Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 293
“See,” says I proudly, “he will do it again.”
“What?” asked an old man.
“Who?” cried some one.
“What’ll he do again?” another one called out.
“Stand back, lemme see!” a fourth one shouted.
“Watch,” I commanded. “Watch close.”
Again the grasshopper proved himself worthy of his name and race by hopping.
“What did I tell you?” I said as I walked away; “he did it, and if you watch carefully he’ll do it again. In fact,” I added, to heighten the mystery, “that’s all he can do.”
The crowd was still gazing as I departed. It is the nature of crowds to gaze, and it is the nature of grasshoppers to hop, and I for one would not want it a bit different. “As it is, so it is,” say I.
Oct. 3rd. — Met Gladys to-day and took her to tea. Score by innings:
5 P.M. Tea, Sandwiches, French Pastry
5.15 P.M. Lemonade, Cakes, Sandwiches
5.45 P.M. Ice-Cream, Coffee, Cakes
6 P.M. Cakes, Almonds, Salad
6.15 P.M. Demi-Tasse, Cakes, Cakes
Grand total $9.85
That girl has the most fluent appetite I ever encountered. And the strange thing about it is that it seems to do her good. Even her dog Dippy, who is no slouch at eating, hands her the palm when it comes to a contest.
Oct. 9th. — Numerous important and painful things have happened to me, but I am still quite vague about them all. I remember sitting in a friend’s apartment on my last liberty feeling very hot and doing some particularly fancy coughing, and then I remember someone getting up suddenly and looking at me in a peculiar, frightened way, then I coughed again, laughed rather foolishly and it seems I was then put to bed. From that time on life assumed a cubist expression. I recall vividly oranges, a kind lady reading to me while I traced a map of the western front from the cracks in the plaster on the ceiling. There seemed to be a certain quantity of broth and milk and a long procession of glittering thermometers somehow connected to a doctor with a pointed beard, a great deal of unnecessary heat circulating around my anatomy and always a splendid accompaniment of coughing. At one time I remember mother came swooning into the room and delivered an impassioned dissertation on underwear, her favorite subject; and then Polly, my sweetie, arrived and sat down beside me like a thwarted nun and gave me to understand that she would cheerfully sign a guarantee to forgive me all my past and future sins if I would only get well, and then she went away just as I was telling her about the sad case of a broken-down elephant suffering from nervous prostration that had come to me in the dark hours of the previous night and sat heavily on my chest. She left, but I continued the story; and the funny part of it was that I believed it, at least they say I did.
Then one morning the doctor came and after listening eagerly to the animated conversation of my lungs, asked me how I would like to go to a hospital.
“Don’t be silly,” says I, “I’m very busy and I’ve a lot of things to do.”
“Get ready,” says he, giving my left side an extra jab for good luck, “get ready if you can, for the ambulance will be here in fifteen minutes.”
He departed and I arose more or less horrified and messed heatedly around in a world of infinite space and no security until a man in white suddenly appeared to me with a little book in his hands and began to ply me with purely rudimentary questions.
“What’s your name?” he asked in a bored voice.
“It doesn’t matter about the name,” I replied, “I won’t be answering to it long.”
“Perhaps not,” he agreed cheerfully, but this is official.”
After that we departed the spot and I saw it no more. I had to climb down six flights of stairs and they taxed me greatly. I progressed with stately elaboration, considering which landing would be the best to go to sleep on. The man in white kept looking at me with an impatient scowl, but made no effort to help me.
“Sorry, old chap,” I said, “to keep you from your pinochle, but only one boiler is working at present.” The street was lined with expectant and morbidly interested people.
“Wot cher got, mister?” one worthy asked.
“Fits,” I answered, “with a deadly complication of bubonic plague. While I have been speaking I have given off exactly 7,895,372 extremely nosey germs. You have gotten many of them.”
After this I staggered to the ambulance and fell within. At the hospital I was greeted by a flock of nurses who convoyed me to my room.
“Get undressed, sonny,” said one of them while the rest crowded cheerfully around the door.
“All right,” says I, waiting for her to leave.
“All right,” says she, not leaving.
“All right,” says I, rather unhappily.
“Start in,” says she in a business-like voice.
“You promise to marry me,” says I, taking off my shoes.
“Oh,” she says as light dawned upon her, “you want me to go.”
“Well, it would be easier,” I admitted, and she withdrew.
I had just gotten down to my shirt, when the door burst open and all the nurses in the world stood without regarding me anxiously.
“Atta, boy,” called one of them in tones of encouragement.
“You’re doing fine,” cried another.
“What’s so blooming wonderful about this?” says I, edging behind an open- work chair. “I have undressed myself for a long time now — ever since Bridget left.”
‘What’s so blooming wonderful about this,’ says I, edging behind an open-work chair.
“Go to it,” says one of them, and I was forthwith bundled into bed, at which moment I drew a complete blank.
Oct. 12th. — Much better. I permitted Polly to kiss my hand this evening. It was interestingly thin. Mother has been shopping for a particularly thick brand of underwear all afternoon against my departure. I told her to interview Admiral Peary, who knew all about such things. She took his name down and said she’d look him up in the telephone book immediately. I have had a crisis and everything, but I’m not going to die for quite some time, I’m told. That’s nice.
Oct. 13th. — Complications. The playful little pleurisy has me in its clutches. It’s one of those things that has to be felt and not described. No sleep, no rest. Constant misery. I asked the doctor if he was sure that I wasn’t going to die and when he said “Yes” I almost cried.
“Well, well, how are you feeling now?” asked the nurse this morning as she swooped cheerfully into the room. I had sat up all night with a hot water bottle and burned myself in several places which were so intimate that I could hardly indulge in the comfort of complaining about them.
“Well,” says I, wearily, “after all the agony I’ve been through the least you could do would be to come across with a little petting.”
“You don’t deserve to get well after that,” says the nurse, leaving the room with false dignity.
Oct. 17th. — Out of pain. Wonder how Fogerty is. Hope he hasn’t caught the “flu.” Anyone wishing to verify the size and quantity of my illness needs only to look at my chart. The fever page looks like a sketch of the Andes Mountain range. Polly has just left. She’s a beautiful woman but a trifle too resolute.
Oct. 18th. — I almost cried when I left the hospital this afternoon. I’d sort of gotten used to the place and the life of an invalid. I thanked everyone profusely, including the elevator boy and told them that they had saved my life. They admitted it, and I guess they did. The lady whose apartment I used to get sick in had a hand in it, too. She was first to the front and got all the good coughing, and was eternally compromised in the eyes of two schoolteachers who lived in the next flat.
Oct. 19th. — Reported aboard today. No sympathy. Why do they always say “The good ship so and so”? I see nothing good about a ship except the gangplank and “Lay aft, liberty party!”
Oct. 23rd. — (In the general direction of France) Sick, that’s all; just plain sick.
Oct. 26th. — (Leaving the war). For full information re-read entry of Oct. 23rd.
Nov. 2nd. — (Near New York — maybe) The remarks of Oct 23rd and 26th still hold good.
Nov. 5th. — (New York) “Lay aft, liberty party!”
The Boatswain has just uttered those magic words. I find no trouble in “laying aft.” It’s the best thing I do. Now I shall proceed to let Polly admire me make away with a pair of plutocratic steaks.
Nov. 12th. — Well, it’s over; all, all over, and I haven’t any wound stripes on my arm. What an inglorious part I have played in the war. I have fallen down and gotten sick and made mistakes and boxed the compass and done endless useless things, but haven’t even seen a periscope. How I will have to lie to my grandchildren. I can now understand why poor, dear grandfather lies so abundantly about his leg that got caught in a folding bed. He feels morally obligated to posterity to tell about his heroic exploits in war. I’ll have to go through with it, too.
Last night was not a pretty night People kissed me. Everywhere I went I was kissed just as resoundingly as if I had been the greatest hero. But they were never the right people. I suspected them of having been rebuffed by other sailors stronger than I. One very pretty girl kissed me, however, and Polly almost hit her. After this we soon went home, Polly abusing me all the way.
“Why didn’t you stop her?’” she asked bitterly.
“I was too tired, Polly,” I replied. “You see for yourself, dear, I can’t help being what I am.”
“If I thought you could,” said Polly, “I’d have no respect for you.”
I chewed on this remark for quite some time. There’s a lot more in it than meets the eye. Women are that way.
Nov. 14th. — The old camp has been blighted by a swarm of very new and bright assistant paymasters. Today I visited it and found the woods full of them. Everywhere I went they were looking for their orders. “More paymasters than pay,” mused I, looking bitterly at an approaching swarm. As they passed me I saluted them gravely and they returned my salute with gratitude.
The place is quite changed. I found any number of Chiefs doing sentry duty. I guess the Ensigns are manning the drags, but I did not actually see this. Everything is being done to make it easy and comfortable for the ordinary seaman.
Mr. Fogerty, my old dog, was moderately glad to see me. He was talking things over with Chief Larry near a very imposing coal pile. Fogerty is very anxious to be mustered out and get back into civil life. He has a couple of families over at City Island to support, not to mention a few down at New Rochelle and White Plains. He has traveled far in his day, has Fogerty, and never have I met a dog that so glories in his past indiscretion.
Nov. 16th. — (Looking backward) He was sitting on the tool box of an automobile with his feet on the running board, and strange to relate he was sitting in his stocking feet. Placed carefully beside him were his large, expressive, nobbed-nosed, navy shoes. Through the long slits of the city fell the vast night, clamorous with the voices of people, the honking of horns which sounded like a large flock of disturbed geese passing southward through the night, and from the river came the deep, vibrating notes of a host of craft forming a sort of monotonous background of sound for the shriller noise arising from the multitude. The world moved through the streets of New York like an undulating, sombre-colored ribbon. There were no single pedestrians. There was no room for the solitary traveler. Humanity, as if drawn by some vast magnet in the hands of an irresponsible god, was squeezed and moulded into a solid river of life, flowing and pouring confusedly wherever an opening was presented. It was a flow of sound and unbridled triumphant rejoicing. Never in the history of the world had there been such a river. For four years the people that went to compose this mass had been held subdued and in leash, fear ridden, wracked by doubts and hitherto unknown bitterness, and now, on this night, the war was over and the phantom that had hung like a shadow for so long over their drab, every-day lives was being chased back into the night on the wings of a great noise. Here was the brutality of happiness divorced from all the cloying niceties of so called civilization, expressive and true in its sheer vulgarity and freedom. Here the numerous proprieties enforced by modern society were shown up in their true light as flimsy bits of drapery which man immediately discards in the face of any strong emotion. The next day the papers wrote indignant editorials on the coarseness and immorality of the celebration, a fact which proved that even in the face of evidence the editors still believe they can control the hearts of men with the same ease and precision with which type is run into the columns of their papers. Men read these editorials ironically and went their way rejoicing. Long after they were forgotten this great night would spring up in their thought as a particularly pleasant and thrilling memory, and they would tell their grandchildren about it in a discreetly abridged version.
As I read over these lines I have written I am wondering whether I am starting a novel or writing a diary. Certainly they sound novelesque. I think I might even show them to Polly, that beautiful and gracious creature, as sarcastic as she is sweet, which means some sarcasm at times. Yes, I might even show them to her, so pleased am I with them, if only to convince her that my literary leanings are really not literary flounderings, as she takes so much pleasure in assuring me every time I read her a poem composed to her eyes and in her honor.
In the meantime, I am leaving a certain party sitting quietly in his stocking feet on the tool box of an automobile.
“Sit down,” said the certain party, seemingly oblivious to all the turbulent masses seething around him.
“Sit down,” he repeated, “me dogs hurt”
“Corns?” said I, sinking wearily to the running board of the deserted car.
“Bunions,” said the sailor moodily. “Terrible painful after being stepped on.”
“I can well imagine,” I replied, sympathetically.
“No you can’t,” said the sailor in an injured voice as though I was deprecating his pain. “No you can’t,” he repeated, “unless you’ve ever had ’em. Have yer?” he added looking at me with much interest
“No,” I answered reluctantly, “but I know all about them. We had a cook once named Nora and she had them all the time.”
“I guess she didn’t have ’em any worse than mine,” he replied jealously.
“Oh, no,” said I, “certainly not. I guess you’ve got the worst attack of bunions a fellow ever bad.”
“Sure,” said he, “you’ve said something.”
We were quiet for a while, busy with our own thoughts. Mine were largely composed of Polly, whom I had just taken home and faithfully promised to go to bed and keep off the streets where the women insisted, despite my modest protestations, upon kissing roe, and here I was, breaking my promise, sitting in the middle of Times Square with a sailor afflicted of bunions while all the world swarmed round our feet
“Now I knew a guy,” began the sailor, “as thought himself taken with bunions. In fact, he claimed to have had the worst—”
And thus started a long discussion on the nature and habits of the domestic bunion with which I will not trouble the reader. For my part, I had very little to give to this discussion and consequently was forced to listen to a lengthy dissertation from the sailor, whose knowledge of the subject seemed well-nigh inexhaustible. Thus, calmly in the face of one of the largest noisiest and most spontaneous celebrations ever known in the history of such events we sat and talked bunions, which perhaps, after all, is about as good a thing to do as any in such circumstances.
After he had succeeded in convincing me that he was a person deserving of the utmost solicitude, he became quite cheerful and immediately forgetting his great affliction be put on his shoes and we proceeded to talk of the sea and ships as all real sailors do when they are thrown in each other’s company.
“Troopship, eh,” he replied in response to my answer. “You’re lucky. All I’ve been doing is snooping around the coast along with a lot of excitable furriners what went loco every time a submarine was even so much as mentioned. I got boiled on one of them southern islands once an’ almost lost me ship. What a night! Worse than this. Much broader.”
With this he thrust his arm into the after part of the automobile and produced, much to my surprise, a pair of golf clubs.
“See what they got in this machine,” he said, looking curiously at the sticks. “I guess they must be carpenters or mechanics or something, although I didn’t ever see any of these instruments used in those trades. What do you think they are?”
“Why, they are golf-sticks,” I replied amazed at his ignorance.
“What are golf,” he asked looking at me innocently.
“Golf,” I answered. “Oh, golf is a sort of a game indulged in by the so-called upper classes and practically the entire population of Scotland and the Union League Club.”
“Oh, sure, I heard of it,” he replied and reaching back into the automobile once more he produced a thermos bottle.
“Oh, look,” he exclaimed, his eyes growing large, “whatta ye guess is in here?”
“Don’t know,” I replied. “Take a chance and open it.”
He opened it and proceeded to sniff suspiciously.
“There’s something in it,” he whispered, his eyes dancing.
“Taste it,” I answered, hardly able to restrain my excitement.
He tasted it and handed the bottle to me. “Whatta ye think it is?” he said.
“I don’t exactly know,” I said, smacking my lips, “but let’s not inquire. As long as we don’t know what we are drinking we can’t be blamed tor drinking it, see?”
He looked at me and smiled.
“You’re some wise guy all right,” said he. “No wonder you get along so well in the navy.” I shuddered at this remark.
