Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 187
“Very good,” said the Superintendent, “you are entitled to fill out a form if you wish to do so.” He searched among his papers.
“Did you say,” he asked, “that you have killed your landlord, or that you are going to kill him?” “I have killed him,” I said firmly. “Very good,” said the officer, “we use separate forms.” He gave me a long printed slip with blanks to fill in — my age, occupation, reasons (if any) for the killing, etc.
“What shall I put,” I asked, “under the heading of reasons?”
“I think,” he answered, “that it will be better to put simply, ‘no reasons,’ or if you like, the ‘usual reasons’!” With that he bowed me politely out of his office, expressing, as he did so, the hope that I would bury the landlord and not leave him lying about.
To me the interview was unsatisfactory. I am well aware that the Superintendent was within the strict nicety of the law. No doubt if every case of the shooting of a landlord were made a matter of inquiry the result would be embarrassing and tedious.
The shooting is generally done in connection with a rise of rent, and nothing more needs to be said about it. “I am increasing your rent another $10.00 a month,” says the landlord. “All right,” says the tenant, “I’ll shoot you.” Sometimes he does, sometimes he forgets to.
But my own case was quite different. The proposal of the National Tenant League to give me a gold medal next Saturday has brought things to a head and forces an explanation.
I recall distinctly the time, now some five years ago, when my wife and I first took our flat. The landlord showed us over it himself, and I am free to confess that there was nothing in his manner, or very little indeed, to suggest anything out of the normal.
Only one small incident stuck in my mind. He apologized for the lack of cupboard space.
“There are not enough cupboards in this flat,” he said.
It made me slightly uncomfortable to hear him speak in this way. “But look,” I said, “how large and airy this pantry is. It is at least four feet each way.”
He shook his head and repeated that the cupboards were small. “I must build in better ones,” he said.
Two months later he built in new cupboards. It gave me a shock of surprise — a touch of the uncanny — to notice that he did not raise the rent. “Are you not raising the rent because of the cupboards?” I asked. “No,” he said, “they only cost me fifty dollars.” “But, my dear fellow,” I objected, “surely the interest on fifty dollars is sixty dollars a year?”
He admitted this, but said that he would rather not raise the rent. Thinking it over, I decided that his conduct might be due to incipient paresis or coagulation of the arteries of the head. At that time I had no idea of killing him. That came later.
I recall no incident of importance till the spring of the year following. My landlord appeared unexpectedly one day with apologies for intruding (a fact which of itself seemed suspicious), and said that he proposed to repaper the entire apartment. I expostulated in vain.
“The paper,” I said, “is only ten years old.” “It is,” he said, “but wall paper has gone up to double its value since that time.” “Very good, then,” I said firmly, “you must raise the rent twenty dollars a month for the paper.” “I shall not,” he answered. The incident led to a distinct coolness between us for some months.
The next episodes were of a more pronounced character. Everybody recalls the great increases of rent due to the terrific rise in building costs. My landlord refused to raise the rent of my flat.
“The cost of building,” I said, “has increased at least one hundred per cent.”
“Very good,” he answered, “but I am not building. I have always been getting ten per cent on my investment in this property, and I am still getting it.”
“Think of your wife,” I said.
“I won’t,” he answered.
“It is your duty,” I went on, “to think of her. Let me tell you that only yesterday I saw in the papers a letter from a landlord, one of the most beautiful letters I ever saw (from a landlord), in which he said the rise in the cost of building materials compelled him to think of his wife and children. It was a touching appeal.”
“I don’t care,” my landlord answered, “I’m not married.”
“Ah,” I said, “not married.” It was, I think, at this moment that the idea first occurred to me that the man might be put out of the way.
There followed the episode of November. My readers will all remember the fifty per cent increase of rents made to celebrate Armistice Day. My landlord refused to join in the celebrations.
This lack of patriotism in the fellow irritated me greatly. The same thing happened at the time of the rise of rents that was instituted to celebrate the visit of Marshal Foch, and the later rise — twenty-five per cent, if I remember rightly — that was made as a tribute to the ex-service men.
It was purely a patriotic movement, done in a spontaneous way without premeditation.
I have heard many of the soldiers say that it was their first welcome home, and that they would never forget it.
It was followed a little later by the rise of rents held as a welcome to the Prince of Wales. No better congratulation could have been planned.
My landlord, alas, remained outside of all this. He made no increase in his rent. “I have,” he said, “my ten per cent, and that is enough.”
I know now that the paresis or coagulation must have overwhelmed one entire lobe or hemisphere of his head.
I was meditating action.
The crisis came last month. A sharp rise in rent had been very properly instituted to counterbalance the fall in the German mark. It was based quite evidently on the soundest business reasoning.
If the fall in the mark is not countered in this way, it is plain that we are undone. The cheap German mark will enable the Germans to take away our houses.
I waited for three days, looking in vain for a notice of increase in my rent.
Then I went to visit my landlord in his office. I admit that I was armed, but in extenuation I want to say that I knew that I had to deal with an abnormal, aberrated man, one-half of whose brain was now coagulated.
I wasted no words on preliminaries.
“You have seen,” I said, “this fall of the German mark.”
“Yes,” he answered, “what of it?”
“Simply this,” I said. “Are you going to raise my rent or are you not?”
“No,” he said doggedly, “I am not.”
I raised the revolver and fired. He was sitting sideways to me as I did so. I fired, in all, four shots. I could see through the smoke that one, at least, of the shots had cut his waistcoat into strips, a second had ripped off his collar, while the third and fourth had cut through his braces at the back. He was visibly in a state of collapse. It was doubtful if he could reach the street. But even if he could, it was certain that he couldn’t walk upon it.
I left him as he was and reported, as I have said, to the police.
If the Tenant League medal is given to me, I want it to be with full understanding of the case.
Why I Refuse to Play Golf
I AM OLD enough to remember very distinctly the first coming of the game of golf to the city where I live. It came in that insidious but forceful way that characterizes everything Scottish. It was similar to the spread of Scottish Banking, the Scottish Church, and Scotch whiskey.
The exact circumstances were these. One afternoon in April when the wind was on the new grass, three Scotsmen went out to a hill slope near the town. They carried with them three crooked sticks and a little ball. There was a firmness in their manner but nothing obviously criminal. They laid the ball down and began to beat it about on the grass. In fairness it must be admitted that they made no parade of the matter. They paid no attention to the few mystified people who watched them. At the end of about an hour they were seen to sit down under a briar bush: there they remained for some time: it was thought at the time that they were either praying or drinking whiskey. Opinion was divided. But the real truth was that they had formed themselves into a Golf Club.
This, I say, was on a Saturday. Had the city been well advised these men could have been arrested on the following Monday. A judicious application of the Vagrancy Laws or rather free interpretation of the Sedition Acts might have forestalled at the outset a grave national peril.
But nothing was done. Indeed at the moment little was thought of the matter, or, at any rate, little was manifested in the shape of public indignation or public protest. Even when six Scotsmen appeared on the ground the following Saturday, and twelve the week after, and twenty-four on the last Saturday in the month, few people, if any, realized the magnitude of what was happening. The news that a Golf Club had been formed in Montreal was presently printed quite openly, in the newspapers as if it were an ordinary event.
One must admit, even, that a very lively curiosity mixed with something approaching to envy began to surround the afternoon gatherings of the Scotsmen. There is something in the sweep of the wind over the April grass, something in the open space and the blue sky that conveys an insidious appeal to the lower side of a man’s nature. It is difficult to sit indoors at one’s desk and to know that other men are striding over the turf. Moreover the ingenious expedient of carrying out a ball and beating it round with sticks supplied a colour of activity and purpose that acted as a drug upon the conscience. Had it not been for this use of the sticks and the ball the players would have appeared as mere loafers. But the evident earnestness with which they followed their avocation robbed it of every appearance of idleness; and the public was entirely deceived as to its character.
In short, it was not long before the game began to exercise an evident effect upon those who at first had been idle spectators. They became anxious to join in. Here and there, by a very obvious and cunning piece of policy, they were invited to try their hand. The spectator then found to his surprise the peculiar difficulty of the game. He discovered that, simple though it looked, it was not possible for him to place the ball on the ground, take a drink of Scotch whiskey, and then hit it with the stick. He tried again and again but failed each time. The natural result was that he solicited membership in the Club, and reappeared on the following Saturday with a ball and stick of his own and with a flask of whiskey on his hip. The Saturday after that he turned up in a pair of knickerbocker trousers, a round tam o’shanter hat and a Cluny Macpherson tartan over his shoulder; after that, as far as any general utility to the community went, the man was lost.
I remember well, some eighteen months after the Club started, realizing how far already the movement had gone when I heard the head of our greatest bank accost the president of a railway, on St. James Street, with the words, “Hoot, mon! it’s a braw morning the day!” Up till that time language of the sort would have come under the criminal code.
I have since learned that this same kind of thing was going on all over the country just as it was in my own city. Men were appearing in the business streets in the Cluny Macpherson tartan. Some even had tall feathers stuck sideways in their tam o’shanters. At more than one public dinner the music of the bagpipes was not only tolerated but even applauded. On every Saturday and presently even on week days men were seen lifting long bags filled with crooked sticks on to the street cars.
In those days the public at large was still innocent and ignorant. We had not even heard the word “propaganda.” Otherwise we should have seen under all this a dangerous organized movement for the spread of Presbyterianism and the sale of the poetry of Robert Burns.
The original Club of which I speak soon took further steps. They erected a kind of wooden structure on the ground where they played. It was a modest affair — merely two large rooms, one a sitting-room, with easy chairs, for talking about golf in, and the other a rest or silence room for thinking about golf in. The ground on which they played was supposedly public property. But any attempt at ejectment was rendered out of the question by the fact that they had enrolled among their membership all the leaders of the bar and all the senior judges.
This last point, indeed, went strongly in their favour throughout. Even when they had left the modest building of which I speak and were spreading over the landscape, it was plain that the game of golf had insinuated itself most daringly into the structure of our legal institutions. A decision of the courts decided that the game of golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort. Another decision laid down the principle that a golf club need never close the bar, not being a bar within the legal meaning of the term, but a place of rest insomuch as the drinks sold are not drinks as known to the statute but a form of recuperation. In the same way, the pay given to a boy attendant, or caddy, is not pay but a reward, and exempts him from the Cruelty to Children Act. The excess profits tax, the license tax and the property tax do not apply, it is held, to the premises of a golf club, as it is a religious institution; and both the Privy Council and the Supreme Courts are said to be preparing decisions to the effect that consuming whiskey in or near a golf club does not constitute a breach of the law provided that it is taken only when needed and in the proportion or quantity needed and that it is not made the subject of treating.
But I anticipate: these decisions belong, of course, to later days. I was saying that in my own town, and no doubt everywhere else, the golf club idea once started and established soon spread. The original ground was abandoned. A vast stretch of beautiful land that might easily have supported hundreds and hundreds of hogs was laid out into a golf course. It was whispered that the ground was not purchased but seized; this is no doubt untrue, but it is an undeniable fact that this beautiful hog pasture was presently laid out into flat lawns and greens. In reality, nothing more is needed for the driving of a golf ball except a straight piece of air two hundred yards long. But it is a nice pretence of the game that a whole landscape must be seized and occupied to the exclusion of agriculture, manufacture, and all other uses. In the case of which I speak, the vast purposelessness of the affair was concealed by the cunning device of setting out tomato cans and red flags at irregular intervals. By walking among these the players are made to appear as if pursuing some known object. The position of the flags are so contrived that each player is led in a circular course and returns at intervals to the club house where he may take a drink and start again. Each set of drinks is call a “round,” and of course an expert player can make a round far more rapidly than a beginner.
One large club, I say, was established. Yet even after it was definitely in operation very few people realized the way in which it was disturbing our civic life. It was noticed, indeed, that the schedule of trains of our greatest railway had undergone marked changes. A great number of suburban trains were introduced and a sharp discrimination made against transcontinental and other needless traffic. A branch line was built in a convenient situation to form a natural obstacle, or bunker, for the golf course. But few people connected these changes with the fact that the president of the railway and the entire directorate were members of the golf club.
A new stage of development presently appeared. There is a certain kind of animal, so biology teaches us, which increases its numbers by simply dividing itself in two. The original animal is called, I think, an amœba. But the real type of the species is the golf club. If you put one of them in the landscape and leave it there for a year or so you presently come back and find two; and if the two are left unmolested for a short period they presently turn into four. Where the landscape is especially favourable, where nature has spread out her fertile land all ready to make bunkers and her pure streams all ready to mix with Scotch whiskey, the two clubs will even turn into six.
Such has been the case in our city, and I imagine, in every other. There are now twelve golf clubs in the vicinity with ten others being organized. The area now covered occupies, it is said, twelve thousand acres. One passes in the train from the crowded confines of the city to the wide expanses of the golf clubs. Everywhere there are little greens, and tin-cans and red flags, and club members in knickerbockers. Each year the city is more and more crowded. Each year the golf area is bigger and bigger.
Nor is there any public protest. Each year more and more men, hitherto respectable God-fearing citizens, are being caught in the lure of it. It is difficult to say just what the fascination is. But it is there. Sometimes I think that it lies in pretending to be a Scotsman. It may be that: there are so many things about the Scotch that attract — their contempt of rain, their peculiar nerve in wearing a hen’s feather in their hat, their comprehensive ideas on damnation — that it may well be that the golf members are simply trying to be Scotsmen. In addition to that I blame Harry Lauder a good deal: and undoubtedly Robert Burns has a lot to answer for. But taking it as you will the golf club has become a grave national menace.
In my own city we are, I suppose, beyond redemption. We have golf tournaments, golf teas, and golf dinners: golf trains and golf cars and golf motors. The use of the bagpipes is everywhere tolerated and we eat Haggis on St. Andrew’s Day. But if there are any cities in which this insidious movement is still in its infancy, I can only exhort them to suppress it while there is yet time.
The Approach of the Comet. Do You Really Care if it Hits You?
BY THIS TIME everybody knows that a comet is due to hit the earth early in the month of June. Last week it passed through the Constellation of Capricorn going like blue-lightning. It is now moving through Virgo to beat — all records. At the moment of writing, it can hardly be more than a few thousand billion miles away: in short, it is right upon us. Just three weeks before the celebration of the Fourth of July the comet will hit us: in fact there will not be any Fourth of July. There will be nothing but a hole where it used to be.
