Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 218
What the Radio Overheard AN EVENING AT HOME OF THE UPTOWN BROWNS
One Crowded Quarter Second HOW THEY MAKE LIFE MOVE IN THE MOVIES
Done into Movies BUT CAN YOU RECOGNIZE THE GOOD OLD STORIES WHEN THEY GET THEM DONE?
Short Circuits in International Relations
Things I Hardly Dare Whisper MORE REVELATIONS OF ANOTHER UNKNOWN EUROPEAN DIPLOMAT. BY AN UNDISCLOSED AUTHOR OF EUROPEAN DISREPUTATION. TWO VOLUMES. TEN DOLLARS EACH, OR THE TWO FOR SEVEN-FIFTY.
Hands Across the Sea WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN AMERICA HAS REMOVED ALL THE EUROPEAN ART
If They Go on Swimming A FORECAST OF THE END OF A NEW INTERNATIONAL CRAZE
If Mussolini Comes WHAT WE WOULD BE ENTITLED TO CONCLUDE WOULD OCCUR
This World Championship Stuff AND WHY I AM OUT OF IT
Get Off the Earth NOW THAT THIS GLOBE IS USED UP, LET’S LOOK FOR ANOTHER
Bygone Currents
The Lost World of Yesterday A PEN PICTURE OF THE VANISHED PAST — THE HORSE AND BUGGY
Come Back to School AND LET US SEE WHAT THE DEAR OLD DAYS FELT LIKE
The Fall Fair and the Autumn Exposition A COMPARISON OF MIDGEVILLE IN 1880 AND MIDGE CITY IN 1928
Extinct Monsters ALL THAT WILL BE LEFT OF OUR HOUSEHOLD PETS IN 1,000 YEARS
The Passing of the Back Yard ANOTHER SOCIAL REVOLUTION COMING STRAIGHT AT US
Short Circuits in Current Literature
The Literary Sensations of 1929 A CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE TO THE NEW BOOKS
Children’s Poetry Revised HOW THE DEAR OLD POEMS OF OUR CHILDHOOD NEED TO BE BROUGHT UP TO DATE
Illustrations I Can Do Without SOME GENTLE SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINES
Our Summer Pets AS PRESENTED BY OUR ENTHUSIASTIC NATURE WRITERS
The Old Men’s Page A BRAND NEW FEATURE IN JOURNALISM
A Guide to the Underworld A LITTLE UNSOCIAL REGISTER FOR THE USE OF READERS OF UP-TO-DATE FICTION
Love Me, Love My Letters THE USE OF INK FOR THE FIRST INKLINGS OF LOVE
With the Authorities SHOWING HOW EASILY THEY EXCEL AT THEIR OWN GAMES
Literature and the Eighteenth Amendment
The Hunt for a Heroine HOW THE FICTION WRITER STRUGGLES TO MAKE AN ATTRACTIVE WOMAN
Bed-time Stories for Grown-up People WITH APOLOGIES TO OUR BEST CHILDREN’S WRITERS
Softening the Stories for the Children BUT DON’T DO IT: THEY PREFER THEM ROUGH
The Great Detective
The Epilogue of This Book: An Elegy Near a City Freight Yard
The Epilogue of This Book
Short Circuits in the Social Current
Old Junk and New Money
A LITTLE STUDY IN THE LATEST ANTIQUES
I WENT THE other day into the beautiful home of my two good friends, the Hespeler-Hyphen-Joneses, and I paused a moment, as my eye fell on the tall clock that stood in the hall.
“Ah,” said Hespeler-Hyphen-Jones, “I see you are looking at the clock — a beautiful thing, isn’t it? — a genuine antique.”
“Does it go?” I asked.
“Good gracious, no!” exclaimed my two friends. “But isn’t it a beautiful thing!”
“Did it ever go?”
“I doubt it,” said Hespeler-Hyphen-Jones. “The works, of course, are by Salvolatile — one of the really great clockmakers, you know. But I don’t know whether the works ever went. That, I believe, is one way in which you can always tell a Salvolatile. If it’s a genuine Salvolatile, it won’t go.”
“In any case,” I said, “it has no hands.”
“Oh, dear, no,” said Mrs. Jones. “It never had, as far as we know. We picked it up in such a queer little shop in Amalfi and the man assured us that it never had had any hands. He guaranteed it. That’s one of the things, you know, that you can tell by. Charles and I were terribly keen about clocks at that time and really studied them, and the books all agreed that no genuine Salvolatile has any hands.”
“And was the side broken, too, when you got it,” I asked.
“Ah, no,” said my friend. “We had that done by an expert in New York after we got back. Isn’t it exquisitely done? You see, he has made the break to look exactly as if some one had rolled the clock over and stamped on it. Every genuine Salvolatile is said to have been stamped upon like that.
“Of course, our break is only imitation, but it’s extremely well done, isn’t it? We go to Ferrugi’s, that little place on Fourth Avenue, you know, for everything that we want broken. They have a splendid man there. He can break anything.”
“Really!” I said.
“Yes, and the day when we wanted the clock done, Charles and I went down to see him do it. It was really quite wonderful, wasn’t it, Charles?”
“Yes, indeed. The man laid the clock on the floor and turned it on its side and then stood looking at it intently, and walking round and round it and murmuring in Italian as if he were swearing at it. Then he jumped in the air and came down on it with both feet.”
“Did he?” I asked.
“Yes, and with such wonderful accuracy. Our friend Mr. Appin-Hyphen-Smith — the great expert, you know — was looking at our clock last week and he said it was marvelous, hardly to be distinguished from a genuine fractura.”
“But he did say, didn’t he, dear,” said Mrs. Jones, “that the better way is to throw a clock out of a fourth story window? You see, that was the height of the Italian houses in the Thirteenth Century — is it the Thirteenth Century I mean, Charles?”
“Yes,” said Charles.
“Do you know, the other day I made the silliest mistake about a spoon. I thought it was a Twelfth Century spoon and said so and in reality it was only Eleven and a half. Wasn’t it, Charles?”
“Yes,” said Charles.
“But do come into the drawing room and have some tea. And, by the way, since you are interested in antiques, do look please at my teapot.”
“It looks an excellent teapot,” I said, feeling it with my hand, “and it must have been very expensive, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, not that one,” interposed Mr. Hespeler-Hyphen-Jones. “That is nothing. We got that here in New York at Hoffany’s — to make tea in. It is made of solid silver, of course, and all that, but even Hoffany’s admitted that it was made in America and was probably not more than a year or so old and had never been used by anybody else. In fact, they couldn’t guarantee it in any way.”
“Oh, I see,” I said.
“But let me pour you out tea from it and then do look at the perfect darling beside it. Oh, don’t touch it, please, it won’t stand up.”
“Won’t stand up?” I said.
“No,” said Hespeler-Jones, “that’s one of the tests. We know from that that it is genuine Swaatsmaacher. None of them stand up.”
“Where did you buy it?” I asked, “here?”
“Oh, heavens, no, you couldn’t buy a thing like that here! As a matter of fact, we picked it up in a little gin shop in Obehellandam in Holland. Do you know Obehellandam?”
“I don’t,” I said.
“It’s just the dearest little place, nothing but little wee smelly shops filled with most delightful things — all antique, everything broken. They guarantee that there is nothing in the shop that wasn’t smashed at least a hundred years ago.”
“You don’t use the teapot to make tea,” I said.
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Hespeler-Jones as she handed me a cup of tea from the New York teapot. “I don’t think you could. It leaks.”
“That again is a thing,” said her husband, “that the experts always look for in a Swaatsmaacher. If it doesn’t leak, it’s probably just a faked-up thing not twenty years old.”
“Is it silver?” I asked.
“Ah, no. That’s another test,” said Mrs. Jones. “The real Swaatsmaachers were always made of pewter bound with barrel-iron off the gin barrels. They try to imitate it now by using silver, but they can’t get it.”
“No, the silver won’t take the tarnish,” interjected her husband. “You see, it’s the same way with ever so many of the old things. They rust and rot in a way that you simply cannot imitate. I have an old drinking horn that I’ll show you presently — Ninth Century, isn’t it, dear? — that is all coated inside with the most beautiful green slime, absolutely impossible to reproduce.”
“Is it?” I said.
“Yes, I took it to Squeeziou’s, the Italian place in London. (They are the great experts on horns, you know; they can tell exactly the country and the breed of cow.) And they told me that they had tried in vain to reproduce that peculiar and beautiful rot. One of their head men said that he thought that this horn had probably been taken from a dead cow that had been buried for fifty years. That’s what gives it its value, you know.”
“You didn’t buy it in London, did you?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” answered Hespeler-Jones. “London is perfectly impossible — just as hopeless as New York. You can’t buy anything real there at all.”
“Then where do you get all your things?” I asked, as I looked round at the collection of junk in the room.
“Oh, we pick them up here and there,” said Mrs. Jones. “Just in any out-of-the-way corners. That little stool we found at the back of a cow stable in Loch Aberlocherty. They were actually using it for milking. And the two others — aren’t they beautiful? though really it’s quite wrong to have two chairs alike in the same room — came from the back of a tiny little whiskey shop in Galway. Such a delight of an old Irishman sold them to us and he admitted that he himself had no idea how old they were. They might, he said, be Fifteenth Century, or they might not.
“But, oh, Charles,” my hostess interrupted herself to say, “I’ve just had a letter from Jane (Jane is my sister, you know) that is terribly exciting. She’s found a table at a tiny place in Brittany that she thinks would exactly do in our card room. She says that it’s utterly unlike anything else in the room and has quite obviously no connection with cards. But let me read what she says — let me see, yes, here’s where it begins:
“ ’. . . a perfectly sweet little table. It probably had four legs originally and even now has two which, I am told, is a great find, as most people have to be content with one. The man explained that it could either be leaned up against the wall or else suspended from the ceiling on a silver chain. One of the boards of the top is gone, but I am told that that is of no consequence, as all the best specimens of Brittany tables have at least one board out.’
“Doesn’t that sound fascinating, Charles? Do send Jane a cable at once not to miss it.”
And when I took my leave a little later, I realized once and for all that the antique business is not for me.
Speaking of India — — WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR HUSBAND TELLS IN COMPANY HIS SAME OLD STORY
I WAS AT a dinner party the other night at which one of the guests, as guests generally do, began to tell an old story of his, already known to us all.
“What you say of India,” he said, “reminds me of a rather remarkable experience of mine in California — —”
“Oh, James,” interrupted his wife, “please don’t tell that old story over again.”
The narrator, a modest man, blushed and came to a stop. There was a painful silence which lasted for some moments. Then somebody said, “Speaking of Mayor Thompson of Chicago — —” and the party went on again.
But the incident left behind it a problem in my mind. Should a wife, or should a wife not, interrupt her husband to stop him telling one of his wearisome old stories. . . .
If the husband could speak (most husbands are inarticulate) he could certainly put up a good defense. He could say:
“My dear Martha, you think this is an old story. But if you knew some of the ones that will be told by the other men if I don’t tell this, you’d think it brand new. You think the story wearisome for you. But their wives think their stories wearisome for them. All the stories we are all going to tell tonight are old. Of course they are. What do you think we are, — Shakespeare? We can’t sit here and make up new stories. If we could, we’d black our faces, call ourselves coons and draw a hundred dollars a night in a New York Revue.
“Moreover — listen to this as a second point. An old story has certain great advantages over a new one. There’s no strain in listening to it. You know just when it is all coming, and you can slip in an extra oyster and bite off an extra piece of celery in between the sentences, take a drink of dry ginger ale and be all set for the big laugh at the end.
“And get this also — if you don’t have stories at a dinner table somebody will start Statistics. And Statistics are worse than stories in the ratio of eight to one. There is, you must remember, a certain type of man, who goes round filling himself up with facts. He knows how many miles of railway track there are in the United States and the number of illiterates in Oklahoma. At any dinner party this man may be there: if he is, conversation turns into a lecture. Worse still there may be two of these men. If there are, conversation becomes an argument.”
Now, this is the worst of all. Argument at a dinner party ruins the whole evening for everybody. One man says something, — let us say, — about the Civil War, — and some one else contradicts him.— “You’ll pardon me — —” he says, and they’re off. They start politely. In two minutes they are speaking with warmth. In four minutes they hate one another worse than hell. First they ask themselves to pardon one another. Then they begin referring one another to books.— “Pardon me,” says one, “if you consult any history of the war, you’ll see that Lincoln never meant to set free the slaves.”— “Excuse me,” says the other, “if you consult any biography of Lincoln you’ll see that he did. . . .”
Now you notice that this point about Abraham Lincoln can’t be settled without at least a year’s work in a library — and not even then.
So the argument gets warmer. The opponents refer one another to books, then they tell one another to go to Washington and hunt it up for themselves. Finally they tell one another to go to hell.
Meantime there is a maid behind one of them trying to give him a creamed celery out of a dish which he keeps knocking over, and a maid pouring hot asparagus with drawn butter over the other one’s shirt front.
And the dinner party is a failure. Those two men will carry their quarrel right on after the men are left alone; they’ll fetch it up to the library, they’ll keep it all through bridge and take it home with them.
Think how much softer and easier if some one had said, “Talking about California, reminds me of an episode in India.” . . . How quietly the asparagus would have circulated then.
And there is more to it than that. There is, it seems to me, a sort of humble pathos surrounding the gentle story teller wanting to get his little anecdote in, and generally having to try several times for an opening.
He begins among the oysters.
“Speaking of India — —” he says. But a wave of general conversation washes over him.
Somewhere in the middle of the fish, there is a lull in the talk and again he says,— “Speaking of India — —” “Now you really must have some of that fish,” interrupts his hostess. And a burst of talk about fish blows his topic into nothingness. He tries next at the roast. “Speaking of India — —” he says, and a maid drops gravy over him.
And at last, at the happy last, he gets a real chance.— “Speaking of India,” he says, and then his wife breaks in with “Oh! James!”
Madam, do you think it’s fair? It is, of course, a great trial for a brilliant woman like you to have to drag around a husband like him. Of course he’s a dud. You ought really to have married either Bernard Shaw or Mussolini.
But you didn’t. You just married an ordinary plain man like the rest of us, with no particular aspirations to be a humorist, or a raconteur, or a diseuse, or anything of the sort: anxious just to take some little part in the talk about him.
So, next time, when he begins “Speaking of India — —” won’t you let us hear what it was that happened there?
How to Borrow Money THE PROCESS IS QUITE EASY, PROVIDED YOU BORROW ENOUGH
HAVE YOU EVER, dear readers, had occasion to borrow money? Have you ever borrowed ten dollars under a rigorous promise of your word of honor as a Christian to pay it back on your next salary day? Have you ever borrowed as much as a million at a time?
If you have done these things, you cannot have failed to notice how much easier it is to borrow ten thousand dollars than ten, how much easier still to borrow a hundred thousand, and that when you come at last to raising an international loan of a hundred million the thing loses all difficulty.
Here below are the little scenes that take place on the occasion of an ascending series of loans.
TABLEAU NO. I
The Scene in Which Hardup Jones Borrows Ten Dollars Till the First of Next Month from His Friend, Canny Smith
“Say, look here, old man, I was wondering whether perhaps you wouldn’t mind letting me have ten dollars till the end of the month — —”
“Ten dollars!!!”
“Oh, I could give it back all right, for dead sure, just the minute I get my salary.”
“Ten dollars!!!”
“You see, I’ve got into an awful tangle — I owe seven and a half on my board, and she said yesterday she’d have to have it. And I couldn’t pay my laundry last week, so he said he wouldn’t leave it, and I got this cursed suit on the installment plan and they said they’d seize my trunk, and — —”
“Say, but Gol darn it, I lent you five dollars, don’t you remember, last November, and you swore you’d pay it back on the first and I never got it till away after New Year’s — —”
“I know, I know. But this is absolutely sure. So help me, I’ll pay it right on the first, the minute I get my check.”
“Yes, but you won’t — —”
“No, I swear I will — —”
And after about half an hour of expostulations and protests of this sort, having pledged his soul, his body, and his honor, the borrower at last gets his ten dollars.
