It is an old Norse belief that a child born on Sunday has supernatural vision; he has associations with the spirit world that no others have. This was probably dreamed up by some Sunday's child who did not like fishing or piracy on the high seas and decided to set up business as a soothsayer. It must have been a good business, for seafaring folk were notoriously superstitious. With business good, it is little wonder that Wednesday's and Friday's child began to muscle in. These opportunists soon made it known that supernatural vision could be obtained in other ways -- raven's blood spilled on the child, a wolf's claw hung around his neck, or breast feeding from a nurse instead of the natural mother.
I was born on a Sunday, but I've lived an ordinary sort of life. The bumps on your head mean nothing to me, tea-leaves are illegible, and the best I can do with cards is count the honor-tricks. Yet there is a den or study in our house that puzzles me. You see, we have a six room house: living-room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bath. That makes six; yet off the living room there is a study. That should make seven according to the brand of arithmetic I learned in grammar school. When I took the matter up with the architect he, nervously fingering his paper-knife, insisted there were only six rooms. He hadn't even put a closet off the living room. Nevertheless, that study is there whenever I choose to retire to a little privacy.
The appointments are of the sort that you might expect to find in the seventh room of a six-room house. I want to speak in particular of the moose's head that hangs over the fireplace. My uncle shot him outside Laube's Old Spain Restaurant on East Avenue. I remember the first night I went into the study and discovered the head. My wife had just finished serving me with an injunction against ever again messing up the living room with my "junk". The last word is hers -- as always. I went into the study and emptied my pipe-dottle all over the floor. As the moosehead was directly in front of me, I addressed to it some remarks about the decline of paternalist society and the rise of Upstart Woman. In moods like this, it is quite usual for a person to indulge in animism of this sort, snarling at inanimate objects or kicking the furniture. A few snarls or kicks and the mood passes. Man knows instinctively that there is no relief, no sense of victory, real or imagined, to be had from snarling at or kicking the little woman.
So I sat there talking to the moosehead when the moosehead joined in. Now, the fact that I felt no immediate surprise does not indicate that I am used to conversing with mooseheads. This particular moosehead is the first one I have ever given a second thought. I must confess, however, that I have since attempted, in the interests of experiment, to strike up conversations with other stuffed animals.
There was an old bookshop on Spring Street that I used to visit quite often to browse around in hopes of finding something of value. You went downstairs under an old brick house and there you were amidst a disorderly assortment of curios. There was a stuffed owl down there with a misanthropic glare that finally impelled me to speak to it one day in an effort to establish contact. I tried to do it inconspicuously, but as the owl was under one of those bell-shaped glass jars, I had first to lift the jar. Standing there and holding the jar and talking to the bird, I could hardly be said to have successfully veiled my purpose. I was really staking my reputation with the proprietor on the owl's speaking to me. Had it spoken, my subsequent visits to the bookshop would not have become such tense affairs. About a year after this incident, Old Mr. Zinmeister sold out to a curio dealer with a more discriminating taste. Whether the owl had anything to do with this change, I do not know.
I won't say that I've really made a fair test. For some obscure reason it is impossible to have a moment alone with a stuffed animal. People who have them, either for display or for sale, have a duenna-like attitude about leaving the room. Every now and then I would find a stuffed specimen that I would swear exhibited some of the exasperation I felt toward this constant and usually garrulous supervision, but I never got further than that. I am by nature a bit too retiring to go about behaving like a Saint Francis of Taxidermy.
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Text versions by Judy Bemis, page scans by Judy Bemis and Kim Huett
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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