A Morning with My Magazines

How to Combine Economy and Enjoyment

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

DO you take magazines? I presume you do. The fact that you are reading this article indicates that you have a touch of the American disease which supports hundreds of periodicals of every literary hue.

Every year my family is confronted with the problem of its yearly magazine supply. It is a thing to which I have given much thought because of its peculiar phases. The decision as to which magazines to retain is fraught with severe brain-strain. To begin with, most publications have fallen into the habit of forming alliances with others, offering a combination of two or more at a reduced rate. Some of these combinations are alluring, some repellent. All in all, they complicate the matter of choice. It seems wicked to pay the full subscription price for any particular magazine when one can save a dollar by standing up under the intellectuality of the New Republic or the Fortnightly in addition.

A curious thing about the magazines to which I eventually subscribed was that I never by any chance read them. I always meant to, but the moment never came. There is the good old Atlantic, for instance. We have always taken it as part of our New England tradition. My son objected to it once because he said it had "too many articles about petunias by ladies with three names", and I admit recalling a large number of stories such as Black Roses by Margaret Cullen Waddlingly, and the like.

However, Son has his own boy-scout magazine and my wife and I still look fondly on the pinky-brown cover of our Boston visitant and say, brightly, the first of every month "Ah! the new Atlantic." We remain so jejeune that we actually anticipate reading it. For two or three days it occupies a place of honor in the living room, thence rapidly working its way up to the table between our beds. I always read the table of contents and the poems, unless they happen to be long or in vers libre. I know nothing about vers libre, but I know what I hate.

Last Month's Magazines

THIS is as far as I get. My reading hour is at night, and as I turn the pages trying to decide between an essay What's Wrong with Russia? by Amasa Chudworth or an exciting story Pussy-Willows by Selma Tucker Boyd, I begin to yawn and the first thing I know is Nothing. Whether the magazine makes me sleepy or I am sleepy anyway, I have never been able to decide. Probably the hour is illchosen. At any rate in a day or two, Lo! the month has slipped away and a new number is out.

Strange, how dead and lifeless last month's magazine becomes. You may not have read it at all. The contents may be absolutely new to you. Yet, they have no interest. Like champagne and fish, magazines should be consumed sur place.

A few years ago I had the magazine complex much more violently than at present. I used to subscribe to all sorts of combinations, and such interesting mesalliances as The Country Gentleman and Vanity Fair, Outlook and La Vie Parisienne, Smart Set and The Fireside Companion. Now that the chil-

dren are growing up, I have La Vie sent to the office. Most of the others have fallen by the wayside or been replaced with juvenile publications.

The gradual accumulation of unread magazines during this early period was something fearful. Before Spring had arrived every table, shelf and sill of our modest home was stacked. They slid out on the floors, crowded the books into oblivion and tipped over lazily when you put an ash receiver on them. Then, in our wrath, we would rise annually and cast them fourth. If it were humanly possible we summoned the Salvation Army, which was reputed to be a glutton for punishment in the matter of old magazines. My heart has often ached at the thought of the poor creatures whose way to salvation is through the pages of this discarded literature. The thought of some unfortunate derelict groping for light at the Army headquarters and getting drowned in an old Atlantic is more than I could bear. I vowed that to those who had trouble no more should be given, at least not by me, and with much fortitude I devoted a rare May morning to a public burning.

Burning Magazines

HAVE you ever tried burning magazines? Talk about fire-proof construction! They are as resistant to fire as steel and concrete. I foretell that some one will some day patent a country house or an office building built entirely of old magazines. You throw one of the blooming things into the heart of a roaring conflagration and it just lies there! For a long time nothing happens. The lady on the cover smiles sweetly at you through the flames as if to say "Come on in; it's great." Then, very slowly, the covers open and the leaves begin to turn. They seem to offer you one last chance to read them. They turn so slowly and at such regular intervals that I have been able to do more consecutive magazine reading during these burnings than at any other time. I remember an extremely good essay by John Farrar—The Minor Profits of Minor Poets in a copy of The Bookman which, I should have said, was older than the author—besides any number of poems, stories and so on, brands plucked from the burning.

But, my word! it did cut into my day so! My first annual fire lasted from nine until five. The second kept me home all of Monday chasing burning pages which flattened themselves against the garage or nestled in the leaves beside the house. So I decided I should have to let nature take its course and abandon the Salvation Army to its fate. I did try one more expedient, that of turning an honest penny by selling the accumulation to the American Dental Association for installation in dentist's waiting rooms, where magazines are given preference in the order of seniority, like Burgundy or Stilton cheese. But I could make no headway with this body. They were quite curt about the matter and I realized that most of their business required a certain amount of pull.

Then, on a bright June morning, an inspiration broke upon me. Day after day, as I reached my office I had found among my mail one or more magazines. These I had been

accustomed to file for reference in the paper basket under my desk, which is emptied regularly every evening by a Slovakian woman whom I have never seen except upon all fours. Why these publications were sent me or by whom or what they were I know not. They simply appeared and disappeared. There was not even the trouble of burning. Upon the particular morning to which I refer the emotion which resulted in my magazine emancipation was, at first, mere curiosity. The day's mail had brought three gratuitous publications, which I had bunched together for filing and oblivion. The top one bore on its manilla envelope the title Y. P. S. Pointers.

I had seen this often enough, goodness knows. These same envelopes have been coming to my desk for several years without arousing my interest or question. But something in my mental state made the cryptic title catch. The night before had been rather a battle, as I recall it, and my presence at the office was less as a functionary than as a formality. To hold the envelope and speculate dully what the initials "Y. P. S." might mean represented my maximum mental effort. "Young People's Sodality" I murmured— "too serious . . . You Perfect Silly . . . too frivolous ..."

Why not open it? A brilliant idea! Y. P. S. turned out to be "Youngstown Pressed Steel Pointers." I held in my hand the "Policy Number, Vol. 2, No. 1." A pressed-steel pointer roused in my mind a long rod such as lecturers use to point out the sources of the Nile or themselves on the top of Mt. McKinley.

"Think of it!" I thought, "an entire plant devoted to the manufacture of pressed-steel pointers! What an age of specialization. Of course, there is the annual importation of English lecturers."

Thus ruminating, I turned the pages. But I could find nothing whatever about lecturers or blackboards or pointers. Come, come, this was better. Instead of knowing exactly what I should find, here was mystery. At last I came across the short article which gave this particular number-its designation: "A Plain Statement of Policy". Therein I read the pregnant paragraph: "Last but not least, Youngstown products—expanded metal lath, comer head, channels, base head—are kept up to the unsurpassed quality we advertise."

What were these things? Comer heads? How could a head get around a corner? Whose comers? And channels? It was all deep, mysterious, fascinating. I read on.

Metal Laths in the War

ON page 3 was a stirringly patriotic article entitled, "Our Flag is Nailed to the Mast". This sounded an important key-note which showed clearly that the war had been won by metal lath, whether as a weapon of offense or defense I could not say. Will you believe it? I read every word of that Policy Number, learned all about the new "Sovereign Apartments" in Cleveland, ate up the description of the Del Mar fire in Toledo and the heroic work done by metal lath on that occasion, right through to the picture of the Y. P. S. shipping room on the back cover. It was great. And, best of all, it was true. This was life, real, actual happenings, not your maudlin fiction and sentimental nonsense.

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(Continued from page 50)

At this point I began to see my way out of the magazine maze. Here it was, right under my hand. I opened the second exhibit. This was more serious, being Bulletin, No. r-P, for February 23, of the Union Fibre Company. It contained little heart interest and no sex appeal, but there was a lot of solid reading matter about heat-transmission, union fittings, etc., and some of the pictures of corroded pipes had for me the same combination of fascination and disgust that I always find in medical treatises on things that can happen to my internals.

But it was the third magazine that cleared away all the clouds and made me see how ridiculous it was to go on shelling out hard-earned money for expensive literature when this crop of sweetness and light was daily being dumped on my desk for nothing. This last creation was one of those pally, take-you-by-the-hand, cheerio affairs that was just what I needed on the morning after the evening of the night before. It was called The Anonymous Donor, and sub-titled itself modestly, "Less a Magazine than a National Institution".

The text throughout sounded as if it had been written by God, in collaboration with Dr. Frank Crane. The sureness and certainty were divine, but the style could only be compared to that of our brilliant contemporary. Imagine the tonic effect, on my debilitated morale, of reading the following testimonial:

Two Great Things

The marvelous influence of rigid enthusiasm, the wonderful worth of sin-cere loyalty—Enthusiasm and Loyalty—these are the two big words that are so essential in business to-day.

Next month: Patriotism and Honesty.

"Ye Gods", I thought, "this is a solution of all my difficulties. Ethics, morals, everything is looked after; simply by following these little editorials!"

Further on, I came across a splendid practical thought. It was expressed in an essay abounding in italics and trickprinting, and so short that I think I may quote it in full.

The Sunset

IT WAS THE END of a perfect day. A Poet and a Business man walked the hills together.

In the sky blazed the fires of a wonderful sunset, so beautiful that at sight of it even an atheist would have acknowledged his Maker.

"How beautiful!" breathed the Pod. " Do you know, Friend, that there, in the sky, is God's gift, Beauty, and yet more than Beauty. There, loo, is Inspiration and Aspiration. On yonder cloud-towers float the Banners of our Ideals and the Ladders of our Hopes."

"Yes," said the Business-man, "and let me also tell you one thing, Friend, and a very big thing, too, about all this beauty and wonder—it doesn't cost a cent!"

For the Business-man, too, was a poet at heart.

What a gorgeous thought! How it lifts the love of nature out of the maudlin and visionary! I vowed then and there that this was the magazine for my home, placed right where my family could pick it up and become inoculated—be exposed to it, so to speak—so that when anyone suggested little outings like opera or the circus, I could say "Dearies, gather round and listen. Daddy has a great treat in store for you! Such fun! Tonight, after supper, we are all going out on the piazza and look at the sunset!"

It Works

I PUT my magazine plan into effect at once, and it has worked like a charm. The regular pay-as-you-enter magazines have been more neglected than ever, while my entire retinue has fallen heavily for the odd little journals and bulletins with which I feed them. They are so different that we actually read .them.

And a diverting feature of this sort of reading is the superiority it gives one at dinners and other functions. I find that I have always read something no one else has. It is mighty pleasant to watch the expressions around a hyper-intelligent table when I intrude with "Do you know Flynn's work?—Frederick E. Flynn? What!—you don't . . . my, my . . . he's really quite remarkable; has a fine article in the last Edison Monthly on the new testing laboratories at 80th Street and East River! Why, Flynn says that more than four hundred articles are used in the testing of a single incandescent bulb."

Of course no one interrupts me. They can't.

Similarly, by dragging in allusions to and quotations from the Bnick Bulletin, The Iron Age, Bradleys Book Chat and so on, I have won the reputation of being extraordinarily well-informed on the most unusual subjects. The final consideration which applies to my system, as it does to the idealism of the Anonymous Donor, is this: they are both so CHEAP!