Books: The Enchanted Typewriter
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John Kendrick Bangs >> The Enchanted Typewriter
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"May I ask why you laugh?" I observed, when she had at length
finished.
"Certainly," she replied. "Far be it from me to dispute the
right of a man to ask any question he sees fit to ask. Is he
not the lord of creation? Is not woman his abject slave? I
not the whole difference between them purely economic? Is it
not the law of supply and demand that rules them both, he by
nature demanding and she supplying?"
Dear reader, did you ever encounter a machine, man-made,
merely a mechanism of ivory, iron, and ink, that could sniff
contemptuously? I never did before this encounter, but the
infernal power of either this type-writer or this woman who
manipulated its keys imparted to the atmosphere I was breathing
a sniffing contemptuousness which I have never experienced
anywhere outside of a London hotel, and then only when I
ventured, as few Americans have dared, to complain of the ducal
personage who presided over the dining-room, but who, I must
confess, was conquered subsequently by a tip of ten shillings.
At any rate, there was a sniff of contempt imparted, as I have
said, to the atmosphere I was breathing as Xanthippe answered
my question, and the sniff saved me, just as it did in the
London hotel, when I complained of the lordly lack of manners
on the part of the head waiter. I asserted my independence.
"Don't trouble yourself," I put in. "Of course I shall
be interested in anything you may choose to say, but as a
gentleman I do not care to put a woman to any inconvenience
and I do not press the question."
And then I tried to crush her by adding, "What a lovely day we
have had," as if any subject other than the most commonplace
was not demanded by the situation.
"If you contemplate discussing the weather," was the
retort, "I wish you would kindly seek out some one else
with whom to do it. I am not one of your latter-day
sit-out-on-the-stairs-while-the-others-dance girls. I am,
as I have always been, an ardent admirer of principles, of
great problems. For small talk I have no use."
"Very well, madame--" I began.
"You asked me a moment ago why I laughed," clicked the machine.
"I know it," said I. "But I withdraw the question. There is no
great principle involved in a woman's laughter. I have known
women who have laughed at a broken heart, as well as at jokes,
which shows that there is no principle involved there; and as
a problem, I have never cared enough about why women laugh
to inquire deeply into it. If she'll just consent to laugh,
I'm satisfied without inquiring into the causes thereof. Let
us get down to an agreeable basis for yourself. What problem do
you wish to discuss? Servants, baby-food, floor-polish, or the
number of godets proper to the skirt of a well-dressed woman?"
I was regaining confidence in myself, and as I talked I ceased
to fear her. Thought I to myself, "This attitude of supreme
patronage is man's safest weapon against a woman. Keep cool,
assume that there is no doubt of your superiority, and that she
knows it. Appear to patronize her, and her own indignation will
defeat her ends." It is a good principle generally. Among mortal
women I have never known it to fail, and when I find myself
worsted in an argument with one of man's greatest blessings,
I always fall back upon it and am saved the ignominy of
defeat. But this time I counted without my antagonist.
"Will you repeat that list of problems?" she asked, coldly.
"Servants, baby-food, floor-polish, and godets," I repeated,
somewhat sheepishly, she took it so coolly.
"Very well," said Xanthippe, with a note of amusement in her
manipulation of the keys. "If those are your subjects, let us
discuss them. I am surprised to find an able-bodied man like
yourself bothering with such problems, but I'll help you out
of your difficulties if I can. No needy man shall ever say
that I ignored his cry for help. What do you want to know
about baby-food?"
This turning of the tables nonplussed me, and I didn't really
know what to say, and so wisely said nothing, and the machine
grew sharp in its clicking.
"You men!" it cried. "You don't know how fearfully shallow
you are. I can see through you in a minute."
"Well," I said, modestly, "I suppose you can." Then calling
my feeble wit to my rescue, I added, "It's only natural,
since I've made a spectacle of myself."
"Not you!" cried Xanthippe. "You haven't even made a monocle
of yourself."
And here we both laughed, and the ice was broken.
"What has become of Boswell?" I asked.
"He's been sent to the ovens for ten days for libelling
Shakespeare and Adam and Noah and old Jonah," replied
Xanthippe. "He printed an article alleged to have been written
by Baron Munchausen, in which those four gentlemen were held
up to ridicule and libelled grossly."
"And Munchausen?" I cried.
"Oh, the Baron got out of it by confessing that he wrote the
article," replied the lady. "And as he swore to his confession
the jury were convinced he was telling another one of his
lies and acquitted him, so Boswell was sent up alone. That's
why I am here. There isn't a man in all Hades that dared take
charge of Boswell's paper--they're all so deadly afraid of
the government, so I stepped in, and while Boswell is baking
I'm attending to his editorial duties."
"But you spoke contemptuously of the Sunday newspapers awhile
ago, Mrs. Socrates," said I.
"I know that," said Xanthippe, "but I've fixed that. I get
out the Sunday edition on Saturdays."
"Oh--I see. And you like it?" I queried.
"First rate," she replied. "I'm in love with the work. I
almost wish poor old Bos had been sentenced for ten years. I
have enough of the woman in me to love minding other people's
business, and, as far as I can find out, that's about all
journalism amounts to. Sewing societies aren't to be mentioned
in the same day with a newspaper for scandal and gossip, and,
besides, I'm an ardent advocate of men's rights--have been for
centuries--and I've got my first chance now to promulgate a few
of my ideas. I'm really a man in all my views of life--that's
the inevitable end of an advanced woman who persists in
following her 'newness' to its logical conclusion. Her habits
of thought gradually come to be those of a man. Even I have a
great deal more sympathy with Socrates than I used to have. I
used to think I was the one that should be emancipated, but
I'm really reaching that stage in my manhood where I begin to
believe that he needs emancipation."
"Then you admit, do you," I cried, with great glee, "that this
new-woman business is all Tommy-rot?"
"Not by a great deal," snapped the machine. "Far from it. It's
the salvation of the happy life. It is perfectly logical to
say that the more manny a woman becomes, the more she is likely
to sympathize with the troubles and trials which beset men."
I scratched my head and pulled the lobe of my ear in the
hope of loosening an argument to confront her with, not that I
disagreed with her entirely, but because I instinctively desired
to oppose her as pleasantly disagreeably as I could. But the
result was nil.
"I'm afraid you are right," I said.
"You're a truthful man," clicked the machine, laughingly. "You
are afraid I'm right. And why are you afraid? Because you are
one of those men who take a cynical view of woman. You want
woman to be a mere lump of sugar, content to be left in a bowl
until it pleases you in your high-and-mightiness to take her
in the tongs and drop her into the coffee of your existence,
to sweeten what would otherwise not please your taste--and
like most men you prefer two or three lumps to one."
I could only cough. The lady was more or less right. I am very
fond of sugar, though one lump is my allowance, and I never
exceed it, whatever the temptation. Xanthippe continued.
"You criticise her because she doesn't understand you and your
needs, forgetting that out of twenty-four hours of your daily
existence your wife enjoys personally about twelve hours of your
society, during eight of which you are lying flat on your back,
snoring as though your life depended on it; but when she asks
to be allowed to share your responsibilities as well as what,
in her poor little soul, she thinks are your joys, you flare
up and call her 'new' and 'advanced,' as if advancement were
a crime. You ride off on your wheel for forty miles on your
days of rest, and she is glad to have you do it, but when she
wants a bicycle to ride, you think it's all wrong, immoral,
and conducive to a weak heart. Bah!"
"I--ah--" I began.
"Yes you do," she interrupted. "You ah and you hem and you haw,
but in the end you're a poor miserable social mugwump, conscious
of your own magnificence and virtue, but nobody else ever can
attain to your lofty plane. Now what I want to see among women
is more good fellows. Suppose you regarded your wife as good
a fellow as you think your friend Jones. Do you think you'd
be running off to the club every night to play billiards with
Jones, leaving your wife to enjoy her own society?"
"Perhaps not," I replied, "but that's just the point. My wife
isn't a good fellow."
"Exactly, and for that reason you seek out Jones. You have
a right to the companionship of the good fellow--that's what
I'm going to advocate. I've advanced far enough to see that on
the average in the present state of woman she is not a suitable
companion for man--she has none of the qualities of a chum to
which he is entitled. I'm not so blind but that I can see the
faults of my own sex, particularly now that I have become so
very masculine myself. Both sexes should have their rights,
and that is the great policy I'm going to hammer at as long
as I have Boswell's paper in charge. I wish you might see my
editorial page for to-morrow; it is simply fine. I urge upon
woman the necessity of joining in with her husband in all
his pleasures whether she enjoys them or not. When he lights
a cigar, let her do the same; when he calls for a cocktail,
let her call for another. In time she will begin to understand
him. He understands her pleasures, and often he joins in with
them--opera, dances, lectures; she ought to do the same,
and join in with him in his pleasures, and after a while
they'll get upon a common basis, have their clubs together,
and when that happy time comes, when either one goes out the
other will also go, and their companionship will be perfect."
"But you objected to my calling you old chap when we first met,"
said I. "Is that quite consistent?"
"Of course," retorted the lady. "We had never met before, and,
besides, doctors do not always take their own medicine."
"But that women ought to become good fellows is what you're
going to advocate, eh?" said I.
"Yes," replied Xanthippe. "It's excellent, don't you think?"
"Superb," I answered, "for Hades. It's just my idea of how
things ought to be in Hades. I think, however, that we mortals
will stick to the old plan for a little while yet; most of us
prefer to marry wives rather than old chaps."
The remark seemed so to affect my visitor that I suddenly
became conscious of a sense of loneliness.
"I don't wish to offend you," I said, "but I rather like to
keep the two separate. Aren't you man enough yet to see the
value of variety?"
But there was no answer. The lady had gone. It was evident
that she considered me unworthy of further attention.
V
THE EDITING OF XANTHIPPE
After my interview with Xanthippe, I hesitated to approach the
type-writer for a week or two. It did a great deal of clicking
after the midnight hour had struck, and I was consumed with
curiosity to know what was going on, but I did not wish to meet
Mrs. Socrates again, so I held aloof until Boswell should have
served his sentence. I was no longer afraid of the woman, but I
do fear the good fellow of the weaker sex, and I deemed it just
as well to keep out of any and all disputes that might arise
from a casual conversation with a creature of that sort. An
agreement with a real good fellow, even when it ends in a row,
is more or less diverting; but a disputation with a female
good fellow places a man at a disadvantage. The argumentum ad
hominem is not an easy thing with men, but with women it is
impossible. Hence, I let the type-writer click and ring for
a fortnight.
Finally, to my relief, I recognized Boswell's touch upon the
keys and sauntered up to the side of the machine.
"Is this Boswell--Jim Boswell?" I inquired.
"All that's left of him," was the answer. "How have you been?"
"Very well," said I. And then it seemed to me that tact
required that I should not seem to know that he had been in
the superheated jail of the Stygian country. So I observed,
"You've been off on a vacation, eh?"
"How do you know that?" was the immediate response.
"Well," I put in, "you've been absent for a fortnight, and
you look more or less--ah--burned."
"Yes, I am," replied the deceitful editor. "Very much burned,
in fact. I've been--er--I've been playing golf with a friend
down in Cimmeria."
"I envy you," I observed, with an inward chuckle.
"You wouldn't if you knew the links," replied Boswell,
sadly. "They're awfully hard. I don't know any harder course
than the Cimmerian."
And then I became conscious of a mistrustful gaze fastened
upon me.
"See here," clicked the machine. "I thought I was invisible
to you? If so, how do you know I look burned?"
I was cornered, and there was only one way out of it, and that
was by telling the truth. "Well, you are invisible, old chap,"
I said. "The fact is, I've been told of your trouble, and I
know what you have undergone."
"And who told you?" queried Boswell.
"Your successor on the Gazette, Madame Socrates, nee Xanthippe,"
I replied.
"Oh, that woman--that woman!" moaned Boswell, through the
medium of the keys. "Has she been here, using this machine
too? Why didn't you stop her before she ruined me completely?"
"Ruined you?" I cried.
"Well, next thing to it," replied Boswell. "She's run my paper
so far into the ground that it will take an almighty powerful
grip to pull it out again. Why, my dear boy, when I went to--to
the ovens, I had a circulation of a million, and when I came
back that woman had brought it down to eight copies, seven of
which have already been returned. All in ten days, too."
"How do you account for it?" I asked.
"'Side Talks with Men' helped, and 'The Man's Corner' did
a little, but the editorial page did the most of it. It was
given over wholly to the advancement of certain Xanthippian
ideas, which were very offensive to my women readers, and
which found no favor among the men. She wants to change the
whole social structure. She thinks men and women are the same
kind of animal, and that both need to be educated on precisely
the same lines--the girls to be taught business, the boys
to go through a course of domestic training. She called for
subscriptions for a cooking-school for boys, and demanded the
endowment of a commercial college for girls, and wound up by
insisting upon a uniform dress for both sexes. I tell you,
if you'd worked for years to establish a dignified newspaper
the way I have, it would have broken your heart to see the
suggested fashion-plates that woman printed. The uniform dress
was a holy terror. It was a combination of all the worst
features of modern garb. Trousers were to be universal and
compulsory; sensible masculine coats were discarded entirely,
and puffed-sleeved dress-coats were substituted. Stiff collars
were abolished in favor of ribbons, and rosettes cropped up
everywhere. Imagine it if you can--and everybody in all Hades
was to be forced into garments of that sort!"
"I should enjoy seeing it," I said.
"Possibly--but you wouldn't enjoy wearing it," retorted
the machine. "And then that woman's funny column--it was
frightful. You never saw such jokes in your life; every one
of them contained a covert attack upon man. There was only
one good thing in it, and that was a bit of verse called
'Fair Play for the Little Girls.' It went like this:
"'If little boys, when they are young,
Can go about in skirts,
And wear upon their little backs
Small broidered girlish shirts,
Pray why cannot the little girls,
When infants, have a chance
To toddle on their little ways
In little pairs of pants?'"
"That isn't at all bad," said I, smiling in spite of poor
Boswell's woe. "If the rest of the paper was on a par with
that I don't see why the circulation fell off."
"Well, she took liberties, that's all," said Boswell. "For
instance, in her 'Side Talks with Men' she had something
like this: 'Napoleon--It is rather difficult to say just
what you can do with your last season's cocked-hat. If you
were to purchase five yards of one-inch blue ribbon, cut it
into three strips of equal length, and fasten one end to each
of the three corners of the hat, tying the other ends into a
choux, it would make a very acceptable work-basket to send to
your grandmother at Christmas.' Now Napoleon never asked that
woman for advice on the subject. Then there was an answer to
a purely fictitious inquiry from Solomon which read: 'It all
depends on local custom. In Salt Lake City, and in London at
the time of Henry the Eighth, it was not considered necessary
to be off with the old love before being on with the new, but
latterly the growth of monopolistic ideas tends towards the
uniform rate of one at a time.' A purely gratuitous fling, that
was, at one of my most eminent patrons, or rather two of them,
for latterly both Solomon and Henry the Eighth have yielded to
the tendency of the times and gone into business, which they
have paid me well to advertise. Solomon has established an
'Information Bureau,' where advice can always be had from the
'Wise-man,' as he calls himself, on payment of a small fee;
while Henry, taking advantage of his superior equipment over
any English king that ever lived, has founded and liberally
advertised his 'Chaperon Company (Limited).' It's a great
thing even in Hades for young people to be chaperoned by an
English queen, and Henry has been smart enough to see it, and
having seven or eight queens, all in good standing, he has been
doing a great business. Just look at it from a business point
of view. There are seven nights in every week, and something
going on somewhere all the time, and queens in demand. With a
queen quoted so low as $100 a night, Henry can make nearly $5000
a week, or $260,000 a year, out of evening chaperonage alone;
and when, in addition to this, yachting-parties up the Styx and
slumming-parties throughout the country are being constantly
given, the man's opportunity to make half a million a year is
in plain sight. I'm told that he netted over $500,000 last
year; and of course he had to advertise to get it, and this
Xanthippe woman goes out of her way to get in a nasty little
fling at one of my mainstays for his matrimonial propensities."
"Failing utterly to see," said I, "that, in marrying so many
times, Henry really paid a compliment to her sex which is
without parallel in royal circles."
"Well, nearly so," said Boswell. "There have been other kings
who were quite as complimentary to the ladies, but Henry was
the only man among them who insisted on marrying them all."
"True," said I. "Henry was eminently proper--but then he had
to be."
"Yes," said Boswell, with a meditative tap on the letter
Y. "Yes--he had to be. He was the head of the Church,
you know."
"I know it," I put in. "I've always had a great deal of sympathy
for Henry. He has been very much misjudged by posterity. He
was the father of the really first new woman, Elizabeth,
and his other daughter, Mary, was such a vindictive person."
"You are a very fair man, for an American," said Boswell. "Not
only fair, but rare. You think about things."
"I try to," said I, modestly. "And I've really thought a great
deal about Henry, and I've truly seen a valid reason for his
continuous matrimonial performances. He set himself up against
the Pope, and he had to be consistent in his antagonism."
"He did, indeed," said Boswell. "A religious discussion is a
hard one."
"And Henry was consistent in his opposition," said I. "He
didn't yield a jot on any point, and while a great many
people criticise him on the score of his wives--particularly
on their number--I feel that I have in very truth discovered
his principle."
"Which was?" queried Boswell.
"That the Pope was wrong in all things," said I.
"So he said," commented Boswell.
"And being wrong in all things, celibacy was wrong," said I.
"Exactly," ejaculated Boswell.
"Well, then," said I, "if celibacy is wrong, the surest way
to protest against it is to marry as many times as you can."
"By Jove!" said Boswell, tapping the keys yearningly, as
though he wished he might spare his hand to shake mine,
"you are a man after my own heart."
"Thanks, old chap," said I, reaching out my hand and shaking
it in the air with my visionary friend--"thanks. I've studied
these things with some care, and I've tried to find a reason for
everything in life as I know it. I have always regarded Henry as
a moral man--as is natural, since in spite of all you can say
he is the real head of the English Church. He wasn't willing
to be married a second or a seventh time unless he was really
a widower. He wasn't as long in taking notice again as some
modern widowers that I have met, but I do not criticise him on
that score. I merely attribute his record to his kingly nature,
which involves necessarily a quickness of decision and a decided
perception of the necessities which is sadly lacking in people
who are born to a lesser station in life. England demanded a
queen, and he invariably met the demand, which shows that he
knew something of political economy as well as of matrimony; and
as I see it, being an American, a man needs to know something of
political economy to be a good ruler. So many of our statesmen
have acquired a merely kindergarten knowledge of the science,
that we have had many object-lessons of the disadvantages of
a merely elementary knowledge of the subject. To come right
down to it, I am a great admirer of Henry. At any rate, he
had the courage of his heart-convictions."
"You really surprise me," tapped Boswell. "I never expected
to find an American so thoroughly in sympathy with kings and
their needs."
"Oh, as for that," said I, "in America we are all kings and we
are not without our needs, matrimonial and otherwise, only our
courts are not quite so expeditious as Henry's little axe. But
what was Henry's attitude towards this extraordinary flight
of Xanthippe's?"
"Wrath," said Boswell. "He was very much enraged, and withdrew
his advertisements, declined to give our society reporters
the usual accounts of the functions his wives chaperoned,
and, worst of all, has withdrawn himself and induced others
to withdraw from the symposium I was preparing for my special
Summer Girls' issue, which is to appear in August, on 'How
Men Propose.' He and Brigham Young and Solomon and Bonaparte
had agreed to dictate graphic accounts of how they had done
it on various occasions, and Queen Elizabeth, who probably
had more proposals to the square minute that any other woman
on record, was to write the introduction. This little plan,
which was really the idea of genius, is entirely shattered by
Mrs. Socrates's infernal interference."
"Nonsense," said I. "Don't despair. Why don't you come out
with a plain statement of the facts? Apologize."
"You forget, my dear sir," interposed Boswell, "that one of
the fundamental principles of Hades as an institution is that
excuses don't count. It isn't a place for repentance so much
as for expiation, and I might apologize nine times a minute
for forty years and would still have to suffer the penalty
of the offence. No, there is nothing to be done but to begin
my newspaper work again, build up again the institution that
Xanthippe has destroyed, and bear my misfortunes like a true
spirit."
"Spoken like a philosopher!" I cried. "And if I can help you,
my dear Boswell, count upon me. In anything you may do, whether
you start a monthly magazine, a sporting weekly, or a purely
American Sunday newspaper, you are welcome to anything I can
do for you."
"You are very kind," returned Boswell, appreciatively, "and if I
need your services I shall be glad to avail myself of them. Just
at present, however, my plans are so fully prepared that I do
not think I shall have to call upon you. With Sherlock Holmes
engaged to write twelve new detective stories; Poe to look
after my tales of horror; D'Artagnan dictating his personal
memoirs; Lucretia Borgia running my Girls' Department; and
others too numerous to mention, I have a sufficient supply of
stuff to fill up; but if you feel like writing a few poems for
me I may be able to use them as fillers, and they may help to
make your name so well known in Hades that next year I shall
be able to print a Worldly Letter from you every week with a
good chance of its proving popular."
And with this promise Boswell left me to get out the first
number of The Cimmerian: a Sunday Magazine for all. Taking
him at his word, I sent him the following poem a few days later:
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