Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 259
I
What Would Happen if the Lady Editor of the Heart-to-Heart All-Girls-Together Column Took Over the Stock Exchange Page.
yesterday’s market — gray the prevailing color — many chic costumes in evidence — pants shorter than ever
Yesterday was on the whole a very dull day on the exchange, so everybody assured me, though in spite of it I noticed one or two very pretty spring effects that give an excellent forecast of what will be worn in the summer. I had a few moments’ chat with Mr. Bing, a very tall striking man, the senior partner and floor member of Messrs. Bing & Bong, Wall St. He was wearing a light summer gray suit of a clinging Spanish wool, over a Cambridge blue negligee shirt cut very full over the breast and held down with braces adjusted with pulleys. His tie was a very simple but recherché effect in a broad sage green carried under a starched double collar in a single sweep past the ears and round the neck.
Looking around the exchange it seemed to me that gray is likely to be the prevailing tone, if one can judge so early in the season, but I noticed here and there some distinct signs of brighter color. One sweet thing in a bottle green especially caught my eye. The coat was cut very full and brought in over the waistline by a single button, the top thrown open so as to show a hay-green soft shirt with the dainty edge of a handkerchief in the side pocket. The pants were cut very, very full, and swung high above the top of the boots. There were one or two very pretty dull blues moving about, mostly a deep French bleu foncé to harmonize with the walls of the room.
I heard a good deal of talk about the recent collapse of credit which, so they say, is likely to check foreign importations. I imagine this means that a lot of the new French designs in men’s trousers will have to be held over. Altogether it seems likely to be a dull season unless the wholesale trade will find some way of carrying the brokers’ accounts.
II
If the Semi-Medical Editor of the How-to-Keep-Strong Column Wrote the Answers for the Lovers and Others Correspondence Page.
Agonized Anita. You say that the young man that you have been going out with regularly for six months has not come near you for a fortnight and you want my advice what to do. You say that you have a sort of sinking feeling all the time and that you don’t seem able to eat anything and keep waking up at night. The symptoms you describe strongly suggest an acidulated condition of the œsophagus, easily remedied by taking half a dozen tablets of hydrated phosphate of magnesia just before retiring. The sinking feeling you describe is not serious and is probably merely due to a partial collapse of the lining of the stomach easily set right by taking another half dozen tablets of hydrated phosphate of magnesia before retiring. The wakefulness at night, insomnia precox, is not lightly to be disregarded as it might lead to grave disorders either in the cerebellum or right slap in the proscenium. For any such trouble the very best thing to take is about a dozen tablets of hydrated phosphate of magnesia immediately before getting into bed. Take the tablets and then get in with one spring. Deep breathing exercises, keeping the mouth shut, and kept up all day in the open air will afford relief, or at least keep you busy.
Perplexed Edward. You write to me that you are a young man of twenty-one, just out of college, and that you have strong literary leanings but so far you have met nothing but failure. You have done several short stories which you are certain are first class but no editor will consider them. Something tells you that you can write, but so far no one seems to see it. You have an intense feeling towards the drama and have written three plays none of which are able to get a hearing. You want my advice as to what you should do to bring yourself forward. Have you ever tried a little hydrated phosphate of magnesia taken either in tablets or dissolved in proportions of twenty to one in tap water. I think that if, before sitting down to write your next play, you were to take about three dozen tablets, you could put more power in them. Remember that health means energy and energy spells success. Try a little deep breathing every morning as soon as you arise, standing on one leg in front of the open window.
Lonely Widow. You write that the world seems empty to you and that you lack the power of making friends. You long for companionship and can’t get it. Try a little hydrated phosphate of magnesia.
Octogenarian. You say you are not what you were. No doubt you are. Try a little hydrated phosphate of magnesia.
III
If the Literary Critic — whose Line is Caustic, Scathing Criticism — wrote up the Sunday Sermons Page.
Abraham, Life of — Sermon Delivered Yesterday in the Amalgamated Church, by the Rev. Elderberry Dingdong, 11.30 a.m. to 12.25 p.m.
Frankly, we can find nothing to say in praise of this sermon except that it might, conceivably, have been longer. A more mixed up, confused rambling discourse, if we can call it a discourse, we have never listened to. In this biography of Abraham, if we can designate such a mess a biography, we look in vain for the lambent wit with which Mr. Lytton Strachey has dissected the life of Queen Victoria or the caustic epigrams with which Sir Andrew Macphail has recently dissolved the illusion of Lawrence in Arabia.
Of the private life of Abraham no disclosures are made whatever: as far as we can see this sermon adds nothing whatever to our previous knowledge of the patriarch. The whole performance lacked pep and punch. The Rev. Mr. Dingdong is, we are sure, an excellent man in his private life, — though no doubt that might need a little looking into, — but when it comes to dealing with a biography he is hopelessly outclassed.
We find his enunciation also very indistinct and difficult to follow. We don’t like his voice, either: there is something sheepish about it, — especially the way he keeps saying “Ah”braham, — which gets on our nerves. But what made us most tired was the sight of him. There is something irritating in his insignificant figure and his limp way of standing. We couldn’t help contrasting him with the King of Norway and Douglas Fairbanks. He isn’t in it with either of them. If this is the kind of sermon that the Amalgamated proposes to run this season, we prophesy for them a greatly diminished house with receipts at the vanishing point.
IV
Or Suppose That the Man who Writes the Funny Column Was Assigned to Do the Foreign News Items.
Here is the kind of thing that would result.
Laughable Incident in Vienna. Yesterday during the session of the Austrian parliament a bomb was thrown from the gallery to the floor of the house and exploded in a most amusing way among the deputies. A number of them were lifted through the windows in the most comical fashion and landed covered with dust on the sidewalk outside.
Funny Episode in London. Yesterday one of the Charing Cross busses collided in a most laughable way with a motor truck, the passengers on the top of the bus flying in all directions through the air. The most amusing part of the incident was that the driver of the bus got knocked off his seat clean into an open sewer.
Open Air Fun in China. The high floods of the Hoang Ho and the Yangtse have drowned about a hundred thousand Chinese: the rest are floating round on their houses in the most ludicrous fashion.
Joke in Java. A violent eruption of Mount Melaya has buried a whole village. The joke is that the incident happened just at the time when a great crowd of native pilgrims had come to town.
Funny Wheeze in Europe. Latest advices by cable seem to indicate that the Germans can’t pay a cent on reparations. This seems to mean that Germany will go bankrupt and that there will be another world war within a few months. Certainly the laugh is on the Allies.
This Heart-to-Heart Stuff
SOME “BIRDIE-BIRDIE” SHOT for the “Kiddy-Kiddy” Writers
I want to express my opinion right here and now to the reading public that there is getting to be far too much of this “heart-to-heart,” “brother-brother,” “service” stuff in the world of to-day. I refer to all sorts of letters, circulars, communications — everybody knows just the kind of stuff I mean.
Who writes it, and just why they write it, I don’t know. Some of them, I imagine, mistake it for “efficiency”; some of them are just a little soft in the head, and some of them, more likely still, are just the sort of low-down pups who would really write it.
In the old-fashioned days when a man wanted to sell you furniture, he put up an advertising sign over his place of business, “John Smith, Furniture”; he put advertisements in the paper, “John Smith, Corner of Smith and John Streets, Furniture”; and he may have even gone so far as to send you by mail a printed circular, “Mr. John Smith begs to call your attention to his fine stock of furniture — tables and chairs in all designs.”
But further than that he did not go. You could buy his things or leave them alone. He wasn’t going to get down and crawl and whine about it; he wasn’t going to get off a whole lot of sob-stuff about your home and your “little folks.”
But listen to the stuff sent out by his descendants, The John Smith Furniture Company, of to-day. Here’s their last letter:
Mr. Citizen:
What about a little new furniture for that home of yours! How about an easy, cozy leather chair for your den, old man? And while we’re talking about your den ——
Notice that— “while we are talking about your den.” Who’s talking about it? He is. I’m not. I haven’t got a den, but if I had I know what I’d do with it. I’d put a couple of hyenas in it and let the “come-along” man go in and talk to them.
His letter continues:
While we are talking about your den, how about one of our adjustable all-trash bookcases? If you haven’t seen them, let our Mr. Smith come up and show you one.
And while we are speaking of furniture, won’t you want something for the wife, too? Couldn’t we help to brighten up that little boudoir of wifie’s? And how about the little folks’ bedroom? A good idea would be to let the little tots have under their feet one of our all-goat’s-wool bedroom rugs from Siberia, Saskatchewan. These rugs are guaranteed to keep the little chips’ feet warm in the winter.
And I wonder if the little nuts would like one of our Kiddy-Kiddy bookcases, all made of pure bamboo from our own Bamboo plantations at Bam, Boo County, Pa.
Suppose our Mr. Smith takes a run up to your home (he’d be delighted to do it) and has a run-round with the kiddies and sees how they are?
To which I would want to say that if he does come — he or any one like him, who writes the “brother-brother” letters — I’d like to receive him with a shotgun loaded up to the muzzle in both barrels with bird shot — what he would call “birdie-birdie shot” — and I know exactly where I’d like to hit him as he turned to go.
It is always on the question of children that these brother-brother people are especially strong. They have a silly idea that any parent’s heart will open at once as soon as they refer to “that boy” or “those boys of yours.”
Take the school advertisements and circulars. A decent correspondence school is content to advertise in a decent way: “The Jefferson Correspondence School: Courses in Shorthand, Typewriting, Accountancy, etc.” If you’ve said that, you’ve said it all. Beyond that, any further, intimate talk is just bunkum, just froth, worthless, and tiresome. No one is coaxed or flattered or deceived by it, except the poor nut who writes it. This is the sort of drivel that he writes:
Well, what about that boy? Coming along pretty well, eh? That’s good! That’s fine! And what are you going to make of him? Not thought much about it yet; no, naturally you hardly would. But perhaps we might give you a little help, a few pointers as to what might be done. We know all about it, you know. All the kiddies write us, and our heart is just so big that we have room for them all.
Well, then, about that boy of yours, or shall we say this boy of ours? Pretty good at figures, eh? Kind of natural-born calculator. I wonder if you’ve ever happened to see our text book, “Calcullatics or The Science of Calculation,” by Professor Calk? The professor swears it’s the biggest thing since Isaac Newton. We tell him he ought to sell it at a big price and make money out of it. But, no, he doesn’t care about money; he just goes right along selling his books at a plain $5.00 a copy. Even at that he sells thousands.
You say the boy has a taste for measurement! Always measuring things, eh? Ha, ha — hum — hum — let’s think. Here’s an idea. How about a correspondence course in practical land-surveying? Ten lessons gives him his diploma of T.K.F., or he can get the diploma straight away, without the lessons, if we classify him as registered first on the report of Professor Crook; perhaps he can get the registration, perhaps not; at any rate, send along a specimen of his handwriting, with ten dollars, to our Professor Crook and we’ll see what we can do with it.
Or has the little lad a taste for telegraphy? Edison began with that. Perhaps the little fellow is an Edison? Who knows? The little soap-sud may turn out a scientist. Anyway, send along ten dollars. . . .
And so on, and so on; more of it and still more of it. In earlier days there used to be vigilance committees for this kind of man. They turned up outside his door some quiet evening on horseback, with a lariat hanging on the pommel of the saddle, with a loop on the end of it all ready for a hanging.
Where are those committees now? We need them back.
The trouble with these brother-brother people is that they disfigure the whole of life with the pretense of sentiments that they don’t feel. Life is not all brotherhood or service — at least not outside of Salt Lake City. Business is business; has been and always will be. Part of it is hard; but it is not made softer by throwing over it a whitewash of hypocrisy.
If I owe a man an account and am slow in paying it, I much prefer to have him write and say:
Dear Sir:
Your account for $10.15 has been overdue at my store for six months. If you don’t get it settled by next Tuesday, I am going to sue you.
That’s the way to do it — the real stuff. There’s no come-along, brother-brother stuff about that. But look at the way in which the brother-brother man deals with it:
Mr. friend and customer:
Well, say, now what do you think? Looking over our books, we notice that same darned old $10.15 never paid yet! Guess you must have kind of clear forgotten it, eh? Well! Well! All right, send us along your check and let’s both have a good laugh over it. And say, stick on 67 cents for interest, will you, just to make the laugh all the jollier? Don’t forget it this time, old fellow, because Mr. Snide of our law department is such a darned old crank (we often laugh with him over what a crank he is) that he swears he’s going to haul you up into court next Tuesday. Well, so long, old boy, don’t forget, ten fifteen and sixty-seven cents, next Tuesday, or jail ten days. Good-by.
I suppose they wouldn’t write this kind of stuff unless there were some people to be misled by it. It is quite possible that the human brain is diminishing in size and is softening in texture. That may account for it. Many things of this sort make people of my age almost anxious to finish with this world and start off for another. Only if I did, I should have a haunting fear that the mail of the next day would bring to my house a printed letter in a black-edged envelope, with the word grief stamped at the top and reading:
Dear Mourning Friends:
Well, well, the good old man is dead. What about burying him? Have you thought of that? Probably not. Let us do the thinking. How about having out Mr. Croak — he’s overwhelmed with tears right now — come up quietly to your home. . . .
No, the very thought of that letter would keep any one alive for twenty years. But what I mean is — what are we going to do about it?
VII
ALSO: ——
Forty Years of Billiards
WHILE PLAYING ENGLISH billiards the other night with my friend Captain R., it suddenly occurred to me that that very night was the anniversary of the first game I ever played and that I had now been playing billiards for no less than forty years.
My reflections for the moment were cut short by Captain R. coming to the end of his break — he had made three and a half — so that it was my turn to play.
But in the pauses of our play it kept coming into my mind that I had now been for forty years a billiard player. And I fell to thinking that there must be a good deal that a player of my experience could tell to youngsters at the game.
For the rest, the moment was hardly suited to reflection, inasmuch as our game had reached a point of interest that demanded an absorbed attention. We were playing very close together, our scores having both moved up from sixty to seventy in the last half hour by quiet, steady play.
I had reached seventy first, but my adversary, Captain R., by a brilliant rush of two, in which he drove the white ball before him into the corner pocket, had closed in on my heels. As there was still three hours to play before the club closed (at one in the morning), there was every prospect that we should finish our game the same evening.
The game indeed had settled down into a matter of rival tactics. For my own part, alarmed at the rapid advance of my opponent from 60 to 70 within a single half hour, I was trying as far as possible to keep my ball away from Captain R., hiding it well under the cushions, while Captain R. in his turn pursued the opposite policy of attempting such a rush at my ball as to drive it off the cloth, his object being to smash the balls together in a general collision even at the risk of straining the legs of the table.
But perhaps if I wish to convey my reflections at the time and to make them useful even to readers who do not know the game of billiards, I must give a word or two of general explanation.
The game of billiards (English billiards) is played, on a table 12 feet by 6, with three balls — one red and two white. Each of the two players has a white ball, which he hits with his cue, his aim being to make it strike or impinge on one of the other balls either red or white.
