Fifth Avenue

EDGAR. SALTU S

HEREABOUTS, nowadays, there are more ways of going mad as a hatter, mad as two hatters, mad as Lincoln and Bennett, than our stenographer could shake her jeweled pencil at. We will cite but two. One had diamonds for signpost, the other, noise. But diamonds first. Presently there will be a lot on view. Presently, when we have the opera again and, with it, the more important spectacle of pretty women scrumptiousy decked out, there will be for those who like that sort of thing a kind of huckster pleasure in estimating the value of their gems. On this subject we have no learning to display, and, what is worse, none to conceal, but we rather fancy that all are not gems that gleam. We rather fancy that many a diamond innocently purchased and honestly sold on the purest water basis is but an ordinary stone artificially enhanced, and yet so admirably that the artifice defies every test save that of time.

THE secret — for there is one, and we scorn to have any from our readers — resides in the deviltry of radium. Under the latter's influence, a muddy stone of which the commercial value is next to nil, will take on the blue white light of real effulgence and retain it for a year and a day or, if you prefer, for a year and a night, — in any event until Time, the one true expert, comes along and shows it up for what it is not worth. For a pretty woman with a prettier rivi&re, is there not a lurking madness in the thought of that?

AMONG the pawpaws of Papua and the monkey-haunted kloofs of inner Africa, there is something ambient and subtle, something in the air that incites to madness also. Hereabouts, the metallic roar of the ceaseless skyscrapers ceaselessly going up, the slambang of the elevated, the grinding grunt of surface cars, the click-click of the typewriter, the intrusive telephone, the roaring motors, the general pandemonium to which it must have displeased Providence to call us, — these things constitute rather an incitement as well. But that being perhaps not quite sufficient, for finishing touch there is the orchestra at the inn and the casual note that asylums are being enlarged.

A FOREIGNER here might fancy that all innkeepers are melomaniacs. (Foreigners are very imaginative.) It is only men with a feminine strain that care for the music at all. There is nothing feminine in a business man. Every innkeeper hates the orchestra, loathes the leader, abominates Donizetti's sugar and water, the Massenet perfumes, the tutti-frutti of the pot-pourris dispensed. And, naturally, he is just so much out of pocket. But silence creates sound. In a restaurant that is properly conducted, one where the waiters make the least possible noise, the man at the next table overhears your confidences; what is worse, you overhear his. To drown that there must be an orchestra. The orchestra makes you both talk louder. The louder you talk the louder the orchestra plays. Musicians are human; they too want to be heard. The result is that you, your neighbor, his neighbor, everybody — waiters and mâitres d'hotel, all shout, the musicians play like demons, and you realize why the asylums are being enlarged.

TALKING of restaurants, in one of them the other night we saw a girl take a bite, then put down her fork, and heard her complain that her steak was not very tender. We wondered if she expected it to call her "My little dear." But one swallow does not make a supper. The poor thing was obviously hungry. Probably she had been turkeytrotting and that may have given her an appetite. We know that it gives us one, and why this dance should be ever condemned we cannot imagine unless it be that a false conception of morality produces improper thoughts. Waltzing has a reverse effect. Yet inasmuch as contrary views are currently expressed we stop right here. We have but one way of convincing people, and that is by agreeing with them.

OUT to return tp our Chablis Mouton. In conversation with a magazine editor recently, we asked what sort of fiction he wanted.

"Truffles and Tokay," he told us, remarking as he did so that nothing was too good for his readers. We thought that very considerate of him, particularly as less than a year ago he had said that it was hard work to find anything poor enough. But he went on to explain that in the magazine world vegetarianism is doomed, that readers who formerly licked their chops over purées of cant and bad grammar, now call for deviled bones; that in literature as in life there is an increasing demand for cabaret cooking, for suprèmes of what the great chef, Swinburne, called roses and raptures; for dishes foaming with scarlet, for purple and evocative cups. As usual we hastened to agree with him. Yet then we could hardly do otherwise. It seemed all too bad to be false.

IT IS perhaps a sign of the times. Another is the wizardry of the druggist. There you have a man worth looking at. When you visit him, you either tell a young person in a cage what you want, shove in the money for it, get a ticket, and suck your thumbs until you are supplied, or else you get your wares at the counter and wait in line to pay for them at the cage. In either case, presto! from a customer you have been transformed into a clerk. Without salary, percentage, or even thanks,—on the contrary! — you are doing the druggist's work. That is black magic. For sheer necromancy we can imagine nothing more surprising, except the possible improvement of buying your wares elsewhere, giving them to the sorcerer, and then buying them back, — though even then this devil of a chap would still find some way of making you his slave.

TALKING of improvements, at our last visit to the Metropolitan Museum it occurred to us that there was room for a few in the catalogue. Plain people like ourselves like to know what's what and why. We like to know whether a landscape is one in which we would feel at home, and whether a marine view is one on which we would be apt to be ill. In earlier days Ruskin used to tell us. We recall a painting by Carpaccio, a picture of a saint with a lot of toads squatting about. Ruskin said that any one who did not at once see that the toads were the direct result of divine inspiration was bad to the core, and anyone who did not appreciate the profound morality of the little beasts was certainly damned. That is the kind of catalogue talk we need.

BUT who is to supply it? There is no Ruskin any more, though, come to think of it, we still have Mr. Hall Caine. There you have another man worth looking at. Mr. Caine so nearly resembles Shakespeare that if you did not know better you might mistake him for Bacon. But to err is distinctly literary. In that respect Mr. Caine is faultless. There is nothing literary about him, and so much the more to his credit, — at the bank. The high art of not being literary is extraordinarily remunerative. It may be that in this accomplishment there are adepts more gifted than he and consequently better banked. There may be, we say, and, we say it only because everything is possible. But we doubt it. We prefer to. We prefer to regard Mr. Caine as unique. It would be disillusioning to think that anyone anywhere could exceed him.

IN SPITE of which, or perhaps precisely on that account, we note with regret that Mr. Caine is becoming defunct. But no one is immortal. Even Hercules is dead. Mr. Caine's defunction is not however due to his labors, but rather to the standards of the Victorian age. Recently London suffered from a revival of two of the successes of that period — "Jim the Penman," and "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." Both were regarded as old fashioned; one because of its technique, the other because of its sentiment. It is not on account of his technique that Mr. Caine is becoming defunct. He is most admirably destitute of any. It is because sentiments, like shoes, will wear out, and his are down at the heel.

WHAT has surprised you most hereabouts?" a reporter recently asked a foreigner. "Why," the latter exclaimed, "all the girls are pretty and the men all in a hurry! " But there is nothing surprising in that. It is a mere example of cause and effect.