Читать книгу: «The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX», страница 8
HOW JIMABOY FOUND HIMSELF
BY FRANCIS LYNDE
When Jimaboy began to live by his wits—otherwise, when he set up author and proposed to write for bread and meat—it was a time when the public appetite demanded names and naïveté. And since Jimaboy was fresh enough to satisfy both of these requirements, the editors looked with favor upon him, and his income, for a little while, exceeded the modest figure of the railroad clerkship upon which he had ventured to ask Isobel to marry him.
But afterward there came a time of dearth; a period in which the new name was no longer a thing to conjure with, and artlessness was a drug on the market. Cleverness was the name of the new requirement, and Jimaboy's gift was glaringly sentimental. When you open your magazine at "The Contusions of Peggy, by James Augustus Jimaboy," you are justly indignant when you find melodrama and predetermined pathos instead of the clever clowneries which the sheer absurdity of the author's signature predicts.
"Item," said Jimaboy, jotting it down in his notebook while Isobel hung over the back of his chair: "It's a perilous thing to make people cry when they are out for amusement. Did the postman remember us this morning?"
Isobel nodded mournfully.
"And the crop?" said Jimaboy.
"Three manuscripts; two from New York and one from Boston."
"'So flee the works of men
Back to the earth again,'"
quoted the sentimentalist, smiling from the teeth outward. "Is that all?"
"All you would care about. There were some fussy old bills."
"Whose, for instance?"
"Oh, the grocer's and the coal man's and the butcher's and the water company's, and some other little ones."
"'Some other little ones'," mused Jimaboy. "There's pathos for you. If I could ever get that into a story, with your intonation, it would be cheap at fifteen cents the word. We're up against it, Bella, dear."
"Well?" she said, with an arm around his neck.
"It isn't well; it's confoundedly ill. It begins to look as if it were 'back to the farm' for us."
She came around to sit on the arm of the chair.
"To the railroad office? Never! Jimmy, love. You are too good for that."
"Am I? That remains to be proved. And just at present the evidence is accumulating by the ream on the other side—reams of rejected MS."
"You haven't found yourself yet; that is all."
He forced a smile. "Let's offer a reward. 'Lost: the key to James and Isobel Jimaboy's success in life. Finder will be suitably recompensed on returning same to 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.'"
She leaned over and planted a soft little kiss on the exact spot on his forehead where it would do the most good.
"I could take the city examination and teach, if you'd let me, Jimmy."
He shook his head definitely. That was ground which had been gone over before.
"Teach little babies their a b c's? I'm afraid that isn't your specialty, heart of mine. Now if you could teach other women the art of making a man believe that he has cornered the entire visible supply of ecstatic thrills in marrying the woman of his choice—by Jove, now! there's an idea!"
Now Jimaboy had no idea in particular; he never had an idea that he did not immediately coin it into words and try to sell it. But Isobel's eyes were suspiciously bright, and the situation had to be saved.
"I was just thinking: the thing to do successfully is the—er—the thing you do best, isn't it?"
She laughed, in spite of the unpaid bills.
"Why can't you put clever things like that into your stories, Jimmy, dear?"
"As if I didn't!" he retorted. "But don't step on my idea and squash it while it's in the soft-shell-crab stage. As I said, I was thinking: there is just one thing we can give the world odds on and beat it out of sight. And that thing is our long suit—our specialty."
"But you said you had an idea," said Isobel, whose private specialty was singleness of purpose.
"Oh—yes," said Jimaboy. Then he smote hard upon the anvil and forged one on the spur of the moment. "Suppose we call it The Post-Graduate School of W. B., Professor James Augustus Jimaboy, principal; Mrs. Isobel Jimaboy, assistant principal. How would that sound?"
"It would sound like the steam siren on the planing mill. But what is the 'W. B.'?"
"'Wedded Bliss,' of course. Here is the way it figures out. We've been married three years, and—"
"Three years, five months and fourteen days," she corrected.
"Excellent! That accuracy of yours would be worth a fortune on the faculty. But let me finish—during these three years, five months and fourteen days we have fought, bled and died on the literary battle-field; dined on bath-mitts and café hydraulique, walked past the opera-house entrance when our favorite play was on, and all that. But tell me, throb of my heart, have we ever gone shy on bliss?"
She met him half-way. It was the spirit in which they had faced the bill collector since the beginning of the period of leanness.
"Never, Jimmy, dear; not even hardly ever."
"There you are, then. Remains only for us to tell others how to do it; to found the Post-Graduate School of W. B. It's the one thing needful in a world of educational advantage; a world in which everything but the gentle art of being happy, though married, is taught by the postman. We have solved all the other problems, but there has been no renaissance in the art of matrimony. Think of the ten thousand divorces granted in a single state last year! My dear Isobel, we mustn't lose a day—an hour—a minute!"
She pretended to take him seriously.
"I don't know why we shouldn't do it, I'm sure," she mused. "They teach everything by mail nowadays. But who is going to die and leave us the endowment to start with?"
"That's the artistic beauty of the mail scheme," said Jimaboy, enthusiastically. "It doesn't require capitalizing; no buildings, no campus, no football team, no expensive university plant; nothing but an inspiration, a serviceable typewriter, and a little old postman to blow his whistle at the door."
"And the specialty," added Isobel, "though some of them don't seem to trouble themselves much about that. Oh, yes; and the advertising; that is where the endowment comes in, isn't it?"
But Jimaboy would not admit the obstacle.
"That is one of the things that grow by what they are fed upon: your ad. brings in the money, and then the money buys more ad. Now, there's Blicker, of the Woman's Uplift; he still owes us for that last story—we take it out in advertising space. Also Dormus, of the Home World, and Amory, of the Storylovers—same boat—more advertising space. Then the Times hasn't paid for that string of space-fillers on 'The Lovers of All Nations.' The Times has a job office, and we could take that out in prospectuses and application blanks."
By this time the situation was entirely saved and Isobel's eyes were dancing.
"Wouldn't it be glorious?" she murmured. "Think of the precious, precious letters we'd get; real letters like some of those pretended ones in Mr. Blicker's correspondence column. And we wouldn't tell them what the 'W. B.' meant until after they'd finished the course, and then we'd send them the degree of 'Master of Wedded Bliss,' and write it out in the diploma."
Jimaboy sat back in his chair and laughed uproariously. The most confirmed sentimentalist may have a saving sense of humor. Indeed, it is likely to go hard with him in the experimental years, if he has it not.
"It's perfectly feasible—perfectly," he chuckled. "It would be merely pounding sand into the traditional rat-hole with all the implements furnished—teaching our specialty to a world yearning to know how. You could get up the lectures and question schedules for the men, and I could make some sort of a shift with the women."
"Yes; but the text-books. Don't these 'Fit-yourself-at-Home' schools have text-books?"
"Um, y-yes; I suppose they do. That would be a little difficult for us—just at the go-off. But we could get around that. For example, 'Dear Mrs. Blank: Replying to your application for membership in the Post-Graduate School of W. B., would say that your case is so peculiar'—that would flatter her immensely—'your case is so peculiar that the ordinary text-books cover it very inadequately. Therefore, with your approval, and for a small additional tuition fee of $2 the term, we shall place you in a special class to be instructed by electrographed lectures dictated personally by the principal.'"
Isobel clapped her hands. "Jimmy, love, you are simply great, when you are not trying to be. And, after a while, we could print the lectures and have our own text-books copyrighted. But don't you think we ought to take in the young people, as well?—have a—a collegiate department for beginners?"
"'Sh!" said Jimaboy, and he got up and closed the door with ostentatious caution. "Suppose somebody—Lantermann, for instance—should hear you say such things as that: 'take in the young people'! Shades of the Rosicrucians! we wouldn't 'take in' anybody. The very life of these mail things is the unshaken confidence of the people. But, as you suggest, we really ought to include the frying size."
It was delicious fooling, and Isobel found a sketch-block and dipped her pen.
"You do the letter-press for the 'collegiate' ad., and I'll make a picture for it," she said. "Hurry, or I'll beat you."
Jimaboy laughed and squared himself at the desk, and the race began. Isobel had a small gift and a large ambition: the gift was a cartoonist's facility in line drawing, and the ambition was to be able, in the dim and distant future, to illustrate Jimaboy's stories. Lantermann, the Times artist, whose rooms were just across the hall, had given her a few lessons in caricature and some little gruff, Teutonic encouragement.
"Time!" she called, tossing the sketch-block over to Jimaboy. It was a happy thought. On a modern davenport sat two young people, far apart; the youth twiddling his thumbs in an ecstasy of embarrassment; the maiden making rabbit's ears with her handkerchief. Jimaboy's note of appreciation was a guffaw.
"I couldn't rise to the expression on those faces in a hundred years!" he lamented. "Hear me creak:"
DON'T MARRY
until you have taken the Preparatory Course in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. Home-Study in the Science of Successful Heart-Throbs. Why earn only ten kisses a week when one hour a day will qualify you for the highest positions? Our Collegiate Department confers degree of B. B.; Post-Graduate Department that of M. W. B. Members of Faculty all certificated Post-Graduates.
A postal card brings Prospectus and application blank.
Address: The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.
Isobel applauded loyally. "Why, that doesn't creak a little bit! Try it again; for the unhappy T. M.'s, this time. Ready? Play!"
Her picture was done while Jimaboy was still nibbling his pen and scowling over the scratch-pad. It was a drawing-room interior, with the wife in tears and the husband struggling into his overcoat. To them, running, an animated United States mail-bag, extending a huge envelope marked: "From the Post-Graduate School of W. B."
Jimaboy scratched out and rewrote, with the pen-drawing for an inspiration:
HEARTS DIVIDEDBECOMEHEARTS UNITED
when you have taken a Correspondence Course in Wedded Bliss. A Scholarship in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. is the most acceptable wedding gift or Christmas present for your friends. Curriculum includes Matrimony as a Fine Art, Post-Marriage Courtship, Elementary and Advanced Studies in Conjugal Harmony, Easy Lessons in the Gentle Craft of Eating Her Experimental Bread, Practical Analysis of the Club-Habit, with special course for wives in the Abstract Science of Honeyfugling Parsimonious Husbands. Diploma qualifies for highest positions. Our Gold Medalists are never idle.
The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.
N. B.—Graphophone, with Model Conversations for Married Lovers, furnished free with lectures on Post-Marriage Courtship.
They pinned the pictures each to its "copy" and had their laugh over the conceit.
"Blest if I don't believe we could actually fake the thing through if we should try," said Jimaboy. "There are plenty of people in this world who would take it seriously."
"I don't doubt it," was Isobel's reply. "People are so ready to be gold-bricked—especially by mail. But it's twelve o'clock! Shall I light the stove for luncheon?—or can we stand Giuseppe's?"
Jimaboy consulted the purse.
"I guess we can afford stuffed macaroni, this one time more," he rejoined. "Let's go now, while we can get one of the side tables and be exclusive."
They had barely turned the corner in the corridor when Lantermann's door opened and the cartoonist sallied out, also luncheon-stirred. He was a big German, with fierce military mustaches and a droop in his left eye that had earned him the nickname of "Bismarck" on the Times force. He tapped at the Jimaboy door in passing, growling to himself in broken English.
"I like not dis light housegeeping for dese babies mit der wood. Dey starf von day und eat nottings der next. I choost take dem oud once und gif dem sauerkraut und wiener."
When there was no answer to his rap he pushed the door open and entered, being altogether on a brotherly footing with his fellow-lodgers. The pen-drawings with their pendant squibs were lying on Jimaboy's desk; and when Lantermann comprehended he sat down in Jimaboy's chair and dwelt upon them.
"Himmel!" he gurgled; "dot's some of de liddle voman's fooling. Goot, sehr goot! I mus' show dot to Hasbrouck." And when he went out, the copy for the two advertisements was in his pocket.
Jimaboy got a check from the Storylovers that afternoon, and in the hilarity consequent upon such sudden and unexpected prosperity the Post-Graduate School of W. B. was forgotten. But not permanently. Late in the evening, when Jimaboy was filing and scraping laboriously on another story,—he always worked hardest on the heels of a check,—Isobel thought of the pen-drawings and looked in vain for them.
"What did you do with the W. B. jokes, Jimmy?" she asked.
"I didn't do anything with them. Don't tell me they're lost!"—in mock concern.
"They seem to be; I can't find them anywhere."
"Oh, they'll turn up again all right," said Jimaboy; and he went on with his polishing.
They did turn up, most surprisingly. Three days later, Isobel was glancing through the thirty-odd pages of the swollen Sunday Times, and she gave a little shriek.
"Horrors!" she cried; "the Times has printed those ridiculous jokes of ours, and run them as advertisements!"
"What!" shouted Jimaboy.
"It's so; see here!"
It was so, indeed. On the "Wit and Humor" page, which was half reading matter and half advertising, the Post-Graduate School of W. B. figured as large as life, with very fair reproductions of Isobel's drawings heading the displays.
"Heavens!" ejaculated Jimaboy; and then his first thought was the jealous author's. "Isn't it the luckiest thing ever that the spirit didn't move me to sign those things?"
"You might as well have signed them," said Isobel. "You've given our street and number."
"My kingdom!" groaned Jimaboy. "Here—you lock the door behind me, while I go hunt Hasbrouck. It's a duel with siege guns at ten paces, or a suit for damages with him."
He was back again in something under the hour, and his face was haggard.
"We are lost!" he announced tragically. "There is nothing for it now but to run."
"How ever did it happen?" queried Isobel.
"Oh, just as simply and easily as rolling off a log—as such things always happen. Lantermann saw the things on the desk, and your sketches caught him. He took 'em down to show to Hasbrouck, and Hasbrouck, meaning to do us a good turn, marked the skits up for the 'Wit and Humor' page. The intelligent make-up foreman did the rest: says of course he took 'em for ads. and run 'em as ads."
"But what does Mr. Hasbrouck say?"
"He gave me the horse laugh; said he would see to it that the advertising department didn't send me a bill. When I began to pull off my coat he took it all back and said he was all kinds of sorry and would have the mistake explained in to-morrow's paper. But you know how that goes. Out of the hundred and fifty thousand people who will read those miserable squibs to-day, not five thousand will see the explanation to-morrow. Oh, we've got to run, I tell you; skip, fly, vanish into thin air!"
But sober second thought came after a while to relieve the panic pressure. 506 Hayward Avenue was a small apartment-house, with a dozen or more tenants, lodgers, or light housekeepers, like the Jimaboys. All they would have to do would be to breathe softly and make no mention of the Post-Graduate School of W. B. Then the other tenants would never know, and the postman would never know. Of course, the non-delivery of the mail might bring troublesome inquiry upon the Times advertising department, but, as Jimaboy remarked maliciously, that was none of their funeral.
Accordingly, they breathed softly for a continuous week, and carefully avoided personal collisions with the postman. But temporary barricades are poor defenses at the best. One day as they were stealthily scurrying out to luncheon—they had acquired the stealthy habit to perfection by this time—they ran plump into the laden mail carrier in the lower hall.
"Hello!" said he; "you are just the people I've been looking for. I have a lot of letters and postal cards for The Post-Graduate School of something or other, 506 Hayward. Do you know anything about it?"
They exchanged glances. Isobel's said, "Are you going to make me tell the fib?" and Jimaboy's said, "Help!"
"I—er—I guess maybe they belong to us"—it was the man who weakened. "At least, it was our advertisement that brought them. Much obliged, I'm sure." And a breathless minute later they were back in their rooms with the fateful and fearfully bulky packet on the desk between them and such purely physical and routine things as luncheon quite forgotten.
"James Augustus Jimaboy! What have you done?" demanded the accusing angel.
"Well, somebody had to say something, and you wouldn't say it," retorted Jimaboy.
"Jimmy, did you want me to lie?"
"That's what you wanted me to do, wasn't it? But perhaps you think that one lie, more or less, wouldn't cut any figure in my case."
"Jimmy, dear, don't be horrid. You know perfectly well that your curiosity to see what is in those letters was too much for you."
Jimaboy walked to the window and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. It was their first quarrel, and being unfamiliar with the weapons of that warfare, he did not know which one to draw next. And the one he did draw was a tin dagger, crumpling under the blow.
"It has been my impression all along that curiosity was a feminine weakness," he observed to the windowpanes.
"James Jimaboy! You know better than that! You've Said a dozen times in your stories that it was just the other way about—you know you have. And, besides, I didn't let the cat out of the bag."
Here was where Jimaboy's sense of humor came in. He turned on her quickly. She was the picture of righteous indignation trembling to tears. Whereupon he took her in his arms, laughing over her as she might have wept over him.
"Isn't this rich!" he gasped. "We—we built this thing on our specialty, and here we are qualifying like cats and dogs for our great mission to a quarrelsome world. Listen, Bella, dear, and I'll tell you why I weakened. It wasn't curiosity, or just plain, every-day scare. There is sure to be money in some of these letters, and it must be returned. Also, the other people must be told that it was only a joke."
"B-but we've broken our record and qu-quarreled!" she sobbed.
"Never mind," he comforted; "maybe that was necessary, too. Now we can add another course to the curriculum and call it the Exquisite Art of Making Up. Let's get to work on these things and see what we are in for."
They settled down to it in grim determination, cutting out the down-town luncheon and munching crackers and cheese while they opened and read and wrote and returned money and explained and re-explained in deadly and wearisome repetition.
"My land!" said Jimaboy, stretching his arms over his head, when Isobel got up to light the lamps, "isn't the credulity of the race a beautiful thing to contemplate? Let's hope this furore will die down as suddenly as it jumped up. If it doesn't, I'm going to make Hasbrouck furnish us a stenographer and pay the postage."
But it did not die down. For a solid fortnight they did little else than write letters and postal cards to anxious applicants, and by the end of the two weeks Jimaboy was starting up in his bed of nights to rave out the threadbare formula of explanation: "Dear Madam: The ad. you saw in the Sunday Times was not an ad.; it was a joke. There is no Post-Graduate School of W. B. in all the world. Please don't waste your time and ours by writing any more letters."
The first rift in the cloud was due to the good offices of Hasbrouck. He saw matter of public interest in the swollen jest and threw the columns of the Sunday Times open to Jimaboy. Under the racking pressure, the sentimentalist fired volley upon volley of scathing ridicule into the massed ranks of anxious inquirers, and finally came to answering some of the choicest of the letters in print.
"Good!" said Hasbrouck, when the "Jimaboy Column" in the Sunday paper began to be commented on and quoted; and he made Jimaboy an offer that seemed like sudden affluence.
But the crowning triumph came still later, in a letter from the editor of one of the great magazines. Jimaboy got it at the Times office, and some premonition of its contents made him keep it until Isobel could share it.
"We have been watching your career with interest," wrote the great man, "and we are now casting about for some one to take charge of a humorous department to be called 'Bathos and Pathos,' which we shall, in the near future, add to the magazine. May we see more of your work, as well as some of Mrs. Jimaboy's sketches?
"O Jimmy, dear, you found yourself at last!"
But his smile was a grin. "No," said he; "we've just got our diplomas from the Post-Graduate School of W. B.—that's all."
