A Book of Burlesques by H. L. Mencken (free ebook reader for pc .txt) 📕

consequence upon its possessor. And, by one of the mysteries of viscerology, it confers even more stateliness upon its ex-possessor!

Alas, what would you! Why is the stomach such a libertine and outlaw in England, and so highly respectable in the United States? No Englishman of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal Family. To avoid the necessity—for Englishmen, too, are subject to the colic—he employs various far-fetched euphemisms, among them, the poetical Little Mary. No such squeamishness is known in America. The American discusses his stomach as freely as he discusses his business. More, he regards its name with a degree of respect verging upon reverence—and so he uses it as a euphemism for the whole region from the diaphragm to the pelvic arch. Below his heart he has only a stomach and a vermiform appendix.

In the Englishman that large region is filled entirely by his liver, at least in polite conversation. He never mentions his kidneys save to [192]his medical adviser, but he will tell even a parlor maid that he is feeling liverish. “Sorry, old chap; I’m not up to it. Been seedy for a fortnight. Touch of liver, I dessay. Never felt quite fit since I came Home. Bones full of fever. Damned old liver always kicking up. Awfully sorry, old fellow. Awsk me again. Glad to, pon my word.” But never the American! Nay, the American keeps his liver for his secret thoughts. Hobnailed it may be, and the most interesting thing within his frontiers, but he would blush to mention it to a lady.

Myself intensely ignorant of anatomy, and even more so of the punctilio, I yet attempted, one rainy day, a roster of the bodily parts in the order of their respectability. Class I was small and exclusive; when I had put in the heart, the brain, the hair, the eyes and the vermiform appendix, I had exhausted all the candidates. Here were the five aristocrats, of dignity even in their diseases—appendicitis, angina pectoris, aphasia, acute alcoholism, astigmatism: what a row of a’s! Here were the dukes, the cardinals, nay, the princes of the blood. Here were the supermembers; the beyond-parts.

In Class II I found a more motley throng, led by the collar-bone on the one hand and the [193]tonsils on the other. And in Class III—but let me present my classification and have done:

CLASS II Collar-bone Stomach (American) Liver (English) Bronchial tubes Arms (excluding elbows) Tonsils Vocal chords Ears Cheeks Chin CLASS III Elbows Ankles Aorta Teeth (if natural) Shoulders Windpipe Lungs Neck Jugular vein CLASS IV Stomach (English) Liver (American) Solar plexus[194] Hips Calves Pleura Nose Feet (bare) Shins CLASS V Teeth (if false) Heels Toes Kidneys Knees Diaphragm Thyroid gland Legs (female) Scalp CLASS VI Thighs Paunch Œsophagus Spleen Pancreas Gall-bladder Cæcum

I made two more classes, VII and VIII, but they entered into anatomical details impossible [195]of discussion in a book designed to be read aloud at the domestic hearth. Perhaps I shall print them in the Medical Times at some future time. As my classes stand, they present mysteries enough. Why should the bronchial tubes (Class II) be so much lordlier than the lungs (Class III) to which they lead? And why should the œsophagus (Class VI) be so much less lordly than the stomach (Class II in the United States, Class IV in England) to which it leads? And yet the fact in each case is known to us all. To have a touch of bronchitis is almost fashionable; to have pneumonia is merely bad luck. The stomach, at least in America, is so respectable that it dignifies even seasickness, but I have never heard of any decent man who ever had any trouble with his œsophagus.

If you wish a short cut to a strange organ’s standing, study its diseases. Generally speaking, they are sure indices. Let us imagine a problem: What is the relative respectability of the hair and the scalp, close neighbors, offspring of the same osseous tissue? Turn to baldness and dandruff, and you have your answer. To be bald is no more than a genial jocosity, a harmless foible—but to have dandruff is almost as bad as to have beri-beri. [196]Hence the fact that the hair is in Class I, while the scalp is at the bottom of Class V. So again and again. To break one’s collar-bone (Class II) is to be in harmony with the nobility and gentry; to crack one’s shin (Class IV) is merely vulgar. And what a difference between having one’s tonsils cut out (Class II) and getting a new set of false teeth (Class V)!

Wherefore? Why? To what end? Why is the stomach so much more respectable (even in England) than the spleen; the liver (even in America) than the pancreas; the windpipe than the œsophagus; the pleura than the diaphragm? Why is the collar-bone the undisputed king of the osseous frame? One can understand the supremacy of the heart: it plainly bosses the whole vascular system. But why do the bronchial tubes wag the lungs? Why is the chin superior to the nose? The ankles to the shins? The solar plexus to the gall-bladder?

I am unequal to the penetration of this great ethical, æsthetical and sociological mystery. But in leaving it, let me point to another and antagonistic one: to wit, that which concerns those viscera of the lower animals that we use for food. The kidneys in man are far down the scale—far down in Class V, along with false teeth, the scalp and the female leg. But [197]the kidneys of the beef steer, the calf, the sheep, or whatever animal it is whose kidneys we eat—the kidneys of this creature are close to the borders of Class I. What is it that young Capt. Lionel Basingstoke, M.P., always orders when he drops in at Gatti’s on his way from his chambers in the Albany to that flat in Tyburnia where Mrs. Vaughn-Grimsby is waiting for him to rescue her from her cochon of a husband? What else but deviled kidneys? Who ever heard of a gallant young English seducer who did’t eat deviled kidneys—not now and then, not only on Sundays and legal holidays, but every day, every evening?

Again, and by way of postscript No. 2, concentrate your mind upon sweetbreads. Sweetbreads are made in Chicago of the pancreases of horned cattle. From Portland to Portland they belong to the first class of refined delicatessen. And yet, on the human plane, the pancreas is in Class VI, along with the cæcum and the paunch. And, contrariwise, there is tripe—“the stomach of the ox or of some other ruminant.” The stomach of an American citizen belongs to Class II, and even the stomach of an Englishman is in Class IV, but tripe is far down in Class VIII. And chitterlings—the excised vermiform appendix of the cow. Of [198]all the towns in Christendom, Richmond, Va., is the only one wherein a self-respecting white man would dare to be caught wolfing a chitterling in public.

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XI.—THE JAZZ WEBSTER
XI. The Jazz Webster

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Actor. One handicapped more by a wooden leg than by a wooden head.

Adultery. Democracy applied to love.

Alimony. The ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

Anti-Vivisectionist. One who gags at a guinea-pig and swallows a baby.

Archbishop. A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

Argument. A means of persuasion. The agents of argumentation under a democracy, in the order of their potency, are (a) whiskey, (b) beer, (c) cigars, (d) tears.

Axiom. Something that everyone believes. When everyone begins to believe anything it ceases to be true. For example, the notion that the homeliest girl in the party is the safest.

Ballot Box. The altar of democracy. The cult served upon it is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

Brevity. The quality that makes cigarettes, [202]speeches, love affairs and ocean voyages bearable.

Celebrity. One who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.

Chautauqua. A place in which persons who are not worth talking to listen to that which is not worth hearing.

Christian. One who believes that God notes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked half to death by the fall of a Sunday-school superintendent; one who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.

Christian Science. The theory that, since the sky rockets following a wallop in the eye are optical delusions, the wallop itself is a delusion and the eye another.

Church. A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

Civilization. A concerted effort to remedy the blunders and check the practical joking of God.

Clergyman. A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.

Conscience. The inner voice which warns us that someone is looking.

Confidence. The feeling that makes one [203]believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place.

Courtroom. A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favor of Judas.

Creator. A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. Three proofs of His humor: democracy, hay fever, any fat woman.

Democracy. The theory that two thieves will steal less than one, and three less than two, and four less than three, and so on ad infinitum; the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Epigram. A platitude with vine-leaves in its hair.

Eugenics. The theory that marriages should be made in the laboratory; the Wassermann test for love.

Evil. That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

Experience. A series of failures. Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.

Fame. An embalmer trembling with stage-fright.

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Fine. A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime. In China such bribes are paid to the judge personally; in America they are paid to him as agent for the public. But it makes no difference to the men who pay them—nor to the men who can’t pay them.

Firmness. A form of stupidity; proof of an inability to think the same thing out twice.

Friendship. A mutual belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks, hobgoblins and imbecilities.

Gentleman. One who never strikes a woman without provocation; one on whose word of honor the betting odds are at least 1 to 2.

Happiness. Peace after effort, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

Hell. A place where the Ten Commandments have a police force behind them.

Historian. An unsuccessful novelist.

Honeymoon. The time during which the bride believes the bridegroom’s word of honor.

Hope. A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

Humanitarian. One who would be sincerely [205]sorry to see his neighbor’s children devoured by wolves.

Husband. One who played safe and is now played safely. A No. 16 neck in a No. 15½ collar.

Hygiene. Bacteriology made moral; the theory that the Italian in the ditch should be jailed for spitting on his hands.

Idealist. One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Immorality. The morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer’s mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.

Immortality. The condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe that he is dead.

Jealousy. The theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.

Judge. An officer appointed to mislead, restrain, hypnotize, cajole, seduce, browbeat, flabbergast and bamboozle a jury in such a manner that it will forget all the facts and give its decision to the best lawyer. The objection to judges is that they are seldom capable of a sound professional judgment of lawyers. The objection to lawyers is that the best are the worst.

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Jury. A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.

Lawyer. One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation.

Liar. (a) One who pretends to be very good; (b) one who pretends to be very bad.

Love. The delusion that one woman differs from another.

Love-At-First-Sight. A labor-saving device.

Lover. An apprentice second husband; victim No. 2 in the larval stage.

Misogynist. A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

Martyr. The husband of a woman with the martyr complex.

Morality. The theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.

Music-Lover. One who can tell you offhand how many sharps are in the key of C major.

Optimist. The sort of man who marries his sister’s best friend.

Osteopath. One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone [207]upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory is to be found in the heads of those who believe it.

Pastor. One employed by