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<h1 class="tei tei-head">XLVI—ON BRICKLAYING</h1> After a series of introspective accounts of the babyhood, childhood, adolescence and inevitably gloomy maturity of countless men and women, it is refreshing to turn to "Bricklaying in Modern Practice," by Stewart Scrimshaw. "Heigh-ho!" one says. "Back to normal again!" For bricklaying is nothing if not normal, and Mr. Scrimshaw has given just enough of the romantic charm of artistic enthusiasm to make it positively fascinating. "There was a time when man did not know how to lay bricks," he says in his scholarly introductory chapter on "The Ancient Art," "a time when he did not know how to make bricks. There was a time when fortresses and cathedrals were unknown, and churches and residences were not to be seen on the face of the earth. But today we see wonderful architecture, noble and glorious structures, magnificent skyscrapers and pretty home-like bungalows." To one who has been scouring Westchester County for the past two months looking at the structures which are being offered for sale as homes, "pretty home-like bungalows" comes as le mot juste. They certainly are no more than pretty home-like. One cannot read far in Mr. Scrimshaw's book without blushing for the inadequacy of modern education. We are turned out of our schools as educated young men and women, and yet what college graduate here tonight can tell me when the first brick in America was made? Or even where it was made?... I thought not. Well, it was made in New Haven in 1650. Mr. Scrimshaw does not say what it was made for, but a conjecture would be that it was the handiwork of Yale students for tactical use in the Harvard game. (Oh, I know that Yale wasn't running in 1650, but what difference does that make in an informal little article like this? It is getting so that a man can't make any statement at all without being caught up on it by some busybody or other.) But let's get down to the art itself. Mr. Scrimshaw's first bit of advice is very sound. "The bricklayer should first take a keen glance at the scaffolding upon which he is to work, to see that there is nothing broken or dangerous connected with it.... This is essential, because more important than anything else to him is the preservation of his life and limb." Oh, Mr. Scrimshaw, how true that is! If I were a bricklayer I would devote practically my whole morning inspecting the scaffolding on which I was to work. Whatever else I shirked, I would put my whole heart and soul into this part of my task. Every rope should be tested, every board examined, and I doubt if even then I would go up on the scaffold. Any bricks that I could not lay with my feet on terra firma (there is a joke somewhere about terra cotta, but I'm busy now) could be laid by some one else. But we don't seem to be getting ahead in our instruction in practical bricklaying. Well, all right, take this: "Pressed bricks, which are buttered, can be laid with a one-eighth-inch joint, although a joint of three-sixteenths of an inch is to be preferred." Joe, get this gentleman a joint of three-sixteenths of an inch, buttered. Service, that's our motto! It takes a book like this to make a man realize what he misses in his everyday life. For instance, who would think that right here in New York there were people who specialized in corbeling? Rain or shine, hot or cold, you will find them corbeling around like Trojans. Or when they are not corbeling they may be toothing. (I too thought that this might be a misprint for "teething," but it is spelled "toothing" throughout the book, so I guess that Mr. Scrimshaw knows what he is about.) Of all departments of bricklaying I should think that it would be more fun to tooth than to do anything else. But it must be tiring work. I suppose that many a bricklayer's wife has said to her neighbor, "I am having a terrible time with my husband this week. He is toothing, and comes home so cross and irritable that nothing suits him." Another thing that a bricklayer has to be careful of, according to the author (and I have no reason to contest his warning), is the danger of stepping on spawls. If there is one word that I would leave with the young bricklayer about to enter his trade it is "Beware of the spawls, my boy." They are insidious, those spawls are. You think you are all right and then—pouf! Or maybe "crash" would be a better descriptive word. Whatever noise is made by a spawl when stepped on is the one I want. Perhaps "swawk" would do. I'll have to look up "spawl" first, I guess. Well, anyway, there you have practical bricklaying in a nutshell. Of course there are lots of other points in the book and some dandy pictures and it would pay you to read it. But in case you haven't time, just skim over this résumé again and you will have the gist of it. <hr class="page" /> <h1 class="tei tei-head">XLVII—"AMERICAN ANNIVERSARIES"</h1> Mr. Phillip R. Dillon has compiled and published in his "American Anniversaries" a book for men who do things. For every day in the year there is a record of something which has been accomplished in American history. For instance, under Jan. 1 we find that the parcel-post system was inaugurated in the United States in 1913, while Jan. 2 is given as the anniversary of the battle of Murfreesboro (or Stone's River, as you prefer). The whole book is like that; just one surprise after another. What, for instance, do you suppose that Saturday marked the completion of?... Presuming that no one has answered correctly, I will disclose (after consulting Mr. Dillon's book) that July 31 marked the completion of the 253d year since the signing of the Treaty of Breda. But what, you may say—and doubtless are saying at this very minute—what has the Treaty of Breda (which everyone knows was signed in Holland by representatives of England, France, Holland and Denmark) got to do with American history? And right there is where Mr. Dillon and I would have you. In the Treaty of Breda, Acadia (or Nova Scotia) was given to France and New York and New Jersey were confirmed to England. So, you see, inhabitants of New York and New Jersey (and, after all, who isn't?) should have especial cause for celebrating July 31 as Breda Day, for if it hadn't been for that treaty we might have belonged to Poland and been mixed up in all the mess that is now going on over there. I must confess that I turned to the date of the anniversary of my own birth with no little expectation. Of course I am not so very well known except among the tradespeople in my town, but I should be willing to enter myself in a popularity contest with the Treaty of Breda. But evidently there is a conspiracy of silence directed against me on the part of the makers of anniversary books and calendars. While no mention was made of my having been born on Sept. 15, considerable space was given to recording the fact that on that date in 1840 a patent for a knitting machine was issued to the inventor, who was none other than Isaac Wixan Lamb of Salem, Mass. Now I would be the last one to belittle the importance of knitting or the invention of a knitting machine. I know some very nice people who knit a great deal. But really, when it comes to anniversaries I don't see where Isaac Wixon Lamb gets off to crash in ahead of me or a great many other people that I could name. And it doesn't help any, either, to find that James Fenimore Cooper and William Howard Taft are both mentioned as having been born on that day or that the chief basic patent for gasoline automobiles in America was issued in 1895 to George B. Selden. It certainly was a big day for patents. But one realizes more than ever after reading this section that you have to have a big name to get into an anniversary book. The average citizen has no show at all. In spite of these rather obvious omissions, Mr. Dillon's Book is both valuable and readable. Especially in those events which occurred early in the country's history is there material for comparison with the happenings of the present day, events which will some day be incorporated in a similar book compiled by some energetic successor of Mr. Dillon. For instance, under Oct. 27, 1659, we find that William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson were banished from New Hampshire on the charge of being Quakers and were later executed for returning to the colony. Imagine! And on Dec. 8, 1837, Wendell Phillips delivered his first abolition speech at Boston in Faneuil Hall, as a result of which he got himself known around Boston as an undesirable citizen, a dangerous radical and a revolutionary trouble-maker. It hardly seems possible now, does it? And on July 4, 1776—but there, why rub it in? <hr class="page" /> <h1 class="tei tei-head">XLVIII—A WEEK-END WITH WELLS</h1> In the February Bookman there is an informal article by John Elliot called "At Home with H.G. Wells" in which we are let in on the ground floor in the Wells household and shown "H.G." (as his friends and his wife call him) at play. It is an interesting glimpse at the small doings of a great man, but there is one feature of those doings which has an ominous sound. "The Wells that everyone loves who sees him at Easton is the human Wells, the family Wells, the jovial Wells, Wells the host of some Sunday afternoon party. For a distance of ten or twenty miles round folks come on Sunday to play hockey and have tea. Old and young—people from down London who never played hockey before in their lives; country farmers and their daughters, and everybody else who lives in the district—troop over and bring whoever happens to be the week-end guest. Wells is delightful to them all. He doesn't give a rap if they are solid Tories, Bolsheviks, Liberals, or men and women of no political leanings, Can you play hockey? is all that matters. If you say No you are rushed toward a pile of sticks and given one and told to go in the forward line; if you say Yes you are probably made a vice captain on the spot." I am frank to confess that this sounds perfectly terrible to me. I can't imagine a worse place in which to spend a week-end than one where your host is always boisterously forcing you to take part in games and dances about which you know nothing. A week-end guest ought to be ignored, allowed to rummage about alone among the books, live stock and cold food in the ice-box whenever he feels like it, and not rushed willy-nilly (something good could be done using the famous Willy-Nilly correspondence as a base, but not here), into whatever the family itself may consider a good time. In such a household as the Wells household must be you are greeted by your hostess in a robust manner with "So glad you're on time. The match begins at two." And when you say "What match," you are told that there is a little tennis tournament on for the week-end and that you and Hank are scheduled to start the thing off with a bang. "But I haven't played tennis for five years," you protest, thinking of the delightful privacy of your own little hall bedroom in town. "Never mind, it will all come back to you. Bill has got some extra things all put out for you upstairs." So you start off your week-end by making a dub of yourself and are known from that afternoon on by the people who didn't catch your name as "the man who had such a funny serve." Or if it isn't that, it's dancing. Immediately after dinner, just as you are about to settle down for a comfortable evening by the fire, you notice that they are rolling back the rugs. "House-cleaning?" you suggest, with a nervous little laugh. "Oh, no, just a little dancing in your honor." And then you tell them that your honor will be satisfied perfectly without dancing, that you haven't danced since you left school, that you don't dance very well, or that you have hurt your foot; to which the only reply is an encouraging laugh and a hail-fellow-well-met push out into the middle of the floor. A pox on both your house parties! And yet, in a way, that is just what one might expect from Mr. Wells. He has done the same thing to me in his books many a time. I personally have but little facility for world-repairing. I haven't the slightest idea of how one would go about making things better. And yet before I am more than two-thirds of the way through "Joan and Peter" or "The Undying Fire" or "The Outline of History," Mr. Wells has me out on the hockey-field waving a stick with a magnificent enthusiasm but no aim, rushing up and down and calling, "Come on, now!" to no one in particular. No matter how discouraging things seem when I pick up a Wells book, or how averse I may be to launching out on a crusade of any sort, I always end by walking with a firm step to the door (feeling, somehow, that I have grown quite a bit taller and much handsomer) and saying quietly: "Meadows, my suit of armor, please; the one with a chain-mail shirt and a purple plume." This, of course, is silly, as any of Mr. Wells's critics will tell you. It is the effect that he has on irresponsible, visionary minds. But if all the irresponsible, visionary minds in the world become sufficiently belligerent through a continued reading of Mr. Wells, or even of the New Testament, who knows but what they may become just practical enough to take a hand at running things? They couldn't do much worse than the responsible, practical minds have done, now, could they? <hr class="page" /> <h1 class="tei tei-head">XLIX—ABOUT PORTLAND CEMENT</h1> Portland cement is "the finely pulverized product resulting from the calcination to incipient fusion of an intimate mixture of properly proportioned argillaceous and calcareous materials and to which no addition greater than 3 per cent has been made subsequent to calcination." That, in a word, is the keynote of H. Colin Campbell's "How to Use Cement for Concrete Construction." In case you should never read any more of the book, you would have that. But to the reader who is not satisfied with this taste of the secret of cement construction and who reads on into Mr. Campbell's work, there is revealed a veritable mine of information. And in the light of the recent turn of events one might even call it significant. (Any turn of events will do.) The first chapter is given over to a plea for concrete. Judging from the claims made for concrete by Mr. Campbell, it will accomplish everything that a return to Republican administration would do, and wouldn't be anywhere near so costly. It will make your barn fireproof; it will insure clean milk for your children; it will provide a safe housing for your automobile. Farm prosperity and concrete go hand in hand. In case there are any other members of society who have been with me in thinking that Portland cement is a product of Portland, Me., or Portland, Ore., it might as well be stated right here and now that America had nothing to do with the founding of the industry, and that the lucky Portland is an island off the south coast of England. It was a bright sunny afternoon in May, 1824, when Joseph Aspdin, an intelligent bricklayer of Leeds, England, was carelessly calcining a mixture of limestone and clay, as bricklayers often do on their days off, that he suddenly discovered, on reducing the resulting clinker to a powder, that this substance, on hardening, resembled nothing so much as the yellowish-gray stone found in the quarries on the Isle of Portland. (How Joe knew what grew on the Isle of Portland when his home was in Leeds is not explained. Maybe he spent his summers at the Portland House, within three minutes of the bathing beach.) At any rate, on discovering the remarkable similarity between the mess he had cooked up and Portland stone, he called to his wife and said: "Eunice, come here a minute! What does this remind you of?" The usually cheerful brow of Eunice Aspdin clouded for the fraction of a second. "That night up at Bert and Edna's?" she ventured. "No, no, my dear," said the intelligent bricklayer, slightly irked. "Anyone could see that this here substance is a dead ringer for Portland stone, and I am going to make heaps and heaps of it and call it 'Portland cement.' It is little enough that I can do for the old island." And so that's how Portland cement was named. Rumor hath it that the first Portland cement in America was made at Allentown, Pa., in 1875, but I wouldn't want to be quoted as having said that. But I will say that the total annual production in this country is now over 90,000,000 barrels. It is interesting to note that cement is usually packed in cloth sacks, although sometimes paper bags are used. "A charge is made for packing cement in paper bags," the books says. "These, of course, are not redeemable." One can understand their not wanting to take back a paper bag in which cement has been wrapped. The wonder is that the bag lasts until you get home with it. I tried to take six cantaloups home in a paper bag the other night and had a bad enough time of it. Cement, when it is in good form, must be much worse than cantaloup, and the redeemable remnants of the bag must be negligible. But why charge extra for using paper bags? That seems like adding whatever it is you add to injury. Apologies, rather than extra charge, should be in order. However, I suppose that these cement people understand their business. I shall know enough to watch out, however, and insist on having whatever cement I may be called upon to carry home done up in a cloth sack. "Not in a paper bag, if you please," I shall say very politely to the clerk. <hr class="page" /> <h1 class="tei tei-head">L—OPEN BOOKCASES</h1> Things have come to a pretty pass when a man can't buy a bookcase that hasn't got glass doors on it. What are we becoming—a nation of weaklings? All over New York city I have been,—trying to get something in which to keep books. And what am I shown? Curio cabinets, inclosed whatnots, museum cases in which to display fragments from the neolithic age, and glass-faced sarcophagi for dead butterflies. "But I am apt to use my books at any time," I explain to the salesman. "I never can tell when it is coming on me. And when I want a book I want it quickly. I don't want to have to send down to the office for the key, and I don't want to have to manipulate any trick ball-bearings and open up a case as if I were getting cream-puffs out for a customer. I want a bookcase for books and not books for a bookcase." (I really don't say all those clever things to the clerk. It took me quite a while to think them up. What I really say is, timidly, "Haven't you any bookcases without glass doors?" and when they say "No," I thank them and walk into the nearest dining-room table.) But if they keep on getting arrogant about it I shall speak up to them one of these fine days. When I ask for an open-faced bookcase they look with a scornful smile across the salesroom toward the mahogany four-posters and say: "Oh, no, we don't carry those any more. We don't have any call for them. Every one uses the glass-doored ones now. They keep the books much cleaner." Then the ideal procedure for a real book-lover would be to keep his books in the original box, snugly packed in excelsior, with the lid nailed down. Then they would be nice and clean. And the sun couldn't get at them and ruin the bindings. Faugh! (Try saying that. It doesn't work out at all as you think it's going to. And it makes you feel very silly for having tried it.) Why, in the elder days bookcases with glass doors were owned only by people who filled them with ten volumes of a pictorial history of the Civil War (including some swell steel engravings), "Walks and Talks with John L. Stoddard" and "Daily Thoughts for Daily Needs," done in robin's-egg blue with a watered silk bookmark dangling out. A set of Sir Walter Scott always helps fill out a bookcase with glass doors. It looks well from the front and shows that you know good literature when you see it. And you don't have to keep opening and shutting the doors to get it out, for you never want to get it out. <ANTIMG src="images/image15.png" alt="I thank them and walk into the nearest dining-room table." class="tei tei-figure" /> I thank them and walk into the nearest dining-room table. A bookcase with glass doors used to be a sign that somewhere in the room there was a crayon portrait of Father when he was a young man, with a real piece of glass stuck on the portrait to represent a diamond stud. And now we are told that "every one buys bookcases with glass doors; we have no call for others." Soon we shall be told that the thing to do is to buy the false backs of bindings, such as they have in stage libraries, to string across behind the glass. It will keep us from reading too much, and then, too, no one will want to borrow our books. But one clerk told me the truth. And I am just fearless enough to tell it here. I know that it will kill my chances for the Presidency, but I cannot stop to think of that. After advising me to have a carpenter build me the kind of bookcase I wanted, and after I had told him that I had my name in for a carpenter but wasn't due to get him until late in the fall, as he was waiting for prices to go higher before taking the job on, the clerk said: "That's it. It's the price. You see the furniture manufacturers can make much more money out of a bookcase with glass doors than they can without. When by hanging glass doors on a piece of furniture at but little more expense to themselves they can get a much bigger profit, what's the sense in making them without glass doors? They have just stopped making them, that's all." So you see the American people are being practically forced into buying glass doors whether they want them or not. Is that right? Is it fair? Where is our personal liberty going to? What is becoming of our traditional American institutions? I don't know. <hr class="page" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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