Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 87
“Tommyrot!” exclaimed the Smooth Gentleman, with great alacrity, his mask entirely laid aside.
“Damn foolishness,” gurgled the Heavy Business Friend, sipping his port.
“Of course you can’t really discuss it with women,” murmured the Host.
“Oh, no,” assented all the others. Even the Half Man sipped his wine and turned traitor, there being no one to see.
“You see,” said the Host, “if my wife likes to go to meetings and be on committees, why, I don’t stop her.”
“Neither do I mine,” said the Heavy Friend. “It amuses her, so I let her do it.” His wife, the Lady-with-the-Bust, was safely out of hearing.
“I remember once,” began the Interesting Man, “saying to” — he paused a moment, for the others were looking at him— “another man that if women did get the vote they’d never use it, anyway. All they like is being talked about for not getting it.”
After which, having exhausted the Woman Question, the five men turned to such bigger subjects as the fall in sterling exchange and the President’s seventeenth note to Germany.
Then presently they went upstairs. And when they reached the door of the drawing-room a keen observer, or, indeed, any kind of observer, might have seen that all five of them made an obvious advance towards the two empty seats beside the Soft Lady.
The Grass Bachelor’s Guide. With sincere Apologies to the Ladies’ Periodicals
THERE ARE PERIODS in the life of every married man when he is turned for the time being into a grass bachelor.
This happens, for instance, in the summer time when his wife is summering by the sea, and he himself is simmering in the city. It happens also in the autumn when his wife is in Virginia playing golf in order to restore her shattered nerves after the fatigues of the seaside. It occurs again in November when his wife is in the Adirondacks to get the benefit of the altitude, and later on through the winter when she is down in Florida to get the benefit of the latitude. The breaking up of the winter being, notoriously, a trying time on the system, any reasonable man is apt to consent to his wife’s going to California. In the later spring, the season of the bursting flowers and the young buds, every woman likes to be with her mother in the country. It is not fair to stop her.
It thus happens that at various times of the year a great number of men, unable to leave their business, are left to their own resources as housekeepers in their deserted houses and apartments. It is for their benefit that I have put together these hints on housekeeping for men. It may be that in composing them I owe something to the current number of the leading women’s magazines. If so, I need not apologise. I am sure that in these days We Men all feel that We Men and We Women are so much alike, or at least those of us who call ourselves so, that we need feel no jealousy when We Men and We Women are striving each, or both, in the same direction if in opposite ways. I hope that I make myself clear. I am sure I do.
So I feel that if We Men, who are left alone in our houses and apartments in the summer-time, would only set ourselves to it, we could make life not only a little brighter for ourselves but also a little less bright for those about us.
Nothing contributes to this end so much as good housekeeping. The first thing for the housekeeper to realise is that it is impossible for him to attend to his housekeeping in the stiff and unbecoming garments of his business hours. When he begins his day he must therefore carefully consider —
WHAT TO WEAR BEFORE DRESSING
The simplest and best thing will be found to be a plain sacque or kimono, cut very full so as to allow of the freest movement, and buttoned either down the front or back or both. If the sleeve is cut short at the elbow and ruffled above the bare arm, the effect is both serviceable and becoming. It will be better, especially for such work as lighting the gas range and boiling water, to girdle the kimono with a simple yet effective rope or tasselled silk, which may be drawn in or let out according to the amount of water one wishes to boil. A simple kimono of this sort can be bought almost anywhere for $2.50, or can be supplied by Messrs. Einstein & Fickelbrot (see advertising pages) for twenty-five dollars.
Having a kimono such as this, our housekeeper can either button himself into it with a button-hook (very good ones are supplied by Messrs. Einstein & Fickelbrot [see ad.] at a very reasonable price or even higher), or better still, he can summon the janitor of the apartment, who can button him up quite securely in a few minutes’ time — a quarter of an hour at the most. We Men cannot impress upon ourselves too strongly that, for efficient housekeeping, time is everything, and that much depends on quiet, effective movement from place to place, or from any one place to any number of other places. We are now ready to consider the all-important question —
WHAT TO SELECT FOR BREAKFAST
Our housekeeper will naturally desire something that is simple and easily cooked, yet at the same time sustaining and invigorating and containing a maximum of food value with a minimum of cost. If he is wise he will realise that the food ought to contain a proper quantity of both proteids and amygdaloids, and, while avoiding a nitrogenous breakfast, should see to it that he obtains sufficient of what is albuminous and exogamous to prevent his breakfast from becoming monotonous. Careful thought must therefore be given to the breakfast menu.
For the purpose of thinking, a simple but very effective costume may be devised by throwing over the kimono itself a thin lace shawl, with a fichu carried high above the waistline and terminating in a plain insertion. A bit of old lace thrown over the housekeeper’s head is at once serviceable and becoming and will help to keep the dust out of his brain while thinking what to eat for breakfast.
Very naturally our housekeeper’s first choice will be some kind of cereal. The simplest and most economical breakfast of this kind can be secured by selecting some cereal or grain food — such as oats, flax, split peas that have been carefully strained in the colander, or beans that have been fired off in a gun. Any of these cereals may be bought for ten cents a pound at a grocer’s — or obtained from Messrs. Einstein & Fickelbrot for a dollar a pound, or more. Supposing then that we have decided upon a pound of split peas as our breakfast, the next task that devolves upon our housekeeper is to —
GO OUT AND BUY IT
Here our advice is simple but positive. Shopping should never be done over the telephone or by telegraph. The good housekeeper instead of telegraphing for his food will insist on seeing his food himself, and will eat nothing that he does not first see before eating. This is a cardinal rule. For the moment, then, the range must be turned low while our housekeeper sallies forth to devote himself to his breakfast shopping. The best costume for shopping is a simple but effective suit, cut in plain lines, either square or crosswise, and buttoned wherever there are button-holes. A simple hat of some dark material may be worn together with plain boots drawn up well over the socks and either laced or left unlaced. No harm is done if a touch of colour is added by carrying a geranium in the hand. We are now ready for the street.
TEST OF EFFECTIVE SHOPPING
Here we may say at once that the crucial test is that we must know what we want, why we want it, where we want it, and what it is. Time, as We Men are only too apt to forget, is everything, and since our aim is now a pound of split peas we must, as we sally forth, think of a pound of split peas and only a pound. A cheery salutation may be exchanged with other morning shoppers as we pass along, but only exchanged. Split peas being for the moment our prime business, we must, as rapidly and unobtrusively as possible, visit those shops and only those shops where split peas are to be had.
Having found the split peas, our housekeeper’s next task is to pay for them. This he does with money that may be either carried in the hand or, better, tucked into a simple etui, or dodu, that can be carried at the wrist or tied to the ankle. The order duly given, our housekeeper gives his address for the delivery of the peas, and then, as quietly and harmlessly as possible, returns to his apartment. His next office, and a most important one it is, is now ready to be performed. This new but necessary duty is —
WAITING FOR THE DELIVERY VAN
A good costume for waiting for the delivery van in, is a simple brown suit, slashed with yellow and purple, and sliced or gored from the hip to the feet. As time is everything, the housekeeper, after having put on his slashed costume for waiting for the delivery van, may set himself to the performance of a number of light household tasks, at the same time looking occasionally from the window so as to detect the arrival of the van as soon as possible after it has arrived. Among other things, he may now feed his canary by opening its mouth with a button-hook and dropping in coffee beans till the little songster shows by its gratified air that it is full. A little time may be well spent among the flowers and bulbs of the apartment, clipping here a leaf and here a stem, and removing the young buds and bugs. For work among the flowers, a light pair of rather long scissors, say a foot long, can be carried at the girdle, or attached to the etui and passed over the shoulder with a looped cord so as to fall in an easy and graceful fold across the back. The moment is now approaching when we may expect —
THE ARRIVAL OF THE VAN
The housekeeper will presently discover the van, drawn up in the front of the apartment, and its driver curled up on the seat. Now is the moment of activity. Hastily throwing on a peignoir, the housekeeper descends and, receiving his parcel, reascends to his apartment. The whole descent and reascent is made quickly, quietly, and, if possible, only once.
PUTTING THE PEAS TO SOAK
Remember that unsoaked peas are hard, forcible, and surcharged with a nitrogenous amygdaloid that is in reality what chemical science calls putrate of lead. On the other hand, peas that are soaked become large, voluble, textile, and, while extremely palatable, are none the less rich in glycerine, starch, and other lacteroids and bactifera. To contain the required elements of nutrition split peas must be soaked for two hours in fresh water and afterwards boiled for an hour and a quarter (eighty-five minutes).
It is now but the work of a moment to lift the saucepan of peas from the fire, strain them through a colander, pass them thence into a net or bag, rinse them in cold water and then spread the whole appetising mass on a platter and carry it on a fireshovel to the dining-room. As it is now about six o’clock in the evening, our housekeeper can either —
TELEPHONE TO HIS CLUB AND ORDER A THIN SOUP WITH A BITE OF FISH, TWO LAMB CHOPS WITH ASPARAGUS, AND SEND WORD ALSO FOR A PINT OF MOSELLE TO BE LAID ON ICE
Or he can sit down and eat those d — n peas.
WE KNOW WHICH HE WILL DO
Every Man and his Friends. Mr. Crunch’s Portrait Gallery (as Edited from his Private Thoughts)
(I) HIS VIEWS ON HIS EMPLOYER
A MEAN MAN. I say it, of course, without any prejudice, and without the slightest malice. But the man is mean. Small, I think, is the word. I am not thinking, of course, of my own salary. It is not a matter that I would care to refer to; though, as a matter of fact, one would think that after fifteen years of work an application for an increase of five hundred dollars is the kind of thing that any man ought to be glad to meet half-way. Not that I bear the man any malice for it. None. If he died to-morrow, no one would regret his death as genuinely as I would: if he fell into the river and got drowned, or if he fell into a sewer and suffocated, or if he got burned to death in a gas explosion (there are a lot of things that might happen to him), I should feel genuinely sorry to see him cut off.
But what strikes me more than the man’s smallness is his incompetence. The man is absolutely no good. It’s not a thing that I would say outside: as a matter of fact I deny it every time I hear it, though every man in town knows it. How that man ever got the position he has is more than I can tell. And, as for holding it, he couldn’t hold it half a day if it weren’t that the rest of us in the office do practically everything for him.
Why, I’ve seen him send out letters (I wouldn’t say this to anyone outside, of course, and I wouldn’t like to have it repeated) — letters with, actually, mistakes in English. Think of it, in English! Ask his stenographer.
I often wonder why I go on working for him. There are dozens of other companies that would give anything to get me. Only the other day — it’s not ten years ago — I had an offer, or practically an offer, to go to Japan selling Bibles. I often wish now I had taken it. I believe I’d like the Japanese. They’re gentlemen, the Japanese. They wouldn’t turn a man down after slaving away for fifteen years.
I often think I’ll quit him. I say to my wife that that man had better not provoke me too far; or some day I’ll just step into his office and tell him exactly what I think of him. I’d like to. I often say it over to myself in the street car coming home.
He’d better be careful, that’s all.
(II) THE MINISTER WHOSE CHURCH HE ATTENDS
A dull man. Dull is the only word I can think of that exactly describes him — dull and prosy. I don’t say that he is not a good man. He may be. I don’t say that he is not. I have never seen any sign of it, if he is. But I make it a rule never to say anything to take away a man’s character.
And his sermons! Really that sermon he gave last Sunday on Esau seemed to me the absolute limit. I wish you could have heard it. I mean to say — drivel. I said to my wife and some friends, as we walked away from the church, that a sermon like that seemed to me to come from the dregs of the human intellect. Mind you, I don’t believe in criticising a sermon. I always feel it a sacred obligation never to offer a word of criticism. When I say that the sermon was punk, I don’t say it as criticism. I merely state it as a fact. And to think that we pay that man eighteen hundred dollars a year! And he’s in debt all the time at that. What does he do with it? He can’t spend it. It’s not as if he had a large family (they’ve only four children). It’s just a case of sheer extravagance. He runs about all the time. Last year it was a trip to a Synod Meeting at New York — away four whole days; and two years before that, dashing off to a Scripture Conference at Boston, and away nearly a whole week, and his wife with him!
What I say is that if a man’s going to spend his time gadding about the country like that — here to-day and there to-morrow — how on earth can he attend to his parochial duties?
I’m a religious man. At least I trust I am. I believe — and more and more as I get older — in eternal punishment. I see the need of it when I look about me. As I say, I trust I am a religious man, but when it comes to subscribing fifty dollars as they want us to, to get the man out of debt, I say “No.”
True religion, as I see it, is not connected with money.
(III) HIS PARTNER AT BRIDGE
The man is a complete ass. How a man like that has the nerve to sit down at a bridge table, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind if the man had any idea — even the faintest idea — of how to play. But he hasn’t any. Three times I signalled to him to throw the lead into my hand and he wouldn’t: I knew that our only ghost of a chance was to let me do all the playing. But the ass couldn’t see it. He even had the supreme nerve to ask me what I meant by leading diamonds when he had signalled that he had none. I couldn’t help asking him, as politely as I could, why he had disregarded my signal for spades. He had the gall to ask in reply why I had overlooked his signal for clubs in the second hand round; the very time, mind you, when I had led a three spot as a sign to him to let me play the whole game. I couldn’t help saying to him, at the end of the evening, in a tone of such evident satire that anyone but an ass would have recognised it, that I had seldom had as keen an evening at cards.
But he didn’t see it. The irony of it was lost on him.
The jackass merely said — quite amiably and unconsciously
— that he thought I’d play a good game presently. Me!
Play a good game presently!
I gave him a look, just one look as I went out! But I don’t think he saw it. He was talking to some one else.
(IV) HIS HOSTESS AT DINNER
On what principle that woman makes up her dinner parties is more than human brain can devise. Mind you, I like going out to dinner. To my mind it’s the very best form of social entertainment. But I like to find myself among people that can talk, not among a pack of numbskulls. What I like is good general conversation, about things worth talking about. But among a crowd of idiots like that what can you expect? You’d think that even society people would be interested, or pretend to be, in real things. But not a bit. I had hardly started to talk about the rate of exchange on the German mark in relation to the fall of sterling bills — a thing that you would think a whole table full of people would be glad to listen to — when first thing I knew the whole lot of them had ceased paying any attention and were listening to an insufferable ass of an Englishman — I forget his name. You’d hardly suppose that just because a man has been in Flanders and has his arm in a sling and has to have his food cut up by the butler, that’s any reason for having a whole table full of people listening to him. And especially the women: they have a way of listening to a fool like that with their elbows on the table that is positively sickening.
I felt that the whole thing was out of taste and tried in vain, in one of the pauses, to give a lead to my hostess by referring to the prospect of a shipping subsidy bill going through to offset the register of alien ships. But she was too utterly dense to take it up. She never even turned her head. All through dinner that ass talked — he and that silly young actor they’re always asking there that is perpetually doing imitations of the vaudeville people. That kind of thing may be all right, for those who care for it — I frankly don’t — outside a theatre. But to my mind the idea of trying to throw people into fits of laughter at a dinner-table is simply execrable taste. I cannot see the sense of people shrieking with laughter at dinner. I have, I suppose, a better sense of humour than most people. But to my mind a humourous story should be told quietly and slowly in a way to bring out the point of the humour and to make it quite clear by preparing for it with proper explanations. But with people like that I find I no sooner get well started with a story than some fool or other breaks in. I had a most amusing experience the other day — that is, about fifteen years ago — at a summer hotel in the Adirondacks, that one would think would have amused even a shallow lot of people like those, but I had no sooner started to tell it — or had hardly done more than to describe the Adirondacks in a general way — than, first thing I know, my hostess, stupid woman, had risen and all the ladies were trooping out.
