Then a military secretary, standing close to His Excellency, takes Mr. Tomkins by the neck and bends him down toward the floor and says very clearly and distinctly, “Mr. Torpentine.”  Then he throws him out by the neck into the crowd beyond and calls for another.  The thing is done.  Mr. Tomkins wipes the perspiration from his hair with his handkerchief and goes back at full speed to the Hoogli Hotel, Calcutta, eager for stationery to write at once to Ohio and say that he knows the Viceroy.

The Office Introduction, One-sided

This introduction comes into our office, slipping past whoever keeps the door with a packet of books under its arm.  It says—­

“Ledd me introduze myself.  The book proposition vidge I am introduzing is one vidge ve are now pudding on the market...”

Then, of two things, one—­

Either a crash of glass is heard as the speaker is hurled through the skylight, or he walks out twenty minutes later, bowing profusely as he goes, and leaving us gazing in remorse at a signed document entitling us to receive the “Masterpieces of American Poetry” in sixty volumes.

On the Stage

Everything on the stage is done far better than in real life.  This is true of introductions.  There is a warmth, a soul, in the stage introduction not known in the chilly atmosphere of everyday society.  Let me quote as an example of a stage introduction the formula used, in the best melodramatic art, in the kitchen-living-room (stove right centre) of the New England farm.

“Neighbour Jephson’s son, this is my little gal, as good and sweet a little gal, as mindful of her old father, as you’ll find in all New England.  Neighbour Jephson’s son, she’s been my all in all to me, this little gal, since I laid her mother in the ground five Christmases ago—­” The speaker is slightly overcome and leans against a cardboard clock for strength:  he recovers and goes on—­“Hope, this is Neighbour Jephson’s son, new back from over the seas, as fine a lad, gal, if he’s like the folk that went before him, as ever followed the sea.  Hope, your hand.  My boy, your hand.  See to his comfort, Hope, while I go and read the Good Book a spell in the barnyard.”

The Indian Formula

Many people, tired of the empty phrases of society, look back wistfully to the simple direct speech of savage life.  Such persons will find useful the usual form of introduction (the shorter form) prevalent among our North American Indians (at least as gathered from the best literary model): 

   “Friends and comrades who are worthy,
   See and look with all your eyesight,
   Listen with your sense of hearing,
   Gather with your apprehension—­
   Bow your heads, O trees, and hearken. 
   Hush thy rustling, corn, and listen;
   Turn thine ear and give attention;
   Ripples of the running water,
   Pause a moment in your channels—­
   Here I bring you,—­Hiawatha.”