Second Mencken Chrestomathy (71 page)

The job still needed perfecting. At one end, on the top row, the planks ran out for four or five feet beyond the last trestle. If anyone happened to be sitting out there and the folks further in got up, it was obvious that the laws of gravitation would come into play. Half a dozen majors and colonels noticed the fact at once and sounded warnings. A dozen lesser warriors leaped at their call, and after a few minutes of heaving, tugging and shoving the planks were thrust back, so that they no longer ran out into space. The grandstand looked fragile, but it was ready for occupancy. The business of filling it began. First the small boys who had climbed it were chased off, and then the little girls in scout uniforms were lined up and ordered to get themselves to the top. They seemed reluctant to venture up, for the highest plank was at least seven feet above the lawn, but in a little while, with much urging by a dozen officers
in uniform, two braved the climb, and then the others swarmed after them. They stood on the top plank and completely filled it. Between the trestles it sagged under them, and they held on to one another in plain fear, but the majors and colonels, aided by the Y.M.C.A. brother, assured them that it was all right, and so they stuck.

Then began the business of filling the lower levels. This took even more shouting and running about than had gone before. Lady Salvationists had to be summoned from clear across the square. They came slowly, and the majors and colonels puffed and showed choler, but in the end, with the aid of a bugler, enough of them were got upon the scene. They clambered up the stand and sat in rows, and below them and between them crowded dozens of children—whether converts or mere spectators I could not make out. Soon the stand was packed to its capacity. Every plank was bowed with the weight upon it, and the trestles began to settle into the soft earth of the lawn. A final hullabaloo, with the shirt-sleeved officers sweating more than ever, chased away unwanted volunteers and the photographer brought up his camera and began to focus it.

This business took some time, for saucy boys were always leaping into the field of the lens, and having to be run out again. The Girl Scouts on the top plank did a lot of squealing, and every few seconds one of them began to wobble and there was an alarm, and more shouting and scurrying about, but none actually fell off, and so the photographer proceeded. Finally, he was ready, and twenty officers joined in cautioning everyone to be still. And then, just as he was about to expose his plate, the whole grandstand began to sway gently from side to side, and an instant later, to go over. The legs of the trestle at one end had sunk into the ground. Over she went!—and up rose a yell that must have been heard for three blocks. Fortunately, there were no serious casualties. The whole squad of majors and colonels, with the Y.M.C.A. brother for good measure, piled upon the wreck in one frantic leap, and the sisters in the background prepared to faint, but there was no sign of blood, and only one of the victims seemed to need aid. She was one of the older girls, and she came out with a bruised shoulder. Forty Samaritans fought to carry her to a nearby automobile, but she made it under her own steam.

At once the work of cleaning up the debris began. It took almost as long as erecting the stand. Every plank was seized by four brothers, each with three or four more to boss him. The trestles and zigzags took six or eight. Several generals emerged from the mass, planning the grand strategy of the removal. The truck was moved down the street six feet, and then moved back again. Orders came roaring from all points of the compass. Gaping small boys were knocked over. The sod was hoofed and gouged up for yards around. Two brothers leaped into the truck to receive the planks. One was knocked over and went sprawling. Finally the truck was loaded and rolled away, and a general went about shouting “Go to the hall!” Then the band ambled off, the sisters followed, the children dispersed, and the show was over.

I present the record as a small contribution to the literature of human imbecility. Seen in retrospect, the episode seems quite fantastic. Imagine setting up those slim trestles on a soft lawn, and then loading them with a couple of tons of women and children! The planks sagged from the first moment. The trestles wobbled and dug in. But not a man in that whole gang of saved and polished souls had wit enough to see what was bound to follow. With the energy of beavers and the devotion of holy martyrs they erected their crazy machine, loaded it with children and then stood by in amazement as it slid from under their noses. The facts belong to any psychologist who cares to anatomize them. As for me, I confess that I got a considerable pleasure out of the spectacle. It was harmless in its effects, and it was perfect in its essence.

From the
Smart Set
, Sept., 1919, p. 42

Ah, those far-off, half-forgotten days, when there was yet enough alcohol in malt to make a vase of it romantic, and the girls were not afraid of shocking a man of my years, and I roamed the great world, sipping beauty like a bee.… I’ll never forget one flaming Spring morning at Versailles, perhaps between 10
A.M.
and 10:15. Ed Moffett and I stood on the little bridge near the Petit Trianon
watching the famous carp leap into the tiny stream below. “Those carp,” said Ed, “are happy. They never get sore feet hoofing through these wet woods. They are never thirsty. They have no religion. They don’t know that Marie Antoinette is dead. They have never heard of Socialism.”

To make conversation I disputed. “They can’t be wholly happy,” I argued. “They haven’t any vices.”

Ed considered the point a moment and then hauled out a large plug of Gravely’s Choice, the Corona-Corona of chewing tobaccos. “It is,” he said, “possible.” Then he broke off three inches of the plug and dropped it with great precision into the gaping mouth of the largest carp.

“Come,” said Ed. “Let us get away before he discovers how happy he is.”

From a hitherto unpublished manuscript

From D
AMN
!: A B
OOK OF
C
ALUMNY
, 1918, p. 37

What humor could be more cruel than that of life itself? Franz Schubert, on his deathbed, read the complete works of J. Fenimore Cooper. John Millington Synge wrote “Riders to the Sea” on a second-hand typewriter, and wore a celluloid collar. Richard Wagner made a living, during four years, arranging Italian opera arias for the cornet. Herbert Spencer sang bass in a barber-shop quartette and was in love with George Eliot. One of the greatest soldiers in Hungarian history was named Hunjadi Janos.

From the
Smart Set
, Jan., 1920, pp. 55–56

M
UCH OF
the current blabber against the late Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is grounded upon the doctrine that his capacity for consecutive thought was clearly limited. In support of the doctrine his critics cite the fact that most of his books are no more than strings of apothegms, with the subject changing on every second page. All this, it must be obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional garrulity and prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes such copious drafts upon the parts of speech that the dictionary is almost emptied, these defective observers jump to the conclusion that his intrinsic notions are of corresponding elaborateness. This is not true. I have read Kant, Hegel, Spencer, Spinoza, Descartes, Leibnitz, Fichte, Locke, Schleiermacher, James and Bergson, not to mention the Greeks and the Romans; the more I read, the more I am convinced that it is not true.

What makes philosophy hard to read is not the complexity of the ideas set forth, but the complexity of the language in which they are concealed. The typical philosopher, having, say, four new notions, drowns them in a sea of words—all borrowed from other philosophers. One must wade through endless chapters of old stuff to get at the minute kernels of the new stuff.… This process Nietzsche avoided. He always assumed that his readers knew the books, and that it was thus unnecessary to rewrite them. Having an idea that seemed to him to be novel and original, he stated it in as few words as possible, and then shut down. Sometimes he got
it into a hundred words; sometimes it took a thousand. But he never wrote a word too many; he never pumped up an idea to make it appear bigger than it actually was.… The professors are not used to that sort of writing. Nietzsche employed too few words for them—and he had too many ideas.

From my translation of The A
NTICHRIST
, 1920. This translation, like the first edition of The American Language, was undertaken as a recreation during World War I, when the prevailing spy-hunt made it impossible to do any rational writing on public questions. There had been two previous translations, but it seemed to me that they were somewhat stiff. What I tried to do was get into mine some reflection of the extraordinary dramatic quality and verbal coruscation of the original. It came out with the approbation of Dr. Oscar Levy, editor of the English edition of Nietzsche and owner of the rights thereto

What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.

What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.

What is happiness?—The feeling that power
increases
—that resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power;
not
peace at any price, but war;
not
virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense,
virtu
, virtue free of moral acid).

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of
our
charity. And one should help them to it.

What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity.…

The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be
bred
, must be
willed
, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.

This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately
willed.
Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it
has been almost
the
terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and
attained:
the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man—the Christian.…