The Panacea

ABOUT the middle of last August we observed in our household that the war was becoming too much for us. At meal-time especially, around the smug compactness of a table set for four instead of six, the change was evident. An unwonted acerbity of tone crept into our discussions of food-saving; the headlines of the evening paper provoked comment and counter-comment, leading to extravagant statement on the part of the Youngest Member, and on the part of the Eldest One to exhibitions of stoicism more irritating still; a luckless caller, skirting the subject of atrocities, aroused behind her retreating back a Hymn of Hate.

It was after the Hymn of Hate that the Eldest One took serious thought and conveyed to us her conclusions.

‘It’s because we think about it all the time; we never get our minds off it. At this rate, you know, we’ll be fit for asylums before the end comes. It’s silly, too. Grown-up people!’

‘ What are you going to do about it? ’ the Youngest Member inquired tartly. Her accent was the inter-bellum accent of all of us.

‘I’m going to change it. I’m going to provide a panacea.’

The Panacea appeared next day. The way of its taking is this.

At dinner, the Eldest One, as she spreads her napkin, speaks cheerfully.

‘I see they’ve decided to locate the Exposition grounds along the north side of the bay.’

There is usually a pause after the initial lead. We are groping back through the clutter of war in our minds. Exposition? — Oh, San Francisco Exposition, of course! Happy is that one who can place herself swiftly enough on this newly offered shoal and bank of time to respond with a comment on Federal aid or the blighted hopes of New Orleans. Happier still, she whose kinked memory recollects, as sometimes memories will, that the Exposition grounds were chosen the month we put in our new plumbing.

But though we halt at first, we grow surprisingly fluent as the dinner progresses. The shortage of labor in California, Mr. Bryan’s grape-juice banquet, the pre-Exposition visit of Cousin Abbie from Pittsfield — before the meal is over, all of these have been dragged from sheltering brain-crevices and received with acclamation.

It is a rule of the game that one dinner may have but one time-setting; but sometimes, in choosing that setting, the Eldest One takes a mean advantage of her seniority.

‘It’s astonishing, the strength Mr. Blaine is developing,’ she opens upon us. ‘Now with the Illinois delegation going to him—’

We gaze at her reproachfully, — we to whom Maine’s Plumed Knight and Hannibal of Carthage are figures equally remote and shadowy, — and presently our six accusing eyes are too much for her complacency.

‘ But, on the other hand, if Mr. Harrison holds the South —’ she concedes to our ignorance; and by the name puts our feet on earth once more.

Benjamin Harrison — Why, certainly! High tariff and ‘grandfather clauses,’ full sleeves and Tweed Ring scandals and the family’s final moving from Vermont — The material for conversation is in our hands again.

But it is such an excursion as this last which drives the Youngest Member to reprisals. When she pulls out her chair the next night, she speaks hastily, stooping for her dropped napkin.

‘I see he’s got over.'

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said, I see he’s brought his troops over the Rubicon. Now if he comes straight on to Rome—’

The Youngest Member is a decade nearer to the Commentaries than are the rest of us. We stumble disgracefully. Was it Pompey who waded across that fateful river? Was n’t there a Scipio somewhere concerned? And was it before the crossing or after it that there took place that famous partition of Gaul? Warily we try to make use of Gaul, fending off the Pompey-Scipio question for later decision. For the minute our minds are swept clean of later wars. Gas-attacks, food-shortage, the letter the postman did not bring — it is only for a minute that we lose sight of them; but the refreshment of that loss is like the trickle of water on parched tongues. Thanks to the Panacea, for this one hour of the day the present gives way to the comfortable past, and around our dinner-table talk and digestion can again go on together.