Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 44
Well, — that’s what it felt like.
Meanwhile they were operating.
Of course I didn’t feel it. All I felt was that someone dealt me a powerful blow in the face with a sledgehammer. After that somebody took a pickax and cracked in my jaw with it. That was all.
It was a mere nothing. I felt at the time that a man who objects to a few taps on the face with a pickax is overcritical.
I didn’t happen to wake up till they had practically finished. So I really missed the whole thing.
The assistants had gone, and the dentist was mixing up cement and humming airs from light opera just like old times. It made the world seem a bright place.
I went home with no teeth. I only meant them to remove one, but I realized that they had taken them all out. Still it didn’t matter.
Not long after I received my bill. I was astounded at the nerve of it! For administering gas, debtor, so much; for removing teeth, debtor, so much; — and so on.
In return I sent in my bill:
Dr. William Jaws
DEBTOR
To mental agony
$50.00
To gross lies in regard to the nothingness of gas
100.00
To putting me under gas
50.00
To having fun with me under gas
100.00
To Brilliant Ideas, occurred to me under gas and lost
100.00
—— —
Grand Total
$400.00
My bill has been contested and is in the hands of a solicitor. The matter will prove, I understand, a test case and will go to the final courts. If the judges have toothache during the trial, I shall win.
III. — My Lost Opportunities
THE OTHER DAY I took a walk with a real estate man. Out in the suburbs he leaned over the wooden fence of an empty lot and waved his hand at it.
“There’s a lot,” he said, “that we sold last week for half a million dollars.”
“Did you really!” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” he said, “and do you know that twenty-five years ago you could have picked that up for fifty thousand!”
“What,” I said, “do you mean to say that I could have had all that beautiful grass and those mullin stalks for fifty thousand dollars?”
“I do.”
“You mean that when I was a student at college, feeding on four dollars a week, this opportunity was knocking at the door and I missed it?”
I turned my head away in bitterness as I thought of my own folly. Why had I never happened to walk out this way with fifty thousand dollars in my pocket and buy all this beautiful mud?
The real estate man smiled complacently at my grief.
“I can show you more than that,” he said. “Do you see that big stretch of empty ground out there past that last fence?”
“Yes, yes,” I said excitedly, “the land with the beautiful tar-paper shack and the withered cedar tree, — the one withered cedar tree, — standing in its lonely isolation and seeming to beckon — —”
“Say,” he said, “was you ever in the real estate business yourself?”
“No,” I answered, “but I have a poetic mind, and I begin to see the poetry, the majesty, of real estate.”
“Oh, is that it,” he answered. “Well, that land out there, — it’s an acre and a half, — was sold yesterday for three million dollars!!”
“For what!”
“For three million dollars, cold.”
“Not COLD!” I said, “don’t tell me it was cold.”
“Yes,” went on the real estate man, “and only three years ago you could have come out here and had it for a song!”
“For a song!” I repeated.
Just think of it! And I had missed it! With a voice like mine. If I had known what I know now, I would have come out to that land and sung to it all night. I never knew in the days when I was content with fifteen dollars a week what a hidden gift my voice was. I should have taken up land-singing and made a fortune out of it.
The thought of it saddened me all the way home: and the talk of the real estate man as he went made me feel still worse.
He showed me a church that I could have bought for a hundred thousand and sold now at half a million for a motor garage. If I had started buying churches instead of working on a newspaper, I’d have been rich to-day.
There was a skating rink I could have bought, and a theatre and a fruit store, a beautiful little one-story wooden fruit store, right on a corner, with the darlingest Italian in it that you ever saw. There was the cutest little pet of a cow-stable that I could have turned into an apartment store at a profit of a million, — at the time when I was studying Greek and forgetting it. Oh! the wasted opportunities of life!
And that evening when I got back to the club and talked about it at dinner to my business friends, I found that I had only heard a small part of it.
Real estate! That’s nothing! Why they told me that fifteen years ago I could have had all sorts of things, — trunk line railways, sugar refineries, silver mines, — any of them for a song. When I heard it I was half glad I hadn’t sung for the land. They told me that there was a time when I could have bought out the Federal Steel Co. for twenty million dollars! And I let it go.[Illus]
He showed me a church that I could have bought for a hundred thousand.
The whole Canadian Pacific Railway, they said, was thrown on the market for fifty millions. I left it there writhing, and didn’t pick it up. Sheer lack of confidence! I see now why these men get rich. It’s their fine, glorious confidence, that enables them to write out a cheque for fifty million dollars and think nothing of it.
If I wrote a cheque like that, I’d be afraid of going to Sing Sing. But they aren’t, and so they get what they deserve.
Forty-five years ago, — a man at the club told me this with almost a sob in his voice, — either Rockefeller or Carnegie could have been bought clean up for a thousand dollars!
Think of it!
Why didn’t my father buy them for me, as pets, for my birthday and let me keep them till I grew up?
If I had my life over again, no school or education for me! Not with all this beautiful mud and these tar-paper shacks and corner lot fruit stores lying round! I’d buy out the whole United States and take a chance, a sporting chance, on the rise in values.
IV. — My Unknown Friend
HE STEPPED INTO the smoking compartment of the Pullman, where I was sitting alone.
He had on a long fur-lined coat, and he carried a fifty-dollar suit case that he put down on the seat.
Then he saw me.
“Well! well!” he said, and recognition broke out all over his face like morning sunlight.
“Well! well!” I repeated.
“By Jove!” he said, shaking hands vigorously, “who would have thought of seeing you?”
“Who, indeed,” I thought to myself.
He looked at me more closely.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said.
“Neither have you,” said I heartily.
“You may be a little stouter,” he went on critically.
“Yes,” I said, “a little; but you’re stouter yourself.”
This of course would help to explain away any undue stoutness on my part.
“No,” I continued boldly and firmly, “you look just about the same as ever.”
And all the time I was wondering who he was. I didn’t know him from Adam; I couldn’t recall him a bit. I don’t mean that my memory is weak. On the contrary, it is singularly tenacious. True, I find it very hard to remember people’s names; very often, too, it is hard for me to recall a face, and frequently I fail to recall a person’s appearance, and of course clothes are a thing one doesn’t notice. But apart from these details I never forget anybody, and I am proud of it. But when it does happen that a name or face escapes me I never lose my presence of mind. I know just how to deal with the situation. It only needs coolness and intellect, and it all comes right.
My friend sat down.
“It’s a long time since we met,” he said.
“A long time,” I repeated with something of a note of sadness. I wanted him to feel that I, too, had suffered from it.
“But it has gone very quickly.”
“Like a flash,” I assented cheerfully.
“Strange,” he said, “how life goes on and we lose track of people, and things alter. I often think about it. I sometimes wonder,” he continued, “where all the old gang are gone to.”
“So do I,” I said. In fact I was wondering about it at the very moment. I always find in circumstances like these that a man begins sooner or later to talk of the “old gang” or “the boys” or “the crowd.” That’s where the opportunity comes in to gather who he is.
“Do you ever go back to the old place?” he asked.
“Never,” I said, firmly and flatly. This had to be absolute. I felt that once and for all the “old place” must be ruled out of the discussion till I could discover where it was.
“No,” he went on, “I suppose you’d hardly care to.”
“Not now,” I said very gently.
“I understand. I beg your pardon,” he said, and there was silence for a few moments.
So far I had scored the first point. There was evidently an old place somewhere to which I would hardly care to go. That was something to build on.
Presently he began again.
“Yes,” he said, “I sometimes meet some of the old boys and they begin to talk of you and wonder what you’re doing.”
“Poor things,” I thought, but I didn’t say it.
I knew it was time now to make a bold stroke; so I used the method that I always employ. I struck in with great animation.
“Say!” I said, “where’s Billy? Do you ever hear anything of Billy now?”
This is really a very safe line. Every old gang has a Billy in it.
“Yes,” said my friend, “sure — Billy is ranching out in Montana. I saw him in Chicago last spring, — weighed about two hundred pounds, — you wouldn’t know him.”
“No, I certainly wouldn’t,” I murmured to myself.
“And where’s Pete?” I said. This was safe ground. There is always a Pete.
“You mean Billy’s brother,” he said.
“Yes, yes, Billy’s brother Pete. I often think of him.”
“Oh,” answered the unknown man, “old Pete’s quite changed, — settled down altogether.” Here he began to chuckle, “Why, Pete’s married!”
I started to laugh, too. Under these circumstances it is always supposed to be very funny if a man has got married. The notion of old Peter (whoever he is) being married is presumed to be simply killing. I kept on chuckling away quietly at the mere idea of it. I was hoping that I might manage to keep on laughing till the train stopped. I had only fifty miles more to go. It’s not hard to laugh for fifty miles if you know how.
But my friend wouldn’t be content with it.
“I often meant to write to you,” he said, his voice falling to a confidential tone, “especially when I heard of your loss.”
I remained quiet. What had I lost? Was it money? And if so, how much? And why had I lost it? I wondered if it had ruined me or only partly ruined me.
“One can never get over a loss like that,” he continued solemnly.
Evidently I was plumb ruined. But I said nothing and remained under cover, waiting to draw his fire.
“Yes,” the man went on, “death is always sad.”
Death! Oh, that was it, was it? I almost hiccoughed with joy. That was easy. Handling a case of death in these conversations is simplicity itself. One has only to sit quiet and wait to find out who is dead.
“Yes,” I murmured, “very sad. But it has its other side, too.”
“Very true, especially, of course, at that age.”
“As you say at that age, and after such a life.”
“Strong and bright to the last I suppose,” he continued, very sympathetically.
“Yes,” I said, falling on sure ground, “able to sit up in bed and smoke within a few days of the end.”
“What,” he said, perplexed, “did your grandmother — —”
My grandmother! That was it, was it?
“Pardon me,” I said provoked at my own stupidity; “when I say smoked, I mean able to sit up and be smoked to, a habit she had, — being read to, and being smoked to, — only thing that seemed to compose her — —”
As I said this I could hear the rattle and clatter of the train running past the semaphores and switch points and slacking to a stop.
My friend looked quickly out of the window.
His face was agitated.
“Great heavens!” he said, “that’s the junction. I’ve missed my stop. I should have got out at the last station. Say, porter,” he called out into the alleyway, “how long do we stop here?”
“Just two minutes, sah,” called a voice back. “She’s late now, she’s makin’ up tahm!”
My friend had hopped up now and had pulled out a bunch of keys and was fumbling at the lock of the suit case.
“I’ll have to wire back or something,” he gasped. “Confound this lock — my money’s in the suit case.”
My one fear now was that he would fail to get off.
“Here,” I said, pulling some money out of my pocket, “don’t bother with the lock. Here’s money.”
“Thanks,” he said grabbing the roll of money out of my hand, — in his excitement he took all that I had.— “I’ll just have time.”
He sprang from the train. I saw him through the window, moving toward the waiting-room. He didn’t seem going very fast.
I waited.[Illus]
I shall not try to be quite so extraordinarily clever.
The porters were calling, “All abawd! All abawd.” There was the clang of a bell, a hiss of steam, and in a second the train was off.
“Idiot,” I thought, “he’s missed it;” and there was his fifty-dollar suit case lying on the seat.
I waited, looking out of the window and wondering who the man was, anyway.
Then presently I heard the porter’s voice again. He evidently was guiding someone through the car.
“Ah looked all through the kyar for it, sah,” he was saying.
“I left it in the seat in the car there behind my wife,” said the angry voice of a stranger, a well-dressed man who put his head into the door of the compartment.
Then his face, too, beamed all at once with recognition. But it was not for me. It was for the fifty-dollar valise.
“Ah, there it is,” he cried, seizing it and carrying it off.
I sank back in dismay. The “old gang!” Pete’s marriage! My grandmother’s death! Great heavens! And my money! I saw it all; the other man was “making talk,” too, and making it with a purpose.
Stung!
And next time that I fall into talk with a casual stranger in a car, I shall not try to be quite so extraordinarily clever.
V. — Under the Barber’s Knife
“WAS YOU TO the Arena the other night?” said the barber, leaning over me and speaking in his confidential whisper.
“Yes,” I said, “I was there.”
He saw from this that I could still speak. So he laid another thick wet towel over my face before he spoke again.
“What did you think of the game,” he asked.
But he had miscalculated. I could still make a faint sound through the wet towels. He laid three or four more very thick ones over my face and stood with his five finger tips pressed against my face for support. A thick steam rose about me. Through it I could hear the barber’s voice and the flick-flack of the razor as he stropped it.
“Yes, sir,” he went on in his quiet professional tone, punctuated with the noise of the razor, “I knowed from the start them boys was sure to win,” — flick-flack-flick-flack,— “as soon as I seen the ice that night and seen the get-away them boys made I knowed it,” — flick-flack,— “and just as soon as Jimmy got aholt of the puck — —”
This was more than the barber at the next chair could stand.
“Him get de puck,” he cried, giving an angry dash with a full brush of soap into the face of the man under him,— “him get ut-dat stiff — why, boys,” he said, and he turned appealingly to the eight barbers, who all rested their elbows on the customers’ faces while they listened to the rising altercation; even the manicure girl, thrilled to attention, clasped tight the lumpy hand of her client in her white digits and remained motionless,— “why boys, dat feller can’t no more play hockey than — —”
“See here,” said the barber, suddenly and angrily, striking his fist emphatically on the towels that covered my face. “I’ll bet you five dollars to one Jimmy can skate rings round any two men in the league.”
“Him skate,” sneered the other squirting a jet of blinding steam in the face of the client he was treating, “he ain’t got no more go in him than dat rag,” — and he slapped a wet towel across his client’s face.
All the barbers were excited now. There was a babel of talk from behind each of the eight chairs. “He can’t skate;” “He can skate;” “I’ll bet you ten.”
Already they were losing their tempers, slapping their customers with wet towels and jabbing great brushfuls of soap into their mouths. My barber was leaning over my face with his whole body. In another minute one or the other of them would have been sufficiently provoked to have dealt his customer a blow behind the ear.
Then suddenly there was a hush.
“The boss,” said one.
In another minute I could realize, though I couldn’t see it, that a majestic figure in a white coat was moving down the line. All was still again except the quiet hum of the mechanical shampoo brush and the soft burble of running water.
