Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 378
Then make the film Chicago University with its saloons of forty years ago, a raw place, nowhere to smoke...And then settle the film down to McGill University, and run it round and round as slowly as you like for thirty-six sessions — college calling in the Autumn, students and co-eds and Rah! Rah! all starting afresh, year after year...College in the snow, the February classroom; hush! don’t wake them, it’s a lecture in archaeology...All of it again and again...College years, one after the other...Throw in, as interludes, journeys to England, a lecture trip around the Empire...Put in Colombo, Ceylon, for atmosphere...Then more college years...
Then loud music and the Great War with the college campus all at drill, the boys of yesterday turned to men...Then the war over, lecture trips to the U.S...Pictures of Iowa State University...Ladies’ Fortnightly Club — about forty of them...Then back to the McGill campus...Retirement...An honorary degree (‘this venerable scholar’)...And then unexpectedly the war again and the Black Watch back on the McGill campus.
Such is my picture, the cavalcade all the way down from the clouds of the morning to the mists of the evening.
As the cavalcade passes down the years it is odd how gradually and imperceptibly the change of outlook comes, from the eyes of wonder to those of disillusionment — or is it to those of truth? A child’s world is full of celebrated people, wonderful people like the giants and magicians of the picture books. Later in life the celebrated people are all gone. There aren’t any — or not made of what it once meant.
I recall from over half a century ago a prize-day speaker at Upper Canada College telling us that he saw before him the future statesmen, the poets, the generals and the leaders of the nation. I thought the man a nut to say that. What he saw was just us. Yet he turned out to be correct; only in a sense he wasn’t; it was still only us after all. It is the atmosphere of illusion that cannot last.
Yet some people, I know, are luckier in this than I am. They’re born in a world of glamour and live in it. For them there are great people everywhere, and the illusion seems to feed itself. One such I recall out of the years, with a capacity for admiration all his own.
‘I sat next to Professor Buchan at the dinner last night,’ he once told me. ‘He certainly is a great scholar, a marvellous philologian!’
‘Is he?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ my friend continued. ‘I asked him if he thought the Indian word “snabe” was the same as the German word “knabe.”’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said he didn’t know.’
And with that my friend sat back in quiet appreciation of such accurate scholarship and of the privilege of being near it. There are many people like that, decent fellows to be with. Their illusions keep their life warm.
But for most of us they fade out and life itself as we begin to look back on it appears less and less. Has it all faded to this? There comes to me the story of an old Carolina negro who found himself, after years of expectancy, privileged to cast a vote. After putting the ballot paper in the box he stood, still expectant, waiting for what was to happen, to come next. And then, in disillusionment: ‘Is that all there is, boss? Is that all there is to it?’
‘That’s all,’ said the presiding officer.
So it is with life. The child says ‘when I am a big boy’ — but what is that? The boy says ‘when I grow up’ — and then, grown up, ‘when I get married.’ But to be married, once done and over, what is that again? The man says ‘when I retire’ — and then when retirement comes he looks back over the path traversed, a cold wind sweeps over the fading landscape and he feels somehow that he has missed it all. For the reality of life, we learn too late, is in the living tissue of it from day to day, not in the expectation of better, nor in the fear of worse. Those two things, to be always looking ahead, and to worry over things that haven’t yet happened and very likely won’t happen — those take the very essence out of life.
If one could only live each moment to the full, in a present with its own absorption, even if as transitory and evanescent as Einstein’s ‘here’ and ‘now.’ It is strange how we cry out in our collective human mind against this restless thinking and clamour for time to stand still — longing for a land where it is always afternoon, or for a book of verses underneath a bough, where we may let the world pass.
But perhaps it is this worry, this restlessness, that keeps us on our necessary path of effort and endeavour. Most of us who look back from old age have at least a comfortable feeling that we have ‘got away with it.’ At least we kept out of jail, out of the asylum and out of the poorhouse. Yet one still needs to be careful. Even ‘grand old men’ get fooled sometimes. But at any rate we don’t want to start over; no, thank you, it’s too hard. When I look back at long evenings of study in boarding-house bedrooms, night after night, one’s head sinking at times over the dictionary — I wonder how I did it.
And schooldays — at Upper Canada College anno Domini 1882 — could I stand that now? If someone asked me to eat ‘supper’ at six and then go and study next day’s lessons, in silence, in the long study from seven to nine-thirty — how would that be? A school waiter brought round glasses of water on a tray at half-past eight, and if I asked for a whisky and soda, could I have had it? I could not. Yet I admit there was the fun of putting a bent pin-you know how, two turns in it — on the seat where the study master sat. And if I were to try that now at convocation they wouldn’t understand it. Youth is youth, and age is age.
So many things, I say, that one went through seem hopelessly difficult now. Yet other things, over which youth boggles and hesitates and palpitates, seem so easy and so simple to old age. Take the case of women, I mean girls. Young men in love go snooping around, hoping, fearing, wondering, lifted up at a word, cast down by an eyebrow. But if he only knew enough, any young man — as old men see it — could have any girl he wanted. All he need do is to step up to her and say, ‘Miss Smith, I don’t know you, but your overwhelming beauty forces me to speak; can you marry me at, say, three-thirty this afternoon?’
I mean, that kind of thing in that province of life would save years of trepidation. It’s just as well, though, that they don’t know it or away goes all the pretty world of feathers and flounces, of flowers and dances that love throws like a gossamer tissue across the path of life.
On such a world of youth, old age can only gaze with admiration. As people grow old all youth looks beautiful to them. The plainest girls are pretty with nature’s charms. The dullest duds are at least young. But age cannot share it. Age must sit alone.
The very respect that young people feel for the old — or at least for the established, the respectable, by reason of those illusions of which I spoke, makes social unity impossible. An old man may think himself a ‘hell of a feller’ inside, but his outside won’t justify it. He must keep to his corner or go ‘ga-ga,’ despised of youth and age alike...
In any case, to put it mildly, old men are tiresome company. They can’t listen. I notice this around my club. We founded it thirty years ago, and the survivors are all there, thirty years older than they were thirty years ago and some even more, much more. Can they listen? No, not even to me. And when they start to tell a story they ramble on and on, and you know the story anyway because it’s the one you told them yesterday. Young people when they talk have to be snappy and must butt in and out of conversation as they get a chance. But once old men are given rope, you have to pay it out to them like a cable. To my mind the only tolerable old men are the ones — you notice lots of them when you look for them — who have had a stroke — not a tragic one; that would sound cruel — but just one good flap of warning. If I want to tell a story, I look round for one of these.
The path through life I have outlined from youth to age you may trace for yourself by the varying way in which strangers address you. You begin as ‘little man’ and then ‘little boy,’ because a little man is littler than a little boy; then ‘sonny’ and then ‘my boy,’ and after that ‘young man,’ and presently the interlocutor is younger than yourself and says, ‘Say, mister.’ I can still recall the thrill of pride I felt when a Pullman porter first called me ‘doctor’ and when another one raised me up to ‘judge,’ and then the terrible shock it was when a taximan swung open his door and said, ‘Step right in, dad.’
It was hard to bear when a newspaper reporter spoke of me as the ‘old gentleman,’ and said I was very simply dressed. He was a liar, those were my best things. It was a worse shock when a newspaper first called me a septuagenarian, another cowardly lie, as I was only sixty-nine and seven-twelfths. Presently I shall be introduced as ‘this venerable old gentleman,’ and the axe will fall when they raise me to the degree of ‘grand old man.’ That means on our continent anyone with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty. That’s the last and worst they can do to you.
Yet there is something to be said even here for the mentality of age. Old people grow kinder in their judgment of others. They are able to comprehend, even if not to pardon, the sins and faults of others. If I hear of a man robbing a cash register of the shop where he works, I think I get the idea. He wanted the cash. If I read of a man burning down his store to get the insurance, I see that what he wanted was the insurance. He had nothing against the store. Yet somehow just when I am reflecting on my own kindliness I find myself getting furious with a waiter for forgetting the Worcester sauce.
This is the summary of the matter that as for old age there’s nothing to it, for the individual looked at by himself. It can only be reconciled with our view of life in so far as it has something to pass on, the new life of children and of grandchildren, or if not that, at least some recollection of good deeds, or of something done that may give one the hope to say, non omnis moriar (I shall not altogether die).
Give me my stick. I’m going out to No Man’s Land.
I’ll face it.
THE PERFECT INDEX - THERE IS NO INDEX, AND WHY
READERS OF BOOKS, I mean worthwhile readers, like those who read this volume, will understand how many difficulties centre round the making of an Index. Whether to have an Index at all? Whether to make it a great big one or just a cute little Index on one page? Whether to have only proper names or let it take in idea — and so on. In short, the things reaches dimensions that may raise it to the rank of being called the Index Problem, if nothing is done about it.
Of course one has to have an Index. Authors themselves would prefer not to have any. Having none would save trouble, and compel reviewers to read the whole book instead of just the Index. But the reader needs it. Otherwise he finds himself looking all through the book, forwards and then backwards, and then plunging in at random, in order to read out to a friend what it was that was so darned good about Talleyrand. He doesn’t find it because it was in another book.
So let us agree, there must be an Index. Now comes the trouble. What is the real title or name of a thing or person that has three or four? Must you put everything three or four times over in the Index, under three or four names? No, just once, so it is commonly understood; and then for the other joint names, we put what is called a cross-reference, meaning, see this, or see that. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it leads to such results as Talleyrand, see Perigord...and when you hunt this up, you find — Perigord, Bishop of, see Talleyrand. The same effect can be done flat out, with just two words, as Lincoln, see Abraham...Abraham, see Lincoln. But even that is not so bad because at least it’s a closed circle. It comes to a full stop. But compare the effect, familiar to all research students, when the circle is not closed. Thus, instead of just seeing Lincoln, the unclosed circle runs like this, each item being hunted up alphabetically, one after the other — Abraham, see Lincoln...Lincoln, see Civil War...Civil War, see United States...United States, see America...America, see American History...American History, see also Christopher Columbus, New England, Pocahontas, George Washington...the thing will finally come to rest somehow or other with the dial pointing at: See Abraham Lincoln.
But there is worse even than that. A certain kind of conscientious author enters only proper names, but he indexes them every time they come into his book, no matter how they come in, and how unimportant is the context. Here is the result in the index under the Letter N:
Napoleon — 17, 26, 41, 75, 109, 110, 156, 213, 270, 380, 460.
You begin to look them up. Here are the references:
Page 17— ‘wore his hair like Napoleon.’
Page 26— ‘in the days of Napoleon.’
Page 41— ‘as fat as Napoleon.’
Page 75— ‘not so fat as Napoleon.’
Page 109— ‘was a regular Napoleon at Ping-pong.’
Page 110— ‘was not a Napoleon at Ping-pong.’
Page 156— ‘Napoleon’s hat.’
Pages 213, 270, 380, 460, not investigated. Equally well meant but perhaps even harder to bear is the peculiar kind of Index that appears in a biography. The name of the person under treatment naturally runs through almost every page, and the conscientious index-maker tries to keep pace with him. This means that many events of his life got shifted out of their natural order. Here is the general effect:
John Smith: born, ; born again, ; father born, ; grandfather born, ; mother born, ; mother’s family leave Ireland, ; still leaving it, ; school, ; more school, ; dies of pneumonia and enters Harvard, ; eldest son born, ; marries, , back at school, ; dead, ; takes his degree, ...
Suppose, then, you decide to get away from all these difficulties and make a Perfect Index in which each item shall carry with it an explanation, a sort of little epitome of what is to be found in the book. The reader consulting the volume can open the Index, look at a reference, and decide whether or not he needs to turn the subject up in the full discussion in the book. A really good Index will in most cases itself give the information wanted. There you have, so to speak, the Perfect Index.
Why I know about this is because I am engaged at present in making such an Index in connection with a book on gardening, which I am writing for next summer. To illustrate what is meant I may be permitted to quote the opening of the book and its conversion into Index Material:
As Abraham Lincoln used to say, when you want to do gardening, you’ve go to take your coat off, a sentiment shared by his fellow-enthusiast, the exiled Napoleon, who, after conquering all Europe, retaining only the sovereignty of the spade in his garden plot at St. Helena, longed only for more fertiliser.
As arranged for the Index, the gist, or essential part of this sentence, the nucleus, so to speak, appears thus:
Abraham Lincoln: habit of saying things, ; wants to do gardening, ; takes his coat off, ; his enthusiasm, ; compared with Napoleon, .
Coat: taken off by Abraham Lincoln, .
Gardening: Lincoln’s views on, ; need of taking coat off, for, ; Napoleon’s enthusiasm over, ; see also under spade, sovereignty, St. Helena.
Napoleon: his exile, ; conquers Europe, ; enthusiastic over gardening, ; compared with Lincoln, ; retains sovereignty of spade, p.1; longs for fertilizer, ; plots at St. Helena, , see also Europe, St. Helena, fertiliser, seed catalogue, etc. etc.
That’s as far as I’ve got with the sentence. I still have to write up sovereignty, spade, sentiment, share, St. Helena, and everything after S. There’s no doubt it’s the right method, but it takes time somehow to get the essential nucleus of the gist and express it. I see why it is easier to do the other thing. But then sin is always easier than righteousness. See also under Hell, road to. Intentions (Good) and Pavement.
L’ENVOI: A SALUTATION ACROSS THE SEA
THE BRITISH ARE AN ODD PEOPLE. They have their own ways and they stick to them, and I like every one of them.
They have their own way of talking. When an Englishman has anything surprising to tell he never exaggerates it, never overstates it — in fact, he makes as little of it as possible. And a Scotsman doesn’t even mention it. An Englishman can speak of a play of Shakespeare as ‘rather good,’ and of grand opera as ‘not half bad.’ He can call Haile Selassie a ‘rather decent little chap,’ and the President of the United States a ‘thoroughly good sort.’
Sometimes this modesty of speech is perhaps carried a little too far. An Englishman when he has to talk about himself doesn’t refer to himself as ‘I,’ but calls himself ‘one.’ In my club the other day a newly arrived Englishman said, ‘One finds Canada simply wonderful; of course one had seen India and all that, but here one finds everything so different.’ What could I answer except to say that one was terribly glad to know that one liked Canada that if one would take a drink with one, one would push the bell. Yet I like that way of talking. It’s better than the everlasting ‘I — I — I.’ Only I think that next time I’ll call myself ‘two.’
A Scotsman of course doesn’t use ‘one.’ He simply calls himself ‘a body.’ He’s not referring to his soul before strangers.
But this modest British way of talking without making things sound too big has the advantage that it keeps the world in its right focus. On our side of the water we get so filled up with admiration, with such a sense of the bigness of potentates and magnates, that we feel small ourselves. We wouldn’t know how to behave if we met the Negus of Abyssinia or the Magnum of Magnesia. They’re all one to the Britisher — Rajahs, and Rams and Jams, he calls them all ‘Jimmy.’
