Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 670
That’s another word on farmers’ labels, ‘callipers’; directions for all seeds and things say, ‘Handle very carefully and pick up with a pair of callipers.’ Up till now I always thought that callipers were French things that women wear. But it seems not. . . .
Anyway you have to have them on a farm. I’m going to get measured for a pair right away.
This high standard of education — I mean this need of knowledge of special terms — makes it hard for any outsider to start in and do anything around the house and garden. You see, on a farm, everything is done from printed directions, either out of little manuals or from papers that come with the packet or round the bottle or under the wrapper.
When I took over my place, as it was meant to be my home for good, I thought I would begin by planting trees round it for shelter. From what I remember of farming when I was young, I naturally thought of spruce trees, and balsam and pine — any kind of fir trees. But it seems they don’t have them. The book said, ‘The snuggest effect about the dwelling-house is to be got by having a warm belt of conifers about it.’ I don’t want them. All I remember about conifers, if I have the word right, is that if they once get into the frame of a bed or bedroom chest of drawers all you can do is to burn it. You can, of course, try poison, any good unguent or emollient, but it seldom works. The conifers could be lifted out one by one by callipers, but it would take a lot of time. The book says, ‘If set out when quite young they will increase rapidly.’ I don’t doubt it, but, thank you, not for me.
The same manual suggested that if a belt of conifers was not available an equally snug effect can be made by covering the loggia with eucalyptus. ‘Loggia’ is a new word for me, though I suppose I can guess what it refers to. Personally, I would just give it a coat of whitewash.
I have found already that gardening has to go the same way as planting trees. I don’t understand the words. Try this:
‘Nitrates may be freely used with leguminous plants’ . . . ‘at the time of calyx closing watch closely for curculio’ . . . ‘remember that the ranunculus is the gardener’s friend’ . . . ‘among the birds all the caprimulgidae are well worth having, while the flickers wage war on larvae’ . . . etc. It seems that farmers eat up this kind of language by the paragraph.
There was an old man working in the next lot to my place on the first day of gardening, and I asked him what he thought of the weather. In the days when I was young such an old man would have said:
‘Well, sir, if them clouds would clear away off the sun for a bit I think it might set in for a pretty fair spell.’
But this old man didn’t.
He said:
‘I had a look at my aneroid barometer first thing this morning and there is certainly an area of pretty low barometric pressure. I had been thinking of setting some antirrhinum this morning, but I guess I won’t.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘It’s too aquaceous. You’ve got to keep a pretty good eye on your humidity gauge before you do much with antirrhinum. I’ll put in something a little more gelatinous.’
Think of it. That old man getting out of bed and having a look at his aneroid before he even put on his pants.
I was going to ask him what he would do instead of setting out antirrhinum, but then I didn’t. I didn’t need to. I knew what he would do.
He would go out and start to do all those things that are in the Farm and Home Manuals and on the seed packets, and that I can’t understand. For instance, he might go and make himself ‘a compost bed.’ Don’t ask me what it is; I’ve no idea, except that it is said to be a grand thing to make with an eye to the future. ‘Soapsuds, dirty water, and all kinds of kitchen slops thrown on the compost bed will help to keep it in good heart.’ It sounds like a dirty enough mess.
Or if the old man didn’t make a compost bed, then he might spend his time ‘treating his soil’ with nitrate, phosphorus, or basic slag. ‘What are they?’ I don’t know. ‘Where do you get basic slag?’ I have no idea.
Then, if the old man had done that, he could go and plant his garden — with what, do you think — lettuce, radishes, and that sort of stuff that I had expected to grow? — not at all. They don’t have them any more. He could plant it with antirrhinum, as I have just said, and scabies, and cuspis, and a border of asbestos and scrofula. Those are the words on the packets, as nearly as I recall them.
So, as for gardening, I’m out of it. I don’t understand the terms.
‘When the garden is complete,’ suggests the manual, ‘a final touch may be given by laying down a flagstone path, with saxifrage in the interstices, and then having a pergola all down the pathway.’ Thank you, not for me.
Another thing I had looked forward to in coming back to farm life, after fifty years away from it, was the reading of the good old farm newspapers. They’ve been parodied, I know, a thousand times by smart city people; but the charm was there all the same. There was personal news that said, ‘Ed Callaghar was in town last night from the Fourth Concession and reports his fall wheat nicely in hand. Well done! Ed’; and the social news, ‘Miss Posie Cowslip of Price’s Corners is home after a three-days’ visit in the city.’
In the place of that you now read:
‘Among the daintiest of the season’s weddings was that of Miss Poinsettia Primrose, celebrated at the family Farmstead, The Bagnolias, the happy bridegroom being Mr. Earl DeBenture of Wall Street. The ceremony, at which the Rev. Mr. Bray officiated, was held out of doors under a pergola, the assembled guests being gathered in the loggia, beautified with floral decorations of bubiscus, rabies, and flowering avunculus. Miss Primrose wore a beautiful écrin of soft tulle shot with dainty écrus. Her father, who gave her away, wore a plain vignolette of haricot, while Mrs. Primrose (mère) looked riante in a dark purple chassis de nacre. The happy couple left immediately after the ceremony for a wedding tour through the Panama Canal to Japan, returning via Soviet Russia.’
I find I don’t talk much to the neighbours. I can’t. One of them, a young farmer from nearby, dropped in the other day to ask if I could lend him a pair of callipers to reset his seismograph, and we had a little talk. He talked a little while on surrealism, which he said had been interesting him lately; he spoke also of metempsychosis, and then drifted on to foreign politics and the ‘open door’ in Manchuria. I think it was in Manchuria; it may have been Missouri.
No, no. I’ll have to go back and study a whole lot more and learn all about alkalis and barometers and callipers: or else perhaps not come to the country, but retire into a beer garden. It’s easier.
XI. WHILE YOU’RE AT IT. EXPERT ADVICE ON KNOCKING YOUR HOUSE INTO SHAPE
THIS HOUSE IMPROVEMENT stuff certainly appeals to me. You know what I mean — having your house all fixed up with new plumbing and heat and painting and everything. As soon as the Government started the idea of improvement loans, it opened people’s eyes. Lots of people, like myself, had gone on living in a house without realizing that there was anything wrong with it; and then there suddenly came to us all this idea of making a new home of it — that’s the word, a home.
I got the first incentive to it one day when I noticed the pipes in the furnace room. They looked worn out. So I sent for a plumber and showed him the pipes, and he said right away, ‘These pipes are gone — clean gone.’ I hadn’t realized that. I thought they were still there. ‘Look,’ he said, and took a hammer and started a big hole in one of them. ‘See that,’ he said. ‘That pipe’s all corroded, it’s oxidized — see! So’s the other!’
He knocked the other to pieces.
‘Can’t you put in new ones?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I could, but if it was me, I wouldn’t. You see, that furnace is too old; it’s gone.’ He took his hammer and smashed in one side of the furnace. ‘See it break! You look at the metal, it’s acidulated!’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you could fix it, couldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ the plumber answered, ‘I could, but if it was me, I’d throw that furnace right out and put in the new self-acting thermostatic heat; it’s fireless and without fuel, and cuts your cost per thermal unit by over a hundred per cent.’
‘Would you allow me anything on the old furnace?’
‘I wouldn’t bother with it if I were you; just throw it out. Of course it means changing the water-pipes to your kitchen range. Do you know if they run through the range, or are they geocentric?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Well, anyhow if it was me I’d throw all the pipes away and reset new ones.’
So I got a kitchen range man to come and have a look. And he said right away that, while I was at it, I’d better throw the range out — just not bother with it. He explained that the whole range was fused — just think of it, fused — and probably had been for years, and I’d never known it.
So I said: ‘All right; throw it out and put in the new hypogastric kind that you say doesn’t use heat at all, but cooks with rheostats. It certainly seems wonderful.’
So I put the range out, and, on the man’s advice, I didn’t ask for any allowance on it. He told me it just wasn’t worth bothering with.
But he said that I’d have to have the wall moved a couple of feet sideways. He said any building firm could do that in a day.
I sent for a builder and he came over with his foreman and they looked at the wall and said it was perfectly easy to move it — just a little brick and mortar and a few feet of scantling — no job at all, and wouldn’t cost much. At the same time they advised me not to do it; they wouldn’t do it if it was them, neither of them, if it was either of them.
What they suggested — and they both thought of it — was not to shift the party wall itself only, but to carry it right up through the house; sink it below the basement, and lift it right up through the roof. They reached up their hands above their heads to show how. Doing it that way, they said, I could put in the new hollow brick, the Delphic brick, that is practically airproof.
I told them to go ahead, but they said that they’d need a contractor, because of the building permit, but that it was a simple matter to arrange.
They came back presently with the contractor. He took a look round and shook his head. He said he could carry the wall up. But much better knock down the house. The house, he showed me, was badly hipped. He said it must have fluted; probably had started with a small flute that had gone on fluting. He showed me a place in the dining-room where, just with a little builder’s axe that he carried, he knocked out bucketfuls of plaster. It seems there was a cyst in the wall.
He strongly advised knocking the house down.
I asked about allowing anything for the material, but he said there was nothing in it either way. He said if you start picking over your brick (my brick) and trying to get the studding and joints out — well, you have your labour — I mean, his labour — or my labour, I didn’t quite catch on whose labour, but anyway your labour, and your time, and what had you got? Nothing. He said if it was him he wouldn’t bother with it.
They are knocking my house down now. I go and have a look at it every day, all disappearing in a cloud of white dust with bricks and plaster and rubbish going down a chute. I saw the books in my library going down yesterday. The contractor said there was no sense in picking them over; there’d be the labour and the time. He said if it was him, he’d read new ones.
So the house is disappearing. Just in time apparently! The further down they get with it, the more they realize the awful condition it was in! Just think of it! the roof had hogged — either had already hogged or was just going to hog any time! There was a five-inch sag in the upper floor. He said it was on account of the thrust. Where the roof had hogged, a joist had thrust; that’s what had made the sag, and it was the sag that had caused the cyst in the basement.
However, he’ll get it down all right. He’s a nice fellow and knows his job. He was telling me that he has knocked down a hundred houses already this year, and is knocking down a big hotel right now, and a church. He sent in a tender to go and knock down Westminster Abbey for the Coronation, but he was late.
Meantime I’m living in a room in a hotel. That will give me time, they say, to ‘turn round.’ I never felt till now that I needed time to turn round. But the builder and the contractor and everybody said I’d better take time to turn round.
Anyway, that’s all the time the hotel could give me. They didn’t want me. They said that they would rather throw me into the river and get a new guest. But they’ll keep me till I turn round.
After that they want the room. It seems there’s a big hotel men’s convention, and they want the whole hotel for the hotel men. That’s only fair when you think of it.
XII. THE SIT-DOWN STRIKE IN MY PARLOUR. THEY CAME AND THEY WOULDN’T GO
THE SIT-DOWN STRIKERS — who sat down the other night in my living-room — had timed their arrival with characteristic cunning. They came just after dark, between eight and nine in the evening. All six arrived in one motor-car so as to effect a quick and immediate entry before anyone could stop them. With proper warning I could easily have prevented an entry. My plant is a large country house with a lodge and driveway, and protected in the rear by a lake. A heavy chain stretched across the drive could have brought the car to a stop. As it was, nothing was done. No chain was placed and there was no tear-gas in the house.
The result was that they were in, had slipped past the maid at the door, thrown off all their wraps, and had occupied the living-room before any organized attempt could be made to eject them.
It was there that I was summoned for a conference. They appeared to be, as I said, six — two men and two women, evidently husbands and wives, and two younger criminals, a grown-up girl and boy, quite old enough to be held legally responsible.
Now here began the difficulty. People who only know of sit-down strikes from hearsay, as I am afraid is the case with even some of our judges, cannot estimate the practical difficulty of dealing with the strikers. But any plant manager will understand my case. An outsider would ask, ‘Why not throw them all out? Your plant,’ he would say, ’is your property. These sit-down people are just trespassers.’ True, but you see I knew them; they were people that I knew, just as the plant manager knows and has worked for years with the leaders of his strike. Apart from their presence in my plant, I had nothing against them. One of our judges asked the other day, ‘Why not throw them out by the neck?’ Well, these two senior women were in evening dress and were of the solid kind that has no neck.
They opened the discussion, cleverly enough, by drawing attention to the fine spring weather; I admitted that it was fine, but claimed that it still turned bitter cold later at night. They denied this flat out. Then I made my first, tentative, offer, viz., that they must have a whiskey and soda, or ginger ale with ice, a choice, before they left. They agreed, but without clause two. For the time being I was beaten, but it occurred to me that in getting ice for the drinks I might make some use of the telephone to get them home. The younger criminal frustrated this by coming to help me. While getting the ice he put in an ingenious claim that he had been a student of mine in Economics when I was a professor. There was no way to challenge this. He may have been. A lot of my students went to the bad.
When I got back to the living-room the sit-downers had settled in to their task and were well ensconced round the fire, which they stirred to a blaze. They came out boldly with their first demand, and suggested a game of bridge. I urged that I had no cards. But their preliminary organization had provided this. It seemed that one of the women strikers had cards in her bag.
By ten o’clock the sit-down strike was in full operation. The strikers were playing bridge, four at a time, with two as pickets to keep their eye on me. The system I believe is called ‘cutting-in,’ and is largely used in cases like this where a sit-down strike is carried on in a private dwelling.
Of bridge I know nothing, but it was clear that we had reached a rough-and-ready understanding, namely, that they would play without further annoyance to the property provided that I kept up the fire and supplied whiskey and soda after each rubber. For those not conversant with bridge I may say that a ‘rubber’ is the name given to the period between drinks.
The sit-down strikers were thus getting about fifty cents an hour, which they raised to sixty cents an hour after eleven o’clock by working shorter rubbers. I had to give in. One man made a distinct threat that, if I didn’t, they’d stay all night. What he said was, ‘I just feel as if I could play all night!’ but I knew what he meant. And when one woman went over to the piano and hit a couple of notes, and sang, ‘We won’t go home till morning!’ I knew that they might start violence at any time.
I repeat again that people who only think in terms of theory fail to realize how difficult it is in practice to fight against sit-down strikers. They would say, ‘Why didn’t you get one and use force, attack him, kill him!’ I tried to. I got one of the men strikers, while he was picketing, and took him down to the cellar under pretence of fixing the furnace, but he artfully kept out of reach of the shovel. Then I took him on the lawn to look at the lake, but I couldn’t get him near enough.
So when we came in I made a flat-out offer of seventy-five cents’ worth of whiskey and a plate of sandwiches if they’d go — that is, before they went. But it only led to a lot of back and forward discussion. One woman said: ‘Oh, yes, sandwiches would be lovely! Do let’s stop a minute!’ But the other said: ‘No, Mary, we don’t need to stop. We can eat the sandwiches right here.’
After that, it was nearly one in the morning, I gave right in. I knew there was a cold turkey in the ice-box, the real thing — plump and cool and lying all dressed up with green parsley. Show that to a woman of the make and build that these were, and you’ve got her.
