Part 29

About the time that their eyes were beginning to hang out on their cheek-bones with the heat, and their ears were ringing like a Broadway New Year’s eve celebration, they managed to throw off the approaching comatose and back out of the room and down to the restaurant for lunch.

The head waiter said all the tables were full but if they didn’t mind sitting outside for a couple of weeks he would see what he could do. They said “Oh-that’s-all-right” and thanked him very kindly and gave him a Dollar Bill and sat down outside the door and tried to look as if they didn’t mind it at all. They didn’t want to give the Head Waiter the slightest suspicion that they were inconvenienced and run the risk of his getting sore at them and shutting them off altogether from the privilege of eating in the restaurant which he didn’t own.

During the same epoch they managed to get a little table facing the wall and a pillar, and were soon rummaging through the Feed Folder for some dish that they could afford to buy without becoming insolvent. They finally took refuge in the haven of all who don’t know what they want, and after they had eaten the last scrap of the roast beef they quietly paid the eleven-dollar check and went out to find the bank.

The next day they took a train for their home, and were so accustomed to foreign compartment cars that they decided to get a compartment. But when they found out the price, they concluded to buy a motor car instead and compromised on a berth in the main dormitory. There were no lowers to be had, and so they thanked the Pullman Conductor and took an upper.

The car seemed a trifle like a dry-kiln in temperature and they asked the porter if he would mind introducing a little outside atmosphere. He looked at the thermomenter and said it was only 190 degrees in the car and that the rules of the company forbade him from opening any more air-holes unless it got up to 3,000 degrees. They thanked the porter for the trouble they had caused him and asked him how all the folks were and bade him good-night and crawled up the ladder and disappeared back of the curtains, and were soon wrapped in the arms of Morph.

A week after they had arrived home, and had told everybody how glad they were to get back to God’s Country, the Cost of living began to show unusual agility in the high jump. The trial heats had caused people to gasp, but when the finals came on, everybody became highly excited and ran to and fro wondering what was coming next in way of sensation.

Mr. and Mrs. Typical American, with their originality of brain convolutions, decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to teach the people how to starve. And so they organized a Gradual Starvation Class and secured many other Typical Americans as pupils and thanked God that through his bounty, the people did not have to do the job suddenly, but could dwindle away slowly and almost painlessly.

They were getting on Very Well until a certain few Americans—not in any sense typical—came out in the open here and there, and said: “Not by a damsight! With grainaries groaning with unused grain, with eggs piled Babel-high in gigantic warehouses, with cotton enough in one State to clothe the whole Nation in summer, and wool enough on the backs of one-tenth of the sheep of the country to clothe the whole Nation in winter, with banks bursting with gold and freight cars enough to move the wares of the planet when not cornered in the holy cause of Pillage—not by a damsight will America starve herself to make a few Rich richer!”

And so it came to pass that these voices crying in the wilderness jarred loose in time the sluggish national contentment of Mr. and Mrs. Typ and other Americans everywhere, and made them think.

But just when they began to think, it was time for them to go Abroad again.

HOT SKETCH NO. 23

WHEN MENTAL LEECH MEETS MENTAL LEECH

THERE was a temperamental manufacturer who used to come down to the office after a thick night in the Loop and unleash a long low growl about the lack of Initiative among his men.

“There isn’t a kanoop among them,” he said, “that has the originality of a tadpole.”

On a certain day, not unlike any other day in this particular establishment, the Sales Manager poked his nose gradually into the Boss’s office, and, sniffing the Boss within, squeezed cautiously into the room, scraping the nap all off his courage as he did so.

“Will you please be so kind as to tell me,” whispered the Sales Manager, “if this little ginger-up letter to the Road Rats meets your approval?”

The Boss grabbed the letter, shot a lightning glance at it upside-down, and rammed it back into the Sales Manager’s hands.

“Rotten!” he said, “Lacks originality—pep! No punch in it!”

“Thank you,” replied the Sales Manager mildly. “I’ll see if I can not embody some of the points of your constructive criticism.” And he oozed out of the room again.

In came the Advertising Manager, walking on his ankles so as to not make any riotous disturbance.

“I was just thinking—” he began.

“Impossible!” sneered His Gentle Bosslets, putting his heels up on his glass-topped desk and lighting his eighty-seventh cigarette since breakfast.

“I was just thinking,” continued the Adv. Mgr. affecting to ignore the suggestion but failing miserably from the knees down, “I was just thinking that maybe it might not be a bad plan, perhaps, to paint New York next month, please.”

“NEVER!” roared the Boss. “Never in a thousand years. The painted bulletin is no good—never was. Poster’s the thing! I’d rather post New York for one month than paint it for forty years at half the price.”

“Very good, then—shall I go in for that?”

“Not on your life. I’ve just decided on a newspaper campaign.”

“Thank you,” said the Adv. Mgr., backing out of the room and falling over a few chairs and things on the fairway.

When the intruder had vanished, Commander Boss got up, ran his long temperamental digits through his top-fringe and pounded out into the manufacturing department where he proceeded to raise from fourteen to sixteen separate and distinct kinds of scarlet hell for the general lack of initiative and commonsense around his plant.