Be It Ever So Humble

HEYWOOD BROUN

Why Can't a Man Write, Paint or Play the Zither and Still Remain at Home?

PEOPLE who want to paint go to the South Seas. A man I knew had an idea for a novel and so he took it with him fo Ecuador—the south eastern part. Many cannot compose a note without putting the Rhine on their right hand. And, of course, if you are sick they send you away.

There are ever so many reasons for journeying—to forget old sorrows or acquire new ones. And, also, they say that travel broadens one. I, who am reducing, stay home. I would be a writer and nevertheless I have not moved beyond the borders of New York in a year.

Why is there always this itch to see just what lies behind the nearest hill? As like as not it is precisely the same view, or very like it, once you get over on the other side. Nor do I believe that any of the arts flourish more abundantly in any fingers just because their owner takes them swinging down a distant road.

Maybe in the beginning there should be uneasiness and some fanning about the planet. After that, it is my belief, there should be peace and anchorage. Even seekers after the Grail may come at last to dig for it within their own back yard.

The first half of a man's life ought to consist of gathering sensory experience. After that he should ruminate. This is particularly so of newspaper men, who are inclined to bolt many and magnificent spectacles. Nor is it true that the variations of human happenings are infinite. Along about thirty-five you begin to encounter repetition. Certainly by thirty a man should have enough material with which to work out whatever writing plans he has in mind. Constant gazing after fresh wonders may dull the edge of appetite. It is well to get up from the table a little hungry.

I'M ready to mull awhile over what has already happened. For instance, I would not walk a mile now to see an eclipse. This is not snootery, but loyalty to the old one. You see, I know the plot and would not be surprised a second time. At the time of the great show I was somewhat disgusted to read of a scientist who went pattering about the world collecting eclipses. He had seen, as I remember, some six or seven. That's foolish business. If it has not already happened, sooner or later he will find himself yawning with a deep "Ho, hum!" just as the sun goes under and the noontide stars spring out.

Suppose Romeo had not made his little mistake and died misinterpreting the deep slumber of Juliet. I hope I remember the play correctly. It is Romeo who dies first, isn't it? I understand that courts are disposed to believe the man lingers longer, but Shakespeare set up a different tradition concerning the nasty accident of which he wrote.

However, not all of this is relevant. Here's what I'm getting at. Suppose Romeo had said: "Well, that was certainly thrilling business while it lasted, I wonder where there's another balcony."

To be sure, in experiences of this particular sort my own life is decidedly deficient, but naturally it is too late to do anything about that now. Romeos can go on until forty or a little later, but they must begin sooner.

Part of this subject came up because of a football game which I did not attend. A friend had tickets. Why don't people with tickets keep them in their pockets instead of annoying busy and indifferent acquaintances? These tickets were for a professional football game either at the Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds in New York. Anyway it was a long journey for a Sunday afternoon what with the hours and the strain the Saturday night poker game puts upon any sincere player.

I told him simply enough that I didn't want to go. Well, maybe that's not exactly true. Probably I said I had another engagement which moved him to ask "What?" and I could not think up something fast enough to convince him. He continued to press his invitation upon me and added that if I went with him I should see "Red" Grange play.

This failed to excite me. I was never one of those to go into fits about the Galloping Ghost, the Indefatigable Iceman or whatever his silly name may have been. Naturally I had read of him in the newspapers in the beginning when he was among the wonders. But this was his second year before the general public. Already he'd become veteran and a little shopworn.

But had I ever seen "Red" Grange? My friend insisted upon knowing. This I answered simply enough and in the negative. Whereupon the man with the tickets turned rude and nasty.

"Why you large loafer," he said bitterly, "yor haven't seen your own toes except in a mirror for the last five years. Keep up the good work. Don't move. Don't get a sudden rash of energy and take a taxi and actually go somewhere and see something. It might spoil you."

AND here are a few of the things which make me content with cud instead of new grass: I saw Woodrow Wilson make his first speech after the election as President of the United States. The students of Princeton gathered around his doorstep and cheered him as if he had run eighty yards against Yale. The picture of the man on that night suffices me admirably. For the rest, I only read of him, but whether the account spoke of him as standing in Guildhall or pleading for the League of Nations in mid-Kansas, I knew and held vividly in my mind the line of that back and the long jaw.

I saw the first division of the American Army come out of a morning mist as the ships laid an army at the doorsteps of the startled citizens of St. Nazaire. And that will keep. Before that I had watched a submarine in anger squirting venom at the steamer upon whose deck I shifted nervously from foot to foot. No encore is needed by me.

I was there when Man O' War came thundering down the stretch to win his first race. He was two years old and big for his age. The price was 4 to 5. Babe Ruth made two home runs in a World's Series game for my benefit. I missed him when he did three, but that's almost too many. A pair sufficed me. With three the law of diminishing returns sets in. I caught the tag end of a revolution in China and walked around the big wall which surrounds the legation quarter in Peking, stumbling over machine guns and sand bags as 1 went. And need I add that it was a quiet day, with no firing? Still, they called it quiet up at Verdun on the afternoon they took us correspondents up. A shell fell fifty feet away and that is close enough.

I WAS among those who shouted "Throw 'em out!" when the Irish rioted at the Maxine Elliott Theatre on the night Synge's Playboy of the Western World was first shown to New York. In New Orleans before the national tragedy I carefully surveyed the color of a Ramos gin fizz and also drank it. Barrymore plunged into Hamlet while 1 was still a dramatic critic and I was among those present when Pauline Lord first played They Knew What They Wanted. And, indeed, I had the great pleasure of watching Marilyn Miller dance in the days before she sang a note.

If Firpo had only hit Dempsey a little harder I might have had a champion in my lap, for he crashed just in front of me but a row too short. It was Grantland Rice who caught him. He has all the luck.

We went through the Inland Sea of Japan by day, and the week before the islands of Hawaii bobbed up early on a peculiarly clear morning. Pershing at the tomb of Lafayette provided a striking picture, even though he did not say, "Nous voilà!" The Haymarket closed its doors while I was still young, but not too young to be thrilled and horrified by the depravity of the place. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, looking precisely like Joan of Arc, led the parade of the Grand Central which greeted the children of the striking mill hands of Lawrence. And this was almost my first newspaper assignment.

On another afternoon they let me go to the trial of the three gunmen, and in the days before the Becker case Jack Rose used to call me by my first name as he wandered in and out of the office of the Morning Telegraph. Twice I saw Theodore Roosevelt plain, and once I played bridge with Lillian Russell. She was not a good bridge player. Before Patricia Salmon made her debut with the Follies I saw her dance and heard her yodel in the King Tut Hall of Shelby, Montana. The Klan fight in the Democratic Convention surged so close that I could have patted the heads of a dozen Kleagles if only I had been provided with some dull, blunt instrument. Will Rogers had a horse as well as a rope when I first caught his act, and Weber & Fields were in their music hall.

I've held ten hearts with five honours and three straight flushes, though never a royal, I will admit.

Why should I get into a taxi and go somewhere?