The Contributors' Club

I REMEMBER several meetings of the Club, when the fortunes of authorship were discussed. I became rather tired myself of listening to the tales of woe, and was caught nodding in my chair once or twice, as the Club may remember ; there was no real discussion, for nobody came forward to speak for the successful authors. If only some one had then known about Vocophy, how instantaneous would have been the relief ; for it would have been possible to make an exact analysis of the fitness of every would-be author. But Vocophy as a science had not then been formulated; at least it had not been given to the world. There were no Yocophers; strictly speaking, there was but one Vocopher, and he was silently and calmly unfolding his great discovery. He has now published his work. “ This work,” he says nobly in his preface, “ has been undertaken with the view to benefit every inhabitant on the face of our planet; ” and we may add, especially those who are in doubt what calling to pursue. There is no invidious distinction of sex: “ In using the word HE throughout the work, we do not use it with any thought of male superiority or adaptation. ... If any female possesses or can gain the necessary requirements demanded in any honorable trade, profession, or occupation, though at present solely followed by man, there can be no objection, whether morally or religiously considered, to her following it.” As to what the requirements are, the great Vocopher does not leave us in doubt. Besides laying down the principles of his science, he has been more practical than many philosophers, and has reduced his principles to rules, arranged alphabetically, and running from an Actor to a Tinman. I repeat that those authors, members of our Club, who complained of their want of success might have been spared their disappointments if they had turned to the title Author in Vocophy, and used the following rule : —

“ Should possess a good education. To write well, one should first be well informed in grammar, rhetoric, and logic, should possess a smattering of nearly everything, and have an abundance of ideas, good language, and know how to express it.”

How many authors live up to that rule ? Can you, my brother, lay your hand on the right spot, and claim that you possess a smattering of nearly everything ? And do you truly have good language and know how to express it ? Now, granting that a man has been honest, and has wiped his pen after reading the requirements for authorship, how simply would his life work be unfolded, if he would examine the Vocopher’s list of possible occupations, and test his own powers ! Would he be a butcher ? “ Destructiveness must be large, with no fear or dread of killing animals.” Or a caulker ? “ The same caution as advised in

plumbing (see Plumbing), as the work is generally in damp places; must be sure-footed, and possess a strong back for stooping, and good muscles for driving or pounding in various postures of the body.” How many of us could caulk ? Who has ever tried to pound in various postures of the body ? You may have pounded in your thumb, but that does not count; it’s not a posture.

There are authors who have fancied they could make a little money by elocution— until they have tried it. But they need not try and fail; they need only put themselves under an examination according to Vocophy : “ Must possess a clear, rich, round, full, and strong voice, — a voice that is deep and ranging from the highest to the lowest notes ; should be natural, easy, and graceful in gestures, possessing a great variety of expressions in the face, from the most cheerful and laughing face to the saddest, ugliest, and the most frightful and hideous, and one expressive of great emotion, love, sympathy, and affection ; should have the requisite power to picture to the audience the persons and scenes described in a natural, easy, and unaffected manner ; must be able to read words at first sight without the least hesitation, and also to look ahead several words, to be enabled to look off of the piece being read, that a natural and easy manner to the rendering may be given.1 The reader should possess a good personal appearance ” — But why need I cite more requirements ? Most of us, if honest with ourselves, would abandon any idea of elocution at once.

Very well; there is one occupation which makes less demand upon the brain than any other. Why should not a disappointed author turn executioner ? Vocophy describes with unerring precision the qualifications for that pursuit : “ Should have large destructiveness ; must have no fear of death, and be devoid of any sympathy in witnessing suffering in his fellow-men. Although it is well to have a small or perhaps a moderate amount of brains, ¹ yet there is no pursuit that demands an organism more animalistic and so near akin to the brute as that of an executioner.” The only omission of consequence in this delightful book is a rule to prescribe the qualifications of a Vocopher himself. Yet, after all, who would venture to divide the honors of that profession with the genius who has, by his discovery, been at the pains to benefit every inhabitant on the face of our planet ? There is, there can be, but one Vocopher. Do not imagine, my disappointed author, that you who have failed in literature can ever succeed in Vocophy.

— When we consider the number of new industries our advanced civilization has called forth and the minute division of labor it has fostered; when we are told that incorporated companies exist to insure shop-windows against damage by breakage and merchants from loss through peculation of their employees ; when we read Housekeeping Hereafter in the September Atlantic, in which it is proposed to farm out the whole business of preparing and serving meals in the family, and to make thereof an independent calling, it seems strange that professional enterprise has not yet been brought to bear upon the department of American travel in Europe. With the exception of the employment of some mechanical devices to shorten the voyage, we are not in the least in advance of our ancestors. We make the trip ourselves and do all our own shopping just as they did. During the spring and early summer the transatlantic steamers are filled to overflowing with Americans going on their mission of generosity ; and in the autumn, when they return, jaded and brain-sore, the weather powers do not grant them any special immunity because they have sacrificed comfort and convenience to make others happy, but turn on fierce gales to rattle them up and down in their cabins like dice in a box. I propose to abolish the trip to Europe in person, and offer a substitute, which shall retain its essential feature and do away with its exertion and worry. My plan is to establish companies in all the large cities, to which a person, when he announces his intention of going abroad, may resort, taking with him a complete list of all his family, acquaintances, and friends. The company might furnish blanks, with columns for names, ages, dispositions, colors of hair and eyes, etc., and with a wide space headed " Remarks,” in which could be jotted down information as to the habits and tastes of each individual. With this for a guide, the company would engage to procure a suitable and acceptable present for each person on the list. It would of course have agents in all quarters. It could order lace from Brussels, meerschaum goods from Triest, mosaics from Rome, corals from Naples, wood-carving from Switzerland, and fezes and other Turkish toggery from Constantinople, by mail or telegraph. Experience would develop the faculty in those employed by the company to hit upon just the right thing for a given man, woman, or child. The pecuniary saving would be large ; the articles themselves would be cheaper, and there would be no expenses of travel. And the saving of muscle, mental energy, and sole leather would be enormous. One who goes to Europe and does his own buying is generally ignorant of languages and values, not a judge of qualities and textures ; in short, the easy prey of the foreign shopkeeper and curiosity-monger. Then, too, he is constantly beset with temptations to waste valuable time in sight-seeing, in running after pictures and castles and grave-yards. Almost invariably somebody is forgotten. I have often wondered how, under the present system, a person whose father was one of a family of nine, and whose mother was one of a family of eleven, ever ventures to go abroad at all. If the business were transacted through a gift agency, according to my suggestion, a man could make out his list in the quiet of his study. His attention would not be distracted by the annoyances of the journey, and there would not be much probability of his omitting any name from the catalogue which really belonged there. Moreover, the saving of traveling expenses would warrant more costly presents, or even permit the widening of the circle of recipients.

There is one obstacle which I have not considered, namely, that greedy, insatiable monster of the coast, the Custom House. But the good, new times of free trade are said to be coming; and, until they arrive, the company could provide steam launches to take whole assemblages of friends and acquaintances out to meet incoming steamers at quarantine, in order to wear their things ashore.

— There is recompense of some sort, immediate or in the long run, for most of the troubles of this world, but there are certain pitiable persons for whose unfortunate lot it is hard to discover any compensation, — I mean the unpractical men and women. This is such an extremely practical world ! There really seems no place provided in it for people without the faculty for managing affairs. I don’t speak of those generally incapable folk, too weak-headed to grasp any ideas beyond the minimum size, but of those whose whole natural bent is towards intellectual matters, and away from matters connected with the conditions of every-day existence. Nature is responsible for the mental makeup of such men and women, and they suffer without fault of theirs and in spite of themselves. The more general brain power they have, the better of course they fare; an intellect is not of much use that cannot apply itself at will, and contrive to master a given subject in some degree. But the fact remains that nature discriminates in the kind of her mental gifts, and that the unpractical man, with the most toilsome application of his mind, cannot achieve what his practical fellow does, with little effort or none. Yet there is no escape for the man of ideas; he must, in old Carlyle’s phrase, “ get himself lived ” somehow, and grapple in some fashion, no matter how difficult, with the facts of ordinary life; for the world will not relent to him, and if he fails to conduct his affairs with sagacity he will get move of contempt than pity from his neighbors. The practical man, on the contrary, has no such hard fate dealt to him. He comes off well enough in the life business, although his deficiency is as great as the other’s in a different direction. He may be quite unfitted to seize a philosophic conception, to handle general ideas, or even that more limited class of them with which a literary man has to do. But this will not tell against him greatly ; his superiority in his own line of activity will be recognized, and he will not be held accountable for his incapacity in intellectual affairs. The man of intellect — for the very reason that he is a man of intellect, and knows how to appreciate duly the importance of labor in the practical sphere as well as that in the mental — will not despise, though he may compassionate the man who lacks what he himself is endowed with. Does the practical man or the world at large do the like justice to the unfortunate who is set to conquer two kingdoms, while equipped with the means of subduing only one ? There is an inequality, an injustice of fate in all this, that one sees no chance of ever being set right.