Still, these were not ants but potentially men and women. They had names--Kerrigan and Vane, the Kaufman Trio, Miss Minstrel Co. and many others. From where we sat they were insects. It seemed to us that it would be no trouble at all to flip the three strong men and the pony ballet into oblivion with one finger. The little finger would be the most suitable.
And there were times when we wanted to do it. Only, the feeling that we were too new a G.o.d to impose a doom restrained us. No divine patience was in us, but we felt that if we could wait a while it might come. The agitated atoms annoyed us. The audacity of "pony ballet" was almost insufferable. Why, as in Gulliver"s land, the biggest of the strong men towered above the smallest of the ballet girls by at least the thickness of a fingernail. And these performing ants were forever working to entertain. They ran on and off the stage without apparent reason and waved their antennae about furiously. Two of the ants would stand close together as if in conversation, and every now and then one of them would hit the other brutally in the face.
We did not know why and our sympathies went entirely to the one who was struck. It was difficult not to interfere. We rather think that some of the seemingly extraordinary judgments of the high G.o.ds between mortals must be explained on the ground of a somewhat similar imperfect knowledge. They too see us, but they cannot hear. Time is required for sound to reach Olympus. When we get into warfare they observe only the carnage and the turmoil. The preliminary explanations arrive several years after the peace treaties have been signed, and then they sound silly and entirely irrelevant.
Accordingly, the high G.o.ds are rather loath to interfere in the wars of earth. They are too far removed to understand causes, and even trumpet-like shouts about national honor merely amble up to their ears through long lanes of r.e.t.a.r.ding ether. Indeed, the period of transit is so long that national honor invariably arrives at Olympus in poor condition. Only when strictly fresh is it in the least inspiring. Little old last century"s national honor is quite unpalatable. It is food neither for G.o.ds nor men.
It was just as well that we waited before taking blind vengeance on the vaudeville insects, because half an hour or so after the blows were struck by the seemingly aggressive ant the conversation which preceded the violence began to drift back to us. It came to our ears during the turn of the strong men and created a rather uncanny effect. At first we were puzzled because we had never known strong men to exchange any words at all except the traditional "alleyup." Almost immediately we realized that it was merely the tardiness of sound waves which caused the delay of the dialogue in reaching us in our bleacher seat.
Fortunately, in spite of our illusion of omnipotence, the distance from the stage was not truly Olympian. The jokes came in time to be appreciated. It seems that one of the ants, whom we shall immediately christen A, told his friend and companion, B for convenience, that he was taking two ladies to dinner and that he would like to have B in the party, but that he, A, did not have sufficient funds to defray any expense which he might incur. B admitted promptly that he himself had nothing. Accordingly, A suggested a scheme for sociability"s sake. He urged B to come, but impressed upon him that when asked as to what he wished to eat or drink he should reply, "I don"t care for anything."
In order to guard against a slip-up the friendly ants rehea.r.s.ed the scene in advance. It ran something like this:
A--August! August!
B--You"re a little wrong on your months. This is January.
A (punching him)--You fool! August is the name of the waiter.
The delay which r.e.t.a.r.ded the progress of this joke to our ears impaired its effectiveness a little. The rest was more sprightly.
A--August, bring some chicken en ca.s.serole and combination salad for myself and the two ladies. Oh, I"ve forgotten my friend. What will you have?
B--Bring me some pigs" knuckles.
At this point A hit B for the second time and again called him a fool.
A--Why did you say, "Bring me some pigs" knuckles?"
B--Why did you ask me so pretty?
Thereupon they rehea.r.s.ed the situation again.
A--Oh, I"ve forgotten my friend. Won"t you have something? You must join us.
B--Sure, bring me a dish of ham and eggs.
Again blows were struck and again A inquired ferociously as to the cause of the slip-up.
A--What made you say, "Bring me a dish of ham and eggs?"
B--Well, why did you go and coax me?
Earlier in the evening we had observed that other blows were struck and there must have been further dialogue to go with them, but we could not wait for it to arrive. We rather hoped that the jokes would follow us home, but they must have become lost on the way.
Perhaps you don"t think there was much sense to this talk anyway.
Maybe the real G.o.ds on high Olympus feel the same way about us when our words limp home.
VI
CHIVALRY IS BORN
Every now and then we hear parents commenting on the fearful things which motion pictures may do to the minds of children. They seem to think that a little child is full of sweetness and of light. We had the same notion until we had a chance to listen intently to the prattle of a three-year-old. Now we know that no picture can possibly outdo him in his own fictionized frightfulness.
Of course, we had heard testimony to this effect from Freudians, but we had supposed that all these horrible blood l.u.s.ts and such like were suppressed. Unfortunately, our own son is without reticence. We have a notion that each individual goes through approximately the same stages of progress as the race. Heywood Broun, 3d, seemed not yet quite as high as the cavemen in his concepts. For the last few months he has been harping continuously, and chiefly during meal times, about cutting off people"s noses and gouging out eyes. In his range of speculative depredations he has invariably seemed liberal.
There seemed to us, then, no reason to fear that new notions of horror would come to Heywood Broun, 3d, from any of the pictures being licensed at present in this State. As a matter of fact, he has received from the films his first notions of chivalry. Of course, we are not at all sure that this is beneficial. We like his sentimentalism a little worse than his sadism.
After seeing "Tol"able David," for instance, we had a long argument.
Since our experience with motion pictures is longer than his we often feel reasonably certain that our interpretation of the happenings is correct and we do not hesitate to contradict H. 3d, although he is so positive that sometimes our confidence is shaken. We knew that he was all wrong about "Tol"able David" because it was quite evident that he had become mixed in his mind concerning the hero and the villain. He kept insisting that David was a bad man because he fought. Pacifism has always seemed to us an appealing philosophy, but it came with bad grace from such a swashbuckling disciple of frightfulness as H. 3d.
However, we did not develop that line of reasoning but contended that David had to fight in order to protect himself. Woodie considered this for a while and then answered triumphantly, "David hit a woman."
Our disgust was unbounded. Film life had seared the child after all.
Actually, it was not David who hit the woman but the villainous Luke Hatburn, the terrible mountaineer. That error in observation was not the cause of our worry. The thing that bothered us was that here was a young individual, not yet four years of age, who was already beginning to talk in terms of "the weaker vessel" and all the other phrases of a romantic school we believed to be dying. It could not have shocked us more if he had said, "Woman"s place is in the home."
"David hit a woman," he piped again, seeming to sense our consternation.
"What of it?" we cried, but there was no bullying him out of his point of view. The fault belongs entirely to the motion pictures. H. 3d cannot truthfully say that he has had the slightest hint from us as to any s.e.x inferiority of women. By word and deed we have tried to set him quite the opposite example. We have never allowed him to detect us for an instant in any chivalrous act or piece of partial s.e.x politeness. Toasts such as "The ladies, G.o.d bless "em" are not drunk in our house, nor has Woodie ever heard "Shall we join the ladies," "the fair s.e.x," "the weaker s.e.x," or any other piece of patronizing masculine poppyc.o.c.k.
Susan B. Anthony"s picture hangs in his bedroom side by side with Abraham Lincoln and the big elephant. He has led a sheltered life and has never been allowed to play with nice children.
But, somehow or other, chivalry and romanticism creep into each life even through barred windows. We have no intention of being too hard upon the motion pictures. Something else would have introduced it. These phases belong in the development of the race. H. 3d must serve his time as gentle knight just as he did his stint in the role of s.a.d.i.s.tic caveman. Presently, we fear, he will get to the crusades and we shall suffer during a period in which he will try to improve our manners.
History will then be our only consolation. We shall try to bear up secure in the knowledge that the dark ages are still ahead of him.
We hoped that the motion pictures might be used as an antidote against the damage which they had done. We took H. 3d to see n.a.z.imova in "A Doll"s House." There was a chance, we thought, that he might be moved by the eloquent presentation of the fact that before all else a woman is a human being and just as eligible to be hit as anybody else. We read him the caption embodying Nora"s defiance, but at the moment it flashed upon the screen he had crawled under his seat to pick up an old program and the words seemed to have no effect. Indeed when Nora went out into the night, slamming the door behind her, he merely hazarded that she was "going to Mr. Butler"s." Mr. Butler happens to be our grocer.
The misapprehension was not the fault of n.a.z.imova. She flung herself out of the house magnificently, but Heywood Broun, 3d, insisted on believing that she had gone around the corner for a dozen eggs.
In discussing the picture later, we found that he had quite missed the point of Mr. Ibsen"s play. Of Nora, the human being, he remembered nothing. It was only Nora, the mother, who had impressed him. All he could tell us about the great and stimulating play was that the lady had crawled on the floor with her little boy and her little girl. And yet it seems to us that Ibsen has told his story with singular clarity.
D"Artagnan Woodie likes very much. He is fond of recalling to our mind the fact that D"Artagnan "walked on the roof in his nightshirt." H. 3d is not allowed on the roof nor is he permitted to wander about in his nightshirt.
Perhaps the child"s introduction to the films has been somewhat too haphazard. As we remember, the first picture which we saw together was called "Is Life Worth Living?" The worst of it is that circ.u.mstances made it necessary for us to leave before the end and so neither of us found out the answer.
VII
RUTH VS. ROTH
We picked up "Who"s Who in America" yesterday to get some vital statistics about Babe Ruth, and found to our surprise that he was not in the book. Even as George Herman Ruth there is no mention of him. The nearest name we could find was: "Roth, Filibert, forestry expert; b.
Wurttemberg, Germany, April 20, 1858; s. Paul Raphael and Amalie (Volz) R., early edn. in Wurttemberg----"