Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 261
But that time Ed was about all finished. The sunshine of the old town was fading out for him. He should have understood, but he didn’t.
“I guess I’ll go into the bank and get some money,” he murmured. I knew what he meant. He was going to leave town.
We went into the bank and Ed wrote a check for fifteen dollars. The clerk looked at it. “I’ll have to show it to the manager,” he said.
“Tell him Mr. Ed Smith, that used to live here,” said Ed.
The manager came out of his little office with the check in his hand. He saw Ed.
“You remember me, Mr. Calson,” said Ed, shaking hands. “I used to live here.”
“Oh, yes,” the manager said in a dubious way. “I remember you, but I was just looking at the check. I suppose it’s all right, eh! There’s ten cents exchange,” he called to the teller. “Well, good afternoon.”
We left the bank.
“There used to be a four-ten train for the city,” said Ed humbly.
“There still is,” I answered.
He took it.
For him, the next time the banners of Old Home Week will float in vain.
But Ed was wrong. He had made a mistake. The old town had given him the best welcome of all. The welcome of familiarity. And he had not seen it.
Conversations I Can Do Without
ENOUGH OF SOME People’s Talk to Explain Why
I
When the Man at the Next Table Is Reproving the Waiter
“Waiter! Waiter! psst!! Waiter! Look here, waiter, I’ve been sitting at this table for fifteen and a half minutes — —”
“I’m sorry, sir — —”
“When I came in, it was exactly half a minute to nine and now it’s a quarter past. For fifteen minutes, and a half — —”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“All I ordered was just some bacon and eggs with French fried potatoes and toast and coffee. You couldn’t take a quarter of an hour to cook that if you tried! I could go out there to the kitchen — —”
“I’m sorry, sir, but — —”
“You can just tell the head waiter or the chef, or whoever it is, that I don’t propose to stand for it. Just as soon — —”
“Well, sir, if — —”
“Just as soon as I’m through, I shall report the whole thing to the management. And you can go to the head waiter right now and tell him that if that order is not on this table in one minute — by this — watch — —”
“I’m sorry, sir, but if you will kindly look on the table it’s there now. I think you covered it up, sir, with part of your paper. You were reading, sir, when I put it down . . .”
“Eh, what! That! Well, what the —— What! What! . . .” And the rest is silence.
II
The Conversation in the Smoking End of the Pullman Between Two Men Talking of Their Bootleggers
“As a matter of fact, all I have to do is just call up my bootlegger and tell him what I want and it comes right to the door — —”
“Same with me. I just say to this feller that I want a case of rye or a case of Scotch and he fetches it right to the house — —”
“Of course, I won’t touch it unless I know it’s all right.”
“Me, too. I don’t believe in taking chances on it. Last week a feller had some stuff at his house, moonshine — something he’d picked up out in the country. But I said, ‘No, thanks, not for me. It may be all right or it may not. But I don’t want it.’ ”
“No, that’s the way I am, too. All this stuff I get sent up to the house is labeled — all of it case goods, you understand, right from Scotland.”
“So’s mine. I won’t drink it unless it’s the real thing. I tried some last week, fierce stuff, I could hardly drink it.”
“Of course it’s hard to get the real old pre-war stuff any longer.”
“No, you just can’t get it.”
“Say, I’ve got a flask of stuff here in my bag. I’m not just so sure what it is. But the bell boy said it was all right. If you care to take a little touch of it. I haven’t tried it out yet. . . .”
“Oh, let’s try it, anyway. I guess it won’t kill us.”
III
Opening Half of Conversation in The Club from Armchair No. 1 to Armchair No. 2, Mine Being Armchair No. 3
“I held the king and the jack, but I couldn’t tell where the ace was. Dummy had only two low spots and all the trumps were out. Of course, my problem was — —”
(But I never stay to hear what it was. I’ve heard others like it too often.)
IV
The Conversation Held by Two Women at the Close of a Dinner Party While I Stand Waiting with the Other Men to Say Good Night
“Well, good night, dear, your party has been perfectly lovely — —”
“Well, it’s been just lovely to have you — —”
(Telepathic thought of the group of men: “Yes, yes, lovely — but now — beat it!”)
“And really such a wonderful dinner. You know, I suppose it’s rude to talk about the things you are given to eat, but that fish soufflé was simply wonderful! How ever is it made? I must get you to give me the recipe.”
“Why, my dear, Bertha just makes it in her own way. But I’ll see if I can get her to write down the recipe and I’ll send it — —”
(Telepathic chorus of the men all thinking the same thing: “Yes, yes, for Heaven’s sake, let her send it, let her write it out, let her print it — only let us beat it.”)
“Will you? That’s so kind! Well good-by, again, and thank you for such a lovely party, and I liked your friend so much — the gentleman who left early. I thought I’d just die laughing at some of his funny stories at dinner — —”
“Oh, but really he wasn’t half as funny as he generally is! I was just thinking at dinner that I wished you could have heard him some night when he’s really funny — —”
“But I thought him ever so funny to-night. I thought I’d die — —”
(The telepathic chorus of the men: “Well, then beat it and beat it right now or perhaps you’ll die right here.”)
“Well, good-by. If you see Amelia and John, tell them I was asking about them — —”
“Oh, we just never see them now since they built their big mansion. They’re far too grand for us in this house!”
“Too grand! Why, my dear, I think your house is just charming and that little sun-room, I mean that sun-room, is too cute for anything, especially if you put some flowers —— My dear, I saw some of the loveliest early wild flowers to-day when we were out in the country in the car. I simply must drive you out there — —”
(Telepathic chorus, as before, “Yes, take her, take her now. Drive her clear to Mexico.”)
And then, just at this moment by Heaven’s special providence a butler or a maid or some one says politely:
“Your taxi’s waiting, madame.”
And the woman gives one wild leap toward the door. Women will talk forever when it’s only a matter of the men’s time, but when it comes to the moving finger of a taxi-meter, they wouldn’t buy five cents’ worth of talk from Shakespeare himself.
After all, these modern inventions are not wholly without advantage.
Mr. Chairman, I Beg to Move ——
SHOWING THE WONDERFUL Effectiveness of What Is Called Legislative Procedure
“There is no doubt,” says one of the recent Outlines of the Sidelines of History, “that the adoption of legislative procedure marked a great forward step in the progress of government. It lent to debate an order and precision before unknown; it clarified thought, and restrained the turbulence of argument by the dignity of formal address.”
Quite so. But did it? Let us see how it has worked out in some of the Meetings.
I
The Man Who Started the Trouble: A.D. 1295
Scene: Ye Chapel of St. Stephen’s in Ye Borough of West Minster.
Ye Speaker: An it please ye, my good Knights and Burgesses, sith this is a regular or model Parliament it would seem good to me that we frame or — as who should say — draught a set of rules whereby our parlement or, so to speak, our debate, shall be guided: Such as, first or in primis, that none shall speak when I am talking; second, that when others speak all shall be in order and form, such that not twenty speak at once as hitherto, but only one, or, so to speak, solus ——
Fascinated with the idea, the houses of the King’s parliament of Edward I got together and made a set of rules of which the awful consequences are still among us. As witness ——
II
The Familiar Scene When the Ladies’ Three-Weekly Discussion Club Undertakes Its Annual Discussion of the Club’s Finances. Verbatim Report:
Mrs. A: I’d like to rise ——
The Chairman-woman: I don’t believe you can.
Mrs. A: But I am ——
The Chair: I mean, I don’t think you’re in order. There’s an amendment to the previous motion still, I think, before us.
Mrs. B: If you mean my amendment, I had something that I want to add to it anyway, but I don’t mind leaving it over if Jennie feels ——
The Chair (pounding on the table with a mallet): You’re out of order.
Mrs. B: I only want to say ——
The Chair: You can’t. There’s a motion still before us and an amendment.
Mrs. C: But can’t she withdraw her amendment? I’d like to move that Mrs. B ——
The Chair: You’ve heard the motion, ladies? Or no, I beg your pardon, it hasn’t been seconded. Doesn’t anybody second it?
Mrs. D: Before you take up that, wouldn’t it perhaps be better ——
Mrs. A, B, C, and half the alphabet: Order!
Mrs. D: I’m not ——
The Alphabet: You are!
The Chair (pounding): Ladies! Ladies!
Mrs. X: I’d like to second the motion, only I’d want to say at the same time that I think that Nellie ——
Mrs. Q: Don’t you think, Madame Chairman, that we’ve done enough for one morning? I’m afraid lunch will be utterly overdone if we keep on. I told them one o’clock in the kitchen.
The Chair: Will you move a motion to adjourn?
Mrs. Q: Yes, if it is necessary. All I mean is that lunch ——
And so after a hard morning they at last get adjourned.
III
How the Committee of Professors Undertake to Bring in a Report to the Faculty
The Chairman: Now, gentlemen, you have heard the remit, that this committee is to report on the question of the use of lead pencils in place of pen and ink.
Professor A: Mr. Chairman, I should like to ask a question, if I may.
The Chair: I don’t believe you can. You see, for the moment there is no business before us, and until we have some definite corpus loquendi as a prima materies there is nothing on which a question could depend.
Professor A: May I perhaps submit a motion?
The Chair (looking in a book of rules and shaking his head): I don’t think a motion would lie. It has nothing to lie on.
Professor B: I think, Mr. Chairman, that a motion that the remit be remitted would lie. Then I think Professor A could move for leave to ask a question as arising out of the remit.
Professor C: I don’t want to delay the work of the committee, but I cannot agree with Professor B. I do not think that any motion can lie at all until the chair sua sponte, or to put it more simply still, ab origine voluntaria, submits the remit to the committee. Till that is done the remit itself is in vacuo.
(General murmurs of approval. Professor C has evidently hit out a home-run. And so by careful legislative procedure, crawling forward from cover to cover, they manage to get to Professor A’s question.)
The Chair: I think, then, Professor A, that we may now hear your question.
Professor A: What I wish to ask, Mr. Chairman, is the precise sense in which the committee is to understand the word “lead pencil”; or rather, to be more exact, the sense to be attached to the term “lead.” The word “pencil,” I think, we may accept as a term generally understood. But the word “lead” offers difficulties. Does the remit include colored leads or only black; would this change permit the use of crayons, chalks, and indelible pencils? In other words, I think we must formulate a definition of the word “lead.”
The Chair: I think Professor A’s remarks are entirely to the point. — Ha! Ha! Gentlemen, you must pardon me, I hadn’t intended any witticism — to the point, ha! ha!
All the Committee: Ha! Ha! To the point — ha! ha!
The Chairman (wiping his streaming eyes): Order, gentlemen, order. (And when the laughter has all died down). Well, then, we must define the word “lead.” Has anybody an encyclopedia here?
Professor C: Yes, I have one in my pocket.
The Chair: Will some one move that Professor C read what it says about it?
General murmur: Carried.
Professor C: Lead. A mineral carboniferous substance generally found in oleaginous rock. Lead was known to the ancients and was probably (but you can’t bet on it) the plumbum of the Romans: whence the word plumb, meaning heavy or straight as in “plumb” line; the word must be distinguished from “plumb,” meaning a fruit (Sanskrit, plupp), which originated in Corinth, which was famous for its fruit trees, a growth due no doubt to the favorable breezes from the Ægean, which was perhaps so called from its “Æge” or border as seen in Ægis, the shield carried by the Roman foot-soldier, but carefully to be distinguished from the pelta or shield of the Greek hoplite. The Greeks, in fact, were a great people ——
Professor X (aged 79, waking up): I think, Mr. Chairman, that our meeting has been sufficiently protracted, and as I think I heard the dormitory dinner-bell ——
The Chair: Shall we then defer progress and adjourn till this day six months ——
All: Carried!
IV
The Crude Proceedings of Those Who Never Heard of the Model Parliament of Edward I
The scene is laid in any board-room where the directors of any great industrial company are making a simple little arrangement not involving more than fifty or sixty million dollars.
The Chairman: Well, then, what we want to do is to split the shares two for one. That’s it, isn’t it?
Murmurs of “Agreed.”
The Chairman: To take 100 millions of the new stock, the holders to take up at par ——
Murmurs of “Agreed.”
The Chairman (to some one): Will you get that drafted, and will you see about the legislative authorization (they know all about it) — and — that was the only thing this morning, wasn’t it? All right, then we’ll adjourn till next time, eh?
Fifty Cents Worth
“IS THAT MY Uncle William?” asks the inquirer. His voice trembles a little as he says it. It is costing him fifty cents to ask this. If it should turn out not to be Uncle William — which might surely happen among the myriads of the spirit world — the fifty cents would be a dead loss.
But luckily it turns out to be all right.
“Yes,” says the voice of the medium. She is lying prostrate on a sofa in an attitude that resembles death, but she looks out of the corner of one eye. “Yes,” she says, “it’s Uncle William.”
She is dressed in a figured robe, presumed to represent the symbols of Persian magic, and, on the business card that stands on the window-sill, her name appears as Abracadabra, the Persian Sorceress (fifty cents a séance). But when she speaks, or when the voice speaks through her, the accent of the communicating spirit somehow is just plain, every-day English.
“Yes,” she repeats, “it is Uncle William.”
“And how are you, Uncle William? Are you happy?”
“Yes, very happy. It’s all so bright and beautiful over here.”
“That’s good. Is Henry there?”
“Yes, Henry is beside me. Henry is happy, too.”
“I’m glad of that. Ask Henry if he remembers me.
“Yes, he says he does. He wants you to believe that he is very happy.”
“Does he send any message?”
“Yes. He says to tell you that goodness is the only gladness, and you are to keep right on expanding yourself all you can.”
“Good. Ask him if Martha is there?”
“Yes. He says that Martha is right there.”
“Good. And ask him who else is with him there.”
For the first time the medium pauses. She speaks with a certain hesitation, as if groping her way. The reason is, no doubt, that there is some kind of thought-block or stoppage in the ethereal wave. Either that or something in the form of the question. Or perhaps the chief cause of these hesitations, or stoppages, is that the ethereal thought-wave has momentarily slipped from one plane to another and not yet regeared itself to the vibration. Very likely, too, the zodiacal body or somatic double has for the moment passed through an obfuscation. It is certainly some simple thing of that sort.
Hence it comes about that, when the inquirer asks who else is over there with Uncle William, the medium pauses and gropes.
“It is not very clear,” she says slowly. “There’s a dimness. I see two figures, but perhaps there may be three. They look strangely alike, and yet oddly dissimilar. They seem to be dressed all in deep black, or else white — I can’t quite be sure.”
The sitter interrupts.
“Ask if they are Mary Ann and Pete,” he says eagerly.
“Yes,” says the medium, “they are! They are! Mary Ann is waving to you. Pete is waving. I can see them very plainly now.”
“What are they saying?” asks the inquirer anxiously.
“They are saying that there is no light but eternity, and they want you to keep on getting on a higher and higher plane.”
At this moment the proprietor of the Spiritualistic Parlors (Hours 9 to 12, 12 to 6, and 6 to 11.30) comes back into the room. His official name, on his cards, is Nadir the Nameless, the Persian Astrologer, and this is why his face is stained with tan shoe-polish (rub well with the fingers, followed by a dry rag, etc.) But he too speaks plain English. He lays his finger on the shoulder of the inquirer and tells him that his time is up. His fifty cents worth is exhausted.
