You Should Worry Says John Henry
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George V. Hobart >> You Should Worry Says John Henry
Dear John, would you tell a loving but perfect stranger how to play
the game without having to wear a mask?
[Illustration]
Dear John, I played a couple of games recently with a wide-faced
young man who grew very playful and threw the parlor furniture at
me because I trumpeted his ace. I fancy I must have did wrong. The
fifth time I trumpeted his ace the young man arose, put on his gum
shoes, and skeedaddled out of the house. Is it not considered a
breach of etiquette to put on gum shoes in the presence of a lady?
If you please, dear John, tell me how to play auction bridge.
Yours fondly,
GLADYS JONES.
P. S. The furniture which he threw was not his property to dispose
of.
G. J.
When friend wife got a flash of this letter she made a kick to the
effect that it was some kind of a cypher, possibly the beginning of a
secret correspondence.
It was up to me to hand Gladys the frosty get-back, so this is what I
said:
Respected Madam:--I'm a slob on that auction bridge thing, plain
poker being the only game with cards that ever coaxes my dough from
the stocking, but I'll do the advice gag if it chokes me:
Auction bridge is played with cards, just like pinochle, with the
exception of the beer.
Not enough cards is a misdeal; too many cards is a mistake; and
cards up the sleeve is a slap on the front piazza, if they catch
you at it.
When bidding don't get excited and think you're attending an
auction of shirt-waists at a fire-sale. It distresses your partner
terribly to hear you say, "I'll bid two dollars!" when what you
meant was two spades. Much better it is that you smile across the
table at him and say, "I bid you good evening!"
You shouldn't get up and dance the Kitchen Sink dance every time
you take a trick. It looks more genteel and picturesque to do the
Castle Walk.
When your opponent has not followed suit it is not wise to pick out
a loud tone of voice and tell him about it. Reach under the table
and kick him on the shins. If it hurts him he is a cheater; if it
doesn't hurt him always remember that you are a lady.
When you are dummy the new rules permit you to call a revoke. When
you see your partner messing up a sure "going-outer" you may also
call the police; then get out your calling cards and call your
partner down, being, of course, particular and ladylike in your
selection of adjectives.
Don't forget what is trumps more than eighteen times during one
hand. The limit used to be twenty-six times, but since the outbreak
of the Mexican war the best auction bridge authorities have put the
limit down to eighteen.
It isn't wise to have a conniption fit every time you lose a trick.
Nothing looks so bad as a conniption fit when it doesn't match the
complexion, and generally it delays the game.
When your partner has doubled a no-trump call and you forget to
lead his suit the best plan is to hurry out the front door, take a
street car to the end of the line; then double back in a taxi to
the nearest railway station; get the first train going West and go
the limit--then take a steamer, sail for Japan and don't come back
for seven years. Your partner may forget about it in that time. If
he doesn't, then you must continue to live in Japan. All
authorities agree on this point.
When the game is close, don't get excited and climb up on the
table. It shows a want of refinement, especially if you are not a
quick climber.
While running a grand slam to cover, the best authorities,
including Bob Carter, claim that you should breathe hoarsely
through the front teeth, pausing from time to time to recite brief
passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Never whistle while waiting for someone to play. Whistling is not
in good taste. Go over and bite out a couple of tunes on the piano.
When your opponent trumps an ace don't ever hit him carelessly
across the forehead with the bric-a-brac. Always remember when you
are in Society that bric-a-brac is expensive.
If your partner bids five spades and you get the impression that he
is balmy in the bean don't show it in your face. Such authorities
as Fred Perry and Dick Ling claim that the proper thing to do is to
arise gracefully from your chair and sing something plaintive, in
minor chords. This generally brings your partner back to earth,
because nine times out of ten he is only temporarily crazy with the
heat.
Don't lead the ten of clubs by mistake for the ace of trumps and
then get mad and jump seventeen feet in the air because they refuse
to let you pull it back.
In order to jump seventeen feet in the air you would have to go
through the room upstairs, and how do you know whose room it is?
There, Gladys, if you follow these rules I think you can play the
game of auction bridge without putting a bruise on the law
regulating the income tax.
P. S. When you play for money always bite the coin to see if it
means as much as it looks.
I hope Gladys wasn't offended.
She hasn't sent me even a postal card containing thanks and a view of
Chestnut Street.
CHAPTER IX
YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT GETTING THE GRIP
Say! did you ever put on the goggles and go joy-riding with an attack of
grip?
It has all other forms of amusement hushed to a lullaby--take it from
Uncle Hank.
As a Bad Boy the grip has every other disease slapped to a sobbing
stand-still.
It's dollars to pretzels that the grip germ is the brainiest little bug
that was ever chased by a doctor.
I was sitting quietly at home reading Maeterlinck on Auction Bridge when
suddenly I began to sneeze like a Russian regiment answering roll call.
Friend wife was deep in the mysteries of Ibsen's latest achievement,
"The Rise and Fall of the Hobble Skirt," but she politely acknowledged
my first sneeze with the customary "Gesundheit!"
Then she trailed along bravely with her responses for ten or fifteen
minutes, but it was no use--I had more sneezes in my system than there
are "Gesundheits!" in the entire German nation, including
principalities, possessions across the sea, and the Musical Union.
"John," she ventured after a time, "you are getting a cold!"
"I'm not getting it," I sniffed; "I have it now."
What a mean, contemptible little creature a grip germ must be.
Absolutely without any of the finer instincts, it sneaks into people's
systems disguised as an ordinary cold. It isn't on the level, like
appendicitis or inflammatory rheumatism, both of which are brave and
fearless and will walk right up to you and kick you on the shins, big as
you are.
Nobody ever knows just what make-up the grip germs will put on to break
into the human system, but once they get a foothold in the epiglottis
nothing can remove them except inward applications of dynamite.
The grip germ hates the idea of race suicide.
I discovered shortly after I had sneezed myself into a condition of pale
blue profanity that a newly married couple of grip germs had taken a
notion to build a nest somewhere on the outskirts of my solar plexus,
and two hours later they had about 233 children attending the public
school in my medusa oblongata; and every time school would let out for
recess I would go up in the air and hit the ceiling with my Lima.
Before daylight came all these grip children had graduated from school
and, after tearing down the school-house, the whole bunch had married
and had large families of their own, and all hands were out paddling
their canoes on my alimentary canal.
By nine o'clock that morning there must have been eighty-five million
grip germs armed with self-loading revolvers all trying to shoot their
initials over the walls of my interior department.
It was fierce!
When Doctor Leiser arrived on the scene I was carrying enough concealed
weapons to start something in Mexico.
The good old pill-pusher threw his saws behind the sofa, put his dip-net
on the mantelpiece, and took a fall out of my pulse.
"Ah!" he said, after he had noted that my tongue looked like a
currycomb.
"The same to you, Doc," I said.
"Ah!" he said, looking hard at the wall.
"Say, Doc!" I whispered; "there's no use to cut off my leg because the
germs will hide in my elbow."
"Do you feel shooting pains in the cerebellum, near the apex of the
cosmopolitan?" inquired the doctor.
"Surest thing you know," I said.
"Have you a buzzing in the ears, and a confused sound like distant
laughter in the panatella?" he asked.
"It's a cinch, Doc," I said.
"Do you feel a roaring in the cornucopia with a tickling sensation in
the diaphragm?" he asked.
"Right again," I whispered.
"Do the joints feel sore and pinched like a pool-room?" he said.
"Right!"
"Does your tongue feel rare and high-priced, like a porterhouse steak at
a summer resort?"
"Exactly!"
"Do you feel a spasmodic fluttering in the concertina?"
"Yes!"
"Have you a sort of nervous hesitation in your hunger and does
everything you eat taste like an impossible sandwich made by a ghostly
baker from a disappearing bread and phantom?"
"Keno!"
"Does your nerve center tinkle-tinkle like a breakfast bell in a
kitchenless boarding house?"
"Right again!"
"Have you a feeling that the germs have attacked your Adam's apple and
that there won't be any core?"
"Yes!"
"When you look at the wall paper does your brain do a sort of
loop-the-loop and cause you to meld 100 aces or double pinochle?"
"Yes, and 80 kings, too!"
"Do you feel a slight palpitation of the membrane of the colorado madura
and is there a confused murmur in your brain like the sound of a
hard-working gas meter?"
"You've got me sized good and plenty, Doc!"
"Do you have insomnia, nightmare, loss of appetite, chills and fever and
concealed respiration in the Carolina perfecto?"
"That's the idea, Doc."
"When you lay on your right side do you have an impulse to turn over on
your left side, and when you turn over on your left side do you feel an
impulse to jump out of bed and throw stones at a policeman?"
"There isn't anything you can mention, Doc, that I haven't got."
"Ah!" said the doctor; "then that settles it."
"Tell me the truth," I groaned; "what is it, bubonic plague?"
"You have something worse--you have the grip," Doc Leiser whispered
gently. "You see I tried hard to mention some symptom which you didn't
have, but you had them all, and the grip is the only disease in the
world which makes a specialty of having every symptom known to medical
jurisprudence."
Then the doctor got busy with the pencil gag and left me enough
prescriptions to keep the druggist in pocket money throughout the
winter.
Then my friends and relatives began to drop in and annoy me with
suggestions.
"Pop" Barclay sat by my bedside and, after I had barked for him two or
three times, he decided I had inflammation of the lungs and was
insistent that I tie a rubber band around my chest and rub myself with
gasolene.
I told Pop I had no desire to become a human automobile so he got mad
and went home. But before he got mad he drank six bottles of beer and
before he went home he invited himself back to dinner.
Then Hep Hardy dropped in and ten minutes later he had me making signs
for an undertaker.
Hep comes to the bedside of the afflicted in the same restful manner
that a buzz-saw associates with a log of pine.
He insisted upon taking my pulse and listening to my heart beats, but
when he attempted to turn my eyelids back to see if I had a touch of the
glanders every germ in my body rose in rebellion and together we chased
Hep out of the room.
The next calamity was Teddy Pearson, who had an apartment on the floor
above us. Teddy had spent the previous night at a Tango party and ever
since daylight he had been beating home to windward. His cargo had
shifted and the seaway was rough. Still clad in the black and white
scenery with the silk bean-cover somewhat mussed he groped across the
darkened room and solemnly shook hands with me.
Then he sat in a chair by the bedside and began to sing soft lullabies
to a hold-over.
Presently he reached out his arm and made all the gestures that go with
the act of hitting a bell to summon a waiter.
Receiving no answer to his thirsty appeal he arose and said, "This is a
heluva club--rottenest service in this club--s'limit, that's what it is,
s'limit!" Then he hiccoughed his weary way out of the room and I haven't
seen him since.
An hour later Uncle Louis Miffendale had looked me over and concluded I
had galloping asthma, compressed tonsilitis, chillblainous croup, and
incipient measles. He insisted that I take three grains of quinine, two
grains of asperine, rub the back of my neck with benzine, soak my ankles
in kerosene, then a little phenacetine, and a hot whiskey toddy every
half hour before meals.
If I found it hard to take the toddy he volunteered to run in every half
hour and help me.
Then his wife, Aunt Jessica, blew in with a decoction she called catnip
tea. She brought it all the way from the Bronx in a thermos bottle, so I
had to drink it or lose a perfectly respectable old aunt.
It tasted like a linoleum cocktail--weouw!
During the rest of the day every friend and relative I have in the
world rushed in, suggested a sure cure, and then rushed out again.
Peaches tried them all on me and I felt like the inside of a medicine
chest.
[Illustration]
To make matters worse I drank some dogberry cordial and it chased the
catnip tea all over my concourse.
Then Peaches, being a student of natural history, insisted that I take
some hoarhound, I suppose to bite the dogberry, but it didn't.
Blood will tell, so the hoarhound joined forces with the dogberry and
chased the catnip up my family tree.
Suffering antiseptics! everybody with a different remedy, from snake
poison to soothing syrup--but it cured the grip.
Now all I have to do is to cure the medicine.
CHAPTER X
YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT A MUSICAL EVENING
Say! did you ever stray away from home of an evening and go to one of
those parlor riots?
Friend wife called it a _musicale_, but to me it looked like a session
of the Mexican congress in a boiler factory.
They pulled it off at Mrs. Luella Frothingham's, over on the Drive.
I like Luella and I like her husband, Jack Frothingham, so it's no
secret conclave of the Anvil Association when I whisper them wise that
the next time they give a musical evening my address is Forest Avenue,
corner of Foliage Street, in the woods.
The Frothinghams are nice people and old friends and they have more
money than some people have hay, but that doesn't give them a license to
spoil one of my perfectly good evenings by sprinkling a lot of canned
music and fricasseed recitations all over it.
The Frothinghams have a skeleton in their closet. Its name is Uncle Heck
and he weighs 237--not bad for a skeleton. Uncle Heck is a Joe Morgan.
His sole ambition in life is to become politely pickled and fall asleep
draped over a gold chair in the drawing room when there's high-class
company present.
For that reason the Frothinghams on state occasions put the skids under
Uncle Heck and run him off stage till after the final curtain.
On some occasions Uncle Heck breaks through the bars and dashes into the
scene of refinement with merry quip and jest to the confusion of his
relatives and the ill-concealed amusement of their guests.
This was one of those occasions.
Early in the evening Jack took Uncle Heck to his room, sat him in front
of a quart of vintage, and left the old geezer there to slosh around in
the surf until sleep claimed him for its own.
But after the wine was gone Uncle Heck put on the gloves with Morpheus,
got the decision, marched down stairs and into the drawing room, where
he immediately insisted upon being the life of the party.
Uncle Heck moved and seconded that he sing the swan song from
_Lohengrin_, but his idea of a swan was so much like a turkey gobbler
that loving friends slipped him the moccasins and elbowed him out of the
room.
Then he went out in the butler's pantry, hoping to do an Omar Khayyam
with the grape, but, not finding any, he began to recite, "Down in the
Lehigh Valley me and my people grew; I was a blacksmith, Cap'n; yes, and
a good one, too! Let me sit down a minute, a stone's got into my
shoe----"
But it wasn't a stone, and it didn't get into his shoe. It was a potato
salad and it got into his face when the Irish cook threw it at him for
interfering with her work.
"I'm discouraged," murmured Uncle Heck, and presently he was sleeping
with magnificent noises on the sofa in the library.
There were present at the battle in the drawing room Uncle Peter Grant
and Aunt Martha; Hep Hardy and his diamond shirt studs; Bunch Jefferson
and his wife, Alice; Bud Hawley and his second wife; Phil Merton and his
third wife; Dave Mason and his stationary wife; Stub Wilson and his
wife, Jennie, who is Peaches' sister, and a few others who asked to have
their names omitted.
The mad revels were inaugurated by the Pippin Brothers, who attempted to
drag some grouchy music out of guitars that didn't want to give up. The
Pippin Brothers part their hair in the middle and always do the march
from "The Babes in Toyland" on their mandolins as an encore.
If Victor Herbert ever catches them there'll be a couple of shine
chord-chokers away to the bad.
When the Pippin Brothers took a bow and backed off into a vase of
flowers we were all invited to listen to a soprano solo by Miss Imogene
Glassface.
When Imogene sings she makes faces at herself. When she needs a high
note she goes after it like a hen after a lady-bug. Imogene sang
"Sleep, Sweetly Sleep!" and then kept us awake with her voice.
Then we had Rufus Kellar Smith, the parlor prestidigitator. Rufus was a
bad boy.
He cooked an omelette in a silk hat and when he handed the hat back to
Hep Hardy two poached eggs fell out and cuddled up in Hep's hair.
Rufus apologized and said he'd do the trick over again if some one would
lend him a hat, but nothing doing. We all preferred our eggs boiled.
Then we had Claribel Montrose in select recitations. She was all the
money.
Claribel grabbed "The Wreck of the Hesperus" between her pearly teeth
and shook it to death. Then she got a half-Nelson on Poe's "Raven" and
put it out of business.
[Illustration]
Next she tried an imitation of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.
If Juliet talked like that dame did no wonder she took poison.
Then Claribel let down her back hair and started in to give us a mad
scene--and it was. Everybody in the room got mad.
When peace was finally restored Mrs. Frothingham informed us that the
rest of the "paid" talent had disappointed her and she'd have to depend
on the volunteers. Then she whispered to Miss Gladiola Hungerschnitz,
whereupon that young lady giggled her way over to the piano and began to
knock its teeth out.
The way Gladiola went after one of Beethoven's sonatas and slapped its
ears was pitiful.
Gladiola learned to injure a piano at a conservatory of music. She can
take a Hungarian rhapsody and turn it into a goulash in about 32 bars.
At the finish of the sonata we all applauded Gladiola just as loudly as
we could, in the hope that she would faint with surprise and stop
playing, but no such luck.
She tied a couple of chords together and swung that piano like a pair of
Indian clubs.
First she did "My Old Kentucky Home," with variations, until everybody
who had a home began to weep for fear it might get to be like her
Kentucky home.
The variations were where she made a mistake and struck the right note.
Then Gladiola moved up to the squeaky end of the piano and gave an
imitation of a Swiss music box.
It sounded to me like a Swiss cheese.
Presently Gladiola ran out of raw material and subsided, while we all
applauded her with our fingers crossed, and two very thoughtful ladies
began to talk fast to Gladiola so as to take her mind off the piano.
This excitement was followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha
Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and screeched them at us.
Minnehaha is one of those fearless singers who vocalize without a
safety-valve. She always keeps her eyes closed so she can't tell just
when her audience gets up and leaves the room.
The next treat was a duet on the flute and trombone between Clarence
Smith and Lancelot Diffenberger, with a violin obligate on the side by
Hector Tompkins.
Never before have I seen music so roughly handled.
It looked like a walk-over for Clarence, but in the fifth round he blew
a couple of green notes and Lancelot got the decision.
Then, for a consolation prize, Hector was led out in the middle of the
room, where he assassinated Mascagni's _Cavalleria Rusticana_ so
thoroughly that it will never be able to enter a fifty-cent _table
d'hote_ restaurant again.
Almost before the audience had time to recover Peaches' sister, Jennie,
was coaxed to sing Tosti's "Good Bye!"
I'm very fond of sister Jennie, but I'm afraid if Mr. Tosti ever heard
her sing his "Good Bye" he would say, "the same to you, and here's your
hat."
Before Jennie married and moved West I remember she had a very pretty
mezzo-concertina voice, but she's been so long away helping Stub Wilson
to make Milwaukee famous that nowadays her top notes sound like a cuckoo
clock after it's been up all night.
I suppose it's wrong for me to pull this about our own flesh and blood,
but when a married woman with six fine children, one of them at Yale,
walks sideways up to a piano and begins to squeak, "Good bye, summer!
Good bye, summer!" just as if she were calling the dachshund in to
dinner, I think it's time she declined the nomination.
Then Bud Hawley, after figuring it all out that there was no chance of
his getting arrested, sat down on the piano stool and made a few sad
statements, which in their original state form the basis of a Scotch
ballad called "Loch Lomond."
Bud's system of speaking the English language is to say with his voice
as much of a word as he can remember and then finish the rest of it with
his hands.
Imagine what Bud would do to a song with an oat-meal foundation like
"Loch Lomond."
When Bud barked out the first few bars, which say, "By yon bonnie bank
and by yon bonnie brae," everybody within hearing would have cried with
joy if the piano had fallen over on him and flattened his equator.
And when he reached the plot of the piece, where it says, "You take the
high road and I'll take the low road," Uncle Peter took a drink, Phil
Merton took the same, Stub took an oath, and I took a walk.
And all the while Bud's wife sat there, with the glad and winning smile
of a swordfish on her face, listening with a heart full of pride while
her crime-laden husband chased that helpless song all over the parlor,
and finally left it unconscious under the sofa.
At this point Hep Hardy got up and volunteered to tell some funny
stories and this gave us all a good excuse to put on our overshoes and
say "Good night" to our hostess without offending anybody.
Hep Hardy and his funny stories are always used to close the show.
"John," said Peaches after we got home; "I want to give a _musicale_,
may I?"
"Certainly, old girl," I answered. "We'll give one in the nearest moving
picture theater. If we don't like the show all we have to do is to close
our eyes and thank our lucky stars there's nothing to listen to."
"Oh! aren't you hateful!" she pouted.
Maybe I am at that.
* * * * *
A LIST of BOOKS
By
HUGH McHUGH
(GEORGE V. HOBART)
This famous author of the well-known "John Henry" books numbers his
sales almost up to the million-mark, and his delightful humor has
created wholesome fun for readers wherever his books are to be found.
Every page brings fresh amusement, and every paragraph tickles the
fancy. They fairly radiate optimism and good cheer in every community.
Back to the Woods. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. $0.75
Beat It. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Cinders. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Dinkelspiel's Letters to Looey. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Down the Line. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Eppy Grams by Dinkelspiel. 16mo. Cloth. .75
Get Next. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Go To It. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Ikey's Letters to His Father. 12mo. Cloth. .75
I'm From Missouri. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
I Need the Money. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75