Peter Donovan

“ What we really object to is that since we have attained the dignity of manhood and the responsibility of a vote in provincial and federal affairs, we are still obliged to toil in cellars with a coal-shovel—a black-and-white slave, so to speak.
It would be different if we were married. We would expect to look after a furnace. And, anyway, to a married man what is a little trouble more or less?—he has lots of it. But freedom from worry about the furnace should be one of the most sacred privileges of the bachelor. We have been deprived of our rights. ”

“ A man might well be moved to song on the top of one of those old coaches of a fine spring morning with the hedge-rows all in tender green. Even we ourself, who have a voice that causes people to turn around and scowl when we join in a chorus, even we might be led to troll a rollicking catch under such circumstances as that.
But who ever heard of anyone singing in a Pullman car—unless it should be a traveller in the smoking-room who had travelled not wisely but too well? And even those days are past now. Singing isn't done, that's all. ”

“ That is why we have such a kindly feeling for others who are trying to save—especially now when the high cost of living has combined with the high cost of killing, as represented in war-taxation, to put such a crimp in a fellow's income that it looks like a French pea to a famished ostrich. That is why we never feel aggrieved when our friends don't invite us to dinner, or give us cold mutton or stew when they do. That is why we never make any remarks on the age of their hats or complain of the cold in their houses or express wonder that they don't light the furnace sooner. ”

“ If a dog does something he knows to be wrong, he hangs his head and his tail and crawls around on his stomach and presents a ridiculous spectacle of contrition and self-abasement, till you let him know he is forgiven. Then he probably jumps into your lap, and licks your glasses off your nose, and sticks his paw in among the cigars in your vest-pocket. The only safe way to forgive a dog is from the top of a high ladder. ”

“ As soon as the heat-wave hit us in our office-chair, we took off our coat, vest, collar and tie, and knotting our suspenders around our editorial waist, we sent out for all the heat-literature that could be obtained for love or money—preferably for love. And then we plunged with characteristic impetuosity into the task of mastering this subtle science or esoteric philosophy or whatever it is. Only we didn't master it.
We never in all our life became so hot as we did reading the various directions for keeping cool. ”

“ We looked down and saw a dingy man with a bag of tools on his shoulder, who was frankly watching us and grinning with disgusting familiarity. Plumbers never are in a hurry.
"Makes a fella feel like chuckin' his work, don't it?" he persisted.
"It does," we burbled through the lather, and drew in our head with reckless haste. We afterwards discovered some of our back-hair still clinging to the lower edge of the window-frame. But not even the painful presence of a protuberance on our skull where none had been before could banish our joy in that robin's song.
Spring was here at last! ”

“ We are a coward like everyone else, and we do it. We don't believe the health-hints we see in the magazines. We have no wife to bully us in the matter of the aeration of our boudoir. And yet we cower miserably under the clothes all winter long, while icy gales leap in through the window, chucking our garments off the chair where we pile them up, blowing the undress portraits of our favorite characters in ancient history, Helen of Troy, Venus, and Phryne, about the room, and reaching under the clothes to tickle our feet with icicles. ”

“ The crease in his trousers and the shine on his shoes may still show the skill and energy of an expensive valet. He may curse at the waiters in his old lordly manner, even though he no longer is able to order his cocktails in a tumbler. But he is not at peace within.
If you are a shrewd observer you will notice that his sixty-cent cigar is not quite at the old aggressive, betcha-million-dollars angle. And the familiar wad of mazuma in the right-hand front pocket of the pants is not so swollen as of yore. We should say it is thinner by several one-hundred-dollar bills. ”

“ Personally we are an ardent and determined five-o'clocker. We have played it every way there is—straight, for place, for show, and across the board. There is no kind of five-o'clock performance—in accordance, that is, with the purity and piety of our character and upbringing—that we have not done or witnessed. We have attended teas of every description and shade of color, pink, yellow, mauve, and with dashes of cerise. We have gone to the tango kind, and to those discreet teas in sequestered corners of tea-rooms to which one conducts fair students of the drama after the matinee. ”

“ Laying our coat neatly folded on the bottom step of the cellar-stairs, we first seize a long lever which comes out every moment or two on our toe, and we shake enough ashes out of the grate to stifle Pompeii. Then groping our way to the coal-bin—away at the other end of the cellar—we proceed forcibly to feed the furnace with a broken scoop-shovel. About half of each shovelful misses the little opening—why the dickens do they put such small doors on the things?—and by the time we have accomplished the chore we are knee-deep in anthracite. ”

“ We buttoned our overcoat, turned up our collar, pulled our hat well down on our head, drew on our gloves, hunched up our back, and were able to talk to him for three minutes about as comfortably as though we were sitting on the top ledge of a sky-scraper in a blizzard. If there's anything we hate, it is a draught in the ear. The only draught we don't object to is the sort that one gets out of a keg, and naturally one doesn't get it in the ear—not unless the party has been going on a long time. ”

“ He fixes us with his shiny eye; he beckons to us; and we walk away down the aisle to meet him. There he turns our coat-collar back, sifts an ounce or two of coal-dust down our neck, deftly blows the rest of it into our ear, knocks our hat all out of shape, seizes the coin which we feverishly proffer him as the price of our deliverance, and then drops us for the next victim. ”

“ Stringent experience such as ours is a very valuable thing at a time like this, and we feel that it is in the nature of a public duty for us to lay before our readers—the whole five of them—the ripe results of our painfully acquired wisdom. Of course, we may be compelled to make revelations of a personal nature; but we don't mind. We can stand it. We have no social position that we need be worried to lose.
The trouble with the general public is that so few people know how to tackle a stringency. They are impulsive and unscientific. ”

“ Whenever after this we go into gilded dens of folly and eat lobster à la Newburg, whenever we commit indiscretions with mince-pie or home-made whiskey, we know the form our penitential dreams will take. We will see ourself standing at one end of that awful saw with Binks at the other, and we will go on forever and ever shoving the saw away from us and pulling it back again through a cast-iron log with Bessemer-steel knots, which will shriek in agony at every stroke. And Binks will be wearing a red suit of tights and a pair of cute little horns and a spiked tail. ”

“ Every young man—whether fifteen or fifty—has cherished these or similar dreams of the joys that await him in the days of vacation. And nearly every young man has had the same experience of going up to the same old summer hotel or boarding-house, where you sleep on a lumpy bed with a crazy quilt, battle with the flies for your food, and spend your evenings rowing a fat girl around a pond in a flat-bottomed boat. ”

“ He is not a regular millionaire—only an intermittent, so to speak. Every little while he manages to chin himself on the trapeze of wealth, though he never quite succeeds in climbing securely into it. He was looking very gloomy, his suit needed pressing, and the diamond in his tie seemed smaller and less brilliant than of yore.
"Hello, old pirate, why so glum?" we asked insolently—we always make a point of being rude to millionaires. ”

“ That is, some sixty or eighty gentlemen in more or less mussy garments came up behind us, watched us cynically, and then with grins more or less politely disguised went on ahead. Again and again, when we had just made a wicked drive of several yards, a fat duffer old enough to be one of our remote ancestors, with a red face and a girth that indicated years of reckless indulgence in pork and port, would come along, watch us for a moment, and then, growling apologetically, would drive like a rifle-bullet straight for the green we wouldn't reach for half an hour. ”

“ Besides, the man who manages to get an extra Scotch or so nowadays doesn't make a fuss about it. He keeps the fact a dark and happy secret. So, instead of singing in a Pullman car, one simply sits and grouches until that blessed moment of release when the porter has brushed all the dust off one's coat into one's eye, and one can seize one's grip and totter out into the open air once more. ”

“ A bachelor, it is true, dearly loves to be initiated into the little mysteries of the toilet, but not at dinner. That talcum powder has an unpleasant way of floating on the soup or the salad dressing. And you can't possibly spread it with the true artistic evenness at the table. You nearly always get too much on one side of your nose. This gives us an almost irresistible impulse to lean over and brush it off for you, and—well, what would the head-waiter think? It would probably cost us five dollars in hush money. ”

“ Every now and then one comes up to breathe, and then he goes down again for another five minutes during which he throws soap-suds all over you. When finally you manage to get a basin yourself, the car gives a sudden lurch and it empties itself gracefully into your lap.
When you have contrived at last to wiggle into your clothes—they always look as if you had spent the night tying knots in them—you go back and sit on the end of your suit-case in the aisle, or somebody else's suit-case, while the porter brushes everybody in sight and takes a quarter away from each of them. ”

“ If we ourself catch anyone glancing at us while we meander towards the wash-room with our toothbrush and our other collar—anyone, that is, of the opposite sex, and it is surprising how very opposite some of them are—we merely blush in simple-hearted confusion. We may wonder why the lady should look at us. But it would never occur to us to be indignant over the matter, not even if we were wearing a flowered kimona and carried our toilet tools in a cute little silk bag. ”

“ As for the flies, deserting in the most heartless manner the cows and horses they have lived with all winter, they rush with a glad shout into the dining-room, and standing with their hind feet in your bacon-and-eggs, reach over and lap up your coffee, or whatever it is people serve under that alias. Very chummy those flies, much more democratic than flies in town. The simple life of the country probably accounts for that—also for the way they wade into the butter like a hired man. ”

“ If a job should turn up to be done around the place and you should be asked if you can do it, deny it utterly. Say you know not neither do you understand a darn thing about it. If they ask you again, deny it again. Then if one come up to you saying, lo, this is a handy man, curse and swear and say that the only nail thou canst hit with a hammer is that which groweth upon thy thumb. Even so wilt thou find peace.
You must be eternally watchful, if you would keep yourself clean from the taint of handiness. There is something balefully fascinating about tools. ”

“ While we feel keenly on this subject of ventilation and believe that the thing is being greatly overdone, we don't wish to write ourself down as entirely opposed to fresh air. Some concessions must be made to the popular hygiene of the day. All that we ask for is reasonable moderation. We don't mind a nice little draught slipping into the room from time to time, so long as it comes in quietly and unnoticeably. What we hate is the sort of draught that leaps at the back of our neck and shoves an icy mitt down our collar. ”