Show 4OS HE SIDE ONLY HI RUI > YARD KIPLING I IConyright 1892 by Rudyard Kipling T TuG truth is17 said the man in the train that xve live in a tropical country for j three months of the year only wo wont recognize it Look at this He handed Oer the long list of deaths from heat that i enlivened tho newspapers All the cities wher men livo at breaking strain were Bf nding in their butcher bills and the papers pa-pers of the cities themselves apostles of tt f gospel of rush were beseeching traders t-raders to keep cool and not to ove thtaselvea while the hot wave vli u ua them The rivers were patched ant arred with sundried pebbles the logs at 1 the loggers were drouchtbound somewhei nIt n-It Connecticut and the grass at the side of the track was burned in a hundred places by the sparks from the locomotive Men hatless coatless and gasomg lay in the shade of tnat station where only a few months ago the glass stood 30 decrees below be-low zero Now the readings were 9S degrees de-grees In the shade Main streetdo you remember Main street of a little village locked up in the snow this spring had Riven up the business of life and an American Amer-ican flag with some politicians name printed print-ed across the bottom hung down across the street as stiff as a board There wero men with fans and alpaca coats curled up in splint chairs in the veranda of the one l0tol among them an expresident of the United States He completed the impression impres-sion that the furniture of the entire country coun-try bad been turned out of doors for summer sum-mer cleaning in the absence of all the inhabitants in-habitants Nothmc looks so helplessly ex as a president returned to stores Jibe Stars and Stripes signified that the presidential campaign i han opened in Main street opened ana shut up again Politics evaporate I evap-orate at summer beat when all hands are busy with the last of the hay and as the I farmers put it Vermonts bound to go Republican Tho custom of the land is to drag the scuffle and dust of an election I over several monthsto the improvement I of business and manners but the noise of 1 that war comes faintly up the valley of I tne Connecticut and is lost among the Addling of the locusts Their music puts as it were a knife edge upon the heat of the dDS in truth it is a tropical country for I I the time being Thunder storms prowl and growl round the belted hills spit themselves away in a few drops of rain I and leave the air more dead than before In the woods where even the faithful t springs are beginning to run low the pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and wait for the wind to bring news of the rain The elements of wild carrot and all the gypsy flowers camped by sufferance between fence line and road net are masked in white dust and the golden I gol-den rod of the pastures that are burned to I flax color burns too like burnished brass A pillar of dust on the long hogback of the I i road across the hills shows whore a team is lathering between farms and the roofs I I I of the wooden bouses flicker in the baze of j i i their own heat Overhead the chicken j I hawk is the only creature at work and his I shrill kitelike call sends the gaping chickens 5 chick-ens from the dust bath in haste to their j i mothers i he red squirrel as usual 1 I feigns business of importance among the butternuts but this io pure prIggishness k When the passerby is gone he ceases chattering and climbs back to where the little breezes can stir bis tail plumes From somewhere vader the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a mowing machine nmong the laythe wherraoand the grunt of the tired horses Houses are onlv meant to eat and sleep j in Tho rest of life is lived at full length in the veranda When traffic is brisk three whole teams will pass that veranda in one day and it is necessary to exchange news ubout the weather ana the prospects for oats When oats are in there will be slack time on the farm and the farmers will seriously think of doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the I eummer They will undertake this and that when they get around to it The I phrase translated is the exact equivalent of the manana of the Spaniard the fcul Jiojafga of Upper India the ytiroshii of the Japanese and the longdrawled tailtoa of Maori The only person who gets around in this weather is the summer boarderthe refugee from tho burning cities of tho plain and she Is generally a woman She walks and botanizes and kodaks and strips the bark off thu white birch to make blueribboned wastepaper baskets and the farmer regards her with wonder More does he wonder still at the city clerk in a blazer who has two weeks holiday in the year and upparenUy unlimited money which he earns in tae easiest possible way by sitting sit-ting at a desk and writing The farmers wife sets the fashions of the summer 4 boarder end between them man and woman get a notion of the beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them The blazer and the town made gown are innocent recvuiting sergeants ser-geants for the city brigades and since one mans profession is ever a mystery to hIs fellow blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and content A cummer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch the thousand aspects of life in the Atlantic States Remember Re-member that between June and September It is the desire of all who can to got away i from the big cItiesnot on account of i wantonness as people leave Londonbut because of actual heat So they get away in II their millions with their millions tho wives of the rich mentor five cleat months tho others for as long as they can and liko drawing like they mako communities ret by set breed by breed division by division di-vision over tbe length and breadth of the land from Maino and the upper reaches of the oaguonay through tbo mountains and Lot springs of half a dozen interior states out and away to Sitka on steamers Then they spend money on hotel bills among 10000 farms on private companies who 11 lease and stock land for sporting purposes en yachts canoes bicycles rods chalets couaces reading circles camps tents and all the luxuries they know But the luxury lux-ury of rest most of them dont know and tho telephone and telegraph are faithfully dragged after them lost their men folk should for a moment forget the ball and chain at foot I For sadness with laughter at bottom there are few things to compare with the I sight of a cartlepe muddybooted millionaire million-aire his hat adorned with trout flies and a string of small Jiab in his band clawing wildly Bt the telephone of some liackof beyond health resort Thus Hello Hello J Yes Whos there Oh aU right Go ahead Yes its me Hey wnatl Repeat Sodor how much Fortyfour and a half Repeat JSTol I told you to hold on What Whet Who I nought at ttiatl Say hold on aminuts i t rJ 1 I Cable the other side No Hold on Ill come down Business with watch I Tell Schaefer iiI see him tomorrow White Mountain express See Tomorrow Tomor-row afternoon Over his shoulder to wife who wears halfhoop diamond ring at JO a m Liizzie wheres my grip Ive got to go down And be goes down to eat in a hotel and sleep in his shut up houseMen house-Men are as scarce at most ot the summer places as they are in the Indian hillstations m the late April The women tell you that they cant get away and if they did they would only be miserable miser-able ip get back Now whether this wholesale whole-sale abandonment of husbands by wives is wholesome let those wno know the beaus beau-s of the AngloIndian system settle for jmsolvea I > hat both men and women need rest very lia iv a glance at the crowded hotel tables r j lea plainso plain indeed that the fort t ner who has not been taught that fuss nd worry are in themselves honorable I wishes sometimes he could put the whole uurtatful crowd to sleep for seventeen hours a day I have Inquired of not less than 5JO men and women in various parts of the states why they broke down and looked PO gash And the men said If you dont keep up with the procession in Amer 1ca you are left and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no ouslder yet bad discovered the real cause of their worry and strain or why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of friction in the shortest given time Now the men can be left to their own folly but the cause ot the womens trouble has been revealed to me It Is the thing called ILhelpt which Is no help In the multitude of presents that the American man has given to the American Ameri-can woman for details see daily papers he has forgotten or is unable to give her good servants and that sordid trouble rnns equally through the household of the millionaire mill-ionaire or the fiat of the small city man Yes its easy enough to laugh said ono woman passionately wo are worn out and our children are worn out too and were always worrying I know it What can we do If you stay here youll know that this is tho land of all the luxuries if you can pay for them and none of the necessities ne-cessities Youll know and then you wont laugh Youll know why women are said to take their husbands to boardinghouses boarding-houses and never have homes Youll know what an Irish Catholic means The men wont get up and attend to these things but we would If we had female suffrage wed shut the door to all the Irish and throw it open to nIl the Chinese and let tho women have a little protection protec-tion It was the cry of a soul I worn thin with exasperation but it was truth Today I do not laugh any more at the race that depends on inefficient helot races for its inefficient service When next you housekeepers in England differ with the respectful amiable ami-able industrious BIB maid who wears a cap aud says Maam remember I the pauper labor of Americathe wives of the 69000000 kings who have no subjects No man could get a thorough knowledge of the problem in one lifetime but he could guess at the size and the import of it of ter he had descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt Then he perceives how jood for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself him-self to pieces in naked competition with his neighbor while his wife struggles un I ceasingly over primitive savagery in the I kitchen In India sometimes when a famine fam-ine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes in all its bareness and bitter stress Here in spite of the trimmings and the frillings it refuses to too subdued and the clamor and the clatter of it are loud above all other soundsas sometimes the thunder of disorganized engines stops conversation along the decks of a liner and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question This thing Is made and paid to bear us to port quietly Why does it not do soin Only here the rattle of the badly put together machine ma-chine is always in the ears though men and women run about with laborsaving appphances and gospels of power through repose tinkering and oiling and making more noise The machine is new Someday Some-day It is going to be the finest machine in all the world To the ranks of the amateur artificers therefore are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and bolthead fiddling with the glands registering revolutions ana crying out from limp to time that this or that is or is not distinctively American Meanwhile men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels and they are said to have fallen hln the battle of life The God who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that battle but we do not and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts and the wheel that breaks us as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships I wor-ships LaiBeg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft But the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself I him-self and be proud of it with sweeping A foreigner can do littlo good by talking of theee things for the same lean dry I blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage parochial pride that i squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger Among themselves the people of tho erstern cities admit that they and their I womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily and that the consequences conse-quences for the young stock are unpleasant unpleas-ant indeed but before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty continent which has nothing to do with tho case and to call aloud on Baal of tho Dollars to catalogue their lines mines telephones banks and cities and all the other shells buttons and counters I that they have made gods over them Now a nation does not progress upon ita braInpan brain-pan as some books would have us believe but upon its belly as did the serpent of old and in the very long run tho work of tho brain comes to be gathered in by a slowfooted breed that have the unimaginative unimagi-native stomach and the nerves that know I tbeirplace All this Is truly consoling from the aliens I point viow He perceives with great I comfort that out of strain is bred impa tienco in the shape of a young bundle of i nerves who is about as undisciplined nn imp as the earth can show Out of impatience II impa-tience grown up habituated to violent and ugly talk and the impatience and recklessness reckless-ness of his neighbors is begotten lawlessness lawless-ness encouraged by laziness ard suppressed sup-pressed by violence when it becomes insupportable in-supportable Out of lawlessness is bred i rebellion and that fruit has been tasted J I once already and out of rebellion comes I I profit to those who wait He hears of the power of the people who through rank slovenliness neglect to see that their laws are soberly enforced from the beginning and these people not once or twice in a year but many times within a month go out In the open streets and with a maximum wasteof power and shouting strangle other people with ropes They are he is told lawabiding citizens who have executed exe-cuted the will of the people wfiich is aa though m man shorld leave his papers 11 a C f I unsorted for a year and then smash I his desk with an ax crying Am I not I orderly Ho hears lawyers otherwise sane and matured defend this pig jobbing murder on the grounds thai the people I II stand behind the lawtbe law that they never administered He sees a right at j present only halfbut still halfconceded II to anticipate tho law in ones own interests inter-ests and nervous impatience always nervesforejudging the suspect In jail the prisoner in the dock and the ward between be-tween nation and nation before that is declared Ho knows that the maxim in London Yokohama and Hong Kong in doing business with the purebred American Ameri-can is to keep him waiting for the reason that forced inaction frets the man to a lather as standing in harness frets a half broken horse He comes across a thousand little peculiarities of speech I manner and thoughtmatters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting frictionand they are all just the least little bit in the world lawless no more than the restless clicking together of horns in a herd of restless cattle I cat-tle but certainly no less Thoy are all good good for those who wait On the other hand to consider the matter 1 mat-ter more humanly there are thousands of delightful men and women going to pieces for the pitiful reason that if they do not I keep up with the procession they are left And thoy are loftin clothes that I aave no back to them among mounds of smilax And young men chance met in I the streets talk to you about their nerves which are things no young man should i know anything about and the friends of I your friends go down with nervous prostration i pros-tration and the people overhead in the trains talk about their nerves and the nerves of their relatives and the little children must needs have their nerves at tendedto ere their milk teeth are shed and tbe middleaged women and the middle mid-dle aged men have got them too and the old men lose the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness and the advertisements adver-tisements m the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no lie Atop of tho fret and tho stampede the tingling self consciousness of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile fu-tile racket that sends up the death rate a childs delight in the blare and the dust of the march of progress Is it not distinctly dis-tinctly American It is and it is not If tho cities were all America as they pretend fifty years would see the march of progress brought to a standstill as a i locomotive is stopped by heated bearings I Down in the meadow the mowing machine I ma-chine has checked and the horses are shaking shak-ing themselves The last of the sunlight I leaves the top of Monndnock and four I miles away Main street lights her electric lamps It is band night in Main street I and tlo folks from Putney from Marlboro from Guilford and even Pew Fane will drive in their well filled wagons to hear I music and look at the expresident Over the shoulder of the meadow two men come I up very slowly their hats off Bud their arms swinging loosely at their sides They do not hurry they have not hurried and they never will hurry for they are of the country bankers of die flesh and blood of the ever bankrupt cities Their children may yet bo pale summer boarders as tho boarders citybred weeds may take over their farms Prom the plough to the pavement pave-ment goes man but to the plough he returns re-turns at last Going to supper Yeep very slowly across the wash of the uncut grass Say that corncrib wants painting Do that when we get around to it They go off throuch the dusk without farewell or salutation steadily as their own steers And there are a few millions of them unhanay men to cross in their ways set silent indirect in speech and as impenetrable as that other eastern farmer who is the bedrock of another land They do not appear In the city papers thoy are not much neard of in the streets and they tell very little In the outsiders estimate of America And they are the American RUDTABD IrzPLlNG |