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III

It is hard, indeed, to get at just what words convey to them. Flora, questioned, says that lecture means getting hanged, while Lucille says "It's the chair." The fact that her husband is in the penitentiary perhaps explains why both girls should associate the word with "electric." Flora says skill is "you do it," which isn't so bad. Lucille says "you do it to fish." "Not scale, but skill," we repeat. "In your head," she answers, which seems perhaps on the right track, until she adds "a bone." "Not skull, but skill," we insist patiently. "Fry in it," she tries again, and we give it up. For purpose of ordinary conversation, words of that abstraction are too hazy for Lucille.

Of course, uneducated people necessarily have smaller vocabularies than the highly trained. But on the other hand, children taught in American schools and confronted by the newspapers have been exposed to a good many words, and the meanings of a few of them have got to penetrate if any sermon on behavior is to be intelligible. Moreover, it is impossible for good advice to be couched entirely in words devoid of some degree of abstraction. So we ask -- "What is pity?" That seems easy: "You're sorry." Encouraged, we proceed, "What is justice?" "Peace," answers Lucille, "I got married by one." Envy is "enemy," or "You like them," or (hesitating) "You don't like them." Insure, to Flora, means "sure," or "You get it when you're dead," or "They get it at the house," or "It's in the company like," or "It's when you get hurt." So much for Flora grasping the insurance principle when some new agent at the door wheedles her out of a first installment, never to be followed by a second!

Cotton is "wood-like," to Flora, but "comes from animals" to Lucille. ("Like coal," she adds, to make it more clear.) Chuck, however, says with a flourish "That it can be viewed from a perspective point," and Flora is silenced with admiration. Brunette, says Flora, means "blondes"; regard means "guard-like"; civil is "civilized" or "big." "Why big?" "Because the Civil War was big." Another venture was "with knives" -- because the war was fought with knives! In what words, then, shall we express to Flora, "You must learn to keep an account of your money, not spend more than you have, and be faithful to Chuck," when she has already told us that charity is "Don't be silly," faith is "You do it," and when, to a question requiring the answer, "thirty-five cents," she has answered "eighteen hundred weeks"? When it is possible to say that control means "wagon" and chastity means "tricks," what hodge-podge of ideas has one's sermon produced in the good-natured mind of the moron bride, who probably has not been listening in any case, but has only been wondering whether her hair would look better in bangs or with a marcel?

Chuck, who was a barber, specializing in the haircuts of sailors along the lake-front, had a curious facility for words, which always made a profound impression upon Flora and on his other friends, and left one in doubt as to how much of what he was saying he understood himself. It was to be expected, of course, that as soon as the sprightly Lucille was accepted as a boarder, complications would arise. Flora wanted Lucille for the sake other company. But so, unfortunately, did Chuck. He would not have sought her out, and neither, perhaps, would she have angled for him. But both being there, in somewhat crowded quarters (when entertaining guests they always slept three in a bed), jealousies soon arose, and a lawsuit pended.

Lucille had twice before held the proud distinction of being a newspaper headliner. When Joe was sentenced, she had had her picture taken with her arms around him, and a dotted line issuing from her mouth enclosed the legend, "I'll be so lonely without my Buddy." Then there had been a dingy fracas later on, when Lucille charged unknown ruffians with tattooing her shoulder-blade, and that, of course, made a magnificent picture for the evening paper. Lucille's friends regarded the tattooing episode with their tongues in their cheeks -- but no one could deny that her pictures had decorated the pictorial section, and that she had twice been presented to 100,000 readers, first as "Pretty Girl-Wife Waits for Thug," and then as "Flapper Tattooed. Is Chivalry Dead?" It was natural that Flora, equally ambitious for fame, should look about her for some path to glory. The easiest way was to start a lawsuit against Lucille for the alienation of Chuck's affections.

We had long arguments with Chuck at this turn of events, and were of course dazzled by his vocabulary, as no one could fail to be. Since simple language was only a haze to him, we tried the experiment of teaching him virtue through fables, in a manner that has been popular since Aesop, and which is apparently still dear to the public, for no movie programme is complete without its pictured symbolic moral. Chuck was fond of fables and read them fluently. But the question was: What lesson, if any, did he learn from them? We soon found out. From the fable of the man who called to Hercules for help, and was advised by him to put his own shoulder to the wheel, he derived the lesson, "Always do the same to them." He laughed appreciatively at the girl who counted her chickens before they were hatched, and said, "It pays to be broad-minded." He sighed over the crow who was flattered into dropping her meat in order to sing, and said, "That's like Lucille. These flappers. It don't pay to be led by flappery." Of the miller and his son who rook every one's advice about their donkey instead of using their own judgment, he said, "They're so backward, these dumb animals. Too backward, much more backward than human beings!"