The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 24, 1904, Page 15

Tae Armniries or Crieerror Lyine” ) (Copyrighted, 1904, by the -Central d Press Exchanpge.) friend of mine will have t characteristic of the s Make Believe, He argues soc intercourse is 2 ake believe. A servant . s that Mr. and Mrs. Bore he drawing-room. “Oh, the man. “Hush!” says St th door, San, H f m I 1 you never to The man creeps shuts himself The won does looking glass, waits force vill, she feels she is and tly mistress of herself not to r feelings, and then enters the with retched s he look of one welcoming gel's vie She says how de- t the Bores; how 3 to come. Why Bores with Bore junior? < never c to see her have to be really angry And sweet little Flossie ca Non- not worth s are not ped that she alled because that they in the e know tc can it be of her 1 know involunt 1 young suppress carry our make-believe even into re- ligion. We sit in church and, in voices swelling with pride, mention to the Al- mighty at stated intervals that we are miserable worms—that there - is- no good in us. This sort of thing, we THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. gather, is expected of us; it does us no harm and is supposed to please.; We make believe that every woman: is pure, that every man {is honest—’ until they insist on furcing us. against - our will, to observe that they are mot. Fables for the Foolish young girl's fancy something about th broad shoulders nor voice. Later ciled to the in- fate for anything down the pike t an aduit bank t true that the disillusionment and dyspepsia. neral accuracy d on Yong and ion he has only to con- r of the late Matilda. the late Matilda, not but because in becoming any- turns to car call her she so tar is no more, Matrimony 18 the genuine original tide in the affairs of women; whatever may be to men, which taken at the r moment and well shaken leads fortune or the divorce court, but neglected all the voyage of their is bound in shing that every were leap year and that the men year didn’t run so fast when they see the opposite sex coming. That was the it was with the late Matilda. When she was young and had ideals to burn she was very nifty about the male specimen of the genus homo that was to be allowed to O. K. her dress- makers’ bills and wait up nights for her when she was at the club. As stated above he must be at least fix feet tall and constructed in the same proportions in other respects. It is a peculiar fact that immense stature is always assoclated in the facile mind of woman with great personal worth. No one can explain it, but it is true. Gabriel doesn’t have a center rush build and a blonde mus- tache there are going to be a lot of dis- appointed women. Another requirement on which Ma- tilda insisted was great personal beau- ty. It is possible that she had secured her idea of manly beauty from the Home and Fireside Library, but such as it was she clung to it with the tenacity of a Congressman to a free Then we become angry with them and explain to them that they, being sin- ners, are not folk fit to mix with us perfect people. Our grief when our rich aunt dies is hardly to be borne. Drap- ers thake fortunes, helping us to feebly express our desolation. Our only con- solation is that she h§s gone tq.a bet- ter world. Everybody goes to a better world.when they have got all they can ) 15 s out of this one. We stand around the open grave and tell each other so. The clergyman is so assured of it that, to save time, they have written out the formula for him and had it printed in a litfle hook. As a child it used to sur- prise . me—this fact that everybody went to heaven. Thinking of all the people that had died, I pictured the place as overcrowded. Almost I felt sorry for the devil, nobody ever com- ing his way, so to speak. I saw him in imagination, a lonely old gentleman, sitting at his gate day after day, hop- ing against hope, muttering to himself, maybe, that it .'aeemed hardly ‘worth while, from his point of view, keeping the show open. An old nurse whom I once took into my confidence was sure, if I continued talking in this sort of way, that he would get me anyhow, I must' have beéen an evil-hearted young- ster; the thought of how he would welcome me, the only human being he had seen for years, had a certain fas- cination for me; for once in my ex- istence I should be made a fuss about. At every public meeting the chiet speaker Is always a “Jolly good fel- low."” The man from Mars, reading our ONE ANOTHER., WE SIT WITH nswspapers, would be convinced that every member of Parliament was a Jjovial, kindly, big-héarted, generous- souled sait, with just sufficient hu- manity in him to prevent the angels from carrying him off bodily. De not the entire audience, moved by one common impulse, declare him three times running and in stentorian voice to be this “jolly good fellow o say all of them. We have always lis. tened with the most intense pleasure to the brilliant speech of our friend who has just sat down. When you thought we were yawning we were drinking in his eloquence with open- mouthed admiration. The higher one ascends in the social scale the wider becomes this necessary base of make-believe. When anything sad happens to a very big person the lesser people round him hardly care to go on living. Seeing that the world is-somewhat overstocked with persons of importance, and that some- thing or other generally is happening to them, one wonders sometimes how it is the world continues to exist. Once upon a time there occurred an fliness to a certain good and great man. I read in my daily paper that the whole nation was plunged in grief. People dining in public sstaurants, on being told the news by the waiter, dropped their heads upon the table and sobbed. Strangers, meeting in WE ARE CARE- NOT TO LOOK AT OUR EYES F)XED ON THE MATRIMONY OF MATILDA THE CEILING OME K- ROME the street, flung their arms about one another and cried like little children. I was abroad at the time, but on the peint of returning home. I almeo: felt ashamed to go. I looked at my- self in the glass and was shocked at my own appearance; it was that of a man vho had not been for weeks. I felt that to burst u this grief-stricken nation v tenance such in fro as mine wou add to their sorrow It was n upon me that I m be a shallow, egotistics had had luck with a pla 1 a life of me could not stricken. There wer if I was not keeping a myself, T found myself Had 1t been possibleT v mained abroad 1l som fortune ‘had rendered me with my fellow coi ness was pres talked to on Dover tom-house officia thought sorrow He demand and Dover p! because a la a dog, but them pence callou heard the news. most, however vay carriage a n reading a cor did not I cy enough m The day b papers, rious of a broken he: tion had pu have cried all themselv does not od. he’burden 1 noticed It th he lange! It about so our hands a fleld obje en two the ba a bit of As a matter of slightest use for believe about quite ous things. In war, each count s sol are always the most courageous in t world. other cot treacherous and they some are supposed to be n ciples of the Sermon and spend most of ou ing arranger fully with our enen the art elie you sit rou 1 and throw y in the ca the auth will pretend that there live water a young lady nam who is the most beau that ever livec n we will pret man named Angelina.” cient pen starts a lina thoug that Edwin things. We up as he go making up please us. to make be cause he c artist. The says He, princess, co that we agre and old m: a pirate, other wobbly t pretend is the ocean pretends to be in love w we know she is n tends to be and Mrs. J o’clock, to prices varying fro a sovereign to sit for two h listen to the But, as I ex the beginning, my friend is a mad sort of person. is By Nicholas Nemo pass. No retrousse noses, carroty halr or elongated mouth for Matilda. When young Augustus Van Rocques began to sit up and take notice of Matilda her mother and other backers smoothed their feathers and looked as satisfied as an unchaperoned kitten in a dairy. Augustus was the cream of the lot and if Matilda could succeed in landing him she was all to the good and nobody in sight. But there was a fly in the ointment, for Augustus would have been so far from taking the first prize in a beauty contest that he would probably have been sent around to the bench show by mistake. Matilda considered the proposition carefully and admitted that there was a great deal of pleasure to be derived from the possession of a bank account that ran wide open win- ter and summer, wet or dry. Then she considered Augustus and pondered deeply over the prospect that was af- forded her of lining up against that face over the coffee cups every morn- ing in the year and her courage failed hér. Nothing for Augustus with Ma- tilda. The next aspirant that entered the game was a gentleman who had just been released from Congress on good behavior and was trying his best to butt in again. He was the sort of chap that every one calls a rising young politician and then turns around and wonders where he got all his mon- ey. He was all right as far as the general makeup of his features was concerned; he had the requisite num- ber and they were so arranged as to secure the best possible effect on the beholder, but with the usual perver- sity of fate he was only about five feet tall and wore boy’s size clothes. When he walked with Matilda people used to ask her how her little boy was doing in school. That put him out of the game without a chance to appeal to the umpire for a reconsideration. It was ong of the prime regulations of the late Matilda’s code that a woman should always be able to look up to a man. She didn’t pause to reflect that after a woman has been married about six months and knows her better half pretty well she looks down on him no matter how tall he is. These are only samples of the way Matilda neglected the golden opportun- ities that lay in her way in her search for a man who looked like James K. Hackett and could do all the things that the hero of a historical novel does. She was an excellent example of the, deterioration that has settled down like a deep, dark cloud over the feminine race as a result of the operations of Mr. Gibson. Some one might have re- minded her that the Gibson men al- ways had girls to match, but that wouldn't have affected her, particularly since she had an idea that she was the real original Gibson girl. Most of her waking hours and some of her dreams were spent in trying to walk like Ethel Barrymore and to dress like. Alice Roosevelt. All the possibilities in the matri- monial line that came her way were steadily rejected on one ground or an- other.. The ofly man who seemed to come within a hundred miles of filling the bill turned out to be a hotel clerk on his vacation and Matilda didn't seem to be able to see her way clear to supporting her expensive ideals on twenty-five dollars a week. Besides she was thoroughly convinced that no man was a real gentleman who didn’t know how to get all the good out of Mrs. Browning’'s poems on the beach of a moonlight night. The hotel clerk, when he was approached on this sub- ject, had to admit that Mrs. Browning had never stopped at his house and that he didn’t think he had ever met the lady. When he was informed that she hadn't been particularly active for a number of years and that her long suit was writing poetry that no one could understand and wouldn't like if he could, he decided that he had better back out of the game. Things ran along in this way for a number of years until Matilda began to ‘think that she could see the sear and yellow approaching in the dim dis- tance. All of the girls Who were on the carpet when she made her appear- ance had been settled in automobiles of their own long since and the young men who were now active didn’t seem to take any great interest in antiqui- tles. Tferefore Matilda began to have vislons of herself gracing the festal board in some institution for ‘he care of aged and unattached females un- less she got immediately and radically busy. After reasoning with herself carefully and elaborately along this line for several minutes she concluded that the only thing left for her to do was to grab the next opport that came along, whether it was looking for her or not. He was forty-five if he was a day and it was currently report- ed that Matilda won him at a prt euchre, but he was a man, techmical- ly speaking, and Matilda had lost most of her high ideas about the sort of person she would like to pour coff for. And so they were married and suc- ceeded in living in various ways, happy and otherwise, for some time after. He wasn't much on looks, but he man- aged to keep coal in the cellar and beefsteak in the refrigerator. Matilda was comforted when she looked »und her and discovered that most the other wom > satisfy thems: little lower than Gib: learned, as had most of her sisters, that of while it is alwavs well to look befor you leap into matrimony, it is not wise to look too long for fear there will be nothing left to leap for. . Copyright, 1904, by Albert Britt.