The Enchanted Typewriter Read online

  V. THE EDITING OF XANTHIPPE

  After my interview with Xanthippe, I hesitated to approach thetype-writer for a week or two. It did a great deal of clicking after themidnight hour had struck, and I was consumed with curiosity to know whatwas going on, but I did not wish to meet Mrs. Socrates again, so I heldaloof until Boswell should have served his sentence. I was no longerafraid 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 thatmight arise from a casual conversation with a creature of that sort. Anagreement with a real good fellow, even when it ends in a row, is moreor less diverting; but a disputation with a female good fellow placesa man at a disadvantage. The argumentum ad hominem is not an easy thingwith men, but with women it is impossible. Hence, I let the type-writerclick and ring for a fortnight.

  Finally, to my relief, I recognized Boswell's touch upon the keys andsauntered 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 Ishould not seem to know that he had been in the superheated jail of theStygian 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 moreor 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'reawfully 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? Ifso, how do you know I look burned?"

  I was cornered, and there was only one way out of it, and that was bytelling the truth. "Well, you are invisible, old chap," I said. "Thefact is, I've been told of your trouble, and I know what you haveundergone."

  "And who told you?" queried Boswell.

  "Your successor on the Gazette, Madame Socrates, nee Xanthippe," Ireplied.

  "Oh, that woman--that woman!" moaned Boswell, through the medium of thekeys. "Has she been here, using this machine too? Why didn't you stopher before she ruined me completely?"

  "Ruined you?" I cried.

  "Well, next thing to it," replied Boswell. "She's run my paper so farinto the ground that it will take an almighty powerful grip to pullit out again. Why, my dear boy, when I went to--to the ovens, I had acirculation of a million, and when I came back that woman had brought itdown to eight copies, seven of which have already been returned. All inten days, too."

  "How do you account for it?" I asked.

  "'Side Talks with Men' helped, and 'The Man's Corner' did a little, butthe editorial page did the most of it. It was given over wholly to theadvancement of certain Xanthippian ideas, which were very offensive tomy women readers, and which found no favor among the men. She wants tochange the whole social structure. She thinks men and women are the samekind of animal, and that both need to be educated on precisely the samelines--the girls to be taught business, the boys to go through a courseof domestic training. She called for subscriptions for a cooking-schoolfor boys, and demanded the endowment of a commercial college for girls,and wound up by insisting upon a uniform dress for both sexes. I tellyou, if you'd worked for years to establish a dignified newspaperthe way I have, it would have broken your heart to see the suggestedfashion-plates that woman printed. The uniform dress was a holy terror.It was a combination of all the worst features of modern garb. Trouserswere to be universal and compulsory; sensible masculine coats werediscarded entirely, and puffed-sleeved dress-coats were substituted.Stiff collars were abolished in favor of ribbons, and rosettes croppedup everywhere. Imagine it if you can--and everybody in all Hades was tobe 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 sawsuch jokes in your life; every one of them contained a covert attackupon man. There was only one good thing in it, and that was a bit ofverse 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 thecirculation fell off."

  "Well, she took liberties, that's all," said Boswell. "For instance, inher 'Side Talks with Men' she had something like this: 'Napoleon--Itis rather difficult to say just what you can do with your last season'scocked-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 eachof the three corners of the hat, tying the other ends into a choux, itwould make a very acceptable work-basket to send to your grandmotherat Christmas.' Now Napoleon never asked that woman for advice on thesubject. Then there was an answer to a purely fictitious inquiry fromSolomon 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 considerednecessary to be off with the old love before being on with the new, butlatterly the growth of monopolistic ideas tends towards the uniform rateof one at a time.' A purely gratuitous fling, that was, at one of mymost eminent patrons, or rather two of them, for latterly both Solomonand Henry the Eighth have yielded to the tendency of the times and goneinto business, which they have paid me well to advertise. Solomon hasestablished an 'Information Bureau,' where advice can always be had fromthe 'Wise-man,' as he calls himself, on payment of a small fee; whileHenry, taking advantage of his superior equipment over any English kingthat ever lived, has founded and liberally advertised his 'ChaperonCompany (Limited).' It's a great thing even in Hades for young peopleto be chaperoned by an English queen, and Henry has been smart enough tosee it, and having seven or eight queens, all in good standing, he hasbeen doing a great business. Just look at it from a business pointof view. There are seven nights in every week, and something going onsomewhere all the time, and queens in demand. With a queen quoted so lowas $100 a night, Henry can make nearly $5000 a week, or $260,000 ayear, out of evening chaperonage alone; and when, in addition to this,yachting-parties up the Styx and slumming-parties throughout the countryare being constantly given, the man's opportunity to make half a milliona year is in plain sight. I'm told that he netted over $500,000 lastyear; and of course he had to advertise to get it, and this Xanthippewoman goes out of her way to get in a nasty little fling at one of mymainstays 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 inroyal circles."

  "Well, nearly so," said Boswell. "There have been other kings who werequite as complimentary to the ladies, but Henry was the only man amongthem 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 hadto 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 forHenry. He has been very much misjudged by posterity. He was the fatherof 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 onlyfair, 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 continuousmatrimonial performances. He set himself up against the Pope, and he hadto 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 yielda jot on any point, and while a great many people criticise him on thescore of his wives--particularly on their number--I feel that I have invery 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 protestagainst it is to marry as many times as you can."

  "By Jove!" said Boswell, tapping the keys yearningly, as though hewished he might spare his hand to shake mine, "you are a man after myown heart."

  "Thanks, old chap," said I, reaching out my hand and shaking it in theair with my visionary friend--"thanks. I've studied these things withsome care, and I've tried to find a reason for everything in life asI 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 EnglishChurch. He wasn't willing to be married a second or a seventh timeunless he was really a widower. He wasn't as long in taking notice againas some modern widowers that I have met, but I do not criticise him onthat score. I merely attribute his record to his kingly nature, whichinvolves necessarily a quickness of decision and a decided perceptionof the necessities which is sadly lacking in people who are born to alesser station in life. England demanded a queen, and he invariably metthe demand, which shows that he knew something of political economy aswell as of matrimony; and as I see it, being an American, a man needs toknow something of political economy to be a good ruler. So many of ourstatesmen have acquired a merely kindergarten knowledge of the science,that we have had many object-lessons of the disadvantages of a merelyelementary knowledge of the subject. To come right down to it, I ama great admirer of Henry. At any rate, he had the courage of hisheart-convictions."

  "You really surprise me," tapped Boswell. "I never expected to find anAmerican so thoroughly in sympathy with kings and their needs."

  "Oh, as for that," said I, "in America we are all kings and we are notwithout our needs, matrimonial and otherwise, only our courts arenot quite so expeditious as Henry's little axe. But what was Henry'sattitude towards this extraordinary flight of Xanthippe's?"

  "Wrath," said Boswell. "He was very much enraged, and withdrew hisadvertisements, declined to give our society reporters the usualaccounts of the functions his wives chaperoned, and, worst of all, haswithdrawn himself and induced others to withdraw from the symposium Iwas preparing for my special Summer Girls' issue, which is to appearin August, on 'How Men Propose.' He and Brigham Young and Solomon andBonaparte had agreed to dictate graphic accounts of how they had doneit on various occasions, and Queen Elizabeth, who probably had moreproposals to the square minute that any other woman on record, was towrite the introduction. This little plan, which was really the idea ofgenius, is entirely shattered by Mrs. Socrates's infernal interference."

  "Nonsense," said I. "Don't despair. Why don't you come out with a plainstatement of the facts? Apologize."

  "You forget, my dear sir," interposed Boswell, "that one of thefundamental principles of Hades as an institution is that excuses don'tcount. It isn't a place for repentance so much as for expiation, and Imight apologize nine times a minute for forty years and would still haveto suffer the penalty of the offence. No, there is nothing to be donebut to begin my newspaper work again, build up again the institutionthat Xanthippe has destroyed, and bear my misfortunes like a truespirit."

  "Spoken like a philosopher!" I cried. "And if I can help you, my dearBoswell, count upon me. In anything you may do, whether you starta monthly magazine, a sporting weekly, or a purely American Sundaynewspaper, you are welcome to anything I can do for you."

  "You are very kind," returned Boswell, appreciatively, "and if I needyour 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 shallhave to call upon you. With Sherlock Holmes engaged to write twelvenew detective stories; Poe to look after my tales of horror; D'Artagnandictating his personal memoirs; Lucretia Borgia running my Girls'Department; and others too numerous to mention, I have a sufficientsupply of stuff to fill up; but if you feel like writing a few poems forme I may be able to use them as fillers, and they may help to make yourname so well known in Hades that next year I shall be able to print aWorldly Letter from you every week with a good chance of its provingpopular."

  And with this promise Boswell left me to get out the first number of TheCimmerian: a Sunday Magazine for all. Taking him at his word, I sent himthe following poem a few days later:

  LOCALITY

  Whither do we drift, Insensate souls, whose every breath Foretells the doom of nothingness? Yet onward, upward let it be Through all the myriad circles Of the ensuing years-- And then, pray what? Alas! 'tis all, and never shall be stated. Atoms, yet atomless we drift, But whitherward?

  I had intended this for one of our leading magazines, but it seemedso to lack the mystical quality, which is essential to a successfulmagazine poem in our sphere, that I deemed it best to try it on Boswell.