Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 201
In any case let me tell you this quite firmly. I will not pay this bill. If need be, I will go to prison for it for ten years. But I won’t pay. Remember also that you cannot tyrannize over me as easily as you think. I have powerful friends. I know the cashier in one of our biggest banks, and a friend of mine knows the mayor quite intimately and calls him Charlie. You may find that if you lay a hand on me you are up against a body of public opinion that will shipwreck your company.
Yours savagely, ——
By the time this letter has been written and my wife has made a copy of it — so that when legal proceedings begin we can read it out to the whole court — it is dinner-time, and too late to bother to post the letter; in addition to which there don’t seem to be any envelopes in the whole blessed house. After dinner I forget about it, and next morning when I see the letter lying on my table I begin to have doubts about the whole thing. After all, what’s the good of a lot of fuss? The light company are scoundrels, but the way to deal with scoundrels is to be broad-minded. Furthermore, are they scoundrels? I’m not so sure on reflection that the collector was theirs, after all. I seem to remember that he was collecting for the home for the blind. And that big charge for the gas might be connected in a way with our having left the cooking stove burning all night once or twice by accident. And, after all, I have no receipts. Oh, pshaw! Let the thing go. The company, if they only knew it, have had a mighty narrow escape. After this I will keep receipts, check the meter myself, lie in wait for them, and then, when they least think of it, overwhelm with an action for criminal conspiracy. But meanwhile let it go. Here is the letter which I actually posted:
The Light, Heat, and Power Company.
Dear Sirs,
Enclosed, with apologies, my cheque for $41.85.
Very sincerely, ——
I suppose there are people in the company’s office who open letters like that every month without realizing the wealth of invective that lies behind them.
Let me turn to a similar example:
Letter to the Head Office of the Railway
Company in regard to the loss of my umbrella.
Here is a letter which speaks for itself. I have written it at least twenty times. So has everybody. But I have never yet posted it. Nevertheless, let the Railway Company be careful. The letter runs thus:
Dear Sirs,
I write to the Head Office of your Company because I have failed to get plain simple justice from any of your hired officials. Last week I left my umbrella in one of your Pullman cars. The name of the car, I regret to say, I cannot remember; but it was either Belgravia, or Ashdown, or some name of that sort. The names of all your cars, I may say, sound alike to me; and, anyway, you cannot expect me to remember them. Very good. I left my umbrella in this car. I want it back. It is not the value of the umbrella that I care about. What I really mean is that it’s not the value of it, but the price of it. The thing concerned is matter of general principle; and when you hit me on a general principle you hit me where I live.
It will be not at all difficult for you to locate my umbrella, as it was left on the car between New York and Boston one day early last week. Up to the present time I have been unable to get any satisfaction whatever from your officials. I have been told that your district superintendent in New York is carrying an umbrella that is either mine or somebody’s. May I add in conclusion that if I do not receive prompt satisfaction in this matter, I shall refer it to my solicitor?
I am yours, sir,
etc., etc. ——
Please note the very firm and decisive ending of this letter to the Railway Company. I am sure that, had it been sent, they would have been compelled to take action. It was only prevented being sent by my finding my umbrella under the hall table.
Another impulse from which often springs my unposted correspondence is an access of sudden philanthropy. Every time I hear that ten thousand Chinese have been drowned in a flood of the Hoang-Ho River I dash off a letter with a cheque in it for fifty dollars and the signature “Friend of China.” But before it is posted I recall the fact that after all there are a terrible lot of Chinamen in the world — four billion, is it? Or is that the issue of German marks per day? Anyway there are so many that if they don’t get drowned, what are they to do? Better wait for the next flood, anyway. So the letter is never sent.
But second thoughts dull the edge of philanthropy every time. Indeed, sometimes the current of good deeds gets turned from its channel in the very process of giving. As witness this letter of a type that I am sure is quite familiar:
Sudden Access of Philanthropy after hearing
A Missionary Appeal.
The Reverend John Jungletalk.
Dear Sir,
Enclosed please find my cheque for a hundred dollars ($100.00) — one hundred dollars!
You do not know me, but I listened, sir, this morning to your sermon on behalf of the Tabloid Negroes of Tanganyika. I do not quite grasp where these negroes live, but your account of their condition has touched me to the quick. I am immensely moved by that story of yours about the old negro woman who wanted to hear a gramophone before she died or to die after hearing a gramophone (I forget for the moment which). These people you told us of are in a deplorable condition. They are without Bibles, have no books, no soap, no hot water (I think you said hot water) — in fact they are in a bad way. And on the top of all this I gather that unscrupulous traders have come into the country and are selling rum and whisky to the natives for a few cents a bottle. This is terrible. In fact, sir, I find that as I write this letter I am inclined instead of sending you the hundred dollars to offer the higher sacrifice of personal service. I gather that you are to sail in a few weeks’ time, going from here to San Francisco and there by steamer, to wherever it is that the Tabloid negroes live. I am more than half inclined to come along. If you can collect enough money for the two of us I will gladly do so. Meantime I will hold back the cheque of which I spoke.
Very sincerely in the spirit, ——
P. S. — That whisky you spoke of — is it Scotch or Irish?
I might have included above the letters which I (don’t) write about the scorching of motors along my street — the other streets matter less — letters complaining that there are too many Flag Days, letters on Daylight Saving, Street Cleaning, Fly Killing, the League of Nations — in fact, it’s endless.
Letters to the New Rulers of the World
No. I — To the Secretary of the League of Nations
Respected Sir,
I have learned, as has everybody here in my home town, with unconcealed delight, of this new convention, that you have just concluded in regard to the Kalmuk Hinterland of the Oxus district. As we understand it here in our town, this convention will establish a distinct modus vivendi as between Monoglian Kalmuks and the Tartarian Honeysuckles. It will set up a new sphere of influence, the boundaries of which we are as yet unable to trace on the railway and steamship map of the world in our new Union Depot, but which we feel assured will extend at least fifty miles in either direction and will stop only when it has to. As citizens of a great country it fills us with a new pride in this nation to reflect that the whole of this hinterland, both back and front, will now be thrown open to be proselytyzed, Christianized, and internationalized, penetrated and fumigated under the mandate of this country.
What you have done, sir, is a big thing, and when we realize that it has taken only six years for you to do it, we are filled with enthusiasm as to what you are destined to do. Nor has this been the sole result of your years of labour. The citizens of our town have followed with a fascinated interest each stage of your achievements. Your handling of the claims of Formosa to a share in the control of the Ho-han Canal was masterly. On the news that you had succeeded in submitting to arbitration the claims of the Dutch bondholders of the Peking-Hankow railway, our citizens turned out and held a torchlight procession on the Main Street. When the word came that you had successfully arranged a status quo on the backwaters of the Upper Congo, there was an enthusiasm and excitement upon our streets such as we have not seen since the silver election in 1896.
Under the circumstances, therefore, respected sir, I am certain that you will not mind a few words — I will not say of protest — but of friendly criticism. We readily admit in our town all that you have done for us. You have lifted us, as we fully recognize, into what is a larger atmosphere. When we look back to the narrow horizon of politics as they were in this town (you will recall our sending Alderman McGinnis and the Johnson boys to the penitentiary) we stand appalled. It is a splendid thing to think that our politics now turn upon the larger and bigger issues of the world, such as the Kalmuks, the Kolchuks and the internationalization of the Gulf of Kamchatka. It would have done you good, sir, could you have listened to the masterly debate at our Mechanics’ Institute last week on the establishment of a six-nation control over the trolley line from Jerusalem and Jericho.
But, sir, to be very frank — there is a certain apprehension in our town that this thing is being pushed just a little too far. We are willing to be as international as anybody. Our citizens can breathe as large an atmosphere as the Kalmuks or the Cambodians or any of them. But what begins to worry us is whether these other people are going to be international too. We feel somehow that your League ought, if we may use a metaphor, to play a little bit nearer home, not all the games but at least some of them. There are a lot of things in this town that we think might properly claim your attention. I don’t know whether you are aware of the state of our sewers and the need for practically ripping up the Main Street and relaying them. Here is a thing in which we think the Kalmuks might care to help us out. Also if you would discuss with the Cambodians of the Sumatra Hinterland the question of their taking a hand in the irrigation of Murphy’s flats (just the other side, you remember of where the old Murphy homestead was) it might make for good feeling all around.
Put very briefly, sir, our one criticism of your achievements — and it is only said in the kindest possible way — is that your League is all right, but somehow the gate receipts of it seem to go in the wrong direction.
No. II — To a Disconsolate King
My dear Charles Mary Augustus Felix Sigismund:
You will pardon me, I hope, this brief method of address. For the moment, I cannot recall the rest of your names.
I need hardly say how delighted and honoured I was to receive a letter from you written all in your own hand and spelt, as I saw at once, without help. It was perhaps wrong of you to pay insufficient postage on it. But I do not forget that you were once a king and cannot at once get over it. You write in what are evidently wretchedly low spirits. You say that you are living in Schlitzen-Bad-unter-Wein (if I get you right), in the simplest conceivable way. You have laid aside your royal title and are living incognito as the Hereditary Count in and of Salzensplitz. You have only a single valet and no retinue. You lunch, you tell me, very plainly each day upon a pint of Rheinwein and an egg, and at dinner you have merely a chop or a cutlet and a couple of quarts of Rudesberger. You retire to bed, it seems, after a plain supper — a forkful of macaroni, I think you said, with about half a tumbler of old Schnapps. Of all the thousands who fed at your table in the days of your kingship, none, you say, care now to share your simple fare. This is too bad. If they had you and your little table in New York, they could give you the choice of a line-up of friends that would reach from the Winter Garden to the Battery. But that is by the way.
The point is that you are singularly disconsolate. You tell me that at times you have thought of suicide. At other times you have almost made up your mind to work. Both of these things are bad, and I beg of you, my dear Sigismund, that before adopting either of these alternatives you will listen to a little quiet advice and will sit tight in Schlitzen-Bad-unter-Wein till things brighten up a bit. Unless I much mistake, my dear Charles Mary Felix, the world has not finished with you yet, nor won’t have for a long time to come. It turns out, I am sorry to say, that the world is still an infinitely sillier place than we had imagined. You remember that morning when you ran away from your hereditary principality, concealed in a packing case and covered up with a load of hay. All the world roared with laughter at the ignominy and cowardice of your flight. You seemed all of a sudden changed into a comic figure. Your silly little dignity, the uniforms that you wore and that you changed twenty times a day, the medals which you bestowed upon yourself, the Insignia of the Duck’s Feather which you yourself instituted — all these things became suddenly laughable. We thought that Europe had become sensible and rational, and was done with the absurdity of autocratic kings.
I tell you frankly, Charles Mary Felix, you and your silly baubles had been no sooner swept into the little heap, than a thousand new kinds of folly sprang up to replace you. The merry Checkoslovak and the Unredeemed Italian ran up a bill of taxes for peaceful citizens like myself to pay. I have contributed my share to expeditions to Kieff, to Baku, and to Teheran and to Timbuctoo. General Choodenstitch is conducting huge operations against General Gorfinski in Esthonia, and I can’t even remember which is my general and where Esthonia is. I have occupied Anatolia, and I don’t want it. I have got an international gendarmerie in Albania that I think are a pack of bums, eating their heads off at my expense. As to Bulgaria, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, I believe I voice the sentiments of millions of free-born income-tax payers when I say, take them, Charles Felix; they are all yours.
The time is coming, I am certain, when a new pack of fools will come and hunt you up in your exile at Schlitzen-Bad-unter-Wein, clap a Field Marshal’s uniform on you, put you in a bomb-proof motor car and rush you back to your hereditary palace. They will announce that you have performed prodigies of personal bravery. You will wear again your twenty uniforms a day. You will give twenty-five cents to a blind beggar and be called the father of your people.
I give you notice, Mary Augustus, that when this happens, I shall not lift a finger to stop it. For it appears that our poor humanity, its head still singing with the cruel buffeting of the war, is incapable of moving forward, and can only stagger round in a circle.
No. III — To a Plumber
My very dear Sir,
It is now four hours since you have been sitting under the sink in my kitchen, smoking. You have turned off the water in the basement of my house and you have made the space under the sink dry and comfortable and you are sitting there. I understand that you are waiting for the return of your fellow plumber who has gone away to bring back a bigger wrench than the one that you have with you.
The moment is therefore opportune for me to write these few lines which I shall presently place in an envelope and deliver to you on your departure.
I do not wish in any way to seem to reflect upon the apparent dilatoriness with which your work has been done. I am certain that is only apparent and not real. I pass over the fact that my house has now for two weeks been without an adequate water-supply. I do not resent it that you have spent each morning for a fortnight in my kitchen. I am not insensible, sir, to the charm of your presence there under the sink and I recognize the stimulus which it affords to the intellectual life of my cook. I am quite aware, sir, that all of these things are outside of the legitimate scope of complaint. For I understand that they are imposed upon you by your order. It is the command, I believe, of your local union that you must not use a wrench without sending for an assistant: it is an order of your federated brotherhood that you must not handle a screwdriver except in the presence of a carpenter and before witnesses: and it is the positive command of the international order to which you belong that you must not finish any job until it has been declared finishable by a majority vote of the qualified plumbers of your district. These things, no doubt, make for the gayety and variety of industry but interpose, I fear, a check upon the rapidity of your operations.
But what I have wanted to say to you, good sir, is this. You find yourself in possession of what used to be called in the middle ages a Mystery, — something which you can do and which other people can’t. And you are working your mystery for all it is worth. Indeed I am inclined to think that you are working it for rather more than it is worth.
I think it only fair to tell you that a movement is now on foot which may jeopardize your existence. A number of our national universities have already opened departments of Plumbing which threaten to bring your mysterious knowledge within reach even of the most educated. Some of the brightest scientific minds of the country are applying themselves to find out just how you do it. I have myself already listened to a course of six speculative lectures on the theory of the kitchen tap, in which the lecturer was bold enough to say that the time is soon coming when it will be known, absolutely and positively, to the scientific world how to put on a washer. Already, sir, pamphlets are being freely circulated dealing with the origin and nature of the hot water furnace. It has been already discovered that the water moves to and fro in the pipes of the furnace with sufficient regularity and continuity of movement to render it capable of reduction to a scientific law. We shall know before long just what it is you do to the thing to stop it from sizzling.
You perceive then, my dear sir, that the moment is one which ought to give you room for anxious thought. You are perhaps not aware that a book has already been published under the ominous title Every Man His Own Plumber. It has been suppressed, very rightly, by the United States Government as tending to subvert society and reduce it to a pulp. But it at least foreshadows, sir, the grim possibilities of the future.
