, or London, or Santa Barbara than to journey to Philadelphia. I suppose the reason for this state of mind is the same as the cause of my sometimes feeling that it would be about as simple for me to undertake a trip from the Grand Central to Buffalo as to get from Times Square down to Fulton Street for a luncheon appointment. A place which is only half an hour, or two hours away, is a place, you think, that you can run down to any time. And—well, just at the moment with everything so pressing and all that. To become keyed up about taking a "real" trip is another matter.

And when I myself do get there I always feel that it is an unusual thing that I have allowed so long a time to lapse since I came before. Because it is so unusually pleasant and restful a ride that it makes me sore to think what an unusually deuce of a thing I am put to every night going home in the rush hour to Dyckman Street on the subway.

It is an unusual thing (or, at least, so it seems to me) that in Philadelphia cards in windows advertising rooms to let should be (as they are) labelled "Vacancies."

It is an unusual thing that here so many undertakers' shops should be conducted in what appear to be private residences. It is an unusual thing that there should be so many ways of paying your fare on the street cars—in some you pay when you get on, in others when you get off. It is an unusual thing that in Philadelphia there are more different kinds of street lamps than (I suspect) there are in any other city in the world. There are powerful arc lamps, high on tall poles, cold white in their light. There are lower down, particularly pleasant in the twinkle of their numbers in Washington Square, gas lamps glowing a mellow yellow through their mantles. Various other kinds of lamps, too. But the ones I like best are those squat fellows throughout Independence Square. Octagonal iron-bound boxes of glass, small at the base, wide at the top, with a kind of ecclesiastical derby hat of iron as a lid. They somehow suggest to me the lamps which I fancy before Will Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Here golden Diana with her bow does not poise high on her slender Spanish tower. But from far above the "Public Buildings" Brother Penn looks down on more banks, United States Mints, trust companies, firms dealing in securities, places handling investments, and such-like business concerns than (one has a feeling) can be found in any other city in Christendom. There are too, I should guess, in Philadelphia about as many different styles and periods of architecture as in any other municipality between the two great seas: Georgian, Colonial, bay-window, London brick row, ramshackle frame, modern mansion, skyscraper, etc., etc., etc. And certainly I don't know where one could go to count more different kinds of porches. Nor where one could find so many such pleasant oddities of today as hitching-blocks, doorway foot-scrapers, and those old friends of our childhood the front yard stone storks.

And where, Oh, where! (not even in London) can one find so many alleys to the square inch? Many of them, lanes of but a few blocks in length, highly respectable, even aristocratic, quarters of the town. Such as Camac Street, tucked away between Thirteenth and Twelfth Streets, one block of it either side of Locust, and the home or haunt of those of artistic persuasion. Here the famous Franklin Inn Club, the charming Poor Richard Club, and divers other clubs of kindred spirit. Unusual this quaint street of art in this: in fixing it up for its present purpose its quaintness and its "artiness" have not been overdone. Far, far finer in effect than New York's over eccentric alley of painters, Washington Mews, its original loveliness has simply been restored. It is as jolly to look upon as London's artist nook, Cheyne Row. Perhaps even jollier.

Now another unusual thing about Philadelphia is that Philadelphians standing within three blocks of the place can't tell you where South Carlisle Street is. Professional Philadelphians, such as policemen, firemen, postmen, street car men, can't do it. In the attempt they contradict each other, and quarrel among themselves. For the benefit of both Philadelphians and visitors to the city I will set down here exactly the location of South Carlisle Street. West of Broad, south of Pine, it runs one block from Pine to Lombard Street. After a jump, where there isn't any of it, north of Market Street there is more of it.

But what the dickens is South Carlisle Street, and why should anybody care where it is? Well, though it isn't in the books on Historic Shrines of America it is a street you "hadn't ought to" miss. It's about twelve feet (or something like that) from wall to wall. The doorways seem to be about three feet wide. There, in South Carlisle Street, Philadelphia's mahogany doors, fan-lights above, white pillars before, marble steps below, her immaculate red brick, her freshly painted wooden shutters, her gleaming brass knockers are in their most exquisite perfection.

A wealthy and cultivated gentleman or two "took up" the street a year or so ago, decided to make their homes there, and it has become quite "class." Same idea, more or less, that Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt has concerning the "exodus" of her set from Fifth Avenue to unheard-of Sutton Place over among the tall yellow chimneys by New York's East River.

Considering the great wealth in Philadelphia and its environs, particularly those patrician environs lying toward Harrisburg, it is, I think, unusual that you never see on the streets there a Pekingese or a Pomeranian attended by a personage in livery.

Unusual, too, that in a city of the first class along the eastern seaboard so few canes are "worn."

And, by the way, that's an unusual railroad service from Philadelphia to New York. Conductor calls out: "Train for Newark and New York. Newark first stop." Train slides a few feet—halts at West Philadelphia. Spins along a bit again, and pulls up at North Philadelphia. Stops later along the way at Trenton, Newark, and Manhattan Junction. I really do not see, putting a wreck out of the calculation, where else it could stop.

I took from a boy in the Pennsylvania station a copy of one of New York's most popular evening papers. It came apart in the middle. Straightening it out, I caught a headline on the "Talks to Women" page. It read "Short Skirts Remain." Below a cut of a beaming lass attired, the caption said, in "frock of navy blue ruffled taffeta with short sleeves and 'shorter' skirt."

When I came out onto the street the temperature (in skirts) seemed to have risen since my departure a couple of days before.

CHAPTER VIII
OUR LAST SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AS A FINE ART

I HAVE just witnessed a revelation. At least, it was a revelation to me. I'm keen on telling you all about it.

One of my earlier articles in this series had to do with the establishment here and there in a great city of those gentlemen engaged in the estimable business of packing you up for keeps—that is the "parlors" of various sorts of "undertakers." I had been much struck by the vast number of cozy little places catering, so to say, to the poor and humble who have forever (as Stevenson puts it) "parted company with their aches and ecstasies." And I had wondered at how very few places there were in evidence on the streets to take care of the "remains" of, in a manner of speaking, the first-cabin passengers in life, those who have travelled through their days in a fashion de luxe. The establishments of this type which now and then I did see were very palatial indeed—and didn't look at all as though they would countenance the corpse of just an ordinary person such as you and me.

Also, all the undertaking establishments visible to me in my goings and comings about town were quite obviously undertaking establishments. They displayed within and without the air, the accoutrements, the paraphernalia traditionally associated with one's last social engagement on earth, his funeral. They varied only in this: some were rich and haughty in general effect, others simple and perhaps dingy in appearance. But each and all of them looked as much like an undertaking shop as a barber shop looks like a barber shop. You could not possibly have mistaken any one of them for a Turkish bath establishment, or a Carnegie library, or an office for steamship tickets.

As I say, I wrote that article telling all this and that about what anybody may see any day as he goes about on his rounds through the thick of the city. But when the article appeared—originally—it soon developed that I was not abreast of undertaking matters at all. I had not in the least kept track of the remarkable advances which have to date been made in the art of being buried—and a very fine art, in the advanced phases of the affair, it certainly has become. I did not even know the present-day, the correct, name for what I, in so old-fashioned a condition of mind, called an "undertaker's." No.

That word, "undertaker," has long, long ago been discarded by the élite of the profession. What a queer word as a business title it was, anyway! How did it originally ever come to be used in its mortuary relation? No one in the business that I have asked has been able to tell me. And why in the dim past when names were being given to trades did not this word, undertaker, seem to be equally descriptive of the career of physician or attorney? Indeed, does not he that sets himself the highly hazardous task of saving a living fellow being from disease or the gallows undertake to do more than he who merely performs the quiet office of laying us away?

And then, oddly enough for its tragic associations, the word acquired in our minds something of a ludicrous turn. It was reminiscent of Dickens, of hired professional "mourners," and that sort of thing. At mention of the word, a picture popped into our mind of a grotesquely angular being, of sallow, elongated features and lugubrious manner, garbed in a rusty frock coat and "stove pipe" hat, who put together before him the tips of black-gloved fingers and spoke with a hollow sound. We would say to our friends when they were feeling blue: "What's the matter with you? You act like an undertaker."

Well, as doubtless you have noticed, the term "funeral director" more or less recently pretty well superseded the word undertaker among progressive concerns. It is a phrase much more in the modern spirit, like "domestic science" for (what used to be) "household work," "modiste" for "dressmaker," "maid" for "hired-girl," "psychic" for "fortune teller," "publicity engineer" for "press agent," and so on. And it has a good, business-like, efficient sound.

Still (I discovered) to be buried by a funeral director is not the very latest, the most fashionable thing. The really smart way nowadays of bidding good-bye to the world is to go to the establishment of a "mortician."

Yes; that's what the gentleman said in his very cordial letter: would I care to look over a "real mortician's establishment in New York City?" I replied that nothing could give me greater pleasure. So at the time appointed a couple of days later his car came round for me.

When I told people of the visit I was about to make, they all laughed, very heartily. Now that brings to one's attention a curious thing: why should they laugh? Honestly, between you and me, think hard and tell me what really there is funny about going to see a burial establishment?

Paradoxical indeed is the attitude of mind of practically everyone toward this subject of being ushered out of life. Sundry totally contradictory emotions are aroused in the very same person by slightly different aspects of the same subject. If you remark that you are going to spend the afternoon at the undertaker's that is awfully amusing. At the same time, is not nearly everyone down in his heart a bit scared of undertakers' shops? Uncomfortable, gruesome places, would not most of us feel, to have next door?

At any rate, as we glided along I was told by the gentleman who had come to fetch me that the feeling was very general that the presence of a funeral director's establishment depreciated the value of property in the immediate neighborhood. Though, he asserted, this popular idea frequently had not at all been borne out in fact.

It developed (from his lively conversation) that nothing so much annoys a funeral director, or a mortician, as for a visitor to pull old gags which he thinks are smart—such, for instance, as the remark: "I see your business is pretty dead." I gathered that this jocular pleasantry was the stock joke of all near-wits who visited undertakers—I mean morticians.

No; there is another thing which annoys these gentlemen (morticians) even more than such punk puns as that. They deeply resent, I discovered, any disrespectful allusion to their silent clients, such as calling them "stiffs," or something like that. How would you, they ask, like to have someone of yours—someone who but yesterday returned your heart's clasp, now dumb and cold—made game of by such ribaldry? Certainly, I cannot say that I should like it.

Another paradoxical contradiction! Tell me (if you can) what strange spring of his being prompts a man to think it big and bold and hearty of him to speak with such cynical contemptuousness of a fellow man returned to rigid clay.

We had arrived at our destination, I was told. But I saw nothing, but what was (seemingly) a rather handsome private residence, set in a pleasant lawn. Though I did discern by the door a modest plate which read (as I recall the name) "Wentworth Brothers," nothing more. Wentworth Brothers might have been, for all the exterior evidence to the contrary, architects, or teachers of dancing and the piano, or breeders of pedigreed dogs, or dealers in antiques, or physical instructors, or almost anything you please.

This I soon learned was the fundamental principle of the sensitive art of the mortician—to scrap all the old stage properties of the bugaboo type of undertaker.

We passed into a charming hall, light and cheerful, furnished in excellent taste, altogether domestic in effect. A number of bright looking people, apparently attached to the premises, were lightly moving about. I had somewhat the sensation of having come to a most agreeable afternoon tea.

I was presented to my host, as cheerful, wholesome and cordial a young chap as anyone would care anywhere to see. The senior, he, of the brothers. I had been a little depressed that morning, having a bad cold and being fretted by a number of gloomy things, but as we proceeded through the house my spirits picked up decidedly. I experienced a feeling of mental and physical well-being, so attractive was everything about.

A dainty reception room opened off the hall at the front. My impression was of a nice amount of charming Colonial furniture. Altogether such a room as you might see in an illustration in the magazine House and Garden. Secluded back of this rooms having a brisk atmosphere and serving as offices. Peopled by very trim and efficient looking young people.

We descended to the "stock room," a most sanitary looking place of cement floor, ceiling and walls, where was a large store of caskets of many varieties. Behind this a spick and span embalming room which (except for the two tables) somewhat suggested an admirable creamery. Here I discovered that to the mind of the mortician towels belong to the Dark Ages. The up-to-date way of drying hands is by holding them before a blast of air turned on from a pipe.

We ascended to the third floor. Here were the chapels, rooms which might have been designed to accommodate fashionable audiences attending literary lectures. In connection with them a tiny "minister's study," not unlike the sanctum of a university professor. Also here small hotel suites, each with bath attached, available for the bereaved from out of town. Here, too, snug quarters for wakes. And a spacious chamber wherein friends may sit for a little last visit with the departed. The dominant article of furniture in this room an Empire lounge such as we see supporting the figure of Madame Récamier in the famous portrait by David. A consummate refinement was shown me on this floor: telephones, concealed behind panels in the wall, with no bells to jangle over-tried nerves, but with a tiny red electric globe on the wall to light as the signal.

The top floor a dormitory for male employees, having much the effect of rooms for boys at college, gay soft cushions, pipes and mandolins scattered about.

I lingered for a smoke and a chat with my host on the ground floor in an oak panelled room like the library of a gentleman's club before leaving.

I came away with (I very much fear) an idea that I should like to go back tomorrow and see some one of my friends so agreeably buried from that place.

CHAPTER IX
WRITING IN ROOMS

I REMEMBER that I was somewhat surprised when E. V. Lucas expressed surprise that I was writing in my room at the hotel where we both happened to be at the same time for several days last summer. He declared with an expression of sharp distaste that he could not write in hotel rooms. But said he had no difficulty in writing on trains. That rather got me, because I can't write at all on trains. And possibly because I was a bit peeved at the easy way in which he spoke of doing that exceedingly difficult thing, writing on trains, I asserted in reply that anybody ought to be able to write in any kind of a room. But I do know, what every writer knows, that the particular room one may be in can make a good deal of difference in the way one is able to write.

Of course, it does appear to be true that there are writers of a kind that can write anywhere in any circumstances, apparently with equal facility and their customary standard of merit, whatever that may be. I suppose war correspondents must be like that, and reporters for daily newspapers. We know that a good many war books were announced as having been written in dugouts, trenches, pill-boxes, tanks, submarines, hospitals, airplanes and so on. In the matter of some of them I should not undertake to dispute that they had even been written in asylums.

I have known, and known well, men of that type of mind which seemed to be so completely under control that at will it could be turned on or off, so to say, like the stream from a water faucet. My friend Joyce Kilmer had such a head. It has been told how some of his most moving poems—for one instance "The White Ships and the Red"—were the result of hurried newspaper assignments: how he could leave a poem in the middle of its composition, go out and lunch heartily for two hours, return and finish the writing of it; how early in his career he would walk up and down a room of his home in suburban New Jersey at two in the morning and dictate (without a pause) to his wife while carrying a shrilly crying child in his arms; how one of the best of his "Sunday stories" was dictated directly after having been taken to a hospital with three ribs fractured by being hit by his commutation train—and how much more. A young man with a brain in perfect practical working condition. But even he was not free from the mysterious tricks of creative writing. For we know that after a daily round sustained for a number of years of high productivity, when he went into the war, which inspired countless others to begin writing, he suddenly ceased to write, practically altogether.

Poets and trains being up, brings to my mind my friend the Reverend Edward F. Garesché, S. J., a source of amusement to many of his friends because of his method of composition. He travels continually. Frequently he will excuse himself from a group with whom he is talking, go to his own seat, request the porter to bring him a card table, get out his travelling typewriter, rattle off several poems, return to his party and resume conversation at about where he had left off. Some of his poems are very good; some (I'm sorry to have to say) are—not so good.

And so round we come again to the matter of writing in rooms. We know how Booth Tarkington writes: in what he calls a "work spree," in a room upstairs at home, a pile of freshly sharpened pencils ready to his hand—and that, doubtless, he wouldn't be able to write anything in an office if he were to be hanged for not doing it. (Probably never goes to an office.) Meredith Nicholson, on the other hand, declares that the only way it is possible for him to write is to go regularly at nine o'clock every morning to an office he has downtown; where he tells anyone who may ask over the telephone that he'll be there until five in the afternoon.

There are persons who like to have others around them, moving about, while they write. And people there are who find it necessary to lock themselves up, and can have no one else in the room. Though in some cases such persons would not mind the bang of a bass-drum just the other side of the door. I know a man who had an office in lower Manhattan where for a considerable period just outside his open window a steam riveter was at work. Terrific it was, the way the noise of this machine smashed the air into tiny particles like a shower of broken glass. Callers who found this man contentedly writing would hold their ears and look at him with their hair on end from amazement. A man of highly nervous organism, too; one who would be very upset if his typewriter had a pale ribbon, or be spoiled for the day if he couldn't find the right pen—worn over just to his liking at the point. But, after the first day or so, Mr. Soaping (name of the gentleman I'm telling you about) I know didn't hear the riveter at all.

Then those exist, Royal Cortissoz is one, who, dictating all they do, can have in the room while they work only their secretary. Frequently is it the case, too, that none but the amanuensis to whom they have been long accustomed will do. A stranger throws 'em completely off. A novelist I know, the writer of a very good style, who becomes very much fussed up, and is practically destroyed, when he suspects a secretary of giving critical attention to the manner of his prose. An embarrassing thing about most stenographers, I have found, is that they are greatly grieved if you say "'em" for "them," or anything like that. Or else they won't let you do such things at all, and edit everything pleasant back into perfectly good copy-book English. Some of them won't even let you split an infinitive.

Who was it, Voltaire, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, somebody, who could write only when elaborately got up in his satins and ruffles? It is what not long ago was called a bromidium to say that humorists are sad people. I'd probably be thought humorous if I should call myself any particular flier as a humorist, but this I know: wherever in my writing I may have approached being amusing that generally was written when I was considerably depressed. Forenoon is the best time for some to write; late at night for others. "Ben Hur," I seem to recall, was penned beneath a noble tree. At any rate, we frequently see pictures of novelists, particularly in England, at work in their gardens. The most familiar photographs, etchings, medallions and so on of Mark Twain and of Robert Louis Stevenson at work are those of them writing in bed. Now I can't (as some so take their breakfast) eat in bed; and I'm quite sure I should never be able comfortably to write anything there. I do not tell you how it is with me because I regard it as of deep interest to you to hear how it is with me, but merely to aid me in assembling a collection of facts concerning the freakishness of writing, and to suggest to you how very different it may be with you.

And I couldn't write under a tree. One writer, perhaps, writes more easily in the winter than in the summer, or it is the other way round. The mind of one, it may be, is stimulated by the companionship of an open fire, and that of another (for aught I know) by the companionship of an ice-box. Personally, I think that it is well in writing for the weather to be cool enough to have the windows down; and that night is the best time, for the reason that your mind (or, at least, my mind) is more gathered together within the circle of light at your desk.

Frequently, however (as you know), after sitting for hours with your mind plumb stalled, it is not until shortly before your bed time that that eccentric engine, your brain, gets buzzed up. Then, probably, you can't call the thing off if you want to. I will tell you a story:

A man there is, of some renown as a writer, who started a new book early last spring. For some considerable time he had been much discouraged about his writing. Hadn't been able to make it go. Could only lift heavily and painfully one stilted sentence after another. Used to take up now and then one or another of his early books and look into it. Marvelled how it was that he ever could have written such clever stuff. Like Swift when late in life he re-read "Gulliver," so did this man exclaim: "What a genius I had at that time!" He felt that the fire had gone out; his inner life seemed to have completely died; he was a hollow shell; could now neither receive nor impart anything worth half a jews-harp. When, one day, he heard rosy, young Hugh Walpole say of himself that of course what he had written was merely a beginning to what he felt he might do, this man looked at rosy, young Hugh Walpole with a deeply gloomy and very jealous eye.

But, lo! as I say, this man started this new book. It began as a series of articles for which he was to be paid—that was why it was begun at all. Now see! With him it was as Professor George Edward Woodberry says of Poe in his admirable "Life"—for a time his genius had "slept." With the start of the new book he awoke. It began to run right out of the ends of his fingers. Took (that book) hold of him completely. He couldn't leave it. Go to bed, have to get up and go at it again. Try to go out for a round of exercise. After a block or so from his quarters, walk slower and slower. Miserable. Tortured. Turn back. Immediately happy again. Soon be back at work. Anybody who entangled him with an invitation anywhere enraged him beyond measure.

New book finished. Everything fine. Got another commission. Easy enough job. Set to at it. Empty vessel again! In despair. He'd make all sorts of excuses to himself to leave his place early in the morning to postpone beginning work. He'd go anywhere, with anybody, to keep as long as possible from facing that task again. Couldn't give any sensible explanation of his prolonged delay to the publishers. Kept putting them off again and again, with one cripple-legged excuse after another, in the hope that he'd come round. Matter became a disgrace.

Still queerer cases than that I know. Fellow who shared an apartment with me one time. When according to the accepted law of nature his mind should have been in a very bad way, then always was he at his best. After leading a regular, wholesome life for a period his mind would become dull, stale and unprofitable. When, following a very different sort of period, he should in all reason have awakened with a splitting head, a swollen eye and a shaking hand, he would get up at about dawn one morning in rattling fine spirits, his mind as clear as a bell, and with an impassioned desire to work. Could, then, write like a streak. But doesn't William James touch upon such a matter as this somewhere?

And Stevenson, how wrong he got the thing! What is it he tells us as to the years of apprenticeship to writing:

It is only after years of such gymnastic that one can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it.

Only last night it was I was talking to Jesse Lynch Williams. He said nothing of "legions of words swarming to his call," nary a mention of "dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice." Instead, he asked if I found that writing came easier as time went on. No, he said, it seemed to him that writing became harder and harder the longer one wrote. That he had torn up everything he had done for a long while.

Always the paradox! Again, there are men who write with astonishing ease, or at least with astonishing rapidity, and write well. Not so long ago I began a novel in collaboration with a writer known and admired from coast to coast, a frequent contributor to The Bookman, and one of the best. We were to do this thing turn and turn about, a chapter by me, then a chapter by him, and so on. For something like ten days I toiled over chapter one. I labored and I groaned. When it was finished I was spent. I handed him the manuscript; he stuffed it into his overcoat pocket and went whistling away. Returned within a few days and handed me a wad of copy covering, I think, three chapters. Again I toiled in the sweat of my brow. Gave him another chapter. When, after a couple of weeks or something like that, he returned and I had read what he had done I discovered that he had got people married that I hadn't known were yet born. The collaboration busted up.

My excellent friend does not like me to tell this story, because he thinks it represents me as the conscientious artist and him as the shallow scribbler. Well, that was not so; his chapters were far better than mine. Nevertheless, his name I shall not give; I'll merely say that it has very much the sound of a name borne by one of the Elizabethan dramatists.

Then there is that sort of human head-piece which can only write when it absolutely has to. I allude to the magical instrument of coercion known as a "copy date." I know people, dozens of them, who having a month and a half ahead of them in which to do an article can't possibly get started on it until it is almost too late for them to get it in on time to go to press—when a mad frenzy seizes them, their indolence vanishes like mist before the rising sun, their minds open like a flower, and all is well.

And the "galley slaves," those poor devils who for years have lived under the whip of copy day every day. How they dream of the "real" things they might do, given time. If (they think) the Lord would only subsidize them! Now and then the Devil takes one of them and does this very thing. The happy man gets some sort of a sinecure. All he has to do is to go write. And (in all probability) that's all there is to that story. He is like those things Riley tells about who "swaller theirselves." He gets nothing written.

What do you write with? And why do you write with whatever it is you write with instead of with something else? Why did Mr. Howells (in all the writing of his which I have seen) use a script-letter typewriter instead of a Roman-letter machine? Why does Mr. Le Gallienne do so much of his copy (if not all of it) by hand? Why is it that Mr. Huneker could never either dictate or learn to run a typewriter? How is it possible for those Englishmen—Swinnerton and Bennett, for instance—to put forth in a few months whole novels in the monkish hand of an illuminated missal? (I have seen the original manuscript of "The Old Wives' Tale," every page like a copper-plate engraving, and hardly a correction throughout.) And why is that it seems to me most natural to write some things with a pen, others with a pencil, most things on a typewriter, and yet again mix the use of all three implements in one composition? I cannot tell you.

Some authors, if they are going to write about a slum, have to go and live in a slum while they are writing about a slum. Other authors, if they are going to write about life in an Ohio town, go to Italy to write about life in an Ohio town. In his excellent book "On the Trail of Stevenson" Clayton Hamilton says:

Throughout his lifelong wanderings, Stevenson rarely or never attempted to describe a place so long as he was in it. For his selection of descriptive detail he relied always on the subconscious artistry of memory. He trusted his own mind to forget the non-essential; and he seized upon whatever he remembered as, by that token, the most essential features of a scene—the features, therefore, that cried out to be selected as the focal points of the picture to be suggested to the mind's eye of his readers.

The author of the thirteen volumes known as "The Chronicles of Barsetshire," a detailed picture of the English clergy of his time, had never associated with bishops, deans, and arch-deacons; he built them up (to use his own expression) out of his "moral consciousness."