A Book of Burlesques by H. L. Mencken (ebook reader color screen .txt) 📗

PUBLISHED AT THE BORZOI · NEW YORK · BY
ALFRED · A · KNOPF

COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1920, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Death: a Philosophical Discussion 11 From the Programme of a Concert 27 The Wedding: a Stage Direction 51 The Visionary 71 The Artist: a Drama Without Words 83 Seeing the World 105 From the Memoirs of the Devil 135 Litanies for the Overlooked 149 Asepsis: a Deduction in Scherzo Form 159 Tales of the Moral and Pathological 183 The Jazz Webster 201 The Old Subject 213 Panoramas of People 223 Homeopathics 231 Vers Libre 237

The present edition includes some epigrams from “A Little Book in C Major,” now out of print. To make room for them several of the smaller sketches in the first edition have been omitted. Nearly the whole contents of the book appeared originally in The Smart Set. The references to a Europe not yet devastated by war and an America not yet polluted by Prohibition show that some of the pieces first saw print in far better days than these.

H. L. M.

February 1, 1920.

I.—DEATH
I.—Death. A Philosophical Discussion

[11]The back parlor of any average American home. The blinds are drawn and a single gas-jet burns feebly. A dim suggestion of festivity: strange chairs, the table pushed back, a decanter and glasses. A heavy, suffocating, discordant scent of flowers—roses, carnations, lilies, gardenias. A general stuffiness and mugginess, as if it were raining outside, which it isn’t.

A door leads into the front parlor. It is open, and through it the flowers may be seen. They are banked about a long black box with huge nickel handles, resting upon two folding horses. Now and then a man comes into the front room from the street door, his shoes squeaking hideously. Sometimes there is a woman, usually in deep mourning. Each visitor approaches the long black box, looks into it with ill-concealed repugnance, snuffles softly, and then backs of toward the door. A clock on the mantel-piece ticks loudly. From the [12]street come the usual noises—a wagon rattling, the clang of a trolley car’s gong, the shrill cry of a child.

In the back parlor six pallbearers sit upon chairs, all of them bolt upright, with their hands on their knees. They are in their Sunday clothes, with stiff white shirts. Their hats are on the floor beside their chairs. Each wears upon his lapel the gilt badge of a fraternal order, with a crêpe rosette. In the gloom they are indistinguishable; all of them talk in the same strained, throaty whisper. Between their remarks they pause, clear their throats, blow their noses, and shuffle in their chairs. They are intensely uncomfortable. Tempo: Adagio lamentoso, with occasionally a rise to andante maesto. So:

First Pallbearer

Who woulda thought that he woulda been the next?

Second Pallbearer

Yes; you never can tell.

Third Pallbearer

(An oldish voice, oracularly.) We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow.

[13]Fourth Pallbearer

I seen him no longer ago than Chewsday. He never looked no better. Nobody would have——

Fifth Pallbearer

I seen him Wednesday. We had a glass of beer together in the Huffbrow Kaif. He was laughing and cutting up like he always done.

Sixth Pallbearer

You never know who it’s gonna hit next. Him and me was pallbearers together for Hen Jackson no more than a month ago, or say five weeks.

First Pallbearer

Well, a man is lucky if he goes off quick. If I had my way I wouldn’t want no better way.

Second Pallbearer

My brother John went thataway. He dropped like a stone, settin’ there at the supper table. They had to take his knife out of his hand.

Third Pallbearer

I had an uncle to do the same thing, but [14]without the knife. He had what they call appleplexy. It runs in my family.

Fourth Pallbearer

They say it’s in his’n, too.

Fifth Pallbearer

But he never looked it.

Sixth Pallbearer

No. Nobody woulda thought he woulda been the next.

First Pallbearer

Them are the things you never can tell anything about.

Second Pallbearer

Ain’t it true!

Third Pallbearer

We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow.

(A pause. Feet are shuffled. Somewhere a door bangs.)

Fourth Pallbearer[15]

(Brightly.) He looks elegant. I hear he never suffered none.

Fifth Pallbearer

No; he went too quick. One minute he was alive and the next minute he was dead.

Sixth Pallbearer

Think of it: dead so quick!

First Pallbearer

Gone!

Second Pallbearer

Passed away!

Third Pallbearer

Well, we all have to go some time.

Fourth Pallbearer

Yes; a man never knows but what his turn’ll come next.

Fifth Pallbearer[16]

You can’t tell nothing by looks. Them sickly fellows generally lives to be old.

Sixth Pallbearer

Yes; the doctors say it’s the big stout person that goes off the soonest. They say typhord never kills none but the healthy.

First Pallbearer

So I have heered it said. My wife’s youngest brother weighed 240 pounds. He was as strong as a mule. He could lift a sugar-barrel, and then some. Once I seen him drink damn near a whole keg of beer. Yet it finished him in less’n three weeks—and he had it mild.

Second Pallbearer

It seems that there’s a lot of it this fall.

Third Pallbearer

Yes; I hear of people taken with it every day. Some say it’s the water. My brother Sam’s oldest is down with it.

Fourth Pallbearer[17]

I had it myself once. I was out of my head for four weeks.

Fifth Pallbearer

That’s a good sign.

Sixth Pallbearer

Yes; you don’t die as long as you’re out of your head.

First Pallbearer

It seems to me that there is a lot of sickness around this year.

Second Pallbearer

I been to five funerals in six weeks.

Third Pallbearer

I beat you. I been to six in five weeks, not counting this one.

Fourth Pallbearer

A body don’t hardly know what to think of it scarcely.

Fifth Pallbearer[18]

That.rss what I always say: you can’t tell who’ll be next.

Sixth Pallbearer

Ain’t it true! Just think of him.

First Pallbearer

Yes; nobody woulda picked him out.

Second Pallbearer

Nor my brother John, neither.

Third Pallbearer

Well, what must be must be.

Fourth Pallbearer

Yes; it don’t do no good to kick. When a man’s time comes he’s got to go.

Fifth Pallbearer

We’re lucky if it ain’t us.

Sixth Pallbearer

So I always say. We ought to be thankful.

First Pallbearer[19]

That’s the way I always feel about it.

Second Pallbearer

It wouldn’t do him no good, no matter what we done.

Third Pallbearer

We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow.

Fourth Pallbearer

But it’s hard all the same.

Fifth Pallbearer

It’s hard on her.

Sixth Pallbearer

Yes, it is. Why should he go?

First Pallbearer

It’s a question nobody ain’t ever answered.

Second Pallbearer

Nor never won’t.

Third Pallbearer[20]

You’re right there. I talked to a preacher about it once, and even he couldn’t give no answer to it.

Fourth Pallbearer

The more you think about it the less you can make it out.

Fifth Pallbearer

When I seen him last Wednesday he had no more ideer of it than what you had.

Sixth Pallbearer

Well, if I had my choice, that’s the way I would always want to die.

First Pallbearer

Yes; that’s what I say. I am with you there.

Second Pallbearer

Yes; you’re right, both of you. It don’t do no good to lay sick for months, with doctors’ bills eatin’ you up, and then have to go anyhow.

Third Pallbearer[21]

No; when a thing has to be done, the best thing to do is to get it done and over with.

Fourth Pallbearer

That’s just what I said to my wife when I heerd.

Fifth Pallbearer

But nobody hardly thought that he woulda been the next.

Sixth Pallbearer

No; but that’s one of them things you can’t tell.

First Pallbearer

You never know who’ll be the next.

Second Pallbearer

It’s lucky you don’t.

Third Pallbearer

I guess you’re right.

Fourth Pallbearer[22]

That’s what my grandfather used to say: you never know what is coming.

Fifth Pallbearer

Yes; that’s the way it goes.

Sixth Pallbearer

First one, and then somebody else.

First Pallbearer

Who it’ll be you can’t say.

Second Pallbearer

I always say the same: we’re here to-day——

Third Pallbearer

(Cutting in jealousy and humorously.) And to-morrow we ain’t here.

(A subdued and sinister snicker. It is followed by sudden silence. There is a shuffling of feet in the front room, and whispers. Necks [23]are craned. The pallbearers straighten their backs, hitch their coat collars and pull on their black gloves. The clergyman has arrived. From above comes the sound of weeping.)

[25]

II.—FROM THE PROGRAMME OF A CONCERT
II.—From The Programme of a Concert

[27]

"Ruhm und Ewigkeit" (Fame and Eternity), a symphonic poem in B flat minor, Opus 48, by Johann Sigismund Timotheus Albert Wolfgang Kraus (1872-  ).

Kraus, like his eminent compatriot, Dr. Richard Strauss, has gone to Friedrich Nietzsche, the laureate of the modern German tone-art, for his inspiration in this gigantic work. His text is to be found in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, which was not published until after the poet’s death, but the composition really belongs to Also sprach Zarathustra, as a glance will show:

I