The Sunday Eight O'Clock/False Faces
BILL WITHERS and I—Bill lived just across the road from us—had been reading "Bentley Burrows, or The Skeleton Hand", a tale of ghosts and bandits and general horrors continued from week to week in the Saturday Night, a literary journal which our hired man bought every week at Cole's drug store in town. Shivering with fear, I was just finishing the last chapter in the dusk of a dull November evening, when I heard a knock at the door. I called "Come in", as was the polite custom in our community, and to my horror a real bandit entered—leather leggins, big revolver, bristling moustache, and all. I was frightened for a moment, and then I caught sight of a lock of curly red hair sticking out through a hole in the sombrero and a freckled ear protruding. It was only Bill Withers wearing a false face and trying to fool me.
I have had the experience often since.
I called at a fraternity house recently when rushing was on. Through the dim light I could see that all the fellows were wearing false faces. Above the din of the rag time whanged from the long-suffering piano I could detect the hollow, unnatural voices issuing through the masks that the men were wearing. The older fellows, more skilled in their strategy, had adjusted their disguises with greater cleverness than the others, but even the freshmen, their false faces sometimes awry, were attempting to cover up their real selves.
I ran onto Jim Burton one Sunday this summer at church with his parents. He was looking pious, attentive, and altogether unsophisticated. As he leaned over to pick a hymn book from the floor I could see how crudely he had adjusted his false face, for underneath he was the same irreligious, irreverent, irresponsible youth whom I had known at college.
I was watching Mary Gay at a party last week, rosy cheeked and bright eyed, and I thought I had never seen a happier and a more animated face. She was smiling on every one and showing a vivacity and an interest that held a pleased crowd about her. A few minutes later I came upon her unobserved as she was standing before the mirror in the hallway surreptitiously adjusting her false face, and I could see how pitifully bored and tired she looked.
These false faces which we wear or see every day seldom deceive anyone. They are like rouge or oleomargarine or hair dye or face powder—no one ever thinks them real. We put them on to make ourselves beautiful or impressive to our teachers or our sweethearts or the tax collector or the home folks or the minister or our Creator, but more often than otherwise the lock of red hair escapes or the freckled ear sticks out and gives us away.
February