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Flying magazine/1931/I Break a Record and Have a Swell Time Besides

I Break a Record and Have a Swell Time Besides. Some random notes on a two-way trip across the continent. By Eddie Schneider as told to Mary Bell Dann. From the beginning I had wanted to do something with my flying. Just being able to go up in the air and come down at the same spot wasn't very exciting. Airplanes are for going places quickly, safely and comfortably. I don't know why, but my longing had always been to go to the West Coast. First, because I had never been there, and then for various reasons you fly over all sorts of country on the way, and it is the best way to see the country. Then that is the longest distance you can go without hitting foreign country. Frank Goldsborough had made the old junior transcontinental record. Frank was killed in a very unfortunate and peculiar accident. When he returned from his cross-country flight he was touring around, got into had weather and landed in a low tree. His companion got out all right and so did Frank when a very strange thing happened. His reserve tank, which he carried under the ship fell and struck him in the head. It was the sort of thing that wouldn't happen once in a million times, but the average person never stopped to think that out. The idea got around that it wasn't safe for young fellows and girls to fly. Frank had believed in aviation for boys and girls of high school and college age as the greatest of sports. I wanted to prove he was right and be able to give people something to talk about in connection with junior aviation besides Frank's tough luck. Those ideas were all in the back of my mind, but I hadn't bean able to do anything about them. Then one day I went over to the Westfield Airport where Charlie Dann was and got to talking it over with him - I wished I had money to buy a ship. He was already sold on the idea of young fellows being in the air and had more young fellows at his school than at any other school in the country. We got thinking it over and he suggested that I get some of my friends to form a corporation to buy a half interest in a Cessna he had at his field. It was a cabin ship and the average passenger prefers to ride in an open ship for a short hop and it was too advanced for student training. It was cheap, the total purchase price would be less than half of the real value of the ship and it was in good shape. I knew it was a fast ship because I had followed in the papers when it raced and brought back cups from the different air meets it went in. Then Dad come across and backed me to the half interest in the ship. I could buy the other half interest when I got back with any prize money or advertising checks I received. It was a lucky break. Things began to happen with lightning-like rapidity. I took title around the tenth of August and was off the fourteenth. The reason for this was that the National Air Races were on during the last week in August in Chicago and I wanted to be there. I had two hours time in the ship before I headed west. There were many details to attend to; the engine had to be checked, there wasn't time for an overhaul and the boys at the field worked cheerfully until all hours of the night helping me. We didn't do any special streamlining to add to the top speed of the ship although I bet we could add an easy ten miles an hour by putting pants over the wheels and a cowling over the motor. It was just an ordinary commercial ship and I was glad I could help tell more folks that Papa Cessna builds an honest ship with remarkably clean lines and speed without the doo-dads. We didn't install any special instruments either. We had the ones checked that were in there. The instrument company's man swung the compass for accuracy before we put the extra cans of gasoline aboard. First I bought a map of the whole United States and laid out on it what seemed to be the best course. I had it beside me at Valley Stream one day just before starting and Frank Hawks looked at it. "Hey, you, where did you get my map?" He was getting ready for his coast to coast flight. Strange thing, we had each laid out a practically identical route. The next stop was to buy state maps, sort them out in the proper order and layout my course on those. Charlie Dann said that wasn't enough, he must have had a hunch about what was going to happen to my compass, so that last night, after we all left the hangar at midnight after throwing in tools, a spare wheel and a bottle of coffee so that I could got right off as soon as dawn broke the next morning, I went to bed and sat up with the maps. In the morning he handed me a log of points measured on the map with a table of how long it would Lake to get from point to point. In this way I could always know where I was without a compass, by the rivers, mountains, cities and other prominent landmarks. I wasn't waiting for perfect weather because there wouldn't be much aviation if it were all fair day and tail wind flying. All I asked was a little ceiling near Bellefonte where the mountains are apt to be a little too chummy with the clouds. The report indicated a rising ceiling over Bollefonte, which later turned out to be a lot of bologna. It wasn't quite light yet when I got out to the field that morning, but the reporters and men who operated the sound trucks were already there, as most of them had slept at the [field] or in Rahway, the nearest town. They took pictures and asked me to speak. I couldn't think of anything to say. I was much more anxious to be up and off. People kept thrusting letters and charms on me until my pockets were bulging with junk. Imagine how silly it would seem if you were starting on an automobile trip and fond friends and relatives insisted that unless you took all of this along the trip was bound to be a failure. A fellow at Roosevelt handed me a little teddy bear, my aunt gave a crucifix, my sister put the first ring my mother ever wore into my keeping, Smitty told me to take along a ... supposed to be lucky Cuban half dollar and his pocket watch and the Danns thought their tiny green stone monkey might help. The ship had been warming up and Sarge, the head mechanic, was at last satisfied with it. So I started off down the runway. I felt one wheel bind slightly, there must have been some grit in there as he had the wheels off greasing them the night before, so I changed over abruptly to the runway that meets the one I started on at an angle. There was some crosswind then that took the weight off the ship off that wheel until she got into the air. We named the ship the Kangaroo, because we hoped I could get to California in a couple of jumps. I left the field at five fifty-five and the weather grew increasingly soupy. It was still early in the morning when I found a hole in the thick stuff and began to look for a resting place. With a compass that didn't work and being unable to distinguish a railroad from a river from the air I had a perfectly swell chance of losing myself, which would add up my flying hours. I saw a nice even wheat field and landed there. The farmer didn't appear to resent my intrusion but started to talk. "I seen you circling around and the woman and kids ran in the house scared. but I watched you." Big, brave farmer! "I always did want to see one of these here airplanes light, I been wanting to go down to Altoona and take the family, but is a long drive, nigh onto thirty mile and we ain't been yet, but I reckon we have to go now." They gave me lunch and were very friendly. The weather started to clear and I was eager to be off so I had the farmer sign a paper telling what time I landed and what time I took off. This would seem to be as appropriate time as another for me to wish aloud for an airport in every town. I had expected to be in Columbus in four hours and a half after leaving Westfield, New Jersey. No reports came through over the press wires about my arriving there and people got kind of worried. I had sent a telegram to Charlie Dann telling him why I won't going through, but he had been up all night working on my navigation and had gone home to bed when I left the field. They didn't want to call him because he was so tired and the contents of the message weren't known. He didn't come to until in the afternoon and then I was six and a half hours overdue at Columbus. I am sorry it gave anyone any concern, because I was enjoying myself. I got kind of still in the front cockpit. but it was a thrill to be in the act of doing what I had always wanted to do most. A combination of fog and darkness made further travel impossible for that night, as I was off the regular mail route which has the beacons, as I making as near a beeline as I could. Before I took off the next morning from Altoona an Army pilot come back for the third time after traveling in circles. The flat lands of the central states were to fly over and until I came to El Dorado, twenty miles east of Wichita, every little thing was just humming along. I was running out of gas or I could have flown over a sand storm that came along. It began with a strong wind, then there was a blast of sand, more wind and then a thunderstorm. It was the time I had seen ball lightning bouncing along telegraph wires, as though the burning spheres were basketballs. There was a flying field there, but you would never know it was one. I was the only one on the field, it came too quickly for me to take the plane down and the only way to keep the plane from blowing away was to sit on the tail, which didn't improve my personal appearance any, as I came into the Wichita airport covered with red mud. At first they just stared at me then Pop Cessna gave me a bawling out for coming in after dark and guessing where the lay. I had a general idea of the direction and distance, having out once before to take delivery on a Stearman. They were at work early the next morning, removing the wing so they could install a big tank for extra gas. This stunt of carrying five gallon cans was not hot as the weight shifted and the heat of the cabin sent the corks popping with expanding vapors. Then if I hit a bump a jet of gas went shooting up. I didn't like the fumes or fighting with the stoppers and was glad to see the tank go in, although it is hard to forgive them for putting the tank in on top of my spare wheel, which I could't get at when I needed it without taking the whole wing off. The tank was much too big to go through any of tho doors or windows so they lowered it through the roof. While they were fixing it, Clyde Cessna let me try his new little powered glider. Clyde had just soloed for the first time with ordinary controls. In the early days each man taught himself to fly in a machine of his own design. In his machine the controls were reversed and until then he had always had the controls reversed on his own personnel ship. The powered glider was fun to fly. so I looped it and rolled it. When I got down Clyde's hair was standing right up straight. They forgot to tell me that no Approved Type Certificate had been issued for it yet and no one knew what it would or would not do, being still in the experimental stages. I left slightly after noon and altered my course to the southward. As soon as I entered New Mexico, I had to dodge one thunderstorm after the other which wasted the gas and added to my flying time. I landed on a high mesa with no vegetation on it except low bushes and rolling tumbleweed. From out of everywhere and nowhere came hordes of Indians. They must have lived nearby on a reservation and I never saw one of them who had any thought of working. All they have to do is around in old broken down Ford cars, about ten to a car, draped on the fenders, the hood, and the folded top. When they wanted to start the cars, it never occurred to them to start them with the starter or to use the crank that swung out front. Everyone would pile onto the car that they wanted to start and shove. Their clothes were cut like ours but made of the dizziest colors you can imagine, mostly reds and yellows. Only one of them spoke any English and he not much. He managed to convey to me that it was the first airplane they had ever seen. When they went by in the air they had always thought they wore big birds. Soon they discovered the ailerons, the movable control surfaces on the wing tips, and were convinced that the plane flapped them to fly. Then one of the men bumped into the rudder and shouted to the rest of them to come over to wiggle it. My English speaking friend remarked deep in thought, “Bird no have him." The flippers were the next discovery of moment. If anyone thinks of Indians as big quiet, impassive individual: he should have hward the babble that crowd made when they were exploring the flippers. Again I heard, "Bird no him." "What make him go?" I pointed to the propeller. "Me no believe, keep um white man cool?" The tank in the back was the next and the word got around that it contained firewater. What a noise! I told the one that it was gasoline and that it made the big bird go tho same as it did their Fords. Another "Me no believe." He was skeptical about everything. I opened a valve and wet my finger with it. "Me believe" which was immediately translated into Indian, “ZXCVBNMASDFGHJKL." They went off at sundown leaving me alone on the mesa. It was a strange feeling. I didn't know any place could be so lonely or any sunset so gorgeous. There was about every color in the world in it. I don't wonder people get nutty about the west. Sleeping in the front cockpit of the plane was another matter though. I awoke just before daybreak from my uncomfortable position and realized I could have slept outside, but I had been afraid to try it for fear a sudden wind might come up and blow my ship away off the tableland and I wasn't taking any chances. A few of the Indians arrived before I got off in the morning and they didn't seem to realize the danger of the prop mowing them down. In fact they were a blame nuisance. As soon as I got in the air I saw the rest of their village headed for the mesa. The ship didn't get very easily off on account of the rarity of the atmosphere and I must have run two miles along the longest dimension of the mesa, before my wheels left the ground. The place was called Anton Chico, although I don't know why a person would bother to name it, and I shan't forget it soon. Most of the time I was busy checking up my navigation, but once in a while when it got monotonous I would go down to the ground and brush the bushes for a while. I could not do that over the desert proper, it was too hot down there. I picked up a thermometer at Wichita, not knowing how good it was, but it registered a hundred and twenty in the cabin. The desert was sprinkled with meteor craters and one of the big ones must have been all of four miles wide. It was just like a mountain, only growing in the wrong direction. There must have been some fireworks when the meteor that threw it up landed and buried itself in the sand. I did some cussing at Holbrook, where I landed to make sure of the weather ahead and ran a sharp sand burr in the tire. I didn't know I had a flat, because the sand of the airport made the going naturally heavy. When I got out at the hangar the tube was all chewed from running on it flat with the load. They had no other and my spare was buried under a hundred gallon tank filled with gas and a wing bolted down on that. I had the luck to locate a motorcycle tube, three sizes too small, but more than welcome. It is still on the ship. The San Bernardino Pass back of Los Angeles was full of fog, so I landed at the town of Ontario to find out if the weather was equally bad ahead, and if not, how to get to the Municipal Airport at Los Angeles. They have been changing the names of the flying fields out there and the man I asked about the Municipal Airport misunderstood my question and directed me to the Municipal Airport in Long Beach. While I was in Ontario I phoned to the Richfield Oil Company in Los Angeles and was told that their man, Mr. Pedri, would be there to meet me when I landed. The weather seemed to be passable ahead, so I took off for what I thought was Los Angeles. I found the field all right, but there was hardly anyone there, and that seemed strange, as just a few minutes before Mr. Pedri had told me there was quite a crowd waiting. It had gotten dark and I was blamed tired, having come all the way from Anton Chico, New Mexico, that day. I had asked the minute I came in and was told that it was the Municipal Airport. After being there some minutes I came to enough to ask, “Is this the Municipal Airport in Los Angeles?" When I found out it was Long Beach and I had no idea of my way around over a strange city, I had another pilot lead the way to the other field. There was a crowd there and the photographers kept me posing, which was the last thing in the world I had any desire to do. The officials added up the time and I was glad to have established a new record. knowing that the chances were it would not be my record long, but that would be just what I wanted. to stir up interest in junior flying. The Richfield Oil Company presented me with a case that is a beauty, with places for everything and lined with oilskin, and the whole thing is as light as a feather. From then on I dragged it around with me everywhere I went after that. I knew that Charlie Dann would want to know how I made out, so I phoned him. It was midnight when I was able to break away to do it so it must have been three o'clock in the morning in Westfield. I think I got almost as much of kick out of phoning three thousand miles as I did out of flying that distance. I spent most of my time in Los Angeles at the airport seeing that work was done on my ship and motor. I did take a few minutes to deliver two letter's, one from Jimmy Walker and one from Mayor Hague, to Mayor Porter of Los Angeles. Mr. Pedri took me to the "Breakfast Club" in Los Angeles. I never heard of any similar institution. It is like night club, only for a little later on. You ate breakfast there in a beautiful grove. where everybody made friends with everybody else and sang. The management put on a show and gave a setting up drill. I finally got back to the port the work on the ship was done and she appeared to be in A1 shape. I was up early the following morning and hopped off for Albuquerque. l hated to leave California. it had looked so good after the miles of desert I had over, but, of course. l was interested in seeing what the ship would do with favoring winds. You can usually count on a tail wind going cast. But no such luck for this boy. I buckled headwinds in both directions. However, I can manage to be thankful they weren't crosswinds. which not only cut down your forward speed but throw you off your course. I enjoyed the night back. Knowing the route, I didn't have to strain so to distinguish landmarks as I had done going out. It would have been easier to follow the oil pipeline from Wichita to Amarillo, Texas, and from there another pipe line to Los Angeles, but that way is considerably longer and consequently slower. Going back, though I could remember having passed over many of the features of the landscape, and another item was that I didn't have the glare of the sun through all the glass and celluloid panels in the front of the ship all through the long afternoon. In Albuquerque some kind of historical pageant was going on and they insisted on my staying to watch it. About a thousand Indians were doing war whoops. We couldn't make out whether the songs were different songs with the same words or the same song with different words. When you saw the way they acted, pushing one foot along in the dirt, digging in first with their toe and then with the heel, at the same time hopping on the other foot, you didn't wonder much that the white men were able to do some sharp trading and get Manhattan Island from them for the price of a hundred gallons of gas. After the first hour or so their performance was terribly boring, they reminded you of a lot of small children showing off in front of grown people, so I was plenty glad when a sandstorm came up and we could clear out. The field at which I put up was an hour's drive from town. Western Air Express used it, as it is a high mesa and the planes can leave and be on their courses. The other field that T. A. T. uses is nearer the town, but you have to circle it several times to get, enough altitude to clear the mountains. They always think up some good reason to put aviation fields as for away from the town as possible. Left for Wichita in the morning and ran into the entrants in the Pacific Coast Women's Derby. I had met them on the coast, so it was like a reunion with old friends. Three of the girls came in several hours late on account of one of the girls getting off her course and the other two following her. Off again early for Columbus and through dirty weather all the way, but it was of no consequence, as over there farming land any can be a landing field. The forecast at Columbus for points east was thick stuff, so I waited, not caring about going over the mountains in Pennsylvania until it had lifted. It hadn't cleared up a whole lot even by the next morning, but I pushed on through. There wasn't a smooth spot to sit down for miles and I was happy that the old coffee grinder up front kept singing along. Landed at Roosevelt, having been in the air twenty-seven hours and some odd minutes. Then for the first real sleep in weeks. Gee, it was good.


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Rh breadths form the inner fold of a plait. In that case the binding will continue down the raw edges of that seam to the bottom of the skirt.

In cases where the plaits are not stitched the entire length, the thread-ends on the under side must be securely tied, as shown in Illustration 189.

Gored skirts that have a side plait or an inverted box plait let into the seams some distance up from the bottom, are sometimes troublesome because of a tendency of these plaits to show below the bottom edge of the skirt since there is nothing to which they may be attached. This trouble may be avoided in the manner shown in Illustration 190.

The seam edge and the edge of each of these plaits are bound, and after the skirt is finished a tape or strap of lining is sewed to the top of each plait and is carried from one to the other all around the skirt. (Ill. 190.) The tape will generally be found sufficient stay, but in a woolen skirt of heavy cloth an additional tape or strap may run diagonally from the top of each plait to the next seam and be securely sewed there to the wrong side of the skirt. This stay also is in Illustration 190.

Ill. 190. Supporting Inlaid Plaits

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52 growth should never be to destroy that unity, but to give it greater purpose, nor to mar that symmetry, but to make it more symmetrical; while the completeness of the early structure should be merged in the yet greater completeness of the later development.

Garden City is not only planned, but it is planned with a view to the very latest of modern requirements; and it is obviously always easier, and usually far more economical and completely satisfactory, to make out of fresh material a new instrument than to patch up and alter an old one. This element of economy will be perhaps best dealt with by a concrete illustration, and one of a very striking nature at once presents itself.

In London the question of building a new street between Holborn and the Strand has been for many years under consideration, and at length a scheme is being carried out, imposing an enormous cost on the


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LACKETS SUCH AS ARE MADE FOR UNLINED DRESSES are shown in Illustrations 191 and 192. This placket is used on skirts of unlined dresses when the outside sewing would be an objection; also on dresses that have to visit the laundry. Use a strip twice the length of the opening and three and three-quarter inches wide.

Lay the lap along the edge of the opening with the right side of the lap and skirt together and baste them in a narrow seam. (Ill. 191.) Run it almost to a point at the lower end of the opening. Turn the free edge under and hem it close to the sewing. (Ill. 191.) When this strip or lap is applied above the back seam of a skirt, it is set back an eighth of an inch from the stitching of the seam. One side is extended out to form the underlap, and the other side is turned under on an even line with the stitching of the seam. When the placket is closed, the entire lap is hidden. (Ill. 192.)

In transparent fabrics such as chiffon, etc., which are not sent to the laundry, the skirt placket should be made as inconspicuous as possible. Don't face the placket edges as the seams would show. Turn a hem and overcast the loose edges finely to show as little as possible. These materials as a rule are made in soft styles where there is no strain on the placket edges. Patent fasteners can be used for the closing, as few of them and as small as will hold the placket. (Chapter 24, page 116.) Use no other sewing on the placket other than the sewing for the fasteners.

THE PLACKETS FOR CLOTH SKIRTS require neat and tailor-like workmanship. Great care must be taken in handling the edges of the opening. They are generally bias, and stretch easily. If the upper edge becomes stretched, it will bulge when the skirt is on the figure—a defect you probably have often noticed on other women. Hooks and eyes or patent fasteners (page 116) should be placed sufficiently close together to prevent the skirt from gaping. Any stitching that shows through on the outside should be

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Rh done evenly and with a suitable stitch and tension. Otherwise the placket-hole will have a careless appearance. A placket-hole should be ten or eleven inches deep unless the figure is unusually large and full, requiring a still deeper opening.

The design of the skirt regulates the position and finish of the placket. It may be at the center or side back, the front or side front.

Illustration 193 shows a simple finish for a placket which may be used for a skirt that has fulness at the top so that no strain comes on the placket-hole. The overlapping edge is finished with a facing and the under edge with an underlap. The facing can be machine-stitched or finished invisibly by hand according to the finish of the skirt. Snap fasteners (Chapter 24, page 116) may be used for the closing since there is no strain. The fasteners should be placed about two inches apart.

A PLACKET-HOLE AT THE CENTER OF AN INVERTED PLAIT is shown in Illustration 194. The placket comes under an inverted plait at the center back of the skirt which fits plainly at the top.

The first step in finishing the placket of a skirt of this kind is to turn the skirt edges back as allowed by the pattern. Stitch the edges of the placket-hole and sew on the hooks and eyes as illustrated, taking care that the stitches don't show through on the outside of the skirt. Cover the hooks on the right side with a facing of silk. Sew an underlap of material an inch and a half wide, finished, to the left edge, and bind the raw edge of the lap with binding ribbon. (Ill. 195.)

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102 A PLACKET-HOLE AT THE UNDER FOLD OF A PLAIT is often used. Cut through the crease or under fold in the plait to the regular placket depth. Bind both cut edges of the plait with binding ribbon or a binding of thin silk. This method allows the plait to serve as a placket underlap.

The outer fold of the plait may be stitched (Ill. 196), leaving the under portion of the plait free. Illustration 196 shows the position of the hooks and eyes or the patent fasteners on the under fold of the plait.

If the plait is in a skirt that fits at the top so that there is likely to be a strain on the placket, hooks and eyes are the strongest fastenings. But if it is a plaited skirt where the plaits fall free and there is no strain on the placket, snap fasteners may be used.

THE PLACKET-HOLE AT THE CENTER OF A HABIT BACK is practically the same as for the skirt with an inverted plait closed at the center-back seam. (Ill. 197.)

A PLACKET-HOLE UNDER A STRAPPED SEAM is shown in Illustration 198. The right-hand fold of the strap is stitched flat to the skirt. The left-hand edge of the strap is turned under and stitched to itself, following the same line of stitching that holds the rest of the strap to the skirt. (Ill. 198.)

The hooks are sewed to the left edge of the strap. Notice that they are set close together and a trifle back from the edge. A strap placket must be held firmly to keep the line of trimming absolutely straight. For the same reason it is just as well to add a row of patent fasteners just back of the hooks. (Ill. 198.)

The underlap should be an inch and a half wide and an inch longer than the placket-hole, finished. (Ill. 199.) It should be made of the skirt material and its edges bound with seam binding or silk. Blind loops are used instead of eyes and should be worked on the skirt in corresponding positions to the eyes. The fasteners are sewed to the lap.

THE PLACKET-HOLE IN A SKIRT SET IN THE SAME BELT with its foundation skirt is made by the same methods as an ordinary placket. In such an instance, the placket opening of the skirt and foundation skirt are finished separately.

Whatever kind of placket is used, one should be particularly careful to see that the hooks and eyes or fasteners are so arranged that they will keep the holes securely closed. Nothing looks worse than a gaping placket, and any woman who takes a pride in her personal appearance will pay special attention to this part of her dressmaking.

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NDERWEAR PLACKLETS are made in the following manner. If there is no seam, cut the opening in the garment the desired length. It should be long enough to slip easily over the head. Cut for a lap a strip of material lengthwise of the goods. It should be twice the length of the placket opening and three and three-quarter inches wide. Fold the ends together and crease through center; open and fold the sides together and crease. Cut out one section to within a small seam of the crease as shown in Illustration 200.

Baste the long straight edge of the lap to both edges of the opening, making a narrow seam. Run it almost to a point at the lower edge of the opening. (Ill. 201.) Make a narrow turning on the three edges of both the narrow and the wide part of the lap. Double the wide part back (Ill. 202), baste the edge over the line of the sewing, and hem. This forms the underlap. Turn the narrow part back on the line of sewing, baste the free edge to the garment to form an underfacing, and hem. The end of the underlap is turned under, basted and stitched across. The finished closing is shown in Illustration 203. This placket has an outside row of stitching. It is usually employed for drawers, petticoats, etc.

A FEATHER-STITCHED HEM ON A PLACKET used on flannel petticoats is shown in Illustration 204.

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HE various styles of pockets used on tailored garments and boys' suits which require some technical knowledge will be treated in this chapter.

A PATCH POCKET is simply a patch sewed on three of its sides to the outside of the garment. Patch pockets vary in size and shape according to the style of the garment and the position they occupy. The upper edge that is left open may lie simply hemmed or faced, or trimmed in any way that the character of the garment may suggest. All other edges of the pocket are turned under, basted and stitched to the garment. In all cases the essential feature of a patch pocket is neatness.

A SLASH POCKET (Ill. 210) is one that is made on the inside of the garment and has a slit opening through to the outside. Mark the line for the opening with tailors' tacks (page 85). Run a line of bastings in colored thread through the perforations to mark the line still more sharply, letting the bastings show on both sides of the material.

Cut a piece of the suit material for a facing. It should be about three inches wide and an inch longer than the pocket opening. Baste it face down to the right side of the garment so that its center comes exactly over the pocket opening and the facing itself extends half an inch beyond each end of the opening. (Ill. 205.) From the wrong side of the garment run another row of colored bastings along the line for the pocket opening so that the second row will show through on the pocket facing.

From the right side place a row of machine stitching on each side of the

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a moment Danny Rugg just stared at Bert. Then the bully swallowed a sort of lump that came in his throat, and said:

"That isn't my button."

"Isn't it?" asked Bert, politely. "Why, it just matches the others on your coat, and it's got a few threads in the holes, and there are some threads in your coat, just where the button was pulled off. I guess it's your button, all right, Danny."

Danny did not say anything. He looked from the button to Bert, and then at the space on his coat where a button should have been, but where one was missing.

"Well—well," he stammered. "Maybe it is off my coat, but—but how did you get it, Bert Bobbsey?"

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Rh {|align = center pocket line and about an eighth of an inch from it. (Ill. 205.) Tie the ends of the threads firmly so that the stitching can not pull out, and then cut through the pocket line with a sharp knife, cutting through both the facing and the garment material. Push the facing through the slit. (Ill. 206.)
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Rebaste the facing from the outside, letting it form a head or cording an eighth of an inch deep at the edges of the pocket. It should be stitched on the upper edge of the pocket hole from the right side. Cross-stitch the pocket edges together to hold them in shape until the garment is finished. Turn down the upper edge of the pocket facing as close to the stitching as possible, and press flat to wrong side of garment. (Ill. 208.)

Cut from strong cotton or drill a pocket piece about twelve and a half inches long and two inches wider than the pocket opening. Shape one end of the pocket like the curved pocket opening and insert it between the lower pocket facing and the garment, close to the opening. (Ill. 207.) Baste it in place from the wrong side, turn the garment portion over to right side, and stitch through both facing and pocket close to opening. Turn under lower edge of pocket facing and stitch it to pocket (Ill. 207), but not to the garment.

Now turn up the pocket about four and a half inches from the opening and baste it in place with its upper edge toward the top of the garment. From the right side, stitch through the garment and the pocket along the upper edge of the pocket opening. Turn under the edge of the upper part of the facing and hem it to the pocket (Ill. 208). Do it from the right side, pushing the pocket and facing through the slit. The sides of the pocket are closed with a row of machine stitching about three-eighths of an inch from the edges. (Ill. 209.) The ends (Ill. 210) are finished with an arrow-head (page 127).

A PERFECTLY STRAIGHT OPENING has a facing of material applied as directed above. (Ills. 205 and 206.) Two pocket pieces are

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Rh "I found it," was the answer. "Don't you want it back?"

He held it out to Danny, who took it slowly.

"Well," went on Bert, with a queer little smile at his enemy, "why don't you ask me where I found it, Danny?"

"Huh! I don't care where you found it. I s'pose you picked it up around the school yard, where I lost it, playing tag with the fellows."

"No, you didn't lose it there," went on Bert, still smiling. "You have another guess coming, Danny."

"Pooh! I don't care where you found it," and Danny was about to turn away.

"Wait a minute," said Bert. "Suppose I say that this button was found in our freezer of ice cream, that you and some other boys took off our stoop the night of Flossie's and Freddie's party, Danny? What about that?"

"It isn't—I didn't—you can't prove anything about me, Bert Bobbsey, and if you go around telling that I took your ice cream, I—I"

But Danny did not know what else to say.

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154 He was confused and his face was white and red by turns, for he realized that Bert had good proof of what he said.

"Better go slow," advised Bert, calmly. "I don't intend to go around telling what you did. I just want to let you know that I am sure you took our ice cream.

"I—I" began Danny. "You're only trying to fool me!" he exclaimed. "That button wasn't in it at all!"

"Wasn't it?" asked Bert, quietly. "Well, you just ask Charley Mason, or any of the fellows who were at the party, what we found in the freezer, and see what they say."

Danny had nothing to reply to this. Thrusting the button in his pocket he walked off. Bert was sure he had found the boy who had taken the ice cream.

Later, from a boy who had been friends with Danny for some time, but whose father, afterward, decided that his son was getting into bad company, and made him cease playing with the school bully, Bert learned that Danny had planned to take the ice cream freezer off the porch.

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106 cut of pocketing or drill, the lower four and half inches long, the upper piece five inches long. Both pieces should be an inch wider than the opening.

The pocket pieces are slipped under the facings, basted and stitched from the right side. (Ill. 211.) Strengthen the ends of the opening on the right side with a bar tack or arrow-head. (Chapter 25, page 127.)

The raw edges of the facings are turned under and stitched to the pocket pieces (Ill. 211). The upper pocket piece is then turned down over the lower and basted and stitched to it around its three open sides. The Raw edges may be bound or overcast.

This pocket is illustrated on the preceding page.

IN A POCKET WITH AN IN-AND-OUT LAP the latter is finished completely before the pocket is begun. Cut the piece for the lap from the cloth, being careful to have the grain or stripe of the goods match when the lap is laid on the jacket in the position it will have when the pocket is completed. (Ill. 212.) Turn in and baste a seam on three sides. Run two rows of even stitching around the edge from the right side, the first row one-eighth of an inch from the edge. Then add a lining of silk, slip-stitching it on by hand.

Now lay the finished lap face down on the goods with its raw edge down, and even with the line of bastings that indicate the pocket opening. The rest of the work is the same as for the pocket described above. In this case, however, the section of the facing strip which is supplemented by the lap is cut away.

AN OPEN POCKET is made similar to the one having an in-and-out lap. The lap is made straight or on a slant (Ill. 213), not quite so wide as for a loose lap, and is joined to the garment at the lower edge of the slit in an upright position and is attached to it at each side.

A BOUND POCKET OPENING should be bound with a bias strip of self or contrasting material about 1½ inch wide and ½ inch longer than the pocket opening. Turn under each end of the strip ¼ of an inch. (Ill. 214.)

Mark the line of the pocket through the pocket perforations with tailors' tacks. (Page 85.)

Place the strip on the outside of the

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Rh He and several boys did this, carrying it to the old barn. They had provided themselves with large spoons, and were having a good time, eating the cream, when they heard the approach of Bert and his friends, and fled, leaving the cream behind.

It was during a dispute as to who should have the right to first dip into the freezer that Danny and a boy named Jake Harkness had a struggle, and in this Danny lost a button which fell into the ice cream without anyone knowing it. The coat Danny wore that night he did not put on again for some time, but when he did Bert saw the missing button.

Danny knew that he had been found out. and for a time he had little to say. But Bert was boy enough not to be able to keep altogether quiet over his discovery. From time to time he would ask Danny:

"Lost any more buttons, lately?"

"You let me alone!" Danny would reply, surlily.

Of course this made talk, the boys wanting to know what it meant, and at last the story came out. This made Danny so angry that he

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 See Fig. 3.

To obtain a graceful carriage of the body—strength and grace combined—it is essential that the head be well poised, the chest prominent (the abdomen, not too much in evidence), the step firm but elastic.

Be unconscious of the legs except as a means of support. Walk, as it were, from the chest. The walls of the chest should be raised and fixed (muscularly), the breathing at the waist (diaphragmatic), the mouth closed.

The athlete should show that he is an athlete at all times and on all occasions; he should show it because he can't help showing it; he should show it by his activity in repose, his clear complexion, his bright eye, his buoyancy and his general manly bearing.

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156 picked several quarrels with Bert. On his part Bert tried to avoid them, but at last he could stand it no longer, and he and Danny came to blows again, Danny striking first.

Bert had been brought up with the idea that fighting, unless it could absolutely be avoided, was not gentlemanly, but in this case he could not get out of it.

He and Danny went at each other with their fists clenched, a crowd of other boys looking on, and urging one or the other to do their best, for both Danny and Bert had friends, though Bert was the best liked.

Danny struck Bert several times, and Bert hit back, once hitting Danny in the eye. Bert's lip was cut, and when the fight was over both boys did not look very nice. But everyone said Bert had the best of it.

"Oh, Bert!" exclaimed his mother, when he came home after the trouble with Danny. "You've been fighting!"

"Yes, mother, I have," he admitted. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. Danny Rugg hit me first. I couldn't run away, could I?"

It was a hard question for a mother to

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Rh. No mother likes to think her son a coward, and that was what the boys would have called Bert had he not stood up to Danny.

"I—I just had to!" continued Bert "And I beat him, anyhow, mother."

Mrs. Bobbsey cried a little, and then she made the best of it, and bathed Bert's cut lip and bruised forehead. She told his father about it, too, and Mr. Bobbsey, after hearing the account, asked:

"Who won?"

"Well, Bert says he did?"

"Um. Well, I've no doubt but what he did. He's getting quite strong."

"Oh, Richard!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, in dismay.

"Well, boys will—er—have their little troubles," said her husband. "I'm sorry Bert had to fight, but I'm glad he wasn't a coward. But he mustn't fight any more."

Then Mr. Bobbsey sat down to read the evening paper.

The weather was getting cooler. Several nights there had been heavy frosts, and for some time the papers had been saying that it

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 See Fig. 4.

Place the tips of the fingers firmly just below the base of the sternum (breastbone), about over the pit of the stomach. Stand erectly, but do not incline the body backward lest you tense the muscles of the abdomen. Inhale (through the nostrils) slowly but fully, causing a strong outward pressure against the fingers (not below). Check the movement a moment, then slowly expel all the air possible, the fingers following the relaxing muscles.

Should you have any difficulty to get a strong movement of these abdominal muscles, lie on the floor flat upon your back, and place a heavy book or other object directly over the spot on which you pressed the fingers. Raise the object by the breathing. You will thus gain control of the breathing and, at the same time, greatly strengthen the abdominal muscles.

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158 was going to snow, but the white flakes did not sift down from the sky.

Thanksgiving was approaching. It was the end of the Fall term of school, and there were to be examinations to see who would pass into the next higher classes for the Winter season.

Of course in the case of Freddie and Flossie, who were still in the kindergarten, the examinations were not very hard, but they were soon to go into the regular primary class, where they would learn to read. And both the twins were very anxious for this. Bert and Nan had somewhat harder lessons to do, and they had to answer more difficult questions in the examinations.

But I am glad to say that all of the Bobbsey twins were promoted, and Freddie and Flossie came home very proud to tell that when they went back again, after the Thanksgiving holidays, they would be in the primer reading book.

And such preparations as went on for Thanksgiving! Dinah was busy from morning until night, and when the little twins made inquiries about the turkey they were to have,

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Rh garment with the center of the strip over the line of the pocket. (Ill. 214.) Baste the strip to the garment. (Ill. 214.) Run a basting line through the tailors' tacks, and through the center of the strip and stitch the strip to the garment ⅛ of an inch each side of this basting line.

Cut the pocket opening through the garment and strip in a clean, even line. Push the binding through the slash to the wrong side of the garment and baste it into position letting it form an ⅛-of-an-inch binding at the edge of the opening. (Ill. 215.) Slip-stitch the corners of the binding so they will not fray.

Cut the pocket sections of satin or lining material about seven inches long and let them extend about ½ an inch beyond each end of the opening (Ill. 216), shaping them as illustrated. Face the under section of the pocket three inches from the top with the material of the garment. (Ill. 216.) Baste the pocket sections to the binding on the inside of the garment as illustrated.

Sew the pocket sections to the binding by hand, using one of the hemming stitchstitches. [sic]

Baste and stitch the pocket sections together to form a pocket and overcast the raw edge.

A POCKET WITH A WELT—Mark the line for the opening of the pocket with tailors' tacks. (Chapter 16, page 85.) Run a line of basting through the tailors' tacks to mark the opening even more clearly, letting the basting show through both sides of the material. If the pocket is to be cut through more than one thickness of material baste around the marking so that the materials can not slip when the opening is cut.

Cut an interlining for the welt ⅜ of an inch smaller at the top and ends than the welt pattern. Turn the edges of the welt over on the interlining at the top and ends, mitering it neatly at the corners. (Ill. 217.) Baste and stitch it to match the rest of the garment and press it carefully.

The pocket is cut in two sections from lining material. The shape of the inner section is shown in Illustration 217. The outer section is cut like the inner but deep enough to form a lining for the welt. (Ill. 218.) The

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Rh Mr. Bobbsey said it would be the biggest he could buy.

"An' I'se gwine t' stuff him wif chestnuts an' oysters," said Dinah. "I tells you what chilluns, yo' all am suttinly gwine to hab one grand feed."

"I wish everybody was," said Flossie, a bit wistfully. "I hope our cat Snoop, wherever he is, has plenty of milk, and some nice turkey bones."

"I guess he will have," said Mamma Bobbsey, gently.

"I hope all the poor children in our school have enough to eat," said Freddie. "Mr. Tetlow said for us to bring what we could for them."

"And you never told me!" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. "Why didn't you? I would have sent something."

Neither Bert nor Nan had thought to mention at home that a collection would be taken at the school for the poor families in the town. But as soon as Mrs. Bobbsey heard what Freddie said she telephoned to her husband. Mr. Bobbsey went to see Mr. Tetlow, and from

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160 him learned that there were a number of families who would not have a very happy Thanksgiving.

Then the lumber merchant gave certain orders to his grocer and butcher, and if a number of poor people were not well supplied with food that gladsome season, it was not the fault of Mr. Bobbsey.

But I am getting a little ahead of my story. A few days before Thanksgiving Mrs. Bobbsey, with a letter in her hand, came to where the four twins were in the sitting room, talking over what they wanted for Christmas.

"Guess who are coming to spend Thanksgiving with us!" cried Mamma Bobbsey, as she waved the letter in the air.

"Uncle Bobbsey!" guessed Nan.

"Uncle Minturn," said Bert.

The little twins guessed other friends and relatives, and finally Mrs. Bobbsey said:

"Yes, your Uncle Bobbsey and Uncle Minturn are coming, and so are your aunts, and Cousin Harry, Cousin Dorothy and also Hal Bingham, whom you met at the seashore."

"Oh, what a jolly Thanksgiving it will be!" cried the Bobbsey twins.

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108 pocket should be ½ of an inch wider on both sides than the opening. A breast pocket should be about 3½ inches deep, a lower pocket about 5 inches deep.

Lay the finished welt face down below the pocket line on the right side of the garment (Ill. 217) with the unfinished edge exactly even with the line marked for the opening. Baste it in place. Lay the inner section of the pocket face down above the pocket line, close up to the welt, and baste it in place. (Ill. 217.) Run a row of machine stitching ⅛ of an inch in from both sides, and tie the threads securely. Turn the seam edge of the welt back and press it back flat against the welt. (Ill. 217.)

Take the outer or larger section of the pocket and lay it right side up over the inner section and welt. (Ill. 218.) Turn the upper edge under ⅛ of an inch from the top of the welt and trim it out at the ends of the welt so that it is ⅛ of an inch smaller. (Ill. 218.) Fell these edges down. (Ill. 218.) Sew the satin along the seam edge of the welt and again ¼ of an inch inside it. (Ill. 218.)

Cut the opening with a sharp pen-knife or pointed embroidery scissors following the thread line to within ⅛ of an inch of the ends. Make a cut from that point to the stitching line on both sides forming a. Push both pocket sections through to the wrong side of the garment and turn the welt up in place. Blind sew the ends of the welt to the garment at the edge and again ¼ of an inch in.

Turn the garment to the wrong side and seam up the pocket edges and overcast them. (Ill. 219.) Press the seam downward and bar tack (Chapter 25, page 127) the ends of the opening to prevent their pulling out. Give the pocket a final pressing on the right side. The finished welt is shown in Illustration 220.

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text: The Bobbsey Twins at School/Chapter 15

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was celebrated in the Bobbsey home as it never had been before. I am afraid if I told you all that went on, of the big, brown-roasted turkey, of the piles of crisp celery, of the pumpkin and mince pies, of the nuts and candies, of the big dishes of cranberry sauce, and the plum pudding that Dinah carried in high above her head—I am afraid if I told you of all these things there would be trouble.

For I am sure you would all be writing to me to ask where the Bobbseys lived, so that you might go and see them, and perhaps spend Christmas with them. Not that they would not be glad to have you, but they have so many friends that their house is sure to be filled over the holidays.

So I will simply say that there was the grandest time ever, and let it go at that.

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162 Uncle and Aunt Bobbsey—Uncle and Aunt Minturn, from the country and seashore, came, with Cousin Dorothy and Cousin Harry. Then, also, Hal Bingham arrived, and the Bobbsey twins took great delight in showing their former playmates about Lakeport.

"Isn't it lonesome at the seashore now?" asked Nan of Dorothy, as she walked with her cousin about the busy streets of the town.

"Not at all," answered Dorothy. "The sea is never lonesome for me. It always seems to be telling me something, Winter or Summer.

"I love it in the Summer," said Nan, "but in the Winter it seems so cold and cruel."

"That is because you do not know it as well as I do," said Dorothy.

Hal, Harry, and Bert had fine times together. There was no skating, and the little flurry of snow there had been was not enough for coasting, but they had other fun.

"Do your ducks miss our duck Downy?" asked Freddie of his cousin Harry.

"Well, I guess they do," was the laughing answer, for Freddie and Flossie had a pet duck

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O SEW ON AN UNLINED COLLAR baste the collar to the neck with the under side of the collar against the right side of the garment. If the garment is of a material that is not transparent, baste a narrow bias strip of material along the edge of the collar with the edges even. Stitch the seam and clip it at intervals so that it will not draw the neck. (Ill. 221.)

Turn under the edge of the facing and if the collar extends all around the neck, hem the facing to the garment covering the seam. If the collar does not extend all around the neck edge as in Illustration 221, turn under the inner edge of the facing on that part of the neck which is beyond the collar. Stretch it to fit the neck and stitch it close to the fold but not to the garment. The facing should simply be pressed. It lies flat against the garment without being stitched and as there is no strain on it it will stay in place. (Ill. 221.)

Seam binding may be used instead of a facing. It should be sewed on flat as in Illustration 222. It should be put on so that the lower edge is not tight on the garment, easing the upper edge in wherever it is necessary to make it lie flat. (Ill. 222.)

If the garment is of sheer material, the collar may be sewed on with machine hemstitching (Chapter 25, page 118), with a narrow rolled hem or a flat fell seam (Chapter 17, page 87) or the seam may be trimmed off to ¼ inch width and finely overcast. The machine hemstitching is the daintiest finish.

TO MAKE AND SEW ON A LINED COLLAR turn under the seam allowance along the outer edge of the collar and sew on the trimming or stitch it in any way desired before the collar is lined. Turn under the outer edge of the collar lining ¼ of an inch more than the collar itself and baste it to the wrong side of the collar with the edge of the lining about ⅛ of an inch within the edge of the collar, taking care not to stretch it or pull the edges. (Ill. 223 on next page.)

Baste the lining to the collar a little more than an inch from the neck edge. Baste the collar to the neck edge of the garment with the right side of the collar to the wrong side of the garment and with the seam toward the outside of the garment. Stitch the seam. Baste the lining neck edge over the seam and hem it down neatly by hand. (Ill. 223.)

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Rh which they took about with them almost as faithfully as they did Snoop. "How is Downy, anyhow?" asked Harry.

"He's fine," answered the little fellow. "Want to see him?" and he took his cousin out to the barn where Downy had a pen all to himself.

"Snoop's gone," said Freddie, "and so is our silver cup, but maybe we'll get that back. It's in a circus."

"In a circus!" cried Harry. "I should think your cat might be in a circus, but not a silver cup."

"We don't know where Snoop is," went on Freddie, "'cause he got away at the time of the circus wreck," and he explained about it. "But we are almost sure the circus fat lady has our cup."

The Thanksgiving holidays came to an end at last and, much to the regret of the Bobbseys, their visitors, old and young, had to go back to their homes.

"But you'll come again at Christmas; won't you?" asked Flossie as she said good-bye.

"We'll try," said her Uncle Bobbsey. "But

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164 maybe there won't be room, with Santa Claus and all his reindeers."

"Oh, we'll make room for you," spoke Freddie. "Santa Claus won't stay long."

With a merry peal of laughter the visitors went off to the station, waving farewells. Then came rather a quiet time at the Bobbsey house, as there always is when visitors go. There seems to be a sort of loneliness, when company leaves, no matter how many there are in the family, nor what fun there is. But the feeling soon passes.

"Well, we'll soon be at school again," said Bert, a day or so before the opening of the Winter term. "I wish we'd get some snow. Then it would be more fun."

"Yes," said Freddie. "We could build snow forts and have snowball fights. I wish it would snow hard."

"So do I, so we could ride down hill," said Nan. "Is your big bob nearly done, Bert?"

"No, Charley and I have quite a lot of things to do on it yet, but we're going to work every night after school now, and it will soon be finished."

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110 Ill. 223. Basting the Lining to the Collar TO FINISH A REMOVABLE COLLAR. A removable collar for the open neck of a garment not made of sheer material is usually finished with a bias binding about ½ an inch wide finished. Sew one long edge of the binding to the neck edge of the collar (Ill. 224), turn in the other long edge of the seam allowance and baste it over the first sewing. (Ill. 224.) Then stitch or hem it by hand as shown in Illustration 224.

When the removable collar is for a waist of sheer material it is best to finish the neck edge of the garment and collar with picot edging (Chapter 25, page 119) or with a narrow rolled hem. (Chapter 27, page 133.)

For the rolled hem a thread should be run in the neck edge of the collar before rolling it, to keep the size and prevent stretching while rolling the hem and working on it, for the edge is bias.

STANDING COLLAR. If the collar is to be of woolen or silk like the gown, it should be lined with a piece of soft, light silk. Turn over all the edges of the collar and baste. Slip-stitch the lower edge to the neck.

If closed at the left side, the entire collar, except the small portion at the back, is sewed to the neck. The neck of the lining at the left side, which is free, is bound with seam-binding. For a waist with a front closing, bind the left side of the neck with seam-binding, pin the collar around the right side, with the center of collar at the front edge of the right front, and the right end of collar at the center-back seam. (Ill. 225.)

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Rh "I'm going to have skates for Christmas," announced Freddie. "I hope the lake will be frozen over by then."

"I guess it will be," returned Bert. "It's getting colder every night."

The Bobbseys were back at school. For a time Nan and Bert, who were in a higher grade, did not like it so well, as they had a strange teacher, and lessons, too, were more difficult. But they were not children who gave up easily, and soon they were at the head of their class as usual. Their teacher, too, was much nicer than they had thought at first. They had considered her stern, but it was only her way, and soon wore off.

As for Freddie and Flossie, they had advanced but little except in reading, and this opened a new world to them.

"We'll soon be reading books," boasted Freddie, on his way home one day. "And I'm going to read all about firemen, soldiers and Indians."

"Oh, I'm not," said Flossie. "I'm going to read how to be a nurse, so I can take care of you when you're hurt."

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166 "That will be nice," said Freddie.

One day, at recess, Bert saw Jim Osborne motioning to him in a secret sort of fashion.

"Come on with us," said Jim, who was a new boy in school. "Danny Rugg and some of the rest of us are going to have some sport."

"What doing?" asked Bert.

"Smoking cigarettes back of the coal house. I've got a whole pack."

"No; I don't smoke," said Bert quietly.

"Bah! You're afraid!" sneered Jim.

"Cigarettes can't hurt you. It's only cigars and pipes that do."

"Yes, I admit I am afraid," said Bert. "I'm afraid of getting sick. Besides, I promised my mother I wouldn't smoke until I was twenty-one, and I'm not going to tell a story. Anyhow, I've got an uncle who smokes, and he says cigarettes are worse than a pipe or cigars, and he ought to know."

"Aw, come on!" urged Jim.

"No," said Bert firmly, and he would not go. Jim went off with Danny and some of the other boys, and they were laughing among

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Rh themselves. Bert felt that they were laughing at him, but he did not mind.

There was to be an examination of the school by some of the members of the Board of Education late that afternoon, and, directly after recess, Mr. Tetlow went to each room to tell the pupils and teachers to get ready for it, and to put certain work on the blackboards, so it could be seen.

When the principal got to the room where Danny Rugg and his particular chums sat, Mr Tetlow, sniffing the air suspiciously, said:

"I smell smoke!"

"I have been noticing it, too," said the lady teacher. "Perhaps the furnace does not work properly."

"It isn't that kind of smoke," went on Mr. Tetlow. "It is tobacco smoke. Have any of you boys been smoking during recess?" he asked sternly, looking across the room.

No one answered. Danny, Jim, and some of the others seemed to be studying their geography lessons very hard.

"I just want to say a word about cigarette smoking," went on Mr. Tetlow, "for that is

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168 usually how a boy begins. Of smoking in general, when a boy gets to be a man, I have nothing to say. Some say it is injurious, and others not, in moderation. But there can be no doubt that for a growing boy to smoke is very harmful. Again I ask if anyone here has been smoking?"

No one replied. The guilty boys bent deep over their books and did not look up.

"Well, I am sure someone here has," said Mr. Tetlow. "I can smell it plainly." He walked down the aisles, looking sharply from one boy to another. If he was sure who were the guilty ones he gave no sign. "And I want to add," said Mr. Tetlow, "that not only is cigarette smoking harmful to the smoker, but it is dangerous. Many fires have been caused in that way. If I find out who of my pupils have been smoking around the school they will be severely punished."

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text: The Bobbsey Twins at School/Chapter 16

title: The Bobbsey Twins at School/Chapter 16


text:
Author:Mary Victoria Cowden Clarke

Works

 * The Complete Concordance to Shakespeare (1846)
 * "Many Happy Returns of the Day!" A Birth-Day Book, with Charles Cowden Clarke (1860)
 * ‘Shakespeare Proverbs; or, The Wise Saws of Our Wisest Poet Collected into a Modern Instance (1848)
 * Kit Bam's Adventures: or, The Yarns of an Old Mariner (1849)
 * The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines (1850)
 * The Iron Cousin; or, Mutual Influence (1854)
 * Florence Nightingale (1857)
 * World-Noted Women; or, Types of Womanly Attributes of All Lands and Ages (1858)
 * The Life and Labours of Vincent Novello (1864)
 * The Trust and the Remittance (1873)
 * Short Stories in Metrical Prose (1873)
 * A Rambling Story (1874)
 * Recollections of Writers, with Charles Cowden Clarke (1878)
 * The Shakespeare Key (1879)
 * Uncle, Peep, and I: A Child's Novel (1886)
 * Centennial Biographic Sketch of Charles Cowden-Clarke (1887)
 * My Long Life: An Autobiographic Sketch (1897)
 * My Long Life: An Autobiographic Sketch (1897)

Poems

 * Honey from the Weed: Verses (1881)
 * Verse-Waifs (1883)
 * A Score of Sonnets to One Object (1884)
 * Memorial Sonnets (1888)

Translations

 * A Treatise upon Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration, translated from the French of Hector Berlioz (1856)

title: Author:Mary Victoria Cowden Clarke


text: Author talk:William Arthur Shaw

title: Author talk:William Arthur Shaw


text: Author:Joseph Rawson Lumby

title: Author:Joseph Rawson Lumby


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Iambic

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Iambic


text:
Page:Kipps.djvu/100

hour of the class on the following Thursday found Kipps in a state of nearly incredible despondency. He was sitting with his eyes on the reading room clock, his chin resting on his fists and his elbows on the accumulated comic papers that were comic alas! in vain! He paid no heed to the little man in spectacles glaring opposite to him, famishing for Fun. In this place it was he had sat night after night, each night more blissful than the last, waiting until it should be time to go to Her! And then—bliss! And now the hour had come and there was no class! There would be no class now until next October; it might be there would never be a class so far as he was concerned again.

It might be there would never be a class again, for Shalford, taking exception at a certain absent-mindedness that led to mistakes and more particularly to the ticketing of several articles in Kipps' Manchester window upside down, had been "on to" him for the past few days in an exceedingly onerous manner…

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CH. IV He sighed profoundly, pushed the comic papers back—they were rent away from him instantly by the little man in spectacles—and tried the old engravings of Folkestone in the past, that hang about the room. But these, too, failed to minister to his bruised heart. He wandered about the corridors for a time and watched the library indicator for awhile. Wonderful thing that! But it did not hold him for long. People came and laughed near him and that jarred with him dreadfully. He went out of the building and a beastly cheerful barrel organ mocked him in the street. He was moved to a desperate resolve to go down to the beach. There it might be he would be alone. The sea might be rough—and attuned to him. It would certainly be dark.

"If I 'ad a penny I'm blest if I wouldn't go and chuck myself off the end of the pier.… She'd never miss me.…" He followed a deepening vein of thought.

"Penny though! It's tuppence," he said after a space.

He went down Dover Street in a state of profound melancholia—at the pace and mood as it were of his own funeral procession—and he crossed at the corner of Tontine Street heedless of all mundane things. And there it was that Fortune came upon him, in disguise and with a loud shout, the shout of a person endowed with an unusually rich, full voice, followed immediately by a violent blow in the back.

His hat was over his eyes and an enormous weight

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90 rested on his shoulders and something kicked him in the back of his calf.

Then he was on all fours in some mud that Fortune, in conjunction with the Folkestone corporation and in the pursuit of equally mysterious ends, had heaped together even lavishly for his reception.

He remained in that position for some seconds awaiting further developments and believing almost anything broken before his heart. Gathering at last that this temporary violence of things in general was over, and being perhaps assisted by a clutching hand, he arose, and found himself confronting a figure holding a bicycle and thrusting forward a dark face in anxious scrutiny.

"You aren't hurt, Matey?" gasped the figure.

"Was that you 'it me?" said Kipps.

"It's these handles, you know," said the figure with an air of being a fellow sufferer. "They're too low. And when I go to turn, if I don't remember, Bif!—and I'm in to something."

"Well—you give me a oner in the back—anyhow," said Kipps, taking stock of his damages.

"I was coming down hill, you know," explained the bicyclist. "These little Folkstone hills are a Fair Treat. It isn't as though I'd been on the level. I came rather a whop."

"You did that," said Kipps.

"I was back pedalling for all I was worth anyhow," said the bicyclist. "Not that I am worth much back pedalling."

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CH. IV He glanced round and made a sudden movement almost as if to mount his machine. Then he turned as rapidly to Kipps again, who was now stooping down, pursuing the tale of his injuries.

"Here's the back of my trouser leg all tore down," said Kipps, "and I believe I'm bleeding. You reely ought to be more careful"

The stranger investigated the damage with a rapid movement. "Holy Smoke, so you are!" He laid a friendly hand on Kipps' arm. "I say—look here! Come up to my diggings and sew it up. I'm. Of course I'm to blame, and I say" his voice sank to a confidential friendliness. "Here's a slop. Don't let on I ran you down. Haven't a lamp, you know. Might be a bit awkward, for me."

Kipps looked up towards the advancing policeman. The appeal to his generosity was not misplaced. He immediately took sides with his assailant. He stood up as the representative of the law drew nearer. He assumed an air which he considered highly suggestive of an accident not having happened.

"All right," he said, "go on!"

"Right you are," said the cyclist promptly, and led the way, and then, apparently with some idea of deception, called over his shoulder, "I'm tremendous glad to have met you, old chap.

"It really isn't a hundred yards," he said after they had passed the policeman, "it's just round the corner."

"Of course," said Kipps, limping slightly. "I don't

title: Page:Kipps.djvu/103


text:
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92 want to get a chap into trouble. Accidents will happen. Still"

"Oh! rather! I believe you. Accidents will happen. Especially when you get me on a bicycle." He laughed. "You aren't the first I've run down not by any manner of means! I don't think you can be hurt much either. It isn't as though I was scorching. You didn't see me coming. I was back pedalling like anything. Only naturally it seems to you I must have been coming fast. And I did all I could to ease off the bump as I hit you. It was just the treadle I think came against your calf. But it was All Right of you about that policeman, you know. That was a Fair Bit of All Right. Under the Circs, if you'd told him I was riding it might have been forty bob! Forty bob! I'd have had to tell 'em Time is Money. Just now for Mr. H. C.

"I shouldn't have blamed you either, you know. Most men after a bump like that might have been spiteful. The least I can do is to stand you a needle and thread. And a clothes brush. It isn't everyone who'd have taken it like you.

"Scorching! Why if I'd been scorching you'd have—coming as we did—you'd have been knocked silly.

"But I tell you, the way you caught on about that slop was something worth seeing. When I asked you, I didn't half expect it. Bif! Right off. Cool as a cucumber. Had your line at once. I tell you that there isn't many men would have acted as you have

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CH. IV done, I will say that. You acted like a gentleman over that slop."

Kipps' first sense of injury disappeared. He limped along a pace or so behind, making depreciatory noises in response to these flattering remarks and taking stock of the very appreciative person who uttered them.

As they passed the lamps he was visible as a figure with a slight anterior plumpness, progressing buoyantly or knickerbockered legs, with quite enormous calves, legs that, contrasting with Kipps' own narrow practice, were even exuberantly turned out at the knees and toes. A cycling cap was worn very much on one side, and from beneath it protruded carelessly straight wisps of dark red hair, and ever and again an ample nose came into momentary view round the corner. The muscular cheeks of this person and a certain generosity of chin he possessed were blue shaven and he had no moustache. His carriage was spacious and confident, his gestures up and down the narrow deserted back street they traversed, were irresistibly suggestive of ownership; a suggestion of broadly gesticulating shadows were born squatting on his feet and grew and took possession of the road and reunited at last with the shadows of the infinite, as lamp after lamp was passed. Kipps saw by the flickering light of one of them that they were in Little Fenchurch Street, and then they came round a corner sharply into a dark court and stopped at the door of a particularly ramshackle looking little house, held up

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94 between two larger ones, like a drunken man between policemen.

The cyclist propped his machine carefully against the window, produced a key and blew down it sharply. "The lock's a bit tricky," he said, and devoted himself for some moments to the task of opening the door. Some mechanical catastrophe ensued and the door was open.

"You'd better wait here a bit while I get the lamp," he remarked to Kipps; "very likely it isn't filled," and vanished into the blackness of the passage. "Thank God for matches!" he said, and Kipps had an impression of a passage in the transitory pink flare and the bicyclist disappearing into a further room. Kipps was so much interested by these things that for the time he forgot his injuries altogether.

An interval and Kipps was dazzled by a pink shaded kerosene lamp. "You go in," said the red-haired man, "and I'll bring in the bike," and for a moment Kipps was alone in the lamp-lit room. He took in rather vaguely the shabby ensemble of the little apartment, the round table covered with a torn, red, glass-stained cover on which the lamp stood, a mottled looking-glass over the fireplace reflecting this, a disused gas bracket, an extinct fire, a number of dusty postcards and memoranda stuck round the glass, a dusty, crowded paper rack on the mantel with a number of cabinet photographs, a table littered with papers and cigarette ash and a syphon of soda water. Then the cyclist reappeared and Kipps saw his

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CH. IV, rather animated face and bright-reddish, brown eyes for the first time. He was a man perhaps ten years older than Kipps, but his beardless face made them in a way contemporary.

"You behaved all right about that policeman—anyhow," he repeated as he came forward.

"I don't see 'ow else I could 'ave done," said Kipps quite modestly. The cyclist scanned his guest for the first time and decided upon hospitable details.

"We'd better let that mud dry a bit before we brush it. Whiskey there is, good old Methusaleh, Canadian Rye, and there's some brandy that's all right. Which'll you have?"

"I dunno," said Kipps, taken by surprise, and then seeing no other course but acceptance, "well—whiskey, then."

"Right you are, old boy, and if you'll take my advice you'll take it neat. I may not be a particular judge of this sort of thing, but I do know old Methusaleh pretty well. Old Methusaleh—four stars. That's me! Good old Harry Chitterlow and good old Methusaleh. Leave 'em together. Bif! He's gone!"

He laughed loudly, looked about him, hesitated and retired, leaving Kipps in possession of the room and free to make a more precise examination of its contents.

He particularly remarked the photographs that adorned the apartment. They were chiefly

title: Page:Kipps.djvu/107


text:
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96 of ladies, in one case in tights, which Kipps thought a "bit 'ot," but one represented the bicyclist in the costume of some remote epoch. It did not take Kipps long to infer that the others were probably actresses and that his host was an actor, and the presence of the half of a large, coloured playbill seemed to confirm this. A note framed in an Oxford frame that was a little too large for it, he presently demeaned himself to read. "Dear Mr. Chitterlow," it ran its brief course, "if after all you will send the play you spoke of I will endeavour to read it," followed by a stylish but absolutely illegible signature, and across this was written in pencil, "What price, Harry, now?" And in the shadow by the window was a rough and rather able sketch of the bicyclist in chalk on brown paper, calling particular attention to the curvature of the forward lines of his hull and calves and the jaunty carriage of his nose, and labelled unmistakably "Chitterlow." Kipps thought it "rather a take-off." The papers on the table by the syphon were in manuscript. Kipps observed manuscript of a particularly convulsive and blottesque sort and running obliquely across the page.

Presently he heard the metallic clamour as if of a series of irreparable breakages with which the lock of the front door discharged its function, and then Chitterlow reappeared, a little out of breath as if from running and with a starry labelled bottle in his large, freckled hand.

"Sit down, old chap," he said, "sit down. I had to

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text:
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CH. IV go out for it after all. Wasn't a solitary bottle left. However, it's all right now we're here. No, don't sit on that chair, there's sheets of my play on that. That's the one—with the broken arm. I think this glass is clean, but anyhow wash it out with a squizz of syphon and shy it in the fireplace. Here! I'll do it! Lend it here!"

As he spoke Mr. Chitterlow produced a corkscrew from a table drawer, attached and overcame good old Methusaleh's cork in a style a bartender might envy, washed out two tumblers in his simple, effectual manner, and poured a couple of inches of the ancient fluid into each. Kipps took his tumbler, said "Thenks" in an off-hand way, and after a momentary hesitation whether he should say "here's to you!" or not, put it to his lips without that ceremony. For a space fire in his throat occupied his attention to the exclusion of other matters, and then he discovered Mr. Chitterlow with an intensely bulldog pipe alight, seated on the opposite side of the empty fireplace and pouring himself out a second dose of whiskey.

"After all," said Mr. Chitterlow, with his eye on the bottle and a little smile wandering to hide amidst his larger features, "this accident might have been worse. I wanted someone to talk to a bit, and I didn't want to go to a pub, leastways not a Folkstone pub, because as a matter of fact I'd promised Mrs. Chitterlow, who's away, not to, for various reasons, though of course if I'd wanted to I'm just that sort

title: Page:Kipps.djvu/109


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ormonde, James


text:
Page:Kipps.djvu/110

98 I should have all the same, and here we are! It's curious how one runs up against people out bicycling!"

"Isn't it!" said Kipps, feeling that the time had come for him to say something.

"Here we are, sitting and talking like old friends, and half an hour ago we didn't know we existed. Leastways we didn't know each other existed. I might have passed you in the street perhaps and you might have passed me, and how was I to tell that, put to the test, you would have behaved as decently as you have behaved. Only it happened otherwise, that's all. You're not smoking!" he said. "Have a cigarette?"

Kipps made a confused reply that took the form of not minding if he did, and drank another sip of old Methusaleh in his confusion. He was able to follow the subsequent course of that sip for quite a long way. It was as though the old gentleman was brandishing a burning torch through his vitals, lighting him here and lighting him there until at last his whole being was in a glow. Chitterlow produced a tobacco pouch and cigarette papers and with an interesting parenthesis that was a little difficult to follow about some lady named Kitty something or other who had taught him the art when he was as yet only what you might call a nice boy, made Kipps a cigarette, and with a consideration that won Kipps' gratitude suggested that after all he might find a little soda water an improvement with the whiskey. "Some people like it

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text:
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CH. IV that way," said Chitterlow, and then with voluminous emphasis, "I don't."

Emboldened by the weakened state of his enemy Kipps promptly swallowed the rest of him and had his glass at once hospitably replenished. He began to feel he was of a firmer consistency than he commonly believed, and turned his mind to what Chitterlow was saying with the resolve to play a larger part in the conversation than he had hitherto done. Also he smoked through his nose quite successfully, an art he had only very recently acquired.

Meanwhile Chitterlow explained that he was a playwright, and the tongue of Kipps was unloosened to respond that he knew a chap, or rather one of their fellows knew a chap, or at least to be perfectly correct this fellow's brother did, who had written a play. In response to Chitterlow's enquiries he could not recall the title of the play, nor where it had appeared nor the name of the manager who produced it, though he thought the title was something about "Love's Ransom" or something like that.

"He made five 'undred pounds by it, though," said Kipps. "I know that."

"That's nothing," said Chitterlow, with an air of experience that was extremely convincing. "Nothing. May seem a big sum to you, but I can assure you it's just what one gets any day. There's any amount of money, an-ny amount, in a good play."

"I dessay," said Kipps, drinking.

"Any amount of money!"

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100 Chitterlow began a series of illustrative instances. He was clearly a person of quite unequalled gift for monologue. It was as though some conversational dam had burst upon Kipps, and in a little while he was drifting along upon a copious rapid of talk about all sorts of theatrical things by one who knows all about them, and quite incapable of anticipating whither that rapid meant to carry him. Presently somehow they had got to anecdotes about well-known theatrical managers, little Teddy Bletherskite, artful old Chumps, and the magnificent Behemoth, "petted to death, you know, fair sickened, by all these society women," Chitterlow described various personal encounters with these personages, always with modest self-depreciation, and gave Kipps a very amusing imitation of old Chumps in a state of intoxication. Then he took two more stiff doses of old Methusaleh in rapid succession.

Kipps reduced the hither end of his cigarette to a pulp as he sat "dessaying" and "quite believing" Chitterlow in the sagest manner and admiring the easy way in which he was getting on with this very novel and entertaining personage. He had another cigarette made for him, and then Chitterlow, assuming by insensible degrees more and more of the manner of a rich and successful playwright being interviewed by a young admirer, set himself to answer questions which sometimes Kipps asked and sometimes Chitterlow, about the particulars and methods of his career. He undertook this self-imposed task with great

title: Page:Kipps.djvu/112


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/I

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/I


text:
Page:Kipps.djvu/113

CH. IV and vigour, treating the matter indeed with such fulness that at times it seemed lost altogether under a thicket of parentheses, footnotes and episodes that branched and budded from its stem. But it always emerged again, usually by way of illustration to its own degressions. Practically it was a mass of material for the biography of a man who had been everywhere and done everything (including the Hon. Thomas Norgate, which was a Record), and in particular had acted with great distinction and profit (he dated various anecdotes, "when I was getting thirty, or forty or fifty, dollars a week") throughout America and the entire civilised world.

And as he talked on and on in that full, rich, satisfying voice he had, and as old Methusaleh, indisputably a most drunken old reprobate of a whiskey, busied himself throughout Kipps, lighting lamp after lamp until the entire framework of the little draper was illuminated and glowing like some public building on a festival, behold Chitterlow and Kipps with him and the room in which they sat, were transfigured! Chitterlow became in very truth that ripe, full man of infinite experience and humour and genius, fellow of Shakespeare and Ibsen and Maeterlinck (three names he placed together quite modestly far above his own) and no longer ambiguously dressed in a sort of yachting costume with cycling knickerbockers, but elegantly if unconventionally attired, and the room ceased to be a small and shabby room in a Folkestone slum, and grew larger and more richly furnished, and the

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102 photographs were curious old pictures, and the rubbish on the walls the most rare and costly bric-à-brac, and the indisputable paraffin lamp, a soft and splendid light. A certain youthful heat that to many minds might have weakened old Methusaleh's starry claim to a ripe antiquity, vanished in that glamour, two burnt holes and a claimant darn in the table cloth, moreover, became no more than the pleasing contradictions natural in the house of genius, and as for Kipps!—Kipps was a bright young man of promise, distinguished by recent quick, courageous proceedings not too definitely insisted upon, and he had been rewarded by admission to a sanctum and confidences, for which the common prosperous, for which "society women" even, were notoriously sighing in vain. "Don't want them, my boy; they'd simply play old Harry with the work, you know! Chaps outside, bank clerks and university fellows, think the life's all that sort of thing. Don't you believe 'em. Don't you believe 'em."

And then!

"Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom.… right in the middle of a most entertaining digession on flats who join touring companies under the impression that they are actors, Kipps much amused at their flatness as exposed by Chitterlow.

"Lor'!" said Kipps like one who awakens, "that's not eleven!"

"Must be," said Chitterlow. "It was nearly ten when I got that whiskey. It's early yet"

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CH. IV "All the same I must be going," said Kipps, and stood up. "Even now—maybe. Fact is—I 'ad no idea. The 'ouse door shuts at 'arf past ten, you know. I ought to 'ave thought before."

"Well, if you must go! I tell you what. I'll come, too.… Why! There's your leg, old man! Clean forgot it! You can't go through the streets like that. I'll sew up the tear. And meanwhile have another whiskey."

"I ought to be getting on now," protested Kipps feebly, and then Chitterlow was showing him how to kneel on a chair in order that the rent trouser leg should be attainable and old Methusaleh on his third round was busy repairing the temporary eclipse of Kipps' arterial glow. Then suddenly Chitterlow was seized with laughter and had to leave off sewing to tell Kipps that the scene wouldn't make a bad bit of business in a farcical comedy, and then he began to sketch out the farcical comedy and that led him to a digression about another farcical comedy of which he had written a ripping opening scene which wouldn't take ten minutes to read. It had something in it that had never been done on the stage before, and was yet perfectly legitimate, namely, a man with a live beetle down the back of his neck trying to seem at his ease in a roomful of people.…

"They won't lock you out," he said. In a singularly reassuring tone, and began to read and act what he explained to be (not because he had written it, but simply because he knew it was so on account of his

title: Page:Kipps.djvu/115


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104 exceptional experience of the stage) and what Kipps also quite clearly saw to be, one of the best opening scenes that had ever been written.

When it was over Kipps, who rarely swore, was inspired to say the scene was "damned fine" about six times over, whereupon as if by way of recognition, Chitterlow took a simply enormous portion of the inspiring antediluvian, declaring at the same time that he had rarely met a "finer" intelligence than Kipps' (stronger there might be, that he couldn't say with certainty as yet, seeing how little after all they had seen of each other, but a finer never); that it was a shame such a gallant and discriminating intelligence should be nightly either locked up or locked out at ten—well, ten thirty then—and that he had half a mind to recommend old somebody or other (apparently the editor of a London daily paper) to put on Kipps forthwith as a dramatic critic in the place of the current incapable.

"I don't think I've ever made up anything for print," said Kipps; "ever. I'd have a thundering good try, though, if ever I got a chance. I would that! I've written window tickets often enough. Made 'em up and everything. But that's different."

"You'd come to it all the fresher for not having done it before. And the way you picked up every point in that scene, my boy, was a Fair Treat! I tell you, you'd knock William Archer into fits. Not so literary, of course, you'd be, but I don't believe in literary critics any more than in literary playwrights.

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CH. IV Plays aren't literature—that's just the point they miss. Plays are plays. No! That won't hamper you anyhow. You're wasted down here, I tell you. Just as I was, before I took to acting. I'm hanged if I wouldn't like your opinion on these first two acts of that tragedy I'm on to. I haven't told you about that. It wouldn't take me more than an hour to read.…"

Then so far as he could subsequently remember, Kipps had "another," and then it would seem that suddenly, regardless of the tragedy, he insisted that he "reelly must be getting on," and from that point his memory became irregular. Certain things have remained quite clearly, and as it is a matter of common knowledge that intoxicated people forget what happens to them, it follows that he was not intoxicated. Chitterlow came with him partly to see him home and partly for a freshener before turning in. Kipps recalled afterwards very distinctly how in Little Fenchurch Street he discovered that he could not walk straight and also that Chitterlow's needle and thread in his still unmended trouser leg was making an annoying little noise on the pavement behind him. He tried to pick up the needle suddenly by surprise and somehow tripped and fell and then Chitterlow, laughing uproariously, helped him up. "It wasn't a bicycle this time, old boy," said Chitterlow, and that appeared to them both at the time as being a quite

title: Page:Kipps.djvu/117


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106 good joke indeed. They punched each other about on the strength of it.

For a time after that Kipps certainly pretended to be quite desperately drunk and unable to walk and Chitterlow entered into the pretence and supported him. After that Kipps remembered being struck with the extremely laughable absurdity of going down hill to Tontine Street in order to go up hill again to the Emporium, and trying to get that idea into Chitterlow's head and being unable to do so on account of his own merriment or Chitterlow's evident intoxication, and his next memory after that was of the exterior of the Emporium, shut and darkened, and, as it were, frowning at him with all its stripes of yellow and green. The chilly way in which "Shalford" glittered in the moonlight printed itself with particular vividness on his mind. It appeared to Kipps that that establishment was closed to him for evermore. Those gilded letters, in spite of appearances, spelt for him and exile from Folkestone. He would never do wood-carving, never see Miss Walshingham again. Not that he had ever hoped to see her again. But this was the knife, this was final. He had stayed out, he had got drunk, there had been that row about the Manchester window dressing only three days ago… In the retrospect he was quite sure that he was perfectly sober then and at bottom extremely unhappy, but he kept a brave face on the matter nevertheless, and declared stoutly he didn't care if he was locked out.

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CH. IV Whereupon Chitterlow slapped him on the back very hard and told him that was a "Bit of All Right," and assured him that when he himself had been a clerk in Sheffield before he took to acting he had been locked out sometimes for six nights running.

"What's the result?" said Chitterlow. "I could go back to that place now, and they'd be glad to have me.… Glad to have me," he repeated, and then added, "that is to say, if they remember me—which isn't very likely."

Kipps asked a little weakly, "What am I to do?"

"Keep out," said Chitterlow. "You can't knock 'em up now—that would give you Right away. You'd better try and sneak in in the morning with the Cat. That'll do you. You'll probably get in all right in the morning if nobody gives you away."

Then for a time—perhaps as the result of that slap in the back—Kipps felt decidedly queer, and acting on Chitterlow's advice went for a bit of a freshener upon the Leas. After a time he threw off the temporary queerness and found Chitterlow patting him on the shoulder and telling him that he'd be all right now in a minute and all the better for it—which he was. And the wind having dropped and the night being now a really very beautiful moonlight night indeed, and all before Kipps to spend as he liked and with only a very little tendency to spin round now and again to mar its splendour, they set out to walk the whole length of the Leas to the Sandgate lift and back, and as they walked Chitterlow spoke first of

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text:
Page:Kipps.djvu/120

108 moonlight transfiguring the sea and then of moonlight transfiguring faces, and so at last he came to the topic of Love, and upon that he dwelt a great while, and with a wealth of experience and illustrative anecdote that seemed remarkably pungent and material to Kipps. He forgot his lost Miss Walshingham and his outraged employer again. He became as it were a desperado by reflection.

Chitterlow had had adventures, a quite astonishing variety of adventures in this direction; he was a man with a past, a really opulent past, and he certainly seemed to like to look back and see himself amidst its opulence.

He made no consecutive history, but he gave Kipps vivid, momentary pictures of relations and entanglements. One moment he was in flight—only too worthily in flight—before the husband of a Malay woman in Cape Town. At the next he was having passionate complications with the daughter of a clergyman in York. Then he passed to a remarkable grouping at Seaford.

"They say you can't love two women at once," said Chitterlow. "But I tell you" He gesticulated and raised his ample voice. "It's Rot! Rot!"

"I know that," said Kipps.

"Why, when I was in the smalls with Bessie Hopper's company there were three." He laughed and decided to add, "Not counting Bessie, that is."

He set out to reveal Life as it is lived in touring companies, a quite amazing jungle of interwoven

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CH. IV "affairs" it appeared to be, a mere amorous winepress for the crushing of hearts.

"People say this sort of thing's a nuisance and interferes with Work. I tell you it isn't. The Work couldn't go on without it. They must do it. They haven't the Temperament if they don't. If they hadn't the Temperament they wouldn't want to act, if they have—Bif!"

"You're right," said Kipps. "I see that."

Chitterlow proceeded to a close criticism of certain historical indiscretions of Mr. Clement Scott respecting the morals of the stage. Speaking in confidence and not as one who addresses the public, he admitted regretfully the general truth of these comments. He proceeded to examine various typical instances that had almost forced themselves upon him personally, and with especial regard to the contrast between his own character towards women and that of the Hon. Thomas Norgate, with whom it appeared he had once been on terms of great intimacy.…

Kipps listened with emotion to these extraordinary recollections. They were wonderful to him, they were incredibly credible. Of course the tumultuous, passionate course was the way life ran—except in high-class establishments! Such things happened in novels, in plays—only he had been fool enough not to understand they happened. His share in the conversation was now indeed no more than faint writing in the margin; Chitterlow was talking quite continuously. He expanded his magnificent voice into huge

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