In an Appendix

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

Two generations ago the lovers of humor used to give a little time to the story of one Timothy Dexter, a curious compound of knave, crank, and fool, who made a fortune, it was believed by fantastic means, built a fantastic house in Newburyport, and published a fantastic book. In the second impression of this book, he tells us that, people having complained because there were no stops in it, he had added two pages full of punctuation marks in an Appendix, and they might “pepper and salt it,” as much as they chose.

It has seemed to me that not a few of our current publications would be improved by a similar system, whereby a good deal of matter, which is somehow deemed essential for what one might call constructional purposes, but needless for comfort or beauty, might be relegated in mass to an appendix, whence those who like such things might select for insertion in the text as much as they liked, without requiring those who do not care for it to wade through it. It is especially in novels that such a plan seems feasible.

For instance: modern novels have a great deal of tobacco in them. The heroes, villains, and confidants are eternally lighting cigarettes, varied by a certain amount of pipes and cigars. These do not help on the plot, the action, or the dialogue. They can hardly be conceived to give local color, for they are introduced independent of all locality; and as they are impossible in stories of more than four centuries ago, they would not appear to be essential to create an interest in the narrative. Now there are still living those who do not want any tobacco in their novels, and a large number who do not want such an endless amount of it. Would it not be possible to leave out all smoking from the body of the book, and print as an appendix two or three pages of tobacconists’ advertisements, out of which those who really cannot breathe without nicotine might spice the chapters at their pleasure. The dealers would gladly pay for this exploitation of their wares.

Another opportunity for this hygienic inoculation with appendicitis is given by descriptions of scenery, — particularly cloud-effects. When one is reading along with interest, rapidly passing from mere keenness to almost breathless excitement, eager to know whether Ethel is going to accept the duke, or whether Herbert is going to make that fortune which will enable him to come in as a machine god and rescue her, one has to stop and wade through an evening in the Dolomites, or a sunrise in the Yosemite. These may be very well done; they may be as exact as a reproduction of the Arundel Society. But they are fearfully in the way; there is nothing done, said, or thought, till the last color of the Tyrolese sunset has “died like the dolphin,” or the last gauzy veil has been lifted from the geysers. If they only affected the result,— if the Dolomite peak only reflected a ray of resolution upon Ethel’s purpose, if the Yosemite slope only revealed to Arthur a bonanza in quartz,— one could be grateful. But nothing of the sort; they are padding,— artistic, suggestive padding, if you will. Now why cannot their lovers let them be all together in the appendix, in the form of photogravures, with notes in the text referring to No. 8 or No. 17, and let the rest of us get on with Ethel and Herbert ?

Perhaps also we should fare none the worse if all introspections and self-communings were concentrated into a few supplementary pages. As it is, no sooner is Ethel comfortably established in her piazza chair among her Dolomites, no sooner is Herbert uncomfortably bestowed in his Pullman, “speeding” across the continent, than each begins to review all the hopes, fears, wishes, doubts, that the situation calls up. Undoubtedly such a review is terribly true to life. We all of us have to go through it, much oftener and more thoroughly than we wish to. It does not help us; we end where we began, and so do our hero and heroine. Ethel gets a belated letter, covered with postmarks, which tells her that her aunt will not perpetrate that second marriage; Herbert’s train is boarded at Flagstaff by some one who brings the latest tip on Northern Securities; and all their nicely balanced self-communings are rendered null and void. A few pages of them might be appended to satisfy the longing hearts of those who love to have events and talks deferred, and they could protract the agony as long as they liked by recognizing their own interminable worries of days gone by.

In Macaulay’s Life we are told how the fashionable novels of eighty years ago were punctuated with fainting fits indulged in indiscriminately by both sexes, whenever a crisis in the story occurred. These need not now seek an appendix; they are forever dead and buried. But how much equally superfluous matter is still allowed to haunt our best stories, not because it helps plot, incidents, talk, or character, but because, as Dexter thought of “stops,” it is supposed to be the thing ? By the use of an appendix, which, like the answers in a school Algebra, might appear in some copies and not in others, all tastes could be gratified.