One Friday, when I was confined to my room with a touch of neuralgia (it was in my face, if you are interested, and the whole right side swelled up until it was twice its normal size--I'd like to tell you more about it some time), I could hear the sounds of carnival going on downstairs. The noises made by women playing bridge are distinctive.

At first the listener is aware of a sort of preliminary conversational murmur, with a running accompaniment of shuffling pasteboards. Then follows an unnatural quiet, punctuated by the thud of jeweled knuckles or the clank of bracelets as the cards are played against the baize, with now and then little squeals of dismay or delight from some of the more demonstrative and an occasional "Good for you, partner!" from an appreciative dummy. Gradually, as the hand draws toward its close, there begins a low sound, like the murmurings of the stage mob in the wings, which rapidly increases, until the room is filled with a shrill chatter, resembling that in the Bird House in Central Park, from which there is distinguishable merely a wild medley:

"If you had led me your queen--was so afraid she might trump in with--my dear, I didn't have a face card in my--threw away just the wrong--had the jack, 10, 9, and 7--thought Alice had the king--ace and three little ones--how about honors?--my dear, _simply_ frightful--if you had returned my lead--my _dear_!"

This listening in at bridge, however, was the nearest I had ever been to the front, until it came time for the Friday Afternoon Club to let down the bars and have a Men's Night. I had no illusions about this "Men's Night," but it was a case of my learning to play bridge and accompanying Dora, or of her getting some man in from off the sidewalk to take my place, and I figured that it would cause less talk if I were there to play myself. As I think it over now, I feel that the strange-man scheme might have worked out with less comment being made than my playing drew down.

But it was for this purpose that I allowed myself to be instructed in the rudiments of bridge. I had nothing permanent in mind in absorbing these principles, fully expecting to forget them again the day after the party. I miscalculated by about one day, it now seems.

The expert, whose article has been such an inspiration to me, had some neat little diagrams drawn for him, showing just where the cards lay in the four hands, and with the players indicated as A, B, Y, and Z; apparently the same people, come up in the world, who, in our algebras some years ago, used to buy and sell apples to each other with feverish commercialism and to run races with all sorts of unfair handicaps. What a small world it is, after all!

It seems to me, therefore, that, since this is a pretty fairly technical article, it might be well if I were to utilize the same diagrammatic device and terse method of description, to show the exact course of the first hand in which I partic.i.p.ated at the party.

A and B are our opponents, X my partner, and I (oddly enough) myself.

A is Ralph Thibbets, one of those cool devils who think they know all about a game, and usually do. He has an irritating way of laying down his cards, when the hand is about half played, and saying: "Well, the rest are mine," and the most irritating part of it all is that, when you have insisted on figuring it out for yourself, he is found to be right. I disliked him from the first.

B is Mrs. Lucas, who breathes hard and says nothing, but clanks her cards down with finality, seeming to say: "That for you!" She got me nervous.

X, my partner, used to be a good friend of mine. And, so far as I am concerned, I would be perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones and be on friendly terms again.

In utilizing the expert's method of description, I shall improve on it slightly by also indicating the conversation accompanying each play, a feature which is of considerable importance in a game.

B deals, and finally makes it three diamonds, after X has tried to bid hearts without encouragement from me. I pa.s.s as a matter of principle, not being at all sure of this bidding proposition.

I lead, with a clear field and no particular object in view, the 8 of diamonds. It looks as uncompromising as any card in my hand. "Leading _trumps_," says X with a raising of the eyebrows. "What do you know about that!" I exclaim. "I had forgotten that they were trumps. I must be asleep. Like the old Irishman when St. Peter asked him where he came from, and he said: 'Begorra--'" A cuts this story short by playing the 3 of diamonds; X, with some asperity, discards the 3 of spades, and B takes the trick with the 10-spot. Silence.

"That story of the Irishman and St. Peter," I continue, "was told to me by a fellow in Buffalo last week who had just come from France. He said that while he was in a place called 'Mousong,' or 'Mousang,' he actually saw--"

"Your play," says X. "Oh, I beg your pardon," I say, "whose jack of spades is that?" "Mine," says B, drumming on the table with her finger nails and looking about the room at the pictures. Having more poor diamonds than anything else in my hand, and aiming to get them out of the way as soon as possible to give the good cards a chance, I play the 5 of diamonds.

"What, trumping it? Have you no spades?" shouts A. I can see that I have him rattled; so, although, as a matter of fact, I have got plenty of spades, I smile knowingly and sit tight. These smart Alecs make me sick, telling me what I should play and what I should not play. A accepts the inevitable and plays his 2-spot. X, considerably cheered up, plays the 4 and says: "Our trick, partner." I pick up the cards and mix them with those already in my hand, reverting, for the time, to poker tactics. This error, alone among all that I make during the game, is un.o.bserved.

"Well, I suppose that you people are all excited over that new baby up at your house," I say pleasantly to A, just to show him that I can be gracious in victory as well as in defeat. "Let's see, is it a boy or a girl?"

"It's _your lead_!" he replies shortly.

"I beg your pardon," I say; "I certainly must be asleep to-night."

And, as my thumb is on the 5 of diamonds, I lead it.

"Here, here!" says A, "wasn't it the 5 of diamonds that you trumped in with just a minute ago?" That man has second-sight. As a matter of fact, I suspect that there is something crooked about him. "Yes, it is," corroborates B in her longest speech of the evening. X says: "Where _is_ that trick that we took?" And then it is discovered that it has found its way into my hand, from which it is disentangled with considerable trouble and segregated. As for me, I pa.s.s the whole thing off as a joke.

"I saw in the paper this morning," I began when the situation has become a little less complicated, "where a woman in Perth Amboy found a hundred dollars in the lining of an old lounge in--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Here, here!' says A, 'wasn't it the 5 of diamonds that you trumped in with just a minute ago?'"]

"It's your lead, if you don't mind," says A very distinctly. "You have made only one false start out of a possible three. Try again." I pretend not to hear this sarcasm, and, just to show him that there is life in the old dog yet, I lead my ace of spades.

"Look here, my dear sir!" says A, quite upset by now. "Only one hand ago you refused spades and trumped them. That revoking on your part gives us three tricks and we throw up the hand."

"Fair enough," I retort cheerfully, "three is just what you bid, isn't it? Quite a coincidence, I call it," and with that I throw my cards on the table with considerable relief. Nothing good could have come of this hand, even if we had played until midnight.

From all sides now arose the familiar sounds of the post-mortem: "I had the jack, 10, 9, and 7, all good, but I just couldn't get in with them.... If you had only led me your king, we could have set them at least two.... I knew that Grace had the queen, but I didn't dare try to finesse.... We had simple honors.... As soon as I saw you leading spades, I knew that there was nothing in it," etc., etc.

But at our table there was no post-mortem. Not because there had been no death, but there seemed to be nothing to say about it. So we sat, marking down our scores, until Dora came up behind me and said: "Well, dear, how is your game coming on?"

As no one else seemed about to speak, I said: "Oh, finely, I'm getting the hang of it in no time."

My partner muttered something about hanging being too good, which seemed a bit uncalled for.

And so I went through the evening, meeting new people and making new friends. And, owing to Dora's having neglected to teach me the details of score keeping, I had to make a system up for myself, with the result that I finished the evening with a total of 15,000 points on my card and won the first prize.

"Beginner's luck," I called it with modest good nature.

IX

FROM NINE TO FIVE

One of the necessary qualifications of an efficient business man in these days of industrial literature seems to be the ability to write, in clear and idiomatic English, a 1,000-word story on how efficient he is and how he got that way. A glance through any one of our more racy commercial magazines will serve nicely to ill.u.s.trate my point, for it was after glancing through one of them only five minutes ago that the point suggested itself to me.

"What Is Making Our Business Grow;" "My $10,000 System of Carbon-Copy Hunting;" "Making the Turn-Over Turn In;" "If I Can Make My Pencil Sharpenings Work, Why Can't You?" "Getting Sales Out of Sahara," etc., are some of the intriguing t.i.tles which catch the eye of the student of world affairs as he thumbs over the business magazines on the news-stands before buying his newspaper. It seems as if the entire business world were devoting its working hours to the creation of a school of introspective literature.

But the trouble with these writers is that they are all successful.

There is too much sameness to their stuff. They have their little troubles at first, it is true, such as lack of coordination in the central typing department, or congestion of office boys in the room where the water cooler is situated; but sooner or later you may be perfectly sure that Right will triumph and that the young salesman will bring in the order that puts the firm back on its feet again.

They seem to have no imagination, these writers of business confessions. What the art needs is some Strindberg of Commerce to put down on paper the sordid facts of Life as they really are, and to show, in bitter words of cynical realism, that ink erasers are not always segregated or vouchers always all that they should be, and that, behind the happy exterior of many a mahogany railing, all is not so gosh-darned right with the world after all.

Now, without setting myself up as a Strindberg, I would like to start the ball rolling toward a more realistic school of business literature by setting down in my rough, impulsive way a few of the items in the account of "How We Make Our Business Lose $100,000 a Year."

All that I ask in the way of equipment is an ill.u.s.tration showing a square-jawed, clean-cut American business man sitting at a desk and shaking his finger at another man, very obviously the head of the sales department because it says so under the picture, who is standing with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, gnawing at a big, black cigar, and looking out through the window at the smoke-stacks of the works. With this picture as a starter, and a chart or two, I can build up a very decent business story around them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A square-jawed American business man, etc., shaking his finger at another."]

In the first place let me say that what we have done in our business any firm can do in theirs. It is not that we have any extraordinary talents along organization lines. We simply have taken the lessons learned in everyday trading, have tabulated and filed them in triplicate. Then we have forgotten them.

I can best give an idea of the secret of our mediocrity as a business organization by outlining a typical day in our offices. I do this in no spirit of boasting, but simply to show these thousands of systematized business men who are devoting themselves to literature that somewhere in all this miasma of success there shines a ray of inefficiency, giving promise of the day that is to come.

The first part of the morning in our establishment is devoted to the mail. This starts the day off right, for it gives every one something to do, which is, I have found, a big factor in keeping the place looking busy.

Personally I am not what is known as a "snappy" dictator. It makes me nervous to have a stenographer sitting there waiting for me to say something so that she can pounce on it and tear it into hieroglyphics.

I feel that, mentally, she is checking me up with other men who have dictated to her, and that I am being placed in Cla.s.s 5a, along with the licensed pilots and mental defectives, and the more I think of it the more incoherent I become. If exact and detailed notes were to be preserved of one of my dictated letters, mental processes, and all, they might read something like this:

"Good morning, Miss Kettle.... Take a letter, please ... to the Nipco Drop Forge and Tool Company, Schenectady ... S-c-h-e-c--er--well, Schenectady; you know how to spell that, I guess, Miss Kettle, ha!

ha!... Nipco Drop Forge and Tool Company, Schenectady, New York....

Gentlemen--er (business of touching finger tips and looking at the ceiling meditatively)--Your favor of the 17th inst. at hand, and in reply would state that--er (I should have thought this letter out before beginning to dictate and decided just what it _is_ that we desire to state in reply)--and in reply would state that--er ... our Mr. Mellish reports that--er ... where is that letter from Mr.

Mellish, Miss Kettle?... The one about the castings.... Oh, never mind, I guess I can remember what he said.... Let's see, where were we?... Oh, yes, that our Mr. Mellish reports that he shaw the sipment--I mean _saw_ the _shipment_--what's the matter with me? (this girl must think that I'm a perfect fool) ... that he shaw the sipment in question on the platform of the station at Miller's Falls, and that it--er ... ah ... ooom ... (I'll have this girl asleep in her chair in a minute. I'll bet that she goes and tells the other girls that she has just taken a letter from a man with the mind of an eight-year-old boy).... We could, therefore, comma,... what's the matter?... Oh, I didn't finish that other sentence, I guess.... Let's see, how did it go?... Oh, yes ... and that I, or rather _it_, was in good shape ...

er, cross that out, please (this girl is simply wasting her time here.