Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 250
“We made nearly 200 miles before lunch in spite of being held up for fifteen minutes by an old Roman town (the book said it was Roman), where the paving was so atrocious that we had two or three times to back out of a street again after getting started in it. However, we are getting wise to that game, and we find that when once you understand travel here you can avoid all the old towns by making a detour. Even if it takes you a few miles out of your direct way, it is well worth it.
“We got badly fooled, though, at a place called Nim, or Neam, or something like that, where we decided not to make a detour because we wanted to have a look at what we thought was a big new football stadium. It lost us about twenty-five minutes of our time and in the end the laugh was on us, because when we got nearer we saw it wasn’t a stadium at all, but just some sort of old ruin. We managed to avoid it before we got too close.
“We had lunch at a gasoline station. And then we got away on a clear stretch, and before the end of the day we had actually done 400 miles.
“We are reckoning that if we can do, say 250 miles a day from here, we can get clear to Spain by Thursday. I was suggesting to Lil that perhaps we could do better if we made a good part of our run after dark, when it’s cooler. There’s not much traffic in France after dark, and with good lights on your car you can see the road as clear as day, and that’s all you need to see.
“We are both fascinated with the trip and want very much to come again, if I can get away, and go over this same ground in winter. I’d like to see how the consumption of gasoline would compare in the colder weather. I’ve got an idea that the per mile cost of gasoline in France per ton of distance is away more than at home. It’s hard to reckon it out, as all the measurements are different. But I keep figuring on it in my head as we drive along.
“That’s another great thing about travel in Europe. It helps you to reflect. Often I fall into a regular reverie about it, and only wake up to hear a man saying, ‘Combien de gasoline, Monsieur?’ That’s the French for, ‘How much gasoline, boss?’ ”
Tommy and Milly at the Farm
THE OLD VERSION and the New
the original visit, as reported in any child’s picture book anno domini 1900
Last summer Milly and Tommy went to spend two weeks at the farm with Mr. and Mrs. Pan-cake. Both the children were very fond of an-i-mals and they loved to see the moo-cows come up into the yard to be milked by Mrs. Pan-cake. Farmer Pan-cake put Tommy on the back of Dobbin, the old horse, and at first Tommy was afraid, but soon he got to like it and called out, “Gee! Up! Dobbin.” Mrs. Pan-cake showed Milly how to feed the ducks in the duck pond, and when Milly called “Dill, Dill,” all the ducks said, “Quack, Quack. . . .”
And so on. This visit could be carried on to infinity.
But now compare the visit to the farm by another Tommy and Milly, descendants of the above, some thirty years later.
the visit of 1930
Milly and Tommy, on their arrival at the farm, were shown into the study of the farmer, who was at that moment rapidly dictating to a young man, evidently his secretary.
Mr. Pangelly — he had changed his name from Pan-cake some twenty years before — pushed back his office chair, rose and shook hands cordially with the children.
“I remember very well,” he said, “the visit of your father and mother thirty years ago, though I did not see them. I was a youngster then just entering a technical college and I was not at home.”
The two children were somewhat embarrassed at first in the presence of the tall distinguished farmer, whose clear-cut features, slightly pale from his indoor life, looked piercingly at them from behind his gold pince-nez.
Mr. Pangelly, however, did his best to put the children at their ease.
“And so you little folks want to have a look around the farm, eh?” he said. “Well, well! Let me see. Burns,” he added, turning to the young man, “what time have I?”
“You’ve a conference with the Coöperative Sellers Committee at ten, sir,” said the secretary, “and I think you ought to finish dictating the crop report — —”
“What about after lunch?”
“I’m afraid, sir, you promised to go round the links, and you’ve only half an hour anyway.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Pangelly. Then he stood for a moment as if lost in thought, murmuring, “Yes, that report, of course, yes.” He had the strange abstracted manner of a man accustomed to large problems.
Then suddenly he seemed to come back to himself.
“No, no, Burns,” he said, “let it all wait. Come along, we’ll take the young people around right now. And what would you like to see first?”
“Oh?” cried Tommy, enthusiastically, “I’d like to see the horses!”
Mr. Pangelly smiled.
“I’m afraid we haven’t any,” he said. “Have we, Burns?” The secretary shook his head. “You see, Tommy, we don’t use horses any longer in the country. They’re only used a little bit in city parks and drives by people who have a fancy for them. Here, of course, we use machinery — —”
“Then couldn’t we see the cows milked?” asked Milly, humbly.
“I’m afraid I must disappoint you again,” said the farmer. “The cows are milked now by electricity and it’s done in the middle of the night. But come along, we’ll have a look around anyway.”
Mr. Pangelly took his Panama hat and his stick from a rack in the hall. “Tell Stetson,” he said to Burns as they went out, “that I will be back in twenty minutes.”
Tommy and Milly were greatly impressed with the huge farm buildings with the vast stone and concrete lower stories and the sweeping roofs of tin, each barn as large as a cathedral. From the inside came the dull hum of machinery.
Tommy and Milly in their shady street in the city had never seen anything close at hand so vast and imposing.
Mr. Burns, the secretary, opened the door of one of the buildings and showed to the children the huge lifts and clutches that handled the grain and the traveling cranes that moved it into place.
Mr. Pangelly followed their gaze, in his abstracted way.
“Did we ever test out,” he said to the young man, “the cost per ton of those? I’ve a notion that the friction loss is a way too high.”
“Anderson says no, sir,” replied Burns; “he worked it out and says that the friction loss is very heavy, but even at that it’s a way more economical than man power.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Pangelly, and stood for a few minutes lost in thought. “Perhaps,” he muttered, “perhaps.”
Then remembering the children he said, suddenly— “Well, let’s come out into the fields.”
From the barns the children passed through a tall hedge of cedar and before them opened up the huge expanse of a grain field. Tommy had hitherto seen nothing larger than a city ball ground in the park and was amazed at the size of the great field.
“What’s that big machine going up and down, sir?” asked Tommy.
“That,” said Mr. Pangelly, “that’s a tractor; wait a little bit and it will come closer.”
“The principle of it,” continued the farmer, as the huge machine, dragging a phalanx of tearing plows, drew close to them, “is quite simple. It’s only one of the many applications of the explosive engine combined, or perhaps I ought to say coördinated with a singular device in traction.” Mr. Pangelly’s voice trailed off into a sort of dreamy reverie as he spoke. “A simple device and yet how long we waited for it — just like the disk harrow — the most obvious application of an eccentric — and nobody thought of it — —”
As they walked back towards the house, Tommy said timidly: “I think I’d like to be a farmer, Mr. Pangelly, when I grow up.”
“Quite right,” said Mr. Pangelly, “quite right. Aim high, little man, aim high, and stick to it. Many a little fellow has thought as you do and then after all fell back to be a lawyer, a doctor — —”
Then he relapsed into silence.
“I can’t believe that Anderson is right about the friction,” he said. Then remembering where he was, “Burns,” he said, “I’m afraid I must get back. Now will you take these little folks to Mrs. Randall and no doubt she’ll get them something to eat. I don’t remember what children of their age do eat. A little grapefruit? Or pâté, or something. Good-by.”
“Good-by, sir,” said Tommy and Milly, humbly.
The visit to the farm was at an end.
Life’s Little Inconsistencies
EXAMPLE NO. I
The Up-to-date Students Take an Evening Off
They were sitting in their dormitory bed-smoking-study room — Gussie and Eddie — in the newly endowed million-door wing of their ten-million-dollar college.
Gussie had laid aside his ukulele and Eddie had given up the effort of trying to tune his mandolin.
“Have a cigarette,” said Gussie.
“Smoked them till I am sick of them,” answered Eddie.
“What in Hades can we do this evening?” said Gussie.
“I don’t know,” said Eddie with a yawn. “What about going to the pictures?”
“Sick of them,” said Gussie.
“There’s the sophomore play on to-night if we want to go to that.”
“I’m fed up with plays.”
“So am I. There’s a dance over at the Theta Beta Sorority.”
“Dance! I’ve been to ten this month.”
Gussie picked up the college newspaper and began looking up and down the columns.
“There’s a lecture in Founder’s Hall,” he said, “on Recent Progress in Science; want to go to that?”
Both the students laughed.
“Here’s another,” continued Gussie. “Meeting of the Astro-physical Society to discuss — —”
“Oh, ditch it,” said Eddie.
“Well, I don’t see much else,” said Gussie. “There’s a reception by the senior year, we went to that last year, it’s hell. — There’s an uplift meeting of the Social Science Workers. There’s a debate at the Literary Society. There’s a motion picture show at the Geographical Club. — No, there doesn’t seem a thing to do.”
He yawned.
Both the students sat silent for a while.
Then suddenly Eddie became animated.
“I tell you!” he exclaimed, “I’ve got a whale of an idea. Let’s study! Let’s spend the evening right here and study! Eh, what!”
Gussie looked up.
“Right you are, Eddie,” he said, “you’ve said a mouthful. Got any books? Hold on, I’ve got some mathematics books there in the trunk packed with my winter underclothes. Attaboy! We’ll spend the evening just studying. However did you come to think of it?”
example no. ii
The Golf Club Members Brighten Up Their Afternoon
“Care to play bridge this afternoon?” asked the first member of the second.
“Too hot,” he answered drowsily.
Then they continued resting in the leather chairs of the lounge, gently breathing cigar smoke.
They had chosen a particularly comfortable corner of one of the fifteen lounge rooms of the More-Than-a-Million Golf Club. From the windows their eyes could roam over two hundred acres of woodland landscape diversified with brilliant greens and elevated tees. But they didn’t need to look that way. In fact, by telling one of the attendants to close the windows they needn’t see the course at all. The excellent acoustics of the building kept out all noise of any game.
“Don’t want a game of tennis, do you?” said the second member presently.
“I don’t think so, rather too much exertion.”
“It is, in a way. What about a dip in the swimming pool?”
“Oh, thanks, a little later it might be all right; rather too early in the afternoon now.”
“It is. But there doesn’t seem a dashed thing to do.”
There was another pause.
“Might play billiards, if you like.”
“Thanks, I was playing most of the morning.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do if you like,” said the first member, with the sudden enthusiasm of a man with an idea. “Come out on the links and I’ll play you a round of golf. What do you say?”
The other hesitated, attracted and yet wavering.
“The trouble is,” he said, “I’ve never played.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Very few of the members play. Come on. We’ll have a game of golf, just for fun.”
example no. iii
The Nature-Writer Seeks Rest
“I’m tired, tired, devilish tired,” said the Nature-Writer, looking up from his table in the sun-and-air room of his Log Cabin in the Woods. “I get so cramped up here. There’s no space — no room to breathe. These everlasting woods all around and the racket of that river and the birds, and at night that whippoorwill! I can’t stand it!”
“I know,” murmured his wife. “I feel it, too, you know, though I haven’t liked to complain. One does feel so terribly shut in.”
“Listen, Emma,” exclaimed the Nature-Writer, throwing down his pens and paper. “Go and call up the railway station and get a compartment on that fast train that comes past this place at 2.30 in the morning; then call New York and get a room at the Biltmont, get seats for the Midnight Foolishness, and get a supper table at any of the good three-o’clock-in-the-morning clubs. — I need rest and quiet and I’m going to get it.”
example no. iv
The Farmer Learns English
“Gee!” said the college professor of English to the Farmer, “this is certainly a pretty lay-out. I’ll say it is!”
“Yes,” answered the farmer, “we like to think that this view from our veranda is really quite as beautiful as any landscape could be. My wife often compares it to Versailles.”
They were sitting together after supper on the veranda at Meadowbrook Farm, where the college professor of English had just arrived as a summer boarder.
“It’s certainly a peach, all right,” said the professor.
“I like it especially,” the farmer went on, “when the sun sets and the twilight steals over it all. It gives one a sort of hushed feeling — I can’t express it — but something almost reverential.”
“I know what you mean,” said the professor, “it gets your goat.”
“I try in vain to think beyond it, to penetrate into the deeper mystery behind.”
“And it beats you to it,” murmured the professor sympathetically.
“At any rate,” concluded the farmer as they rose presently to go inside, “I am very glad and very much honored to have you here. I want my son to go to your college, with English as his special subject, and now that you are here, I’ll have a chance to talk it all over.”
“Oh, send him to us,” assented the professor cheerfully. “We’ll learn it him all right.”
New Words — New Things
“PARDON ME,” SAID the Aged Man. “Where did you say you come from?”
“I am a Lat,” said the Youth.
“A which?”
“A Lat.”
“Pray pardon me again. I meant what country do you come from?”
“I knew you meant that. I come from Latvia.”
“You will excuse me,” said the Aged Man, “but my memory perhaps grows weak. I have lived entirely out of the world since 1901, the first year of this century. I do not seem to recall your country. Where is it?”
“It is east of Czechoslovakia,” replied the Youth.
“Of what?”
“Of Czechoslovakia.”
“And where is that? I do not seem to know it.”
“It is almost directly North of Yugoslavia.”
The Aged Man, more than ever distressed at the apparent loss of his memory since his retirement, paused and was silent a moment; then he resumed.
“Are you under an emperor,” he asked, “or under a prince?”
“We are a republic, but we are not a Soviet.”
“Not what?”
“A Soviet. In fact, we are far indeed from being Bolsheviks.”
“Eh?”
“From being Bolsheviks. As a matter of fact, in our country we are much closer to being Fascisti than Bolsheviki.”
“Are you?” murmured the Aged Man feebly. Unable to comprehend anything of the Youth’s nation or national status, he proceeded to shift the conversation.
“And how did you happen to come to America?” he asked.
“Well,” replied the Youth, “in the first place, I was lucky enough to get on the quota.”
“The what?”
“The quota. You see the quota for Latvia is very seldom full. We are much luckier than Esthonia and Lithuania and Czechoslovakia. So I was able to get in.”
“I see,” murmured the Aged Man. But he didn’t. “And tell me, how did you come to think of migrating to America?”
“Oh,” replied the Youth casually, “I had got a great idea of the United States.”
“Ah, yes,” assented the Aged Man, glad at last to comprehend, “I understand. You had read a great deal about it.”
“No, I never read a word about it in my life.”
“But how then — —”
“Oh, mostly in the Movies.”
“The what?”
“The Movies. I saw a scenario with a lot of skyscrapers in it. At that time, of course, we let in American films and were glad to get them, and this was a beautiful ten-reel film, one of the best films I ever saw on the screen — —”
“Movies, films, screens,” murmured the Aged Man, putting his hand to his head. “I fear you must excuse me. As I explained to you when we met, I have lived for the last twenty-eight years as a missionary, entirely out of the world, among the Kalmuks beyond Yakutsk. I fear that perhaps the isolation has impaired my mental faculties. I do not seem to comprehend a word that you say.”
