Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 636
And watching the game in this vicarious manner isn’t so bad as the fellow who has got tickets and carfare to the real game would like to have it. You are in a warm room, where you can stretch your legs and regulate your remarks to the intensity of your emotions rather than to the sex of your neighbors. And as for thrills! “Dramatic suspense” was probably first used as a term in connection with this indoor sport.
The scene is usually some college club in the city — a big room full of smoke and graduates. At one end is a score-board and miniature gridiron, along which a colored counter is moved as the telegraph behind the board clicks off the plays hot from the real gridiron. There is also an announcer, who, by way of clarifying the message depicted on the board, reads the wrong telegram in a loud, clear tone.
Just as the crowd in the football arena are crouching down in their fur coats the better to avoid watching the home team fumble the kick-off, the crowds two and ten hundred miles away are settling back in their chairs and lighting up the old pipes, while the German-silver-tongued announcer steps to the front of the platform and delivers the following:
“Yale won the toss and chose to defend the south goal, Princeton taking the west.”
This mistake elicits much laughter, and a witty graduate who has just had lunch wants to know, as one man to the rest of the house, if it is puss-in-the-corner that is being played.
The instrument behind the board goes “Tick-ity-tick-tick-tickity.”
There is a hush, broken only by the witty graduate, who, encouraged by his first success, wants to know again if it is puss-in-the-corner that is being played. This fails to gain.
“Gilblick catches the kick-off and runs the ball back to his own 3-yard line, where he is downed in his tracks,” comes the announcement.
There is a murmur of incredulity at this. The little ball on the board shoots to the middle of the field.
“Hey, how about that?” shout several precincts.
The announcer steps forward again.
“That was the wrong announcement,” he admits. “Tweedy caught the kick-off and ran the ball back twenty-five yards to midfield, where he is thrown for a loss. On the next play there was a forward pass, Klung to Breakwater, which—”
Here the message stops. Intense excitement.
“Tickity-tickity-tick-tickity.”
The man who has $5 on the game shuts his eyes and says to his neighbor: “I’ll bet it was intercepted.”
A wait of two triple-space minutes while the announcer winds his watch. Then he steps forward. There is a noisy hush.
“It is estimated that 50,000 people filed into the Palmer Stadium to-day to watch Yale and Princeton in their annual gridiron contest,” he reads. “Yale took the field at five minutes of 2, and was greeted by salvos and applause and cheering from the Yale section. A minute later the Princeton team appeared, and this was a signal for the Princeton cohorts to rise as one man and give vent to their famous ‘Undertaker’s Song.’”
“How about that forward pass?” This, as one man, from the audience.
The ball quivers and starts to go down the field. A mighty shout goes up. Then something happens, and the ball stops, looks, listens and turns in the other direction. Loud groans. A wooden slide in the mechanism of the scoreboard rattles into place, upside down. Agile spectators figure out that it says “Pass failed.”
Every one then sinks back and says, “They ought not to have tried that.” If the quarterback could hear the graduates’ do-or-die backing of their team at this juncture he would trot into the locker building then and there. Again the clear voice from the platform:
“Tweedy punts—” (noisy bond-salesman in back of room stands up on a chair and yells “Yea!” and is told to “Shut up” by three or four dozen neighbors) “to Gumble on his 15-yard line. Gumble fumbles.”
The noisy bond-salesman tries to lead a cheer but is prevented.
Frightful tension follows. Who recovered? Whose ball is it? On what line? Wet palms are pressed against trouser legs. How about it?
“Tick-tickity-tick-tickity-tickity-tickity.”
You can hear the announcer’s boots squeak as he steps forward.
“Mr. A. T. Blevitch is wanted on the telephone,” he enunciates.
Mr. A. T. Blevitch becomes the most unpopular man in that section of the country. Every one turns to see what a man of his stamp can look like. He is so embarrassed that he slinks down in his seat and refuses to answer the call.
“Klung goes around right end for a gain of two yards,” is the next message from the front.
The bond-salesman shouts “Yea!”
“How about that fumble?” shouts every one else.
The announcer goes behind the scenes to talk it over with the man who works the Punch-and-Judy, and emerges, smiling.
“In the play preceding the one just announced,” he says, “Gumble fumbled and the ball was recovered by Breakwater, who ran ten yards for a touchdown—”
Pandemonium! The bond-salesman leads himself in a cheer. The witty man says, “Nothing to it.”
There is comparative quiet again, and every one lights up the old pipes that have gone out.
The announcer steps forward with his hand raised as if to regulate traffic.
“There was a mistake in the announcement just made,” he says pleasantly. “In place of ‘touchdown’ read ‘touch-, back.’ The ball is now in play on the 20-yard line, and Kleenwell has just gone through center for three yards.”
By this time no one in the audience has any definite idea of where the ball is or who has it. On the board it is hovering between midfield and second base.
“On the next play Legly punts—”
“Block that punt! Block that punt!” warns the bond-salesman, as if it were the announcer who was opposing Legly.
“Sit down, you poor fish!” is the consensus of opinion.
“Legly punts to Klung on the latter’s 25-yard line, where the first period ends.”
And so it goes throughout the game; the announcer calling out gains and the dummy football registering corresponding losses; Messrs. A. T. Blevitch and L. H. Yank being wanted on the telephone in the middle of forward passes; the noisy person in the back of the room yelling “Yea” on the slightest provocation and being hushed up at each outbreak; and every one wondering what the quarterback meant by calling for the plays he did.
In smaller cities, where only a few are gathered together to hear the results, things are not done on such an elaborate scale. The dummy gridiron and the dummy announcer are done away with and the ten or a dozen rooters cluster about the news ticker, most of them with the intention of watching for just a few minutes and then going home or back to the office. And they always wait for just one more play, shifting from one foot to the other, until the game is over.
About a ticker only the three or four lucky ones can see the tape. The rest have to stand on tip-toe and peer over the shoulders of the man in front. They don’t care. Some one will always read the results aloud, just as a woman will read aloud the cut-ins at the movies. The one who is doing the reading usually throws in little advance predictions of his own when the news is slow in coming, with the result that those in the back get the impression that the team has at least a “varied attack,” effecting at times a field goal and a forward pass in the same play. r’”
A critical period in the game, as it comes dribbling in over the ticker, looks something like this:
YALE. PRINCETON. GAME....CHEKFMKL
— KLUNG. GOES. AROUND. LEFT. END.
FOR. A. GAIN. OF. YDS — A. FORWARD.
PASS. TWEEDY. TO. KLUNG. NETS —
(Ticker stops ticking).
Murmurs of “Come on, there, whasser matter?”
Some one suggests that the pass was illegal and that the whole team has been arrested.
The ticker clears its throat. Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r The ticker stabs off a line of dots and begins:
“BOWIE. FIRST. RACE.. MEASLES. FIRST.. 13.60.. AND.. 6.00.. WHORTLEBERRY. SCND. PLACE. 3.80.. EMMA GOLDMAN, THIRD.. TIME. 1.09.4.5 NON. START. PROCRASTINATION. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN”
A few choice remarks are passed in the privacy of the little circle, to just the effect that you would suspect.
A newcomer elbows his way in and says: “What’s the good word? Any score yet?” and some one replies: “Yes. The score now stands 206 to o in favor of Notre Dame.” This grim pleasantry is expressive of the sentiment of the group toward newcomers. It is each man for himself now. Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
“Here she comes, now!” whispers the man who is hanging over the glass news terminal, reading aloud: “Yale-Princeton-Game-Second Quarter (Good-night, what became of that forward pass in the first quarter?) Yale’s-ball-in - mid - field - Hornung - takes - ball - around - left - endmaking - it - first - down - Tinfoil - drops - back - for - a - try - at - a - field - goal. (Oh, boy! Come on, now!)”
“Why the deuce do they try a field goal on the first down?” asks a querulous graduate-strategist. “Now, what he ought to do is to keep a-plugging there at tackle, where he has been going—”
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
“Bet he missed it!” offers some one with vague gambling instincts.
“.. INS. NEEDLES.. ij.. ZINC.. CON.. 41/2.. WASHN..THE CENSUS. OFFICE. ESTIMATES. THE CONSUMPTION. OF COTTON. WASTE. IN. THE. MFGR. OF. AUTOMBLE. HOODS. AS. 66.991.059 LBS.. INCLUDING. LINTERS. AND. HULL. FIBER..”
And just then some one comes in from the outside, all fresh and disagreeably cheery, and wants to know what the score is and if there have been many forward passes tried and who is playing quarter for Yale, and if any one has got a cigarette.
It is really just the same sort of program as obtains in the big college club, only on a small scale. They are all watching the same game and they are all wishing the same thing and before their respective minds’ eyes is the picture of the same stadium, with the swarm of queen bees and drones clinging to its sides. And every time that you, who are one of the cold and lucky ones with a real ticket, see a back break loose for a long run and hear the explosion of hoarse shouts that follows, you may count sixty and then listen to hear the echo from every big city in the country where the old boys have just got the news.
MR. COBB TALKS OF TRADE
Irvin S. Cobb, born in Paducah, Ky., in I8J6, would be classed by many people as America’s foremost living humorist. But even apart from such odious comparisons, there can be no doubt of the high character of Mr. Cobb’s work, whether grave or gay. The following typical discourse on “Trade” is taken from a delightful volume of selections, Here Comes the Bride — and So Forth.
ONE PLEASANT AFTERNOON I was sitting on our front porch enjoying the beauties of the sunset. We live in a highly restricted community and our sunsets are particularly fine. If you had never made a scientific study of sunsets you would say that it was about a five-minute walk from our house to the place where the sun sets.
When the agent for the real-estate company is selling a lot to anybody he always calls the attention of the buyer to the desirable sunsets. He somehow manages to convey the impression that these sunsets are practically an exclusive feature with us.
I recall how it was in my own case. When we were buying out here the agent, on one pretext or another, kept me hanging round until the sun was in the act of sinking to rest in the golden west, and then he took me by the hand and led me to a spot where we should have an uninterrupted view of it, and talked so entertainingly about the superiority of their sunsets that I forgot entirely to inquire regarding the train service and signed the papers on the spot. Sometimes now we feel that we would like to exchange a few high-grade sunsets for a train leaving the city at five-thirty. Under the present schedule we have to wait for the six-ten, which leaves at six-fifteen or six-eighteen. I am passionately fond of the beauties of Nature, but there have been times in my life when it seemed to me that even Nature was a trifle overdone.
Be that as it may, on the afternoon in question I was sitting on our front porch, at peace with the world, enjoying the beauties of the sunset, when I saw approaching a person whom I instinctively recognized as a book canvasser or agent. A subtle, intangible, indescribable something about his manner warned me that he had marked me for his prey.
Now I distinctly did not want to buy any more books. We have plenty of books. We had to move nearly everything out of the library, which is in weathered oak and opens off the living-room, to make room for an encyclopedia in thirty volumes that I purchased some time back. This is a very handsome encyclopedia. It is impressively heavy too. The gentleman who sold it to me dwelt upon this attractive feature at the time. He said, as I recall, that each volume would weigh seven pounds and a half if bound in the half-morocco binding, or eight pounds in full calf.
However, the weight was not the main consideration that actuated me in making the deal. It was more what the man told me. He started out by explaining that he was not a regular book agent in the vulgar acceptation of the term. He was a high officer of the publishing company — the president, I think, or something of that general nature — and he was really not trying to sell the books. He was engaged in introducing them amongst a few prominent and widely known persons residing in homes of undoubted refinement and culture, in order to advertise the work and give it the right prestige. In this connection my name had been handed him, but before he had called on me he had made diligent inquiries to assure himself that I was entitled to share in this important and beneficial movement. Unless a person were really prominent in the community he would have absolutely no use for him — he told me so.
This argument appealed to me naturally. It was gratifying to think that in the leading publishing centers of the metropolis true worth was finally being recognized and that a desire had grown up to introduce this great work in thirty volumes amongst me; so I called the wife into conference and after some talk back and forth we took the entire set. We bought the full calf, which seemed to be more appropriate, buying it on the installment plan — so much down and so much a month until entirely paid for. If nothing happens that encyclopedia will be ours a year from this coming April.
So we signed up and I made the first payment; the president of the publishing company asked me who lived next door and went upon his way. In about ten days a van drove up to our house and two brawny men got out and unloaded our encyclopedias. They have caused the living room to sag down a little at one end, but that is more than compensated for by the highly refined tone they impart to the whole place.
Therefore when I became aware that this man, with the marks of the book agent about him, was stalking me I made up my mind that no matter how attractive his proposition might be I would not allow myself to become interested. I said to myself that under no consideration would I be tempted. I had already established my position in the literary field through buying my encyclopedia, and I could afford to sit back and let others, who were equally deserving, perhaps, but less known, have their chance. How often, though, one makes those high resolutions only to have them crumble into an impalpable dust before the arguments of a superior and highly trained mentality.
This person came up on the porch and shook hands with me warmly and took a chair and made some remarks of a complimentary nature in reference to the weather. His tone implied that he regarded me as being largely responsible for the weather and that personally he wished to thank me for it and congratulate me. Of course he did not come right out and say this in so many words, but I could gather from his general attitude what his feelings in the matter were. He had beautiful manners. He said he was engaged in presenting to the favorable attention of the discriminating reading public a work that belonged in every well-run household. No library, he said, however vast, could be called complete without it. I broke in on him there.
“We have a library,” I said; “we have thirty volumes weighing on an average eight pounds a volume and—”
“But,” he demanded, “have you a copy of the invaluable work entitled Ten Thousand Priceless Facts and Secrets?”
He had me there. I had to confess that we did not. This statement seemed to give him mingled pleasure and pain. He reached back somewhere into the remote recesses of his person and produced the book in question. It was in one volume — dark red with green lettering. He hitched his chair up close, where he could put his arm round me without straining himself. I repeat that he had beautiful manners, but he was addicted to the raw-onion habit.
“In that case,” he said, “you will want this book without delay — won’t you? You need it in your everyday life — don’t you?”
I saw I must be firm with this man. I began to fear his powers, began to realize that he had winning and persuasive ways about him, and that to win his point he would go far indeed. I saw I must be very firm.
“Perhaps so,” I said; “but I do not wish to buy it at this time.”
I do not know yet why I stuck that last part on— “at this time.” I did not wish to buy it at this time or any other time, yet something in the searching and impelling look of his eye made me add those words.
“Conceded,” he said— “conceded; but it cannot possibly do you any harm to look at it, can it now?”
That seemed fair enough and I felt impelled to agree with him that it could not do me any harm to look at it. Besides, the sun had finished sinking by now and it would be some little time yet before the boy got round with the evening papers.
“This work” — he began, spreading it open across my knees, so I could not move my legs without seeming impolite, and at the same time holding me down with a firm yet friendly pressure of his free hand— “this work, as its name implies, contains ten thousand priceless facts and secrets. I will briefly enumerate some of its contents. It tells how to charm those whom you meet and make them love you. It tells how to make people at a distance think of you. It tells how to perform the Davenport Brothers’ famous mysteries; how to make an egg stand on end; how to communicate with the spirit world; how to make a cheap radio set; how to make writing appear upon the human arm in blood characters; how to make a candle burn all night; how to remove warts and superfluous hair; how to cure drunkenness; how to cure stammering; how to cure hams; how to cure diseases of the common barnyard or domestic fowl; also eight hundred other cures alphabetically arranged.
