Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 5
“I find, for instance,” the first man went on, “that a drop of water is filled with little…with little…I forget just what you call them…little — er — things, every cubic inch containing — er — containing…let me see…”
“Say a million,” said the other thinker, encouragingly.
“Yes, a million, or possibly a billion…but at any rate, ever so many of them.”
“Is it possible?” said the other. “But really, you know there are wonderful things in the world. Now, coal…take coal…”
“Very, good,” said his friend, “let us take coal,” settling back in his seat with the air of an intellect about to feed itself.
“Do you know that every ton of coal burnt in an engine will drag a train of cars as long as…I forget the exact length, but say a train of cars of such and such a length, and weighing, say so much…from…from…hum! for the moment the exact distance escapes me…drag it from…”
“From here to the moon,” suggested the other.
“Ah, very likely; yes, from here to the moon. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
“But the most stupendous calculation of all, sir, is in regard to the distance from the earth to the sun. Positively, sir, a cannon-ball — er — fired at the sun…”
“Fired at the sun,” nodded the other, approvingly, as if he had often seen it done.
“And travelling at the rate of…of…”
“Of three cents a mile,” hinted the listener.
“No, no, you misunderstand me, — but travelling at a fearful rate, simply fearful, sir, would take a hundred million — no, a hundred billion — in short would take a scandalously long time in getting there—”
At this point I could stand no more. I interrupted— “Provided it were fired from Philadelphia,” I said, and passed into the smoking-car.
Men who have Shaved Me
A BARBER IS by nature and inclination a sport. He can tell you at what exact hour the ball game of the day is to begin, can foretell its issue without losing a stroke of the razor, and can explain the points of inferiority of all the players, as compared with better men that he has personally seen elsewhere, with the nicety of a professional. He can do all this, and then stuff the customer’s mouth with a soap-brush, and leave him while he goes to the other end of the shop to make a side bet with one of the other barbers on the outcome of the Autumn Handicap. In the barber-shops they knew the result of the Jeffries-Johnson prize-fight long before it happened. It is on information of this kind that they make their living. The performance of shaving is only incidental to it. Their real vocation in life is imparting information. To the barber the outside world is made up of customers, who are to be thrown into chairs, strapped, manacled, gagged with soap, and then given such necessary information on the athletic events of the moment as will carry them through the business hours of the day without open disgrace.
As soon as the barber has properly filled up the customer with information of this sort, he rapidly removes his whiskers as a sign that the man is now fit to talk to, and lets him out of the chair.
The public has grown to understand the situation. Every reasonable business man is willing to sit and wait half an hour for a shave which he could give himself in three minutes, because he knows that if he goes down town without understanding exactly why Chicago lost two games straight he will appear an ignoramus.
At times, of course, the barber prefers to test his customer with a question or two. He gets him pinned in the chair, with his head well back, covers the customer’s face with soap, and then planting his knee on his chest and holding his hand firmly across the customer’s mouth, to prevent all utterance and to force him to swallow the soap, he asks: “Well, what did you think of the Detroit-St. Louis game yesterday?” This is not really meant for a question at all. It is only equivalent to saying: “Now, you poor fool, I’ll bet you don’t know anything about the great events of your country at all.” There is a gurgle in the customer’s throat as if he were trying to answer, and his eyes are seen to move sideways, but the barber merely thrusts the soap-brush into each eye, and if any motion still persists, he breathes gin and peppermint over the face, till all sign of life is extinct. Then he talks the game over in detail with the barber at the next chair, each leaning across an inanimate thing extended under steaming towels that was once a man.
To know all these things barbers have to be highly educated. It is true that some of the greatest barbers that have ever lived have begun as uneducated, illiterate men, and by sheer energy and indomitable industry have forced their way to the front. But these are exceptions. To succeed nowadays it is practically necessary to be a college graduate. As the courses at Harvard and Yale have been found too superficial, there are now established regular Barbers’ Colleges, where a bright young man can learn as much in three weeks as he would be likely to know after three years at Harvard. The courses at these colleges cover such things as: (1) Physiology, including Hair and its Destruction, The Origin and Growth of Whiskers, Soap in its Relation to Eyesight; (2) Chemistry, including lectures on Florida Water; and How to Make it out of Sardine Oil; (3) Practical Anatomy, including The Scalp and How to Lift it, The Ears and How to Remove them, and, as the Major Course for advanced students, The Veins of the Face and how to open and close them at will by the use of alum.
The education of the customer is, as I have said, the chief part of the barber’s vocation. But it must be remembered that the incidental function of removing his whiskers in order to mark him as a well-informed man is also of importance, and demands long practice and great natural aptitude. In the barbers’ shops of modern cities shaving has been brought to a high degree of perfection. A good barber is not content to remove the whiskers of his client directly and immediately. He prefers to cook him first. He does this by immersing the head in hot water and covering the victim’s face with steaming towels until he has him boiled to a nice pink. From time to time the barber removes the towels and looks at the face to see if it is yet boiled pink enough for his satisfaction. If it is not, he replaces the towels again and jams them down firmly with his hand until the cooking is finished. The final result, however, amply justifies this trouble, and the well-boiled customer only needs the addition of a few vegetables on the side to present an extremely appetizing appearance.
During the process of the shave, it is customary for the barber to apply the particular kind of mental torture known as the third degree. This is done by terrorizing the patient as to the very evident and proximate loss of all his hair and whiskers, which the barber is enabled by his experience to foretell. “Your hair,” he says, very sadly and sympathetically, “is all falling out. Better let me give you a shampoo?” “No.” “Let me singe your hair to close up the follicles?” “No.” “Let me plug up the ends of your hair with sealing-wax, it’s the only thing that will save it for you?” “No.” “Let me rub an egg on your scalp?” “No.” “Let me squirt a lemon on your eyebrows?” “No.”
The barber sees that he is dealing with a man of determination, and he warms to his task. He bends low and whispers into the prostrate ear: “You’ve got a good many grey hairs coming in; better let me give you an application of Hairocene, only cost you half a dollar?” “No.” “Your face,” he whispers again, with a soft, caressing voice, “is all covered with wrinkles; better let me rub some of this Rejuvenator into the face.”
This process is continued until one of two things happens. Either the customer is obdurate, and staggers to his feet at last and gropes his way out of the shop with the knowledge that he is a wrinkled, prematurely senile man, whose wicked life is stamped upon his face, and whose unstopped hair-ends and failing follicles menace him with the certainty of complete baldness within twenty-four hours — or else, as in nearly all instances, he succumbs. In the latter case, immediately on his saying “yes” there is a shout of exultation from the barber, a roar of steaming water, and within a moment two barbers have grabbed him by the feet and thrown him under the tap, and, in spite of his struggles, are giving him the Hydro-magnetic treatment. When he emerges from their hands, he steps out of the shop looking as if he had been varnished.
But even the application of the Hydro-magnetic and the Rejuvenator do not by any means exhaust the resources of the up-to-date barber. He prefers to perform on the customer a whole variety of subsidiary services not directly connected with shaving, but carried on during the process of the shave.
In a good, up-to-date shop, while one man is shaving the customer, others black his boots; brush his clothes, darn his socks, point his nails, enamel his teeth, polish his eyes, and alter the shape of any of his joints which they think unsightly. During this operation they often stand seven or eight deep round a customer, fighting for a chance to get at him.
All of these remarks apply to barber-shops in the city, and not to country places. In the country there is only one barber and one customer at a time. The thing assumes the aspect of a straight-out, rough-and-tumble, catch-as-catch-can fight, with a few spectators sitting round the shop to see fair play. In the city they can shave a man without removing any of his clothes. But in the country, where the customer insists on getting the full value for his money, they remove the collar and necktie, the coat and the waistcoat, and, for a really good shave and hair-cut, the customer is stripped to the waist. The barber can then take a rush at him from the other side of the room, and drive the clippers up the full length of the spine, so as to come at the heavier hair on the back of the head with the impact of a lawn-mower driven into long grass.
Getting the Thread of It
HAVE YOU EVER had a man try to explain to you what happened in a book as far as he has read? It is a most instructive thing. Sinclair, the man who shares my rooms with me, made such an attempt the other night. I had come in cold and tired from a walk and found him full of excitement, with a bulky magazine in one hand and a paper-cutter gripped in the other.
“Say, here’s a grand story,” he burst out as soon as I came in; “it’s great! most fascinating thing I ever read. Wait till I read you some of it. I’ll just tell you what has happened up to where I am — you’ll easily catch the thread of it — and then we’ll finish it together.”
I wasn’t feeling in a very responsive mood, but I saw no way to stop him, so I merely said, “All right, throw me your thread, I’ll catch it.”
“Well,” Sinclair began with great animation, “this count gets this letter…”
“Hold on,” I interrupted, “what count gets what letter?”
“Oh, the count it’s about, you know. He gets this letter from this Porphirio.”
“From which Porphirio?”
“Why, Porphirio sent the letter, don’t you see, he sent it,” Sinclair exclaimed a little impatiently— “sent it through Demonio and told him to watch for him with him, and kill him when he got him.”
“Oh, see here!” I broke in, “who is to meet who, and who is to get stabbed?”
“They’re going to stab Demonio.”
“And who brought the letter?”
“Demonio.”
“Well, now, Demonio must be a clam! What did he bring it for?”
“Oh, but he don’t know what’s in it, that’s just the slick part of it,” and Sinclair began to snigger to himself at the thought of it. “You see, this Carlo Carlotti the Condottiere…”
“Stop right there,” I said. “What’s a Condottiere?”
“It’s a sort of brigand. He, you understand, was in league with this Fra Fraliccolo…”
A suspicion flashed across my mind. “Look here,” I said firmly, “if the scene of this story is laid in the Highlands, I refuse to listen to it. Call it off.”
“No, no,” Sinclair answered quickly, “that’s all right. It’s laid in Italy…time of Pius the something. He comes in — say, but he’s great! so darned crafty. It’s him, you know, that persuades this Franciscan…”
“Pause,” I said, “what Franciscan?”
“Fra Fraliccolo, of course,” Sinclair said snappishly.
“You see, Pio tries to…”
“Whoa!” I said, “who is Pio?”
“Oh, hang it all, Pio is Italian, it’s short for Pius. He tries to get Fra Fraliccolo and Carlo Carlotti the Condottiere to steal the document from…let me see; what was he called?…Oh, yes…from the Dog of Venice, so that…or…no, hang it, you put me out, that’s all wrong. It’s the other way round. Pio wasn’t clever at all; he’s a regular darned fool. It’s the Dog that’s crafty. By Jove, he’s fine,” Sinclair went on; warming up to enthusiasm again, “he just does anything he wants. He makes this Demonio (Demonio is one of those hirelings, you know, he’s the tool of the Dog)…makes him steal the document off Porphirio, and…”
“But how does he get him to do that?” I asked.
“Oh, the Dog has Demonio pretty well under his thumb, so he makes Demonio scheme round till he gets old Pio — er — gets him under his thumb, and then, of course, Pio thinks that Porphirio — I mean he thinks that he has Porphirio — er — has him under his thumb.”
“Half a minute, Sinclair,” I said, “who did you say was under the Dog’s thumb?”
“Demonio.”
“Thanks. I was mixed in the thumbs. Go on.”
“Well, just when things are like this…”
“Like what?”
“Like I said.”
“All right.”
“Who should turn up and thwart the whole scheme, but this Signorina Tarara in her domino…”
“Hully Gee!” I said, “you make my head ache. What the deuce does she come in her domino for?”
“Why, to thwart it.”
“To thwart what?”
“Thwart the whole darned thing,” Sinclair exclaimed emphatically.
“But can’t she thwart it without her domino?”
“I should think not! You see, if it hadn’t been for the domino, the Dog would have spotted her quick as a wink. Only when he sees her in the domino with this rose in her hair, he thinks she must be Lucia dell’ Esterolla.”
“Say, he fools himself, doesn’t he? Who’s this last girl?”
“Lucia? Oh, she’s great!” Sinclair said. “She’s one of those Southern natures, you know, full of — er — full of…”
“Full of fun,” I suggested.
“Oh, hang it all, don’t make fun of it! Well, anyhow, she’s sister, you understand, to the Contessa Carantarata, and that’s why Fra Fraliccolo, or…hold on, that’s not it, no, no, she’s not sister to anybody. She’s cousin, that’s it; or, anyway, she thinks she is cousin to Fra Fraliccolo himself, and that’s why Pio tries to stab Fra Fraliccolo.”
“Oh, yes,” I assented, “naturally he would.”
“Ah,” Sinclair said hopefully, getting his paper-cutter ready to cut the next pages, “you begin to get the thread now, don’t you?”
“Oh, fine!” I said. “The people in it are the Dog and Pio, and Carlo Carlotti the Condottiere, and those others that we spoke of.”
“That’s right,” Sinclair said. “Of course, there are more still that I can tell you about if…”
“Oh, never mind,” I said, “I’ll work along with those, they’re a pretty representative crowd. Then Porphirio is under Pio’s thumb, and Pio is under Demonio’s thumb, and the Dog is crafty, and Lucia is full of something all the time. Oh, I’ve got a mighty clear idea of it,” I concluded bitterly.
“Oh, you’ve got it,” Sinclair said, “I knew you’d like it. Now we’ll go on. I’ll just finish to the bottom of my page and then I’ll go on aloud.”
He ran his eyes rapidly over the lines till he came to the bottom of the page, then he cut the leaves and turned over. I saw his eye rest on the half-dozen lines that confronted him on the next page with an expression of utter consternation.
“Well, I will be cursed!” he said at length.
“What’s the matter?” I said gently, with a great joy at my heart.
“This infernal thing’s a serial,” he gasped, as he pointed at the words, “To be continued,” “and that’s all there is in this number.”
Telling His Faults
“OH, DO, MR. Sapling,” said the beautiful girl at the summer hotel, “do let me read the palm of your hand! I can tell you all your faults.”
Mr. Sapling gave an inarticulate gurgle and a roseate flush swept over his countenance as he surrendered his palm to the grasp of the fair enchantress.
“Oh, you’re just full of faults, just full of them, Mr. Sapling!” she cried.
Mr. Sapling looked it.
“To begin with,” said the beautiful girl, slowly and reflectingly, “you are dreadfully cynical: you hardly believe in anything at all, and you’ve utterly no faith in us poor women.”
The feeble smile that had hitherto kindled the features of Mr. Sapling into a ray of chastened imbecility, was distorted in an effort at cynicism.
“Then your next fault is that you are too determined; much too determined. When once you have set your will on any object, you crush every obstacle under your feet.”
Mr. Sapling looked meekly down at his tennis shoes, but began to feel calmer, more lifted up. Perhaps he had been all these things without knowing it.
“Then you are cold and sarcastic.”
Mr. Sapling attempted to look cold and sarcastic. He succeeded in a rude leer.
“And you’re horribly world-weary, you care for nothing. You have drained philosophy to the dregs, and scoff at everything.”
Mr. Sapling’s inner feeling was that from now on he would simply scoff and scoff and scoff.
“Your only redeeming quality is that you are generous. You have tried to kill even this, but cannot. Yes,” concluded the beautiful girl, “those are your faults, generous still, but cold, cynical, and relentless. Good night, Mr. Sapling.”
And resisting all entreaties the beautiful girl passed from the verandah of the hotel and vanished.
