Simeon Strunsky

“ And yet it must have been I that first suggested Mars to him. Let me confess. I do not love the Martian canals with the devouring passion they have aroused in susceptible souls like Robert. But in a quieter way the canals have been very dear to me. Their threatened loss comes like the loss of an old friend; a distant friend whose face one has almost forgotten and never hopes to see again, from whom one never hopes to borrow, and to whom one never expects to lend, but who all the more lives in the mind a remote, impersonal, and gentle influence. ”

“ From the newspaper point of view, a college professor counts less than a professional gambler; a gambler counts less than an actress; a good actress counts less than a bad one; a bad actress counts less than a prize-fighter; a prize-fighter counts less than a chimpanzee that has been taught to smoke cigarettes; and an educated chimpanzee counts less than a millionaire who suffers from paranoia. By continuously pondering on the horrors of crime and vice as depicted in the newspapers, the American people are roused to such a hatred of evil that some editors receive a salary of $100,000 a year. ”

“ No sooner have I put my question than I am sorry. There is nothing the young soul is so afraid of as of satire. It can understand being petted and it can understand being whipped; but the sting behind the smile, the lash beneath the caress, throws the young soul into helpless panic. It feels itself baited and knows not whither it may flee. I have always thought that the worst type of bully is the teacher in school or in college who indulges a pretty talent for satire at the expense of his pupils. ”

“ But it is not an assemblage of poets or scholars or thinkers, or whatever class it is that is supposed to keep the world moving. It is that most solemn of all things—a city crowd on its way home from the day's work.
The footsteps keep up the tramp, tramp, on the board flooring, while train after train pulls out jammed within and without. The influx from the street allows no vacuum to be formed upon the platform. The patience of the modern man shows wonderfully. The tired workers face the hour's ride that lies between them and home with beautiful self-restraint and courage. ”

“ I have always been peculiarly susceptible to the music of marching feet. I know of no sound in nature or in Wagner that stirs the heart like the footsteps of the crowd on the board platform of the Third Avenue "L" at City Hall every late afternoon. The human tread is always eloquent in chorus, but it is at its best upon a wooden flooring. Stone and asphalt will often degrade the march of a crowd to a shuffle. It needs the living wood to give full dignity to the spirit of human resolution that speaks in a thousand pair of feet simultaneously moving in the same direction ”

“ They make it a habit to walk across the bridge on their way home in the evening, and they speak with great feeling of the beautiful effect when New York's high buildings flash into banked masses of flame in the falling dusk. People who live in Brooklyn take pride in keeping up old friendships and in dressing without ostentation. There are old gentlemen who use only the ferries in coming to New York, because they regard the bridges as a novelty open to the suspicion of being unsafe. ”

“ And the mayor all the while kept thinking how like her mother Helen was: her voice, her hair, her eyes, but especially her voice. It filled the room with many-coloured vibrations of the consistency of building concrete and hid completely from the mayor's sight the crowd of young faces, O'Brien, the Board of Aldermen, and the three million presidents of the Board of Education. Only Helen remained and she came close to him and laid her cool fingers on his aching head. ”

“ Taking dinner with an old friend who has just been married is an experience I regard with apprehension. In the first place, it is always awkward to be introduced to a woman who begins by being jealous of you because you knew her husband long before she did. She may be a nice woman; in fact, from the air of almost imbecile happiness that invests young Hobson, you are sure she is. But since it is natural to hate those whom we have injured, it is natural for young wives to dislike their husband's friends. ”

“ And as they sang, the player at the piano, exhausted by his supreme effort, sank more and more into his indifferent former self. His form collapsed, the fire in his eyes died out, and the powerful hands wearily drooped and drooped till they rested once more on the player's knees. A sigh of relief swept over the hall. Human emotion could stand no more. The audience could hardly wait for the last throb of the violins, to break out in rapturous applause. ”

“ It is a room in which all the arts of the undertaker have seemingly been called upon to bring out the full possibilities of the average New York brownstone "front-parlour." I have often tried to decide whether, in a doctor's waiting-room, night or day was more conducive to thoughts of the grave. At night a lamp flickers dimly in one corner of the long room, and the shadows only deepen those other shadows which lie on the ailing spirit. ”

“ The fire which flashes up in the eye of every amateur when he contemplates the gem of his collection, was visible as Cooper led the way to a good-sized platform of polished mahogany and brass on which was set up what I took to be a beautiful reproduction of the planetary system in miniature. I was right. "But observe," said Cooper, "the details of construction. The sun is made up of infinitely small eggs, since we know that the weight of all the hen's eggs consumed by the human race since the beginning of the Christian era is equal to one-billionth the weight of the sun. ”

“ It was Harrington who brought forward the topic that men take up in their most cheerful moments. I mean, of course, the subject of death. Harrington quoted a great scientist as saying that death is the one great fear that, consciously or not, always hovers over us. But the five men who were at table with Harrington that night immediately and sharply disagreed with him.
Harding was the first to protest. He said the belief that all men are afraid of death is just as false as the belief that all women are afraid of mice. It is not the big facts that humanity is afraid of, but the little things. ”

“ I had run down for a Sunday afternoon to Garden Towers-by-the-Sea, a beautiful suburb which a number of enterprising citizens had built up out of a sand waste to meet the needs of the tired urban worker who, in his expensive and uncomfortable city flat, finds himself longing for the life-giving breeze of the ocean and the sight of a bit of God's open country. ”

“ What the professor was anxious to learn was just how the newspapers influence the national life to the remarkable extent they undoubtedly do. He knew, of course, that the Americans are a free people, and that they select their own lawmakers and magistrates. He soon discovered that when the people desire to choose some one to rule over them, they name two, three, or more men for the same office. The newspapers then proceed to accuse these men of the vilest crimes, and the one who comes out least besmirched is declared to be elected. ”

“ Physical culture as pursued in the home probably benefits a man's body; but the strain on his moral nature is terrific. I go through my morning exercise with hatred for all the world and contempt for myself. Why, for instance, should every system of gymnastics require that a man place himself in the most ridiculous and unnatural postures? A stout, middle-aged man who struggles to touch the floor with the palms of his hands is not a beautiful sight. ”

“ It was very dreary.
"Harding," I said, "you were insisting only a little while ago that life is always beautiful."
"So it is," he replied, too listless to be defiant. "To some people."
"To whom?"
"Well, to the two here, for instance," and he pointed to a pair of handsome lovers playing golf all over a double page in the advertising section of his magazine. "Do you mean to say these two ever know what ugliness is, or pain, or want? Or ever grow old? Or cease to love? Here is the perfect life for you." ”

“ It is like starving in the midst of plenty. One always has the choice of half a dozen surface cars, but one is always sure to be directed to the wrong one.
So I repeat: Brooklyn's tangled streets serve their highest purpose in safeguarding its inhabitants against the unwelcome visitor. Because of our American good nature we are always inviting people to call; and when they accept we immediately feel sorry. It is a law with us that if two utterly unsympathetic persons meet by chance at the house of a common friend, they shall insist on having each other to dinner on the following two Sundays. ”

“ In Brooklyn there are people, churches, baby-carriages, bay-windows, butchers' boys carrying baskets and whistling, policemen who misdirect strangers, vacant lots where boys play baseball, small tradesmen, overhead trolleys, quiet streets tucked away between parallel lines of clanging elevated railway, an Institute of Arts, and old gentlemen who write letters to the newspapers. ”

“ The difference between the typical public clock and a watch out of order is obvious. Every prudent man knows the peculiarities of his own watch, just as he knows the peculiarities of his own wife and children; and he is consequently prepared to make allowances. But the clock on the street corner persists in thrusting false information upon you. The man who consults his watch does so with a purpose, and is naturally on the alert. But the cheating clock confronts him in moments of unsuspecting security, and throws him into a condition of the wildest alarm. ”

“ In the days before the auto a drive of fifteen or twenty miles constituted a good Sunday's outing. To-day a man can leave New Rochelle at eight o'clock in the morning and pay a fine at Poughkeepsie at one in the afternoon, or he can leave Poughkeepsie at eight in the morning and at one in the afternoon be in the lock-up at New Rochelle.
What hurts the motorist's feelings most of all, however, is to be regarded by the public as a sort of licensed assassin. Yet almost any one can think of people who drive a car and take no pleasure in spilling blood. ”

“ To be quashed into pulp under one of those girder-like front legs, Gordon felt must be abominable. To make matters worse, Gordon has a young son who insists on being taken every Sunday morning to see the animals; and of all attractions in the menagerie, the child prefers the elephant house. He loves to feed the biggest of the elephants, and to watch him place pennies in a little wooden box and register the deposits on a bell. What Gordon suffers at such times, he told us, can be neither imagined nor described. ”

“ Bob knows nothing of the cant which makes the robber monopolist only the sad victim of forces outside his control. Bob knows nothing of the sentimental twaddle about that interesting class of people who are more sinned against than sinning. ”

“ Right at the beginning of the volume to which I have alluded, I came across the following apothegm: "Long after Woman has obtained the right to vote she will continue to face the wrong way when she steps from a street-car." "How true," I said to myself. Well, a few days later, while glancing through the pages at the end of the volume, my eye fell on the following lines: "Now that Woman is learning to face the right way when she steps from a street-car, she has demonstrated her right to the ballot." ”

“ What I have said of clocks is largely true of the weighing-machine. Like the public clock, it thrusts itself upon us, and like the clock it betrays the confidence which it invites. I feel convinced that no one would ever think of using [Pg 245] a weighing-machine if it did not constitute the most characteristically national piece of furniture in our railway stations. All weighing-machines cheat, but, if cheat they must, give me the machine that flatly refuses to budge from zero after it has swallowed your coin. ”

“ What reply does the clergyman await when he asks the rejoicing parents whether they are willing to have their child baptized into the community of the redeemed? What is all ritual, as it has been framed to meet the needs of the human heart, but a preordained order of question and response? In birth and in burial, in joy and in sorrow, for those who have escaped shipwreck and those who have escaped the plague, the [Pg 33] practice of the ages has laid down formulæ which the soul does not find the less adequate because they are ready-made. ”

“ What is it that appeals to a woman when she reads a newspaper? A Presidential election may be impending, a great war is raging in the Far East, an explorer has just returned from the South Pole, and, woman, picking up the Sunday paper, plunges straight into the fashion columns! ”

“ Bob, like Nature, indulges in no fine distinctions. When he meets a bad Sultan he punches his head. When he meets a good Sultan, nothing is too good to believe concerning him.
And he accepts the one as naturally as he does the other. He has no moral enthusiasms or enthusiasms of any kind. It is merely an obvious thing to him that right should triumph and wrong should fail. He does not play with his emotions. I remember how, one [Pg 53] night, in relating the fall of Abdul Hamid, Harrington had worked himself up to an extraordinary pitch of excitement. ”

“ The city and the day's task have seized upon them and passed them through the same set of rollers and pressed out their differences and transformed them into a single mass of weary human material. The city has had its day's work out of them and now sends them home to recruit the [Pg 146] new supply of energy that it will demand to-morrow. The unshaven men with their newspapers and the listless women with their paper-covered novels show ascetically tight-drawn faces, as if the day had been passed in prayer and supplication. ”

“ And it is something to have a universal topic that every one can write on, just as it is stimulating to have a universal appetite like eating, or a universal accomplishment like walking. How many other subjects besides Woman have we on which the schoolboy and the sage can write with equal confidence, fluency, and approach to the truth? Possibly even women will regret that they are no longer the subject of universal comment. Who knows? A woman will forgive injury, but never indifference. ”

“ Yet even this mockery of a weighing-machine is preferable to the emotional type of scales which simultaneously gives you a false weight, tells your fortune in utter disregard of age and sex, and plays a tune that cannot be recognised. When such a machine has registered a German matron's weight at 115 pounds and informed her that she will some day be President of the United States, it is ludicrous to [Pg 246] have it break into a tinkle of self-appreciation, like a spaniel barking his own approval after walking across the room on his hind legs. ”

“ It is difficult to start on a short spin in town, under doctor's orders, without immediately beginning to wonder why house rents and office rents should be going up steadily in face of the fact that the population of New York transacts its business and pursues its pleasures entirely in the middle of the road. German citizens, as a rule, stop to light their pipes on a street crossing. When you give them the horn, they are seized with the belief that you are trying to play the prelude to "Lohengrin," and they run up and down in front of the car in extreme agitation. ”

“ Motoring is not unmitigated bliss. The common belief that a body may be in only one place at one time can be easily refuted by a woman with a baby-carriage. Experience shows that such a woman, if she be put five feet from a sidewalk, with forty feet of open road behind her for an auto to pass through, will cover the forty feet backward with incredible speed and propel herself right in front of the car. ”