BACK HOME

By Eugene Wood

Contents

INTRODUCTION

GENTLE READER:—Let me make you acquainted with my book, "Back Home." (Your right hand, Book, your right hand. Pity's sakes! How many times have I got to tell you that? Chest up and forward, shoulders back and down, and turn your toes out more.)

It is a little book, Gentle Reader, but please don't let that prejudice you against it. The General Public, I know, likes to feel heft in its hand when it buys a book, but I had hoped that you were a peg or two above the General Public. That mythical being goes on a reading spree about every so often, and it selects a book which will probably last out the craving, a book which "it will be impossible to lay down, after it is once begun, until it is finished." (I quote from the standard book notice). A few hours later the following dialogue ensues:

"Henry!"

"Yes, dear."

"Aren't you 'most done reading?"

"Just as soon as I finish this chapter." A sigh and a long wait.

"Henry!"

"Yes, dear."

"Did you lock the side-door?" No answer.

"Henry! Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you lock the side-door?"

"In a minute now."

"Yes, but did you?"

"M-hm. I guess so."

"'Guess so!' Did you lock that side-door? They got in at Hilliard's night before last and stole a bag of clothes-pins."

"M."

"Oh, put down that book, and go and lock the side-door. I'll not get a wink of sleep this blessed night unless you do."

"In a minute now. Just wait till I finish this..."

"Go do it now."

Mr. General Public has a card on his desk that says, "Do it Now," and so he lays down his book with a patient sigh, and comes back to it with a patent grouch.

"Oh, so it is," says the voice from the bedroom. "I remember now, I locked it myself when I put the milk-bottles out.... I'm going to stop taking of that man unless there's more cream on the top than there has been here lately."

"M."

"Henry!"

"Oh, what is it?"

"Aren't you 'most done reading?"

"In a minute, just as soon as I finish this chapter."

"How long is that chapter, for mercy's sakes?"

"I began another."

"Henry!"

"What?"

"Aren't you coming to bed pretty soon? You know I can't go to sleep when you are sitting up."

"Oh, hush up for one minute, can't ye? It's a funny thing if I can't read a little once in a while."

"It's a funny thing if I've got to be broke of my rest this way. As much as I have to look after. I'd hate to be so selfish.... Henry! Won't you please put the book down and come to bed?"

"Oh, for goodness sake! Turn over and go to sleep. You make me tired."

Every two or three hours Mrs. General Public wakes up and announces that she can't get a wink of sleep, not a wink; she wishes he hadn't brought the plagued old book home; he hasn't the least bit of consideration for her; please, please, won't he put the book away and come to bed?

He reaches "THE END" at 2:30A.M., turns off the gas, and creeps into bed, his stomach all upset from smoking so much without eating anything, his eyes feeling like two burnt holes in a blanket, and wishing that he had the sense he was born with. He'll have to be up at 6:05, and he knows how he will feel. He also knows how he will feel along about three o'clock in the afternoon. Smithers is coming then to close up that deal. Smithers is as sharp as tacks, as slippery as an eel, and as crooked as a dog's hind leg. Always looking for the best of it. You need all your wits when you deal with Smithers. Why didn't he take Mrs. General Public's advice, and get to bed instead of sitting up fuddling himself with that fool love-story?

That's how a book should be to be a great popular success, and one that all the typewriter girls will have on their desks. I am guiltily conscious that "Back Home" is not up to standard either in avoirdupois heft or the power to unfit a man for business.

Here's a book. Is it long? No. Is it exciting? No. Any lost diamonds in it? Nup. Mysterious murders? No. Whopping big fortune, now teetering this way, and now teetering that, tipping over on the Hero at the last and smothering him in an avalanche of fifty-dollar bills? No. Does She get Him? Isn't even that. No "heart interest" at all. What's the use of putting out good money to make such a book; to have a cover design for it; to get a man like A. B. Frost to draw illustrations for it, when he costs so like the mischief, when there's nothing in the book to make a man sit up till 'way past bedtime? Why print it at all?

You may search me. I suppose it's all right, but if it was my money, I'll bet I could make a better investment of it. If worst came to worst, I could do like the fellow in the story who went to the gambling-house and found it closed up, so he shoved the money under