"Is there anything else you want?" said Jones as he left me in what, in reasonable circumstances, would have been my bedroom, but was now merely the world at large. "Nothing," I said, with fortitude. "Good night." I went into the house and ten minutes later I emerged, attired in a neat, but gaudy, pair of pajamas. A lamp lighted my labors. The game was on; the mosquitos and I were alone. I shall withhold the tedious details of bed-making. Suffice it to say that I followed the golden rule of the art: don't let the feet escape; sacrifice everything else. If a single toe projects, the blankets will be up and about your neck before you know it. Then I folded a spare blanket into a pillow. Next came the magnum opus-hanging the mosquito-netting. bite only the head. Now I could show you-but never mind. Then there is the Renaissance style. You suspend the netting gracefully by one or two points from a branch or some such supposed fixture, and let it depend in elegant festoons to the floor, securing the corners by lamps, vases, pitchers, or shoes. This method adequately answers the question, "What shall we do with the weddingpresent Aunt Alice gave us?" There is also the Perpendicular Gothic style-four posts erected at the corners of the cot, with netting draped over them. This, I decided, required too much construction, and I swung back to the Renaissance. Securing some string, after a short, dark, and eventful journey in the house, I hitched the string to the netting, tied it to a branch, made a beautiful pyramidal tent, and squirmed inside with all the delicate deliberation of a jackstraw-player. At last I was on the creaking cot, and my tent still stood! The laws of physics tell us that breezes pass through netting. This merely goes to show that physics has a big future. I had distinctly felt a slight zephyr outside; but now, as I balanced on my shoulderblades on a Spartan blanket, I thought that the heat had become even more breathless; I felt that I was being suffocated. Is n't there some wild animal that builds itself a house and then crawls in to die? But I was not going to give up; I forced myself to draw a long sigh of relief, and said to myself: "Oh, what wonderful air! How I shall sleep!" Yes, how? I humped about a few times-creaking as I have never creaked before-till I thought I was more comfortable, pulled up a blanket cautiously, kicked it off warmly, rolled back into my original position, moved down six inches, so that my head just reached the pillow, thought about mosquitos awhile, moved up four inches, thought about pillows, and then suddenly, with a great start, realized that I was n't asleep. The fact stood out in my brain in huge, staring capitals: YOU ARE WIDE AWAKE; YOU ARE NOT EVEN SLEEPY. It was clear that my nerves needed soothing if I was to get any sleep at all. People recommend many ways of soothing the nerves, but at times they are all disappointing. I thought of sheep jumping over a fence until all the sheep in my head had gone lame. I counted up to three hundred and seventy-four, which must be pretty nearly the world's record, but I noted no good results. At the end of an hour I was wider awake than ever and considerably more uncomfortable. About this time I began discovering laws of physics. I. When a man lies on his side on a cot, his weight is evenly distributed between his ear and his hip-bone. II. For every dead mosquito in the hand there are two live ones in the bush that will be along presently. III. The use of netting rests on the theory that it offers an obstruction to mosquitos. This was first proved false in 1066, but people still At dawn, which in summer occurs shortly after bedtime and lasts for several hours, I was awakened by the birds, which were making a dreadful din above me in the trees. I found that four mosquitos were perched on the netting about fourteen inches from my face-great, hungry fellows, regular eagles. They stared at me till I could have hidden myself for embarrassment. Presently a friend of theirs, bloated with drink, sailed down and sat beside them, singing a triumphant blood-lust song in a harsh, drunken tenor. He was plainly a degenerate going the pace that kills. I They say that if you look a wild animal in the eye he will turn away uneasily. I tried this on Macbeth, the new arrival,I called him Macbeth because he murdered sleep,-but he was unabashed. even spoke to him sternly, told him to go home and take his friends away with him, asked him what sort of place this was for a chap with a family; I appealed to his better self. Macbeth's only reply was to crawl insolently through a tear in the netting and come straight at me. His song of triumph rose in sharp crescendo till he struck my nose; then it ceased. I was just reaching to kill him, even at the risk of disfiguring myself for life, when suddenly and without warning the netting gave way completely and fell about my ears. Can you imagine a worse predicament than to be pinned under so much wreckage with a mosquito that you personally dislike? Well, I climbed out, rearranged my tent (while Macbeth's friends got at my ankles), sneaked in under the edge again, lay down once more, and looked about warily for Macbeth. He was nowhere to be seen. I suspected some treachery, and on the off chance slapped the back of my neck quickly and with tremendous force, but with no corpse to show for it. "HE WAS PLAINLY A DEGENERATE GOING THE PACE THAT KILLS" Well, to tell the truth, that's as far as I got. I inadvertently fell asleep in the middle of law number three. Physics is the loser. I blame only myself. From that moment to this I have never seen Macbeth. It is all very sad. I al most wish now that I had n't been so harsh with him. After I had given him up for lost, I took count of the insect life about me, and discovered a delightful game, called Insides versus Outsides. At 4 A.M. the score stood as follows: Insides, three mosquitos, one spider; Outsides, one ant, one daddylong-legs, two mosquitos. A vigorous campaign then began, the Insides trying to get out, and the Outsides trying to get in. At 4:30 A.M., owing largely to my efforts, the aspect of things was somewhat changed, the score standing: Insides, one mosquito; Outsides, one wasp, six mosquitos, two classified. (Mind you, I 'm no etymologist; I don't pretend to know these eight-legged, hairy lads by name.) un The list of dead and injured was simply appalling. die of sunstroke. They only fainted and lost their minds. Shortly after this I must have fainted, for I woke up to find I had been unconscious for at least two hours! The last thing I remembered, before the coma set in, was killing a spider on my stomach at five forty-five. It was now eight o'clock. The sun had moved round and I could hear the kitchenpump going, and see the housemaid, indoors, hiding matches, and sweeping the dust under the rugs. "I COULD SEE THE HOUSEMAID, After awhile I tired of this game, but the mosquitos were all for keeping it up indefinitely. Only when a breeze sprang up did they begin to reel home in twos and threes to sleep off their jag. Then, once again, I shut my eyes in the hope that sleep would knit the "ravell'd sleave of care." It seemed, however, that the elements were all against knitting. The sun at that moment came up through the trees and shone straight into my eyes. This worried me not so much on my own account as on Jones's; I hated the thought of his coming out with his wife at breakfast-time and finding me dead of a sunstroke on his porch. Then I remembered that people don't I felt sleepy, but otherwise moderately well.1 Presently Jones came out in his bath-robe, and asked me how I had slept. I told him that that was just what I'd been wondering myself, and he wanted to know whether the mosquitos had been thick. I said no, not too thick to get through the netting, and we both laughed and joked about the night as though it were the funniest thing in the world. That's the way in such crises, when the terrible strain is over. I avoided another night's excitement by telegraphing myself to come home at once on the most urgent business. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were awfully cordial, and laid emphasis on the fact that in the future my cot would always be waiting for me on the porch. I explained that my business would be very exacting for a few years, and I doubted if I would ever be able to get away again. I still cling to the old-fashioned idea that night is the time for sleeping, and not for hunting and recreation. 1 Law of physics: sunstrokes are not necessarily fatal. "MACBETH" THE SENIOR WRANGLER INDIVIDUALISM—AND CAR CONDUCTORS THE heavy passenger on the rear platform who looks deep into your eyes while you are running, and shouting to the conductor to stop the car, must often guess your meaning, but, though he stands within whispering range of the abstracted conductor he very seldom drops any hint to him about you. This is noticeable in suburban purlieus where cars are rare and swift as life's great joys. Of what use to hail or whistle or fling the arms about? It is not the business of that stout, contented person to intervene. No gleam of recognition lights up the leaden gaze. He is no mediator for man or woman but a strict partizan of laisthe fittest, made haughty by his mercy. Wait for another car with a motorman or a Annie Laurie, may have a to hold him. Dance on the sight. That sometimes incan interest the suburban individually, there is little. all the usual forms of shoutonly makes him regard you and he shows you what his all by yourself on the crossof a gay abandonment, may the bell-rope to see more of "A QUIET LITTLE DANCE sez-faire, a fat survival of success. Hope nothing from fifteen minutes. Wait for a conductor who, perhaps, like rolling eye; and study how crossing as the car heaves in terests him and unless you conductor in you personally, hope. He is blasé, as far as ing go, and a stern chase as a competitor in speeding: car can do. But a little dance ing, a quiet dance, yet full attract him, and he will pull it; and then is your chance. A LITERARY GRANDEUR THAT IS PASSING WHERE be the spoken and printed sonorities of yester-year? Gone with the death-bed steel-engravings; gone with the haircloth and the Rogers groups. Yet here and there Kentucky colonels may still be found in print. I treasure all their priceless sayings. "I am in receipt," said one of them during the last political campaign, "of Governor Wilson's averment to the contrary." In this day of clipped and jerked-out speech we do not say "averment to the contrary." Yet it is a style that is bound up with our country's history. Back in the eighteen fifties there were many colonels writing busily in this vein. Such writers are rarely found at present. Something American has been lost. Once they were as natural as nasality; as indigenous as the rolling r's of the rolling prairie. And where is the bold free use of metaphor that could in a single sentence call up a dozen pictures to the eye? The writings of Colonel Henry Watterson are to-day almost the only source of catachrestic inspiration. Here are a few examples: Suggested title: "Anvil Cakes" "HE seized hackneyed truths, dressed them in fresh language, and dealt them out as though they were hot from his intellectual anvil." Suggested title: "A Strange Accident in a Fool's Paradise" "POLITICALLY at least, he was living in a fool's paradise, because that which he considered to be his duty brought the house down upon his head, and, of a sudden, he saw what seemed to him incredible, the working of a deal by which the very fabric was to be pulled up by the roots, and this at the hands of those he had served and whom he thought his friends." Suggested title: "A Senator as an Earthquake on Horseback that Lives in a Tent" "IT is scarcely probable, however, that the Senator, having pitched his canvas for the Republican nomination for reëlection to the Senate, or for riding into the Presidency, if he can create a tidal wave of sufficient volume to secure that end, etc." |