The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) by Marshall P. Wilder (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📗

chair: "It's a perilous thing to make people cry when they are out for amusement. Did the postman remember us this morning?"

Isobel nodded mournfully.

"And the crop?" said Jimaboy.[Pg 1766]

"Three manuscripts; two from New York and one from Boston."

"'So flee the works of men
Back to the earth again,'"

quoted the sentimentalist, smiling from the teeth outward. "Is that all?"

"All you would care about. There were some fussy old bills."

"Whose, for instance?"

"Oh, the grocer's and the coal man's and the butcher's and the water company's, and some other little ones."

"'Some other little ones'," mused Jimaboy. "There's pathos for you. If I could ever get that into a story, with your intonation, it would be cheap at fifteen cents the word. We're up against it, Bella, dear."

"Well?" she said, with an arm around his neck.

"It isn't well; it's confoundedly ill. It begins to look as if it were 'back to the farm' for us."

She came around to sit on the arm of the chair.

"To the railroad office? Never! Jimmy, love. You are too good for that."

"Am I? That remains to be proved. And just at present the evidence is accumulating by the ream on the other side—reams of rejected MS."

"You haven't found yourself yet; that is all."

He forced a smile. "Let's offer a reward. 'Lost: the key to James and Isobel Jimaboy's success in life. Finder will be suitably recompensed on returning same to 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.'"

She leaned over and planted a soft little kiss on the exact spot on his forehead where it would do the most good.

"I could take the city examination and teach, if you'd let me, Jimmy."[Pg 1767]

He shook his head definitely. That was ground which had been gone over before.

"Teach little babies their a b c's? I'm afraid that isn't your specialty, heart of mine. Now if you could teach other women the art of making a man believe that he has cornered the entire visible supply of ecstatic thrills in marrying the woman of his choice—by Jove, now! there's an idea!"

Now Jimaboy had no idea in particular; he never had an idea that he did not immediately coin it into words and try to sell it. But Isobel's eyes were suspiciously bright, and the situation had to be saved.

"I was just thinking: the thing to do successfully is the—er—the thing you do best, isn't it?"

She laughed, in spite of the unpaid bills.

"Why can't you put clever things like that into your stories, Jimmy, dear?"

"As if I didn't!" he retorted. "But don't step on my idea and squash it while it's in the soft-shell-crab stage. As I said, I was thinking: there is just one thing we can give the world odds on and beat it out of sight. And that thing is our long suit—our specialty."

"But you said you had an idea," said Isobel, whose private specialty was singleness of purpose.

"Oh—yes," said Jimaboy. Then he smote hard upon the anvil and forged one on the spur of the moment. "Suppose we call it The Post-Graduate School of W. B., Professor James Augustus Jimaboy, principal; Mrs. Isobel Jimaboy, assistant principal. How would that sound?"

"It would sound like the steam siren on the planing mill. But what is the 'W. B.'?"

"'Wedded Bliss,' of course. Here is the way it figures out. We've been married three years, and—"[Pg 1768]

"Three years, five months and fourteen days," she corrected.

"Excellent! That accuracy of yours would be worth a fortune on the faculty. But let me finish—during these three years, five months and fourteen days we have fought, bled and died on the literary battle-field; dined on bath-mitts and café hydraulique, walked past the opera-house entrance when our favorite play was on, and all that. But tell me, throb of my heart, have we ever gone shy on bliss?"

She met him half-way. It was the spirit in which they had faced the bill collector since the beginning of the period of leanness.

"Never, Jimmy, dear; not even hardly ever."

"There you are, then. Remains only for us to tell others how to do it; to found the Post-Graduate School of W. B. It's the one thing needful in a world of educational advantage; a world in which everything but the gentle art of being happy, though married, is taught by the postman. We have solved all the other problems, but there has been no renaissance in the art of matrimony. Think of the ten thousand divorces granted in a single state last year! My dear Isobel, we mustn't lose a day—an hour—a minute!"

She pretended to take him seriously.

"I don't know why we shouldn't do it, I'm sure," she mused. "They teach everything by mail nowadays. But who is going to die and leave us the endowment to start with?"

"That's the artistic beauty of the mail scheme," said Jimaboy, enthusiastically. "It doesn't require capitalizing; no buildings, no campus, no football team, no expensive university plant; nothing but an inspiration, a serviceable typewriter, and a little old postman to blow his whistle at the door."[Pg 1769]

"And the specialty," added Isobel, "though some of them don't seem to trouble themselves much about that. Oh, yes; and the advertising; that is where the endowment comes in, isn't it?"

But Jimaboy would not admit the obstacle.

"That is one of the things that grow by what they are fed upon: your ad. brings in the money, and then the money buys more ad. Now, there's Blicker, of the Woman's Uplift; he still owes us for that last story—we take it out in advertising space. Also Dormus, of the Home World, and Amory, of the Storylovers—same boat—more advertising space. Then the Times hasn't paid for that string of space-fillers on 'The Lovers of All Nations.' The Times has a job office, and we could take that out in prospectuses and application blanks."

By this time the situation was entirely saved and Isobel's eyes were dancing.

"Wouldn't it be glorious?" she murmured. "Think of the precious, precious letters we'd get; real letters like some of those pretended ones in Mr. Blicker's correspondence column. And we wouldn't tell them what the 'W. B.' meant until after they'd finished the course, and then we'd send them the degree of 'Master of Wedded Bliss,' and write it out in the diploma."

Jimaboy sat back in his chair and laughed uproariously. The most confirmed sentimentalist may have a saving sense of humor. Indeed, it is likely to go hard with him in the experimental years, if he has it not.

"It's perfectly feasible—perfectly," he chuckled. "It would be merely pounding sand into the traditional rat-hole with all the implements furnished—teaching our specialty to a world yearning to know how. You could get up the lectures and question schedules for the men, and I could make some sort of a shift with the women."[Pg 1770]

"Yes; but the text-books. Don't these 'Fit-yourself-at-Home' schools have text-books?"

"Um, y-yes; I suppose they do. That would be a little difficult for us—just at the go-off. But we could get around that. For example, 'Dear Mrs. Blank: Replying to your application for membership in the Post-Graduate School of W. B., would say that your case is so peculiar'—that would flatter her immensely—'your case is so peculiar that the ordinary text-books cover it very inadequately. Therefore, with your approval, and for a small additional tuition fee of $2 the term, we shall place you in a special class to be instructed by electrographed lectures dictated personally by the principal.'"

Isobel clapped her hands. "Jimmy, love, you are simply great, when you are not trying to be. And, after a while, we could print the lectures and have our own text-books copyrighted. But don't you think we ought to take in the young people, as well?—have a—a collegiate department for beginners?"

"'Sh!" said Jimaboy, and he got up and closed the door with ostentatious caution. "Suppose somebody—Lantermann, for instance—should hear you say such things as that: 'take in the young people'! Shades of the Rosicrucians! we wouldn't 'take in' anybody. The very life of these mail things is the unshaken confidence of the people. But, as you suggest, we really ought to include the frying size."

It was delicious fooling, and Isobel found a sketch-block and dipped her pen.

"You do the letter-press for the 'collegiate' ad., and I'll make a picture for it," she said. "Hurry, or I'll beat you."

Jimaboy laughed and squared himself at the desk, and the race began. Isobel had a small gift and a large am[Pg 1771]bition: the gift was a cartoonist's facility in line drawing, and the ambition was to be able, in the dim and distant future, to illustrate Jimaboy's stories. Lantermann, the Times artist, whose rooms were just across the hall, had given her a few lessons in caricature and some little gruff, Teutonic encouragement.

"Time!" she called, tossing the sketch-block over to Jimaboy. It was a happy thought. On a modern davenport sat two young people, far apart; the youth twiddling his thumbs in an ecstasy of embarrassment; the maiden making rabbit's ears with her handkerchief. Jimaboy's note of appreciation was a guffaw.

"I couldn't rise to the expression on those faces in a hundred years!" he lamented. "Hear me creak:"

DON'T MARRY

until you have taken the Preparatory Course in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. Home-Study in the Science of Successful Heart-Throbs. Why earn only ten kisses a week when one hour a day will qualify you for the highest positions? Our Collegiate Department confers degree of B. B.; Post-Graduate Department that of M. W. B. Members of Faculty all certificated Post-Graduates.

A postal card brings Prospectus and application blank.

Address: The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.

Isobel applauded loyally. "Why, that doesn't creak a little bit! Try it again; for the unhappy T. M.'s, this time. Ready? Play!"

Her picture was done while Jimaboy was still nibbling his pen and scowling over the scratch-pad. It was a drawing-room interior, with the wife in tears and the husband[Pg 1772] struggling into his overcoat. To them, running, an animated United States mail-bag, extending a huge envelope marked: "From the Post-Graduate School of W. B."

Jimaboy scratched out and rewrote, with the pen-drawing for an inspiration:

HEARTS DIVIDED
BECOME
HEARTS UNITED

when you have taken a Correspondence Course in Wedded Bliss. A Scholarship in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. is the most acceptable wedding gift or Christmas present for your friends. Curriculum includes Matrimony as a Fine Art, Post-Marriage Courtship, Elementary and Advanced Studies in Conjugal Harmony, Easy Lessons in the Gentle Craft of Eating Her Experimental Bread, Practical Analysis of the Club-Habit, with special course for wives in the Abstract Science of Honeyfugling Parsimonious Husbands. Diploma qualifies for highest positions. Our Gold Medalists are never idle.

The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.

N. B.—Graphophone, with Model Conversations for Married Lovers, furnished free with lectures on Post-Marriage Courtship.

They pinned the pictures each to its "copy" and had their laugh over the conceit.

"Blest if I don't believe we could actually fake the thing through if we should try," said Jimaboy. "There are plenty of people in this world who would take it seriously."

"I don't doubt it," was Isobel's reply. "People are so ready to be gold-bricked—especially by mail. But it's[Pg 1773] twelve o'clock! Shall I light the stove for luncheon?—or can we stand Giuseppe's?"

Jimaboy consulted the purse.

"I guess we can afford stuffed macaroni, this one time more," he rejoined. "Let's go now, while we can get one of the side tables and be exclusive."

They had barely turned the corner in the corridor when Lantermann's door opened and the cartoonist sallied out, also luncheon-stirred. He was a big German, with fierce military mustaches and a droop in his left eye that had earned him the nickname of "Bismarck" on the Times force. He tapped at the Jimaboy door in passing, growling to himself in broken English.

"I like not dis light housegeeping for dese babies mit der wood. Dey starf von day und eat nottings der next. I choost take dem oud once und gif dem sauerkraut und wiener."

When there was no answer to his rap he pushed the door open and entered, being altogether on a brotherly footing with his fellow-lodgers. The pen-drawings with their pendant squibs were lying on Jimaboy's desk; and when Lantermann comprehended he sat down in Jimaboy's chair and dwelt upon them.

"Himmel!" he gurgled; "dot's some of de liddle voman's fooling. Goot, sehr goot! I mus' show dot to Hasbrouck." And when he went out, the copy for the two advertisements was in his pocket.

Jimaboy got a check from the Storylovers that afternoon, and in the hilarity consequent upon such sudden and unexpected prosperity the Post-Graduate School of W. B. was forgotten. But not permanently. Late in the evening, when Jimaboy was filing and scraping laboriously on another story,—he always worked hardest on the heels of a check,—Isobel