At this summary of his record, which was very accurate, Scalza wept copiously. "I want-a see my lawyer," he whined. "Sure. We got to see a lawyer," echoed Dago Pete.

Lieutenant Snider banished the reporters and visitors from the room. As they left they heard the sound of several hearty kicks and Snider's warning: "Don't mark 'em, boys. The judge don't like it."

Such was act one of the great American comedy "The People vs. Dago Pete and Tony Scalza, Defendants." Act two followed twenty minutes later.

Alderman Antony Capello appeared. He wore a large stomach, a checked suit, an eight-dollar claret-colored tie, a silk shirt, a pearl-gray hat, patent-leather shoes, white spats. He is alderman of the

-th ward and also a professional bondsman, private banker, labor padrone, wholesale liquor and wine dealer. It is said of him that he can get a murder done more cheaply than any other man in the State. He first made a hundred thousand dollars by blackmail and labor contracting. During the past five years he has doubled his fortune every twelve months by wholesale bootlegging and hi-jacking. Alderman Capello distributed fiftycent cigars with magnificent gestures. He reeked with the mingled scent of garlic and fifteen-dollar-an-ounce perfume. "Two of my boys from th' ward is lockup," he explained. "How much-a th' bail? I make-a bail, now.

"Hello, alderman." The lieutenant shook hands cordially. The alderman has influence and the lieutenant hopes to become a captain.

"What's th' troub' with my boys?" "We're chargin' them with robbery first, alderman. They've been identified as them stick-up men from the West Side." "Al' right. How much-a th' bail?" "Never mind the bail to-night, alderman. It's midnight. We don't want to get a judge out of bed to sign the bond now." "Sure," Alderman Capello nodded vigorously. "I get-a judge quick, you bet-ch. Judge'll get up for me any time." He was quite right about that. A county judge is elected by popular vote, and no judge would risk offending the alderman and party-boss of a large and pivotal ward.

"They're pretty good boys, Lieutenant.

They didn't mean nothin'. What you say, Lieutenant? We make-a bail now.'

The lieutenant refused. He was anxious to hold the bandits until they could be identified by five or six of their former victims. The lieutenant risked his chances of promotion by flatly refusing to allow Capello or his lawyer to see the prisoners.

Act three was played the next morning. Capello's attorney applied for a writ of habeas corpus, forcing the police to arraign the prisoners and admit them to bail before they had been properly identified by complaining witnesses. Before the magistrate the bandits pleaded not guilty to the charge; Capello furnished $8,000 cash bail for each, and they were released. That very night they resumed their series of robberies. They had to work to earn money to pay their lawyer's fee and to pay Capello his commission, called "slice," for providing bail.

"What in hell is the use of missin' meals an' sleep to lock up two rats like them?" complained Detective Hogan. "Before you can make a case on 'em, some lawyer'll be around to get 'em out on Corpus Christi proceedin's.'

By employing every artifice and technicality their attorney delayed their trial for fourteen months, until the fact of the arrest had been forgotten by such citizens as will consent to serve on juries. Then it was found that most of the State's witnesses who could identify them as the bandits had either disappeared, moving away from the city, had been intimidated until their testimony was worthless, or had been "seen," which means being bought off. As a result, the defendants' lawyer was able to raise the "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the trial jurors. Tony and Pete were acquitted and the policemen who arrested them were denounced by the trial judge for their "brutality and arrogance."

Yes, the police are stupid, sometimes. But society gives them no chance to become an intelligent, self-respecting, efficient arm of the government.

As one sits in police headquarters, seeing the hopeless odds placed against the officers, one wonders how and why the machinery creaks along. It is not astonishing that it works badly, but rather it is marvellous that it functions at all.

JEFT to itself, the irresponsible spirit of levity, obviously individualistic, however contagious, inevitably honeycombs our seriousness-itself not generically suggestive of the "high seriousness" preached (at one epoch) to subsequent societies by Greek example. The Puritans and Plato differed temperamentally. And since the day of the Puritans, who individually often, and as "herd" on such occasions as meeting-house raisings, had plenty of the leaven of pure jollity, we have certainly not been prone to solemnity-save perhaps in the varieties of "solemn farce" which our frivolity is as prompt to produce as it is both quick to detect and ready to deride. Mockery of seriousness, indeed, is the staple basis of much of the humor in which-not too humorously, though in the language of "Shakespeare, our contemporary," as Stuart Sherman calls him-we "tell the world" we altogether excel it. Often the world's reply is practically in the austere words of Queen Victoria: "We are not amused." Occasionally, of course, our humorists do amuse it. When our pervasive, preponderant, national, and volatile humor is condensed, and not to put too fine a point upon it-personified in an occasional personality, it indubitably "gets across" in the land of our ancestry, though, so far as I know, it has not yet invaded North Britain. But, except for its incarnation in these fortunate individuals with whose identity it so happily merges, the impression it leaves on the uncomprehending foreigner-not unnaturally indifferent to us as civilized, by reason of possessing and preferring a civilization of his own, and hence only interested in our exceptional "cases"-is more of a lack of solidity of character, a lack of seriousness of aim and temper, than of the kind of humor consistent with these qualities.

Those of us, in a word, whom foreigners can find "great fun" are generously appreciated-Artemus Ward in the London of his day, Mark Twain in the Oxford of ours-but, in the main, they are apathetic and no doubt sceptical as to the potential seriousness out of which the "great fun" they savor has issued. They would probably agree with Mr. Will Rogers declaring that he writes "for grown-ups with the child-mind," and assure him that in this respect he has among his countrymen no monopoly of the practice. In general, it is unfair to expect spectators to enjoy the game of which they do not know the rules. Nevertheless, national traits ought to be attractive, and, if they are not, those who possess them ought to ponder the fact and the explanation of it. Fitzjames Stephen, who wrote a mordant "examination" of Mill's philosophy with the title "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," a marked book of mid-Victorian polemic, was an ingrained Tory of the kind more easily forgotten than refuted. "We divide on other lines nowadays," as the economists say. But he has this to observe in his section on "Equality," which, at least on the fas est ab hoste doceri principle and by way of seeing ourselves as others see us, we might still usefully medi

The success of equality in America is due, I think, mainly to the circumstance that a large number of people who were substantially equal in all the more important matters, recognized that How far they are equal now, and how long they fact and did not set up unfounded distinctions. will continue to be equal when the population becomes dense, is quite another question. It is also a question which I cannot do more than enormous development of equality in America, glance at in two words in this place, whether the the rapid production of an immense multitude of commonplace, self-satisfied and essentially slight people is an exploit which the whole world need fall down and worship.

Plainly the Tory mind-that apparent incongruity, as it seems to-day to many still has its standing in court. But of course I have quoted this passage for the

sake of the "two words" to-day most worth our attention. We can find reasons for self-satisfaction in being multitudinous and even, in Tory eyes and considering the Tory alternative, commonplace. But I confess it is difficult to be pleased with being found "essentially slight." Is it only because we are too touchy that we hesitate to acknowledge the modicum of truth there may be in the words-to exclaim touchés, so to speak-with candor equal to our critic's? On the whole, I think not. I think our touchiness itself, which is undeniable, is a mark of the immaturity that distinguishes us from older societies, and that if we seem "slight" it is not because we are essentially but because we are socially so. "Socially slight" we ought, perhaps, to own up to, and recognize the fact as a defect of our quality of individualism. With far more fraternity than some other peoples, is it not true that we get less out of our fraternizing?

A people may be considered happy, even fortunate (since the two so often merge), of which the bond consists in a temper so fundamentally sound as to be constitutionally serene, and so habitually unclouded as to devote much of its selfexpression, when expressing itself socially, to running the gamut between good nature and high spirits. This at least saves it from the accidia detested of Dante -and the misfortune of having eminent Tories like Stephen. But socially speaking, I suppose the trait with which as a people we are best satisfied-to the point of saturation often-would be the humor least savored by others, save in the case of our star performers. We make, however, a radical mistake in conceiving it as intrinsically a social trait at all. We put it very generally and often very successfully (in the absence of other instruments) to social uses, sometimes indeed leaning on it heavily and working it hard. But if we take, as among the most discerning, the definition of Thackeray, "Humor is wit and love," or that of Anne Evans (not George Eliot, who has, however, admirable pages on the subject), "Thinking in fun while we feel in earnest," it is recognizable as first and most of all a personal matter. Wit, no doubt, is intrinsically social. It requires the reciprocity of others

viewing the subject, if only for the moment, in the same way and perhaps turning on it a new light. Beside it humor is spectacle; the social humorist plays a lone hand. And he is apt to forget Mr. Tarkington's caution: "There is one trouble with unflagging humor: it never flags."

Writing of his former aid in The Nation office of early days, John Richard Dennett, a literary critic of unsurpassed quality, the late E. L. Godkin declared: "He was a man to whom the ball of conversation was really a ball and not an anvil or a barrel of flour." That is, he was eminently a wit and, socially gifted, shared what he shone in and what he was, though quite otherwise than that arch-humorist, Falstaff, the cause of in others. However personally imaged and superscribed, wit is intrinsically current coin. Add love to it and it at once acquires the subjective tinge appropriating it to its author. Hence authorship rather than society is its congenial field. Though love be, in itself, one of the most powerful of social forces, alloyed with wit it singularizes and isolates the humorist-sometimes indeed insulating him if addicted to the anviland-barrel-of-flour habit, and to that extent disintegrating the social entente. Professional or lay, our humor in general is apt to decline into facetiousness, and facetiousness, though a distinct social force, is commonly exerted on a level too lowly to make very powerfully for distinction. Socially a lubricant rather than a factor, it fraternizes genially without much deepening fraternity or elevating the conversation-oftener perhaps versation—it characterizes. It betrays effort as often as it eases the strain it is, rather crudely, designed to relieve. As persiflage it is apt to be stock rather than spontaneous-in which case it is, to use the terms of trade. significantly incorporated with our speech, less a social asset than a social liability.

In its broader social aspects humor is fatally devitalized by frivolity, and seriousness even in humor is impossible without depth of sentiment, real enough to be felt if not stressed enough to be salient. Exceptions if any prove the rule. A community whose humor is insipid might better be humorless, and is especially unfortunate if especially addicted to humorless humor. In our own case, though

often enough intellectually frivolous, its lack of seriousness oftenest springs from its lack of sentiment. In avoiding the attitude of the owl, it misses the thrill of the nightingale. The "love" that it adds to wit lacks depth-the quality that subtends nobility as elevation crowns it, and that in itself confers distinction. Molière, the incarnation of Meredith's "comic spirit," had, according to Stendhal, more depth than other poets." In eschewing sentimentality we do not hesitate to weaken sentiment-and not in humor only, but all along the line of thought and expression. If we gain in truth, in good sense, in the disposition to look the facts in the face, in fortitudeand it is perhaps one of our illusions, because it is too unquestioningly one of our convictions, that we do-nevertheless only sentiment can be relied on to rescue us from the literal, æsthetically one of the intrinsic foes of distinction, as indeed it is of the comic spirit-save as, in Labiche, for instance, supplying this with some of its choicest material.

One of our literary worthies whom with the lapse of time desuetude has, not altogether innocuously, retired to the higher and least molested shelves of the libraries is Washington Irving. Perhaps "The Sketch-Book" is no longer quite adapted for bedside, nor "Knickerbocker" for sociable, reading, and their author properly a classic mainly in accordance with Signor Pococurante's characterization. Nevertheless, as Sainte-Beuve said of Lamartine, "he was important to us," and it is a pity that, whatever his vitality, it lacked the force adequate to make it viable, for the link with which he attached us to a great humoristic tradition was so evenly welded of both wit and love as could but have a salutary suggestiveness for the literature that begins with him, and now in Dennett's phrase "remembers" him "as forgotten." But in spite of his failure in permanent influence, the memory of his undeniable distinction, and of how well it served his country in his day, remains all the more salient to the reader who is anything of a bookman, and his distinction is largely due to the blend just noted. I suppose no one ever wrote of him without saying that his works were "distinguished by humor

and sentiment"-meaning substantially Thackeray's more analytical definition. And if his practice had had the force of his procedure it would doubtless have stimulated in many of our jesters the element of seriousness needed to make them "important to us," as well as amusing, by determining our literary taste in the direction of distinction rather than of relaxation. Too much tickling leaves us helpless. Its "irresistibility" paralyzes response to the elementary invitation familiarly expressed in the time-honored formula: "Brace up and have some style about you." The gods, as we know, laughed inextinguishably, but they extended no such Olympian privilege to mortals, for whom, indeed, as a rule, they arranged but meagre occasion for its exercise, feeling no doubt that they would be prone to abuse it.

However, our humorists can hardly be held altogether responsible for the short life and other shortcomings of our humor. Its irresponsibility, in fact, is largely what we find irresistible in it. It is our social immaturity that insists on confining it to shooting as it flies the folly that does not fly far or long without suggesting to more developed taste the wisdom of the poet's further prescription, to "vindicate the ways of God to man." It is the extravagant-the outré, the rococo-taste of the time that, amply repaying this restricted practice, evokes little of stronger wing; save satire which may be as savage, and burlesque which may be as extravagant, as it likes. And if our humor favors the divorce of those classic inseparables, "laughter and tears," wit with us, not content to banish sentiment, shows a marked disposition to burlesque it. The most distinguished example of this is, of course, Mr. Erskine's "The Private Life of Helen of Troy"-material classic enough, one might contend, to claim more strictly humorous alloy; Molière, for example, rather than Meilhac. And even "La Belle Hélène," though deliciously diverting, is less disillusioning in being more irrational. But we deduce rules from masterpieces rather than the other way round. This one is as brilliantly as if such a thing ever happens-it is unprecedentedly, successful in applying the terminology of one time to the material of another

in order to exhibit our own traits by what Master Penrod Schofield would felicitously call "the main and simple" expedient of emptying a time-honored legend of the sentiment that has heretofore made it august. Is "Helen" satire only, or is it also sense? The author leaves it to us to decide. I wish sometimes he hadn't, but that is precisely the effect he is rubbing his hands over so relentlessly producing. And in any case the result is literature, and, in virtue of its contemporary truth, in spite of its burlesque, must rank as comedy-comedy, besides, showing that burlesque may be exquisite as well as broad. Like all original masterpieces, it seems to establish as well as to invent its type Shaw without perversity, Gilbert Platonized.

In less distinguished hands, it is true, the type is unlikely to be utilized on the same plane. Variants may conceivably vulgarize it. One such has been thought to, Miss Anita Loos's marvel of gaiety, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." Being the self-portrait of a "gold-digger," it may be considered to "sink with its subject," as Arnold considered that in the sense in which "a Dutch painter" did, Homer did not. But if talent is to "catch manners as they rise," to cite Pope once more, it is simply dull to confound the material with the method which in Miss Loos's hands is all the more obviously objective for being ostensibly self-revelation. The type of her heroine is certainly an accredited one from the realistic point of view, and if it is treated too lightly for realistic veraciousness, to exact literal realism of farce is literalism. The aptness of baseness for burlesque may be argued, but here the absurdity of the characters' view of baseness is fundamental, as well as dominant in the treatment. The treatment surely is too light to sink with the subject in any case, and, since it would be idiotic to call it misleading, one may concentrate on it as the sole point of the book, and enjoy in enviable relaxation the art of a truly imaginative talent.

It is to be remarked all the same of this delightfully considered trifle, as of Mr. Erskine's really magisterial performance, that its only dealing with sentiment is to deflate it. Both rank with wit rather than with the humor of which sentiment is as

normal an ingredient as wit, and, whatever our deficiency in sentiment, no one would say that we overdo wit, or that it would not be an excellent thing if such examples as the foregoing were less exceptional with us. In so far as Thackeray's definition of humor holds, wit is as essential to humor as love. It is, as I said, eminently social, but a mark of a mature rather than an undeveloped society, indeed a development rather than a fundamental force of concert. The anchorite may conceivably be witty but only potentially, though he might often yearn for the society he foregoes. It is possible that we are on the verge of a general efflorescence of wit in consequence of denuding our humor of sentiment. But we may perhaps more reasonably hope to experience a renascence of our native sentiment earlier than the development on any noteworthy scale of an accomplishment that is intrinsically a social plant of slow growth.

Much deeper than the stratum of sentiment associated with either wit or humor, of course, lie the most powerful springs of concerted action. Fundamentally personal as well as human, these have their intimate side and belong in that borderland of thought and feeling where the individual and the social overlap each other. For all their wide-spreading and far-reaching radiation they are, as Thackeray says, "of their nature sacred and secret and not to be spoken of save to Heaven and the one ear alone," the religion, in a word, which is love (and not theology), and the love which is religion (and not Shelley's "sad satiety"). Considered as social forces, they are naturally to be considered strictly as the sentimental springs of action and not in the gross as all the action itself that springs from them; forces to be controlled and utilized to the end of social ideality, and precisely not suffered to obsess the individual into the fanatic in the one case, or the sensualist in the other. As such forces they cannot be too intelligently respected. And since we are, as a race, fundamentally and traditionally sentimental, it can hardly be that our sentiment, intelligently reviewed and rationalized, will not ultimately reappear.

Nothing, indeed, marks the present time as a transitional one more than the