Mince Pie eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 192 pages of information about Mince Pie.

Mince Pie eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 192 pages of information about Mince Pie.

“Dear Mr. Phillips—­I owe you about $490.  Come around some day and I’ll blow you to lunch.”

THE KEY RING

[Illustration]

I know a man who carries in his left-leg trouser pocket a large heavy key ring, on which there are a dozen or more keys of all shapes and sizes.  There is a latchkey, and the key of his private office, and the key of his roll-top desk, and the key of his safe deposit box, and a key to the little mail box at the front door of his flat (he lives in what is known as a pushbutton apartment house), and a key that does something to his motor car (not being an automobilist, I don’t know just what), and a key to his locker at the golf club, and keys of various traveling bags and trunks and filing cases, and all the other keys with which a busy man burdens himself.  They make a noble clanking against his thigh when he walks (he is usually in a hurry), and he draws them out of his pocket with something of an imposing gesture when he approaches the ground glass door of his office at ten past nine every morning.  Yet sometimes he takes them out and looks at them sadly.  They are a mark and symbol of servitude, just as surely as if they had been heated red-hot and branded on his skin.

Not necessarily an unhappy servitude, I hasten to remark, for servitude is not always an unhappy condition.  It may be the happiest of conditions, and each of those little metal strips may be regarded as a medal of honor.  In fact, my friend does so regard them.  He does not think of the key of his roll-top desk as a reminder of hateful tasks that must be done willy-nilly, but rather as an emblem of hard work that he enjoys and that is worth doing.  He does not think of the latchkey as a mandate that he must be home by seven o’clock, rain or shine; nor does he think of it as a souvenir of the landlord who must be infallibly paid on the first of the month next ensuing.  No, he thinks of the latchkey as a magic wand that admits him to a realm of kindness “whose service is perfect freedom,” as say the fine old words in the prayer book.  And he does not think of his safe deposit box as a hateful little casket of leases and life insurance policies and contracts and wills, but rather as the place where he has put some of his own past life into voluntary bondage—­into Liberty Bondage—­at four and a quarter per cent.  Yet, however blithely he may psychologize these matters, he is wise enough to know that he is not a free man.  However content in servitude, he does not blink the fact that it is servitude.

“Upon his will he binds a radiant chain,” said Joyce Kilmer in a fine sonnet.  However radiant, it is still a chain.

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Project Gutenberg
Mince Pie from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.