Third Wodenouse stories Vanity Fair (USA)

8/3/2019 Third Wodenouse stories Vanity Fair (USA)

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Vanity Fair Stories Number 3

CABARABIAN NIGHTSA Little Tour of the Cabaretsby P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (August 1915)

THE other day, having business with the president of a certain trust company, Icalled at his office at noon, and was informed that he never arrived there before two oclock. The reason, I learned, was that he spent the early hours of every morning at the cabarets. It seemed a peculiar way of carrying on a great business, but a few nights later I saw a sight which brought understanding to me. At a table at the Follies Roof, the hour being one-thirty a.m., I espied three extremely prominent and important powers of the financial world talking earnestly withtheir heads close together. They were paying no attention to anything except themselves, and it was obvious that what they were doing was fixing up some momentous deal for the ultimate spoliation of the widow and the orphan. Before they left to snatch an hour or so of sleep, they probably arranged all the details in such a way that the widow and the orphan will get theirs in a manner which will ma

ke them think a Zeppelin has dropped bombs on them.That is the secret of the cabarets vogue. It has superseded the old-fashioned office. You know how it is with offices. You are just settling some scheme for doing a free people to the tune of a few million dollars, when there is a telephonecall, or somebody drifts in and sits on your desk and begins to talk about himself, or you find the stenographer hiding behind the curtain, taking notes to sell

to your rivals. Jesse James could not have worked under such conditions. Financiers had to think out some other place of meeting, and the idea of the cabaretsstruck them at once. A cabaret is the ideal place for plotting. If there had been cabarets in Guy Fawkes days, the English Houses of Parliament would have gone up so high that they wouldnt yet have come down.

Statistics show that the patrons of cabarets are divided almost equally into visitors from the Middle West, young girls being lured, and bulbous millionaires trying to think up schemes for inculcating thrift and prudence into a too speculative public.

The financier fox-trots round the floor, his brow creased with thought. He is bumped into by another financier, who has not yet completed his course of lessonsat the correspondence school of modern dancing. It gives him the idea he has been seeking since dinner. When the music stops, he goes over to the other mans table.

Hello, Jimmy!

Hello, Clarence.

Say, listen, Jimmy, old man, just a minute. Ive got an idea.

And then they sell each other the Pennsylvania Railroad.

ON no other reasoning is it possible to explain why the cabarets are so popular.It is absurd to suppose that crowds flock to these places every night simply towatch Diamond Jim Brady doing the one-step. At any theatre they could see profe

ssional dancers who do it quite as well. I have a respect amounting to veneration for Mr. Brady, but I prefer him seated. And, as for the other so-called attractions of the cabaret, they are non-existent. They consist for the most part of vocalists who sing very loudly in a key different from that in which the French h


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orn in the orchestra is wailing, and chorus-girls doing Swedish exercises at your elbow in a manner that on a warm evening engenders intense sympathetic fatigue

- a vicarious perspiration, as it were, in the onlooker. Surely it is not for the sake of these things that men leave their comfortable homes.

No, the cabaret is the modern office, and I suppose it is with a sense of what is fitting to the dignity of business that men go to them dressed in business suits. One of these nights somebody will attend a cabaret in evening dress and there will be a riot.

And yet, from one point of view, it seems a pity, this rigid adherence to the costume of the day-time. To my mind, a visitor to a cabaret assumes a certain responsibility. The moment he enters the door, he becomes part of a spectacle, and it is his duty to make that spectacle as attractive as possible. Despite the under-current of stern business, a cabaret is supposed to be a place of wild revelry, a sort of last-act-of-a-musical-comedy place. It is not fair to come there looking like an advertisement of somebodys Bon Ton ready-made suitings for the dressy shipping-clerk at fourteen dollars a throw. Let us have a little display, a certain air. Let us exhume the old dinner jacket, shake the moth-balls from the dr

ess trousers, and throw out our chests as if we were someone. Let us cultivate that sleek appearance and that look of haughty aloofness which make the London night-clubs so fascinating. To enter a London night-club is to feel that one is on

probation. The exquisitely groomed young man who stares at you so superciliously may be a clerk, but he looks like the son of a duke, and, if you pass his scrutiny with success, you feel prouder of yourself: you feel that you must be quite

a fellow after all. But you may go to a cabaret here in tweeds and brown shoes,and nobody cares. It is democratic, but it is not suitable. After all, people w

ho go to cabarets want to be thought wicked, and you cannot be really wicked except in evening dress. A wicked man in evening dress is a polished villain. In tweeds he is just a plug-ugly.

I HAVE a friend who would go even farther in this matter of cabaret reform. He would have a censor appointed, whose duty it would be to stand at the door of entry and pass upon the personal appearance of would-be patrons, rejecting all whodid not in his opinion increase or at least maintain a definite standard of ornamentality. It is a Utopian idea, but there is something in it. At present anyone

may come in, no matter how homely, and there are few more painful sights than that of a little stout man in tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses pirouetting anxiouslyround the room. A morbidly sentimental legislature will not permit you to shoothim, and there is nothing to be done except to sit there and watch him.

It is a good idea, this of the censor, and I think that in the end the existenceof such an official would increase the profits of the management. It is a facto

r in human nature that we push and jostle to get into places from which anyone is trying to exclude us. Adam and Eve probably thought Eden rather dull till they

were outside it, but after that Eve would have traded every fig-leaf in her trousseau for a pass-ticket or a rain-check. So, with the cabaret. If it could be made difficult to get in, there would be long waiting-lines outside the doors every night. And what a cachet admission would carry with it. Mankind would be divided into definite classes. There would be the Adonis who could get in anywhere,and, starting from him, various downgrades. The girl whose fianc belonged to thefirst class would not be obliged to boost the young mans looks. She would triumph

automatically over girls engaged to men who were allowed inside, say, Castles In The Air and Reisenwebers, but were barred from the Follies.

Failing a censor, there seems nothing to be done but to leave it to the good taste and public spirit of the individual.


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Cabarets are divided into various groups, those where the food is bad and thosewhere the food is unspeakable: those where the waiters are civil and those which

are doing good business: those where the performers perform without introduction and those which offer what they call revues, with elaborately printed programmes. There is no word of spoken dialogue in these revues. They consist of a series of songs and dances, with twenty minute intermissions to enable to audience to

enjoy itself. It is only fair to say that they do not interfere very much withones pleasure.

AS far as it is possible to ascertain from a somewhat restricted experience, thechief trouble with the cabarets is that there are only enough really smart peop

le in New York to make up one good audience. If you can hit on the particular cabaret which these people are patronizing on any particular night, you will havean interesting and stimulating time. The difficulty is to do it.

In general practice it works out that if, having heard that Frolics in the Twentieth Story is the place to go to, you repair thither in search of the gay life,

you find it deserted except for a few drug-store assistants and a sprinkling ofcitizens from some Omaha center, and learn too late that, since the previous week, Fashion has deserted Frolics in the Twentieth Story and that the only cabaret

in town worth visiting is Reigelheimers. You get a hasty shave and dash off to Reigelheimers, and find that there has been another shake-up, and that Mosenwebersis now the one spot. New York is so restless, so fond of change, and the Broadway palace of today is the hovel of tomorrow. The only thing to do in order to beat the game is to stick to one cabaret and wait there till its popularity comes round again.

As I write this, everybody is going to the Cascades above the Biltmore, but, bythe time my words are in print, Fashion will probably have whizzed off to some spot at present not on the map of the Great White Way, say the Blue Bird, on topof the McAlpine and the Cascades will possess only the melancholy interest of Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, which got its write-up from Oliver Goldsmith simply through being deserted.

I have a kind and sympathetic heart, but I weep few tears when I find a cabaretdoing bad business. I look on the cabarets as the Federal League of Broadway life. Everything was getting along quite nicely till they came along, promising the

public rich rewards if they would desert the good old hotels at which they werewont to sup, the Sherrys, the Delmonicos, the Knickerbockers.

ONE of these days I am going to start a cabaret myself, without music, without singers, where dancing is forbidden and nobody is allowed to speak. My patrons will sit around in comfortable chairs, doing nothing but relax. Those who can think will be allowed to think, but these will form a small proportion of my clientele. I shall provide no attractions; I shall do a better thing than that I shallprotect people from attractions. In six months I shall retire with a fortune, leaving the field to imitators who will have discovered that the Something New which this city wants is Rest.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE EIGHTEENTH HOLEA Very Modern Golfing RomanceBy Melrose Granger


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Vanity Fair (August 1915)WHEN William John Maxwell received the note and recognized on the envelope the handwriting of B. Rockleigh Derrick, the father of his Genevieve, hope, for the first time in many daysfor the first time, in fact, since that painful interview in Mr. Derricks study, when the life-romance of two loving young hearts had hit the resin with a thud, as if it had been sand-baggedbegan to stir within him.

It was true that at the interview referred to, Mr. Derrick, basing his refusal on some trivial ground, such as the stunted nature of Williams annual income, haddeclined, with considerable violence, to give his consent to what William regarded as a most suitable match; but, if he had not relented, why was he writing notes in this way.

It is not too much to say that, as he tore open the envelope, William expected aFathers Blessing to jump out at him. He was even surprised to find no tear-stain

s of remorse on the epistle.

And all it wasand in the third person, at thatwas an invitation to play golf. Mr.Derrick begged to inform Mr. Maxwell that, by defeating Mr. Saul Potter, he had

qualified for the final round of the Rockport Golf Tournament, in which, he understood, Mr. Maxwell, who had also survived the opening rounds, was to be his opponent.

If it would be convenient for Mr. Maxwell to play off the match on the followingafternoon, Mr. Derrick would be obliged if he would be at the club-house at hal

f-past two. If this hour and day were unsuitable, would he kindly arrange others. The bearer would wait.

The bearer did wait, and then trudged off with a note, in which Mr. Maxwell begged to inform Mr. Derrick that he would be at the clubhouse at the hour mentioned.

And, added Mr. Maxwell, after the bearer had departed, I will give him such a licking that hell brain himself with a cleek.

It is painful to write of the lower emotions, especially when exhibited by otherwise estimable young men, but the fact must be faced that, on the following afternoon, William John Maxwell looked forward to a gruesome revenge on Mr. Derrick.

The prospect brought a wan, faint smile to his lips.

MR. DERRICK was one of those Merchant Princes who have taken to golf in middle age, of whose golf the best one can say is that they take pains. Mr. Derrick took

exquisite pains. He lived for golf, and it was the ambition of his life to winthe Rockport Championship. He came to Rockport every year, and always went in for the Cup; and such is the magic of perseverance that for two years in succession he had been runner-up.

It was a galling thought to him, that, if it had not been for the presence of William Maxwell, this year he would have brought the thing off. Nor did it make it

better to remember that the presence of William Maxwell was directly due to thefact that he himself was at Rockportfor, though William had no great love for Mr

. Derrick, he always went where he knew Genevieve to be.

All this William knew, and he was conscious of a moody joy at the prospect of snatching the prize from Mr. Derrick. He knew that he could do it. Even allowing f

or bad luckand he was never a very unlucky golferhe could rely with certainty on crushing his rival.


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But he did not intend to do it abruptly. It was his intention to nurse Mr. Derrickto play with him. The contest would be decided to match play, which would givehim ample scope for toying with the victim. He proposed to allow Mr. Derrick toget ahead, and then to catch him up. He would then forge ahead himself, and letMr. Derrick catch him up.

They would race neck and neck together to the very end, and then, when Mr. Derricks hair had turned white with the strain and he had lost forty pounds in weightand his eyes were starting out of his head, he would go ahead and beat him by ahole.

He felt ruthless towards Mr. Derrick. He knew that to one whose soul is in the game, as Mr. Derricks was, the agony of being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness all other agonies.

He knew that, in days to come, Mr. Derrick would wake from fitful slumber moaning that, if he had only used his iron at the tenth, all would have been well; that, if he had putted more carefully on the seventh green, life would not be drear

and blank; that a more judicious manipulation of his mashie throughout might ha

ve given him something to live for. All these things he knew, but they did not touch him. He was adamant.

WILLIAM drove off from the first tee. It was a splendid drive, and it intimidated Mr. Derrick. He addressed the ball at twice his usual length, waggling his club over it as if he were about to perform a conjuring trick. Then he struck, andtopped it. The ball rolled two yards. He got to work with a brassey. This time he hit a bunker, and the ball rolled back. He repeated the maneuver twice.

I shall pick my ball up, he said huskily, and they walked in silence to the secondtee.

Mr. Derrick did the second hole in four, which was good. William did it in three, whichunfortunately for Mr. Derrickwas better.

William won the third hole.

William won the fourth hole.

William won the fifth hole.

Beads of perspiration stood out on Mr. Derricks forehead. His play became wilderand wilder at each hole in arithmetical progression. If he had been a plow, he could hardly have turned up more soil. The imagination recoiled from the thoughtof what he would be doing in another half-hour if he deteriorated at his present

speed.

A feeling of calm and content stole over William. He was not sorry for Mr. Derrick. Once, when the latter missed the ball clean at the tee, their eyes met, butWilliam saved his life by not smiling.

The sixth hole on the Rockport links involves the player in a tricky piece of cross-country work. There is a nasty ditch to be negotiated. Many an optimist hasbeen reduced to blank pessimism by this ditch. All hope abandon, ye who enter here, might be written on a notice board over it.

Mr. Derrick entered there. The unhappy man sent his ball into its very jaws, andthen madness seized him. The merciful laws of golf, framed by kindly men who donot wish to see the asylums of the country overcrowded, enact that in such a ca


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se the player may take his ball and throw it over his shoulder, the same to count as one stroke. But vaulting ambition is apt to try to drive out of the ditch,thinking thereby to win through without losing a stroke. This way madness lies.

Sixteen! said Mr. Derrick at last between his teeth. And he stooped and picked uphis ball. I give you this hole.

They walked on.

William won the seventh hole.

William won the eighth hole.

The ninth hole they halved, for in the black depths of Williams soul a plan of fiendish subtlety had formed. He intended to allow Mr. Derrick to win eight holesin succession, then, when hope was once more strong within him, he would win the

last, and Mr. Derrick would go mad.

WILLIAM watched his opponent carefully as they trudged on. Emotions chased one another over the latters face. When Mr. Derrick won the tenth hole, he merely refrained from oaths. When he won the eleventh, a sort of sullen pleasure showed inhis face.

Mr. Derrick won the twelfth. It was at the thirteenth that William detected thefirst dawning of hope. When, with a sequence of shocking shots, he took the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth and when he took the seventeenth hole in eight,he was in a parlous condition. He wanted, as it were, to flap his wings and crow. William could see dignity wrestling with talkativeness.

When he brought off an excellent drive from the eighteenth tee, Mr. Derrick seemed to forget everything.

My dear boy, he began, and stopped abruptly in some confusion. Silence once more brooded over the pair as they played themselves up the fairway and onto the green.

Mr. Derrick was on the green in four. William reached it in three. Mr. Derricks sixth stroke took him out.

William putted carefully to the very mouth of the hole. He walked up to his ball, and paused. He looked at Mr. Derrick. Mr. Derrick looked at him.

Go on, said Mr. Derrick hoarsely.

And then, at the eleventh hour, Williams better nature asserted itself. A wave ofcompassion flooded over him. He made up his mind.

Mr. Derrick, he said.

Go on.

That looks a simple shot, said William, eyeing him steadily, but I might easily miss it.

Mr. Derrick started.

And then you would win the championship.


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Mr. Derrick dabbed at his forehead with a wet ball of a handkerchief.

Go on, he said for the third time, but there was a note of hesitation in his voice.

Sudden joy, said William, would almost certainly make me miss it. If, for instance,you were suddenly to give your consent to my marriage with Genevieve

Mr. Derrick looked from William to the ball, from the ball to William, and backagain to the ball. It was very, very near the hole.

WHY not? said William.

Mr. Derrick looked up, and burst into a roar of laughter.

You young devil, he said, youve beaten me.

On the contrary, said William, you have beaten me, Mr. Derrick.He swung his putter, and drove his ball far beyond the green.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE EXPULSION FROM EDENA Long and Sad Farewell to the Many Waxworks at the Eden MuseBy Pelham Grenville. Drawing by Thelma CudlippVanity Fair (August 1915)AS I roamed through the cathedral-like stillness of the Eden Muse, the home of waxworks and horrors, which is soon to be closed forever to the public, it seemedto me that a chorus of ghostly Wal, I swans filled the air, as a million dead and gone visitors from Kankakee, Kalamazoo, and all points west, wandered past, leading hysterical infants by the hand and telling them that they had got to enjoy themselves even if they did have convulsions at the lovely horrors displayed to their view.

The exhibits at the Eden Muse are of all kinds, from the Czar of Russia to Mutt and Jeff; but all of them seem more or less steeped in blood. I dont think I eversaw so much vital fluid collected in one place as there is in No. 38, Beheading in Morocco, though No. 35, Execution of a Burmese Criminal, is far from dry.

There are two absorbing problems opened by an inspection of the Eden Muse: why people think them attractive, and what are the essential qualifications which, inthe eyes of the proprietors, render a person a fit candidate for the waxen Hallof Fame?

Of course, there are certain criminals, Kaisers and other sensational murderers,who get in without question. But why, to name one instance, is Anna Held at theEden Muse, and not Mrs. Vernon Castle? Why is E. H. Sothern given preference ove

r Frank Tinney? Why is there no Jess Willard and no Billy Sunday?

There must be some system of admission and exclusion. Probably an admission comm


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ittee sits, like the governing board of a fashionable club, and weighs the claims of all the applicants.

As to why people like to look at waxworks, that, I suppose, is answered by the fact that tastes differ. There are thousands and thousands of persons, for instance, who like to read the novels of Mr. Harold Bell Wright.

A more interesting subject for speculation is, How does a wax-worked celebrity feel when he sees his image glaring at him with that expression of glassy imbecility which is so de rigueur in the world of wax?

Does William Jennings Bryan drop into the Eden Muse to correct a tendency to think too highly of himself after a more than successful tour on the Chautauqua Circuit? It would be hard to imagine a finer corrective for complacency. I seem to see these great ones breezing into the Muse, all pride and self-confidence, and creeping out into Twenty-third Street like punctured balloons. Even Donald Brian might doubt his physical charms if he saw himself in wax.

Whatever you may say in favor of the waxworks, they lack what you might call action. A public which can see its favorite movie-actorfor five cents, cashshoot a dozen desperadoes, ride across country at a speed never less than a hundred and fifty-five miles an hour, and marry the girl at the end of the ride, will not spendtwenty-five cents to stare at an immobile policeman holding up a motionless opium den. Get action! That is the slogan of to-day.

Yes, it is undoubtedly the movies which have killed the poor waxwork. The Eden Muse no longer has the power to draw the rustic from his native village. When therustic wants intellectual refreshment, he takes it back home at the Hicks Corners Colonial or the Bodville Center Gaiety, and his children, spared the Chamber of Horrors, stand a sporting chance of growing to manhood with unimpaired intellects instead of becoming nervous wrecks at the tender age of seven through a toogreat acquaintance with the Eden Muse.

There is one group, however, which must give the directors of the Eden Muse a great deal of quiet satisfaction. I can imagine them creeping down into the chamber

of horrors every now and then when they are feeling a little depressed to gazeat it, and smiling softly to themselves for a moment. It represents an untamed lion of the jungle and a film operator. A part of the film operator is inside the

lion, the remainder covered with blood is waiting, with pained look on its face, till the motionless diner shall be ready for his next course.

FOR a moment, I say, the directors gaze on the group and smile. But their smilesdie away, for film operators are so many, and untamed lions are so few.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE SO-CALLED PLEASURES OF CONEY ISLANDby P. Brooke-HavenVanity Fair- (August 1915)


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IN the days of the Spanish Inquisition one of the assistant torturers was chatting with Torquemada during a matine performance in the deepest dungeon beneath the

castle moat.

We arent doing so well as we used to, said this worthy fellow. Im not kept busy at all nowadays, not what I call busy.

I think, said Torquemada, that the supply of heretics must be giving out.

It isnt that, replied the other. The trouble is that our methods are all wrong. Whathappens, for instance, if we want to put a fellow on the rack? Why, we go out a

nd arrest him, and try him in prison first, and all that. What we ought to do isto charge a small admission fee, change the name of the rack to Stretching the

Stretch or something, and before you knew where you were we should be turning them away.

Well, Torquemada paid no attention to the man, partly because he himself was a conservative in his views and partly because it would have been beneath the dignity of the Head of the Inquisition to accept advice from an underling: and look at the result! Who ever hears of the Spanish Inquisition nowadays? What dividends

does it pay? It has failed, simply because it was run without any understandingof the first principles of human nature.

Centuries later, along came Coney Island, run on the lines suggested by the above-mentioned thinker, and it is doing great business.

The principle at the bottom of Coney Islands success is the eminently sound one that what would be a brutal assault, if administered gratis, becomes a rollicking

pleasure, when charged for at the rate of ten cents per assault.

Suppose somebody laid hands upon you and put you in a large round tub. Suppose he then proceeded to send the tub spinning down an incline so arranged that at intervals of a few feet it spun round and bumped violently into something. Next day he would hear from your lawyer. But at Coney Island you jump into the Virginia

Reel, and enjoy it. You have to enjoy it, because you have paid good money to do so.

To one who, like myself, has never invented anything more elaborate than an excuse for getting out of a dull dinner party, the most amazing thing about Coney Island is the apparently effortless way in which those in charge think up new attractions every year. I picture them as rather grim, melancholy men. In early life

they have had some disappointment, and this has soured them. They do not love their species, but the law prevents their revenging themselves on mankind by anysimple and direct process, so they have to invent Attractions. When they devisesomething which must inevitably produce dyspepsia, nervous breakdowns, and heart

failure in the victim, they are happy.

They meet at a special club of their own.

The lawyers got away with all my money during my minority, says one, but I have invented an attraction which jerks you up and sideways at the same time and squirts

water in your face.

My wife eloped with the chauffeur in the summer of 93, says the other, but look at t


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he new one I have invented. You pay ten cents and drop through a trap-door ontoa lot of spikes.

Being in America, Coney Island is thought a little vulgar. If it were in France,we should have had writers pointing out how essentially refined the Tickler andthe Human Roulette Wheel were, and with what abandon and polish the French popu

lace took its pleasures.

To the thinking man the great charm of Coney Island is the feeling of confidenceit gives that the heart of the nation is sound and that, though we may be unpre

pared for war, we could nevertheless be depended on to render a good account ofourselves, should the necessity arise. We may have a small army and navy, but it

would be a rash power that would dare to set foot on the soil of a country whose inhabitants can consume hot dogs and ice-cream cones, wash them down with iced

beer, and then go off and submit smiling to the Aerial Slide and the Barrel ofLove. We should like to see a regiment of Uhlans tackle the Virginia Reel! Theywould have the white flag out before the tub had done its second bump.

Again, Coney Islands system of combination tickets might solve Broadways problem of theatrical depression. Think of central offices where one could buy a combination ticket for all the theatres! Theatre going would cease to be a gamble. For example, if you didnt like the play at the Gaiety, you could leave and go to the Astor, and so on till you picked a winner.

Before I forget. It seems that the explosion from the neighborhood of the kitchen, which I heard as I was writing my last paragraph, was the cook having a few difficulties with the oven. My wife reports that our faithful Swede, underestimating the volume of gas in the stove, set her front hair and part of her dress onfire, was exploded to the ceiling, and is now in hysterics. I cannot conclude an

article on Coney Island without suggesting this brand-new idea to the promoters. I look forward to seeing, on my next visit there, the great new attraction, The Oven of Joy. The idea is sound. It contains all the elements of a genuine Coney Island success. It makes a lot of noise; it throws you in the air, and it nearly kills you. Price ten cents.

~~~ The End ~~~

A School for Movie VillainsBY Pelham GrenvilleVanity Fair, October 1915THE school which I propose to found for the benefit of a small but deserving section of the community will have as its object the education of moving-picture villains in the difficult art of killing moving-picture heroines. The scheme deserves, and will doubtless command, public sympathy and support, for we all want moving-picture heroines killed. Is there one amongst us who would not have screamed with joy if Pauline had perished in the second reel or the Clutching Hand had

massacred that princess of bores, Elaine? But these pests carried on a charmed life simply because the villain, with the best intentions, did not know the proper way to go about the job.


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You and I, gentle reader, when circumstances or some whim compel us to slay a female acquaintance, just borrow a revolver and a few cartridges and do the thingin some odd five minutes of the day when we are not at the office or watching aball-game. We don

t worry about art and technique and scientific methods; we just go and do it. But the villain suffers from a fatal ingenuity. Somewhere back in the past the old folks at home must have told him that he was clever, and it has absolutely spoiled him for effective work.

Ingenuity is a good thing in its way, but he overdoes it.

He is a human Goldberg cartoon. A hundred times he manoeuvred his victim into aposition where one good dig with a knife or a carefully directed revolver shot would eliminate her forever, to the great contentment of all, and then, the chump, he goes and spoils it all by being too ingenious. It never occurs to him to point the pistol at the girl and pull the trigger. The only way he can imagine doing the thing is to tie the girl to a chair, erect a tripod, place a revolver onit, point it at her, tie a string to the trigger, pass the string round the walls of the room till it rests on a hook, attach another string to it, pass this ov

er a hook, tie a brick to the end of the second string, and light a candle underit. He has got the whole thing reasoned out. The candle will burn the string, the brick will fall, the weight will tighten the first string, thus pulling the trigger, and there you are. Of course, somebody comes along and blows the candleout.

THE keynote of the curriculum in my proposed school will be a rigid attention tosimplicity and directness. The pupil will start at the beginning by learning ho

w to swat flies. From this he will work up through the animal kingdom in easy stages till he arrives at movie heroines; and by the time he graduates, the Elaines and Paulines will be climbing trees and pulling them up after them to avoid the man, for by then he will be really dangerous.

The great difficulty will be to exorcise that infernal ingenuity of his. His natural impulse, when called upon to kill a fly, would, of course, be to saw away the supports of the floor till a touch would break it down, tie a string across the doorway, and send the fly an anonymous letter urging him to come to the roomat once in order to hear of something to his advantagethe idea being that the fly, hurrying to the room, would trip over the string, fall on the floor, and tumble with it into the depths, breaking his neck. That, to the villain

s mind, is not merely the simplestit is the only way of killing flies, and the hardest task facing the instructors at the school will be to persuade him that excellent results may be achieved with a rolled-up newspaper.

Once, however, he had grasped it, his progress ought to be rapid. Should he by chance succeed in slaying Pauline or Elaine or Genevieve or Gladys, he knows thegratitude which will pour out toward him from a million hearts which are achingto have the infernal serial finished and get on to the Charley Chaplin stuff.

But we must not be too optimistic. Success, however desirable, is at present faraway, and can only be reached with patience. A villain with those ideas will no

t learn in a day that the quickest method of killing a heroine is to decoy the girl down a dark alley and lean a couple of feet of gas-pipe against her Irene Castle bang, but he may come to learn it in time, and it is with that hope that Iam founding my school.

~~~ The End ~~~


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PERFECTLY FURIOUSby P Brooke-HavenVanity Fair, October 1915I HAD not seen Henry Bootle since his marriage. I had heard that he had taken aplace in the country and settled down.

It was a pleasure, then, coming into the club one afternoon, to find him there.He wore a somewhat depressed air.

Married life suiting you, old man? I asked tentatively, after the first greetings.

Splendid, he replied. Splendid. Never been happier. Buter, tell me, do I strike youas having grown at all ferocious since our last meeting?

Ferocious? How do you mean?

You feel safe in my presence? You have no lurking fear that I may spring at you suddenly and bite you in the leg?

None, I said. He sighed with relief.

You comfort me.

I dont understand you, Henry.

Of course not, he said. Listen: I hate scenes. I loathe rows. I have always pridedmyself on my even temper. Yet at Bodville Corners, where I now live, I am regarded as the local Bad Man. The natives avoid me nervously. When I walk down Main Street, little children run screaming to their mothers. And it is all due to Mabel.

To Mabel? To Mrs. Bootle?

He nodded mournfully.

Let me tell you all. The house in which we live is surrounded by beautiful grounds, so beautiful that the villagers like to wander through them, picking our flowers, trampling our grass, and shedding old newspapers and bottles as they wander.

I disliked all this, but I should never have dreamed of complaining. But I didsay to Mabel that I thought it rather a pity, and one morning I was surprised to

find the grounds deserted.

For a time I wallowed in the luxury of walking about the estate without bumping into strangers, and then I began to wonder what had caused this joyful deliverance. I made inquiries of Mabel.

Yes, she said, I sent them away. I said they must not come wandering about the place. I said that you were perfectly furious about it.

Life went on. Except for the fact that the plumber would drop in and borrow my bicycle, invariably returning it next day with a puncture in one or both tires, al


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l Nature may be said to have smiled.

What a pity it is, I said to my wife, that Wilkins has such bad luck in puncturing my bicycle tires. Its too bad, isnt it?

That night at dinner Mabel said: Oh, its all right about Wilkins. I spoke to him to-day. I said that he was never to borrow the bicycle again. I told him that youwere perfectly furious about it.

Next day I was walking along the road, and I saw Wilkins in the distance. About thirty yards away, he stopped dead, turned pale and fled in the opposite direction. I have never seen him since.

And so it went on. It was a little hard on a sociable man like myself that, aftersome months at Bodville Corners, the only person who remained on speaking termswith me was a chap named Smith. He is a capital fellow, a good golfer and deepl

y interested in several of my particular hobbies.

He paused, and again that look of pain came over his face.

Cheer up, Henry, I said. Life may still be pleasant, while Smith remains a friend.

He isnt, said Henry dejectedly. I was just going to tell you. You must know that hekeeps his car in our barn. We were only too glad to have his car there till theother day, when we bought a car of our own. While getting our car in, for the very first time, I scraped my mud-guard against the mud-guard of Smiths machine.

PERHAPS I expressed myself a little strongly! I said to Mabel, Dear me! There is hardly room for two cars in here.

In the excitement of arranging my car in the barn I wholly forgot Mabel, and it was only when I had completed the operation that I turned, to find her gone. I guessed what was up and cowered in the barn with fear and trembling. An hour later

she came back, looking rather flushed.

I have been speaking to Mr. Smith, she said, about the barn.

Yes?

I told him that he must take his car out of here at once. I said that you were perfectly furious.

At this point in his narrative Henry Bootle paused.

What brought you to the city to-day? I asked, for lack of anything else to say.

Oh! I merely came to try to get a cook. We had a perfect jewel till this morning,but yesterday I happened to say at breakfast that I should prefer to have my eg

gs boiled a trifle softer, and it seems that Mrs. Bootle told the cook I was perfectly furious about it.

~~~ The End ~~~


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THE EUROPE WEEKLY GAZETTEWith Apologies to F. P. A.Vanity Fair (October 1915)

AMERICAN WAR CORRESPONDENTSAmerican war-correspondents have overrun this continent until they have become as much of a menace as they ever were in their native clime, where they used to be sob-story writers and write pieces for the papers about "Things I See In ThisGreat City That Make Me Weep" and things like that, only now they have all comeover here and are writing about our war. We have had a lot of complaints at theGazette office from generals about how they cant fire off a 42-centimetre gun without bringing down a whole lot of American special writers who are hiding in trees and making notes on the horrors of the battle-field. And no General likes to

do that, because if he kills American citizens his country gets a firm and unwavering Note from President Wilson by every mail, and what a nuisance it is, answering letters when you are busy at something else. Stay at home, you special writers, say we. This means you!

Bill Irwin has left for his home in U.S.A. Sorry to see you go, Bill. Come again, is our attitude.

Looks like there was going to be another strike in Wales. Lloyd George of herehas gone to see cant something be done about it?

"Winnie" Churchill, our genial and popular statesman, is taking a m.n. rest, hehaving been until recently working hard in the shipping business. Win. is a good

boy, and that he may some day be back at the old stand is the w. of a.

All Americans want souvenirs. Sell your old cartridge cases and spiked helmets.Goldstein pays highest prices.Adv.

The Fall styles for women are military, which confuses our soldier boys so thatthey often salute their wives and kiss their superior officers.

Alf. Northcliffe has been saying a lot of things in his w.k. Daily Mail and Time

s which ye cor heartily endorses, he being of the opinion that it is time someone did something about all sorts of things.


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Babies are being christened Mackensen von Hindenburg Schmidt and Mazurian LakesMuller all the time now.

Ye cor lost his bread-ticket last wk, and had to live on potatoes.

Hank von Tirpitz says he is thinking up some more ideas like what he had when heinvented that submarine blockade. Oh you Hank!

Pretty poor results is being got by old Doc Zeppelin these days, and if he doesnot show some pep pretty soon he will have his Iron Cross taken away from him,

is manys opinion. What did he say his balloons could destroy London for when theykeep on missing it when they drop bombs and only hitting ploughed fields somewh

ere up Scotland way thinking they are destroying Piccadilly, say unkind critics.

One of the Prussian landsturm told ye cor that the Kaiser nearly swallowed the left half of his mustache last wk while singing the Hymn of Hate at a Heidelbergclass-reunion, he having come back from both fronts at the same time to be present. It gets in his way when he takes a deep breath, and rumor hath it that he was seen standing outside a barbers shop in the Wilhelmstrasse Monday.

Old man Bethmann-Holweg was to the Reichstag Friday, saying how it was England that had started the fuss and how Germany had been savagely attacked by Belgium so what were they to do except defend themselves? Beth. speaks his pieces quits nicely these days, nice and loud, and says something different every time from what he said last time, Its hard to keep tab on Beth. right along, ho changes his mind such a lot.

The fleet is summering in the Kiel Canal, and a pleasant time is being had by all.

Colonies has been getting pretty scarce lately.

Earl Kitchener of London, Eng. was a pleasant caller in our trenches recently.

Willie Hohenzollern Jr is still visiting in the Argonne. You must like us Willie, to stay so long. Thanks, say we.

Several local boys are vacationing in the Dardanelles, the w.k. Turkish spot.


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News is pretty scarce except for hand-grenades and such.

It begins to look like Jack Joffree, the esteemed general, didnt mean to move this yr after all. Well, take your time, Jack. Nobodys hurrying you. Youll move whenyou feel like it. We know you, Jack.

This has been a great season for tourists, many visitors from Germany and Austria having Julyed and Augusted in our midst. General von Hindenburg was a pleasant

Warsawer recently and is moving on into the interior. Whats your hurry, Hind?

People in these parts are saying how didnt the Czar say last year that the Russians would get to Berlin, and well, havent a million or so got there already?

Smoke Mazurian Lake MixtureAdv.

~~~ The End ~~~

A VISIT TO THE R.W.CHAMBERS FICTION PLANTBy J. Walker WilliamsVanity Fair (November 1915)TELL us, we said, how on earth you do it. Wherever we look, we seem to see nothingbut your temptation stories. We have to-day reached the end of your latest serial in Americas greatest magazine, and, just as we were mopping our forehead and saying, Well, thats that! we caught sight of an editorial note saying that your new one would begin next month. How do you manage it?

System, replied Mr. Robert W. Chambers. Nothing but system. Perhaps you would liketo stroll through the plant?

The Chambers Fiction plant is, with the exception of Mr. Henry Fords eruption ofautomobiles, the largest single industry in the country, and is conducted on much the same principles. Everybody knows by now how a Ford car is put together. Workmen have been toiling day and night, preparing the various standardized parts,

so that, when an order comes in, all they have to do is to put them together. Mike has a barn full of differential gears, George a few acres of carburetors, Ike more cylinders than he knows what to do with, Bills long suit is wheels, and Percy knows just where to dig up a chassis or two when required. The consequence is that, directly you come in with your order, Mike, George, Ike, Bill, and Percy

pick up the nearest thing in sight, rush to Clarence who has charge of the string and mucilage, and the thing is put together while you wait.


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Very much the same secret is at the root of Mr. Chambers great success in literature. He has learned the value of standardization. He has the modern touch. He knows the importance of speed. Competition is too keen to permit of delay. It wasthe necessity of putting on just that extra turn of speed which led Mr. Chambers

to hit on the real secret of his method,the standardization of parts.

There is one vast section of the factory given over entirely to the manufactureof love-scenes. Skilled workmen labor incessantly under the personal direction of the inventor, turning out detached chapters on the formula patented by him. In

another part of the building expert nature-fakers are preparing descriptions ofscenery and insect life. A whole wing of the works is given over to a corps of

assistants whose sole duty it is to think up new names for heroines. Heroes areattended to elsewhere, and there is a small comedy room in the basement.

It was my privilege to be present when Mr. Hearst called up Mr. Chambers on thetelephone for another novel, to be delivered on the following morning, and I have seldom seen such an exhibition of intense organized activity. From all corners

of the building workmen came rushing, one with a chunk of dialogue, another with specimen names for the heroine, a third wheeling a carefully-sealed carboy of

sex stuff to be used for flavoring. There was no blundering, no confusion. The man with the chapter in Natalies bedroom did not trip over the man with the scenewhere the erring husband drinks himself to death. The nature-fakers scuttled inand out, doing their little bit. Before one could believe it, the machine was complete, and there only remained the testing of it on the staff of resident school-girls which is one of the features of the Chambers Plant. Long before the specified time the thing was on its way to the editors office, complete in every detail and guaranteed similar in every respect to all previous productions bearing the firms name.

Mr. Chambers received my congratulations modestly.

A mere nothing, he said. In this particular case the order was given in plenty of time, and there was no real hurry. You should see us one of these days when we are really pushed. There is no mystery about my process. The formula is everything. I have been fortunate enough to hit on one which is, for practical purposes, perfect, and the rest is easy. Long experience has taught me the exact degree ofHoward Chandler Christyhood necessary for the composition of a heroine, and I know precisely how long andstill more importanthow broad a love scene must be to make a stenographer cut down her chewing-gum expenditure in order to have the fifteen cents for reading me serially. I always use the best wood in the manufactureof my heroes.

Wonderful, wonderful! I said, as I left.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE HABIT OF PICKING ON NEW YORK

A Mild Protest by P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (November 1915)ONE of these days someone will found the S.P.C.N.Y., the Society for the Preventi


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on of Cruelty to New York. But until that time arrives it seems as if nothing would prevent the stranger within our gates from administering a farewell kick atthe metropolis as he shakes the dust of it from his departing feet.

Lately, the entire population of these United States appears to have taken the thing up, and one cannot open a paper without finding some modern Juvenal in theact of knocking New York down and stamping on it. Mrs. Helen van Campen (Helen Green, of blessed gifts and memories) is the latest writer to commit mayhem on our unoffending city.

She prefers Alaska, and does not care who knows it.

Mrs. Van Campen bases her criticism on the theory that the population of New York are a set of effete worms, while in Alaska, every man is a Galahad and every woman is like the heroine of a three-volume novel.

THERE is no defense against these distant visitors. They have their own system o

f reasoning, and it is useless to try to get them to adopt any other. They overhear, in a restaurant, a man bullying a waiter. Down it goes in the note-book. Inthe restaurants of New York it is the custom to treat the waiters like dogs. New

Yorkers never speak civilly to a waiter. How different in Jayville, Neb., wherea waiter is more like a brother than a mere acquaintance.

HITHERTO New York has adopted the meekly accepting rle, but the S.P.C.N.Y. will alter all that. Its funds will be large, and its commissioners will journey north, south, east and west, showing up a lot of these saintly settlements on the edge of the map. They will penetrate Alaska, and report to Helen Green that a certain population of the inhabitants are burdened with human failings, just as the inhabitants of New York are.

Those will be great days.

To the resident New Yorker, the bitterness of these attacks lies in the fact that the aspect of the city usually criticised by the out-of-town satirist is the one created by out-of-town demand and supported, for the most part, by out-of-town money. The first thing the visitor does is to plunge energetically into the all-night-cabaret zone, and, when he returns home with a headache, he works off his spleen and his headache by writing articles attacking it.

The logic of the thing is all wrong. On his own showing, New York gave him a great time and relieved him of most of his money. As he came to New York to spend money and have a great time, the conclusion one comes to is that New York did its

share satisfactorily and deserves some credit for doing it. It would be different if someone went away from the city and broke into print with a violent attack

on the Tenderloin for being dull, and prosy, and economical, and respectable.

The country critic comes to New York, puts up at a hotel within a biscuit-throwof Times Square, stays out every night till the small hours, and then goes awayand says that this is an awful place where nobody ever goes to bed.

If the next provincial who intends visiting us for the sake of peace and quiet w

ill communicate with us before he starts, we will give him the addresses of a dozen hotels where peace and quiet may be obtained.


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All-night cabarets may be sinful, but it is not yet compulsory to attend them.

OF course the chief difficulty in the path of the S. P. C. N. Y. is going to bethat in defending our virgin city against all this sort of guerilla warfare, itis going to be so hard to hit back. In the old days, when the issue was broad and simple and the point in dispute was the alleged inferiority of New York to London, it was easy to put up a satisfactory fight. If London satirized New Yorks partiality for ice-water, New York could get back with something pointed about the

Englishmans afternoon tea.

But what is one going to do about Alaska? Personally we know nothing of the tea,fogs, and bath tubs of that proud territory. For all we know, they may have Esq

uimo cabarets there, with blubber on the toast to eat, and the Walrus Roll, or one-step. If they have, we certainly mean to take them inand criticise them freely.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE SCOURGE OF THE GOLF CHILDAn Agonized Cry from Pelham GrenvilleVanity Fair (November 1915) COME with me to the golf-links at Bellport, Long Island. Let us stand at the first tee, and survey the scene that confronts us. The emerald turf, so smooth andinviting. The gentle bunkers, so easily overcome even by the novice. The crisp air. The beaming sun. The sparkling waters of the Great South Bay. I hear you murmur, Is this Paradise?

No, Rollo, it is not Paradise. You have overlooked the Golf Child.

Just as he who would dive into the sparkling waters that lave the shores of Bellport, draws back as he is about to spring because he sees that the s.w. are not

so much s.w. as a solid mass of jellyfish; so does the golfer, about to tee offfrom the local clubhouse, hold back his stroke when he notes that the emerald t

urf is almost entirely black with Golf Children. A kindly man, he does not wishto add infanticide to his other minor sins. He says, I will pause awhile, and let

these children get ahead before I make my big drive. And he waits and waits. Andwaits ...

THERE they are, the little pets. There they are, toddling along in couples and giving their lifelike imitations of men rolling peanuts with tooth-picks for an election bet. See, Rollo! Over yonder two of the cute angels have just done the third hole in a hundred and ninety-one, so now the patient looking, grizzled manand his wistful friend can make another stroke. Then, if they wait half an hour

or so, they can make another. This is what is meant when you hear people talkingabout the fascination of golf. It is a great game, as played at our Long Islandsummer resorts, for it inculcates patience, philosophy, and control of the nerv


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es, and it keeps one out in the open air.

But it is thought by some that our genial committee at Bellport made a mistake when they passed that law that, by paying the sum of one hundred dollars down, any individual may become a member for the season and enjoy the privileges of thelinks not only in his own person but in the persons of as many of his family ashe cares to have enjoying his generosity. For it is this law that has produced the Golf Child.

As Bacon finely puts it in his widely read Shakespeare, the evil that men do lives after them. It is thus with many parents. Papa is a business man. He can onlyafford to take week ends off, and Bellport only knows him on Saturdays and Sundays. But he insists on his wife and children enjoying our soothing air right along. So he pays his hundred bucks to the golf club, and passes away, like one of those unpleasant moths which lay a million eggs in a bee hive and then go away from that place. The evil that he has done lives after him. On the strength of what he has stripped from his roll, by virtue of that one hundred iron men which the committee have thrust into their jeans with a fatuous smile of satisfaction, the entire family may overrun the links like an army corps of Germans swooping bl

ithely onto a neutral country. And it is one of Natures strange, immutable decrees that the fathers who do pay the all-the-season-come-yourself-and-bring-the-whole-dam-family subscription always have a quantity of offspring that would make a

rabbit look on himself as a race-suicide promoter and duck down a by-street when he saw Colonel Roosevelt coming.

AND so, as I say, just as we are about to drive off, we stay our hand and lowerour club, for we perceive that Willie, Percy, Clarence, Harold, Twombley, Stuyvesant, Cuthbert, Aubrey, and Baby George are in our midst, and that further on, just where our drive will land, are little Genevieve with her sixteen sisters and

the nine cousins who have come down to visit them. Wherever your ball drops, itmust infallibly maim or slay an olive-branch of one of the sexes.

It is impossible to outgeneral the Golf Child. You rise at five sharp and get tothe links at five-thirty, and you find a platoon of progeny hard at it. You han

g around till the dinner-hour draws near, and through the gathering darkness youcan still hear the clear, fresh young voices of a whole drove of issue as they

quarrel over whether little Claude has taken two hundred or two hundred and twenty approach-shots to reach the seventh green.

SOME hold that the Golf Child is more sinned against than sinning. They advancethe theory that the pestilence is due to that ineradicable trait in human nature

that urges a man to get as much as possible for his money. A man, they say, whohas paid a subscription of a hundred dollars feels that the more people he can

decant onto the links, the more value he is getting for his outlay. His adult friends are probably men like himself, who cannot get away from New York except for the tail-end of the week, so he has to fall back on children. There is something in this, one feels.

And the Golf Child aids and abets his parsimony. He likes doing it. It tickles him to see a long line of adults forming up patiently by the clubhouse, waiting for his little ones.

And so, what happens is that Papa, anxious to make his hundred dollar payment cease to seem an extravagance, rushes out into the highways and byways, scooping i


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n children with both hands and packing them off to Bellport. Nor does he desistuntil Mama telegraphs him House full. Three sleeping in bath already. Can put one

more on diningroom mantelpiece, but that is the limit. When that message comes, he rubs his hands and says, Well, it wasnt such a bad idea, after all, paying thatcentury. Ive given a lot of pleasure to an extraordinary number of children.

HE MISSES the point. Golf is, or should be, a game for the grown-ups. Papa should think for a moment of the wretched adults who have been lured to Bellport by its advertised links, and who must punctuate their every game with long pauses for fear of massacring the kindergarten. There is only one thing to say to such aparent, and that is Have a heart!

But I must cease, for I hear the voices of my own six little ones who have justreturned from a happy day on the links.

~~~ The End ~~~

Third Wodenouse stories Vanity Fair (USA)

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