Christopher Morley - In The Sweet Dry And Dry

"You don't understand," she said demurely. "You may remember that

Mr. Quimbleton's card gave his name as associate director of the

Happiness Corporation?"

"Yes," said Bleak.

"I am the Director," she said.

"YOU? But how can that be? Why, your father-"

"That's just why. Any one who had to live with Father would be sure to take the opposite side. He's a Pan-Anti. I'm a Pan-Pro.

Those poems I have written for him were merely a form of camouflage. Besides, they were so absurd they were sure to do harm to the cause. That's why I wrote them. I'll explain it all to you a little later."

At this moment they were held up by an armed guard of chuffs, stationed at the city limits. These saluted respectfully on seeing the Bishop's daughter, but examined Bleak's passport with care.

Then the car passed on into the suburbs.

As they neared the fields of actual battle, Bleak was able to see something of the embittered nature of the conflict. In the hot white sunlight of the summer morning platoons of Pan-Antis could be seen marching across the fields, going up from the rest centers to the firing line. In one place a shallow trench had been dug, from which the chuffs were firing upon a blackberry hedge at long range. One by one the unprincipled berries were being picked off by expert marksmen. The dusty highway was stained with ghastly rivulets and dribbles of scarlet juices. At a crossroads they came upon a group of chuffs who had shown themselves to be conscientious objectors: these were being escorted to an internment camp where they would be horribly punished by confinement to lecture rooms with Chautauqua lecturers. War is always cruel, and even non-combatants did not escape. In the heat of combat, the neutrality of an orchard of plum trees had been violated, and wagonloads of the innocent fruit were being carried away into slavery and worse than death. A young apple tree was standing in front of a firing squad, and Bleak closed his eyes rather than watch the tragic spectacle. The apples were all green, and too young to ferment, but the chuffs were ruthless once their passions were roused.

They passed through the battle zone, and into a strip of country where pine woods flourished on a sandy soil. The fragrant breath of sun-warmed balsam came down about them, and Miss Chuff let out the motor as though to escape from the scene of carnage they had just witnessed.

"Whither are we bound?" asked the editor, with pardonable curiosity, as their tires hummed over a smooth road.

"Cana, New Jersey," said Miss Chuff, "where poor Quimbleton is in hiding. He is in very sore straits. He narrowly escaped capture after the parade the other day. I managed to get him smuggled out of the city in the same ambulance that carried Father's horse. The horse was drunk and Quim was sober. Wasn't that an irony of fate?

But I promised to tell you how I became associated with the

Happiness Corporation."

My story," said Miss Chuff, as the car slid along the road, "is rich in pathos. My father, as you can imagine, is an impossible man to live with. My poor mother was taken to an asylum years ago.

Her malady takes a curious form: she is never violent, but spends all her time in poring over books, magazines and papers. Every time she finds the word HUSBAND in print she crosses it out with blue pencil.

"From my earliest days I was accustomed to hear very little else but talk about liquor. The fairy tales that most children are allowed to enjoy merely as stories were explained to me by my father as allegories bearing upon the sinister seductions of drink. Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, for instance, became a symbol of young womanhood pursued by the devouring Bronx cocktail.

The princess from whose mouth came toads and snakes was (of course) a princess under the influence of creme de menthe.

Cinderella was a young girl who had been brought low by taking a dash of brandy in her soup. Every dragon, with which good fairy tales are liberally provided, was the Demon Rum. It is really amazing what stirring prohibition propaganda fairy tales contain if you know how to interpret them.

"All this kind of palaver naturally roused my childish curiosity as to the subject of intoxicants. But, like a docile daughter, I

fell into the career marked out for me by my father. I became a militant for the Pan-Antis. I distributed tracts by the million; I

wrote a little poem on the idea that the gates of hell are swinging doors with slats. I can honestly say that I never felt any real hankering for liquor until it was prohibited altogether.

That is a curious feature of human nature, that as soon as you forbid a thing it becomes irresistibly alluring. You remember the story of Mrs. Bluebeard.

"It occurred to me, after booze had gone, that it was a sad thing that I, Bishop Chuff's daughter, who was devoting my life to the prohibition cause, should have not the slightest knowledge of the nature of this hideous evil we had been pursuing. I brooded over this a great deal, and fell into a melancholy state. The thought came to me, there must be some virtue in drink, or why would so many people have stubbornly contested its abolition? It would be too long a story to tell you all the details, but it was at that time that I first became aware of my psychic gift."

"Your psychic gift?" queried Bleak, wondering.

She turned her bright beer-brown eyes upon him gravely. "Yes," she said, "I am an alcoholic medium. It is the latest and most superior form of spiritualism. By gazing upon crystalparticularly upon an empty tumbler-I am able to throw myself into a trance in which I can communicate with departed spirits. A

good drink does not die, you know: its soul hovers radiantly on the twentieth plane, and through the occult power of a medium those who loved it in life can get in touch with it once more.

Through these trances of mine I have been privileged to put many bereaved ones in communication with their dear departed spirits.

To hear the table-rappings and the shouts of ecstasy you would perceive that a great deal of the anguish of separation is assuaged."

"Do you often have these trances?" said Bleak, with a certain wistfulness.

"They are not hard to induce," she said. "All that is necessary for a seance is a round table, preferably of some highly polished brown wood, a brass rail for the worshipers to put their feet on, and an empty tumbler to concentrate the power of yearning. If those present all wish hard enough there is sure to be a successful reunion with the Beyond."

"But surely," said the fascinated editor, "surely not any-well, actual MATERIALIZATION?"

"Oh, no; but the communion of souls produces quite sufficient results. You see, so many fine spirits passed over at once, suddenly, on that First of July, that the twentieth plane is quite thronged with them, and they are just as eager to come back as their friends could be to welcome them. One good yearn deserves another, as we say. The only time when these seances fail is when some inharmonious soul is present-some personality not completely

EN RAPPORT with the spirit of the gathering. I remember, for instance, an occasion when a gentleman from Kentucky had most ardently desired to get into communication with the astrals of some mint juleps he had loved very deeply in life. Everything seemed propitious, but though I struggled hard I simply could not get the julep spirit to descend to our mortal plane. Finally I

made inquiry and found that one of the guests was a root-beer manufacturer. Of course you may say that was petty jealousy on the side of the departed, but even these vanished spirits have their human phases."

She was silent for a moment.

"You can imagine," she said, "what a perplexity I was in when I