In that process of advancing alternate trouser-legs we call locomotion do
we not consciously, or unconsciously, follow in the direction indicated
by the point of the crease?
What then would happen if the crease were transferred from the front to
the sides?
The Crab alone of all living creatures exhibits in its legs a formation
that corresponds to the human trouser-crease.
This ridge-like formation or crease occurs in the _side_ of the Crab’s
legs, not in the front as in the human species!
And the slogan of the Crab (as everyone knows) is, “First make sure
you’re right _and then go sideways_.”
Shall we too go sideways?
* * * * *
Charlie Chaplin is the only human creature whose feet go East and West
as his face travels North and his trouser-creases are so complicated it
would be difficult to classify them.
Perhaps they hold the secret of his centrifugal orientation, his
inexplicable fascination.
Who knows!
[Illustration]
AN OLD-FASHIONED HEAVEN
We have to thank an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. G. Vale Owen, for
the latest description of the Future Life of our species. Impelled by
a “gentle, steady but accumulative force” this good man became the
unwilling amanuensis of the spirit of his mother and “other friends” and
has written a description of the houses, trees, bridges, gardens and
people of the other world and their occupations that could scarcely be
improved upon by the most imaginative motion-picture photographer, or
mechanic or scrub-woman or whoever it may be that writes the scenarios.
We of this world are still, after many thousand years of waiting, eager
for the faintest ray of light that may be thrown on the actual conditions
of what we call “the world to come,” or as the Spiritists love to say,
“behind the veil,” but for the tawdry imaginings of the Reverend Mr.
Owen the “Veil” serves only as an opaque screen upon whose surface
they flicker grotesquely like the disorderly apparitions of a cinema
projection.
As a Seer this reverend gentleman, without for a moment questioning his
sincerity, is a failure; his narrative, is childish in its crudity and
tedious as a dream told at the breakfast table.
One thing, however, is interesting, and that is to trace as we do,
through the transcendental claptrap of “rainbow brides” and white-winged
angels and the pseudo-scientific jargon of “planes,” “vibrations,”
“spheres,” and “fourth dimension,” the—shall I say humanizing—influence
of the cinema.
For the first time we learn that there are bath tubs in the Heavenly
Mansions—Bathtubs! With hot and cold water, and Dr. Owen does not stop at
bathtubs; he assures us there are also—don’t faint—_water nymphs_! Can’t
you see all Israel clamoring for the picture rights!
Imagine the angelic shade of St. Anthony or Mr. Spurgeon coming
unexpectedly upon a school of water nymphs!
And how is this for a motion-picture “fade out”?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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