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Profiles
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (June 17, 1911) : 26
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Profiles
      Nature’s pitilessness is refuted by scientists, but her adamant qualities remain. Her habit of qualifying her every postulation is unvarying, and it is this trick of evenly mingling negatives and affirmatives that seems a fair substitute for the cruelty we used to believe in. It has happened to all of us that a profile of striking qualities has attracted our attention, and we have said to a friend beside us, “See that poetical head,” only to have the head, on our friend’s looking, turn toward us, showing a full face of blunt materialism. Every characteristic seen from one view is denied by an altered view of the same features, so that we get more than one person by a step to the right or left. Every characteristic seen from one view is denied by an altered view of the same features, so that we get more than one person by a step to the right or left. It is only what might have been expected, as it is precisely what occurs on our looking at personalities; but it does surprise us, for it proves again that Nature will never let anything “go at that.” She always has to say a last word, and the last word upsets all the statements that have gone before.
      The transformation taking place so frequently in the physical exterior has one simplifying attribute. It makes us feel that when a personality is slack and cheap, as seen at one time, and with equal completeness delightful and appreciative when seen at another, we have but viewed it full in the face, and caught as well the sharp but necessarily partial outline of a profile. With most of the people we meet there is a long period of circling around and around, sometimes a decision as to which is full view and which is half seeming so difficult that we walk off and leave them, exhausted by not being able to make up our minds. With a few we do not attempt to deny the expression of the side face, but, feeling sure of all that is seen from the front, believe in it, no matter what position they may temporarily take up. Those people who look best with nothing but an ear, the sweep of the hair over it, and a mere hint of chin line showing, can be liked, even if only liked to this extent. If one’s attitude toward them is a backing away, it is merely that they may be always regarded from the spot where they appear to greatest advantage.

Meetings
      different take on similar at "Disappointments of Surprise Visits" (190908911) The risk of meeting any one at a point where he does not expect to see you almost amounts to courting disintegration. He is prepared to see you at one stage in the route of travel, and the idea has occurred to you of bobbing up without warning two days earlier. You are thrilled with excitement at the thought of your appearing suddenly — why, it is difficult to say. Jacks-in-the-box are not particularly stimulating things to watch, yet hours of discomfort are endured that you may give to yourself and your friend all the exquisite delight of jumping out and crying, “Boo.” The plan is so pleasing that you swell to an unnatural size, distended with anticipation and nervousness, a fact that increases the risk you run. As the boat approaches you feel yourself looming up enormously, one large chuckling announcement of, “This is me.” You smile gigantically and wave things to emphasize the surprising phenomenon of your being where you are. As the friend is clearly seen leaning on the rail you barely escape combustion at the size of the surprise you are about to give. Then your friend looks you straight in the eye as though murmuring, “Who is that idiot making a fool of herself?” Languidly his glance leaves you and wanders to the people standing near you. He wears the relaxed, superior expression of one who knows there will be no need of his being publicly emotional that day, and although you keep up all your former gesticulations it is with a distressing waning feeling inside. All the uncomfortable sensations of a rubber pig, which has been blown to its fullest curves and is collapsing rapidly, are revealed to you with an awful keenness as your friend continues to gaze straight through you with the same immovable blankness. If you keep up a faint smile and a desperate wiggle of two fingers it is in a despairing desire for recognition. The friend is looking from side to side and even glancing backward to see at whom you can possibly be staring, and your extinction is now just a matter of seconds. If he continues to deny you with this effacing calm, you will believe him to be in the right, and the force of his denial will be quite enough to blur, then obliterate, you into space. Sheepish, flat, a mere shred of vitality that would like above everything to crawl inside one of the near-by trunks, you still manage to leer insanely up through one eyebrow, and when your friend’s mouth suddenly flies open, his eyes widen, and his amazed gasp can be heard across the intervening water, you bow with strained formality, and with shaking knees seek the protecting shelter of a smokestack. The speck to which you dwindled, the extremity of emotional depletion you reached, renders you mute and spiritless for the rest of the day, and though you have contrived to place your person near that of your friend, the essential parts of you take some time to reassemble and recover.

Small Packages
      To be out of America is enough in itself, to be reminded of it every time you wish to send something to America is a painful final slap. The smallest parcel or mere scrap of something in a letter is considered by one’s native land a beautiful opportunity to slam its doors in your face, and call impertinent things to you through the keyhole. You answer back very meekly that it is a mere nothing not intended to hurt any one, and it is only because you are so fond of America that you would so enjoy sending pretty things into it, and couldn’t they let just this one thing in between friends, as it were? They hustle official papers crossly behind the door, and say something about fifty per cent. You cry protestingly, “Oh, not half what I paid for it!” and they say, “Yes,” and you say, “But what for?” and they say, “For that,” and you say, “ For what?” and then they refuse to discuss the matter further. Then, gazing at the package for a long time with the feeling of having been cast off without a penny by an irate parent, you present the gift to yourself, never expecting to get the least enjoyment out of it, and wondering if the government is noticing your injured air.
 

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