Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 167
But very different is the case of the up-to-date parent. “Now I’ve just given Jimmy fifty dollars,” he says to the schoolmaster, in the same tone as he would use to an inferior clerk in his office, “and I’ve explained to him that when he wants any more he’s to tell you to go to the bank and draw for him what he needs.” After which he goes on to explain that Jimmy is a boy of very peculiar disposition, requiring the greatest nicety of treatment; that they find if he gets in tempers the best way is to humour him and presently he’ll come round. Jimmy, it appears, can be led, if led gently, but never driven. During all of which time the schoolmaster, insulted by being treated as an underling — for the iron bites deep into the soul of every one of them — has already fixed his eye on the undisciplined young pup called Jimmy with a view to trying out the problem of seeing whether he can’t be driven after all.
But the greatest nuisance of all to the schoolmaster is the parent who does his boy’s home exercises and works his boy’s sums. I suppose they mean well by it. But it is a disastrous thing to do for any child. Whenever I found myself correcting exercises that had obviously been done for the boys in their homes I used to say to them:
“Paul, tell your father that he must use the ablative after pro.”
“Yes, sir,” says the boy.
“And, Edward, you tell your grandmother that her use of the dative case simply won’t do. She’s getting along nicely and I’m well satisfied with the way she’s doing, but I cannot have her using the dative right and left on every occasion. Tell her it won’t do.”
“Yes, sir,” says little Edward.
I remember one case in particular of a parent who did not do the boy’s exercise but, after letting the boy do it himself, wrote across the face of it a withering comment addressed to me and reading: “From this exercise you can see that my boy, after six months of your teaching, is completely ignorant. How do you account for it?”
I sent the exercise back to him with the added note: “I think it must be hereditary.”
In the whole round of the school year, there was, as I remember it, but one bright spot — the arrival of the summer holidays. Somehow, as the day draws near for the school to break up for holidays, a certain touch of something human pervades the place. The masters lounge round in cricket flannels smoking cigarettes almost in the corridors of the school itself. The boys shout at their play in the long June evenings. At the hour when, on the murky winter nights, the bell rang for night study, the sun is still shining upon the playground and the cricket match between House and House is being played out between daylight and dark. The masters — good fellows that they are — have cancelled evening study to watch the game. The head master is there himself. He is smoking a briar-root pipe and wearing his mortar-board sideways. There is wonderful greenness in the new grass of the playground and a wonderful fragrance in the evening air. It is the last day of school but one. Life is sweet indeed in the anticipation of this summer evening.
If every day in the life of a school could be the last day but one, there would be little fault to find with it.
Laus Varsitatis
A SONG IN Praise of the University of Toronto
(Varsity War Supplement)
(1916)
Note. — It would be false modesty to conceal the fact that this poem was submitted for the Chancellor’s Gold Medal. It didn’t get it.
No one I think can blame me if I want to
Exalt in verse the University of Toronto.
I always do, I hope I always will
Speak in the highest terms of Old McGill;
That institution, I admit with tears,
Has paid my salary for sixteen years.
But what is money to a man like me?
Toronto honoured me with her degree.
Oh, Seat of Learning, at whose Norman Gate
My feeble steps learned to matriculate,
Oh, ancient corridors and classrooms dim,
That youth that once you sheltered, I am him.
Ghosts of departed decades, wake and see,
That boy in the short trousers, I am he,
And after thirty years I bring along
This unsolicited return of song.
Roll back the years, O Time, and let me see
The College that was Varsity to me;
Show me again those super-sylvan spots
Now turned to choice suburban building lots.
Spread wide the trees and stretch the park afar,
Unvexed as yet by the electric car,
Till once again my listening ear shall seize
The Taddle murmuring among the trees
And Fancy see in that far yesterday
The Bloor Street farmers hauling in their hay.
Thus at fond memory’s call as through a haze
I see the men and things of other days.
Dim shades appear within the corridor
And noiseless footsteps fall upon the floor.
Lo! noble Wilson — dared we call him Dan?
Musing, the while, on Prehistoric Man,
Draw nearer still, O Venerable Shade,
Read me that lecture on the Third Crusade,
Let thy grave voice its even tenor keep,
Read it again. This time I will not sleep.
Profound in thought, melodious in tongue
I seem to see thee still, Oh Paxton Young;
How gladly I would ask thee, if I could,
One or two points I never understood.
You said one day that all our judgments were
Synthetically a priori, sir, —
I never doubted it, I never will.
I thought so then and I believe it still,
Yet whisper low into my ear intent
What did you say that a priori meant?
But see these shadowy forms, so strange yet like,
That head!— ’tis Chapman — and that brow— ’tis Pike.
That coloured chalk, that moving hand, that bright
Description of the Neurilemma — Wright!
That voice within the room — pause here and listen —
Mittel Hoch Deutsch — it is, it’s Vandersmissen.
Oh Noble Group! what learning! There were some
Possessed a depth one hardly dared to plumb,
Others a width of superficies that
Makes the professor of to-day look flat.
And all are gone, departed, vanished, nil —
Called to the States or summoned further still,
Some have resigned, or been dismissed, or died;
Others, while still alive, Carnegified,
And in their stead their soft successors play,
In flannelled idleness at Go-Home Bay.
All gone? Not so, some still are on the ground;
Fraser is with us still, and Squair is round,
Still Hutton’s Attic wit the classroom pleases
And Baker keeps at least as young as Keys is.
Others there are — j’en passe et des meilleurs —
Who still recall to us the days that were.
For those were days of Peace. We heeded not.
Men talked of Empire and we called it rot;
Indeed the Empire had no further reach
Than to round out an after-dinner speech,
Or make material from which John A.
Addressed us on our Convocation Day.
There was not in the class of ‘91
A single student who could fire a gun,
Our longest route march only took us — well,
About as far as the Cær Howell Hotel,
Our sole protection from aggression lay
In one small company — its number K.
Oh, little company, I see thee still
Upon the campus at thine evening drill;
Forming in fours, with only three in line,
A target for such feeble wit as mine.
All honour to the few who led the way,
Barker and Coleman, Edgar and McCrae,
Geary, Ruttan and Andy Eliot, who
Is now dispensing justice at the Soo;
And Ryckert — let me pause and think of him,
Is it conceivable he once was slim!
And, yes, perhaps the most important one,
Friend of my youth, good Howard Ferguson,
The kindest man that ever failed to pass
In First Year Trigonometry, alas! —
This man of place and power, has he forgot
His boyhood friend? Oh, surely, he has not;
When next some well-paid sinecure you see,
Oh, Howard, pass it, pass it on to me.
A noble band, those veterans of K.,
Born out of time, living before their day,
Paying their own expense, their belts, their boots,
And calling ever vainly for recruits.
Oh K., thou wert O.K., but not to be
And sank as sinks a raindrop in the sea;
Yet from thine ashes — if a raindrop can
Be said to have such things — there then began
A mighty movement, and one well may say,
You put the K in Canada to-day.
For see, the past has gone! It fades apace
And the loud angry Present takes its place,
Lurid and red, and shaken with alarms,
The thunder that proclaims a world in arms.
What sounds are these, O Varsity, that fall
Loud on thy corridors, the bugle call,
The muster roll, the answering cry, the drum,
As from thy quiet halls thy students come?
Oh ancient corridor! soft falls the light
Upon their hurrying faces, brave and bright;
Children they seemed but yesterday, and then
As in a moment they are turned to men.
Hush low the echoes of thy stone-flagged floor,
Footsteps are passing now that come no more.
And they are gone! The summer sunshine falls
Through the closed windows of thy silent halls,
The winter drags its round, the weary spring
And the slow summer still no tidings bring
Of their return. Yet still, O Gateway Grey,
Silent but hopeful thou dost wait the day —
And it shall come. Then shall the bonfires burn
To tell the message of their glad return.
Ho, porter, wide the gate, beat loud the drum,
Up with the Union Jack, they come, they come!
Majors and Generals and some V.C.’s —
Had ever college such a class as these?
Let the wine flow — excuse me, I forgot —
I should say, in Ontario, let it not,
But let at least the pop be strongly made
And more than lemons in the lemonade.
Let the loud harp and let the mandolin,
In fact, let any kind of music in —
And while the wildest music madly whirls,
Why, then — if I may say it — bring the girls.
And under circumstances such as these
Come, give them all gratuitious degrees.
And there are those who come not. But for them
We sing no dirge, we chant no requiem.
What though afar beneath a distant sky,
Broken and spent, shall their torn bodies lie,
And the soft flowers of France bloom once again
Upon the liberated soil above the slain
Who freed it, and her rivers lave
As with their tears the unforgotten grave,
Whilst thou, Oh Land of murmuring lake and pine,
Shall call in vain these vanished sons of thine, —
They are not dead. They shall not die while still
Affection live and Memory fulfil
Its task of gratitude. Nor theirs alone
The sculptured monument, the graven stone;
The Commonwealth of Freedom that shall rise
World wide shall tell their noble sacrifice.
The Oldest Living Graduate
I FIND HIM wherever I go among the colleges — the Oldest Living Graduate. At every College Reunion, there he is; at each Commencement Day you may expect him among the first — a trifle bent he is and leans, one cannot but note it, somewhat heavily upon his stick; and there is something in his eye, a dimness, a far-away look as of one to whom already a further horizon is opening.
Yet, frail or not, he is there among the graduates at the earliest call. The younger men may hesitate about a hundred-mile journey to attend the Annual Dinner of the Alumni — not he. The younger men may grudge the time or count the cost — not so the Oldest Living Graduate.
See, it is Commencement Day. There sits the Oldest Living Graduate in the very foremost row of the seats in the college hall. His hand is bent to his ear as he listens to the President’s farewell address to the graduates. But he hears no word of it. His mind is back on a bright day in June — can it be sixty years ago? — when first he heard the like of it.
Easy and careless he was then, the Youngest Living Graduate, happy in his escape from the walls of the Temple of Learning. A butterfly he was, hatched from his silken skeins and glorying in the sunshine.
The gaze of the Youngest Living Graduate was turned forwards, not back. He was looking out upon life, eagerly and expectantly. For the time being the sights of the grounds of the campus had faded from his eye and ear. His mind was bent, his strength was braced, to meet the struggle of the coming years. It is the law of life. He had no time, as yet, for retrospect, and in his very eagerness was over-careless of the things that lay behind.
But as the years slipped past the ties of memory began to tighten in their hold. There was time, here and there, in the struggle of life, for a fleeting glance towards the past. And lo! How soft the colours that began to lie on the pictured vision of his college days. The professoriate, once derided, how wise they seemed. It is ever their hard lot to be honoured only when they are dead; but all the greater is the honour. The glory of the campus, the football game played into the November dusk — how the shouts of it will linger in the ear of memory when half a century has gone. Nay, even the lamp of learning itself, how softly now does it illuminate the long-neglected page; and the brave lettering of the degree, what a fine pride of forgotten knowledge does it now contain! Ah, my friends, you and I and each of us were once the youngest, or at least the latest living graduate. The time is coming, if we stay to see it, when we shall be the oldest. The time is coming when you and I and an ancient group that we still call our “Class” will walk the green grass of the campus on Commencement Day with the yearning regret for all that we might have done; with the longing for lost opportunity that is the chief regret of Age.
While there is time, let us be up and doing. Before yet we are the Oldest Living Graduate, let us borrow something of the spirit that inspires him. Let us discount a note against the future with Father Time, and receive its value in the glowing coin of a present affection. While our class yet live let us realize what a splendid group they are; and let us find the opportunity to tell the professors how much we owe to them before we write our gratitude upon their tombstones. And if our college wants our support, our help, and our enthusiasm, let us bring it forth with all the affection of the Oldest Living Graduate and with all the power and eagerness of the youngest.
The Faculty of Arts
(VERSES WRITTEN FOR Dean Moyse’s Dinner to the Professors of the Faculty of Arts, McGill University, October 29, 1909.)
Dear Mr. Dean, I think it much completer,
To voice to-night my sentiments in metre,
This little thing — I ask your blessing on it —
Is what we technically call a sonnet.
Sonno, I sing, and Nitto, I do not,
A derivation made upon the spot.
Here let me interject to save confusion,
There has not been the very least collusion,
I had not given any intimation
That I intended such an innovation,
And if you find my verses poor and mean,
Worthy professors, do not blame the Dean.
For years I have dissembled, now you know it,
My friends! behold in me an unknown poet
Careless of notoriety, of fame unthinking,
But singing like a skylark after drinking.
So tasting this good cheer from soup to Stilton,
I can’t remain a mute inglorious Milton.
Let every man pursue his different way
And seek his life work where he finds his pay.
I leave to Walker gas, to Caldwell Kant,
Adams the rock; Penhallow keeps the plant,
Let the bacilli stay where they belong.
But leave to me the humble joy of song.
A sonnet did I say? Nay I confess
This is an epic neither more nor less,
Arts and the Men, I sing, for I am yearning
To sound the praise of Academic learning.
How start the theme with teeming fancies fraught,
How measure into feet the crowding thought,
How mark the rhythm and divide the time
And bid the stubborn syllables to rhyme, —
In other words, how can I jam it, sir,
In Petersonian Pentameter?
First, let me voice a wish I must avow,
The Board of Governors might see us now.
That we might have to make the tale complete,
An Angus and a Greenshields, and a Fleet.
Oh, sirs, this spectacle would make them feel
That poor professors like a solid meal,
That learning, since it is no hollow sham,
Looks best with a distended diaphragm.
Well may they boast among their employees
A group of smiling faces such as these!
