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Novelties — Waltzing — Broadway
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (March 26, 1910) : 27
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      Every one persists in saying that the new, the surprising, is desirable, while a moment’s observation shows it to be heartily disliked by all. That is, the genuinely surprising, the truly new. To be surprised along old lines is a gentle stimulant deservedly popular. Complete surprises, when they come, are received with hot indignation and declared bad taste, bad art, or bad business. We feel that if we sufficiently insult this new thing it will disappear or disclose some old, reassuring traits. Because, if we consent to take account of a surprising fact, it involves so much work on our part. It must be weighed, dissected, its qualities carefully inspected, and finally, when it has been measured and compared with old known things, every one has been put to a great deal of trouble and accepted this newcomer only when because she is at a point of exhaustion which made resistance impossible.
      Genuine novelty is presented as though it were an insult. In its guise of a challenge it is undeniably disturbing, and, many people feeling that to be incited to action is an unforgivable insult, in the end it amounts to the same thing. When a person is talking we listen for the thing we think she is going to say, and, when she brings out something unexpected, we are so desperately anxious to avoid it and the consequent horrid bother of accommodating ourselves to it, that we gladly accuse ourselves of deafness or the talker of an impediment in her speech. In this way we can prepare ourselves for it, and when it finally arrives our sentiment is one of self-congratulation that we had prophesied it so accurately. For the arrival of the unexpected necessitates dragging out of our standards from the dusty lumber-room, and if there is anything we revolt at and bad-temperedly object to doing it is disturbing this indispensable possession. A physical deformity we take on our shoulders willingly, for we have heard of deafness before, but a surprising statement we admit to our ken only after a brave effort to ward it off. We prefer to see a surprise coming in the distance. In this way we can prepare ourselves for it, and when it finally arrives our sentiment is one of self-congratulation that we had prophesied it so accurately. For the arrival of the unexpected necessitates dragging out of our standards from the dusty lumber-room, and if there is anything we revolt at and bad-temperedly object to doing it is disturbing this indispensable possession.
      We all have standards — we would just like to hear any one accuse us of not having them; but they are not kept up to date, and altogether stand badly in need of renovation owing to most things we see, hear, and know of being so accepted, so established, that we know their precise value without applying to them that complicated, cumbersome old scale, our standard. If, however, a thing persists in being surprising after all our threats that we are about to discover something shamefacedly usual under its thin pretences, then sulkily we pull our standard forth, only to find that it needs radical additions at the top, not being half high enough to take in a number of things, as well as a completely new base and some nice adjustments about the middle, with some of the half and quarter inches in need of repainting, and immediate rescuing from their blurred condition.
      With our standards carefully refurbished — and by this time we are in such a pet at the bother we have been put to that we determine never again to take note of a surprising thing, though we lose our life thereby, which is a small matter to losing one’s peace of mind — we are obliged to catch the surprising thing, forcibly, by the back of the neck, and none too gently, as we instinctively loath it, hold it firmly, while we measure its height, width, length, breadth, and bulk, particularly its relation to everything past and above all its influence on everything in the future. Then and then only can we dismiss it, pronouncing it to be on the whole bad, but with some elements of good in it, and reeking with something that we cannot quite make out, but which probably amounts to nothing. When it is all over and we are glaring fiercely about to see if anything fresh threatens, we are relieved to think we have behaved so well, our action exonerates us from any further effort of the kind for a long time to come; but no one who has been by us in our travail can honestly say that we enjoyed ourselves, or that we in the least approve of surprising things, particularly if they come in the form of ideas.

      “What is the world coming to?” is the title of The Gentler View column of April 20, 1912, devoted to the modern performative paragon of “seriousness and morality.” What is the world coming to when waltzing has deteriorated into Bostoning? For vacillating indecisive movement there was never anything like it. It lacks progress and ambition. One stands in one spot as though one were hitched to a post but did not care, and cautiously hops up and down. An honest soul is ashamed to Boston. It says, “I know I am doing it, I find to my chagrin that my feet know how, though Heaven alone knows where they picked it up; but I do not approve of Bostoning, I am not in sympathy with it, I regard it as timid and irresolute. I feel all the discomfort of being a calico horse, a desire to cry, ‘In the name of all that’s stable, makes me either white or brown; the weakness of character signified in these spots I cannot and will not endure.’” If one only Bostoned at one or two dances one might escape serious results, but it is dreadful to think what effect season after season of Bostoning might have on one’s efficiency. One could not be a person of force after nights of that half-hearted jigging. A vigorous nature would cry, “I will dance or I will sit down, but I will not split the difference at every step. It is too much of a compromise; it is positively demeaning.” “I will dance or I will sit down, but I will not split the difference at every step. It is too much of a compromise; it is positively demeaning.” No engine was ever contented to get up steam all its days, and every automobile expects after it has chugged for a certain length of time to start, but with a room full of people apparently making preparations for something they at the end of the dance sit down. One had thought that if they took such pains to set themselves going they would eventually do something worth while. It is sadly, finally realized that they none of them had any such intentions. For an effete picture of a decadent nation commend us to a ballroom full of people amusing themselves by standing in almost one spot, faintly, spiritlessly, bobbing up and down. They are even unable to do it alone, but require the assistance and support of a second person. Boston, Boston, this will be put to your account, and it will need your long and honorable record to counterbalance it!

      Broadway, as seen from Forty-second Street in the evening has reached its zenith of vulgarity. It looks like the future of a Western mining town seen from the point of view of a real-estate agent who has bought land. It is too awful to be real. It looks like the future of a Western mining town seen from the point of view of a real-estate agent who has bought land. It is too awful to be real. It has the glaring optimism of a prospectus, a hectic quality that reassures you as to your own fevered condition, which, though uncomfortable, is preferable to believing that the reality looks as you believe it to. At best it is the howling midway of an exposition limited to a three months’ existence, to be paid for by zealously cleaning up the exposition-grounds, removing the final vestiges of the buildings, and turning the whole into a recreation park for the poor of the city. If a town were painted red — one has heard the feat rumored — it would look like Broadway and Forty-second Street. The four corners should be arrested for disorderly conduct and only released when they sobered up. If New York has conceived and cultivated this garish locality, New York is at the stage of civilization where it ought to be wearing red flannel shirts and high boots, and, with a horse-pistol in either hand, divert itself by good-humoredly, if a trifle boisterously, shooting up the town.
 

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