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Title: Model Memoirs and Other Sketches from Simple to Serious
Author: Leacock, Stephen Butler (1869-1944)
Date of first publication: 1938
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1939
Date first posted: 7 November 2009
Date last updated: 7 November 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #410

This ebook was produced by: Al Haines




_MODEL MEMOIRS_


_AND OTHER SKETCHES FROM_

_SIMPLE TO SERIOUS_


_By_

_Stephen Leacock_




LONDON

JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD




FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1939


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

UNWIN BROTHERS LIMITED, LONDON AND WOKING




PREFACE

Many of the memoirs and sketches in the present volume have already
appeared in print.  My thanks are due to the editors who so kindly
received them and, with equal kindness, set them free again.

The Model Monologues in the book are constructed as radio sketches, two
of them, as marked in the text, being made over from stories in my
other books and the others written expressly as radio monologues.

I am aware that parts of this volume may be found offensively serious,
and can only plead the influence of advancing years.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

MCGILL UNIVERSITY
  _November_ 1938




CONTENTS

     I. MODEL MEMOIRS

        (1) My Victorian Girlhood
        (2) Through Arabia on a Mule
        (3) Up and Down Downing Street
        (4) So This Is the United States
        (5) The Criminal Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte

    II. MODEL MONOLOGUES

        (1) Mrs. Uplift Betters Society
        (2) Mrs. Newrich Buys Antiques
        (3) Mrs. Eiderdown Roughs It in the Bush
        (4) Mrs. Easy Has Her Fortune Told

   III. THE DISSOLUTION OF OUR DINNER CLUB

        INTERLEAF STORY. How Teachers Swim

    IV. HOW TO LOSE MONEY (FOR AMATEURS)

     V. THE FAMILIAR MAGIC OF FISHING

    VI. OVERWORKING THE ALPHABET

   VII. ON THE NEED FOR A QUIET COLLEGE

        INTERLEAF STORY. Removal Problem Solved

  VIII. TURN BACK THE CLOCK

        INTERLEAF STORY. Quality Does It

    IX. COME OUT INTO THE GARDEN

        INTERLEAF STORY. All Nice People

     X. THE ANATOMY OF GLOOM

        INTERLEAF STORY. A Dip into Psychology

    XI. THEN AND NOW

        INTERLEAF STORY. Thrown Out

   XII. WHAT I READ THEN; WHAT YOU READ NOW

        INTERLEAF STORY. Feeding Time

  XIII. HAND ME DOWN THAT BOOK

   XIV. WHO KNOWS IT?

    XV. HOW MUCH DOES LANGUAGE CHANGE?

   XVI. HOW FAR CAN WE PLAN?

  XVII. COLLEGE AS COMIC STUFF

 XVIII. ALL IS NOT LOST!  A Recollection




I

MODEL MEMOIRS: No. I


MY VICTORIAN GIRLHOOD

_by_

LADY NEARLEIGH SLOPOVER

The life we led at Gloops--Gloops was my father's seat--had all the
charm and quiet and order which went with life in my young days.  My
dear Papa (he was the eleventh Baron Gloops) was most strict in his
household.  As a nobleman of the old school, he believed fully in the
maxim _noblesse oblige_.  He always insisted on the servants assembling
for prayers at eight every morning.  Indeed his first question to his
own man when he brought up his brandy and soda at ten was whether the
servants had been at prayers at eight.

My dear Mama, too, always seemed to fulfil my idea of what a _grande
dame_ should be.  She fully understood the routine of a great house
like Gloops, and had a wonderful knowledge, not only of the kitchen,
but of all sorts of draughts, simples and samples and the use of herbs.
If any of the maids were ill, Mama never called a doctor but herself
mixed up a draught from roots that would have the girl on her feet in
half an hour.

Nor did she disdain to do things herself, especially in an emergency.
Once when Papa was taken faint in the drawing-room, Mama herself rang
the bell for an egg, told the butler to hand her a glass and a decanter
and herself broke the egg into the glass with her own hands.  Papa
revived at the sight of her presence of mind and himself reached for
the brandy.

To myself and my younger sister Lucy, Papa and Mama were ideal parents.
Never a day passed but Papa would either come up to our nursery
himself, and chat with our governess Mademoiselle Fromage--she was one
of the De Bries--or would at least send up his own man to ask how we
were.  Even as quite little girls Papa could tell us apart without
difficulty.

Mama too was devoted to us, and would let us come down to her boudoir
and see her all dressed to go out to dinner, or let us come and speak
to her, when she was ready to drive in the phaeton; and once when Lucy
was ill Mama sent her own maid to sleep in Lucy's room, in spite of the
infection.

Gloops was on the border of Lincolnshire.  All of Papa's tenants and
cottagers spoke with the beautiful old broad accent of the fen country
and said 'yowp' for 'yes,' and 'nowp' for 'no,' and 'thowp' for 'thou,'
and 'sowp' for 'soup.'  It seems so musical.  It is a pity it is dying
out.

Papa was a model landlord.  The tenantry were never evicted unless they
failed to pay their rent, and when the cottages fell down Papa had them
propped up again.  Once a year Papa gave a great ball for the tenantry
on his estate, and our friends used to drive long distances to be
there, and the great hall was cleared for dancing, for the gentry, and
the tenantry danced in the great barn.  Papa gave each of them a bun
and an orange and a prayer book for each child.  The working class was
happier, I think, in those days.

Papa was not only democratic in that way with his tenantry but also
with the people of the neighbourhood and of the village, though none of
them were gentlemen.  Quite often he would bring Dr. McGregor the
doctor of the village to dine at Gloops, I mean if no one else was
there.  Dr. McGregor had taken a very high degree at Edinburgh, but was
not a gentleman.  He had travelled a great deal and had been decorated
by the King of France for some wonderful medical work for the French
armies in Algeria, so it was a pity that he wasn't a gentleman:
especially as you couldn't tell that he wasn't if no one said so.

Isolated as Gloops was, many great people drove down from London to see
us, on account of Papa's position in the Lords.  Indeed the most
wonderful thing about our life as children at Gloops was the visit
every now and then of one of these great and distinguished people whose
names are now history.  How well one remembers them--such old-world
manners and courtesy!  I recall how Lucy and I were brought into the
drawing-room to shake hands with dear old Lord Melrush, the Prime
Minister--always so pleasant and jolly.  I remember Mama said, 'These
are my two little girls'--and Lord Melrush laughed and said, 'Well,
thank God, they don't look like their father, eh?'  Which was really
quite clever of him, because we didn't.  And I remember old
Field-Marshal Lord Stickett, perhaps England's greatest
strategist--they called him Wellington's right-hand man--he'd lost his
left arm.  I can still see him standing on the hearth-rug saying, 'Your
two little girls, ma'am: well, I don't think much of them!'  He was
always like that, concise and abrupt.

I liked much better Admiral Rainbow, who had been one of Nelson's
captains and had a black patch over his eye where some one hit him in
the face at Trafalgar.  I was quite a growing girl when he came,
fourteen at least, and he said, 'By Gad!  Madam, shiver my spankers,
but here's a gal for you!  Look at the stern run under her counter!'

Another great thing in the life at Gloops was when I got old enough to
dine with Mama and Papa and their guests.  Such dinners were a
wonderful education.  I was taken into dinner once by Lord Glower the
great archaeologist.  He hardly spoke.  I asked him if he thought the
Pyramids were built by the Hittites.  He said he didn't know.

We used to dine in the old wainscotted dining-hall--it was a marvellous
room, dating from Richard III, with the panels all worm-eaten almost to
pieces.  Papa was offered huge sums for them.  It had some grand old
paintings--one a Vandyke, so blackened you couldn't possibly tell what
it was, especially as most of the paint had fallen off: Papa later on
presented it to the Nation--the year the Prime Minister voted him the
Garter--refusing any pay for it, though the Prime Minister made him
accept a thousand guineas as a _solatium_.  Papa fetched down another
Vandyke from the storeroom.

By the time I was eighteen I think I may claim to have grown to be a
very handsome girl and certainly, as everybody said, very aristocratic
looking.  I was several times compared with the Princess Eulalie of
Schlatz and once with the Grand Duchess Marianna Maria of
Swig-Pilsener.  Dear old Dr. Glowworm, our Vicar, who was so old that
he remembered the French Revolution, said that if I had lived then, I
would certainly have been guillotined, or at least shut up.

But presently there came into my life, a little earlier than that--I
was eighteen--the greatest event of all, when I first met Alfred, my
dear husband that was to be.  It was at a great dinner party that Papa
gave at Gloops, given for Sir John Overdraft, the head of the new bank
that had just made Papa a director.  Sir John was the head of the bank
and had been knighted, but the strange thing was that he was really
nobody.  I mean he had made a great fortune in the City and had huge
influence in finance, but he wasn't anybody.  And, what was more,
everybody knew that he was nobody.  Papa made no secret of it.  I
remember hearing old Lord Tweedlepip, our neighbour, in the
drawing-room before dinner ask Papa who Sir John was and Papa said, 'As
far as I know, he isn't anybody.'  But in meeting with him Papa was
courtesy itself: indeed he often explained to us children that even
though prominent people--writers, painters, sculptors, for
instance--were often nobody, we should treat them in society as if they
were like ourselves.

It was such a large party that I can hardly remember all the people,
especially as it was my first real dinner party: I was out, but hadn't
yet been presented.  But there was one man there I especially noticed,
although he was not only nobody but was an American.  He was the first
I think I ever saw, though now of course you meet them anywhere, and
many of them such cultivated people that you can hardly tell them.  But
this man, the first American I saw, seemed different from the men
around him, more hard and dangerous, and yet pleasant enough, but no
manners.  I couldn't even be sure of his name because Papa and Sir
John, who both seemed to know him well, kept calling him different
things like 'Old Forty-four Calibre,' and 'old Ten-Spot.'  His family
seat was called Colorado and I gathered that he owned gold mines.  I
gathered all this because I happened to be near the library door, a
little before dinner when Papa and Sir John and Mr. Derringer--that
perhaps was his real name--were all talking together.  Mr. Derringer
wanted to give Papa an enormous part of a gold mine and then Papa was
to pass it on to Sir John and the new bank was to pass it over to the
public.  It all seemed very generous.  I heard Mr. Derringer say to
Papa, laughing, 'Gloops, if we had you in the States you would be sent
to Sing-Sing in six months.'  Sing-Sing it seems was a new place they
had just started in America.  It corresponds, Mama said, to our House
of Commons.  Mr. Derringer laughed when he said that Papa could get in,
but I am sure he meant it.

But I am leaving out, in a feminine way, I fear, the great thing of the
evening which was that it was dear Alfred, my later husband, who took
me in to dinner.  So wonderful he looked, over six feet high and as
straight as a piece of wood, with beautiful brown hair and those
handsome high side whiskers, the French call them _cotelette de
mouton_, which were worn then.  I had never seen him before and all
that I knew of him was that his name was the Hon. Alfred Cyril Nancie
Slopover, eldest son of the tenth Marquis of Slopover and Bath and that
his people were West Country people, but very old and very good.  His
mother was a Dudd, which made her a first cousin of Lord Havengotteny.

Alfred, I say, took me in.  We hardly spoke at dinner, because I think
I was shy, and at any rate at our end of the table Mr. Derringer was
telling Mama wonderful stories about hunting the wild papooses in
Colorado, which must be fascinating, and how the Cactus Indians pursue
the buffalo with affidavits, and we were all listening.  But Alfred,
though he never talked much, had that firm incisive way of saying
things, just in a word, that sounds so final.  For instance, after
dinner when the men came into the drawing-room for tea, I said to
Alfred, 'Shall we go into the conservatory?'  And he said, 'Let's.'
And I said, 'Shall we sit among the begonias?' and he said, 'Rather!'
and after a time I said, 'Shall we go back to the drawing-room?' and he
said, 'Ah!'  When we got back to the drawing-room, Mr. Derringer was
still telling Mama of his wonderful adventures--indeed they were all
listening.

It made me realize what a vast country America is.  In fact I have
always felt, and still feel, that some day it will have a great future.
But that evening I could hardly listen to Mr. Derringer because my
heart was beating so with happiness, as I felt certain that Alfred had
fallen in love with me.  He looked so noble, sitting there listening to
Mr. Derringer, with his mouth half open, seeming to drink it all in.
Now and again he would make such intelligent comments as when Mr.
Derringer told about the easy social life in the West, and the lynching
parties, and of how they invite even the negroes to them.  And Alfred
said, 'Do they really!'  He seemed that evening, in fact he always has
seemed, so typically British, so willing to be informed.

Everybody was so loud in praise of Alfred next day.  Tiptoeing round
the house, because I did not think it dishonourable, I was able to hear
such a lot of complimentary things about him.  Mr. Derringer, who used
a lot of those fascinating American expressions, taken from their
machinery, called him a 'complete nut,' and Lord John, who is so
brusque and quick himself that he admires Alfred's dreamy, poetical
nature, said he seemed 'only half there.'  But think of my delight when
a day or two later Alfred sent Mama a beautiful bouquet of roses from
Slops, his father's seat, and then a basket of hothouse grapes, and
then, for Papa, a large fish, a salmon.  Two weeks after that he wrote
and definitely proposed to Papa, and Papa went up to London and saw the
solicitors and accepted Alfred.  It all seemed so romantic and
wonderful, and then Alfred came over for a blissful week at Gloops as
my betrothed, which meant that we could walk in the grounds together by
ourselves, and that even in the drawing-room Mama would sit at the
other end of the room and pretend not to see us.

Of course Love always has its ups and downs and never runs smooth: I
remember that there was a dreadful quarrel with my sister Lucy who said
that Alfred was ignorant and didn't know anything: and I said why
should he?  What did a man like Alfred need to know?  It seemed so
silly.  I remember I often thought of it later on when Lucy made her
own unhappy marriage.

Then for a little while there was a little trouble about my dowry, or
jointure.  Papa at first offered five thousand pounds and Alfred
refused it flat.  He said he ought to have at least ten thousand.  It
seemed so romantic to be quarrelled over like that, as a sort of gage
of battle.  Alfred was so firm: even when Papa raised from pounds to
guineas he held out.  So at last Papa gave way completely, and not only
gave way, but went generously further and gave Alfred twelve thousand
pounds, all to be paid in shares in Mr. Derringer's gold mine.  Papa
explained that they were called 'preferred' shares, which made them
very desirable.  He said that if Alfred and I kept them long enough
there was no telling what they would be worth.  So Alfred was delighted
at his victory over Papa, especially as Sir John always said that Papa
could have been a financier and Mr. Derringer had said he could have
got into Sing-Sing.

I remember that Papa, in the same generous fit, gave away a lot of the
same gold shares, practically all he had, to various people, to
Alfred's father, Lord Slopover, to old Lord Tweedlepip, our neighbour,
and others, for next to nothing, or at least nothing like their real
value.

Then came the happy day when Alfred and I were married in the little
church at Gloops, by old Dr. Glowworm.  Everybody was there, and all
the tenantry and cottagers in a long line outside the church, for
Alfred and me to walk through; and Papa gave a grand fte for the
tenantry on the lawn with beer to drink our health in and an orange and
bun for each of the children, and a work-box for each grown-up girl, a
work-basket each for the old women, and for each young boy a book
called _Work_.  I think the working people were far happier then than
now.  They often strike me now as restless.  I think they need more
work.

After our marriage we went to live in London because the Prime Minister
wanted Alfred to go into the House, as he said that England needed men
like Alfred.  Alfred accepted the seat, but on the firm condition that
he needn't speak, or work, or attend, or have anything to do with the
voters.  The Prime Minister said yes at once: he didn't want Alfred to
see the voters at all.

Naturally, of course, our earlier married life had its ups and downs as
it does with all people.  When we first went to London we were quite
poor, I mean not at all well off, and it was difficult for us to afford
enough servants to manage our house properly: on the other hand,
without a house that size it would have been hard to use all our
servants.  Even as it was Alfred would himself often fetch up his own
shaving water, and more than once I have seen him light his own fire,
touch the match to it himself, sooner than ring up a servant.  But we
both agreed that these little discomforts only make life all the more
worthy.

But after a little while Papa's influence got for Alfred a Court
appointment as Gentleman Equerry of the Bloodhounds, which made our
position much easier.  Alfred, of course, didn't have to take the
bloodhounds out himself, as that was done by the Yeoman Equerry: but he
had to countersign all the warrants for what they ate, which often kept
him busy.

Then on top of little hardships at home came the terrible trouble of my
poor sister Lucy's marriage.  Lucy had always, I think, been a little
wanting in making proper social distinctions.  I remember that even as
a girl she would often speak with cottagers in what seemed quite a
wrong way, as if she were their equal.  So in a way it was not
surprising when she married absolutely beneath her.  Papa and Mama were
utterly consternated when they heard of it, and Mama decided to do the
only brave thing about it and not speak to Lucy any more.  She had
married a man who not only had no family--I mean in the literal sense
absolutely none--but who worked as a journalist on a newspaper.  I know
that, of course, nowadays things are different and a journalist can be
received anywhere, I mean if he is properly born.  But it was not so
then, and Lucy's husband, whose name was Mr. Smith, was even worse than
that, as he had tried to write books as well: indeed he had one
published, a book about flowers and botany.  The whole thing was, of
course, a great pity to us--I mean, Lucy's living like that, until at
last Papa, who naturally had great influence, got the Colonial Office
to pay Mr. Smith's expenses, with Lucy and the children--there were
three already--to go out to British Borneo to study flowers: as he
couldn't afford to get back, they all stayed there and it was all
right.  Papa had a letter later from one of the boys from Sarawak, and
Papa said he seemed promising and might grow up to be a Dacoit.

But much more serious were the financial troubles which once or twice
threatened to overwhelm us.  The first was when Papa's bank broke and
Sir John and the directors went to jail, because in those days the law
was very strict and fair and the bank directors went to jail like
anybody else--except, of course, Papa.  In his case, as the Lord Chief
Justice explained, it had to be understood that he acted in utter
ignorance, in fact that he knew nothing, being a nobleman.  Indeed Lord
Argue, after sentencing the directors, complimented Papa very highly:
he said it was men like Papa who make embezzlement possible--which we
all thought very handsome.  But after all it was a great relief when it
was over, expecially as it turned out that by a lucky chance Papa had
sold all his own shares in the bank the very day before it broke.

But to us, Alfred and me, a much more direct blow was the failure of
Mr. Derringer's gold mine.  We never knew just what happened.  It
seemed that the mine had not exactly failed but it had never been
there.  Alfred heard in the City that Mr. Derringer had 'salted' the
mine, but Alfred couldn't see how he could do that, as it would take
such a lot.  At any rate it was all in the American papers, and poor
Mr. Derringer's trial, and he was sent to prison for ten years and was
there for weeks and weeks before he could get out.  Papa's name came
into it all, of course, as a first director, but he was out of it
since, though there might have been a sort of scandal except that the
American judge spoke very handsomely of Papa's ignorance of it all.
Indeed he said that what Papa didn't know would fill a book, and that
it was men like Papa who gave England the name it had.

So it all blew over, but presently Alfred and I found that after that
the dividends from the mine stopped, which we couldn't understand as
they were preferred.  Alfred would have been very cool with Papa over
it, but as Papa was getting old it seemed wrong to get cool with him.
If anything happened to Papa while Alfred was cool, it might make a
difference, Indeed it was just at that time that dear Papa got a
stroke, his first stroke.  It didn't really incapacitate him at first
but we thought best to call in a consultant opinion, and then he got a
second stroke, and so, in real alarm, we sent for a great Harley Street
specialist and Papa got a third stroke.  With the third stroke, he
passed out.

      *      *      *      *      *

I will not carry these Memoirs down any further than the day of Papa's
funeral which seems a good place to stop.  Such a wonderful day, one of
those bright crisp autumn days when it just feels good to be alive!
Gloops looked so wonderful in the bright sunlight and everywhere the
late autumn flowers.  And such wonderful messages of sympathy!  One
from the House of Lords, official, to say that the House had learned
with satisfaction that Lord Gloops was to be buried; and one from the
Home Secretary expressing his personal appreciation of Papa's burial;
and one from the Secretary in Waiting at Windsor Castle that the whole
Court was ordered to go into half mourning for a quarter of an hour.
And then the funeral service in our dear little church at Gloops.  Old
Dr. Glowworm, though he must have been nearly a hundred at the time,
preached the funeral sermon.  It was just a little hard to hear him,
except the text which was 'Where has he gone?'--we all thought it so
beautifully apt--but we couldn't quite follow Dr. Glowworm's answer.
Then as the crowning thing in the day came the reading of Papa's will,
by Papa's own solicitor, Mr. Rust, who came from London to Gloops on
purpose.  Of course we knew that everything would be all right, but of
course couldn't help feeling a little nervous.  Poor Papa had always
been a little uncertain and when we remembered about Papa's bank and
the mine, we couldn't feel quite sure what would happen to Gloops.  The
title, of course, would go to my cousin, the present Marquis of Gloops,
but the entail had been cut long ago and Papa was free to do as he
liked.  I remember how dear Alfred sat so bolt upright, trying so hard
to understand every word, though of course that was impossible as most
of the will was in law terms.  But the meaning came out clear enough.
Dear Papa had done everything just as it should be, according to the
fine old traditions of the time.  Mama was given the Dower House for
life, with the full right to use her own money in maintaining it.  All
the old servants were remembered--Papa gave them each a suit of
mourning and quite a substantial sum, I forget what, but I think at
least ten pounds, which meant a great deal to people in their class.
For my sister Lucy, Papa could not, of course, in view of what had
happened, do very much: but even in her case he left her something to
remember him by, a beautiful set of books from his library--sermons
bound in old leather--and a purse for each of her children--there were
only five at that time--with half a sovereign in it, and a prayer book
each.  Alfred and I got Gloops and all the residuum--that was the word
Mr. Rust used--residuum of the estate--which was only fair as we should
need it to keep the estate up: on the other hand we could hardly have
used the residuum if we hadn't had the estate itself.  Mr. Rust
explained it all very clearly.

After it was all over Alfred said, 'Well, it's all over.'




MODEL MEMOIRS: No. II


THROUGH ARABIA ON A MULE

_By_

MAJOR ALLHELL

Late Pindilwani Field Force (Third Base)

We based our expedition on Waz-el-Yaz, which is about two hours' steam,
or four hours' hot water, from Aden.  From Waz-el-Yaz, or Yaz, as the
natives call it, our purpose was to strike direct into the desert.  At
Yaz, therefore, we spent several days in terrific heat (the thermometer
standing, even at night, at over 110 Fahrenheit), in what seemed at
the time the hopeless attempt at organizing the expedition.  Our
accommodation meantime was a wretched hotel or caravanserai, conducted
by a villainous Frenchman, where for three days we drank the most
abominable champagne at a most iniquitous price, our sole diversion
being endless games of billiards on a perfectly impossible billiard
table, or endless games of cart with a pack of unrecognizable cards.

At last, however, after the most terrific exertions we were able to
start.  We had with us four Dhouris, as bearers, two Yawks for the
heavier stuff, and as our guard six Hepaticas--very fine-looking
fellows--on foot.  My advice, by the way, for any one proposing to
follow our route would emphatically be _not_ to take Yawks.  A Yawk is
good enough as a bearer, reminding me very much of the Dongolas of
Angola, and may do at a pinch as a beater, but only at a pinch, and is
quite hopeless as a scout or tracker.  If I were going again I should
use every effort to get Scafaris.  I give this advice merely for what
it is worth.  I may add that for my own transport, in addition to being
carried by the Yawks, I had also a mule.  The mule was less comfortable
than the natives, but I needed her for these memoirs.

Our Nilghari, or dragoman, completed the procession of our escort, as
apart from Major Boozer, young Charteris, myself, and Professor McTosh.
The fellow seemed to know his business and professed to talk six of the
Arabian desert languages--though I presently doubted if he knew
anything of them except a few words of Pindi and perhaps a little
Hootch.

For the use of prospective travellers who may follow in our steps, I
will first set down a few words in regard to our special equipment for
the desert.  It consisted of 18 boxes of chocolates supplied by the
kindness of Messrs. Sweets, Bonbons and Company, Ludgate Hill,
Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, London: 10 pounds of the best
condensed preserved ginger, very kindly contributed to the expedition
by Messrs. Ginger and Ginger, of Preserve Street, Soho; one fur
sleeping-bag and a tin of arctic cough drops, supplied by the kindness
of the Hudson's Bay Company; together with a bottle of Bromo Seltzer,
given to us as a send-off by the Royal Geographical Society.  All these
things, of course, had been given to us gratis, and I desire here to
express my sense of obligation to the donors.  We had also an aneroid
barometer, a clinical thermometer, and part of a sextant.  All these
were given to us, so we took them.

As for arms we had with us one elephant gun, two cow guns, a buffalo
gun--an excellent piece sighted up to fifty feet--and two fowling
pieces, carrying fowl shot.  Our natives were all armed with
double-headed Knerries and with the usual smooth Kiboshes, very deadly
at close quarters.

I prefer to say as little as possible in this place about ourselves.
But the acrimonious discussion in regard to our expedition that has
followed my return to London makes it perhaps necessary to say at least
a few words as to my companions.

Of Major Boozer, late of the 89th Hurraws, and young Charteris, I may
say, apart from any question of ill-faith or treachery, for which my
narrative will speak for itself, that they were at least both
gentlemen.  Major Boozer was one of the well-known Boozers of
Hampshire, indeed one of the best known.  In the case of young
Charteris, certain temporary difficulties in connection with his
leaving Sandhurst, after being sent down from Oxford and sent back from
Canada, had made his father, Lord Mudloft, anxious to have him out of
England, and led to his being placed in our expedition.  I must add in
all fairness that our subsequently leaving him in the desert was due
rather to a misunderstanding, on our part, of Lord Mudloft's wishes,
than any ill-will on our part; the more so as the lad was a likeable
boy and had proved a good companion on the coastal steamer that took us
from Suez to Aden, though, I admit, a poor hand at cards, losing so
habitually that presently Boozer and I ceased to play with him.

But at least both Boozer and Charteris were gentlemen.  It was this
that induced me to take them, my experience being that if you are
embarking on an expedition into the dark places of the earth, among
crime and vice, what you need are gentlemen.  A gentleman will go where
other men refuse to; indeed will go anywhere, provided, of course, that
his expenses are paid.  In a tight place he will get out of it more
quickly than any other man.  In especial I have found that Oxford
men--but I must not over-exalt my old Alma Mater (where I was up for
two years and had my Blue before I was down) except to say that if I
_have_ to go anywhere among savages, give me an Oxford man every time.
But as to poor Charteris, I need only add that I doubted from the first
whether his physique could stand the strain of Arabian travel.  Even
while still waiting at Waz-el-Yaz, the boy showed signs of what looked
alarmingly like Beriberi, though it turned out to be only a touch of
Billi-billi.  But we were hardly two days out from our base when I was
compelled to discuss with Major Boozer the question of leaving him to
die in the desert.  In many ways it seemed the right thing to do.  On
all such expeditions as ours, one has to face the fact that some of the
members have got to be left to die somewhere, and it is perhaps better
to get it over and done with as early as may be.

Boozer, however, argued that if Charteris were left to die so near the
base, natives might pick him up, so that it would be better in any case
to take him as on far as he could go.

Of Professor McTosh, our other companion of the march, I say nothing.
He was not at the time attached to the expedition except in a temporary
capacity.  Professor McTosh, who holds the chair of Archaeology at the
University of Inverness, is, I suppose, one of the world's greatest
archaeologists.  He has himself told me that he regards his
interpretation of Mesopotamian cuneiform inscriptions as superior to
anything else that he knows of.  The flat stones which he brought home
from the Euphrates (he has never divulged the exact spot) containing
inscriptions absolutely unreadable by anyone else, were bought by the
British Museum for a thousand guineas; Professor McTosh donating a
Gaelic translation as a personal gift.  At that stage of our expedition
all that we knew of Professor McTosh's plans was that he was entering
Arabia with a view to excavating the buried city of Blob.  This city,
he told us, was mentioned by Herodotus, mentioned again, though
somewhat dubiously, by Pythagoras and afterwards, though with great
hesitation, by Pliny.  Strabo never speaks of it.  Then silence falls
over it for more than a thousand years, and Professor McTosh argues
that it is buried under the sand and claims that he knows where it is.
He expects, moreover, to find inscriptions of the greatest interest,
probably, he says, Coptic, but perhaps Cryptic.  Major Boozer and I, as
plain soldiers, could have but little interest in this.  Nor had we, as
in the case of young Charteris, any apprehension as to the Professor's
stamina for the desert journey.  Though advanced in years McTosh's
appearance speaks of rugged strength and endurance.  His wearing of a
plaid and a tam o'shanter at a time when Boozer and I were glad to just
wear merely a pugaree and a suttee, was merely personal eccentricity.

McTosh, by arrangement, was to come with us into the desert to a point
where his route should leave ours, paying for his transport for himself
and for his baggage, carried by one of our Yawks.  He himself arranged
the fees, a matter which Major Boozer and I, as gentlemen, could hardly
discuss.  He set down the price of carrying himself and his baggage,
including his whiskey, in Arabian money, at one Arabian jolt (four
squid) per pound for each mile.  We found later this equals one
Singapore cent for ten miles; a sum on which McTosh claimed a further
deduction per mile when he walked, while from the weight of the whiskey
he subtracted one jolt each time he took a drink, and two when he
treated us.

Yet, whatever its difficulties and dangers, we soon fell under the
spell of Arabian travel in the desert.  I shall never forget our first
night in camp.  Only those who have seen the sand deserts of the
tropics know how rapidly day changes into night.  The glare and heat
and dust passed into stillness under the great stars of a purple sky.
We sat upon mats round a light fire of dried roots of desert grass, for
a chill strikes when the sun is gone, the camp equipment piled in a
ring around us, the natives at a respectful distance, sitting on the
ground occupied with cleaning and furbishing their weapons.  Even
McTosh admitted that nowhere, except in the Hebrides, had he known a
more peaceful scene.  Little did we think that that peaceful camp--but
I must not anticipate except to indicate that plenty more is coming.
Boozer and I, as old campaigners, sat and discussed our route over a
parchment map, dimly illuminated by the firelight.

We proposed to strike east, direct across the desert, then to turn and
strike west, after that to strike north--and by this means, after three
strikes, to go out.

This route eastward, if successful, would let us visit the Veiled City
of Hush, as yet never penetrated by Europeans.  The routes to the west
and north would then afford a safe exit.  The main difficulty and
danger, however, lay in the fact that to reach Hush, we must go through
the country of the Fusees, said to be the fiercest tribesmen of the
desert, while westward--but again I must not anticipate.

During our deliberation, McTosh, who had mixed himself an evening toddy
for fear that the desert might get damp, said nothing, but sat adding
up accounts and shaking his head from time to time.  Young Charteris
lay trying in vain to sleep, but groaning slightly.  The lad had
complained of fatigue so I had given him a heavy dose from our medicine
chest; on his again complaining I gave him another, after which his
complaint had ceased.

But whatever the charm of an evening encampment, with the first streak
of dawn our day's work, the stern routine of desert travel, began
again.  I warn all prospective travellers that it cannot be undertaken
except by those who have the physique to stand it.  With the earliest
daylight our Swas--the word is the same as the Indian Kitmutgar--called
Major Boozer and myself, bringing us a long cool swizzle-stick, which
we drank somewhat slowly to allow our bearers, all Mohammedans, to make
their prayer to the rising sun just visible in the east.  Our Yawks
then lifted us into the two palanquins, or sedan chairs, that they
carried (my mule I seldom rode till the cool of evening) and the march
over the sand, unremitting and relentless, went on for three hours,
till a halt was called for breakfast.  At midday a longer halt enabled
the bearers to prepare us our tiffin.  We ate in such shade as we could
find, there being no trees, either under the shady edge of a broken
nullah, or under a canvas shelter set up on spears....  Here we slept
for the three hours of the afternoon siesta, a necessity of tropical
travel, after which the march began again, and we were carried five
hours, sleeping as best we could, or waking from time to time to take a
drink of Rhine wine and Seltzer, a wise precaution against tropic
disease of any kind.

Our first fortnight's journey had brought us far out into the tropical
Arabian Desert.  I can best describe it as flat, quite deserted and
entirely without vegetation or vegetables.  The soil is what one would
call sandyish, but here and there roughish and even rockyish, and some
of it clayish.  The reader may form a mental picture of the Arabian
desert by imagining a flat country covered with a dense forest and then
removing the forest.  We had, however, now reached a region where the
flat desert began to change to a country of rolling sand hills, called,
I believe, 'dunes' in Scotland, or 'djinns' in Iceland, and in Norway,
where they don't have any, 'dumps.'  From this we knew that we were
entering the country of the Fusees, a fact confirmed by the obvious
trepidation of our natives and their anxious glances from time to time
at the horizon.  Even my mule at times humped me up sharply in the air
as if scenting danger.

It was just at this stage of our journey that the unfortunate incident
occurred which led to our separation from Professor McTosh.  Under the
circumstances I fear I can call his departure little else than
treacherous desertion.  The circumstances were these.  Major Boozer
made the astounding discovery that Professor McTosh was carrying a
large sum of gold money in a belt around his person.  His laying it
aside for a few moments enabled Major Boozer, the soul of honour, I may
say, to estimate rapidly with his fingers that it contained at least
two hundred sovereigns.  He had just opened one end of the belt to
ascertain whether the coins really _were_ sovereigns and had removed
one with a view of biting it, when McTosh reappeared and with some heat
demanded his belt.  Both Major Boozer and I explained to him the folly
of his carrying such a sum of money when unarmed in the dangerous
region we were entering, We showed him the obvious advantage of
transferring it to us--I think the suggestion was made for a transfer
in half and half.  McTosh absolutely refused this, although Boozer
offered to give him a written receipt and our words as gentlemen.

That night, after the camp was quiet, Major Boozer and I discussed the
propriety, in the Professor's own interest, of taking his money into
safe keeping.  Something may have been said about chloroform or even a
tap on the head, nothing very severe, with a stick.  No decision was
reached.

Judge of our amazement on finding in the morning that McTosh had
disappeared.  A brief note, left on a piece of rock, explained that he
proposed to leave our company and make his own way to the buried city
of Blob.  The note contained the sum of ten pounds ten shillings and
sixpence for his board as from Yaz and in compensation for two
Hepaticas and one Yawk, persuaded, apparently, to go with him.

This treacherous desertion of McTosh was a severe blow.  We had relied
on him for our line of march as neither Major Boozer nor I could use a
sextant.  It had been understood also that McTosh would collect and
classify the _flora_ and _fauna_ of the desert which should have formed
the appendix to these memoirs, now unfortunately missing.  We ourselves
saw no flora that we recognized as such, and, as for fauna, the few
bugs we were afterwards able to collect made too poor a showing
afterwards.  In any case, we lost track of which was which.

It would indeed have been possible to follow after McTosh to the buried
city of Blob.  But this would mean abandoning our search for the Veiled
City of Hush.  Both Major Boozer and myself were unwilling to do this.
A buried city is of merely archaeological interest whereas a Veiled
City evidently carries the idea of Veiled Women; and both for Boozer
and myself Veiled Women hit us where we live.  To women, in the
abstract, I confess that I am not particularly susceptible.  But shut
them up and I want to get at them, especially if they are veiled before
being shut up.  To me therefore the notion of women in a harem or
purdah or a zenana, wearing a Yasmak and under the care of a duenna or
a bigorra, has an irresistible attraction.  These feelings, I may say,
are entirely shared by Major Boozer.

To us, therefore, there could be no hesitation as between a march to
the buried city of Blob, to dig up a few archaeological specimens of
rock, and a forward advance towards the Veiled City of Hush.  Little
could we foretell the sequel of our choice--but I only add that so that
the reader may know that we couldn't foretell it, and keep excited.

Three weeks more of arduous travel on this soil had brought us into the
very heart of the Arabian desert, a country not flat like the Sahara or
the Gobi or the Kalahari, or in short, any of the half-dozen deserts I
have traversed, but made up of rolling sandhills alternating with open
spaces of flat rock.  It was here that we got our first alarm of the
Fusees.  It was, fortunately for us, just at sundown, after we had gone
into camp in the bottom of a hollow much resembling a donga, or a South
African drift.  Here, just at dusk, outlined against the last of the
sunset, appeared on the sky-line a string of Fusees, mounted and riding
in single file.  They appeared tall fine-looking men wearing the usual
shapka over their shoulders and armed with long pointed spears.  They
resembled very closely the more familiar Bedouins or the Baggaras of
Bahr-el-Gazal (I know all these places).  We could form no estimate of
their numbers as we saw them only over a shoulder of a sandhill, but
they were evidently numerous and formidable.  Their distance from us
being less than a hundred yards, it seemed little short of miraculous
that they didn't see us.  This was due, I presume, to their position on
the sky-line.

At the sight of the Fusees our Hepaticas fell to the ground, shuddering
with terror, while our Yawks seemed about to bolt away in sheer panic.
I realized at once that, as so often happens, we had taken the wrong
natives.  I gather not only from my own experience, corroborated by
that of Major Boozer, but also from many books of adventure, that one
nearly always gets hold of the wrong natives, the terrified ones,
whereas the really desirable ones are always those on the sky-line, who
belong to the enemy party.  There is also, I admit, something very
terrifying about riders on the sky-line.  Even in my own case, such
riders if accurately on the sky-line, get me every time.  I have
noticed it often, at the cinema, as applied to a Sheriff's posse in
Wyoming, or to the Mounted Police descending the edge of the Rockies.

Fortunately, the Fusees passed us by, but from this time on we advanced
with extreme caution, concealing our march in the hollows.  From time
to time we could observe parties of Fusees on the horizon--though we
managed to keep them off the sky-line--or at times a single Fuse,
riding rapidly over the desert.

Whether we should be able to make our way through country thus occupied
to the Veiled City of Hush now became a serious matter.  Our Hepaticas,
let alone the Yawks, were in a constant state of terror, our Nilghari
in an absolute funk.  To say that Major Boozer and I were afraid would
of course be ridiculous.  We could at any time have bagged half a dozen
of the fellows on the sky-line with our buffalo gun.  But then the
remaining fellows might have come off the sky-line and bagged us.

This first alarm of the Fusees made us realize that the time had come
to abandon poor Charteris.  It was quite unlikely that his strength
would carry him forward.  His one chance was to be left behind--a
procedure always adopted in any expedition I have known.  If the Fusees
found him it would divert their attention at a possibly critical
moment.  We therefore left the lad beside a shady rock, giving him a
supply of water, the sextant, a can of corned beef and the copy of last
year's Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, presented to us
in London.  Little did we think at the time--but naturally we had
little time to.

Our march from now on became extremely hazardous.  Almost every
evening, usually just about dusk, Fusees appeared upon the sky-line, in
long cavalcades in single file, or in smaller parties, or at times
merely a single Fuse.  It became necessary for us to avoid the sky-line
altogether and to keep hidden at dusk, marching only in the day time,
when they couldn't see us.  A week of such travel saw but little
progress, especially as we had no idea where we were going.

Both Major Boozer and myself agreed, that is, I agreed with myself as
completely as he did, that our only hope would be to secure the
services of a friendly native as a guide.  Experienced travellers find
that among a given group of natives there is always one that is
'friendly.'  This 'friendly native' usually speaks broken English, such
as can just be re-set by a printer into type, has probably been in the
United States and has very likely worked in a saloon in Chicago.  Get
such a man as that and his devotion is extraordinary.

By good luck we got him the third night we tried.  On Boozer's
suggestion we adopted the strategy of setting up a bottle of rye
whiskey on a stick, a few yards from the sky-line--with a piece of
cardboard carrying the words _Family Entrance_.  'If he comes from
Chicago,' said Boozer, 'he can't miss it.'  True enough, on the third
night, we perceived a friendly native carefully crawling on his
stomach--their only method of approach--the nature of his wriggling
leaving no doubt of his sentiments.  Boozer and I walked forward to
meet him.  He rose up at once and introduced himself, carefully
breaking his English, as Hassangarlick Ibn Allah.  He said that he had
worked in Chicago on South Clark Street for three years, knew all the
best people there, mixed with any of them, anything.  He seemed an
excellent fellow, friendly and biddable from the first, and told us to
call him simply Hassangarlick; the rest of his name, 'Ibn Allah,'
merely meaning 'faithful child of God,' a point he was willing to lay
aside while working for Christians.  We preferred, however, to call him
'Ibn' as having more character for us.

To our great delight Ibn not only knew the city of Hush--he pronounced
it Hootch--but said that we were only three days' journey from it.  We
asked at once about veiled women and where they kept them, and were
reassured when Ibn, understanding at once, laughed, showed all his
teeth as friendly natives always do, and said, 'Oh yes, yes, Bulbul
Zenana!'  My knowledge of Arabic was sufficient to tell me that this
meant the 'Birdcage of the Nightingales,' and fitted our idea exactly.

This was just the place for us.  Boozer and I agreed to push our march
with full speed.  We stepped boldly up on the sky-line--in spite of the
tremors of our Hepaticas--and walked straight along it.  My mule, which
proved too slow for this part of the advance, I left tied to a stick in
a nullah.

In three days of this bold advance we never saw a trace of a single
Fuse.  Confidence always wins.  Imagine our delight on the fourth
morning when Ibn, leading us to the top of a ridge of rock, showed us
almost at our very feet a silver inlet of the sea, and beside it the
goal of our desires--The Veiled City of Hootch, the capital of the
Sultan, or Sheik, of Fuz.

I have to admit that after the first ecstasy of discovery had passed,
the prospect was not altogether as we had expected it.  The city of
Hootch did not appear to be sufficiently veiled.  We saw what were
undoubtedly large gas tanks.  We could even read the words 'Standard
Fuz Oil Company.'  Several at least of the buildings looked like
skyscrapers on a small scale.  Most disappointing of all was a huge
sign over a gate with the words HOOTCH--WELCOME.  Indeed in the nearer
foreground, outside the gates, we could detect what we were almost
certain were little buildings like cabins, with signs apparently
reading TOURISTS and perhaps FRESH EGGS.

In short, the first aspect of the city seemed to add one more
disillusionment to our rapidly vanishing myth of Oriental mystery.  As
I said to Major Boozer, who agreed with me--in fact we both did--as far
as any mystery or romance or oddness about the place went, we might as
well be back among the Pygmies of Central Africa, or in a caf in
Samarkand or at any ordinary Boy Scouts' reception in Constantinople.
'The thing,' I said, 'Boozer, is over.  I'm going back for my mule.'

But in one moment all our excitement was restored when Ibn touched me
on the elbow and pointed to a large group of buildings standing in a
heavy grove of cypress, on the east side of the city, now illuminated
with the light of the rising sun.  The place was just right; square
buildings, with small barred windows, wide screened verandahs, the
whole set in a compound surrounded by unbroken walls at least twelve
feet high.  'That's it,' said Ibn, 'Bulbul Zenana.'

I need not say in what eagerness Major Boozer and I waited for the day
to wear slowly towards night.  We hurriedly prepared the scaling
ladders, together with other apparatus, such as ropes, masks--both gas
and ordinary evening wear--and chloroform, et cetera, et cetera.  What
we had not got Ibn fetched secretly from the city, from a chain
gas-and-mask store.

Our calculations were that we could carry two women each and Ibn one,
and make three, perhaps four, trips a night.

Our excitement did not abate as the swift tropical sunset passed into
purple night.  We had sneaked, under such cover as we could find, to a
favourable spot beneath the compound wall.  Here we waited till we
could hear the priests or muezzins call out their night prayers from
the roof.  We knew that after this all pious Fusees would seek the
peace of their own harems.  The night and the dark were for marauders
like ourselves.

With no difficulty we ascended the wall by our ladders and came down on
the other side among the shrubbery.  It was almost pitch dark and very
still, so much so, that men of a different type might have felt
apprehensive.  But for old soldiers, such as Major Boozer and myself,
the darker it is the better we can see.  For Ibn, who had known the
West side of Chicago, our enterprise, at the rate of ten women a night,
was nothing.

We moved gently through the shrubbery, making use of our flash-lights
only when strictly necessary.  I cannot say at what point our first
misgivings arose, but I think it was when we came across a little bench
labelled with the device _Reserved for the Bible Class_.  This shook
us.  Something seemed wrong, still more so when we carefully made our
way to a side entrance of a building, flashed the light a moment and
read, _Bible Class Entrance_.  Reckless with apprehension we now walked
boldly along the building to what was evidently its main entrance.  We
turned the light full on to the large brass plate beside the doorway.
Its inscription read: FEMALE TEACHERS' EDUCATIONAL MISSION PERSIAN GULF
BRANCH LEAVE ALL PARCELS AT THE TRADESMEN'S ENTRANCE.  Lower down was
another plate, marked with hands to indicate directions, and with the
legends Y.W.C.A. BUILDING TO THE LEFT, W.C.T.U. OFFICES TO THE RIGHT.
'W.C.T.U.!  Good Lord,' exclaimed Boozer, 'school teachers!  Let's get
out of this.'

I understood, of course, his meaning.  Boozer's code of honour was
entirely my own.  A gentleman has no hesitation in carrying off veiled
women but when it comes to carrying off female teachers, and members of
a women's Temperance Union, his code of honour forbids it.  Our only
course now was to get out of the place, before being tempted to break a
rule and take a teacher.

Our disappointment no doubt made us forget our position.  We must
unconsciously have spoken too loudly and made a noise in our movements.
At any rate, within a few moments, windows opened in the upper floor,
lights appeared everywhere, and from heads put out of the windows came
everywhere the cry of 'Men!  Men!'

'Great Heavens,' said Boozer, 'run for the ladders!  They'll get us.'
We lost no time, running as best we could through the dark shrubbery.
We just reached our ladders in time.  Ibn, I imagine, was caught by the
women.  We had no time to think of him.

But for us it was out of the frying pan into the fire.  The noise and
lights in the compounds had attracted the Fusee Police outside; it was
not like our orderly home cities, where one can escape comfortably, in
a fusillade of shots, by motor car.  A fusillade hurts no one.

Boozer and I, no doubt, could have knocked over half a dozen Fusees
each.  But as that only made twelve and there were about twenty-four,
we submitted.  We were taken into custody, amid an increasing
hullabaloo, and dragged to what appeared to be a sort of jail.  Here we
were thrown into separate cells, ignorant of one another's fate.  For
myself, I spent a sleepless night, with nothing in the way of supper
except a little coffee, a few dates, and some French rolls, and nothing
to smoke except native cigars.  My jailers, however, for some reason I
failed to grasp, were singularly civil.

I was still more surprised when in the morning a person, evidently an
official, for he wore a frock coat and a tarboosh and had a Rotary Club
'Good Luck' button, was shown into my cell.  He told me that I was not
to go before the _cadi_, or magistrate, but was to be taken to the
Sultan of Hootch himself--the Sheik ul Fuselem.

The Sheik--always called in Arabic and Turkish The Shake, as they don't
know it is pronounced Sheik--was seated on his divan, in a heavily
curtained room, windowless and fragrantly scented with bil and sice.
He looked exactly the right thing for a Shake--heavy, and gone to fat;
his features the colour of light gingerbread, heavy and motionless, his
lips large, his eyes protruding.  He too wore a frayed frock coat, the
kind used with us by peddlers, and a tarboosh with a tassel.  He had on
the lapel of his coat the French Legion of Honour (Class A1) and the
British Victoria Cross.  Most Shakes are eager for these and pay well
for them.  The Shake was smoking a narghile in rose water.

My conductor salaamed twice--once for the Shake and once for me--and
left us.  From this I knew that I was received not as a prisoner but as
a gentleman.

Oriental courtesy demands delay.  The Shake motioned me to a cushion
and invited me to smoke.  After half an hour he clapped his hands and
ordered coffee.  Half an hour later he ordered a drink of Scotch
whiskey, and five minutes after, two more.  After that, he began to
talk.  Rolling his eyes slightly sideways, and speaking with evident
meaning, 'You were in the compound?' he said.  'I was.'  'What's it
like inside?' he asked, his mouth expanding into a smile.  'Women?'
'Full of them,' I said.  'A female teachers' educational mission!'
'Heavens!' said the Shake, smacking his lips with gusto!  'Female
teachers, eh?  Ha!  Ha!'  'And a branch of the Women's Christian
Temperance Union.' ... 'No!' exclaimed the Shake, his eyes popping with
excitement.  'You don't say so!  Tell me all about it!'

I began to realize that the Shake had never seen the inside of the
Women's Educational Mission Compound--the Bulbul Zenana as
Hassangarlick translates it.  His treaty arrangements forbid all
intrusions or interferences.  I therefore told him very frankly all
about it--that it was organized apparently by the Young Women's
Christian Association, and by the W.C.T.U. (I explained the term) and
incorporated as the _Female Teachers' Educational Mission_.  I stated
without concealment that I had been looking for 'veiled women,'
confessed, as a plain soldier, to their peculiar fascination, and
admitted that I had intended, along with Major Boozer, to abduct as
many as we could carry.  But I strenuously denied all desire to
interfere with the females of the Y.W.C.A., the W.C.T.U., or the
F.T.E.M.  For me, veiled women or none.

To my utter surprise, I began to realize that the Shake's point of view
was entirely different.  The more he heard of the Y.W.C.A. and the
W.C.T.U., the more excited he became.  All he asked--he made no secret
of it--was an opportunity to get at them.  He freely confessed that
'veiled women' were nothing to him.  He'd seen too much of them, and in
any case he had as many as he wanted of them right there in his harem.
But these women of the Y.W.C.A. and W.C.T.U. were different; think of
it, young, Christian women! ... The Shake admitted that for him there
was something irresistibly attractive about Christians, especially if
taken young.  And 'temperance' women, whom he had never seen, conveyed
a peculiar mystery that reached him where he sat.  His only
difficulty--I was amazed to learn--was that, under his present
circumstances, he had no right to enter the secluded premises.  And I
learned further, with puzzled surprise and delight, that the Shake was
fully willing to grant me my liberty provided I could aid him in making
a legitimate and proper acquaintance with the ladies of the Mission.
If I could give him an introduction in the ordinary formulas of English
or American social life, that would let him enter the compound in a
non-political capacity, he would not only grant me my liberty, but give
me a free passage home in a vessel leaving the port next day.

This was rare good fortune.  There was, of course, the apparent
difficulty that I did not _personally_ know the ladies of the Mission.
But I had known so many like them that it didn't matter.  Indeed I
realized that to them an introduction to an Eastern potentate would
sound so good that it was of no consequence who signed it.  As long as
it appeared orthodox and decorous it would get by.

Another slight difficulty was that my plans made no provision for Major
Boozer.  This was, I admit, a matter of lively regret.  But I realized
that a soldier's life must leave no room for sentiment; and that a man
of resource, especially a Boozer, will find a way out of anything.  The
further thought that I would thus get first home to write memoirs, I
put aside as unworthy.

I therefore at once sat and wrote on the tablet supplied to me by the
Shake:


The Lady Director,
  The Female Teachers' Education Mission,
    Persian Gulf Branch,
      Hootch.

_Dear Madam,_

_May I present to you by this note of introduction my esteemed friend
the Shake ul Fuselem, Sultan of Hootch?  You will find in the Shake a
charming and cultivated gentleman, a graduate of Harvard, a member of
the Lion's Club and an honorary director of the Girl Guides of Omaha.
You will be reassured to know that the Shake some years ago not only
readily embraced Christianity, but asked if there was any more of it.
The Shake would like much to meet some of your young ladies and to take
a selection of them to visit his harem.  I may add that the Shake never
touches liquor except as a beverage._

      *      *      *      *      *

The Shake on reading the letter, declared that it was exactly what he
wanted and with Oriental gratitude threw round my neck a chain of
beaten Persian gold--and only removed it on second thoughts as better
sent by Express.  Meantime he summoned his scribe, arranged for my
papers of passport and transit, gave me an excellent cigar, and
declared me free.  Next morning a courteous official conducted me to
the dock, pointed out my steamer and in saying good-bye, gave me
another excellent cigar, making two.

I could see from the busy decks and smoking funnels that the steamer
gave every evidence of approaching departure.  To my utter surprise the
first person I saw as I came up the gangway was Major Boozer.  His
manner, as I greeted him, was singularly constrained, as was also no
doubt my own.  Indeed for some time we conversed with a certain
_malaise_, each of us aware of an _arrire pense_ that set up a
_gne_.  This _gne_ was only dispelled over a whiskey and soda, which
I may say has always had for me an unrivalled power of dispellation
against a _gne_.  It was Boozer who voiced the idea that had arisen in
both our minds.  'Tell me, Allhell, did you give a letter to the
Shake?'  'I did,' I answered.  'So did I,' said Boozer.  'Shake!'
After that our friendship was easily cemented over another whiskey and
soda, which, as cement, I consider unequalled.  I also gave Boozer one
of my cigars.

But a further surprise was in store for both of us.  Judge of our utter
astonishment, and I may add our chagrin, when we learned on coming out
on deck again that Professor McTosh was to travel on the same ship.  It
appeared that he had just arrived from the buried city of Blob.  Our
first intimation that he was to be a passenger was the sight of a large
number of heavily loaded cases being lowered on a winch into the hold.
The boxes were all labelled 'McTosh, Blob to Aberdeen via Hootch and
Aden,' and, from the elaborate markings on them, conveyed the idea of
great value.  The purser of the ship was checking off the consignment
and a group of officers and men were watching the operation with the
greatest interest.  We inquired if the boxes contained specimens of
rocks.  The purser laughed and said they were mostly filled with gold
and silver cups, jugs and ornaments, together with specimens of early
beaten gold.  The ship's manifest placed them at 50,000 sterling, but
the sum, he said, was merely nominal.  They represented the first
result of Professor McTosh's excavation at Blob.

Major Boozer and I, whatever our resentment at the treachery of McTosh,
felt that, as gentlemen, we must conceal our feelings.  Indeed, when
the Professor presently came on board, we evinced every sign of
friendliness, even offering to help him with the transport of his
property, and to check over and value for him his gold and silver
mugs--in short, to get our hands on them in any way useful.  His
consistent refusal led to a coolness that lasted throughout the voyage.

A still more embarrassing feature of our life on board ship was the
presence of young Charteris.  It seemed that he had been picked up by
friendly Fusees and carried in safety to Hootch.  Delighted though
Boozer and I were to see the lad again, we could not but reflect that
his return to England would seriously impair our arrangements with his
father, Lord Mudloft.  Boozer even offered to lend Charteris money to
go back to the desert, but all our efforts at conciliation were of no
avail.

The return of our expedition to England has given rise to a great deal
of misunderstanding and acrimonious controversy.  In the first place
Lord Mudloft is dissatisfied with the way in which Major Boozer and I
carried out our arrangements in regard to his son, and refuses to
fulfil his own part of the contract.  He admits the necessity of our
abandoning Charteris, but claims that we did not abandon him in the
proper way.  Boozer and I have offered to begin over again and take the
lad out to Brazil and abandon him up the Amazon, but the offer is
refused.  Lord Mudloft, I believe, is now thinking of the Pole as an
opening for the boy.

The Royal Geographical Society also has acted in what seems to me a
very narrow spirit.  They have refused to print my memoirs as not
sufficiently geographical, at the very time when the King's Printer has
sent them back to me as not sufficiently Royal.  At the same time the
Boozers of Hampshire--the well-known Boozers of whom my companion is
one--are bringing an action against my using their name in the memoirs.
They claim that even if they are Boozers, I have no right to say so, a
familiar point of law.  Professor McTosh on the other hand has written
me a very handsome letter, congratulating Boozer and me on getting out
of jail, and refunding a one-and-sixpence overcharge on his Hepatica.

In addition to these personal matters, there has been rather a nasty
mess with the Foreign Office in regard to the Shake's letters of
protest.  He wants them to remove from his harem the ten teachers that
he took from the Compound.

I trust that the appearance of these memoirs will help to put matters
right.




MODEL MEMOIRS: No. III

UP AND DOWN DOWNING STREET

_or_

WHO STARTED THE GREAT WAR?

MEMOIRS OF A WAR DIPLOMAT

(The One Hundredth Set of Such)

The lapse of years has only served to heighten the interest in the
question of who started the Great War.  Indeed to those of us in inner
diplomatic circles--I myself am right in the middle--the thing gets
positively feverish.

Only last week a former diplomatic opponent of mine, the ex-Crown
Prince Halfwitz of Ratz, came into my office in great agitation, threw
himself down on a sofa, and sobbed out, 'I didn't start it, I really
didn't.'  That same evening, at a dinner given by the War Office,
General Spittitout, of the Roumanian Staff (who was sitting next to
me), after saying nothing for nearly half an hour, turned to me quietly
and said, 'I didn't do it.'  On my other side Field-Marshal Scratch of
Bulgaria, who had said less than nothing for more than half an hour,
nodded still more quietly and said, 'I didn't either.'  The moment
might have been an awkward one for such a topic to be raised, but the
French Ambassador, sitting opposite, with characteristic tact said,
'Will you pass across the cucumbers when you've done with them?'

The quiet _savoir faire_, thus exercised to avert an awkward situation,
was typical of the courteous diplomatic intercourse of the older
school.  Frequently by passing cucumbers, or asking for a match, we
avoided a European crisis.  But, I repeat, to those of us who survive
from those exciting days of the great crisis of nearly thirty years
ago, the question of who started the war possesses a burning interest,
and the continuous publication of memoirs serves only to fan the fire
into a flame.

It is the realization of this intense interest which has led me to the
publication of these memoirs and with them to divulge the real origins
of the Great War.  I had intended to keep my lips sealed, and such
memoranda as I had written, disclosing what I know of the inner
diplomacy that preceded the Great War, were all duly docketed, tied up
and sealed, and marked 'Not to be opened till fifty years after my
death.'  But I found this unsatisfactory.  Although I had informed the
Press that my memoirs were deposited in the Bank of England and would
not be disclosed till I had been dead fifty years, it failed to
occasion any outcry.  Indeed I searched in vain for comment on it,
except for a brief note in the English Press under the heading,
'Commendable Decision,' and an American item, 'Will Keep Mouth Shut.'

I found also to my chagrin that my colleague in the Cabinet, Lord
X----, had also deposited his sealed memoirs with the Bank of England,
labelled 'Not to be opened for sixty years,' that Lord Y---- had gone
as far as seventy years and the Duke of Z---- had made it a hundred.

Nor was that all.  A number of continental diplomats, our former
associates, having now no safe place of their own, entrusted us with
their sealed memoirs.  Then when the market for memoirs opened, they
began divulging them.  Prince Scratchitoff, now a refugee but formerly
of the Czar's entourage, keeps telephoning me to know if his memoirs
have yet been divulged.  It seems that 'divulged memoirs' command a
good price without waiting fifty years.

It is understood, however, that in divulging these memoirs before their
time, I am compelled to preserve as far as possible the seal of
confidence as the cloak of anonymity.  I necessarily refer to my former
Cabinet colleagues as X---- and Y---- and even as A, B, and C--none of
which, as the reader easily guesses, corresponds to their names.  If I
refer to the King of Roumania, I call him simply the K. of R., and the
German Kaiser I indicate as the G.K., and so on.

The question is often asked me to what extent did we as a Cabinet know
what was going on in Europe?  Did we know anything?  Or were we as
ignorant as we looked?  To which I can only answer that we know a great
deal, but _not as a Cabinet_.  Readers, unused to diplomatic memoirs,
will have to pause over this phrase and get it as best they can: I say,
'_not as a Cabinet_.' The Foreign Office probably knew a great deal
that never reached the Colonial Office: while the Colonial Office
undoubtedly had information that never got to the Admiralty.  On the
other hand the Admiralty had on their files secret information that
never got off their files and the War Office no doubt had a mass of
material that they used for gun wadding.  The Home Secretary knew a
great deal but had no right to say it.

This system of checks and balances, which has often been called the
spirit of British Government, worked admirably.  It meant that
everybody knew something, somebody knew anything but nobody knew
everything.  Hence, acting as a Cabinet we knew nothing at all.  This
gave us a free hand and allowed us to keep an open mind, closing our
eyes but having our ear to the ground.  But it must not be supposed
from my speaking thus of checks and balances that there is implied any
division or dissension among us as a Government.  Indeed the very
contrary was the case.  The group of men who formed at that time the
Ministry and the diplomatic circle of the Foreign Office, I regard as
the most remarkable group of men--not excepting myself--ever gathered
together in one Government with me in it.  Not only were they
signalized by their high intelligence but they worked together like a
band of brothers.

Let us speak of them in turn.  Lord X---- was a gentleman of the old
school with all the culture given by the older universities and the
aristocratic circles in which he had been brought up.  If there was any
fault to be found with him, it was that his brains were ossified and
his mind moved so slowly that a man like me couldn't wait for it.  I
sometimes wonder, perhaps, whether the older universities have not
developed a sort of dry rot of which men like Lord X---- are the
result.  X---- was a poor speaker, and a very indifferent writer.

Y---- and Z----, my other two senior colleagues, were also men of
commanding intellect.  My only criticism of them would be that their
minds, though commanding, were small, and their point of view extremely
childish, and their experience of life practically nothing.  Beyond
that, they were invaluable.

G---- was a man of superb genius, but, I must admit, always seemed half
asleep.  Q----, at the Exchequer, would have been admirable if he had
understood figures.  Lord M---- at the Foreign Office was exactly the
right man in the right place, but had a very feeble knowledge of
geography and couldn't spell and was deaf.  Taken all in all the
Cabinet were perhaps the most imposing group that had governed England
since Queen Anne.

One naturally asks then why such a group of gifted men could not have
prevented the outbreak of the Great War.  Surely, it is argued,
something could have been done.  To which I reply that we did prevent
the Great War, again and again, and had been preventing it for twenty
years.  The quiet tact of old war diplomacy before the War had again
and again forestalled what seemed an inevitable outbreak.  It is not
generally known that the German Ambassador had asked for his passports
on the news of the Agadir crisis.  Lord Z---- gave a grave nod of
acquiescence, and said, 'What about a Scotch and soda before you go?'
He was still there in the morning.  Three or four times the Admiralty
were merely waiting to press a button, the Exchequer were all ready to
nail up the Bank of England, when a casual invitation to lunch, or the
loan of a cigarette, saved Europe.  One must realize also that all this
time we continued, nominally at any rate, on the most friendly
relations not only with the Quai d'Orsay--which went without
saying--but with the Ball Platz and the Quirinal and Escurial and even
with the Yildiz Kiosk and with others I can't think of for the moment.
Maintaining these foreign relations required a very delicate
equilibrium, which was rendered still more unstable by the need of
considering also our relations.  It was not only the Quai d'Orsay and
the Thiergarten that we must consider, but also the Chteau Laurier at
Ottawa, the Nelson Hotel at Cape Town and the Palmer House at
Melbourne.  We realized that the least shock might shake the Empire to
pieces; in fact that the least tap would knock it into fragments.
Indeed we felt that nothing held it together but ourselves.  With all
of these chancelleries we were in constant correspondence, and if at
any time one or more of us were fishing in Norway or shooting grouse in
Scotland, there were always others to answer his letters.  Ultimatums
were thus regularly answered by return mail and there was always
somebody available who could arrange a _modus vivendi_ over the
week-end to prevent an _impasse_ that might lead to a _cul-de-sac_.

It was the sudden and accidental collapse of this orderly system of
diplomatic intercourse that precipitated the War.  Those who recall the
early summer of 1914 will remember that it was a season of
exceptionally beautiful weather; all the world seemed to take holidays
by the sea and on the moors.  The G.K. was yachting off Norway.  The
Crown Prince of Serbia was pig-sticking.  The President of France was
at Vichy drinking Vichy water.  The Bavarian Government was at a Bath;
the King of Italy was at a circus; while our own Cabinet was scattered
through the country, mostly on the moors, but some up the fjords and
others on the veldt.

It was under these peculiar circumstances that an ultimatum happened to
be sent to Serbia by the Government of Austria.  In itself the
ultimatum did not differ from a large number of ultimatums sent back
and forward in the preceding ten years of crisis.  I forget its exact
terms, but it stated that unless Serbia was prepared to do so and so
within forty-eight hours, Austria would declare war in forty-seven.  It
spoke of the Serbians as murderers, etc., but not in any offensive way.
In the ordinary course of events, Serbia would at least have answered
and, even if compelled to reject the ultimatum, would have at least
expressed its appreciation of the literary style of the ultimatum and
hoped that the rejection of this ultimatum would not prevent the
Austrian Government from continuing to submit others.

The case was aggravated by the fact that none of the other governments
to whom complimentary copies of the ultimatum had been sent had paid
any attention to it.  Worse still, no one of them had 'divulged' it.
The Austrian Government had thus to undergo the supreme humiliation of
having its ultimatum unanswered and undivulged, and was compelled to
divulge it to the papers itself.

When at last the diplomatic corps returned from their holidays, it was
too late to mend matters.  A meeting was called at the Foreign Office
in the hope of finding a way out, or at least a _modus vivendi_,
accepting the _status quo_ as a _res judicata_--and then going fishing
again.  But it transpired at once that the insult to Austria was not to
be overlooked.  It was in vain that the French Ambassador offered the
Austrian plenipotentiary a cigar--a good one, two for ninepence.  He
merely put it in his pocket and said he would smoke it when he got
home.  'This,' said Prince Halfwitz of Ratz, 'means war.'  No one dared
contradict him.  The Prince, who had been hunting big game in New York,
felt that it was all his fault in having left Europe without him for
six weeks.  'Where does Roumania come in?' asked General Spittitout, at
that time Roumanian _charg d'affaires_.  'Wait and see,' said Lord
G----, 'we'll find a place for you on one side or the other.'

The gathering that evening at the Foreign Office was imposing as the
last of the great diplomatic parleys conducted with the old world
formal courtesy.  When we came together again at Versailles the world
had changed, the old courtesy gone.

We sat that evening in the famous conference room of the Foreign Office
quietly smoking our cigars, with an occasional sip of whiskey and soda,
the map of Europe spread out before us.  Many of us, myself, I admit,
included, wished that we had studied it sooner and to better purpose.
It was difficult to make out which were railways and which were rivers.
Many of us, I am sure, felt that it was hard to part and to say
good-bye to our pleasant diplomatic gatherings.  The German Ambassador,
as he took his Scotch whiskey and soda, felt that he might not get any
more for years.

Yet, as best we could, we had to construct at this brief notice the
alignment of the Great War.  'You had better take Bulgaria,' the German
Ambassador said to the Prime Minister.  'Let me see where it is,' he
answered.  Then he shook his head.  'Is that where Bulgaria is?' he
continued, 'No, we can't take it, unless you'll take Turkey on your
side.'  'I suppose we'll have to,' the German Ambassador said
reluctantly.  'France,' interrupted the French plenipotentiary, 'will
take on her side whatever oppressed nations are striving for liberty.'
'Give him a sandwich,' said Lord X---- and saved the situation.  Just
as the list was complete, Lord M----, of whom I spoke above,
interrupted hurriedly.  'Haven't you forgotten Nevada?' he asked.  For
a moment there was consternation and a hurried consultation of the map,
till a Cabinet member said hesitatingly, 'It's in the United States:
I've been there--at Reno.'

And, as he spoke, Big Ben began tolling the fatal hour.  Europe was at
war.




MODEL MEMOIRS: No. IV

SO THIS IS THE UNITED STATES

A SIX WEEKS' THOROUGH SURVEY

_As made by_

A LECTURER FROM ENGLAND

The desire to visit the United States had been to me for many years a
cherished ambition.  My admiration for American life and character,
which I am glad to set down here and which my publishers are at liberty
to use in any way they like, led me to wish for a nearer view of a
country which had so deeply impressed me both physically and
geographically, as well as financially.  Moreover, the increasing vogue
of my books in America guaranteed a warm welcome.  My American readers
were multiplying rapidly; almost every day I received letters which
read:


_Dear Sir or Madam_ (the word 'madam' being carefully crossed out to
signify that the writer knew that I was not a woman): _As an autograph
collector I would be glad to add your autograph to my list which
already includes those of Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. H. G. Wells, the King
of Siam, and some others which I can't remember.  Kindly pay your own
postage.  The others did._


To such tributes were joined the casual remarks of a number of chance
acquaintances.  An American gentleman whom I met in the Piccadilly Bar
told me that he had read one of my books (he was sure it must have been
mine) while suffering from insomnia on a voyage from San Francisco to
Pago Pago.  He was certain, at any rate, that it was Pago Pago.

To this was added a very cordial, direct invitation from the Cunard
White Star Steamship Company, who had apparently heard of my interest
in America.  The company wrote:


_This is travel year.  Why not cross the Atlantic?  The holding of the
International Steamfitters' Convention, the first in a hundred years of
steam fitting, at Pittsburgh, Pa., seems to offer a splendid
opportunity and invitation._


The final incentive was given by a very flattering proposition sent to
me by one of the leading lecture bureaus of the United States.  It ran:


_Dear Sir or Madam: The increasing popularity in America of your books
(book, speeches, or sermons, as the case may be) leads us to invite you
to make a lecture tour in the United States, regardless of expense, as
we don't pay it, giving us 80 per cent of your gross receipts and the
rest in cash.  We may add that the holding of the International
Steamfitters' Convention at Pittsburgh seems to offer a special
opportunity and invitation._


Without fully comprehending the financial terms, expressed with typical
American generosity, I decided to come.

My journey across the Atlantic was one of unparalleled pleasure and
comfort, and if the Cunard White Star Company care to say I said so,
they are at liberty to do so.  In the intervals of idle day-dreaming in
the saloon bar of the palatial liner in which I had engaged my passage
(I will name it if the Company like), I was able to put the finishing
touches to the lecture that I was to deliver in the States.  The
bar-tender to whom I read portions of it said that it seemed to him A1.
He said he had heard a lecture at Schenectady, but failed to recall
what it was about.  The reader may judge with what a thrill of
fascinated interest I caught sight, from the sea, of the sky-line of
the skyscrapers of New York.  One got from the prospect an impression
of something one could scarcely convey in words, though I shall keep
working on it.

At the Customs House in New York, where I met with every courtesy and
politeness, an inspector asked if I had anything of value to declare.
I said that, apart from my bag with my personal belongings and my
lecture suit, I carried nothing but my lecture itself.  He looked at
it, shook his head, and said there was nothing to pay, the duty being
_ad valorem_ only.  I said that he had better perhaps read the lecture,
and he answered with characteristic American courtesy that he would see
me I forget where.

This characteristic American courtesy I soon found to be characteristic
of America.  In New York, in spite of the rush and pressure of American
life, there is always this same courteous desire to please, a
willingness to break away from the claims of business in order to
extend courtesy to strangers.  On my first morning in the city, I
presented my letter of recommendation to the manager of one of the
biggest banks of the city, remarking on having been impressed, in a way
I could scarcely convey, by the sky-line of the skyscrapers.  He
immediately asked me had I been up on the Empire State building, rang
the bell for a clerk and insisted on my going at once, urging me to
spend at least an hour, or better still, to stay there all day.

The head librarian of one of the great city libraries, to whom I
presented my card, asked me if I was interested in Assyrian literature
and at once took me to a roomful of it, and told me, as he closed the
door on me, to read it all.

I duly visited the offices of the lecture bureau under whose auspices I
was to make my tour, and found the personnel of the bureau extremely
friendly and obliging.  The courteous manager immediately asked me
whether I had enough money for current necessities and hearing that I
had more than enough, at once arranged to take charge of the balance.
The rapidity with which money is moved like this in America is most
gratifying.  The manager then asked me whether I had had lunch, and
urged me to go and get it without delay.

On returning next day to the bureau, I learned that the opening lecture
of my tour was not to be given in New York (owing to the question of
overcrowding), but in a place 'up state.'  For the benefit of English
readers I may explain that the whole of the United States is divided
into States, such as New York State, Boston, the District of Columbia,
Ontario, and so forth.  My lecture, I found, was to be delivered at the
Ladies' Musical Club at Hicksville, the subject of the address being
'Charlemagne.'

This was, as a matter of fact, the topic on which I proposed to lecture
every time during my tour.  Such a thing is easily possible in America:
owing to the great size of the country the lecturer can take a train
after his lecture, and get away to another State before the news of his
last night's meeting.  He is thus always twelve hours ahead of his
lecture.  All that is needed is a second lecture for the return tour,
which can, however, without difficulty be written on the back of the
first.  In my own case, I decided to lecture from New York to San
Francisco on 'Charlemagne, the Man,' then to turn round and lecture on
the way back on 'Charlemagne, the Boy.'  I had selected this subject of
Charlemagne because in America it is absolutely necessary that the
topic should have novelty, and at the same time there is an unwritten
law against bringing in politics, sex or race, while such topics as
religion and Christianity are naturally offensive.  Liquor must not be
mentioned, nor must the lecturer introduce the name of the President or
of God.  It is well to keep away from Labour, Fascism and Communism.
All of this had been very carefully explained to me and had led me to
select the subject of Charlemagne.

My reception at Hicksville was cordiality and kindness itself.  From
the station, which the Americans call a depot (but they mean a
station), I was driven by the husband of one of the ladies to the
lady's house, where we had cocktails with a group of friends; after we
had had three, at the suggestion of one of the other ladies, we stepped
across to her house close by and had three more.  The lecture hour,
however, being almost come, there was just time for two more at the
house of another friend, a minister, who lived just over the street.  I
found indeed that the habit of giving the lecturer and his audience
plenty of cocktails before the talk is universal in America.  It might
indeed be commended to our restless audiences at home, always loud with
interruptions and disturbance.  In the United States it is not good
form to interrupt a lecture.  The audience remain absolutely quiet, the
room being suitably darkened.  The lecturer, after being introduced, is
shown to a quiet corner of the platform with a lamp on it, beside which
he reads his lecture.  It is thought very bad taste to leave the place
while he is still reading, or seeming to read.  In fact, the utmost
courtesy is extended to him to enable him thus to read to himself till
he is finished.

At Hicksville I met the first of such delightful American audiences.
It being a leafy night in June, very quiet and balmy, there was an
intense stillness, which made it difficult to realize that the audience
was there.  I read my lecture in a suitably low voice for almost an
hour and a half, following Charlemagne from Poitou to Poitiers and then
from Poitiers back to Poitou.  After the lecture was over we went over
to a very pleasant house and had some more cocktails in a large and
comfortable library.  The minister of whom I spoke, in thanking me for
the lecture, said that the small size of the audience--thirty-five--was
because the weather was so fine as to keep the young people out of
doors, and yet still cool enough to keep the old people in.  A
Hicksville audience, he said, was very distinctive: it was hard to get
them to turn out, and hard to warm them up, and difficult to get them
to let themselves go, but if they ever turned out and warmed up and let
go, they were a great audience.  He said a lot of them were getting a
lot more out of my lecture than you'd think they were.  He told me that
he himself was thinking of going into life insurance as it offered
better openings for the ministry.

My experience at Hicksville was pleasantly repeated on later evenings
at Heckville in Connecticut and in Huckville, Maine.  In each place
unfortunately the coolness of the evening still imprisoned the old
people, while its freshness tempted away the young.  I put down in my
notes this temptation of the young and the imprisonment of the old as
typical of American life.  As I said later on to the janitor of
Harvard, there was something psychologically interesting in this idea
if one could only seize it.  But I admitted that I could not seize it
and he said he couldn't either.  Naturally it followed as a matter of
course that if I couldn't, he couldn't: but it is typical of the
equality of American life that he wouldn't see this.  Indeed I found so
many things in America typical of American life that I found it
difficult to get hold of them fast enough.  This itself is very
characteristic of America.

But I pass over lightly my visits to the various small towns of New
England.  As my reference to the janitor has suggested, it was my
appearance at Harvard University that I anticipated as the chief
feature of my tour in the eastern part of the States, in which it lies.
I may mention for the benefit of my readers that the eastern half of
the United States faces east, and the western half faces west.  In
between lies the space called the Middle West facing apparently nowhere.

As I said, Harvard was the Mecca of my visit.  I recognized in it the
intellectual centre of America and was anxious to test it out by trying
it on myself.  How would it measure up beside me?  A great number of
English lecturers have tried this comparison but it hasn't worked.  All
of them, while speaking kindly of Harvard, are forced to admit that it
still lacks something.

In my own case I did not have the pleasure of lecturing at Harvard.
This was disappointing, as Charlemagne would have been just the right
thing for them, whereas in the smaller towns of New England the
confusion between Charlemagne and Lake Champlain had been painfully
apparent.  But a Harvard audience would have grasped in a minute that
Charlemagne, pronounced as I do it with a hard N and a liquid G--and I
take my time to it--was a Frenchman.  However, the arrangement for a
lecture at Harvard fell through at the last moment, that is to say, up
to the last minute the lecture bureau hadn't made any arrangement, and
at the last minute it was too late to make any.  I have noticed that a
great many English visiting lecturers find their lectures at Harvard
fall through at the last moment, some even before.

However, I passed a wonderful day of day-dreaming in and around
Harvard, first of all in the hotel because I needed sleep after a
night's journey from Pawchunk, Maine, and afterwards at intervals on
benches among the elm trees.  But I had, at the same time, an excellent
opportunity for making a study of the University itself, having the
good luck to find a disengaged janitor--it was his day off--who took me
round what he called the Yard and showed me the principal buildings,
giving me much information in regard to the professoriate and their
classes.  I was able therefore to make a great many very interesting
comparisons as between Harvard and our own universities.  The standard
of culture at Harvard, though high, is below our own, the janitor not
speaking English at all as well as I do.  The students at Harvard are
marked with great politeness and courteousness, all those whom I met
about the entrance of the buildings showing a polite desire to move
away instantly on my coming, and a reluctance to answer questions.
There were, however, one or two marked exceptions to this, a few
students coming forward with information of the greatest use for my
notebook--in regard to such things as the new courses on butchering,
and the research seminar in hair-cutting for the barbers' post-graduate
course.  Of the professoriate, unfortunately, I saw nothing, it being
the month of June during which, the students told me, they are all
either in Europe, or taking their afternoon rest, or doing research
work in Boston.

After leaving Harvard I visited a number of the New England colleges,
such as Amherst where there is an excellent lunch room close to the
railway station, Williams, from which the buses very conveniently leave
every half-hour, and Dartmouth, which can only be reached in the middle
of the night but which contains the best barber's shop I had yet seen
outside of New York.  At Smith College, devoted only to women, I was
unable to obtain an entre--I mean, to get in.  Of Bowdoin I saw hardly
enough to form a judgement, merely changing trains at the junction
there.  Yet I was glad to have had the opportunity of seeing American
academic life and comparing it with our own.  The janitors are
everywhere a fine class of men, very much interested in their students,
and proud of their institution.  All of them regretted that I did not
have an opportunity to lecture in their college, my lectures, owing to
the season of the year, being in the towns only.

I pass over, for the moment, the itinerary of my lecture tour among
these smaller places--such as Pleasantville,
Massachusetts--Pleasantville, New York--Pleasantville, New Jersey, and
Pleasantville, Pennsylvania.  I pass it over I say for the moment, but
naturally I shall come to it later on if the reader waits for it.  But
for the moment I am anxious to pass on to Pittsburgh towards which my
course was directed and which seemed to me hardly second in interest to
New York or Harvard.  Pittsburgh, I may explain to those of my readers
who don't know the fact already (I didn't, so a lot of them won't), is
situated at the junction of the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the
Ohio, all three of which here come together.  At Pittsburgh I found
again the same courtesy among the great business men as in New York.
Having mentioned to a great leader of industry to whom I presented my
card that I had never seen a blast furnace, he at once rang for a clerk
and instructed him to take me to one immediately and to pick a hot one.

After leaving Pittsburgh I had hoped to find myself in the Middle West,
an expectation all the keener as I was unusually interested in what my
impressions of the Middle West were going to be.  So many English
lecturers have regretted that they were unable to see the Middle West
that I hoped to act as a discoverer.  But I confess that as far as my
own impressions are concerned, the Middle West is non-existent, as I
couldn't find it.  In Chicago everyone disclaimed the idea that their
City was in the Middle West, they said it was east: so, too, at St.
Louis, the Middle West had not begun, and at Omaha, it was all over.
In Memphis, Tennessee, I found that I was in the Old South, and in
Missouri--among the better-class people--still in the Confederate
States.  In Minneapolis, I had reached the north, beyond which was only
Winnipeg where the price of wheat was too low for me to lecture.

The lecture bureau having arranged this part of my tour in what are
called 'long jumps,' I was shot up and down all over the country in
nightly leaps, and may have passed through the Middle West in my sleep.
I don't mention this arrangement of long jumps in any spirit of
criticism or as wishing in any way to discourage other English
lecturers.  Experience shows that this is the only way to handle an
English lecturer in this central part of the United States.  He must be
moved fast, the people being of a nervous temperament and often acting
on impulse.

One peculiar advantage I derived, however, from my transit of the area
where the Middle West should begin was that I was enabled to visit the
'centre of population' of the United States.  I have no idea how this
extraordinary place is selected or nominated, whether by general vote,
or by means of what are called 'primaries.' Nor must I attempt to
explain to my English reader what a primary is, because he wouldn't get
it.  Suffice it to say that when a person is to be elected to anything
in the United States, he is first elected in a primary, then in a
secondary, then in a tertiary, and so on.  Hence, for all I know, the
centre of population may be chosen by the primaries.  But the amazing
thing is that there are hardly any people in the place at all.  The
centre, at present--I say at present advisedly, for they keep changing
it--is out in the country in a state called Indiana, being almost three
miles east of Linton Post Office--the only way of keeping track of it.
It is characteristic of this restlessness of American democracy that
they keep changing the centre of population.  In the past, Baltimore
and Columbus and other cities have been selected, but the choice now
goes to much smaller places.  Indeed enquiry on the spot showed that
there weren't any people on the spot.

It was while making these reflections that I found myself arrived at
Chicago, a vast city, situated at the foot of Lake Michigan, one of the
chain of Great Lakes which, as British readers will recall, join the
Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.  Chicago was to be, contrary to my
expectation, the end of my itinerary.

The bureau had decided not to carry my lecture beyond Chicago.  There
were three reasons for this; (1) that I might find the summer heat very
trying; (2) the doubt whether the hotels were comfortable enough for
me, and (3) the certainty that there was no money in it.  This
shortening of my tour was to me a great disappointment.  I was most
anxious to see what impressions Hollywood might make on me and whether
I could set it down in words, or merely convey it into acts.  It would
be of interest, too, to see my reaction to San Francisco and the
Alcatraz Prison.  Many Americans had very specially recommended me to
see the insides of the prisons, and to stay there.  Alcatraz, they
said, would be the best.

All this, however, was not to be.  Chicago was to be my goal, and from
Chicago strangely enough my lecture tour was to change from the quiet
itinerary which I have described to the extraordinary sensation which
has led finally to my deportation from the United States.  To think
that all this originated from my casual reference to Chicago, in my
opening lecture, as a 'city of murderers.'  The words were used in the
most harmless way without the least intention to offend.  American
opinion, however, is so peculiarly sensitive, one might almost say
touchy, that a casual remark of this kind, meant in perfect good
nature, is apt to be taken up wrongly.  But I anticipate--an inveterate
habit of mine when I get interesting.

My reference to murderers arose from very simple circumstances.  On my
arrival in Chicago a courteous member of the committee had called for
me with a car and asked me whether I would prefer to go and visit the
university, which he said covered two square miles (I forget if it was
two or twenty), at any rate, whether I would visit the university, or
pay a visit to the art galleries, or would like to drive down town and
have a drink at his club.

On our way to his club I was immensely struck by the lake front and
said so to my host, telling him at the same time that he might make any
use of my remark that he liked.  The vast boulevards that carried us
along Lake Michigan, the lake at that moment being lashed into what I
described to my companion as 'mimic fury' (told him to put it in the
papers if he wished to), gave me the impression of size, of water, in
fact the idea of a big lake, which, as I said to my host, I seemed able
to seize but not to convey.  He told me to hold on to it.

At the club my host introduced me to several of his friends, many of
them university men and nearly as well educated as I am.  Our talk,
that of men of culture, fell on drink, prohibition, women, and
naturally murder.  One of the men present was kind enough to give me
some statistics of the subject for my book, which I wrote down with no
intention of using them in my lecture.  But my reader will be amazed as
I was to learn of the appalling growth of homicide in Chicago: the
figures given by my informant reached to one hundred per day and
perhaps fifty per night, when they can't see so well to get at them.

On the strength of this information, on lecturing on Charlemagne that
afternoon before the Ladies' Mandolin and Banjo Club, I used the
harmless phrase 'your city of murderers.'  The effect was
extraordinary.  I had hardly returned to the hotel before three young
men with flashlight cameras came to get my picture and the newspapers
next morning carried headlines '_a city of murderers_.'  The next
afternoon, by special invitation, I gave a lecture on 'murder' at the
university, using, of course, my lecture on Charlemagne but making a
parallel between Charlemagne and Al Capone, and deriving both their
names from the idea of big stuff.  The effect was heightened by the
Press christening me the 'Man with the Poison Tongue.'  The civic
authorities gave me twenty-four hours to get out of the City, beyond
which they could not be responsible.

The time, however, was more than what I needed.

I had already received a telegram from the head office of the lecture
bureau 'Call Pittsburgh something.'  Like a flash, in fact in less than
half an hour, I named it 'The City of Filth' and received back an
answer:


_Special lecture arranged with Clean Government League on the platform
and filth as the background._


My return lecture at Pittsburgh was to have been, as already indicated,
on 'Charlemagne, the Boy,' to be delivered before the Young People's
Astronomical Society.  But, as I say, the bureau easily arranged a
second lecture on the subject, 'The City of Filth,' at which I had with
me on the platform a number of City aldermen and twenty of the clergy
of the City, all of them known to be absolutely clean.  I used, of
course, my prepared lecture on Charlemagne, the Boy, but dealt with him
from the point of view of filth.  I made it clear all through, by
inference, that if Charlemagne had been as dirty as the average
Pittsburgh boy even the Franks would have had no use for him.

My Pittsburgh lecture was followed next morning by a telegram from the
Boston office of the bureau which read:


_Please send names for Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and, if possible,
for New York.  Meantime every one here is delighted by your calling
Harvard the 'Cesspool of Conservatism.'  A lecture has been arranged
for you in the big hall of the union, the local committee agreeing that
you lecture on Charlemagne, the Boy beside the Cesspool.  Arrangements
are being made for the students to throw you into the Charles River
after the lecture._


This was, indeed, a gratifying prospect.  The reader will recall that
on the occasion of my previous visit my offer to lecture at Harvard,
referring to it as the Oxford of America, had come to nothing.  The
interest shown in the proposal was very small and the attempt of the
lecture bureau to get the students to mob me after the lecture met with
complete indifference.  But now this generous offer to throw me into
the Charles guaranteed me the kind of reception a foreign lecturer does
not readily forget.

The invitation from Harvard was followed, as might be expected, by a
rival invitation from Yale.  I say 'as might be expected,' though my
English readers cannot possibly tell what I mean until I add that if
Harvard is the Oxford of America, Yale, situated at New Haven in
Connecticut, may be called its Cambridge.  What one does to-day, the
other did yesterday.  Hence there followed an invitation from Yale
accepting my idea of a lecture on 'New Haven as New Heaven' and
carrying with it a promise to throw me into Long Island Sound, a
greater distance than at Harvard.

I have not space here to narrate my gratifying success, both on the
platform and in the river, at Harvard: nor were the Yale students any
less enthusiastic: the dean of one of the faculties in introducing me
said that he hoped that after the lecture nothing would be done
unbecoming to the high reputation of the college for fair play: he had
heard, he said, a rumour that the lecturer would be thrown in the
river: he hoped not: something has been said of Long Island Sound.  Was
this wise?  But without further ado he would introduce the lecturer.

Unfortunately a students' dance after the lecture absorbed the
attention of the undergraduates and they had no time to devote to me,
but at any rate, several of them assured me of what they would do if I
came again.

After my conspicuous success in the greater cities and colleges, I need
say little of my triumphs in lesser places.  The indignation created at
Rome by my referring to it as 'Water Tank Seventeen, New York Central,'
guaranteed a capacity audience.  The people of Buffalo turned out in
thousands to see the man who called their city the 'Old Man's Home.'
In fact, I realized that I had unearthed a profound truth in American
psychology.  The Americans, if you praise them, fall asleep.  Curse
them and they are right there.  They like it.  When I get time I shall
hope in my forthcoming _Impressions of America_ (copies may be ordered
now before I write it), to develop this idea more fully.  At present I
just state it as it stands.  Hence the contrast between the drowsy
audiences that heard me talk on 'Charlemagne, the Man,' and the excited
crowds who listened to my lecture on 'Charlemagne, the Boy.'

The unsophisticated reader (most of my readers are unsophisticated) may
wonder how it was possible for me under these circumstances to deliver
a lecture on the boyhood of Charlemagne and have it accepted as matter
of interest.  The reason is very simple.  The newspapers always
explained that the lecture was filled with veiled illusions to city
politics.

Take for example my return lecture in Hicksville, the upstate town
where I opened my tour.  This was to me the most interesting evening,
and the most characteristic of what I have elsewhere called the
American temperament (I thought of it myself).  I have spoken of the
drowsy quiet of the town on my first coming.  It seemed now an entirely
different place inhabited by another set of people.  I had called it,
to a Boston reporter, the '_moron municipality_.'  This led at once to
an invitation from the town council to speak as their guest.  The hall
and the adjacent streets were packed with listeners.  In my talk on
'Charlemagne, the Boy,' every hidden reference to Hicksville went right
home.  In fact it was understood that 'Charlemagne' was just a clever
name for 'Charlie Maine' who had been superintendent of education the
year before last and was to run again.  The mayor of Hicksville, who
was in the chair, joined good-naturedly in the laugh over my reference
to the mayors of the palace.  He told me afterwards that my talk would
do a lot to clean up Hicksville town politics, which, it appeared, were
inconceivably dirty.  The mayor got me out of town in his car from the
back-stage door of the hall.

My biggest triumph should have been my concluding lecture in New York.
I had called the city 'God's Grave' and there had been a protest from
many of the clergy against the blasphemy of the term.  Success seemed
certain when word came from Washington of the order of my deportation
from the United States, and the lecture was cancelled.  The order was
not unexpected.  It had been hinted that I was about to call Washington
'The Whited Sepulchre,' and was trying to find a name for the
President, a thing not yet done.  The order for deportation has ended
all this, and terminates my American visit.

I have prepared for the Press a farewell interview in which I speak of
the great heart of America.  Anybody who would like this interview can
call here at Ellis Island and get it.  Meantime an enthusiastic article
in the New York Press under the title _Kicked Out_, suggests that I
might go and say some dirty things about my own country.  The idea
strikes me as so good that I wonder I never tried it.  The only
question is whether they are quite up to it at home.




MODEL MEMOIRS: No. V

THE CRIMINAL MEMOIRS OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

_Note.--It was announced by the European Powers, after the escape of
Napoleon from Elba, that he was a criminal at large.  Acting on this
idea, after his defeat at Waterloo, they made him a prisoner at St.
Helena.  Not accepting the view of himself, Napoleon missed a fine
chance to write the first of the prison memoirs now so popular.  He
could have handed them out in a talk to the visiting delegation of
Bigger and Better Prisons Society, St. Helena Branch, and sold them at
_10s. 6d._ a volume with a foreword by Sir Hudson Lowe, the Governor of
the Island.  Even now they may be reconstructed for him, foreword and
all._



FOREWORD BY SIR HUDSON LOWE

I am very glad indeed to grant the necessary permission to the
publication of the memoirs written by the prisoner William Napoleon
Bonaparte.  At the present time he is serving a life sentence following
on his conviction for aggression, invasion, and overweening ambition.
During his stay here he has, however, ceased to ween entirely and has
shown a most laudable contrition and regret for the past and for
everything he ever did.  At his own desire he is altering his name to
William, in recognition of the late Mr. Pitt.

During his stay here, Bonaparte has shown a commendable desire to learn
the English language, and has got as far as the verb 'I am.' He has
embraced the Protestant faith, as a Presbyterian, and already
understands a part of the Westminster catechism.  He has been in every
way a model prisoner, having earned already enough good conduct marks
to remit one year of his life sentence, retrospectively.

The prisoner strikes me as a man of some intelligence and with a
certain knowledge of the world.  I feel assured that the publication of
his memoirs will aid in deterring others from the errors he has made.



THE MEMOIRS AS GIVEN TO THE DELEGATION

Yes, gentlemen, if I had listened to my good old mother, I should never
have been here.  Again and again, she said to me, 'Napoleon, keep
straight,' and if I had kept straight, gentlemen, I should never have
gone crooked.

Since I've been here on the Island I've had access to a lot of good
books, for which I want to thank the librarian, and I can see things
differently about my career from what I could at the time.  I can't
thank the English military critics enough for letting me know that I
was too fat at Waterloo, too fat, gentlemen, and drowsy.  If I had
realized, gentlemen, how fat I was, I would never have undertaken that
battle.  But I just went slamming ahead, the way fat men do, and I lost
it.

But you've asked me about my story, and how I came to be here, and
above all, how I came to see the light after so much sin.  So I'll do
my best at telling you.  But I'm not much of a hand, I must warn you,
gentlemen, at telling a story.  I can write a bulletin about battles
and victories with anyone; some of you may have seen that one I wrote
about the eagles flying from steeple to steeple till they would alight
on Notre-Dame.  It was good stuff--wicked though it was--and even here,
gentlemen, it stirs me, although now I can see the sin of it and how
ungrateful I was to the Government of England and other kind friends
who had given me a nice home in the Island of Elba.

But perhaps some gentleman would give me a chew of tobacco.  It's dry
talking without something to chew.  Thank you.

Well, then, father and mother had a farm near Ajaccio Post Office in
Corsica and there my brothers and I were brought up.  I have always
felt that I owed much of my energy to those early years on the farm, to
being up at sunrise to drive the cows from the pasture.  With such a
beginning I ought to have grown up a hundred per cent American as all
farm boys do.

But I started wrong.  I was sent away to school in France with my
brother Joe and if we had come home again with the fine education we
received at Brienne, we could have started a goat farm and very likely
done well.  I have to admit that Joe was all in favour of it.  Years
after, when I made him King of Spain, he used to say, 'I'd rather have
goats, they're quieter.'

But there was a wild streak in all of us, and nothing would do than we
must go to Paris, Joe and I first, and afterwards Lou and Luce and the
girls, down to Jerry, my youngest brother.  Jerry was the youngest and
wildest of us all and presently he ran away to the United States, and
did well, and married into one of the oldest Baltimore families, a big
lift for us Bonapartes.  But I made Jerry come home, and he sank back
again, went soldiering and I last saw him, I think, at the battle of
Waterloo.  But I was too fat to keep track of him.  But I'm running
ahead of my story.  I suppose none of you gentlemen carry a drop of
brandy?  Thank you.

Anyway, we went to Paris just at the time of the excitement over the
French Revolution and I think you've heard what happened?  I joined the
army, got in with the wrong crowd, and some of them put me up to the
idea of stopping the French Revolution.  I stopped it by shooting
grapeshot at it, an idea that no one had thought of before.  Then I
went down with a pretty tough crowd to Toulon and beat up the English,
and then one dark night went out with a gang and conquered Belgium.
And after that I was always out at night, conquering something, for
months together--with the same crowd, Bill Ney, and Joe Murat, and Nick
Soult, and dare-devils of that sort.

But you know the whole story, gentlemen, and I needn't repeat it.  The
wickedness of it was not so much in anything we did as what we planned
to do.  Do you know that at one time we actually planned to invade
England; another time a lot of the boys went right across Spain and
captured Lisbon and made the English sail them home again: and later
than that, quite a bit later, a big crowd of us went to Russia and
burnt Moscow.  Most of those boys, gentlemen, never came back and their
poor mothers have no one to thank for it but me.  I suppose no
gentleman has another drop of brandy?  Thank you--I get a little
wheezy, you see, with talking.  I'm over fifty, gentlemen, and I've led
a hard life.

But, as I say, I never realized the mistakes I made till it was all
over.  Looking over it now with the help of books and military
criticism, I can see that my career was one long series of fatal
errors.  I've spoken of the battle of Waterloo, where I was too fat.
On the other hand when I tried to conquer Egypt I was too thin.  My
fatal mistake at the great battle of Leipzig in 1813--I've read all
about it since--was that I didn't keep my rear covered.  A true
strategist always has his rear resting on something.  On the other hand
at the big battle at Borodino--that's just outside of Moscow--I lost
out by refusing to uncover my rear.  In Spain I forgot about the heat.
In Russia I miscalculated the cold.  In short there was a fatal blunder
in every campaign.

Honestly, gentlemen, I don't think I ever ought to have been born.  It
was a big mistake.  But it appears, from what I read, that it had to
be.  I represented, so it seems, military autocracy emerging from mob
rule, and so I had to emerge.  My trouble was, as I get it from reading
about my career, that I had to represent a lot of things and got no
chance to be myself.  I represented the fall of feudalism and the birth
of imperialism and the rise of nationalism and the fall of Methodism.
What chance has a fellow who represents all that to strike out for
himself?

Still, I'm not complaining, at least not in that sense.  But since some
of you have asked me if I have any complaints to make while you're
here, I'll say yes, gentlemen, I have.  In the first place, I don't
like the way my name is already being used in the newspapers, I mean in
connection with their advertising matter.  I say to myself if this kind
of thing has got started already in 1820, what will it be like a
hundred years from now?

I'll show you what I mean.  Here is a journal that's just come over
from the United States with an advertisement for winter blankets.  It
says, 'Napoleon used to say, "Keep the feet warm and your kidneys will
look after themselves,"'  I admit, gentlemen, that I did say that, I
said it in Russia one day to Marshal Augereau.  He was complaining of
the cold and I asked him, 'Where does it get you, Augereau?' and he
answered, 'Right in the kidneys.'  I said, 'Keep your feet warm,
Augereau, and your kidneys will never bother you.' But when I said
this, it was as a private remark to Marshal Augereau.

Or look at this one, 'Napoleon used to say, "Deep breathing sets up a
diaduction of the oxygen in the lungs."'  Yes, I said it all right--I
said it to the Pope the day of my coronation, for fear he might faint,
but I meant it _only_ for the Pope, and not for use in connection with
a bathroom exercise machine; and I certainly did not say to the Pope,
'Ten minutes on the floor of the bathroom every morning will make a new
man of you.'  He had no bathroom; never had had.

There's more than that.  I don't like the way they are starting to call
all sorts of people 'Napoleons.'  Here's a fellow who is being named
'the Napoleon of financiers.'  I might stand for that.  But I don't
like this other man, in the tailor business, calling himself the
Napoleon of trouser-cutters.  That's not fair to me.  I never cut
trousers.  It was all done for me by Marie Louise--she was a good wife,
gentlemen, and bred up in Austria as a woman should be.  Excuse me, if
the remembrance of her affects me for a moment.  Thank you, yes,
another glass of brandy?  You're very kind.  Some day I hope they call
a brandy after me.

But just as a last word, gentlemen, I'd like to say that when the time
comes for me to leave this world, I expect to turn into a spirit and
any of you can call me up and have a talk at about half a crown, or
fifty cents United States money, for three minutes.  But don't ask me
about the battle of Austerlitz: just ask me if it's all bright and
beautiful where I am and whether Sis and Uncle William are happy.  Till
then, gentlemen, adieu.




II

MODEL MONOLOGUES: No. I

MRS. UPLIFT BETTERS SOCIETY

Oh, Clara! is it you?  Do, do come in--no, no, you don't disturb me at
all--I've been having such a morning over these wretched accounts of
our Social Betterment Association....

You're a member aren't you?  Yes, I thought you were.  Well, my dear,
the mess it seems to be in!  You've no idea--I'm treasurer, you know,
so it falls on me; but of course they wanted me to be treasurer as
Alfred is in so many things--and the bank has been awfully nice about
it--we owe them a lot of money now, you know, but they say as long as
they have Alfred's personal signature and one or two others of our
husbands, they'll let the account run--isn't it nice of them, I mean,
making it a _personal_ matter, like that, so homelike?--people say
banks haven't got souls, but really I think, in some ways, they're
generosity itself.  Think of it!  You see we owe them about five
thousand dollars and the other day I asked the manager, Mr. Bland, what
he charged us for lending us the money.  My dear, he was almost
hurt--'Why, _nothing_,' he said, 'only the interest on the money.'
Isn't it good of them?

      *      *      *      *      *

But dear me, it does seem a mess--the committee is meeting this morning
over at Mrs. Gamble's, the president's, in fact they've had meetings
for a week, to think out ways and means for the future, and meanwhile I
was trying to get these accounts straight.  You see, it goes back two
or three years--before you were a member, I think, Clara.  It began in
such a wonderful way--such sympathy--a lot of us felt so terribly bad
about the men without work and the poor little babies without milk and
the people in the slums without _anything_--and the poor friendless
girls, and homeless old people and all that, that we simply had to do
_something_--so we started the association and now here we are with a
debt of five thousand dollars....

As to the slums--I just don't know where they are in this city--I'd
never been in social work before and supposed there _must_ be slums but
I can't find them.  A visiting delegate was here a little while ago and
she asked me to drive her to the slums, so I said to the chauffeur,
'drive us to the slums.'  But he didn't know of any and he drove all
round down town through a lot of narrow dirty streets--but it turned
out to be where the _brokers_ live--we couldn't find slums--the
delegate was quite angry--she said it was scandalous that a city as big
as ours had no slums.  As for the friendless girls--why, Clara!--there
_aren't_ any--every time we give a treat for them, their boy-friends
bring them in motor cars.  And the babies have no milk because they all
use prepared food--something out of a tin, what is it, Chipso, or is it
Nux Vomica?--anyway, what they give babies now--and the men without
work all get their money every week.  I'm not complaining about it,
Clara, I'm only just saying that social work isn't what it was, and
here we have this wretched debt of five thousand dollars and we can't
stop or we'd have to pay it.  At first the finance was very simple
because we just used to collect subscriptions and use the money for the
charities.  But we soon found that that was too slow, and then so many
of the ladies were so terribly behind in their subscriptions....

So we began--oh, that was at least two years ago--trying to _make_
money.  The first thing we did was to bring Signor Stringi, the great
violinist, from New York for a special engagement.  He was most kind
about it: he told us that his regular fee was a thousand dollars, but
for us, as it was a charity, he took off ten per cent, and made it nine
hundred.  But oh, my dear! such a failure!  We put the seats at five
dollars, but you know, Clara, the people here are simply not musical,
or not so musical as that.  They simply wouldn't come....

So there we were with a loss of over nine hundred dollars: of course,
the bank was awfully nice about it.  They said just to leave it, to pay
no attention to it.  As long as they had Alfred's personal signature
and two others they said it didn't matter....

But, naturally, we wanted to get out of it as soon as ever we could,
and so we brought that famous pianist, what was his name?  I think you
were here then--oh, yes, Herr Thumpit--and he reduced his fee ever so
much--simply asked what was the most we could pay and took that--and we
put the seats at fifty cents each!  Would you believe it, people simply
_wouldn't_ come!  Not at fifty cents!  They were _too musical_, you
see, to attend any fifty cent performance.  The receipts were only
forty dollars.  Poor Herr Thumpit was awfully hurt.  He said he felt
like giving back the cheque--he said it again and again, and when we
wouldn't take it, he said he'd tear it up--in fact, he did tear a
corner off it.  But of course the mistake was ours not his....

So there we were with a bigger overdraft than ever--because the
advertising had cost such a terrible lot.  Do you know, Clara--it
seemed to go that way all the time.  The next thing we tried we felt
_sure_ would make a direct appeal--a concert, just with home talent, on
behalf of ragged children.  The talent didn't cost anything, but we
spent _such_ a lot of money on the hall, although the manager said that
they made a different price for us, from what they would have for
_anybody_ else.  The idea was--you remember it, don't you, Clara?--to
take up a collection.  All the people came in free, and of course all
the little children--our hope was that the sight of the little ragged
children would appeal to all the fathers and mothers and make them give
liberally.  But, my dear!!  They didn't _look ragged at all_!  The
little girls looked simply sweet in their print dresses, and the boys
all so neat and their shoes blacked--and we had spent ever so much on a
poster, 'HELP THE BAREFOOT KIDDIES!'

Then after that we had the big amateur theatricals at the Opera House!
That's the special mess I've been trying to get straight.  My dear,
it's simply scandalous what the theatre charged!  And the costumes--the
bills have been coming in all summer!  Those girls--you remember we had
a chorus all of debutantes because they would look so fresh and
innocent as compared with professionals--the bills those girls sent in
for costumes!  Would you believe it, one of them bought a dress suit
for her father, and another put in a raincoat she got last year--so, of
course, there was a terrible deficit.

That's why the committee are meeting to-day to see what we can do: in
fact they've been meeting for a week and making plans, to-day is just
the final.  Mrs. Gamble--she's the president, you know--said she would
send me over a note as soon as they make a decision....

Did the bell ring?  Perhaps that's it now.  Martha, I think the bell
rang.  You see she would send the note over by a messenger, it's
quicker--thank you, Martha, that's it--and I know her writing--now let
me see what she says:


Dear Mrs.----

_At our final special finance committee this morning, we have been
considering ways and means in regard to our very heavy accumulated
overdraft, which the bank now tell us is over five thousand dollars.
The universal feeling among the ladies of the committee is that the
debt must be lifted at once, and that a special effort should be
immediately set on foot in this direction.  The proposal has been made
that the Association should remove the debt at one stroke by holding a
garden party, or rather a _fte champtre_, on such a large scale as to
cancel the whole overdraft.  Mrs. Rollinit has been kind enough to
offer the use of her beautiful grounds for the afternoon and evening,
as a special contribution to the work of the club, with no other charge
or expense than what is needed to pay the extra time of her gardeners
and groundsmen and the extra effort involved for her inside staff.
Apart from this the committee will be called upon to pay no expense
beyond that of the special lighting and illumination of the grounds
which are to be turned into a sort of fairyland for the occasion...._


Oh, Clara, doesn't it sound just too wonderful!  You know, the
Rollinits are simply rolling in it--and the grounds!--think of it, ten
acres--they have a quarter of a mile of gladioli alone.  Imagine it all
lighted and illuminated!


_--We have already received a very kind offer from the Hook and Gettit
Electric Co. to undertake the whole work as a matter of civic
service...._


--Isn't that splendid of them.  My husband is one of the directors, you
know, and Mr. Rollinit is the president.


_--a matter of civic service without any mention of cost beyond the
bare sum needed for labour, material and overhead and contingent
charges, insurance and deterioration with an addition of a nominal 10
per cent profit...._


--Isn't that kind of them--adding ten per cent extra, after doing all
that?...


_--For the matter of refreshments, the committee think it wise to turn
the whole thing over to professional hands.  The Philanthropic
Restaurants Limited have offered to undertake the contract of
refreshments, drinks and attendance at an absolutely minimum figure.
Their manager is unable to state precisely what the figure will be, but
assures the committee that it will be the very least they feel like
charging.  There is a point, he says, which they simply daren't go
below, but they guarantee to charge something above this point.  He
adds that they will regulate their price partly by what funds they know
us to have...._


--I'm sure nothing could be fairer than that could it, Clara?


_--For music the committee have a very kind offer from the Theatrical
Musicians Guild offering to supply any quantity of music and to take
merely what they can get._


Isn't that like musicians?  So generous always!


_It is suggested, too, that we obtain special attractions for the
occasion, among which, perhaps, will be Mr. Angus Macfoozle--whose wife
is a member of the association--our local bagpipe expert, and who
offers to play without any fee at all--merely accepting a honorarium..._


That's terribly good, but really they shouldn't let him, he's too
generous: when he played for our church last winter, he cut his fee
down to three-fifths; we insisted on raising it to three-eighths; but
he said no, absolutely--only three-fifths.


_The suggestion is made that the guests should pay a single uniform fee
for entrance to the grounds, music and refreshment, and that this fee
should be twenty-five cents with complimentary tickets to the ladies of
the committee and their families, and guests and friends; this should
easily..._


Oh, is that the telephone?  Excuse me just a minute, Clara--Hullo, oh,
is that you, Mrs. Gamble--yes, I've just been reading it!  I think it's
just too wonderful!  Oh, yes, of course, we must start right away, and
yes, certainly we must begin ordering the printing, and the
decorations--and, of course, we shall need some money shan't we, to go
on with?  The bank said--oh, you're _speaking_ from the bank!  They're
letting us have another five thousand?  Isn't that good of them--really
banks nowadays do take a wonderful interest in social work.  They're
putting five thousand to our credit, you say, and no charge at all,
except the interest?  Isn't it generous--and they want our husbands'
signatures--yes, exactly, as a matter of form--I'll send my husband in
to sign after lunch--and I'll come over and join you at the committee
rooms with a cheque-book.  Good-bye.


Ah, now I do feel that the Association is at the end of all its
troubles.




MODEL MONOLOGUES: No. II

MRS. NEWRICH BUYS ANTIQUES

Oh, my dear, I'm so delighted to see you!  It's so charming of you to
come--Jane, take Mrs. Overworld's coat, please--do come on in--Jane,
take Mrs. Overworld's gloves.  It's just delightful to see you.  Ever
since we came back from Europe, Charles and I have been just _dying_ to
have you see our things--(raising her voice): _Charles!  Mrs.
Overworld's come over to see our new antiques.  Isn't it sweet of
her?..._  He's in his study but I don't know whether he hears.  He just
gets buried in reading.  Charles, you know, has always been so
_scholarly_ and so every time he gets a new price-list he just gets
_absorbed_ in it....

But there's such a lot I want to show you that I can't even wait till
you've had a cup of tea....  This clock in the hall?  An antique?  Oh,
yes, indeed!  Isn't it just marvellous!  It's a _Salvolatile_!  Does it
keep good time?  Gracious! what an idea!  Of course not!  It doesn't
keep time at all.  It doesn't go, I understand it never did go.  That's
why there's such a demand for the _Salvolatile_ clocks.  You see he was
one of _the_ really _great_ clock makers.  None of his clocks ever went.

_Charles, did any of the Salvolatile clocks ever go?  What?  Only the
imitation ones.  Thank you_....  You see, that's one way you can tell a
_Salvolatile_ clock.  If it is _genuine_, it won't go.  You say, it
hasn't got any hands left.  My dear!  Why, of course, it never _had_
any--not supposed to.  We picked it up in a queer little shop in Amalfi
and the man assured us that it never had had any hands.  He guaranteed
it.  That's one of the things, you know, that you can tell by.  Charles
and I were terribly keen about clocks at that time and really studied
them, and the books all agreed that no genuine _Salvolatile_ has any
hands.  See what it says on the little label--it was gummed on it when
we got it--so we left it still there--(_reading_):

_No._ 5661.  _X Salvolatile Wall clock, no hands, never had, won't go,
never would, no pendulum (breaking off her reading with animation)_--of
_course_, I'd forgotten that--no _pendulum_--that makes it more
valuable still....

That break in the side?  Ah, my dear, I saw you looking at that--but I
won't try to lie about it ... the broken side isn't _genuine_--we had
it broken by an expert in New York after we got back.  Isn't it
exquisitely done?  You see, he has made the break to look exactly as if
some one had rolled the clock over and stamped on it.  Every genuine
_Salvolatile_ is said to have been stamped upon like that.

Of course, our break is only imitation, but it's extremely well done,
isn't it?  We go to Ferrugi's, that little place on Fourth Avenue, you
know, for everything that we want broken.  They have a splendid man
there.  He can break anything....

Yes, and the day when we wanted the clock done, Charles and I went down
to see him do it.  _It was really quite wonderful, wasn't it, Charles?_
(_raising her voice_).  _You remember the man in Ferrugi's who broke
the clock for us!_  I'm afraid he doesn't hear.  But the man really was
a wonderful expert.  He just laid the clock on the _floor_, and turned
it on its side and then stood looking at it intently, and walking round
and round it and murmuring in Italian as if he were swearing at it.
Then he jumped in the air and came down on it with both feet ... with
such wonderful accuracy.

Our friend Mr. Appin-Hyphen-Smith--the great expert, you know--was
looking at our clock last week and he said it was marvellous, hardly to
be distinguished from a genuine _fractura_....  But he did say, I
remember, that the better way is to throw a clock out of a
fourth-storey window.  You see, that was the height of the Italian
houses in the thirteenth century--_is it the thirteenth century I mean,
Charles?  Charles!  Do I mean the thirteenth century?  I mean the
proper time for throwing an Italian clock out of the window--the
fourteenth?  Oh, thank you, darling!_--I'm always so silly about
remembering the centuries of the Italian things....

Of course, you see, with antiques you simply _must_ know the century or
you make the silliest blunders.  The other day I made the most
atrocious mistake about a _spoon_--I called it a twelfth-century spoon
and in reality it was only eleven and a half--of course my hostess, who
owned the spoon (she collects them), was terribly put out.  You see, a
twelfth-century spoon is practically worthless.  None of the great
Italian spoon-makers were _born_ till the eleventh century--or have I
got it backwards--anyway, till then, my dear, the spoons made were only
good for eating with--and then the great spoon-maker--_Charles! what
was that great Italian spoon-maker's name--Spoonuchi! of course, how
silly of me!_--Spoonuchi made spoons that couldn't be eaten with, and
of course that started the craze....

That glass case, that's very interesting, isn't it?--I'm afraid you
can't see them very well without a magnifying-glass--there, try this
one--they're _signatures_, all mounted and framed--some are perfectly
wonderful--that's Queen Elizabeth--of course, you simply couldn't tell
it if you didn't know.  But if you look you can see the Q--or no, I
think it's Peter the Great--you can't tell any of the really good
ones--but Charles has a key to them....

We have a little man in Highgate who picks them up for us here and
there and he always tells us what they are--that's Napoleon!  Doesn't
it seem wonderful to think of his _actually_ writing it--or no, I beg
your pardon, that's not Napoleon--that's P. T. Barnum, he was one of
Napoleon's marshals, I believe--_Charles! was P. T. Barnum one of
Napoleon's marshals?  His private secretary!_--oh, of course.  But I'm
forgetting your tea--do pardon me--you know I get so absorbed in my
antiques that I forget everything.  Do come into the drawing-room and
have tea--but, oh, just a minute before you sit down, do let me show
this tea-pot--oh, no, I don't mean _that one_, that's the one that the
tea has been made in--but it's _nothing_.  We got that here in New York
at Hoffany's--to make tea in.  It is made of solid silver, of course,
and all that, but even Hoffany's admitted that it was made in America
and was probably not more than a year or so old and had never been used
by anybody else.  In fact, they couldn't guarantee it in any way.

But let me pour you out tea from it and then do look at the perfectly
darling tea-pot on the shelf beside you.  Oh, don't touch it, please,
it won't stand up....  No....  That's one of the tests.  We know from
that it is genuine _Swaatsmaacher_.  None of them stand up.

Did I buy it here?  Oh, heavens, no, you couldn't buy a thing like that
here!  As a matter of fact, we picked it up in a little gin shop
in--what was the name of that place in Holland?  _Charles, what was the
name of the place in Holland where there was a gin shop?  What?
Ober--what?--oh, yes, of course, Oberhellandam!_

Those Dutch names are all so picturesque, aren't they?  Do you know
Oberhellandam?  No--well, it's just the dearest little place, nothing
but little wee smelly shops filled with most delightful things--all
antique, everything broken.  They guarantee that there is nothing in
the shop that wasn't smashed at least a hundred years ago ... see the
label on it....  It's in Dutch...  _Tay poot_--I think that is Dutch
for tea-pot--_gesmosh_--that means, smashed--hog--_Charles! what is
'hog' in Dutch--on the tea-pot darling--hog wort--high value!_  Oh, of
course!...

Would it make good tea--oh, I imagine it would make wonderful tea--only
it leaks--that's one of the things to know it by.  It's what the
experts always look for in a _Swaatsmaacher_.  If it doesn't leak, it's
probably just a faked-up thing not twenty years old....  Silver?--oh,
no, that's another test.  The real _Swaatsmaachers_ were always made of
pewter bound with barrel-iron off the gin barrels.  They try to imitate
it now by using silver, but they can't get it.  You see the silver
won't take the tarnish.

It's the same way with ever so many of the old things.  They rust and
rot in a way that you simply cannot imitate.  I have an old drinking
horn that I'll show you presently--_ninth century, isn't it,
Charles?_--that is all coated inside with the most beautiful green
slime, absolutely impossible to reproduce ... really and truly
impossible, they say.  Yes, I took it to Squeeziou's, the Italian place
in London.  (They are the great experts on horns, you know; they can
tell exactly the century and the breed of cow.)  And they told me that
they had tried in vain to reproduce that peculiar and beautiful rot.
One of their head men said that he thought that this horn had probably
been taken from a dead cow that had been buried for fifty years.
That's what gives it its value, you know.  We asked him--the head man,
I mean--how long he thought a cow had to be dead to be of use as an
antique, and he said it was very hard to say; but it had to be dead for
years and years anyway....

That's what the man said in London, but of course we didn't buy the
tea-pot in London.  London is simply impossible, just as hopeless as
New York.  You can't buy anything real there at all....  So, we pick
things up here and there, just in any out-of-the-way corners.

That little stool we found at the back of a cow stable in Loch
Aberlocherty.  They were actually using it for milking.  And the two
others--aren't they beautiful? though really it's quite wrong to have
two chairs alike in the same room--came from the back of a tiny little
whiskey shop in Galway.  Such a delight of an old Irishman sold them to
us and he admitted that he himself had no idea how old they were.  They
might, he said, be fifteenth-century, or they might not ... oh, and
that reminds me I've just had a letter from Jane (Jane is my sister,
you know) that is terribly exciting.  She's found a table at a tiny
place in Brittany that she thinks would exactly do in our card room.
She says that it is utterly unlike anything else in the room and has
quite obviously no connection with cards.  But let me read what she
says--let me see, yes, here's where it begins:


_... a perfectly sweet-little table.  It probably had four legs
originally and even now has two which, I am told, is a great find, as
most people have to be content with one.  The man explained that it
could either be leaned up against the wall or else suspended from the
ceiling on a silver chain.  One of the boards of the top is gone, but I
am told that that is of no consequence, as all the best specimens of
Brittany tables have at least one board out._


_Doesn't that sound fascinating?  Charles!  I was just reading to Mrs.
Overworld, Jane's letter about the table in Brittany--don't you think
you'd better cable for it right away--yes, so do I--and Charles! ask
them how much extra they would charge to smash one of the legs_--and
now, my dear, _do_ have some tea.  You'll like it--it's a special kind
I get--it's Ogosh--a very old China tea, that has been let rot in a
coal-oil barrel--you'll love it.




MODEL MONOLOGUES: No. III

MRS. EIDERDOWN ROUGHS IT IN THE BUSH*

* See Preface.


Yes, we come up every autumn.  We're both so passionately fond of the
open air.  Ransome, will you close that window?  There's a draught....

And we love to do everything for ourselves.  Ransome, will you please
pass me that ash-tray from across the table?

And we live here quite without form or ceremony--that's what makes it
so nice, it's all so simple.  Gwendoline, you may put on the
finger-bowls, and tell William to serve the coffee in the card-room....

We like the roughness of it, you know, the journey up, and everything.
Of course, it's not quite so rough to come up now as it used to be, now
that they have built the new main highway.  This time we were able to
drive up both the town cars, and before that it was always a question
just what we could bring up.

I do think the big closed cars are so much nicer when one is roughing
it--Gwendoline, the cigarettes, please--they keep the air out so much
better, and our new one, perhaps you noticed it, is the kind in which
you can draw the curtains and arrange it something like a drawing-room
on a train.  We are able to come up at night in it.  I always think it
much nicer--don't you?--to come up through the mountains at night.  One
sleeps better than in the day.

      *      *      *      *      *

Of course, it is not all so easy.  The food up here is always such a
question.  Of course, we can always get meat from the village--there is
quite a village now, you know, though when my husband first came up
twenty years ago there was nothing--and we can get milk and eggs and
vegetables from the farmers, and, of course, the men bring in fish all
the time, and our gardener manages now to raise a good deal of fruit
under glass, but beyond that it is very difficult to get anything.

Only yesterday, the housekeeper came to tell me that we had not enough
broilers for lunch; somebody had made a silly mistake and we were one
short.  We had to send Alfred (he drives fastest) back to the city with
the big car to get one.  Even then, lunch was half an hour late.
Things like that happen all the time.  One has to learn to be
philosophical.

But surely it is worth it--isn't it?--for the pleasure of being up here
in the wilderness, so far away from everything and everybody.  I
sometimes feel up here as if one were cut off from the whole
world--William, will you turn on the radio?

I think there will be news of the municipal elections and, of course,
my husband is tremendously interested.  His company has been trying to
get better city government for so long; they need pure government
because of their franchises, and it has been costing them a tremendous
lot of money to get.  What do you say, William, not working?  Then will
you please ask Jones to tell the electrician to look at it?

      *      *      *      *      *

Gwendoline, I think you had better tell James to give us more furnace
heat and see that there are fires in the upper bedrooms to-night.  It's
turning a little chilly.

I always like to see to everything myself.  It takes trouble, but it's
the only way.  But, I beg your pardon, you were asking me something.
Fishing!  Oh, yes, there is the most glorious fishing up here.  I must
tell Gwendoline to tell Mrs. Edwards to see that they give you fish at
breakfast.  It's just an ideal fishing country, my husband says.  We
send William out every morning, and sometimes William and Ransome both.
Often, so my husband tells me, when the weather is really clear he has
William up and out by four o'clock--my husband is so fond of early
rising, though he can't get up now himself the way he used to--but he
always likes to get William and Ransome out early.

They bring back the most beautiful fish.  Trout, I think.  I don't
precisely know because, of course, I never go myself, but I think trout
and sea-bass and finnan-haddock--they keep us beautifully supplied.
William caught some finnan-haddie this morning, I think--or did he say
dory?...

Thank you, William, you can take the glasses; we're done with them.
You see, William knows all about fish, as he comes from Newfoundland,
or some place of the sort.

You say, doesn't my husband go fishing himself?  Oh yes, indeed,
Peter's a tremendous fisherman!--simply adores it!  But of course, he
can't go in the early morning--the _chill_, you know, my dear--he has
to avoid a _chill_.

Our doctor, Dr. Slyder, a very old friend, always says to
Peter:--'Remember, Eiderdown, a chill simply won't do!'  So my husband
is positively cut off from early rising, the thing he'd love best to do
if he dared....  But Dr. Slyder--he comes up here himself, you know,
and goes fishing with Peter, Dr. Slyder says--'Absolutely no!  I forbid
it.'  He insists that neither of them get up before ten-thirty and then
they go and fish together.  Dr. Slyder is just as keen on fishing as my
husband is--in fact, they're both experts.

They go and fish about the middle of the day--they like to go in a very
simple way--just in the large motor launch you may have seen as you
passed the corner of the lake.  My husband would have preferred an
ordinary fishing-smack, but he couldn't get one here--he's having one
made in New York.

They just take Edward, the mechanic, for the engine, and Thomas, the
fisherman, to look after the lines (Dr. Slyder forbids my husband to
handle his own hooks for fear of infection)--and of course, one of the
indoor men for the lunch--even that very simple--a little cold salmon
on ice and a bottle or two of champagne--my husband says it's amazing
how little you eat when you are fishing--a little salmon, a salad, and
a meat pie--is all that he and the doctor ever take.  But they do take
champagne because Dr. Slyder insists that in Peter's case he must take
it as a preventative--with just a little spirits--cognac--after it.
Dr. Slyder is very strict as to cognac.

They generally fish a little, while the men prepare the lunch on the
shore,--you noticed the little islands no doubt--and then after lunch,
just a little nap.  Dr. Slyder refuses to let Peter fish for an hour
after a meal, and then off they go again till it's time for afternoon
tea.  But of course it's a little too late in the year now.  Several
times lately Dr. Slyder has insisted on their playing billiards instead.

You say, 'Do we have any trouble getting servants up here?'  My dear,
it was simply the bane of my life trying to get them, until at last we
decided to import them from England and Scotland.  The people round
here--I really don't know why--seem quite unfitted to be servants.  So,
as I say, we bring them out.

You may have noticed McAlister in the garden--or no, perhaps, he was in
his greenhouse (he goes there when he doesn't want to be
disturbed)--well, my dear, he's a perfect _treasure_--and such a
character.  I don't know how we could get another like him.  And yet in
a way McAlister is a perfect _tyrant_.  My dear, he simply won't allow
us to pick the roses; and if any of us walk across the grass he is
furious.  And he positively refuses to let us use the vegetables.  He
told me quite plainly that if we took any of his young peas or his
early cucumbers he would leave.  We are to have them later on when he's
finished growing them.

Of course we have trouble with McAlister at times, but he's always very
reasonable when we put things in the right light.  Last week, for
example, I was afraid that we had gone too far with him.  He is always
accustomed to have a quart of beer every morning at half-past ten--the
maids are told to bring it out to him--and after that he goes to sleep
in the little arbour beside the tulip bed.  And the other day when he
went there he found that one of our guests, who hadn't been told, was
actually sitting in there reading.  Of course he was furious.  I was
afraid for the moment that he would give notice on the spot.  But we
explained to him that it was only an accident and that the person
hadn't known, and that it wouldn't occur again.  After that he was
softened a little, but he went off muttering to himself, and that
evening he dug up all the new tulips and threw them over the fence.  We
saw him do it, but of course we didn't dare say anything.  You see if
we had, we might have lost McAlister, and I don't know where we could
possibly get another man like him: at least not on this side of the
water....

What society we have in a place so isolated as this?  Do you know, my
dear, people so often ask me that and I simply answer, 'none at all.'
We don't need it--we come here to be isolated and what we want is to be
just quietly alone by ourselves.  Of course, Peter generally brings Dr.
Slyder with him because the doctor says he never feels quite
comfortable about what Peter eats and drinks unless he's with him, and
very often Major Boozer and Mr. Ace come--you met them before dinner,
didn't you?--because they are Peter's partners and Peter feels it wise
to keep in touch with them and know what they're doing.  But beyond
that we bring no one except any odd guests one happens to want to
bring--you noticed at dinner that we weren't more than a dozen--we
seldom go beyond that--so here we always are as a sort of life in
ourselves.

There are, of course, a few people around.  The Upstocks have laid out
a very beautiful place at the other end of the lake.  And the Brokes
have built a really handsome place, done in stone in a simple Roman
style that suits the rough country--these and a few others, but, of
course, nothing like the crush of the city.  And they all get into the
same simple ways.  Mrs. Upstock always comes over just as she is, and I
go over there in the launch just as I am: and Mr. Upstock is terribly
informal: often walks over here just in his braces.  So you see it
isn't society.

What do you say--our amusements here?  Oh, we simply don't have any.
We have always both felt that up here in this beautiful air (that
french window at the end of the room needs closing, Ransome) it is
amusement enough just to be alive.  So we have never bothered to think
about amusements.  Of course, my husband had the billiard-room built
because that is really his one pastime, and this card-room because it
is mine, and we put in the tennis courts, though it was hard to do so,
so as to have them for the children.  But that is all.  We have the
golf links, of course--perhaps you noticed them as you came up.

It was really quite a triumph for my husband making the courses here.
He did every bit of it himself.  At one time he had nearly two hundred
Italians working.  My husband, as you know, is terribly energetic; I
often call him a dynamo.  The summer when he was building the golf
course he never seemed to stop; always sitting with his cigar in his
mouth, first under a tree on one side, looking at his Italians, and
then on the other side--in fact, he was always _somewhere_.  I used to
wonder how he could keep it up.

It was just the same way when my husband was putting in the tennis
courts--I must show it you in the morning.  Peter was determined that
one thing we must have was proper _en tout cas_ tennis courts.  But
Peter, as I say, is such a dynamo that he went right at it, taking it
over and doing it all himself.  Do you know that he blasted through ten
feet of rock to get the foundations he wanted?  Two of the Italians
were blown up with the dynamite, but Peter wasn't discouraged for a
minute--he sent for two more and went right on--and of course Peter
paid all the expenses of the two he had blown up, funeral, insurance,
everything.  He said that it was only fair as it was his risk not
theirs.  Peter is like that.

But, I am so sorry, I am afraid it is time I was ordering you all off
to bed.  We keep such early hours here that we go to bed at midnight.

But perhaps you'd rather stay up a little and play billiards or cards,
and there are always one or two of the servants up--at any rate till
about three, and then I think my husband is sending William fishing.
Good night.




MODEL MONOLOGUES: No. IV

MRS. EASY HAS HER FORTUNE TOLD

_Mrs. Easy entering her apartment to find a friend waiting for her._

Oh, my dear Mary, I'm so sorry, I'm just exhausted.  Martha, put the
chain back on the door, please--I do hope I haven't kept you waiting
long--about twenty minutes?  Oh, what a shame!

But I've just had such an exciting experience!  I'm just done out!  I
_must_ tell you all about it.  But just wait a minute till I ring and
tell Martha to make a cocktail.  You'll have one, won't you?  Martha,
make two cocktails--no, make four--or no (_calling louder as Martha has
left_)--Martha--make _six_.  My dear Mary, I _need_ it.  I'm just all
done in.

I've just come from having my fortune told, at least I don't mean that,
I mean having my _horoscope_ read.  You must excuse my being so
breathless, I'm not really breathless, it's just the excitement.  My
dear Mary, I _must_ say it, I can't keep it to myself--I'm going to be
_kidnapped_!  Yes, _kidnapped_, now, at any minute, right here!
Martha, is the chain on the door?  Don't open it for anyone....

Ah! thank goodness for that cocktail--excuse me if I drink it right off
(_noise of drinking_)--ah! that's better: it makes one feel calmer,
doesn't it?  I think I'll take another--yes, my dear (_more
resignedly_), I'm expecting to be kidnapped at any moment.

Did Mrs. _Brown_ say that was my fortune?  Oh, goodness, no!  I don't
mean I went to old Mrs. Brown, or anybody of that class--she's all
right, of course, Mrs. Brown, I've often been to her and she's a dear
old soul.  I must have gone to her nearly once a week last winter.  But
she never says anything, and even what she says is so _ordinary_, don't
you know.

She prophesied that Henry would live to ninety.  That's all right.  I
hope he does, I'm sure, and Henry's as good as husbands go anyway.  But
ninety!  And after all that's not the kind of thing you pay to hear.
Of course, she _did_ prophesy that we'd go to Bermuda at Easter.  But
that had been in the paper anyway....

But this fortune-teller (_sinking her voice to mystery_), is utterly
different.  He's not just a fortune-teller.  He's a Yogi
soothsayer--it's quite different, he's Mr. Yahi-Bahi, and he's a
Parsee, you know what that is--it means a sort of Hindu, only higher
up.  You know how all the Hindus are divided into castes; if you're in
the lowest caste, you have to live on garbage and you mustn't speak to
anyone, and then there are a lot of in-between castes who have to be
vegetarians and worship cows.  You see, I know all about India because
Henry and I were on a round-the-world-cruise and we had a whole day in
Bombay, and there was a Chinese gentleman on board with us, a Mr.
O-Hoo, and he was all right, he'd been at Harvard for four months and
he told us all about the Hindu religion and why it is so far ahead of
Christianity.

So that's how I know about castes and Mr. Yahi-Bahi's caste is at the
top of all.  They don't eat.  They don't speak--they just
_contemplate_.  Oh, thank you, Martha, put them down here beside the
others.  Now that's not too strong, is it? (_drinks_).  Oh!  Goodness!
I needed that!  Well, I was saying, would you believe it, that Mr.
Yahi-Bahi, before he came here, sat on the top of a post for a
month--with just a loin cloth on--and just _meditated_.  Think of the
flies!

So then he came here (I don't just know how long ago), and began
casting horoscopes--that's what it's called--and Mary! such wonderful
results!  Do you know that he told Mrs. Faith that something dark was
hanging over her--and that very month her chauffeur left her; and he
told Mrs. Gull that there was a fate over her youngest son, the one at
college: and there _was_.  He was sent home for drinking at the end of
the term.

Oh, he's just wonderful.  And my dear!  No money!  He scorns it!
That's the first thing you learn about Yahi-Bahi.  You can _offer_ it
if you like just as a courtesy, but he just quietly refuses.  Money, to
him, is just _dirt_.  You see his expenses are nothing; contemplation
doesn't cost anything.

So it's very hard to get an interview.  Why, my dear, I had to wait for
ever so long.  You see, I couldn't have my fortune told--only it is not
really called that, it's _receiving a revelation_--I couldn't receive a
revelation till I was fit to receive it--that's part of the method.

So I had to qualify by _contemplation_: I had to send in ten dollars
(not to Mr. Yahi-Bahi, of course; to his assistant) and then
contemplate for a week.  At first it was _awfully_ hard, I don't mean
the ten dollars, that was _easy_, but to contemplate.  You see, you
have to think of _nothing_.  And at first I'd keep thinking of shopping
I'd had to do and whether Martha had given Ouiji his bath and about
telephoning to Henry to be sure to cash a cheque--and about what to
wear that afternoon--well, you know, all the regular round of work that
makes up one's day.  But I managed to learn fairly well, and at the end
of the week, I got a _thought_ message--think of it! a _thought_
message (it was sent by post) to tell me to send ten dollars again and
keep on contemplating.  So I knew I had succeeded....

Well, after contemplating like that for four weeks they let me become a
neophyte--that means a person just starting to be a Yogi--only it takes
years.  And then I went to see Mr. Yahi-Bahi himself for the first
time--such a strange place, at least not the outside--it was just a
little apartment on a side street.  But I mean, once you got in, all
the stairway going up, and the ante-room, where you waited, were hung
with curtains with figures of snakes and Indian gods, perfectly weird!
And the man who met me--not Mr. Yahi-Bahi himself, of course, but his
assistant, the strangest little being.  His name is Mr. Ram Spudd, a
little round man, a Bengalee, I think.  He put his arms across the
stomach and bowed ever so low and said, 'Isis guard you!'--my dear! it
was _most_ impressive.

I asked if I could see Mr. Yahi-Bahi, but Mr. Ram Spudd shook his head
and said no, Mr. Yahi was in meditation, and mustn't be disturbed.  I
laid down ten dollars on a little side table--just unobtrusively so as
not to insult him.  But Mr. Spudd just waved the idea aside with his
hand, with such a kindly smile and a shrug of the shoulders, and
explained that money didn't enter into Mr. Yahi's life.  Then he waved
his hand again, and would you believe it, the ten dollars had gone!  My
dear! he had _de-astralized_ it! not a doubt of it.  I saw it myself.
One minute it was there! and next gone!

So I came like that three more times, I mean three days running--and
each time Mr. Spudd received me with the same gentle way and shook his
head.  Mr. Yahi was meditating still....  I laid ten dollars on the
table and each time it was de-astralized!

Then I got afraid that it was bad taste and might hurt his feelings to
force him to de-astralize ten dollars every day--so next day I didn't
put any money down--and perhaps the shock--you see it's all so subtle,
my dear--the _shock_ woke Mr. Yahi out of his meditation--I heard him
call to Mr. Spudd in Hindu, I suppose, and Mr. Spudd said Mr. Yahi
would see me.

So Mr. Yahi-Bahi came out from behind the curtains--such a
strange-looking man, so tall and yet he wasn't really tall, I suppose
it was his long gown, all figured over with sacred snakes and
lizards--and his eyes--my dear! so deep--like pools of molasses! and he
took my hand flat between his and he said, '_Osiris keep you!_'

Then he made me sit down in a chair and he looked into my eyes and held
my hand a long while and then he said--'You have a soul!' and then he
looked at me again and said--'Dark Things are impending over you,' and
I said, 'What are they?'  But he just shook his head and in a minute he
was gone!  I had just half closed my eyes and he vanished!  Perhaps he
went behind the curtain.

Well, would you believe it, my dear--(_bell rings_)--see who it is at
the telephone, Martha, and say I can't come--would you believe it, I
went time after time--what do you say, Martha?  The _Evening Times_
want to speak to me--say I'm out--I went, as I say, time after time,
and Mr. Yahi said he would get my horoscope ready to read but he never
got it till to-day--and, oh, goodness, I'm all shaken up with it; it's
so dark, it's terrible.  But I must tell you first.  Each time I went
to Mr. Yahi, Mr. Spudd said I'd have to wait a week or two for my
horoscope but that if I liked (he was awfully nice about it), he would
call up some spirits and I could talk to them.

It was wonderful.  He called up the spirit of Napoleon, and I talked to
Napoleon, behind a curtain, just as easily as I'm talking to you.  I
asked him if he had been lonely at St. Helena and he said, 'Yes.'  And
I asked him whether it was the battle of Trafalgar that did most to
defeat him and he said, yes, he hadn't enough cavalry.

And I talked with the spirit of Benjamin Franklin but he seemed a
little dull; perhaps his brain got damaged after he was dead, but
anyway he said that it was all bright and beautiful where he was.  But
a funny thing about the spirits, my dear, some of them--they asked such
_queer_ questions.  Napoleon asked me if I had an extra key of my
apartment, and I said I had and he said he might need it and please
leave it with Mr. Yahi.  So I _did_, but I don't want Napoleon coming
over and able to get in at night.  I said to Mr. Yahi I'd have an extra
lock put on--and just imagine, my dear, the spirit of _Joan of Arc_
(next sance) warned me not to.  She said it was all right: and of
course if _she_ thought so, it was all right for me.  But if Mr. Yahi
gives the key to Napoleon I hope he lets me know.

      *      *      *      *      *

Well, at last I managed to get a revelation from Mr. Yahi.  That was
two days ago.  First he talked about Henry.  He wouldn't say what is
going to happen to him.  But it's something terrible.  He said it hangs
over him ready to fall and he said the sand is low in his glass.  He
says Henry must leave town at once, and take nothing with him of any
value, leave all his valuables here in the apartment.  Osiris will look
after them.  I called Henry up on the telephone as soon as ever I got
home: he was at the golf club and I said, 'Henry, Mr. Yahi, the Parsee
magician, says there's something hanging over you,' and he said, 'Is
that so?  Say!  I made the fourth hole under par': and I said, 'Mr.
Yahi says the sand is low in your glass,' and Henry said, 'I fell down
badly in the waterhole,' and I said, 'Henry, you've got to get under
the protection of Osiris,' and he said, 'What's wrong with the police?'
You know that mocking way Henry has.

But when he came home, I told him all about it and this time he
listened, especially about Napoleon having our key.  I think he was
jealous.  But I said, 'Henry, Napoleon is only a spirit, and anyway
Napoleon was not that sort of man.'

Well, that was yesterday and I went round again to-day and Mr. Yahi was
there--not meditating--and he told me my horoscope.  He said I'm going
to lose Henry--I'd guessed that already, and then he said--I'm just
shuddering at the thought of it--Martha, is that door _locked_, see
that it is--he said that I'm in hourly danger of being kidnapped!

Yes, kidnapped! and held for ransom!  Think of it--I asked him for how
much and he said he would try to find out and looked into a crystal
ball, all dark and shining--looked into it ever so fixedly and said the
figures were there but were hard to read and asked how much would I
pay, and I said it would depend on Henry and Mr. Yahi shook his head
and said the figures looked like a hundred thousand to him.  I said I
was glad it wasn't more; and he looked again and said he believed it
was a hundred and fifty thousand....

I asked Mr. Yahi what I would do, and he said the first thing was to
put myself under the protection of Isis and Osiris.  He said to pack up
everything I had of value and leave it here, with the secret mark of
Osiris--he showed me how to make it--to guard it.  He said, put the
mark on anything valuable, like jewels, but not on other things and
Osiris would look after them, and if I decided for a ransom to leave
it, marked plainly RANSOM.  Then he said for me to leave town instantly
and take nothing with me.  You see he explained that protection in the
Yogi doctrine is only for the weak--and I must leave behind even all my
money, except just enough for a few days--in fact he said to take any
cash in my cash account, mark it Osiris and leave it here.  He said
Osiris would ...

Is that some one at the door?--don't take the chain off it,
gracious--don't let any one in, Martha--a young man from the _Evening
Times_, you say, about the '_sensational arrest_'?  I don't know about
the '_sensational arrest_--shut him out, Martha.  But my goodness,
'_sensational arrest_,' does that mean that the kidnappers are caught
already?  Isn't Osiris wonderful--just think of divining what they were
going to do before they did it!  Well, thank goodness...

There's the telephone again, Martha.

      *      *      *      *      *

My husband--yes--of course, I'll speak.  Hullo, Henry, what is it? did
you hear about--what are you saying--my two crooks arrested--_my_
two--why do you call them _my_ two?  Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd!
But Henry _they're_ not crooks--they're Parsees!  Mr. Ram Spudd is a
Bengalee and is one of the most spiritual men, Henry, I've ever seen.
Just to hear him talk lifts one up....  What are you laughing at?  You
say I should have heard him talk to-day?--what do you mean?--he's not a
Bengalee, you say, he's just coloured and Mr. Yahi is Irish--well,
what's the laugh?--what did Ram Spudd say?  He said _that_!  Just you
repeat that, Henry--Ram Spudd said they nearly caught the old hen!
Meaning me! _me_!  An old hen!  Well, he's a dirty little crook and I
hope he gets--what do you say--he'll get five years?  I hope so!--but
not poor Mr. Yahi; he's all soul--oh, he laughed too!!  What!  An '_old
sheep_'--I hope he gets ten.




III

THE DISSOLUTION OF OUR DINNER CLUB

As it is now definitely understood that our dinner club is dissolved,
it is proper to let people know the circumstances of its dissolution.
This all the more so, as already I begin to hear it mentioned with a
sort of regret as 'the old Dinner Club,' although the last meeting--the
one of the Hungarian _Goulash_--was only on Tuesday of last week.  I
remember that it was Tuesday because I was a little laid up on the
Wednesday.

Yet, in a way, it is only right to regret the ending of the club, as I
never knew of anything that started off with greater enthusiasm, with
greater what the French call _clat_.  The idea of it just came up one
day in a sort of spontaneous way among a group of us who were sitting
around having a drink and talking in our club--I mean the regular city
club to which we belonged.  The talk had been really worth while;
Merrill, who is a really brilliant talker, had been speaking, I
remember, of Mr. Roosevelt, making an analysis of him--we had three or
four drinks while he was making it--and someone said that if you want
to have really good conversation the thing is to start a dinner
club--you know, a club to meet every fortnight or so, and hold a dinner
and have brilliant conversation.  This man said he'd once been a member
of a club like that in Edinburgh--he's Scotch, his name is
Stewart--Cluny Macpherson Stewart--a Scotchman--and one night they'd
discuss (I mean this club in Edinburgh) say Greek architecture, or
another night perhaps the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, or another night,
the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.  So hearing all that, we got off to a
good start with all of us talking at once.

Of course, everybody agreed that, with a dinner club, you have to hold
it somewhere else than in your own regular club.  That gives a sort of
novelty to the evening and lets you take in other fellows who don't
happen to be in your own club.  It was agreed that men get stale if
they just stick around with their own same crowd in their own same
club, whereas a man in a dinner club gets what you might call mental
friction.

Then one of the group, a man called Watergrass, a poetical sort of
fellow, said that the idea was to have your dinner club meet at some
place right away out in the suburbs, so that you could have a good
bracing three-hour walk before you sat down.  He said that a walk like
that put a man just in shape for brilliant talk--blows away the
cobwebs, that was his phrase--and he said that that season of the
year--it was November when we began--was just right for walking.  What
you needed for real walking was rough weather, the rougher the better,
wind and storm so that you could turn up your coat collar, grip your
stick and just buffet right into it.  He quoted the case of men like
Tennyson and Longfellow, tremendous walkers both of them.  It appears
that Tennyson--even to write just a small unimportant poem like _Break,
break, break_--would walk forty miles as hard as he could go: I think
Watergrass said forty.  Anyway he said that when Longfellow wrote about
how he stood on the bridge at midnight, he actually went and stood on
it: that, I gathered, was what gave him the idea of standing on it.

Well, of course, that part of the plan was instantly and eagerly
adopted.  All the more so as one of the men was able to tell us of a
new eating-place that had just been opened right outside city limits,
ten miles away, an awfully artistic place called _The Old Cow-stable_.
You see, it actually had been an old cow-stable--I mean it really was
one before--with heavy stone walls and a high peaked roof--and it had
been done over inside and opened up as a sort of roadside restaurant,
and somebody had hit on the clever idea of calling it _The Old
Cow-stable_.  Clever, wasn't it?

But the biggest idea of all, the thing that gave the Club its real
impetus, was the idea of having the bill of fare for the dinner utterly
different each time, and represent different kinds of national dinners.
For instance, it was suggested right away that we could have a typical
'New England Dinner'--the thing the early settlers used to have, at the
time when they had only one big pot over the fire to cook in, and put
everything in together; or as someone called it, 'a real old-fashioned
New England dinner.'  Then Des Rois, who is French, said, why not have
a typical Marseilles dinner like what they eat in Marseilles: and he
told us about _bouillabaisse_, the great Marseilles dish, along with
_tripe  la mode de Caen_.  He spelt them later for the committee.  We
generally spell Caen as Cannes, but anyway it is close to Marseilles.
Des Rois certainly got us going by telling about eating _bouillabaisse_
and drinking the real Marseilles wine _pisco_, and then driving out
along the Corniche Road overlooking the Mediterranean.  He said he
would arrange a dinner like that, that would take us right to
Marseilles.

Then, of course, there was suggested a Mexican dinner--_chile con
carne_ with hot _tamales_--and a Bengal dinner with mangoes and curried
duck--in fact I can't remember them all--and, of course, the Hungarian
_Goulash_, that I mentioned before; that came last, and that we had
last Tuesday.  I was sick Wednesday.

We limited the club to a membership of twenty--we had to limit it or
we'd have had all the city in--and invented for it the happy name of
the _Dinner Club_, to mean that it was just a club for dining.  Other
names were suggested.  One of the crowd, a man called Woodenbean, who
lectures in Greek in the Faculty here, wanted to give it a Greek name.
_Hoi_ something.  _Hoi Pants_ something.  I can't quite get it, but he
said it was a delightfully witty name.  I am sure it was.

      *      *      *      *      *

Looking back on the _Dinner Club_ now that it is all over, upon my word
I find it hard to see why it failed--or I won't say failed--I mean came
to an end.  I am inclined to think that it was a case of hard luck; so
many little things went wrong with it.  For instance, on the day we
began--it was in November--the weather was all wrong.  Just one of
those quiet clear days with a blue sky, no snow, hardly a breath of
wind--nothing to buffet.  Some of us had met at the town club at four
to walk out with heavy coats and big sticks, but it seemed silly to
start out like that--still broad daylight in the middle of the
afternoon--to hoof it for three hours, when you could go out in a taxi
in twenty minutes.  So we just sat around the club and had a few drinks
and talked--mostly about Mr. Roosevelt--and then went out in a couple
of taxis.  We found that practically all the other members had come the
same way, the weather being no good for walking, but they all had big
rough coats on and carried thick heavy sticks, which gave the thing a
kind of touch.  The only one who had walked was Watergrass and he
looked pretty tuckered out, and fed up with being the only one.

So that was the start, not quite in the right key.  And it made things
a little worse when one of the members--it was Macpherson Stewart, who
hadn't ever seen _The Old Cow-stable_ before--as soon as he came in,
said, 'Phew!'--like that--'Phew.'  Somebody said, 'Well, Cluny, you
can't expect to cook a New England dinner and not have a certain smell
of cooking,' and he said, 'Oh! it's not the England dinner!  Oh, no,
phew!'  Of course, the idea was ridiculous.  The whole place had been
renovated, with a beautiful hardwood floor and an open fire-place.  I
admit that in the little sort of partitioned-off place in the corner
where we put our hats and coats, you might notice something--but not
really anything.  And for the matter of that over in Scotland I've been
in places like Edinburgh Castle and Carlyle's Cottage that were
something awful!  Anyway, Macpherson dropped out.

Still I think it was mistaken judgement to begin with a New England
dinner.  Those old colonial settlers, you've got to remember, were a
pretty tough lot, out of doors in the open air all day, and, of course,
they'd never been really used to anything; and they hadn't had four
cocktails before they sat down.  And I hadn't realized before what it
meant cooking all the stuff in one big pot; it all comes out, meat and
cabbage and vegetables and bones, in one great wet _flop_!  I thought
of stuff I'd read about Indian dog feasts (that was the same time as
the Puritans, wasn't it?) and I couldn't eat it.  That was all about
it.  I couldn't.

Still I don't mean the evening was so bad.  All the twenty members were
on hand and there was such a lot of initial enthusiasm it was bound to
carry the thing through.  Watergrass kept dozing off to sleep from
having walked there, and Stewart, of course, was peeved, but on the
whole it went pretty well.  The conversation was good but not quite of
the kind that I'd been expecting.  There wasn't any architecture or
archaeology stuff.  We talked mostly about Mr. Roosevelt.  Merrill made
an analysis of him: it was certainly brilliant--I couldn't follow most
of it.  But the idea was to show that Roosevelt is a world force and,
if I got it right, should have been expected even if he hadn't turned
up.  We broke up about ten-thirty, with pretty good feeling all round,
and with everybody promising to be on deck two weeks later for the
Marseilles dinner that Des Rois was to arrange.

That, I will admit straight out, was a mistake--that _bouillabaisse_
stuff.  I don't say the Marseilles people don't eat it.  They're
fishermen and they're in sea air all the time and in sea air you can
eat anything.  But that stuff!  Did you ever see it?  And the thing
after it called _tripe  la mode de Caen_--it's French and means
'canned tripe'--of all the ghastly-looking mess!  Taste?  I've no
notion--I couldn't touch it.  One rather dirty thing was that Des Rois
didn't eat it.  He'd ordered an English mutton chop for himself.  I had
some cheese, all full of holes, and some figs--but, of course, I'm not
kicking at that--I ate when I got home.  The talk, though, was really
good.  Merrill got talking of Mr. Roosevelt and made an analysis of
him--a new one, it was two weeks since the other one--and that led us
to talk of a wide range of things like the New Deal and Mr. Roosevelt's
attitude to the courts and what Mr. Roosevelt would do with 'big
business'--in fact, we ranged all over the place.

One thing, though, bothered us, which we hadn't noticed so much the
first night--the seats.  You see, they had no backs to them.  _The Old
Cow-stable_ is all done up artistically with long narrow tables of
heavy old wood--the kind the monks used to eat at in the place called,
what was it?--the refractory, or the penitentiary, or
something--anyway, those narrow tables.  With tables of that sort the
seats have to be just long heavy benches with no backs: anything else
would be hopelessly inartistic.  But you sit on that thing for two
hours and a half and you'll see where you are.  With monks it was
different: they were looking for it.  But we weren't.  So that meant we
broke up about nine-fifteen: and as a matter of fact, three or four of
the men--I mean apart from Watergrass and Cluny Stewart--hadn't turned
up at all.

But the next meeting wasn't so bad.  That Mexican stuff, if you only
take a little of it, is _good_.  A little of that hot _chili-tobasco_
stuff on a little edge of bread is all right and helps you to wash a
drink down.  I guess the Mexicans eat it all right; they would.  But
you see, at a dinner club you don't really need much to _eat_--that is
not the idea--it's a way of bringing fellows together and then they can
go off and get something to eat elsewhere later.  So we just sat around
and had smokes and drinks, and dipped bits of toast in the _chile con
carne_.  The talk was all right, too.  We were discussing Mr.
Roosevelt, and some of the fellows were saying that he really
represented a sort of world force--well, you know, that we have to put
up with him.  We broke up at eight-thirty and got back into town in
time for a bite at the club--just a snack of cold lobster or something.
But I was sorry to see that there were only thirteen present--and even
at that several fellows offered to drop out so as to break the hoodoo
of thirteen.  In fact three went.

The Hungarian dinner was the last, so there's no use in getting mad
about it.  That stuff, that _Goulash_, is just poison!  And anyway how
can you eat--I mean men of our age, we're all around forty to fifty--if
you're not getting any exercise, and are sitting around drinking
cocktails?  You _can't_ eat!  I just hated the idea as I felt that
Hungarian dinner getting nearer, that _Goulash_, I mean!  You don't
know how the notion gets you when you belong to a dinner club that
you've _got_ to eat!  Eat?  Who wants to eat?  I heard after though I
didn't know it at the time that one or two members were knocked right
out, knocked flat, after that _Goulash_!  They were crazy enough to eat
it.  And that sour Hungarian wine--_Magyak-Buda_--ugh!  The Hungarians
after all--as somebody said after dinner--are not a civilized people:
we were discussing Mr. Roosevelt and that had led up to the idea of
civilization.  Look at their government! or for the matter of fact,
their religion--I don't mean I know what they are; I mean that the
fellow who had eaten the _Goulash_ said, look at them!

Anyway, the _Goulash_ dinner ended it.  We all knew it at the time.
One of the members who had been in India and knew a cousin of
Kipling's, was supposed to be getting up a Bengal dinner--curried duck
with mangoes.  But he says he can't get any mangoes.  That's all right.
We understand.  The Club is over.

      *      *      *      *      *

And yet, isn't human nature queer!  Within a few months, or a year,
they'll be calling it the 'good old Dinner Club'--and talking about the
dinners of _chile con carne_ and _bouillabaisse_ with the wonderful
talk about Mr. Roosevelt.




HOW TEACHERS SWIM

When I was teaching at Upper Canada College, ever so many years ago,
some benefactor of the school endowed and equipped a big swimming tank
for the boys.  So the question arose of getting a swimming teacher.

At a masters' meeting the principal announced to us that he had found a
teacher.

'He seems,' he said, 'just the man for the job.  He's young and he's an
athletic-looking fellow, civil-spoken and with the best references.  He
has certificates for boxing, and several medals for gymnastics.  I
think he's just what we want.'

There was a general murmur of assent.  No one seemed inclined to offer
any objection.  But the principal, an honourable man, had an
afterthought in his mind and felt that he had to mention it.

'There's only one possible objection to this young man,' he added, 'he
has never--he doesn't know--that is, _he can't swim_.'

There was a momentary sensation but not much.  We were all experienced
teachers.  We knew how little that mattered.

The young man was engaged and some of the boys taught him to swim and
he turned out a huge success...

As a matter of fact there is an educational principle involved in that.
You can teach best a thing that you don't know.  That is, you're
learning it yourself.

I remember a similar instance at the same school when I was the senior
master and made the timetable.  One of my colleagues came to me and
said, 'I wish you could arrange to put me down to teach German to the
lower commercial.'

'I didn't know that you knew German,' I said.

'I don't,' he answered, 'that's just it.  I studied it a little, years
ago, but I've forgotten it all completely.'

'All right,' I said, and I arranged it.  It worked fine.  There were
two or three German-speaking boys from Berlin, Ontario, in the class
and they told him the pronunciation.  He moved with them next year to a
higher class and kept nearly even with them till matriculation.




IV

HOW TO LOSE MONEY

(FOR AMATEURS)

We may define business in a broad, general way as the art of losing
money.  This is only a rough-and-ready definition to which numerous
exceptions will be found.

Indeed, very often business, even if losing a certain amount of money,
is carried on for other reasons.  As one of my big business friends
said to me the other day, 'What else can I do?'  Many of my business
friends--the big ones--ask me that: what else can they do?  I don't
know what else they can do.

Or very often a business connection is of such long standing, of
generations, perhaps, that it is difficult to stop.  I am thinking here
of my friend Sir John Overwarp, the big thread man.  Sir John is the
senior partner of Overwarp, Underwarp, and Shuttle.  In fact he _is_
Overwarp, Underwarp, and Shuttle.  They are probably the biggest thread
people in the world.  They are _the_ thread people.  They have works in
Sheffield, Bradfield, Oldfield--in short, they have so many works they
don't know where they are.

Well, the other day Sir John said to me (he speaks to me): 'We've been
in thread now for five generations.  I don't know how I could get out
of it.'  After five generations in thread you get all tangled up in it.
Somebody told me that Sir John's shareholders are going to let him out.
It'll be nice of them if they do.

But business habit is business habit.  I knew a man, one of the McDuffs
of Duff (they came from Duff), who had been in Scotch whiskey, and in
nothing else, for years and years.  He had travelled round the world in
it four times.  It seemed to follow him.  You could notice it.

Then there's the sense of responsibility--I mean, responsibility to
other people.  I know quite well the French financier, the Baron de
Citrouille (it is pronounced _Citrouille_), who brought a great
quantity of French money out to America, and lost it here.  He couldn't
have lost the half of it in France, but here he was able to do what is
called 'spread his loss.'  Some of the big men can spread their loss
over half the continent.

But these, of course, _are_ the big men--what are called the captains
of industry.  It is not wise to try to begin with discussing such
large-scale operations as theirs.  It might give the beginner a sense
of despair.  Some of these men are known to lose a million dollars a
day.  The business beginner asks, 'Can I do that?'  I answer, 'Not yet,
but you can learn.'

One has to realize that these are selected men winnowed out, as it
were, from the crowd; they are men who probably had even at the
beginning a flair for business and kept on getting more and more flair.
The word flair is French.  It is pronounced flair and means in a
general way more or less what we call in English a flair.

These big men, indeed, are distinguished not so much by what they do as
by what they can't do or won't do.  I once knew (I knew him only once)
Sir Humphrey Dumphrey, the big electrical man: he was probably the
biggest electrical man in Europe, except perhaps the Italians Nitti and
Dotti.  Sir Humphrey said to me: 'Look at me.  I can't do fractions.'
I looked at him.  He couldn't do them.

Or take Sir Hamstein Gorfinkel, the great British financier.  He said
he couldn't recite the Lord's Prayer: couldn't or wouldn't.

But these men are in a class by themselves.

When I say I want to talk about business and how money can be lost,
even in a small way, I naturally wish to begin with simple things.
Young people just entering on life realize that if only they had money
now, even a moderate sum, they could find opportunities to lose it that
would never come later.

There are so many choices to be made, such a difficulty in selecting a
career, that young people need help.  'Should I live in the country?' a
young lady asked me at a reception.  'Yes,' I said, 'away in, as far as
you can get.'

'My son,' wrote an old friend, 'shows every disposition to be a
stock-broker.  What should I do about it?'

'Shoot him,' I answered.

One should start with some of the simpler ways of losing money, such as
chicken-raising, dry duck farming, keeping bees and wasps, along with
such things as horticulture and germicide.  Bigger things could come
later, such as how to build a transcontinental navy.  One must start
humbly.




V

THE FAMILIAR MAGIC OF FISHING

A PULLMAN CAR TRANSFORMED INTO A TROUT STREAM

They sat together in the smokers' end of a Pullman car.  They didn't
know one another.  They were strangers.  They weren't talking to one
another--why talk anyway?  A man always feels tough and only half alive
in the morning on a Pullman car--no need to make conversation with the
damn fool, so thought each of them.

Outside, the February snow blew against the windows.  One saw dim
outlines of trees, mostly spruce.  'Where are we?' said one of the men.
He said it half by accident.  He hadn't spoken for an hour.

'Just at the end of the bush country,' the other man answered.  'That's
Washago Junction.  I recognize it by that piece of bush.'

'You know this country?' said the first man.

'Oh, yes, I come up here fishing all the time.'

'Is that so?  ARE THERE FISH HERE?'

'Trout.'

'Trout, eh?' said the second man, trying to get his face close to the
pane so as to see the trout.  'There are trout streams here?'

He spoke almost reverently, as if in a church.

'Oh, yes, lots of them, all through here.  There are some little lakes
further in, but here it's mostly streams.'

'You fish with flies?'

'Well, you can all right where it's a little open but of course there's
a lot of it where the bush is so thick that you can't get room to cast.
I don't mind admitting it, when I can't get room to cast, I'll fish
with bait every time, with worms.'

'I'll say so!' said the other man.  'And mind you, there's a whole lot
more skill in fishing with worms than people think.  You get a place
where the stream takes a sharp turn right under a big log in the
water--say, for instance, there was a log over there...'  He pointed at
the other side of the little room.

'Yes,' said the listener.  He could see the log, too.  Being fishermen,
it was very clearly right there for both of them.

'--now, we'll say it's all thick brush--'

'Yes,' assented the other man; in fact, he could feel the brush all
round him.  He couldn't have moved his arm if he'd tried.

'--now, you see, you get your line on the bottom--there's apt to be a
little bit of hard sand or gravel in a place like this right in the
middle of the channel--and you reach out your line...'

The speaker sat forward in his chair till he was--or thought he was--on
his hands and knees.  The other man bent his back a little--(the brush
wouldn't let him bend much), and they were _both_ on their hands and
knees.

'--you get a good bait on your hook, the bigger the better, it travels
easier and won't catch, and you let it just--roll--roll--along with the
water....'

There was tense excitement in the little room.  Both men followed
breathlessly the rolling line....  'You'll never get snagged,' the
speaker continued, talking low, as trout are easily frightened, 'if you
let the line take its own way.  It'll go into the deepest hole--and
then, by George! you feel Mr. Trout take a snap at it, and out he
comes!'

He landed the trout right on the floor of the room, a perfect beauty
with white-edged fins and bright vermilion spots on the deep,
firm-fleshed sides.

      *      *      *      *      *

And with that the two men went on to discuss telescope rods and whether
the damn things really work, or whether one wouldn't rather have a
bamboo rod in little sections--you can put it all into your valise.
And then they talked of whether you can really make a cast with a rod
made in small sections, and the second man showed that you could by
making a cast right there in the car, of over sixty feet--and landed
another trout.

And the man who didn't know the Washago section said he came from West
Virginia, so the first man asked him if it wasn't too hot for trout
down there, but it seems not, or at least not up in the hills.  In
fact, the second man took the first man away up into the hills above
the Kenowsha and cooled him right off, and then fed him on trout with
West Virginia bacon that he cooked over a brush fire.

So that led to talk about how a _brown_ trout can stay in water up to
seventy degrees; but after all, is a brown trout any damn good anyway:
would you call it a _trout_ in the real sense? ... and for the matter
of that even a rainbow trout isn't in it with a straight speckled brook
trout: the colour may be all right, but for sport and for eating,
there's no comparison.

And incidentally they told one another who they were and the first man
said that he was in hardware and the second man, it seemed, was in
paper boxes; but they weren't really.  They were both in trout.

      *      *      *      *      *

And when the porter came to the door and said to one of them, 'Toronto,
sir, you change here!' they said good-bye like old friends.

And the first man said to the second man that if he ever got as far
down as Buckhannon, he must certainly take him to the Kenowsha; and the
second man said that if the first man ever got as far up as Toronto, he
must certainly take him up into the Washago country....

And each, when he got home, said to his wife, 'I met a hell of a nice
feller on the train coming down.'

And that's why fishermen's wives are never jealous of them when they
leave home.




VI

OVERWORKING THE ALPHABET

I admit that this is the age of brevity.  Our rapid life demands
condensed speech.  We have not enough leisure to talk like Daniel
Webster.  Even our words must be cut to the shortest limits.  We have
no time to say _telephone_ and _debutante_ and _cinematograph_ and
_automobile_.  Not at all: we _phone_ an invitation to the _cinema_,
and our _debs_ ride in _cars_ and _planes_.

But when it comes to cutting out words altogether and falling back on
letters, it is time to ask where we are 'at.'  I mean is it really O.K.
to talk about the C.I.O.?  And if the C.I.O. joins with the A.F.L. does
the mixture become the C.A.I.F.O.L. or the A.C.F.I.L.O.?  Similarly, is
a man a D.F. if he finds that he can't remember what the O.G.P.U. is,
and whether it is in Spain or Russia?

Our grandfathers with their pioneer thoroughness knew nothing of this
haste.  If they founded a farmers' society they were willing to call it
the Oro Township Agricultural Autumn Fair and Flower Show Association,
and let it go at that.  The more often they said it the better they
liked it.

But nowadays three or more people no sooner get together in anything
than they fuse themselves with the alphabet.  A ladies' sewing circle
formed overnight appears as an L.S.C. in the morning.  If the Junior
Pygmies of equatorial Africa ever get organised, the Press will call
them J.P.E.A. next morning.

I think the Great War started it.  Before the War came we made use of
alphabet abbreviations but they were kept fairly within reason.  We
spoke of the U.S.A. and the Y.M.C.A. and with an effort of brain power
we could understand what the Y.W.C.A. ought to mean.

Before the War, business used the letters of the alphabet, but not too
much.  People signed I.O.U.'s or had to pay C.O.D., and business men
sent things F.O.B., though no one else knew what it meant.  Before the
War, teachers in the schools used to make use of A, B and C to work
arithmetic, and long ago, 200 years before Christ (B.J.C.), Euclid used
to sign his theorems Q.E.D. to mean that that was the end.  But the
letters were only used to give a touch of finality, just as on a
tombstone they put R.I.P., to mean that the man was dead and there was
no need to waste words on him.

In fiction, too, especially detective and comic fiction, letters were
used to give a touch of mystery, to indicate the unsolvable.  I mean, a
passage would run something like this:


_My friend X had taken the early train to Q where he met Miss M. on the
platform accompanied by her uncle, the Bishop of Asterisk, waiting,
apparently, to take the down train to H--._


All this excited in the reader's mind a queer suspicion that perhaps X
was not the man's name and that the bishop was not going to H--.


But beyond such usages the Alphabetical Contractions never extended
rill the Great War came and flooded us with them.  I think I can see
how the War started it.  In war time at the front if a man took full
time to say 'General Headquarters,' he might get shot before he
finished it, whereas if he said 'G.H.Q.' he still had a chance for his
life.  So when the soldiers came back, we heard them all talking in the
new alphabetical jargon about the G.H.Q. and the C.O. and who gave the
D.S.O. to a V.A.D.

Naturally, we started to imitate them and the thing spread till the
alphabet invaded all our Government and civil administration, then
overwhelmed all corporate business and labour organizations, and now
threatens to submerge private life.  The United States began it with
the N.R.A. (even before F.D.), and when we had learned that, lengthened
it to the N.R.A.A. and then hurried us on to the P.W.A. and its
fellows.  The only trouble is to remember what they all do for
everybody.  In an emergency, people can fall back on the F.E.R.A.; or
enjoy a cosy sense of security under the S.S.B.  There's a peculiar
protection against want in F.S.C.C., and a man who wants to break up
his home can do it under the F.H.I.B.B.

But many of us now find that we are losing our grip on what these
things mean, and when we hear that the Supreme Court has set aside the
P.D.Q. we don't know whether to get mad about it or not.  The spread of
the same thing across the field of labour has given us the A.F.L.--not
difficult if you remember F for federation--and the C.I.O. (not to be
confused with the one that means the high explosive).

If things are difficult at home on our own continent, think what they
must seem abroad.  Tell a foreigner that the allegiance of the United
States Navy is undermined by the Y.W.C.A. and he'll believe it.  Offer
to give to Hitler the order of a D.F. in the W.C.T.U. and he'll accept
it.  The use of the overworked alphabet is creating a sort of new
language.  We are getting so accustomed to it that things written out
in full look needlessly prolix.  If we want to keep our history alive,
it will have to be rewritten.  A new outline of history (O. of H.) will
contain an account of the American Revolution (the A.R.) as follows:


SIGNING OF THE D.O.I. AND THE BIRTH OF THE U.S.A.


The excitement over the S.A. and the B.T. (it means the Stamp Act and
the Boston Tea Party) soon led to open resistance (O.R.).  The battle
of B.H., outside of Boston, was followed by the appointment of G.W. as
C.I.C. of the C.A., and a congress of delegates (F.O.B. Philadelphia)
signed on July 4, 1776, the famous D.O.I., written by T.J.  The
stubborn K.O.E.--G.3--refused all conciliation, looking upon G.W. as
P.E. No. 1 of his Empire.  The war ended in a C.V. (complete victory)
at Yorktown, presently followed by the drawing up of the T.O.V. in
which G.3 recognized the I.O.U.S.A.  G.W. became the first P.U.S., and
was recognized in history as the F.O.H.C.


But I perceive as I go on thinking about it, that it is not only our
history but our English and American literature of the past that must
be revised to make it properly alphabetical.  Tennyson's _Charge of the
Light Brigade_--renamed as the C.L.B.--will read:

  _Half a league, half a league,
    Half a league onward!
  Into the V.O.D. rode the S.H._


Gray's immortal _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_--the E.C.C.--will
explain how the 'Curfew tolls the K.P.D.,' while 'the ploughman
homeward plods his W.W.'

It will reach its climax in the immortal stanza read aloud by General
Wolfe to his officers as their boat stole up the St. Lawrence in the
dusk of an autumn evening--the evening before the battle of the P.O.A.
The stanza, as revised, reads:


  _The B.O.H., the P.O.P.,
  And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
    Await alike the I.H.:
  The P.O.G. lead but to the capital G._


But one last despairing stand must be made to keep the alphabet of
private life.  Don't call your stoker 'my S.,' or your dearest friend
'my D.F.'  Invite your guests to a week-end cocktail party but not to a
W.E.C.P.  As you grow old let people call you a venerable old gentleman
but never a V.O.G., and when you die arrange for a private funeral, but
not a P.F.


  Stephen Leacock

  Self-appointed Secretary Anti-Alphabet Association
  (or better, S.A.S.A.A.A.)




VII

ON THE NEED FOR A QUIET COLLEGE

If somebody would give me about two dozen very old elm trees and about
fifty acres of wooded ground and lawn--not too near anywhere and not
too far from everywhere--I think I could set up a college that would
put all the big universities of to-day in the shade.  I am not saying
that it would be better.  But it would be different.

I would need a few buildings--but it doesn't take many--stone, if
possible--and a belfry, and a clock.  The clock wouldn't need to go; it
might be better if it didn't.  I would want some books--a few thousand
would do--and some apparatus.  But it's amazing how little apparatus is
needed for scientific work of the highest quality: in fact 'the higher
the fewer.'

      *      *      *      *      *

Most of all I should need a set of professors.  I would only need a
dozen of them--but they'd have to be real ones: disinterested men of
learning, who didn't even know they were disinterested.  And, mind you,
these professors of mine wouldn't sit in 'offices' dictating letters on
'cases' to stenographers, and only leaving their offices to go to
'committees' and 'conferences.'  There would be no 'offices' in my
college and no 'committees,' and my professors would have no time for
conferences, because the job they were on would need all eternity and
would never be finished.

My professors would never be findable at any fixed place except when
they were actually giving lectures.  Men of thought have no business in
an office.  Learning runs away from 'committees.'  There would be no
'check up' on the time of the professors; there would be no 'hire and
fire,' or 'judge by results' or standards or norms of work for them:
nor any fixed number of hours.

But on the other hand they would, if I got the ones I want, be well
worth their apparent irresponsibility: and when they lectured each one
would be, though he wouldn't know it, a magician--with such an interest
and absorption that those who listened would catch the infection of it,
and hurry from the lecture to the library, still warm with thought.

It must be understood that the work of professors is peculiar.  Few
professors, real ones, ever complete their work: what they give to the
world is fragments.  The rest remains.  Their contribution must be
added up, not measured singly.  Every professor has his 'life work' and
sometimes does it, and sometimes dies first.

I can recall--I say it by way of digression--one such, who was working
on Machiavelli.  When I first met him he had worked fourteen years.  He
worked in a large room covered a foot deep with Machiavelli--notes,
pamphlets, remains.  I asked him--it seemed a simple question--what he
thought of Machiavelli.  He shook his head.  He said it was too soon to
form an opinion.  Later--ten years later--he published his book,
_Machiavelli_.  One of the great continental reviews--of the really
great ones; you and I never hear of them: they have a circulation of
about 300--said his work was based on premature judgements.  He was
hurt, but he felt it was true.  He had rushed into print too soon.

Another such devoted himself--he began years ago--to the history of the
tariff.  He began in a quiet lull of tariff changes when for three or
four years public attention was elsewhere.  He brought his work up to
within a year or so of actual up-to-date completeness.  Then the tariff
began to move: two years later he was three years behind it.
Presently, though he worked hard, he was five years behind it.  The
tariff moved quicker than he did.  He has never caught it.  His only
hope now is that the tariff will move back towards free trade, and meet
him.

      *      *      *      *      *

Not that I mean to imply that my professors would be a pack of nuts or
freaks.  Not at all: their manners might be dreamy and their clothes
untidy but they'd be--they'd have to be--the most eminent men in their
subjects.  To get them would be the main effort of the college: to coax
them, buy them, if need be, to kidnap them.  Nothing counts beside
that.  A college is made of men--not by the size of buildings, number
of students and football records.  But no trustees know this, or, at
best, only catch a glimmer of it and lose it.  Within a generation all
the greatest books on the humanities would come from my college.

      *      *      *      *      *

The professors bring the students.  The students bring, unsought, the
benefactions.  The thing feeds itself like a flame in straw.  But it's
the men that count.  A college doesn't need students: it's the students
that need the college.

After twenty years my college would stand all alone.  There are little
colleges now but they ape bigness.  There are quiet colleges but they
try to be noisy.  There are colleges without big games but they boom
little ones.  Mine would seem the only one, because the chance is
there, wide open, and no one takes it.  After twenty years people will
drive in motor cars to see my college: and won't be let in.

      *      *      *      *      *

Round such a college there must be no thought of money.  Money ruins
life: I mean to have to think of it, to take account of it, to know
that it is there.  Men apart from money--men in an army, men on an
expedition of exploration, emerge to a new life.  Money is gone.  At
times and places whole classes thus lift up--or partly: as in older
countries like England the class called 'gentry' that once was.  These
people lived on land and money from the past--stolen, perhaps, five
hundred years ago--and so thought no more of it.  They couldn't earn
more, they didn't know how.  They kept what they had, or dropped out,
fell through a trestle bridge of social structure and were gone in the
stream.  This class, in America, we never had.  They grow rare
everywhere.  Perhaps we don't want them.  But they had the good luck
that in their lives money in the sense here meant, didn't enter.
Certain money limits circumscribed their life, but from day to day they
never thought of it.  A cow in a pasture, a fairly generous pasture,
doesn't know it's in.  It thinks it's outside.  So did they.

So I would have it in my college: students not rich and not poor--or
not using their wealth and not feeling their poverty, an equality as
unconscious as that where Evangeline lived....

Nor would their studies lead to, or aim at, or connect with wealth.
The so-called practical studies are all astray.  Real study, real
learning must, for the individual, be quite valueless or it loses its
value.  The proper studies for my college are history and literature,
and philosophy, and thought and poetry and speculation, in the pursuit
of which each shall repeat the eager search, the unending quest, of the
past.  Looking for one thing he shall find another.  Looking for
ultimate truth, which is unfindable, they will learn at least to
repudiate all that is false.

I leave out at one sweep great masses of stuff usually taught: all that
goes under such a name as a university faculty of commerce.  There is
no such thing.  The faculty of commerce is down at the docks, at Wall
Street, in the steel mills.  A 'degree' in commerce is a salary of ten
thousand a year.  Those who fail to pass, go to Atlanta--and stay
there.  Certain things in commerce are teachable--accountancy,
corporate organization, and the principles of embezzlement.  But that's
not a university.

Out goes economics--except as speculation: not a thing to teach in
instalments and propositions like geometry.  You _can't_ teach it.  No
one knows it.  It's the riddle of the Sphinx.  My graduates will be
just nicely fitted to think about it when they come out.  A first-year
girl studying economics is as wide of the mark as an old man studying
cosmetics.  The philosophical speculative analysis of our economic life
is the highest study of all--next to the riddle of our existence.  But
to cut it into classes and credits is a parody.  Out it goes.

Out--but to come back again--goes medicine.  Medicine is a great
reality: it belongs in a _school_ not a college.  My college fits
people to study medicine--study it in crowded cities among gas-lights
and ambulances and hospitals and human suffering--and keeps their souls
alive while they do it.  Then later, as trained men in the noblest
profession in the world, the atmosphere of the college which they
imbibed among my elm trees, grows about them again.  The last word in
cultivation is, and always has been, the cultivated 'medicine man.'

The engineers?--that's different.  Theirs is the most 'manly' of all
the professions--among water power and gold mines and throwing bridges
half a mile at a throw.  But it's a _school_ that trains them, not a
college.  They go to my college but they don't like it.  They say it's
too damn dreamy.  So they kick out of it into engineering.  For a time
they remember the Latin third declension.  Presently they forget it.
Doctors grow cultivated as they grow older.  Engineers get rougher and
rougher.

      *      *      *      *      *

What I mean is that our studies have drifted away, away from the
single-minded absorption of learning.  Our students of to-day live in a
whirl and clatter of 'student activities.'  They have, in any large
college, at least a hundred organizations and societies.  They are 'all
up!' for this to-day and 'all out!' for that to-morrow.  Life is a
continuous rally! a rah, rah! a parade!  They play no games: they use
teams for that.  But exercise, and air, is their life.  They _root_, in
an organized hysteria--a code of signals telling them what to feel.
They root, they rush, they organize, they play politics, run
newspapers--and when they step from college into life, they fit it
absolutely, having lived already.

No one is denying here what fine men and women college makes,
physically and mentally alert.  Any one of them could operate a lift
the day he steps out of college.

But there's something wanting--do they _think_, or is there anything
after all to think about?--and yet, surely, in the long run the world
has lived on its speculative minds--or hasn't it?

Some who think, or course, there must be.  You can't submerge humanity
in two generations.  But mostly, I believe, the little poets fade out
on their first-year benches, and the wistful intelligence learns to say
'_Rah!  Rah!_' and is lost.

Not so in my college.  There will be no newspaper, except a last week's
paper from the back counties of New England.  There will be no politics
because there will be no offices to run for.  My students will control
nothing.  The whole movement of student control is a mistake.  They're
so busy controlling that they're not students.

They shall play games all they want to, but as games, not as a
profession, not as college advertising--and no gate receipts.  Till
only a few years ago the country that taught the world its games played
them as apart from money--as far apart as sheer necessity allowed.  If
Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton (it wasn't really: it
was won in Belgium), there was at least no stadium at two dollars a
seat.

One asks, perhaps, about the endowments, about the benefactors of my
ideal college.  The benefactors are all dead: or at least they must act
as if they were.  Years ago on the prairies many authorities claimed
that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.  It may not have been
true.  But it is certainly true that the best college benefactor is a
dead one.  After all, the reward in the long run is his--those
sculptured letters graven in the stone, 'To the greater glory of God
and in memory of Johannes Smith'--that, in a college among elm
trees--that's worth a lifetime of gifts--given and given gladly.  Such
things should best be graven in Latin.  In my college they will
be--Latin and lots of it, all over the place, with the mystic
conspiracy of pretence, the wholesome humbug, that those who see it
know what it means.  Latin lasts.  English seems to alter every
thousand years or so.  It's like the tariff that I named above--too
mobile for academic use.

      *      *      *      *      *

As with the benefactors, so with the managing trustees who look after
the money and never lose it.  Not dead, these, but very silent: solid
men who don't need to talk and don't, but who can invest a million
dollars over three depressions, and there it still is, like gold in a
pot in the pyramids.  You find them chiefly in New England--at least I
seem to have seen them there more than anywhere else.  They are at the
head of huge investment businesses, so big that you never hear of them.
Mostly, if they don't talk, it means that they are thinking where to
place fifty million dollars.  You see, they hate to break it.

      *      *      *      *      *

And women?  The arrangements in my college for the women students, and
the women's dormitories?  Oh no--no, thank you.  There aren't any
women.  Co-education is a wonderful thing for women: college girls
under co-education leave college more fit to leave college than any
others.  College girls are better companions, better wives (as your own
or as someone else's) than any others.  It's the women who have made
our college life the bright happy thing it is--too bright, too happy.

But men can't _study_ when women are around.  And it's not only the
students.  If I let the women in, they get round some of my dusty old
professors, and marry them--and good-bye to Machiavelli, and the higher
thought.




REMOVAL PROBLEM SOLVED

Having retired from the service of McGill University, I was invited a
little while ago to go out and join the staff of the University of
British Columbia.

News of the invitation appeared in the papers and the manager of a
removal company called me up by telephone and said:

'Mr. Leacock, we understand that you are making a move to British
Columbia.  Now you just leave it to us and we'll arrange to move you
the whole way out there.'

I answered, 'Oh, no, I'm not going.  When I move next it will be much
further than that.'

'All right,' he said, 'we'll take you.  Where is it?'

'Eternity,' I answered.  I thought I had him floored, but not at all.
He came back, almost instantly:

'All right.  You leave that to us.'

I am still wondering just what he meant.  Wonderful thing a removal
van, isn't it?




VIII

TURN BACK THE CLOCK

OR, AT LEAST, MAKE IT SLOWER

All of us who are old look back with a sort of wistful admiration to
the education that we received long ago--so different from the
education of to-day.  I remember many years ago, when I was a junior
professor at McGill University, meeting an elderly Scottish divine who
questioned me about the nature of our curriculum.  He was horrified to
find that the students were actually allowed a certain amount of
choice, or election, in making up the programme of their studies.
'When I was at Edinburgh,' he said, shaking his head, 'the whole of the
studies were absolutely compulsory.'  With that he shuffled off,
smacking his lips over the word _compulsory_, and musing, no doubt, on
the degeneracy of the time.

A similar point of view, as I have mentioned in another connection, was
expressed once in a discussion at my club about education, involving
the topic of the classics.  A scholarly English visitor to the club, a
bishop, said very emphatically--'Well, all I can say is that I regard
Greek as having practically made me what I am.'  There was a silence,
and then an American present said, 'Exactly!'  But the bishop didn't
see it--one of the advantages, no doubt, of learning Greek.

Such views of our own past education belong, I do not doubt, to the
illusions of retrospect.  They have all the soft colour and mellow
tints that surround the 'good old times,' and the 'old school' and
reach away back to the distant past of 'Merrie England' and the 'brave
days of old.'  The pain and distress dies out of our human record as we
look back on it.

But even if we grant that modern education has in the main meant
progress, we may still note many things of value that have somehow been
dropped by the way--and the faster the pace of progress the larger the
likelihood of such losses.  One grants, I said, the progress, the
improvement.  The 'little red school house' of sixty years ago, taken
as a reality, looks but a poor structure, ill-lighted and unventilated
beside the 'academy' of to-day--its windows all to the sun, its rooms
as neat and bright as day, its wide corridors decorated with the framed
pictures of great men.  In it is its teacher, as highly certified and
as guaranteed as a patent pump, and at his command a whole battery of
instruction by radio and screen, and loud speaker, with apparatus to
illustrate everything so clearly as to obviate all thought.

More than that.  The new teacher is very different from the old
'dominie' and the bye-gone 'school-marm,' in that he is a 'pedagogue'
with a pedagogical certificate to prove it.  He knows the principles of
education, whereas sixty years ago none of us dreamed that there were
any.  He knows that education must proceed from the known to the
unknown and from the concrete to the abstract.  He knows, or he thinks
he knows, that learning things is of no value unless you clearly
understand what they mean: otherwise your knowledge is just that of a
parrot.  He does not realize that the bishop and I--I mean the bishop
of whom I just spoke--having been very largely trained as 'parrots'
along with a whole generation of other young parrots, would regret very
much to admit that there is absolutely nothing in the bird at all.

      *      *      *      *      *

The field that is suggested is so wide--this problem as to what our
rational education may have lost in becoming so--that one can do no
more than skirt its outline, or indicate one or two of the eminences or
depressions of its landscape that seem of peculiar significance.  Here
is one broad feature of the prospect--the element of hardship, of
compulsion, of disagreeableness.  Modern education has set itself to
make its processes attractive, to substitute the element of spontaneous
interest for the element of compulsion by force.  Learning at the point
of a stick, corporal punishment, and learning under the threat of
detention--the school-world equivalent of the gallows and the jail--are
out of fashion now.  It is the idea of our education that learning must
be free and happy, carrying its own interest, and at least relying more
on rewards than on punishments.  Seen thus the interest of each bright
little school building becomes for the child a vision of what the world
might be, could we so order it; and above all, for the children of
poverty, some little taste of the warmth and amenity of life.

These tendencies and these ideas must in the main be true.  I may say,
indeed, that I am sure they are, for I can look back over sixty-four
years of school and college classrooms and I have seen the change.  I
recall that when I first went to school in England, as a child of four,
there had newly come into use a little text called _Reading Without
Tears_.  Observe the revolutionary title.  Older people shook their
heads at it.  Till then, the tears that fell upon the page softened it
to its value.  The Beth-el of education was built of the stone blocks
of hardship.  The steeper the road to Parnassus the more was the body
fortified in climbing it.

We are at too great pains now to make our education easy, at too great
pains to avoid sustained hardship.  We prefer to give to the children
the pretty little mechanical fancies that belong to the nursery in
place of tears.  Our text-books multiply the devices of ease--the
little rsum that replaces the ensemble, the quick and easy
'selection' that reduces a poem to a verse and a stanza to a line; the
total omission of factors that seem 'too difficult,' such as the
'quantities' of Latin words.  In place of Plato, students study a
'Plato-made-easy'--by ceasing to be Plato.  I know of a great
university--I won't name it; it begins with an 'M'--which gave up first
year physics as a compulsory subject because 'the girls couldn't learn
it.'

Every foot of this ground, of course, is uncertain with doubt, and
undermined with controversy.  But I incline to think that we overdo now
the elements that were of such high value when they came as over-needed
innovations.  The point is that our new mechanical environment--radio,
motion pictures, the voices in the air and the figures on the
screen--make presentation so direct, so easy, so physical that they
tend to put the human imagination to sleep.  The sheer rapidity of them
precludes depth; the multiplicity of them defies memory.  There are no
'indelible impressions' left.

To the child of fifty years ago the world of books was one of intense
imaginative creations--the work of its own responsive mind.  What child
could forget its conjured vision of Robinson Crusoe bending over the
yellow sand that bore the imprint of Friday's foot?  What reader of
_Tom Sawyer_ could forget the gloomy horror of the great cave--with
Indian Joe walled up in it--the great cave of which he himself--his own
imagination--was, under Mark Twain's guidance--the sole architect?  All
of our pictured world was ours.  But compare with it the typical modern
child of the cities, lolling at his movies, saturated and
unsurprisable, impervious, after the age of about ten, to further
impressions of scenery, an expert in murder, a cynic on women--for whom
all the world's masterpieces have been done over into flickered
sensationalism.

What such a child needs when he goes to school is not the primrose path
of ease, the escalator to Parnassus, but a touch of the good old hard
stuff such as the bishop and I got, and the Edinburgh divine.  If he
doesn't, there will soon be no more men left like us, and that would be
too bad.




QUALITY DOES IT

A man who had served in the War once said to me--'Your books were just
a godsend to us in the hospital!'

I thanked him.

He then added--'You see, in the shape we were in, we could only read
rot.'

      *      *      *      *      *

A parallel compliment was once paid to me years ago, by that charming
and courtly scholar, Dr. B----t W----l, of Harvard.  He himself moved
on such an exalted plane of English literature that it was difficult
for him to descend to the level of a mere writer of burlesque and such
nonsense.  But he did his best, when I was introduced to him, to
recognize my merit.

'I'm so glad to meet you,' he said, as he shook hands, 'my children
love your books.'

'And my mother,' I answered enthusiastically, 'is just crazy over
yours.'




IX

COME OUT INTO THE GARDEN

PART ONE: A MEMORY OF SPRING

No, don't trouble me with the afternoon newspaper.  I've no time to
read it.  I want to get out into the garden and get in some good licks
before it gets too dark.  You say the news from Czecho-Slovakia looks
pretty ominous, eh?  Well, let it.  You tell me that the Czechs will
very likely declare war against the Latts?  Did you say the Latts or
the Slatts?  I mix these people up.  But it doesn't matter, I want to
hustle out into the garden.  Wait till I tie these trousers up: no, I
never use braces in the garden; just trousers like these tied up with
an old necktie.

You just sit there, Bill, and take a drink while I finish getting
ready; there's soda just near you on that tray....  And light your
pipe, and then come out with me to the garden and you can get a smoke
out there while I work.

Yes, this is my garden suit.  No, I didn't _buy_ it.  You can't _buy_
suits like this.  Oh, I know that makers advertise what they call
garden suits but they're not the real thing.  You see this suit was
originally made much too large by mistake, so I didn't care to wear it
and then by accident the moths got at it--not much, I don't mean they
really hurt it--and then when it was out on a clothes line someone put
a charge of bird-shot through it, and so I thought I would just keep it
for the garden.  See the way it sets behind--look--you see when you're
working on your hands and knees a suit gets bulged like that, in the
seat, I mean, and at the knees.  There's no waistcoat, of course, just
a loose shirt.  Now if you get that suit on and then take the coat off,
why, there you are!  Get right down on your hands and knees and you can
move!  You're free, you don't choke.

Say, don't fidget with that darned newspaper, Bill.  You say it looks
as if Che-Foo would have to fall?  Fall where?  Oh, Che-Foo in
China--going to fall, eh?  Too bad.  Mind you the Chinese are darned
good gardeners.  Did you ever hear of the way they plant seeds?  I'm
trying it out this year.  They crumble earth up between their fingers,
fine, ever so fine, and keep crumbling it till it's like dust, and put
the seeds into that.  I heard about that last winter, one night at a
banquet.  I sat next a man who was a Ph.D.--no a D.D., or a
D.D.F.--anyway he'd been a college missionary in China--seemed dumb as
a nut, till he got talking about how to grow cucumbers, and then he was
fine and told me about how the Chinese plant seeds and all about bird
manure.  These missionaries learn a lot, eh--I guess we ought to
support them.

There, I'm ready.  Finish your drink and leave your paper there--all
right, stick it in your pocket, if you like.  Now, we'll go out through
the kitchen and by the back door, if you don't mind, and into the
garden....  You might just pick up that spade, if you will, and I'll
take this hoe....  I'll hold the door for you....  Oh, thanks.

Now, this little space you see behind the kitchen, I fenced off so as
to have it for a sort of yard for drying clothes, and that sort of
thing, and then I ran the hedge and fence across to separate off the
rest of the ground as a garden.  This hedge--of course it doesn't show
to much advantage yet as the leaves are only starting to bud--this
hedge is quick-set, or quick-something, I forget what.  I put it in
five years ago; it hasn't come along very fast, but when it
_does_--it'll reach high up overhead--away up as high as my hand or
higher--fine, isn't it?

Just excuse me a minute, this darn gate doesn't seem to be working this
spring--you have to pick it up and lift it.  There!  I've been meaning
to fix up a patent rig so that the gate would pull open and then shut
of itself.  I thought it out one day in church last winter.

Now, there we are!  Quite a lay-out, isn't it?  I forget how many feet
this way and how many that.  But, of course, at this time of year,
before the leaves are out, it doesn't look so large.  The first
evening--five nights ago when I started work--Gee! it looked small.
But it's getting bigger now.  And, you see, later on you don't see the
other premises at all.  All those bushes are right out in leaf, and the
apple tree at the end--you wait and see it in blossom in June--in fact,
the whole place is literally what you'd call a bower.  And I always put
a heavy row of sunflowers across that end!--just what you'd call a
blaze of colour.  But hold on now, sling down that spade and you sit
down on this rustic bench and light up a pipe and just make yourself
easy.  I made the bench myself--I like making things like that--solid
and heavy, no pretence at art, but--oh, say, I'm sorry--you're not
hurt?--it's that darn end leg.  It did that last spring, too.  Wait, I
know how to fix it in a minute; or, all right, sit at the other end,
it's as solid as anything.

Now, you light up your pipe and be comfortable and I'll just smoke a
cigarette while I sort out some seeds before I get to work--no, no, you
keep the bench, I'll just turn this box up and sit on it....  There!

Do I do all the garden myself?  Oh, yes! there isn't any fun in it if
you don't do it yourself.  That's the whole idea of gardening.  _Dig_
it?  No, I didn't _dig_ it.  That's pretty darn heavy work.  Every
spring I get a man to dig it.  Of course everybody finds that there are
different things round a house you have to get a man for.  I tried last
week fixing the tap in the kitchen sink but I had to get a man; and for
the electric stuff, it's always best to get a man, and for anything
round a garage you need a man--in fact, for anything, don't you know,
that's a little complicated or needs brain, it pays to get a man.  So
you see even round a garden, for a thing like heavy digging--it's
really back-breaking work--I get a man.  He's a queer old character,
old William, sort of crooked-backed old fellow, I don't know how old he
is--but you should see him dig!  He's not round here to-night or I'd
show him to you.  I suppose old fellows like that they just don't mind
digging, eh?  Anyway I get him to come and do the digging, and then a
boy for the weeding--it's mean work, you need a boy for it--and perhaps
now and then I get a woman in to do the picking--you know, gooseberries
and currants--and things like that.  It's tiresome work--you need a
woman for it.  But beyond that I do the whole thing myself: especially
the planning.  You see in a garden there's a whole lot of planning to
do; where everything is to go and a sort of timing and rotation.  I
made out a whole card of it one night last winter but I can't find it.
I made it out one evening during a show given by our Repertory Theatre
Company--ever see them?--they're great!  I took nearly the whole
evening to do it, on the back of the programme, and I put it in my
dinner-jacket pocket, and I forgot it and I suppose it got thrown away.
Anyway, I know it pretty well.

Now these seeds--look at the packet--see these are _Bordigiana_!
They're for flowers all along the path (to make a border) and they come
out in those beautiful masses of dense flowers low and close to the
ground--no, I never grew them before, never heard of them till a fellow
told me about them one day last winter at a funeral--but look what it
says--'form a heavy border of deep _calceolaria_'--what the hell is it?
Latin, perhaps--anyway you can see the effect.  It explains, see, that
you make a sort of little trench by pulling out all the
stones--William's doing it to-morrow--and that's where they go.  So I
have to get this packet out marked ready, as you see, with a label
_Bordigiana_, and such and such a date--that's to-morrow--he'll put
them in then--and that's what you call system.

I wonder if you'd like some kind of a cool drink, eh! perhaps something
with a stick in it?  You take these packets of seed, if you don't mind,
and mark the date on each--no, not to-night, to-morrow: I'll let the
old fellow plant them; he'll be flattered to death.  And I'll just go
back into the house and fetch out something to drink.  Just a second....

      *      *      *      *      *

Now, I'll put the glasses and the bottle on this rustic table--neat,
isn't it?  Solid but sort of artistic too--I made it myself--stop,
steady!  I'm afraid the damn thing's a little shaky.  You don't mind if
I set the stuff on the ground?  There!  Ice in it, or not?  Say when!
Right! ...  You see, I always feel when I get out for an evening's
gardening, there's nothing like an odd drink, just to keep a man from
feeling tired: and anyway it's nice to have it here out of doors in the
evening, among all the foliage, or where it's going to be--I just love
nature, don't you?--Here's luck!

Now let me just have half a smoke and explain to you the layout.  You
see it's partly flowers and partly vegetables!  Do I grow vegetables!
Well, I should say so.  You see that's the mistake made by so many
fellows--amateurs, I mean--to think that gardening means only flowers!
Not at all, there's a fascination about growing vegetables--I mean
really fine prize stuff.  I had some lettuce here last year that I wish
you could have seen: great big heads of it--I was so proud of them I
took two of them over to my grocer, perfect beauties--he gave me five
cents each for them--and took two more next day.  Well, you might say
that that was just partly because I have a big account there, but all
the same that kind of thing mounts up.  Last season I took him over a
cucumber, a perfect prize, I never saw anything like it--he gave me
fifteen cents for it--and said that any year I had another like it,
he'd be glad to take it.  And early peas--very often, in fact, only
four or five years ago, I had a whole basket of the earliest in town--I
sold them to our club: you may have eaten some of them--forty cents,
thank you, for that one little transaction!  So you see that kind of
thing keeps adding up.  It all cuts down your overhead.

But mind you, _mainly_ I grow vegetables just for the pride and beauty
of it.  You see that flat patch over there, all smooth, just
planted--well, those are early peas, English marrowfat peas--unless
William forgot to put them in this morning.  I never saw them before, I
never heard of them till a man told me about them at a board meeting
last winter.  Here's the packet I took them from to give them to
William: I wanted to keep the picture.  Aren't they lovely?

See what it says--'English marrow peas, full-podded variety, reach a
height of five to six feet, carrying pods eight to ten inches in
length!'  Get that!  Now those peas by July, they come on early, will
just fill that space up so that you can't see over them.  Just wait
till July.  I'll grow them on high sticks--it's a lot of trouble but I
don't mind it.  I'll get the boy--the kid that does the weeding--to go
and cut a lot of brush--I'll tell him just the kind of brush to cut,
and there you are!

Of course, I admit that vegetables would be nothing without flowers
mixed in.  I always have them here in borders or patches: right over
there along the side I had a patch of nasturtiums.  You ought to be
here in July to see them, just a blaze of colour! and down that way a
line of dahlias.  You ought to see them in August.  You just wait till
August!...

Sweet-peas, you say?  Well, no, I never had any luck with them.  The
damn things don't ever seem to come up.  I've tried again and again.
But I'm going to have another go at them.  A friend of mine was telling
me about them one day last January.  It was up at the college at the
inauguration of the new president--I think I saw you there--and the
president made his inaugural address, you remember?--fine, wasn't it?
I call it masterly--and we were right away at the back of the hall--and
my friend was telling me about sweet-peas.  It seems you make a deep
trench--oh, just as deep as you can--and then put in a base of old
rotten manure--and then some earth, and more manure as rotten as you
can get it--the real stuff--and then the sweet-peas!  And will they
grow!  Five feet is nothing! and blossoms as big as saucers.  You wait
till about the end of August and you'll see!  I'll have a centre line
of them right across the garden.  Oh, I'm going to go right at it!  No
half measures--I'll have William dig that trench right slap across the
garden from side to side.  If you garden at all you've got to be
thorough about it.

Ah, here's William now!  Isn't he a queer-looking bird?  No, he's not
so old, not seventy or only just.  That's his own shovel he's got over
his shoulder--a shovel with a long handle.  These old birds never dig
with a spade, always with a long shovel--excuse me; I'll just call to
him a minute--William, you might just be getting that patch ready for
the early corn where I showed you last night.  I'll be talking to my
friend here for a while.  You just go ahead, eh?  Where to make the
line?  Oh, just make it--make it--oh, I tell you--just make it where it
seems about all right, eh! all right.

Now, what about just another little tinkle of the ice, eh?  Isn't it
great out here in the garden on a night like this--so soft, eh?--and
yet the light seems to fade so soon, doesn't it--going already--thanks,
that's plenty, whoa! stop!...  You were asking me do I grow asparagus?
No, I don't, I'm sorry to say.  I always mean to and I don't.  You see,
there are a lot of things like asparagus that you have to start last
year--or for asparagus itself, you have to start the year before last.
You lay down a bed the year before last and then let it grow its first
year untouched and even the last year only just trimmed, and the third
year, this year, there's your asparagus!  I was thinking only last
night that if I had started three years ago I could have had a good bed
all along the bottom side of the garden--that way--just under the
sunflowers--I mean, where the sunflowers will be--I showed you, you
remember.  But I'll get at it this year all right.  You have to make
the bed in August, and I think I'll hire old William for the whole of
August (I'll be away at the sea, myself), and I'll go right at it.

      *      *      *      *      *

What!  You say you have to leave?--no, no, don't go.  It's hardly dusk
yet.  I can work later.  Often I come out here and work when it's
practically dark, or sit and smoke on the bench.  Stay right on.  You
have to go round to the club.  Jack Conway there!  No! not old Jack who
was at college with us?  I haven't seen Jack for years.  Darn, I wish I
could go over!  You're going to have a game of poker, you say: but
then, I'd be one too many?  No?  Is that so?  I'd love to go over too.
Wait till I just call over to William--or no, to hell with William, let
him dig.  Come on.  Drink that up and we'll go into the house and I'll
get these darn-fool trousers off: it won't take a second....  No, no,
that's all right.  You didn't upset my gardening.  I'll be at it again
to-morrow--it's Saturday, and I'm planning a regular field day!  Old
William is to bring another old fellow like himself and I expect to
have them digging from right after lunch (my lunch) till dark.  It's an
exercise like that, I find, that keeps a man fit.  Come on!



PART TWO: A MEMORY OF AUTUMN

'Another year,' he said, 'I mean to get at it a little earlier in the
spring, so as to get the weeds out of it.'

We were standing looking at the autumn wreck of what he called his
garden.  It was a little angle of ground about so far this way and so
far that--you know how big--a quarter of an acre?  I guess so, or no,
not that much--well, just a garden.  The hedges and trees about it
must, I suppose, in the summer have made it look like a bower.  But now
the leaves were mostly fallen, or thin and yellow.  The wind whistled
through it.  Running across it were some ragged stalks of corn still
standing--the leaves--or whatever you call them--a faded brown with
streaks of mildew.  It all seemed pretty empty and forlorn.

'A snug spot, isn't it?' said my gardener friend.  Lord knows he didn't
seem to see the desolation of it.  To him it was the same little
embowered enchantment where he had worked on his hands and knees in the
long June twilight, his wife holding the trowel for him while he
planted--what was it?--oh, yes, the Dutch bulbs for a border, the ones
that grow six feet high--no, they didn't come up.  He thinks he planted
them too deep.

'Another year,' he said, 'I'll set them just almost on the surface.'
'Another year'--that's always the tenor of his and other gardeners'
talk.  'Another year!'  And each year they try again, and the garden
ends in weeds, and frost and wind, and little clumps of half-sized
beetroots under a mist of fox-grass, and a thick patch of long grass
that to their fond eye is still the strawberry bed, and still they say,
'Another year!'  Our human kind, so we read in the scripture, began in
a garden.  So we never want to leave it.  I have no doubt that Adam
said to Eve, 'Another year I'll try pruning the apple trees earlier.'

'These strawberries,' said my friend, pointing to what I saw as a patch
of grass and what he saw as a bed of strawberry plants with invisible
weeds, 'would have done better if we had kept the grass down.  I really
meant to cut the runners off and make a new bed, but I didn't get time.
Another year I certainly will.'

'Did you have any strawberries this year?' I asked.

'Oh, my!  Yes, lots, or well, at any rate, once or twice my wife and I
had a great bowl of them--all we could eat.'

I know just how much a loving wife can eat, or fail to eat, under those
circumstances.  She reaches repletion at a cost--if they bought the
strawberries--at about two cents.  But there's no use applying cost or
accounting to amateur gardening.  It won't stand it.

'Those beets,' began my friend.

'Which beets?' I asked.

'Here, you see them--just along past your feet in a row.  They go right
across the garden.'

Then I saw them, the half-withered tops above the fox-grass and the
roots, or bodies, or bottoms, or whatever you call them, just feebly
out of the ground.

'The beets,' continued the gardener, 'are a failure.'  It is
characteristic of amateur gardeners that they like at times to admit
failure in an offhand way.  It seems to indicate huge success elsewhere.

'I think,' he said, 'I gave them too heavy a dose of nitrate.'

'Nitrate' is the name of a white powder that my friend keeps in his
'garden house' (a little shed four by three at the corner of the lot).
I have noticed him often in the spring when the gardening is at its
height, and green bursting out everywhere, crawling along on his hands
and knees and dusting on nitrate.  If nothing else will kill the stuff,
that will.

But it seems that you don't need in such a garden to take steps to kill
_everything_.  The birds, it appears, will look after a lot of it.

'These were the peas,' he said, 'the birds got them.'  He pointed to a
sort of trellis work of lath sticks with fragments of dried yellow
vines, or leaves, clinging to them or even tied to them.  It must have
taken hours and hours to make that trellis.  But it has the effect, I
believe, of holding the peas down from growing.  All amateur gardeners
use it.

'Didn't you have any?' I asked.  'Oh, goodness, yes, we had one elegant
feed of them--all we could eat--and then a flock of birds cleaned them
out.  Another year I'm going to put a sort of cover over them, a kind
of movable net that I've invented.'

I have long since observed that my gardening friends live on
_invention_.  They never _make_ the things.  They just invent them,
mostly in winter time--as sorts of ingenious contrivances for automatic
watering, for bleaching celery, and spraying with nicotine where
nitrate couldn't reach.

'These beans,' said my friend, 'were fine.'  This time I didn't ask
which beans.  I knew there must be beans in the grass somewhere.

'The only trouble with beans,' he added, 'is that they get old so soon.'

It is a common trouble in life.  But I have often noticed its
application in the gardens of my gardening friends.  One day the beans
are too young to pick, and a day passes and they are too old to eat.
There is something about it, or like it, in the Epistle to the
Corinthians.  I think I've heard it at funerals.

A colder wind rustled through the little garden, shaking the leaves.

'Another year,' said my friend, 'I think I'll put in a cedar hedge.  It
will keep the garden warmer, either that, or a sort of movable fence in
sections, that I invented one day on the way to work.

The wind blew again, colder and with a fleck of rain in it.  The
branches shook as if in denial of the fence or hedge.

'Come into the house,' he said, 'it's a little cold here.'  'A little!'
I had been half frozen ever since we looked at the first empty hotbed.
'Come into the house,' he said, 'and I'll give you a Scotch and soda.'

We went into the house.  There was a flaming fire of crisp autumn
sticks burning in the grate.  It was warm and bright.  Glasses and a
decanter glittered on a tray.  The light shot back in amber streaks
from the whiskey in the decanter.

'Now then,' said my friend, 'a Scotch, eh?' as he moved to pour it out.

'Do you grow your own whiskey?' I asked.

'Good Heavens, no!' he laughed.  'What an idea!'




ALL NICE PEOPLE

The word 'landlord' generally carries a bad significance.  It seems to
mean a man eager and grasping for rent, and putting the screws on
delinquent tenants.  But the truth isn't always so.  There are
landlords and landlords.

I had a proof of this some years ago, one summer when I was house
hunting--visiting old houses and new houses, and going through
apartment buildings--brand-new, half-finished, or not finished at all.
Everybody who has done it knows how fatiguing it is.  There's no fun in
it.  But if you want to get what you want you have to go through with
it.

One hot summer evening I came across a new apartment building, just
about the type I was interested in.  It wasn't quite finished, at least
the lower part was pretty complete, but the top mostly ladders and
platforms.

It was getting towards dusk but there were a few carpenters or workmen
still around.  I asked where the landlord lived.

'He's right here,' they said, 'sitting over there.'  I went over to
him.  'I'd like to have a look over these apartments,' I said, 'if it's
not too late.'

'Not too late at all,' said the obliging man, rising and slipping on
his coat, 'not a bit too late.  You don't mind climbing one or two
ladders, do you?'

'Not a bit,' I answered.

'Now this,' he said, showing a ground floor apartment, 'is, I think, a
pretty good affair.  You've got an open fire in both the living-room
and the dining-room, and you see the way the service pantry is
arranged.'

'I'm afraid,' I said, 'I couldn't rent that one.  It's a little too
large.'

'Oh, it's rented,' said the genial landlord, 'a little couple from
Pittsburgh, nicest people I ever saw.  They'll be in on the first of
next month.'

'But look at this,' he continued, as we climbed up one flight, 'this
one's practically ready.  Isn't that pretty complete?  How do you like
that kitchenette, eh?'

'Very good,' I said, 'this is more what I wanted.  How much is it?'

'Oh, it's taken,' he answered, 'a little couple from Cleveland, mighty
nice people.'

We were climbing again.  'But here's the mate to it, see--wait while I
open this folding door, this is practically the same thing, except for
the bow window ... fine view out of that, eh, if it was more daylight.'

'Could I have this one at the same price as the one below?'

'No--it's gone: lady and her brother from Schenectady: nicer people I
never saw ... but I think I can show you the very thing you're after,
if you don't mind climbing up three more floors to the top--just watch
those ladders.  Eh?  On this floor?  No, not this one, nor on the floor
above, they're taken--but up here at the top is the one I especially
want to show you.'

'Now,' he said, himself a little out of breath, as we got to the top
floor, and stood on the unfinished studding and gaping doorways.  'This
is the apartment, living-room, kitchen, bath and two bedrooms, about as
complete a little layout as you can fancy.  That's the sort of thing
you're looking for, eh?'

'Yes,' I said, 'It is.  But if I take this, how soon could it be
finished?'

'Oh,' he answered, 'you couldn't _take_ it.  It's been let a month
back, a little couple from Winnipeg, musical both of them, never met
nicer people, oh, no, you couldn't _take_ it, but I thought you'd be
interested to _see_ it.'

'Why, thank you,' I said, 'but I'd rather look at the apartments that
are still to rent.'

'Oh, I haven't got any,' answered the landlord, 'all gone weeks back.
But I thought you'd like to have a look over them anyway.  Watch that
ladder; it doesn't seem quite firm!'

We climbed down.




X

THE ANATOMY OF GLOOM

To bring this essay into line with the dignity of a professor I have at
least to pretend that it is part of the 'psychology of business.'  As
everyone knows, there has grown up now in the colleges an entire
department of wisdom called by that name, the 'psychology of business.'
This shows how you can sell insurance to a 'prospect' by looking him in
the eye; or find out the saturation point of the sale for
braces--what's called the elasticity of the demand--by saying to a
number of men in succession 'your trousers are slipping.'  There are
other tests for women.

So, in a way, this essay dealing with the business value of
cheerfulness as a collective business asset is not to be ruled out as a
mere attempt at humour, a thing not to be tolerated.

Let me first put in a few words what I want to say with all the dignity
and seriousness that befit a professor--and then try to say it over so
as to make it worth hearing.  I think that we, speaking collectively
for about a hundred million people, are greatly adding to the burden of
our world by our new mentality of distress.  Anxiety is becoming a
habit.  We cultivate the expectation of disaster.  This attitude works
towards our destruction.  We are all afraid together.  We have lost
courage.  Mediaeval superstition, with its fear of hell, wasn't in it
with our new fear of depression, our new alarm of war.  We see it
everywhere.  Bankers tremble.  Newspapers croak.  Professors prophesy.
Farmers whine.  Business slackens.  Credit shrinks.  Even the criminals
are discouraged, losing nerve.

We are only kept going at all because youth will have its way: will
ride in motor cars: will spend money in cabarets--and because at all
ages pleasure beckons: people take trips and buy what they can't
afford.  The pump sucked dry with fear, is primed extravagance.  Never
mind the economics of this.  Just take it as a fact.  It always has
been so.  Nero, it is said, fiddled while Rome was burning; quite so,
and saved the violin industry.  We are dancing, it is said, on the edge
of a volcano.  Good, keep it up!  'Forward and back, and doh-see-do!'
as they called out in the barn dances.

I think we get the theme, or shall I say it over again?--business and
industry are being paralysed by apprehension.  The world is becoming
too serious to-day, even to do its serious work properly.

Take first, as the most obviously striking example in the present
instance, the case of banking.  What a serious trade it has become!  As
I first remember it in my home town of Mariposa (population 4,000 but
locally estimated more) it was a profession calculated to enlarge the
amenity of life.  A bank manager was supposed to turn up with the key
of the bank about ten, the clerks dropped in soon after.  The manager
only stayed till a customer asked him out for a drink, the usual
civility after receiving a loan, or until he asked a customer out for a
drink, the usual courtesy after refusing a loan.

This kept the manager in and out of the bank all day, seeing the public
all the time, always pleasant and agreeable--why not?  And thus
gathering business without trying for it.  For business, like
happiness, comes easiest when least sought.  The banker's clerks never
studied books on banking--there weren't any--didn't bother with graphs
or charts--except for the races, went home at three o'clock, played
tennis till dark, and poker (ten matches to a cent) till daylight.  And
yet, in the words of an old song, 'the world went very well then.'

Take, if you will, the terrible change that has come over journalism.
The old-time newspaper--I'm thinking of the country type--told the best
of everything.  The huge city papers that we read now tell the worst of
everything--a daily scare of apprehension of approaching war, of
imminent disaster, of deepening depression.  We get to expect it, to
ask for it, like martyrs asking for suffering.  The old-fashioned
country newspaper tried to find pleasant news such as: 'We see that Mr.
Silas Aimes of the Fourth Concession has got the frame of the new big
barn up.  Well done, Si!'--or--'We learn that Mr. Lemuel Crowder and
his daughter Posie are back from a trip to the old country.  They spent
a week going all over England and Scotland, and report the old country
a great place, right up to the modern standard!'  Now, why can't we
train our journalists to give us a little of that sort of stuff!  If we
must talk of foreigners let's get them on to the Fourth Concession.
Like this: 'Mr. Adolf Hitler is putting a new tin roof on his house at
Berchtesgarten.  Well done, Alf, you'll need it.'  Or this: 'Dooce
Mussolini, of Appian Way Corners, has stocked in a new line of gent's
shirting, done in a heavy black material, and well suited for chores
and dirty work.  Dooce's slogan is, "You can change later."  A lot of
the boys are buying.'  Or this one: 'Advices from northern Spain show
that Frankie Franco's circus will be on tour all through Catalonia in
early summer.  The little ones are on the look-out already.  Give them
something good, Frankie!'

I don't mean to say that old-time newspapers in the city didn't contain
sensation and disaster.  Of course they did.  But it was other people's
disaster.  We just got the sensation.  We read, for example, that a
subterranean earthquake had destroyed an island in the Pacific, killing
over a thousand Kanakas--poor fellows!  Some of them were blown a
hundred feet in the air--poor lads!  Quite a lift, eh?  Or we read that
the Russians had overrun Turkestan and that General Itch had executed
Fatash Pasha, the rebel leader.  It was all so far away: just quiet
reading for breakfast.  But now the daily newspaper is the day's
anxiety.

Our trouble is too much fuss over foreigners.  A generation ago if we
had heard that they were making a new anschluss--or anschlitz--what is
it called?--we would have thought it had something to do with beer.
Let's let it go at that.

Our trouble is statistics.  We do everything with charts and graphs.  A
baby starts with a chart, where it used to get a kiss.  All through our
lives, charts follow us, to show how depressed we are, how much in debt
we are, how much married we are, and how criminal we are becoming: at
the end, a little chart beside a hospital bed, runs out with us to
zero.  But the real things of life--the endeavour, the hope, the will,
that make it--are things no chart can show.

Our trouble is prophecy.  We are too much troubled about the future.
It sticks in my mind that there is a warning against that in the New
Testament somewhere, but it is little read now.  We attempt to peer
into the future with a little apparatus of statistics, like looking
into a fog with opera glasses.  Prophecy is all right in its way, but
to get the good of it you have to make it bold and long.  When I was a
professor--an occupation I followed for thirty-five years--I dealt
freely in my lectures in prophecy.  '_Mark my words, gentlemen, in a
hundred years you will see the structure of our Government basically
altered,' or--'The continent of America, gentlemen, is understood to be
moving westward away from Europe and towards Japan at the rate of
nearly fifty feet a year.  I venture to prophesy that we shall find
means to alter our foreign policy in time to meet this new
rapprochement._'  Unfortunately I made some of my prophecies a little
too short and just got out of college in time before they were due.

But I am saying, make your prophecy long and bold and it's good, if
only as a stimulus to thought.  One recalls the weather prophecy of the
old farmers' almanac, a whole year of weather at a time--'July, wind,
with rain and sun.  No snow.  Fair with spells of heat and cold.  The
sun in Sagittarius.'  Putting the sun in Sagittarius was a good touch:
not so much where it was, but knowing it was there.

The truth is we can't see far.  Life is veiled.  It has to be.  Biology
has long since exploded all the nonsense about 'signs of a hard
winter,' and so forth, that used to be the stock-in-trade of trappers
and hunters.  One remembers Longfellow's _Evangeline_:


  '_All of the hunters predicted a winter long and inclement
  Seeing how thick was the fur on the back sides of lynxes and foxes._'


The quotation is not exact but it will do, especially as there's
nothing in it biologically.  The fur on the animals has only to do with
what is past and not with what is coming.  You might as well say:

  _All of the brokers predicted a terrible slump in the market,
  Seeing their clients arriving no longer in seal-skins but coon-skins._


Yet we fret ourselves needlessly with our unending preoccupation over
to-morrow.  Wiser men in older time have warned us to seize the present
moment while we can--to 'eat, drink, and be merry.'

  _Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old Time is still a-flying,
  And that same flower that smiles to-day,
    To-morrow will be dying._


But I am saying more than this.  I am saying that it is _good business_
to do so.  Let me stress again the main theme I am trying to follow,
and as difficult to walk as a tightrope: I am saying that there is
money in cheerfulness, business salvation in hope and collective
security in collective forgetfulness.

That cheerfulness is good business I was once called upon to prove (to
a law court) as an economic expert.  I was commissioned to prepare a
'factum' to that effect on behalf of a great corporation which had been
foolish enough to subscribe money to a sick children's hospital.  This
seemed a pretty dirty thing to do.  No wonder a shareholder complained
and brought suit.  The only possible rebuttal was to show that charity
was good business.  The corporation repudiated all idea that they cared
about sick children, a ridiculous thought--or took an interest in
hospitals: they claimed they were just out for money.  And I proved it.
I showed that even hardened economists like Adam Smith and John Stuart
Mill had admitted that there's money in charity and profit in good
will.  Any firm in the toy and Christmas business will see it at once:
so what we want is more toys and more Christmas.

The corporation for whom I wrote the factum were so delighted with my
argument that they were going to give me a fountain-pen with an
inscription on it, till I showed them a better idea.

Incidentally--I say it as an _obiter dictum_, a digression father
against my theme--I got in this connection an instance of the practical
working of the law as an instrument of prophecy.  The lawyer in charge
of the case showed me a pile of typed sheets.  'That's the evidence of
our witnesses,' he said.  'Have they given it already?' I asked.  'Oh,
no,' he answered, 'they won't give it for a month.'  'Oh, I understand,
you mean they've written it out beforehand.'  'Oh, no,' the lawyer
said, 'they haven't seen it yet.'

      *      *      *      *      *

As I look about me I seem to see a gathering pall of over-seriousness
pervading all our civilization: of over-apprehension, over-anxiety.  We
take too much thought for the future.  In fear of life we drag out our
preparation for it, our education, too long.  When it is done, life
itself has passed by: apprehension of the future makes everything too
late--marriage ten years beyond its time, children ten years late, and
Grim Death reaps down too soon what should have lived as a grandfather.

We are losing the key to happiness.  I realized this anew and vividly
when I went the other day to see, as all the world has, _Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs_.  What a wonder of light and colour and, above all,
what a world of happiness!  One could feel the audience reach forward
as if wanting to step from our world into theirs--the fawns, the little
animals, so kind in every gesture, in every tremor, the merry melody of
the dwarfs' evening gaiety, the mutual willingness and goodwill--oh!
give us that--and we can afford to have all our evil segregated into
one hideous witch--forgotten as soon as gone.

If it is true that a heavy pall of gloom is spreading over us: if it is
true that it debilitates our collective energy, and lowers our
collective confidence, what is there that we can do about it?  Nothing
that I know of--or nothing by rule, line, or statute.  Changes are made
not by the law but by the spirit.  The law merely registers the fact.
The law against theft proves that the world hates stealing.  A
compulsory law compelling cheerfulness--forcing a banker to smile and
compelling a professor to stop talking--would fail of its end.  But it
is at least something to know what's wrong with us.




A DIP INTO PSYCHOLOGY

It struck me one morning with sudden apprehension that I was growing
deaf.  It was not a thing to neglect for a moment.  The mere notion of
it set all my senses alert.  I telephoned at once to an old friend of
mine, a specialist, to make an appointment.  Then I started to walk to
his office.

The distance was about a mile.  The day one of those bracing autumn
mornings that just put life into your veins.  By the time I entered the
doctor's office, I felt fine.

'Henry,' I said, 'I think I'm going deaf.'

'Eh?' he said mildly.

'I think I'm going deaf,' I repeated.

'Oh, _deaf_!  Well, we'll soon see about that.'

The doctor picked up a little sounding fork and made it twang.

'Do you hear that?' he asked.

'Why, of course,' I said.  'Hear it?  I could have heard it half a mile
away.'

'Try this,' he said, and made it lower.

'Why, yes, it sounds quite loud.'

He tried it lower still.

'I hear it quite easily,' I said.

'Impossible,' he muttered, with a kind of anxiety in his voice, 'now
then, this one.'

It was faint, but I could hear it.

'You can hear that?' questioned the doctor.

'Can't you?' I asked.

'Why, no, damn it, I can't hear any of the last three!'

'You don't say so!' I said.  'Give me the sounding fork!  Now!  Can you
hear this, Henry?'

'No!'

I hit the fork harder--'And this?  Try now, can't you get it?'

Louder still--'No!'

I hit the fork harder--'And this?  Try now, can't you get it?'

Louder still--'No!'

'By gosh!' my specialist friend said in alarm, 'I believe I'm going
deaf: strike it again--no, I don't hear a thing!'

'Henry,' I said, as I laid the fork down, 'your hearing is in a bad
way.  Whether it comes from drinking or merely from a general breakdown
of your system, I don't know.  But what you need is air, vigorous
exercise.  Good-bye!'

I left him, having learned, if I didn't know it before, that
ophthalmologists are always deaf, that oculists are blind, that sailors
can't swim, distillers hate whiskey, and barbers are all bald.

There's a psychological law for this, but I forget it.




XI

THEN AND NOW

WERE WE HAPPIER FIFTY YEARS AGO?

Old people always think that the world is going to pieces and young
people that it is just beginning.  To old people things are closing in;
to young people they are opening out.  To old people of to-day the
world seems filled with dangers, terrors, with imminence of world war,
and world destruction, of social revolution and social catastrophe.  I
suppose it always did.  I suppose that fifty years ago people thought
of Nihilists and Anarchists in the same terms of terror; and fifty
years before that all England shuddered at 'Chartists,' at 'Trade
Unions,' and 'Agnostics,' and 'Rationalists,' and wondered what the
world was coming to.

So, on general principles, the apprehensions of old age are a mere part
of old age itself and the world is not coming or going anywhere in
particular except round its orbit, first turn to the left and straight
on.  But exceptions prove a rule.  I'm not just so sure that in our own
day, this present moment, we have not a bad case of a world greatly
changed for the worse in ever so many things in its last fifty years.

Now I make, of course, great reservations here.  I leave out of count
all sorts of things.  I admit _that human life now averages fifty-five
years_ whereas it only used to be thirty-five.  Hence the expectation
of life is now longer, but then few people expect to reach it anyway,
like the farmer whose crops hadn't turned out so well as he thought
they would--but then he didn't think they would.  I admit that the
hideous poverty of the slums of 1887 is alleviated a lot.  But then I
don't live in the slums and don't care to know people who do.  I admit
that prisons are greatly improved and that a first-class penitentiary
now is as good as a club.  But I have a club of my own just as good
anyway.  I admit that the old saloon is gone and I'm sorry.  I admit
that women have largely emancipated themselves from the dominance of
men and I'm sorry for that too, and I don't believe it anyway.  I
acknowledge all the progress of machinery and science but I fail to see
that it has got us anywhere.  As far as the explanation of the universe
goes, science is utterly hopeless.  As far as its application to human
wants goes, it has reached an absolute deadlock.  As far as the means
of death goes, science is triumphant over human happiness.

But I am thinking of the ordinary life of ordinary people, then as now,
fifty years ago and to-day.  Then it was all so simple; now so complex.
Take the earliest thing--education.  Then it was relatively short, a
prelude to life.  Now it stretches out into an appalling vista of
years, an unspeakable prospect of expense.  Fifty years ago a course in
medicine was all accomplished in three years--one in a sawmill and two
at college.  You got admitted to the church by putting in four summers
on a farm and one winter in a divinity school.  Entrance to the bar was
by hanging round the bar, or bars, in the city for three or four years
and defending a negro in a police court.  Teachers became teachers
without any technical qualifications except that they needed the job
and had nothing else that they could do.  The entry to journalism was
by setting type, and a banker became one by being able to add two
columns at a time and live on twenty dollars a month.  These are not
exaggerations or attempts at pleasantry.  They are just facts.  Few
people realize the tremendous burden of added cost, of added complexity
that fifty years has piled on to the average life of those not rich and
not criminal.

Turn from education to the softer aspect of opening life--love and
courtship and marriage.  Fifty years ago, you didn't take a girl out in
a taxi, there weren't any.  And you didn't take her in a cab.  Cabs
were only used for weddings or when people were knocked down in the
street.  No, the girl walked.  And if you made a hit with her at the
party then you asked if you could take her out for a walk next day.
Some of those girls, the popular ones, must have walked a hundred miles
a week.  And after a party you didn't have to take her to supper to a
night restaurant or cabaret.  There weren't any.  You took her back to
her own house and she--not you--had to supply lemonade and
bread-and-butter sandwiches.  Of course her mother was there.  I admit
that you had to see far more of a girl's mother in those days than you
do now.  But perhaps it was just as well; you knew the worst sooner.
You also took her out to the big football games and the cricket
matches--no admission to pay for either of them.  Can you wonder that
lots of fellows spent practically all their time with girls?

The result was early marriage.  You see you didn't have to save up to
buy a car, or a radio, or a refrigerator--you rented a house for $8.00
a month and had all the rest of your money over.  An evening party
(Euchre, beer, and cold turkey) cost $1.50 and a summer vacation (spent
in a canvas tent) cost $25.00.  Life was all so simple.  Can you wonder
that people died at thirty-five?  They'd finished it.

Or the outside world?  How beautifully far away.  No submarines, no
aeroplanes, no bombs, no gas.  War was adventure, far away.  It had no
meaning in home life.

Social revolution?  For most people there wasn't enough to revolve.
There were of course, a few big cities, with occasional upheavals--but
it didn't touch your life or mine.  You read that it had been necessary
to charge the rioters with cavalry; or fire a volley into them--or
perhaps a couple of volleys--too bad, nothing else to do.  That the
riot could spread, could engulf the world, could spread death in the
last corners of the countryside--no, no one ever thought of it.

And the far away countries.  China!  One read--I mean it literally, and
I remember it though I forget the year--that a million Chinese were
drowned in a flood.  Hard luck, eh?  One didn't think they had so much
water power in China.

Fun!  Amusement!  But that all depends on your capacity for it.  The
moving pictures have made every little snipe in the city brain-drowsy
at twelve years old.  He's seen earthquakes, shipwrecks, riots, bombs,
kings, courtesans, savagery--he's finished.  You couldn't knock another
spark of intelligence out of him.  His little flint has finished all
its fire; there's nothing left for him now except over-effect,
perverted sensation, crime...  It is quite possible indeed that the
world will swing upside down, like a revolving pyramid, with crime, the
criminal class, at the top.




THROWN OUT

I was sitting in the rotunda of the hotel, one of those old-fashioned
rotundas--it was years ago--where the chairs were in a sort of big
horseshoe, with a huge open fire-place in the centre.  It was the
custom of the guests--these were called 'guests' in those days--to sit
around the rotunda in their off hours and the manager would sit among
them.

I was at the end of the row but one, and the end one was the manager.
He and I were old friends.  I said to him, 'What's the matter with you
to-night?  You look as if you had something on your mind.'  I knew him
as well as that.

'I have,' he answered.  'I've just had a mean business to get through,
one of those things that you've got to do in the hotel business,
whether you like it or not.'

The manager spoke in a low, throaty tone, as soft and easy as a gargle.
He was too heavy a man to shout.  Anyway hotel men talk low.  They have
to.

'What was the trouble?' I asked.

'Case of getting rid of a loafer,' the manager continued in his low,
confidential tone.  'Fellow you may have seen round--been here for two
months or more--never paid for his room, not a cent, hung up the
dining-room, and as for the bar, he seemed to think he could drink free
in there all day.'

The manager's rising indignation began to raise his voice with it.  He
began to speak with animation and anger, looking me right in the face
as he spoke.  Some of the guests had half turned to listen.

'So at last I said to him,' the manager said, dropping as best he could
into his quiet tone, but losing it entirely as he continued, 'Look
here, you loafer!'  As he said this, the manager stood up, turned
squarely in front of me and smacked one hand with the palm of the other
(that made every one turn and listen), as he went on, 'Listen to me.
You've loafed round this hotel for two months.  You haven't paid a cent
on your room or your board--and I'm sick of it.  Out you go, to-night!'

With that, the manager put his hands in his pockets, and walked off
about his business, cooling down as he went.

But the news round town that I'd been thrown out of the hotel for debt
nearly cost me my job!




XII

WHAT I READ THEN; WHAT YOU READ NOW

AN ESSAY FOR THE YOUNG

I am sixty-eight years old.  Sixty years ago, able to 'read for
myself,' I first passed through that magic gateway into the Garden of
Imagination.  How greatly has it changed in sixty years to become the
very different garden, the very different world that you young people
know to-day.

The world in which I lived, as compared with yours, was vast and empty
and voiceless.  Look at the map of it as it hung on the walls of our
school-room.  There was Africa, a huge continent with nothing but an
outside rim to it, rivers that seemed to come from nowhere, and queer
names along the coast now mostly vanished--Mozambique, Zanzibar,
Sofala; Asia, a lot of it just about as empty, with a great desert
smeared across the middle, with its northern coast, inaccessible and
unknown, washing into the Arctic Sea.  Over the heart of the continent
were still inscribed such queer and romantic names as Turkestan and
Bokhara and the Kurghis Steppes.  Arabia was marked as a great empty
desert, closed and forbidden.  Of our own continent great stretches
were still one vast emptiness of prairie and forest, the Rocky
Mountains infinitely far away, as yet pierced only with the thin thread
of two or three railway lines; in Canada still huge and impenetrable.
South America seemed on the map, as far as its insides went, an
unexplored jungle.

In such a world the sense of distance, of mystery and of the unknown
was far more impressive than is possible to-day.  Your little world is
shrunken, crowded--noisy and quarrelsome--it is like a street alley
where was once a silent wood.

I went the other day to the 'pictures' and there before me on the
screen was the young King Farouk of Egypt in a tarboosh and his Queen
Farida in a Paris dress, just bowing themselves off in time to give the
Japanese a chance to bomb Shanghai--also in a hurry, because Dartmouth
was going to play hockey against McGill in a minute.  The game was
timed to allow Mussolini to come out on the roof of the Vatican (it
went fast, I'm not sure what roof it was) and give a talk meant for
Hitler, who appeared on the terrace of the Tiergarten--followed by the
last minute of a fight in Madison Square Garden....  What a world!
Rushing with voices that come from currents of cosmic force running
through our very bodies themselves--quivering with power we cannot
control, dangers we can see but not avoid.

I am not placing my world _above_ yours--I am only exchanging one
mystery for another.  Our life, in any case, is framed in mystery,
floating in the unknown; but the world of to-day seems to me, as an old
man, in a way terrifying, like a thing rushing to its doom!  But don't
worry over that, my young friends.  Old men have always thought the
world was hurrying to its doom: and the joke is, it wasn't the _world_
at all, but just the old men themselves.

But at least the contrast is great.  Oh, to be back in the silent world
of sixty years ago, in which a little boy with a book under an apple
tree could be transported to the Rocky Mountains, and there sit with
Trapper Ben and Siwash Jo, beside a crackling fire of resinous pine,
over a dish of buffalo meat.  You can't sit there, you see, because if
you did, Trapper Ben would say to Siwash Jo, 'Turn on the radio, Jo and
let's hear what's doin'!' and Siwash Jo would say, 'Me thinkum King
Farouk of Egypt he marry one nicey piece-Squaw.'

      *      *      *      *      *

From such a setting you will easily understand that our reading of
sixty years ago was based on the 'bigness' and mystery of the world, of
adventure in 'distant lands' and 'overseas,' of people disappearing on
long voyages to return as heroes or millionaires--back from the
'diggings' or the 'Cannibal Isles,' or places like that.  Notice the
queer, fascinating names of our world.  You'd call the 'diggings' the
'Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company,' and the 'Cannibal Isles'
the 'Municipality of Honolulu.'

But of course we were strongest of all on 'desert islands.'  The height
of every boy's imagination was to share the fate of that lucky man
Robinson Crusoe and be shipwrecked on a desert island, with one or two
'other fellers'--no girls and no grown-up people.  Desert islands
always contained in abundance everything needed for life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness, such as bread-fruit, yams, mangoes,
coconuts--the stuff we never got at home except at Christmas.  Of
course, the world's best desert island story was _Robinson Crusoe_, and
no doubt you still read it.  But it's really upside down.  Defoe, who
wrote it in 1719, meant it as a picture of loneliness and hardship, but
the story, as stories do, turned into something else.  Hence all boys
envy Robinson his island and his goats and his parrot, and above all
his man Friday.  What they like is the fun of _being_ there.  When the
Spaniards come into the story and the 'adventures' begin, it is all off.

The second best-known desert story, written a hundred years ago, was
the _Swiss Family Robinson_.  Its author was a Swiss professor of
philosophy so that shows how much he knew about desert islands.  His
story was no good after you were ten years old--too namby-pamby: the
Island too easy.  And then how silly to have Mr. and Mrs. Robinson
there!  If you're lucky enough to hit on a desert island, you don't
want your father and mother around.

But the best island story of the lot was Jules Verne's _Mysterious
Island_.  Verne was a Frenchman, but the boys of England and America
adopted him so completely that his books that ran from about 1870 to
1900 were put into English as soon as written.  Everybody has heard of
his 'prophecy' stories.  _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ and
_The Clipper of the Clouds_, both come true, and his _Journey to the
Moon_, still waiting.  But best of all was the wonderful island on
which there lands a group of castaways carried in a great storm in a
balloon--days and days in dark and wind and clouds, and blow to
land--heaven knows where, over such great spaces as we knew and you
can't _ever_ know.  They all landed empty-handed.  They begin as
children of civilization, from nothing, make and contrive everything,
melting iron for tools and mixing gunpowder--but read it.  _It's still
good_.

      *      *      *      *      *

Of course, our adventures turned mainly on the sea.  Say what you like,
the sea can never be the same again since steam and wireless and radio.

Where are now

  _...  The Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
  And the mystery and beauty of the ships
  And the magic of the sea?_


Never again can be reproduced the wonder and beauty of the great
sailing ships outward bound in the sunset a hundred years ago.  Kipling
has tried, in his _MacAndrew's Hymn_, to lift the huge floating machine
called a steamship to a par of mystery and wonder.  But it can't be
done.  The things are different.  The one is man, the other is machine.

Never again can literature have such a romantic basis as in those great
days of the sea.  You can read it now but it's all altered by your
knowledge of radio and wireless.  To you all great sea stories suggest
the idea, what a pity they didn't have wireless!  But as for us, we
just plunged from shipwreck to shipwreck, buffeted, tossed about,
battered by a rush of nautical terms that we didn't understand!  We saw
the _Grosvenor_ strike on the breakers and founder off the coast of
South Africa--infinite desolation!--foundering with all hands--well,
perhaps a few did reach shore to wander among the savages.  We saw the
Indiaman _Kent_ burned to the water's edge, and the _Dunbar_ beaten to
pieces off Sydney Heads in the dark, and Masterman Ready in the wreck
of the _Pacific_.  Such writers as Captain Marryat, Fenimore Cooper and
Clark Russell went literally round the world.

You can't read them now, my young friends, I am sure.  But don't call
them _slow_: the reason is not in them but in you.  You are not, I say
it very politely, fit to read them.  You see, you are a child of
machinery and electricity and so you want machinery at every turn.  In
my day, for example, in a sea story we used 'to sweep the pirates off
the deck with our cutlasses'--just a loud 'Hurrah!' and over they went
still gnashing their teeth and biting their nails.  But you would want
to defeat them with 'heat ray' or a 'detonating bomb' or some such
deviltry as that.  Poor creatures!  We just swept them off the
deck--surely that doesn't hurt anybody.

But above all we loved the technical language of the sea--the hundred
ropes with every one a name, and all the parts of the ship that we knew
so well by name but only vaguely by location.  The 'bitts,' the 'main
chains,' the 'scuppers'--were they parts of the 'binnacle' or of the
'taffrail'?  The 'tops,' the 'cross trees,' the 'main-royal-yard'--how
high up are we?  Don't look down!

When your teachers teach you Shakespeare they explain to you what a
wonderful knowledge of the sea Shakespeare had, just because of a
little biff of sea language, or an attempt at it, in a play called _The
Tempest_.


Master: _Good, speak to the mariners: fall to't yarely, or we run
ourselves aground: bestir, bestir_.

Boatswain: _Heigh, my hearts!  Cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare!
Take in the topsail; tend to the master's whistle.  Down with the
topsail, yare!_


Tut!  That's poor stuff, as Mark Twain once showed (I am quoting his
example)--just elementary.  Compare it with the language of a real
sailor like R. H. Dana, who wrote for us _Two Years before the Mast_.


_Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each
sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at a word the whole
canvas on the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible
everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and
cat-headed, and the ship under headway._


But of course for _you_ to-day there is no more 'cat-heading' and
'sheeting.' Here is the kind of passage that you would expect in one of
_your_ books:


_Ned brought the radio message to the captain.  'A radio message, Sir,'
he said, 'in code.'  'Decode it,' cried Captain Carburettor.  Ned, who
was a skilled decoder, decoded the coded radio._

_'What does it say, Ned?' asked the Captain._

_'It's from an aeroplane, Sir,' said Ned, 'warning us that they can see
an enemy submarine approaching us at a narrow angle.'_

_'How narrow?' asked Captain Carburettor._

_'One degree, two minutes, log 5 1/2,' answered Ned._

_'How long have we got?' asked the Captain._

_'Forty-six seconds, Sir,' said Ned._

_'Plenty!' said the Captain.  'Pass me a depth bomb.  Or here, boy,' he
added, putting his hand, not unkindly, on the youngster's shoulder,
'you jump over with it yourself.'_

      *      *      *      *      *

But don't think for a moment that our adventure books were all and only
on the sea.  Not at all.  We were just as much at home on land--in the
heart of the forest or out on the prairie, with just enough savages
'lurking' round to make things creepy.  What they did was always called
'lurking': they never came straight at you, in an open manly way, they
'lurked.'  The only notice you got of their approach was of the
snapping of a dry twig: if you heard that, watch out!--there was 'a
pesky red-skin' somewhere around.  Not that you yourself could hear it,
but it was heard by the quick trained ear of your guide and companion,
Old Pigskin or Deerskin or whatever he was.  I am thinking here, as you
guess, perhaps, of Fenimore Cooper, whose books went all over the world
in all the languages.  Sixty years ago our continent was still young
enough and open enough to keep Cooper's books near and intelligible;
the prairie was still there and Sitting Bull's massacre of Custer's
force recent enough to thrill us with its horror.  It is strange to
think of the marvellous vogue and influence of writers like Cooper,
Scott and Dickens, writing for all the world.  What _they_ did can
never be done again.  The times forbid it.  A writer nowadays may make
a huge hit with a 'best seller,' _Gone with the Tide_ or _Off with the
Wind_--half a million copies in a year, and in five years as dead and
forgotten as dry grass.

Compare that with the world significance of _The Last of the Mohicans_.
For the sake of _that_ book, little boys in France and Germany dressed
themselves up in what they meant for 'leggings,' with feathers and
scalp-locks, and crawled round in the bushes of suburban gardens,
avoiding the snapping of a dry twig.  Remember the name if you don't
know it already--_The Last of the Mohicans_, and don't pronounce it, as
we _always_ did in England, as if _Mohican_ rhymed with 'Joey can':
it's '_Moheegan_--with a sort of Irish sound to it.

      *      *      *      *      *

Later on, of course, we moved from pure adventure to
adventure-romance--Walter Scott for all time the master of it.  I am
afraid that many young people, perhaps most, can't read Walter Scott
to-day.  They find him too 'long-winded.'  That seems a queer
accusation from a generation that makes its novels longer and longer,
and thinks nothing of 600 pages.  I admit that our books were
'long-winded,' but so are the books of to-day.  Only they are
long-winded in a different way.  We took our 'long-wind' in the
beginning, in the way of an 'introduction'; nowadays you get the
'long-wind' all through: the book just goes on and on, like sawing
wood.  There's no need for it to stop: the end could be the beginning:
just like films in the cinema, where we come in late and take the story
backwards.  We see the final death scene and then learn who it is that
died and what killed him.  In fact the 'pictures' have shown us that a
story is a circle.  You begin anywhere.

But in _our_ good old books you began at the beginning.  Very much so.
In fact, away before the beginning.  If the story was laid in the
Highlands you had to have first the history and description of the
Highlands and how they got high.  Then as the hero of the story is
going to be Hoosh McQuoosh, you have to learn quietly and slowly all
about the ancestry of the Hoosh McQuoosh family, one of whom fell at
Bannockburn, one at Flodden--in fact they fell all over the place.  But
the reward was that by the time you got, slowly and gradually, into the
story, you were right at home in it; it felt like part of you.

      *      *      *      *      *

In one department I am willing to confess our books of sixty years ago
were weak.  That was in the matter of the heroines.  I am afraid, as I
look back at them, that our heroines were 'simps.'  True, they were
given large 'lustrous eyes' like a startled fawn, mouths like
'rosebuds' and a complexion that shot over with blushes as rapidly as a
neon sign.  But they were 'simps.'  There was no sport in them.  They
wouldn't go out at night.  If you dared to touch them they cried out,
'Unhand me, foul villain!'  In fact their rhetoric--talk like _that_,
only longer--was their strong point, their chief defence.  Alone with a
foul villain in a ruined castle they could blast him with it.  Even in
the forest they could knock out an Indian at ten yards.  'Despicable
man,' cried Ethelinda, as the fierce Mohawk raised his tomahawk, 'alone
and defenceless, beyond human help, a prey at once to treachery and
menace, with nothing on which to rely save only the promptings of my
own innocence, I command you to restrain your hand!'  The Mohawk
lowered his tomahawk with a groan: a blush as of shame (it really
wasn't) mantled his dusky countenance, and with a couple more groans,
he vanished into the brush!

When I compare those heroines with the kind of girls I see in the films
to-day, skipping around on beaches and eating midnight supper under
rubber trees, I feel sorry to think what we missed.

But you must excuse my writing further--there's a film I must go to
see--racketeers, gangsters, murders, trials, jails, all our bright new
world spinning at its best.




FEEDING TIME

Feeding time at the Zoo is said to be most interesting to watch.  But
it's pretty good too in any first-class hotel.  You notice that man, at
the little table by himself, who has just called the waiter to him.
You observe the suffering look on his face, the peculiar whine in his
voice.  What is it he's saying?

'Waiter, when I asked for the toast well browned, I didn't want it all
burnt up like that, into a black crisp!'

Poor fellow, how he must have suffered!  Got black toast instead of
brown, too bad!  But as a matter of fact, that type lives on suffering
like that.  He can't eat without it.

If the waiter could talk back he'd say, 'Got burnt toast, did you, you
poor fish--well, even at that, it's too good for you!'

But the waiter can't talk back, he just says, 'I'm sorry, sir.'  He
isn't really.  He hopes the fellow chokes.

But look at this other man, pink and complacent, and smiling at the
bill of fare.  'Waiter,' he is saying, 'I want a _nice_ lamb chop--and
some _nice_ fried potatoes, with a _nice_ piece of toast and a _nice_
pot of hot tea.'

The proper answer from the waiter to say to him would be, 'I'm sorry,
sir, we have no _nice_ lamb chop.  It's no good!'  But he doesn't give
it.  He says, 'Yes, sir,' and writes it all down.  He knows this man
has such a good digestion that his breakfast seems nice to him before
he eats it.

The most usual type of man in the room, representing, at least,
three-quarters of them all, is the man who sits with the menu card in
his hand and holds a dialogue with the waiter like this:

'Waiter, is there fresh fish this morning?'

'Oh, yes, sir.'

'How is it?'

'Excellent, sir.'

Here there falls silence and a little more study and then:

'How's the steak this morning?'

'Very good indeed, sir.'

More study:

'Are there cod fish-cakes on the bill of fare to-day'?

'I'll just go and see, sir.'

'No, wait a minute.  What about liver and bacon?'

'Yes, sir, always; very good indeed, sir.'

The man puts down the bill of fare.

'Bring me bacon and eggs,' he says, and picks up his newspaper.

As a matter of fact this man has eaten bacon and eggs every day for ten
years, never eats anything else, and he knows it and the waiter knows
it.

But he can't help having a sort of longing look at the things he would
eat if he didn't eat bacon and eggs.  It's like thinking of having
married someone else instead; not exactly regret, just wonder.

'Waiter!  Is my order coming?'




XIII

HAND ME DOWN THAT BOOK

It is an old dispute whether fancy is greater than fact, fiction
superior to reality, and the creation of the imagination more
significant than the literal truth of the intellect.  To put it more
simply--which do you find more real, Mr. Pickwick whom you know from
the garters up and from the heart out, or Mr. Jones, next door?  Night
after night you've talked with Mr. Jones while he sprinkled his lawn
with a hose.  He has expressed his opinion on the extent which grass
can be kept green all summer and he has agreed with you that after all
the City in the summer is the best summer resort that there is.  But
apart from that, do you _know_ him?  No, practically not.  Would he
lend you money?  Oh, no!  Would Mr. Pickwick?  My dear sir, you'd only
have to ask.  He'd send it over by Sam Weller within ten minutes with a
warning that there must be no thought of repayment.

That's what 'people in books' are like--real people to whom your heart
responds and who mean more to you than the people of your everyday
life.  Many of them have come down with you from your childhood.  With
some of them you have faced danger on the sea, when one more crack in
the top-gallant-mast might mean instant disaster--or in the pathless
woods of North America where the careless cracking of a dry twig under
the foot of either of you could have brought an arrow whizzing past
your head.  It wouldn't have hit you, of course.  In the glorious world
of books, arrows never _hit_ you, they just 'whizz past'; and bullets
'sing'; or even 'rattle' when thick enough--but you come out of it all
right, always.  Another contrast this with real life, whose poor
disasters are so mean, so desolating, so shabby and so unrelieved.

What a cavalcade they form, these 'people out of books' as they come
from away back down the centuries.  Some are in the very dawn of
history, the mist still all about them.  Here is Hector with his tall
helmet, and Achilles who dragged him around the walls of Troy--or, wait
a bit, was it Achilles who dragged Hector, or was it Hector who dragged
Achilles?  And, let me think, were they dragged or _drugged?_--I'm
afraid I'm mixing it up with the latest film; did you see it?  I can't
quite remember the name--anyway, the one where the Chinaman, Hong
something, drugs the detective--at least he _thinks_ he's a detective.

The trouble is, of course, that in these later days--nobody's
fault--the old outlines are getting dim--all sorts of other and newer
and quicker impressions are being written over them.  The flash of the
cinematograph fuses our history like a burnt-out wire, till the
pictures melt and run and mix and somehow reform to make a kaleidoscope
of moving mice, flying rabbits, of dancing scenery, of rushing trains,
fleeing criminals, detectives ... and throughout all, to-day's news,
crashing with bombs, louder than the ten years' siege of Troy, and
forgotten in a week.

Those of us old enough can still look through this foreground of the
moment to the cavalcade of giants, heroes, warriors, knights, and
ladies, that gradually made the literature of the world.  We can still
hear the laughter of Chaucer's Pilgrims of Canterbury, easy and
sauntering, with always time for a joke, the worse the better--how
different from the hurrying tourist of to-day with his radio in his ear
as he sleeps.  We can still wander with Don Quixote, driving full speed
at windmills, with the haunting feeling that there's a double meaning
in it all if we could only catch it.  Or here, closer at hand is
Falstaff--it's a pity the young people of to-day don't know him; they'd
find him 'some boy.'  Or here is _Sir Roger de Coverley_--never read
it?  Oh, you must--and _The Vicar of Wakefield_--and then round the
corner into the full noonday sun of the nineteenth century, with its
whole procession of _Waverleys_ and _Ivanhoes_, its Pickwicks and its
Wellers, Pendennises, and Newcomes.  Lord bless us!  How the sun once
shone on them.  And with that what a marvellous side procession to join
from America, brought over in stately ships by Washington Irving and
Fenimore Cooper, on rafts by Huck Finn, and as (first-class) _Innocents
Abroad_, by Mark Twain.  On these, as on their British peers and
predecessors, it seemed as if the illumination would never fail, and
that there never could be a boy who hadn't heard of Mr. Squeers or a
girl who hadn't wept over Evangeline.

And now, how great a change!  It seems--so I am credibly informed and
so I constantly notice--it seems that a great many of the young people
of to-day (young people anywhere from six to sixty) have never heard of
the _Knights of the Round Table_ or at least mix them up with _Ten
Nights in a Bar Room_.  They think that Robin Hood was 'Doug' Fairbanks
when he was younger, and that Lady Godiva is the name of a flesh paint.

There is no need to get angry over it.  No need even for a professor to
lecture about it.  The fact is that the world to-day is so closely
interconnected on the surface, that it loses its connection downwards
with the past.  Let me try to say that more simply, and then I'll get
it better myself.  In the world in which we live you may 'sit in' at
any aerial bombing going on in Barcelona or Shanghai, you can watch and
hear the French people going crazy over King George VI, get all the
wars in fifteen minutes, three wars going on and four practically
guaranteed, get prize-fights, horse races, beauty shows--all hot over
the wire or the wireless and fused again into nothing in a moment, as
printers melt up type to use the lead again, and so convert a sermon
into a love story.  Thus does the type of life melt and run over the
radio and the cinema.  Now I think we all get it.

And yet--even granting that this hurrying world exceeds and surpasses
the older one--its technique, immeasurably superior, in its
possibilities of vivid depiction, its power of annihilating time and
distance in the interest of narrative, and, perhaps, in many ways
surpasses it in imaginative power--if only in its command of the
grotesque, the lurid, the pathological forms of literary
creation--grant all that, and yet something is irretrievably gone if we
let go the thread of connection with the literature of the past.

We cannot live in a world of two dimensions, and literature, like life,
must have its third.  Our literature, common more or less, in its
greatest sense, to all Western Europe, and laid as a present in the
cradle of America--goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.  It has
to.  It is a continuous growth.  Mr. Pickwick, don't you see, is
directly descended from Sir Roger de Coverley, and Charles O'Malley,
and Masterman Ready (never mind who they were: ask someone eighty years
old), all such, and a host of heroes like them, are the Knights of the
Round Table, still seeking for adventure.  As the professorate would
say, the continuity of a national literature is an essential condition
of the continuation of national life.

Fetch me the old books and the old favourites--a whole real collection
of them.  I'll tell you what I'll do, if _you_ will.  I'll start all
over again, beginning with the Trojan war, with Flaxman's
illustrations, and then live over again the Last Days of Pompeii (look
out for the lava, it's dangerous): we'll sit and watch the hundred
coloured bannerets that flaunt in the breeze on the tourney ground of
Ashby de la Zouche: drink sack with Falstaff; smoke long pipes with my
Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim: and, in our heroic moods, wrap our
colours round our breast (over our vest) on the fields of Spain, or
climb the mast right up to the royal flush (I forget its exact name)
and listen to the guns thunder on the deck below!

And, do you know, I think that such perusal, lost and absorbed in the
fancied creature of which our own imagination must supply one half--and
gives more than, if we sit, full of peanuts and popcorn, allowing
flickering shadows, created by someone else, and sound and melody,
contrived by someone else, to fill us up with a story--as you feed
porridge to a duck.

Fetch me the books.  I'm going to read.




XIV

WHO KNOWS IT?

OUR PASSION FOR INFORMATION

The other night I heard a voice on the radio in my living-room asking
who was King George's great-grandmother.  I felt terribly
pleased--because I knew the answer--Queen Victoria!  In fact I remember
her quite well.  Then it asked how high is Mount Popocatapetl, and I
was clean out of it.  In all these years I had never stopped to
enquire.  When the voice went on to ask how many gallons there are in a
cubic foot, and who fought the battle of Actium, I had to switch it off.

Odd, isn't it, this sudden new passion for information that seems to
have swept over us like a wave.  Questionnaires, intelligence tests,
quiz classes held by Professor Knowit, puzzles, problems--anything that
can stand for information given and received, knowledge checked up and
proved.  And even when we are listening to other people being
questioned, it's really ourselves that we are checking up on.  'Who was
the bosom friend of Damon?' asks the radio--and we _know_ it: Pythias,
eh, what?  Where was Napoleon born?  Corsica!--we got it the first
time--ask us another.

The wave of questions sweeps the whole coast of human knowledge.
Sometimes it's history: 'Where was General Burgoyne defeated?'  That's
just a sort of come-along, made easy, to coax us into the water.  'In
what year was America discovered?'  That gets us right in up to the
neck; and then, 'Who was John Wilkes?'  'Who was Vasco da Gama?'  'Who
defeated Hannibal?'  'Who were the Sumerians?'  We're swamped and
drowned.

Often the questions branch into poetry, 'The curfew tolls the
knell'--of what?  'The boy stood on the burning deck'--what boy?
'Father, dear father, come home with me now'--home from where?  'The
shades of night were'--doing what?

A person who stands up to questions like that feels that he's getting a
grip on literature.

Sometimes we drop into straight mathematics, which has the same
attraction as playing with fire; for example:--_If a frog falls into a
sand-pit twenty feet deep and gets up the side in jumps two feet at a
time, but slips back one foot on the sand while taking his breath after
each jump, how many jumps would it take him to get out of the pit?'_

There, be careful with it.  Don't say you can do it by algebra--that's
cheap stuff--and anyway you can't.

      *      *      *      *      *

A side-line of this new question-and-answer craze is the
'information-questionnaire' as used in business.

The idea of it is to find out all about a person by reducing him to a
set of questions and answers.  As a recommendation of a candidate for a
job we no longer want a few words of glowing praise, but something by
which we can 'measure him up' on a scale.  Perhaps as the light of the
spirit grows dim, we turn on the artificial lamp of science.

Fifty years ago, if a business house wrote to a college for a
recommendation of a young man seeking a job, they merely asked in
general terms what sort of young man he was.  They received in reply
from a dean, or other academic authority, a letter which said that Mr.
Jones was 'a young man of high Christian character who had earned the
esteem of his teachers, both for his assiduity and his intelligence.'
But nowadays, that kind of recommendation wouldn't get the young man
very far.  The business house want him 'measured.'  So they send out a
printed form of questions.  It says:

'We understand that Mr. Jones was at your college.  Kindly fill up the
data as requested in the questions below.

(1) What percentage of character has he got?

(2) What is his percentage of Christianity?

(3) How is his assiduity (state how many hours he can sit still).

(4) How would you class his intelligence-- (_a_) normal?  (_b_)
super-normal?  (_c_) subnormal?  Compare him with a higher ape.'

The college, of course, meets the situation on its own terms.  It keeps
books like ledgers in which Mr. Jones is reduced to credits, merits,
hours per week, and weeks per year.  They can fill him out in five
minutes as sixty per cent Christian, forty-five per cent normal,
assiduity guaranteed up to fourteen hours a day--saturation point--and
intelligence tested five times under high pressure and never burst.

Some of the question sheets (I've filled in dozens of them) go further.
They want to know not only what Mr. Jones is and does, but what he
would be and do under circumstances that haven't happened yet.  Such
questions as:

(1) How would Mr. Jones measure up in an emergency?

(2) If we left a hundred dollars on our office table would he steal it?

(3) If not a hundred, at what sum would he reach the stealing point?

(4) If burglars entered our office and shot at him, how would he react?

(5) If they hit him, what then?

      *      *      *      *      *

As a natural result of this 'questionnaire' system, once it got
started, there arose the 'intelligence test,' as applied direct to an
applicant, the last word in the attempt at quantitative measurement of
human capacity.  It has since run riot.  It proved a godsend to college
psychology just at the time when the lamp of the old metaphysics burnt
dim.  It overspread business.  It invaded the army.  There was no end
to it.

It works like this--you want to know what a piece of steel is like.
Test it.  You want to know what a young man is like--test him.  Here,
for example, is a young man who wants to marry your daughter.  All
right--have him tested.  Send him up to the college psychological
laboratory and let the professor test him.  Don't send your daughter
up, though--just the young man.

To test him they find out whether he can remember how many windows
there are in the corridor he passed through--how many steps he came up
to get in--and what kind of trees he passed by in the college grounds.
In reality, anybody who remembers windows and trees and steps has a
mind as empty as a dried nut.  What he needs is furniture.  A hen,
which can see, but can't think, would pass an intelligence test in
Class One ... Isaac Newton couldn't touch it.  To my mind an
'intelligence test,' if it means anything more than talking to a person
as a way of getting to know him, is just a piece of pretentious
nonsense, as ineffective as it is ancient.

      *      *      *      *      *

But what does all this mean, this everlasting searching of our brains,
testing our knowledge of fact, this passion for information, this
desire for accurate measurement?  Does it mean that there's something
going wrong with us?  'Is civilization a failure, and is the Caucasian
played out?' asked the Truthful James of Bret Harte seventy years ago.
Indeed, every nation is always asking itself if it is getting played
out.  The Greeks complained of it.  The Romans talked of it so much
that at last they got it.  Every nation likes to hark back to the 'men
of old' and pity themselves as degenerate descendants.  Just now we are
running through a phase of pretending that western civilization--the
name we give ourselves--is playing out; that presently it will
'crash'--a new metaphor brought down from the air--and when it
'crashes' we'll pass into a form of nebula called 'world-chaos.'

Seen in this light, the present craze for 'questions,' for 'facts'
means that earlier faith having gone, the minds run to seed in
meaningless intellectuality; that 'purpose' is being replaced by
purposeless capacity, just as the 'helmsman' is replaced by the
gyro-compass, and machines with steel fingers replace the human agent.

There's no end to it.  People can get as mournful as ever they like
about it, but if you come to the reality of things you will find that
the present puzzle-and-quiz-and-fact craze has no particular meaning
and no particular novelty.  It's the kind of thing that comes and goes
and always has come and gone.  The trouble with humanity is not that it
changes so much but that it changes so little.  The 'men of old' never
existed, or, when they did, were pretty much like ourselves.  Later on,
we'll be the 'men of old'--rugged, honest, but all dead.

So what I am saying is that the new 'question-and-answer' mentality is
just a passing phase, not so new as it seems, and, in one form or the
other, often in the world before.

      *      *      *      *      *

Let me start at some of the simpler phases of it.  There are people,
and always have been, who have a weakness for 'facts' rather than
'fancies': and others who prefer 'fancies' to 'fact.'  Some people read
romances and others prefer an almanac.  Some lose themselves in a poem,
others bury themselves in a railway folder.  But the motive is one and
the same, the desire to _escape_ from the little prison of our
consciousness in which we are compelled to dwell.  Some attempt to fly
out on the wings of the imagination, blown up as light as helium, and
others make an aeroplane of the solid metal of facts.

But it was always so.  The biggest encyclopaedia ever written was
compiled in China several thousand years ago: the 'romances' of the
troubadours took a week to sing.  Archimedes was as deeply buried in
thought as Omar Khayym was lost in imagination.  Fact and fancy have
always divided us.

      *      *      *      *      *

Personally, I am willing to plead guilty, along with thousands of other
people, to this passion for facts.  Say what you will against
statistics, I must admit that I like them.  I can open a guide book or
a compendium or a digest at any time and get absorbed in it; absorbed,
for instance, in that marvellous and vivid description of the United
States (who hasn't read it with delight?) which says:


_The United States has a continental area of _3,026,789_ square miles
with a non-contiguous territory of _711,606_ square miles, making a
total area of _3,738,395_--think of that!  Just by adding them together
the continental population at the census of _1930_ was _122,775,046_.
The national wealth was _$361,800,000,000_ or _$2,977_ per capita._


Everyone had a share.  That's great stuff: it's vivid--and with it are
mixed streaks of higher colour, such as:


_The number of children enrolled in the public schools in _1934_ was
_27,157,601_ (_that one boy may have left since_); the number of mules
in the United States was _4,925,000_.  There were on July 1st, _1933,
50,000_ miles of natural gas-pipe lines._


After you've read an account like that you feel you know the country.
So, too, with its people: what you want is their actual statistical
measure.  The old-fashioned way of talking about them was in such
general terms as:--'The average American is a volatile individual,
restless, energetic, and with a passion for novelty and experiment.'
How much superior is the newer method; 'The average adult American is 5
feet 7 1/2 inches in height; he weighs 138 lb., with a chest
measurement of 30 inches.  He has (approximately) two ears, one on each
side of his face.  He has 2.1 children and dies at 51.'  There--with
that you feel you know the fellow, or, at least, lots like him.

But certain statistical figures appeal not so much by their exactness
as by their size, by their very magnitude.  People like to be staggered
with huge figures, just as they like exaggeration in humour and in
romance.  The little child who reads of the dog with eyes as big as the
Round Tower of Copenhagen (see under Hans Andersen) will grow into the
man who reads that the estimated original natural stock of coal in the
United States was _3,214,898,000,000_ tons.

But if you want to get a real stagger you have to turn to astronomy.
That's where you get the real stuff!  How's this:--'The diameter of the
star Betelgeuse is estimated at _240,000,000_ miles.'  How's that for
size?  Almost difficult to visualize, isn't it?  Or take this one--'The
beams of light from the great nebula in the constellation something or
other, which started during the Trojan War and have been moving ever
since at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, are not here yet.'  It
makes you feel like going out and watching for them to come.

      *      *      *      *      *

But what I am saying is that this passion for big figures is as old as
humanity.  In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to
fall back on lies.  Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive
literature, giants, miracles, wonders!  It's the size that counts.
They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the
same.

      *      *      *      *      *

In the same way our present passion for puzzles and puzzle-questions is
nothing new.  The puzzle-man is probably a type as old as humanity.
They must have had him in Babylon and on the Nile.

Everybody knows him as we see him with us to-day--never happy unless he
is working out a puzzle.  He carries it round with him, as men used to
carry a chew of tobacco.  You see him sitting in a railway train gazing
fixedly out of the window.  But he sees nothing.  He doesn't know
whether he's going through the Adirondacks or over the Susquehanna.
He's got a puzzle inside him: he's trying to think how a farmer with a
ten-gallon can and a three-gallon can and a two-gallon can, manages to
measure out six gallons of milk.

These puzzle-men, when you understand them, are singularly easy to
entertain if you have them on your hands in your house.  Just throw
them a puzzle.  All you do is to say to such a man--'Bentley, I saw a
good puzzle the other day but I couldn't solve it.  It said, "A
shopkeeper has a piece of linoleum twelve feet by twelve feet, and a
customer wants a piece sixteen feet by nine feet--same number of square
yards but different shape.  The shopkeeper says, 'All you need to do is
to cut this twelve by twelve piece into two parts and place them
together.'  'Only two parts?' asks the perplexed customer.  'Only two,'
says the shopkeeper."  Now how could he do that, Bentley?'

And with that Bentley is off.  You don't need to think of him any more
all evening.  He'll just sit round and murmur, 'Sixteen feet by nine,
eh?'  Then he won't speak for a long time, till he says, 'Linoleum,
eh?'  You don't need to talk to him, or amuse him, or to let him cut in
at bridge.  Just turn from the card table now and then to say,
'Linoleum, that's right, Bentley.'  If he gets restless, give him a
Scotch and soda and let him walk up and down, and mutter, 'Twelve by
twelve.'  He's all set for the evening.

But be sure to tell him the answer before he goes home.  Even if he
protests, tell it to him.  Otherwise he'll call you up by phone at two
in the morning, jubilant, to say he got it.  He thinks you'll be too
glad to sleep.

But this puzzle stuff, as I say, is as old as human thought.  As soon
as mankind began to have brains they must have loved to exercise them
for exercise' sake.  The 'jig-saw' puzzles come from China where they
had them four thousand years ago.  So did the famous 'sixteen puzzle'
(fifteen movable squares and one empty space) over which we racked our
brains in the middle eighties.  The mathematical puzzles come from the
Greeks who left some behind them never yet solved.  For example:--If
Achilles is chasing a tortoise and moves at such a rate that he catches
up half the distance in the first minute, and half the remaining
distance in the second minute, then, as he is always moving faster than
the tortoise is, he must sooner or later catch up with it.  But as
there is always half the distance left at the end of each minute, it is
equally certain that he will never catch up with it.  The Greeks died
without knowing the answer.

Or take all the 'crossword,' 'catchword' stuff.  That carries back to
the Middle Ages, otherwise the Muddled Ages, when all life was one big
puzzle.  The monks and the few people who could read used to divert
themselves with 'acrostics,' 'anagrams,' and 'magic squares.'

Even the word 'puzzle' is so old that nobody knows what it's derived
from, and they think 'puzzle' must go back to the twilight beginnings
of human thought.  Most people know, by reproduction in pictures, the
wonderful statue of a primitive man, made by the French sculptor Rodin,
and called _Le Penseur_.  The figure is that of a huge creature, just
emerged above the ape--seated--the narrow head bent on the hands--the
rude face immobile and furrowed with a fierce attempt at constructive
thought.  In looking at it one realizes that the man is probably
muttering--'Linoleum, eh?  Twelve by twelve.'

      *      *      *      *      *

As to the 'intelligence test,' ask anybody old enough to recall the
Spanish American War of 1898 to tell you the famous story of the
Message to Garcia.  Then work back from that to the story of King
Solomon and the undistributed baby--and you'll realize that tests are
as old as intelligence.

No, no--it's all old stuff come back again in a new form that suits our
ideas.  Let's turn on the radio and hear Professor Knowit asking about
Christopher Columbus.




XV

HOW MUCH DOES LANGUAGE CHANGE?

About forty years ago one of England's ripest scholars--you know what
that means: they get so ripe, they fall off like pumpkins--said that as
far as grammar and structure went, the English language was 'probably a
finished process.'  He admitted that new words might come and old words
might go, but as for language-making, in the structural sense, it is
all over.  'The grammar will remain for centuries what it is now.'
Odd, isn't it? the way old men have of thinking that things have
reached the full stop of betterment in their own time!  John Stuart
Mill thought that political economy was as fixed as Euclid: and now,
political economy is a wreck and Euclid is called Einstein.

How does it stand with this idea of an unchanging language?  In the
forty years since the ripe scholar ripened, has grammar 'stayed put,'
as he expected, or has it moved on?

Of course, in one sense there is an aspect of language that can't
change.  It has a vertebrate anatomy that is, and always has been, the
same.  The distinction of 'parts of speech' rests on fundamental modes
of thought, not on shifts of language.  A noun will still be a noun in
heaven; and a verb is a verb, even in Japanese: put the two together
and, even in Japanese, you get what can be charitably called a sentence.

The general notions implied in 'parts of speech,' and 'parsing,' and
'analysis' are of a fundamental and unchanging character.  But 'changes
of grammar' mean new modes of structure inside this frame.  To give an
example, the Latin language, the kind we learnt or nearly learnt at
school, was succeeded by what was called 'low Latin,' which we
understood was beneath the notice of decent people.  The kind of change
involved was precisely a change in grammar.  Thus in the classical days
at Rome, somebody--I forget who--said of his own achievements,
'_monumentum exegi aere perennius_,' i.e. 'I have erected a monument
more lasting than bronze.'  But a 'low Latin' got down low enough to
say, '_habeo monumentum erectum_,' 'I have a monument erected'--and the
thing proved such a hit that a flood of auxiliary verbs was let loose
on Latin and broke it up as rain breaks ice.

In the same way in English, 'I speak,' widened into 'I do speak' and 'I
am speaking,' and, quite in our own day, 'I am praised' could be
expanded into 'I am being praised,' and we can even say, without taking
a fit, 'I will be being praised'--a usage which would have made Addison
or Gibbon feel faint.

The point then is, are there any more such changes to come?  We leave
out of count the mere changes of words and phrases that make
vocabulary.  These, of course, in their own place are of extraordinary
interest and often of marvellous curiosity, and at times contain within
themselves a whole irony of history.  It is strange to think that a
word that once meant 'to go on a sacred pilgrimage to the Holy Land'
(_sainte terre_) now means 'to loaf' (_saunter_): or that the '_hocus
pocus_' of a modern conjurer is the '_hoc est corpus_' of a mediaeval
bishop.

Yet these developments of language are aside from the present
discussion, and indeed, in many cases, are but shifting metaphors that
come and go, lose their initial force and pass out or sink into a
common-place.  The eighteenth century called a bad young man a 'rake'
or a 'blood'; we call him a 'lounge lizard' or a 'lobster.'  But it's
all the same thing: he's no worse or better.  The Stuart generation
called a young woman a 'jade' or a 'wench.'  Nowadays we--or, at least,
people younger than myself--call her a 'skirt,' or a 'doll,' or a
'flapper.'

Indeed, the power of making new words has been accelerated by the
continuous need for them.  Who ever dreamed, a generation ago, of the
'social hostess of a passenger plane'?  What landscape painter ever
thought of a life insurance 'prospect' (meaning a human being)?  I defy
the Duke of Wellington to guess what a 'gas-mask' is, or a 'dug-out,'
and Lord Nelson wouldn't know what a 'depth bomb' was till you dropped
one on him.

These new words are a fascinating study.  They seem to indicate a
vitality in our spoken language never equalled before.  They not only
embody a wealth of metaphors but they seem at times to dive down into
the fundamental undertones that preceded definite language, and bring
up treasures as from an ancient cave.  Consider such words as 'stooge'
and 'boob' applied to a 'dumb' young man, or words such as 'zoom' to
indicate descent through the air accompanied by noise.  It is a pity
that most of our discussion of such new forms has not reached beyond
the stage of making a catalogue, without further interpretation.  Such
a catalogue is just on the surface as botany was when still confined to
the classification of flowers by a ladies' school.

But what about changes in grammar itself?  Was the ripe scholar correct
about them?  I am willing to suggest for the consideration of other
scholars--and the school returns of the United States show a total of
two million coloured scholars alone--that the ripe English authority
was all wrong: he was, to use a new term for it, 'all wet.'

Proof can only be by examples.  Let me proceed to gather and present a
few.  I will begin with a very simple one, that of beginning a sentence
with a verb first and its subject after it without using an
introductory word such as 'there,' or 'now.'  For example, instead of
saying, 'There followed a moment of intense anxiety,' ever so many
writers of to-day put, 'Followed a moment of intense anxiety.' Compare:
'Came October'...  'Broke disaster'...  'Ensued a pause.'  They do this
not once in a while but they do it all the time, they do it on purpose,
for effect, with the idea that it is stronger than what we used to
write.

Personally I hate this innovation with all the unreasoning conservatism
of old age.  I quite admit--to halt an idiotic objection at its first
step--that of course fifty years ago, when I was young, and even the
ripe scholar not too old, many writers used such a form sometimes, and
it was frequently used in poetry by what was called 'poetic licence,'
an indulgence as wide as a 'liquor licence' in Chicago.  But it was no
part of regular writing.  It is now rapidly becoming so and is helping
to add in the new casting of sentences from the continuous flow that
was the ideal of Cicero or Milton to the step-by-step prose of to-day.
Thus one of the old-fashioned three-decker love stories which
flourished three generations ago, would contain a sentence:


_The sudden entry of Elizabeth afforded to John an opportunity for a
bold invitation that was no sooner extended than embraced...._


The author's ghost might read it now, or soon, in such a rewritten form
as this:


_Came in John.  Appeared Elizabeth.  Spoke John, 'What about it,
Lizzie?'  Pondered not Elizabeth.  'I'm on,' she said._


Call it grammar, or call it what you like, the change in speech is here
about as complete as the difference between the famous Strasbourg Oaths
of early French (A.D. 842) and an election speech of M. Daladier in
1938.

That, then, is that, a phrase in itself suggestive of a new era.  I
pass to another case of usage, very wide and working great change in
our colloquial speech.  If I wanted to indicate it in a pedantic way so
as to give it all the peculiar force of obscurity, I should say that we
are reintroducing forms similar to the old Greek reduplicated aorist--a
vanishing form belonging in the dawn of written speech whose original
force had apparently disappeared.  I should then apologize for the lack
of Greek type in this book and slip out of proof like Houdini out of
handcuffs.  But let me say it instead in simple, vulgar language.  We
have got into the way, colloquially, of putting in front of our verbs
such peculiar modifications as 'sort-of (pronounced 'sorta') and
'kind-of' (pronounced 'kinda').  Such usages as 'I sort-of thought he
would come,' 'I kind-of-suspected he was here,' are ghastly as logic,
impossible to parse--in fact, utterly unfit for use in the House of
Lords.  On the other hand they are replete with meaning and they fulfil
the entrance test needed for admission into language that they express
something that needs expressing and that nothing else will express so
well.

It is clear to anyone of unclouded vision that we are to have a new
kind of mood, made after the fashion of the Greek 'reduplicated aorist'
tense--a noble ancestor that will make it respectable.  The grammar out
of which the Chinese conquerors of Europe will learn their old
twentieth-century English will have a section to read:


_Any verb may be removed from the indicative to the dubitative mood by
the addition of the prefix 'sorts' (derived according to Dr. Woo Hoo
from 'soror' a sister, but perhaps an abbreviation of
'so-it-ought-'er').  Thus the verb 'to think' has as its dubitative
past:_

  _I sortathought_
  _You sortathought_
  _He sortathought_, etc., etc.

_The negative form, which is difficult for foreigners and should be
avoided except by writers of special taste and purity, runs:_

  _I sortadidn'tthink_
  _You sortadidn'tthink_, etc., etc.


Only people who know nothing of language, its origin and its vagaries
will find anything odd in this.  Let me refer the doubting reader to
any grammar of the Zulu language: he will there find verbs with an
interpolated middle part of much this sort.  But if he has no Zulu
grammar, and won't go to Zululand, let me refer him to the more
accessible example of Japanese language.  He will find there that the
Japanese verbs have a great variety of these internal modifications.
Thus the Japanese for 'put' (OKU) has a tense called (for short) the
indefinite probable past, which means 'I think-I-very-likely-put,' 'you
think-you-very-likely-put,' etc., etc.  But in Japanese it has to
undergo a second cross variation to distinguish whether I am talking
about myself or about you.  If I talk of myself it must be indicated in
Japanese by some form of change or particle to mean 'humble worm,' 'low
form of existence.'  But if I talk of you, it must imply
'august-presence-gentleman-Mr.,' or have the initial 'GO' in front of
it which implies 'Just listen to this.'  So that the tense of which I
speak, conjugated out for actual use, would run as far as it is
possible to say it:


First person: '_Humble worm thinks humble worm likely put_.'

Second person: '_Listen to this!  August gentleman mister thinks high
presence likely put_,' etc., etc.


Can you wonder that the Japanese verbal form grows long!  I have in
front of me a Japanese textbook (Chamberlain, page 150) in which the
author indignantly complains that foreigners mistake for verbal roots
forms which are nothing but the 'indefinite potential of the causative
conjugation.'  Simple, isn't it, once you're on to it?  And all this
out of Chamberlain's _Colloquial Japanese_--before you get to the real
language.

Let it be observed that the colloquial introduction, and future
literary adoption of such a form as 'I sort-of-thought' is entirely
different from such a form as 'I rather thought.'  The latter is
grammatical as it stands with the adverb 'rather' to modify the verb
'thought.'  But 'I sort-of-thought' breaks the mould.  It is grammar in
the making.

Nor can we smugly brush aside these changes by dismissing them as
'colloquial.'  All language was so, originally.  And even now only a
small part of our language comes in by the front door of literary
creation--such as 'cinematograph' and 'automobile.'  Even these get
beaten out by 'cinema' and 'car.'  In fact there is no front door.
Open it as you will it keeps banging to, and cutting off the half of a
word as it comes in--leaving us 'phone' and 'bike,' and such.  Meantime
the crowd of new words, the real ones, squeeze in as best they can at
the back door and brush up into respectability.

Verbal changes are being greatly helped by that insidious thing called
the 'split infinitive': 'insidious' because it has a way of enlarging
its consequences like a split in a hemlock log.  Personally I am all
for it.  I would as soon split an infinitive as split an egg.  But
grammarians used to shudder--shuddering is their business--at such
forms as 'to fully understand,' 'to entirely agree,' and to collapse at
such extensions as 'to more than half believe.'  But the split
infinitive has made its way into our language by sheer merit.  It can
say what nothing else can.  Even so distinguished a grammarian as Otto
Jespersen of Copenhagen, who knows more of our language than a Dane has
any business to (see his _Essentials of English Grammar_), is willing
to give it his parting blessing in his _Final Remarks on Infinitives_.
But all grammarians warn us to be careful with split infinitives, as
with petrol or live electric wires.  The unthinking public--it is its
business to unthink--never heeds the warning and into the gap of the
split infinitive pour a host of new verbal forms, like soldiers into a
breach.  Hamlet could have solved his maddening doubts whether '_to be
or not to be_,' if he had made up his mind 'to more or less be.'

Dr. Hubert Jagger in his _Modern English_ cites the case of the
Staffordshire County Council being brought up all standing (1924) by a
split infinitive that held up the question of slaughtering cattle.
They seem to have been perplexed as whether to '_ask the ministry
seriously to consider it_' or '_to ask the ministry to seriously
consider it_,' or '_to seriously ask the ministry to consider it_.'
Evidently the thing needed was a higher sense of fun in England.

Another wedge is being driven deep and always deeper into the
grammatical structure of the English language by its prepositions.  All
foreigners realize that our prepositions are our chief glory.  They can
only admire without understanding them--like George III with the
British Constitution.  For example:--'to break out,' 'to break up,' 'to
break off,' 'to break in.'  Thus if a riot 'breaks out' in a meeting,
the speaker 'breaks off,' the police 'break in' and--what does the
meeting do?--it 'breaks up.'  After which there are arrests and the
prosecution 'breaks down.'  And just as the foreigner thinks he
understands it, he finds Tennyson writing, _Break, break, break_,
without telling him whether it was 'up' or 'down,' or 'down and out.'

The prepositions once started loose on their evil course, instead of
being tightly imprisoned as in Latin, have permeated into our verbal
forms like a chemical solution.

'What say the waves?' is Latin.  'What are the wild waves saying?' is
Victorian English.  But, 'What are the wild waves being said to?' is
something else.  Or consider this:--'The patient was brought to, but
did not know what he was brought to for, nor what he was brought to
by.'  The Japanese for this (much superior) is
'Honourable-sick-man-mister-as-for-much-better-cause-non-existent.'
Dr. Jagger quotes a still better example in the form, 'Whatever did you
choose that book to be read out of to for?'  He says it is comic: I
think so too.

In other words, stated simply and softly, our prepositional compounds
have broken out of any grammatical frame that existed when grammar
'became fixed.'  True their vagaries had begun: but they hadn't ended,
and we don't know yet what they will 'pass on over into.'  As yet no
one has fitted a logical grammar around them.

The revolt of the prepositions has been accompanied by an insurrection
among the pronouns.  It is not yet fully recognized by the grammarians,
but has at least acquired belligerent rights.  Who is there who still
says, 'It is I'?  Or who would be ashamed of saying, 'It is me'?
Consider such a dialogue as this:--'I think you said you lost your
gloves.  Are these they?'  'Oh, thanks awfully, that's them.'  One
would almost prefer the Japanese form,
'August-mister-gloves-as-for-humble-worm-offer-from-below.'

In short the time has come to bring all these revolted pronouns back
under the aegis of grammar by giving them a name, as the French do, and
calling them disjunctive forms and forgiving them.  The French have
used them for so long that in French the other forms, the ones we try
to use, sound silly.  Compare in the well-known play _Ici On Parle
Franais_ the immortal dialogue, '_Qui est la personne ici qui parle
franais?'--'Je'_!

      *      *      *      *      *

Oddly enough some few grammatical changes are reversions to old, old
types, so old as to be long forgotten and hence not conscious
reconstructions.  Thus, professors (who know everything) know that 'if'
meant 'give.'  'If he comes here,' was equal to saying--'Give this (let
it be granted), he comes here.'  Compare 'Gin a body meet a body coming
through the rye'--where 'gin' means 'given'--and 'rye' means only what
it says.

Now our language, our colloquial language, in its effort to shake loose
from the shackles of long sentences and subordinate clauses can reach
back to the dim ages and revive the remote form.  In the most
colloquial of English, the English that is almost back-alley and
gangsters' English--instead of saying 'If you stay here, the police
will get you,' the thought is expressed, 'Look--you stay here, the cops
get you--see?'

The underlying reason is, of course, the impulse we have to-day to
break up speech so as to make it intelligible step by step as it goes
along.  This is intensified by the fact that our language is more than
ever under the stress of the demand for brevity.  We live in an era of
traffic-signs, street directions, police radio calls, telegrams, and
air mail.  We have no time even for the old-fashioned politeness that
would say, 'Gentlemen are requested not to sit down on the wet paint.'
We just put a sign, 'wet paint,' and they can sit on it if they like.
This pressure extends from the language of written signs to the
language of written literature.  Our writers begin to find that they
need little but a noun and a verb.  In fact, even the verb can be
dropped.  Thus Longfellow wrote, _The shades of night were falling
fast_.  A free verse poet of to-day would just say, 'Night.'

And in the same poem, where Longfellow writes, '_Oh stay!' the maiden
said, 'and rest,_' the same idea can be admirably expressed now with
the sign, 'Tourists' or 'Fresh eggs.'  Incidentally, Longfellow's young
man in the poem was away ahead of his time, for instead of saying, 'I'm
so sorry but I really must be moving on,' he says, '_Excelsior_.'  This
was bad Latin, as it ought to be neuter, but was wonderful
condensation.  This single-word brevity, or rather our consciousness of
it, can easily be reduced to parody, as in the familiar verse:

  _A little boy,
  A pair of skates,
  A hole in the ice,
  The golden gates._

      *      *      *      *      *

Nor is it only in this way that the isolated use of nouns, substituting
images for abstractions, grows upon our language.  Two nouns in
juxtaposition can, by acting as adjective and noun, replace two nouns
connected with verbs and prepositions.  A 'steam-boat' means a 'boat
moved by steam.'  A 'steamboat company' means a 'company operating
boats moved by steam.'  This mode is as old as Anglo-Saxon, but has
grown now to dimensions unrecognizable fifty years ago.  We can say,
and we do say--'Steamboat Company Dock Agents Life Insurance
Department...' and so on endlessly.  If we ran out of new ideas to tack
on to the end, we could begin again at the beginning and say, 'Lake
Shore Steamship Company...' and so on.  No Anglo-Saxon could have said
that: he couldn't _hold_ it: a Roman would have taken a page to say it,
and a Greek would be talking yet.  Our minds have been trained to a new
habit of suspended animation, so to speak, waiting for the end before
we make an image.  We do with these compounds what the Romans used to
do, when they read a long sentence of Cicero's intricate prose.  They
waited till they got it all.  We find Cicero hard to follow because we
have long since broken up our prose to make it intelligible as it goes
along.  The Romans would find our 'Steamboat Agency Head Office' stuff
quite impossible.

      *      *      *      *      *

But then what's left of our ripe scholar?  Nothing.  What with new
model verbs, and pronouns, split infinitives, interpolated
prepositions, traffic-sign nouns, and buried verbs, our grammar seems
to have about as much stability about it as a French franc, or a
Japanese treaty, or an over-the-counter share in a gold mine, or any
other up-to-date phenomenon.  No, our ripe scholar has fallen off his
stem.




XVI

HOW FAR CAN WE PLAN?

AN EXCURSION INTO ECONOMICS

I remember many years ago on a Sunday morning, meeting an old-time
Presbyterian friend of mine, just emerging from his church and drawing
on his gloves with an air of great satisfaction.  'Our minister,' he
said, 'preached a great sermon this morning.'  'What was it about?' I
asked.  'About the poor.'  'And what did he say about them?'  'He gave
them hell.'

That, I repeat, was many years ago.  We can't solve our social problems
quite so simply now.  The time has gone by when we can believe that the
poor are poor because they deserve to be poor, and the rich enjoy their
wealth because they created it themselves, or inherited it from those
who did.

Yet this was, in the main, the simple creed that was good enough for
George Washington and George III, for John Adams and Adam Smith.
Leaving out a few uncomfortable people like Thomas Paine--and crazy
people like the French--it was, a hundred years or more ago, the
general theory of society entertained by a gentleman.  It could be
reduced to a few simple ideas.  Here first was property--especially
property in land--a thing so obviously admirable that no property-owner
ever questioned it.  With this was free contract in buying and selling,
with a guardian government and law to keep it all straight and prevent
fraud and violence.  Labour, both in England and America, was equally
free, that is, leaving out plantation slavery, a domestic institution,
existing under both flags and concerning negroes not men.  Labour had
been emancipated from the old restrictions about moving from place to
place.  It had full liberty to go where it would, like the liberty
granted to Mr. Pickwick by the Pickwick Club on the proviso that he
paid his own expenses.  This system was undoubtedly capitalism though
they didn't know it as such at the time, and called it common sense,
natural law, or the workings of providence.  In England there was
supposed to be something not only moral about it, but peculiarly hearty
and British.  In America, with land free and opportunity wide open, it
fitted like a glove.  Who cared if George Washington owned 150,000
acres?  There were lots more.  In the old world the fit was better at
the top: at the bottom the poor got badly squeezed.  But they could be
explained away, first on the ground that they were always with us, and
secondly that theirs was the Kingdom of Heaven.  With all that in sight
they had no right to kick.

A few had qualms.  Adam Smith, who owned no land, was not quite sure
about landlords, and Bentham, who had no children, felt uncertain about
inheritance; and John Stuart Mill was poor for so long that he grew
doubtful about the rich.  But mainly the social system of the earlier
nineteenth century appeared to those who prospered under it as the
natural and only order of society.

More than that, it had in it, in the form of its new and wonderful
machinery, the prospect of continual betterment, increasing happiness.
Hence even the misery of the slums seemed only a dark corner waiting
for the light.  People lived in the sunrise.  It was always morning.

      *      *      *      *      *

A hundred years has clouded it all over.  The sky is darkening into
night, and livid with hidden lightings.  The air has fallen hot,
stifling.  Something is coming--we cannot tell what--and far off
perhaps in the darkness our ears seem to catch the roaring of a great
sea.

What is coming?  Where can we stand!  Is the old basis gone on which we
build our foundation, and must we look for higher ground or perish in
the gathering flood?...

      *      *      *      *      *

Let us pace over again, in broad strides down a hundred years of
history, the ground that has been traversed.  This age of Hope, what
happened to it?

      *      *      *      *      *

Well, in the first place poverty, that should have disappeared, showed
no signs of doing so.  It seemed that the poor couldn't, or wouldn't,
get rich, and they wouldn't go to Heaven, all lit up and waiting for
them.  It isn't true that the poor got poorer.  It is only that the
aspect of poverty grew worse.  A slum is more appalling than a desert.
The Hottentots were poor and never knew it.  A Hottentot thought he was
rich because he had two wives.  We know better than that.

Of course, as long as there was America to go to, it wasn't so bad.  If
the poor wouldn't go to Heaven they could go to Pittsburgh.  Then
America filled up and the 'free world' was all finished.

At the same time 'free competitions' began to be all grown over with a
web of monopoly.  Machinery and company organization seemed to create
monopolies, and monopoly prices were not the same as 'free' prices.  It
is not true that a monopolist can 'ask what he likes'--or rather he can
ask it, but he can't get it--but a monopoly price differs from a 'free'
price in that it is based on the interest of the seller--'what the
traffic will bear.'  'Leave the consumer to us,' said a great
monopoly-sugar magnate forty years ago.  But the consumer said, 'Please
don't.'

With monopoly prices came all kinds of queer prices of which Adam
Smith, who slept well, never dreamed, and John Stuart Mill, a light
sleeper, only caught a vision in a nightmare.  These were prices
specially made for competition's sake, temporary prices of business
strategy to kill the 'little man' (meaning perhaps a huge local butcher
or a heavy drayman); prices as by-products, or prices under a cost so
multiple and divided, that no one could measure it.

All of this simply overwhelmed John Stuart Mill's world.  All that he
said about it was true, but there ceased to be any such place.

On the other hand, the only effective thing to raise wages and shorten
hours turned out to be the thing that the economists of a hundred years
ago called futile.  Ricardo said that wage laws couldn't possibly lift
wages, neither could strikes.  The economists approved of labour unions
only in the form of burial societies, those for mutual improvement or
recreation.  'Oh, what a world of profit and delight is open to the
studious artisan!'  So sang some dead jackass of the period.  The
workers could improve themselves (with such things as algebra), have a
good time and then bury themselves.

But it turned out that Labour organization could and did raise wages:
not by making the social cake bigger but by making other people's
slices smaller.

But there was worse than that.  As the machine production system
widened over national industry, it developed a habit of going
alternately fast and slow, and every now and then coming nearly to a
full stop.  This was the familiar 'cycle' which the world tried to
ignore and which is now the world's bogey, the world's ghost, the
assassin behind the arras.  The economists tried to pooh-pooh it.  They
said it always righted itself; so does human life--at the end.  The
famous economist Jevons said it came from periodical over-brightening
of the spots on the sun, which affected the Indian rice crop, which
affected English investment in India, which affected the London market,
and so on.  It was like the house that Jack built, whose causation got
longer and longer.  Perhaps it's not the spots, exactly, but Jevons was
right about the causation idea, and of the notion of one thing knocking
down another and so on.  We _do_ live in a house that Jack built; it's
like a card house that's fine as long as it stands up.  When it falls
then Brazil coffee knocks down cotton and cotton knocks down wheat and
away it all goes.

What a place!  What a world!  After all the bright hopes that gave it
birth.

      *      *      *      *      *

So can we wonder that very early in the day a lot of people began to
think that the only thing to do was to sweep it all away and build up
another kind of society.  They forgot that there's only one kind of
society that we can build, a society made up of men and women--_as they
are_.  Give me saints and angels--and I'll build a fine one....  But
even at that it would be dull.  Women, as they are, are better for the
purpose than angels; saints and women could be a fine combination but
you couldn't keep it.  The women would corrupt the saints.  What I mean
is that we have got to deal with people as they are, not with people as
they might be--the dream-people of the academic socialist.

      *      *      *      *      *

Modern socialism came in with the middle of the nineteenth century.  It
had nothing to do with the earlier mediaeval socialisms of the inner
light--the socialism of friars and monks, or of Rappites and Oneida
Shakers.  These, as economics, succeeded--because they aimed at
renouncing the world.  A man in a hair-shirt is easy to please.  But
new socialism aimed at achieving the world.  That's different.

It spoke through such epoch books as Louis Blanc's _Organisation of
Labour_ and Karl Marx's _Capital_ and Edward Bellamy's _Looking
Backward_.  It has spoken through a thousand tongues since, but the
voice, though in a thousand tones, is still the same.  Academic people
with long ears and loose ties now pooh-pooh all connection with the
older socialism.  They said it is replaced by guild socialism, or
gradualism, or syndicalist-socialism, or by the peculiar Tom Tiddler's
ground beginning to be called totalitarianism.  Not so: as they say in
French, 'the more it changes the more it's the same thing.'  The
central idea is wonderful, simple--and utterly hopeless.

A British Prime Minister once said that he could write out 'free trade'
on half a sheet of notepaper.  I am sure I could write out socialism on
the space left at the bottom of the page.

Socialism merely means everybody working along with everybody else for
everybody's good, in cheerful co-operation and equality, instead of
each selfishly working for himself in a world of inequality and
injustice.  The idea is grand.  I'm all for it.  But I'm not fit for
it.  At least I might be, but I doubt you other people.  I'd hate to
give up my house and my shares in my latest get-rich-quick gold mine
(over the counter, tenpence a share)--till I am a little more sure of
the rest of you.

      *      *      *      *      *

Consider how socialism is supposed to work, by a real socialist or
communist.  Never mind the difference between the two: it's only that a
socialist shares the workroom and a communist shares the bathroom.  For
the present purpose they are all the same.  There isn't, of course, any
such thing as real socialism in existence, and never has been and never
will be.  But you will find it existing as a vision in the mind of any
enthusiastic second-year student, bright with light and iridescent as a
soap-bubble.  It is part of his native endowment of generous
imagination which the college will presently remove in fitting him for
life.

This is what he sees.

In his happy world a group of awfully decent old men (many of them as
old as forty) sit together as a sort of board of directors and arrange
how much of everything ought to be produced so that everybody will have
conveniently enough of it.  How do the old fellows know it?  Oh, they
think it out--or no, perhaps they calculate it from graphs and curves
that indicate what is called 'saturation.'  The old men are supposed to
know when they are saturated.  Not all old men do, but that doesn't
matter.  These are supposed to, and anyway these old men are so decent
and so public-minded that they don't mind how long they sit there and
saturate.  Real old men (I am one) might want to have a whiskey and
soda brought in, and a box of cigars--or perhaps want to know what
there was in it for themselves; and crooked old men (I'm not one, but a
lot of my friends are) would start to fix up the plan of production all
crooked.

But anyway pass on from the old men.  The idea then is that all the
'comrades' are allotted to various tasks.  One says, 'Please may I be a
policeman?' and the board says, 'Certainly!'  And another says, 'Can't
I have a hat like his?' and the board says, 'Why, of course.'  Because,
you see, they're all so kind and so considerate.  They're just _dream
people_, not real at all.  And so the dream-people drift off into all
their jobs--and some are butchers, or bakers, or tinkers, or
tailors--my, it's fun!--they all love it!--and some are engineers on
trains and go 'Toot! toot!'  Don't you remember when you were a child
and had no economic ideas and thought that a policeman was a policeman
because he liked being a policeman, and an engineer was on a train
because he liked to make the whistle toot?  Well, that dream world that
you lived in was the socialist's world: and if you grow old enough and
silly enough you can get back into it, and think of it over a bowl of
gruel.

It just can't be.  The _motive_ is wrong.  We are not like that.  We
don't, we _can't_ care enough for one another's welfare.  I'll look
after my grandmother, but I won't look after yours.  She's not worth
it.  I'll pay for the education of my own children because they are
bright little fellows and it's well worth while, but you've only to
look at yours to see the difference.

As to dividing up work, by cheerful goodwill and free discussion, you
can't do it.  I'll take an example from the simplest thing that I
understand--farming.


_On a socialist farm, run by free discussion comrades, you'd get scenes
like this--held in fence corners under an elm tree on a June morning.
The hour is early, but not too early as some of the comrades like to
take an extra snooze, when it's fine, and the other comrades hate to
start without them._

_One speaks, 'I move, gentlemen, that it would be a good thing to-day
if we were to pick Colorado 'Beetles.'_

_'You've heard the motion, gentlemen, that we spend to-day in picking
Colorado Beetles.  Any seconder?'_

_'I second it.'_

_'Any discussion?'_

_'I'd like to offer an amendment to the effect that we don't pick them
off by hand but use a spray of Paris green dissolved in water'--_

_'I object--it's no good--it don't kill 'em.  I propose arsenate of
lead'--_

_'It's no use--Paris green!' (shouts of 'arsenate of lead!' 'Paris
green!')._

_Chairman: 'Order, order, gentlemen!'_

_Senior member, rising--that is, half sitting up in the grass: 'Mr.
Chairman, in view of the heat I suggest that we adjourn the discussion
and have a drink of lemonade under this elm tree.'_

_'I suggest an amendment to make the motion read, "beer and pretzels."'_

_Amendment carried._

      *      *      *      *      *

But suppose you say that in a co-operative commonwealth of course
everybody would _have_ to work; wouldn't be allowed extra sleep just
because he felt drowsy; wouldn't pick his own trade--if it was full--or
set his own hours, or wages, or conditions.  All this would be done by
authority, by those over him.  The officials of the state would decide
how and when and where the work was done.  And if a man wouldn't work?
What then?  'Those who will not work shall not eat,' wrote up Captain
John Smith in Virginia.  But the Virginian had at least the wilderness.
The modern communist worker has the loom on the left and the jail on
the right.  Work or get punished.  And those who direct it are the
bosses--elected, selected, or forcing their way to the top.  The
strongest rules.

What a picture, this world of iron rule with the worker called, and if
need be driven, to his task.  This is no pleasant hay field in the
morning sun.  But if you know of any state where this cap fits, put it
on.  There is no escape from the dilemma.  Freedom in a socialist state
means idleness and confusion: order and authority means economic
slavery.

Nor is there any solution to be found in the half-way house called a
totalitarian state: in this the workers are ordered and grouped in huge
economic divisions with wages and profits unified in the groups.  But
the totalitarian state faces exactly the same dilemma as described: the
moment it passes a certain line it turns to economic slavery.  In it,
or in any other state, political and national enthusiasm can render
tolerable for a time an economic system impossible in the long run.
But this is just the hair shirt of the mediaeval socialist.  A similar
devotion for a time can carry a nation, or at least many of its people,
into the sacrifice of individuality, the consciousness of mass welfare,
that goes with war.  But this is the agony of mankind, its martyrdom,
not its life.

      *      *      *      *      *

What is left?  We must go on as we are, with our every-man-for-himself
individualist state, patching it, fixing it, somehow making it go.
Call it capitalism if you like and kick it, but it is all we've got.

But observe that after all we are at least getting on a little.  We
won't let one another starve: doles, and pensions, and relief, and all
that goes with it take the place, for the poor, of the Kingdom of
Heaven.  We try to regulate our industrial system by wage laws, welfare
laws, school laws, and all that goes with parks, playgrounds and
libraries and community life.  We give more and more collectively from
the rich towards the collective enjoyment of the poor.  We seem slowly
to be devising not a new society but a better regulation of the old,
not a new game, but a new set of rules.

Such a conclusion seems perhaps dispirited and discouraging.  As I see
it, it's the only one.  What we have is all we are fit for.  Change
_us_ and you change it.  The two go together, spirit first, body after.




XVII

COLLEGE AS COMIC STUFF

Every age and every generation has its own particular line of humour,
its own ideas of what things are supposed to be funny and form the
subject of its jokes.  A generation ago all Irishmen were funny; in
fact, the whole of Ireland was supposed to be a sort of fun shop--with
horse-fairs and wakes, and fist fights--something doing all the time.
On the comic stage the Irishman in green twirled a shillelagh tied up
with ribbons and joined in alternate laughter and tears with a
'colleen' whose short skirt came up so high that it met her pigtails
coming down.  The Irishman--older people please recall it--would hold
up a sod of earth, so green you could see it from the gallery, announce
it as from his mother's grave, break down and cry, and then forget it
all in a dance with the colleen.  In short, the place was full of fun.
Nothing is left of it now except the thin conventional jokes beginning
'Did you hear what Pat said?'  Ireland as the home of merriment has
gone to the bad; there's no fun left in it--just a people who talk
Gaelic, sit in the League of Nations, discuss their tariff policy, and
buy their laughter over the radio.

Ireland has gone, and along with it a lot of other old landmarks:--the
comic Jew now turned into one of the world's tragedies, the comic
Yankee of the days of Sam Slick and Major Downing, now turned into a
New England trust company, fast asleep.

But in place of these, since the world never stops spinning, arises new
scenery for our humour, and above all, as the latest, the best and the
most delightful, the Comic College.  You can see it, if you don't know
it already, in a hundred moving pictures, in a hundred magazines.
Look!  There it is!  See the 'Co-eds' skipping around in shorts!  You
didn't think college girls were like that, did you?  And 'Prexy,' the
president, isn't he just done to the life, eh?  That is to say, you've
perhaps never really seen a college president, but isn't he just like
what they all are--I mean all the other 'Prexies' in all the other
college movies?  And the 'Profs'--aren't they simply killing?  And the
rah! rah! students playing on ukeleles.

The Comic College!  I'm all for it as the most delightful, most
enchanting Garden of Fun that ever opened upon our vision.

I have spent my life, except my school days, in college--was myself a
'Prof' for thirty-five and a half years.  And when I see the Comic
College, I half recognize it and half not.  It seems half true and half
nonsense--or at least truth reflected through apparent falsehood as it
always is in art.

Where did they come from--the 'Co-eds,' the 'Prexies,' and the 'Profs'?
How did the Comic College appear, and why wasn't it here before?  Well,
you see, a generation or two ago, a college, whatever else it was,
wasn't comic.  There was no fun in it.  Then all sorts of changes came
over the old college and turned it into the new college.  This opened
the eye of the artist to things that no one ever saw before.

For the wonderful thing about the Comic College is that it contains
just that exact relation of fact and fancy, reality and romance, truth
and exaggeration which makes for artistic creation.  Take some of its
chief items, for example, 'Prexy,' the comic president of the Comic
College, with his mortar-board, and mock dignity, ridiculous in his
overdone decorum, his offended majesty, his fuss and anger.  Is a
college president really like that?  Not in the slightest.  A college
president of to-day is approximately more and more, as is everyone
else, in the type of a 'business man.'  If the twelve apostles came
alive to-day they'd look like 'business men.'  It's what the biologists
call the 'survival type.'  Anything else like the old-fashioned college
president that used to be, the biologists call a 'sport.'  You see the
world at large only caught on to the fun that was in the old-fashioned
college president after he was gone.  It is always like that.  We can
only see literary colour in retrospect; for colour in the life around
us we are as blind as a horse in blinkers.  We only discover when its
light is fading.  Chivalry only began in literature when it was dead in
fact; a war only gathers its romance when the soldiers who fought in it
are dead.  And so the world never discovered the college 'Prexy' till
in reality he was gone.  The president of to-day, dictating in his
office, filling appointments, granting interviews, is quite different.

Witness this little experience.

A classmate of mine of long ago came back after many years to see our
college.  He said he'd like to go in and see the president, see him
just a minute.  'I don't want to let the old geyser pin me down there
and shoot Latin at me for half an hour; do you remember the way old
"Prexy" used to get people in his office and they couldn't get out?'
'So he did,' I admitted.  'Well, look,' said my friend, 'if this old
buster starts saying anything about showing me round the college and
inviting me to lunch, then I'll say that I have to catch the 11.30 for
New York, see?  We just go in and shake hands and then beat it.'

We waited our turn, were announced, and went in.  The president rose
from his chair, with my friend's card in his hand.  There was no
'Prexy' stuff about him--neat and smooth, a man of the world, his
manner polished, his voice composed, nothing comic in him.  'Ah, yes,'
he said, as he shook hands, still with his eye on the card,
'Mr.--er--Mr. Maclennan of--er--Arizona--class of--er--ninety-four...
I'm extremely glad!'

My friend gurgled.  He didn't find words because he was knocked
sideways to realize that the president was twenty years younger than he
was.

'Having a look round the old college?' continued 'Prexy,' and my friend
made another noise in his throat to mean retrospect.  'I'm sure you
will be most interested.  You must see our new dormitories--I'm so
sorry'--he took out a gold watch and snapped it--'that I can't offer to
go around with you--but the fact is that I have to get the 11.30 for
New York.'

Two minutes later we were out of the room again, my friend pledged to
go and look at the dormitories and not to miss the hydraulic apparatus.

That seemed very different from the comic 'Prexy' who does the dance
with the 'Co-eds' in shorts.  In reality it was the change from one to
the other that enables us to hatch out the old college president, and
to turn him into art.

It was the same law of evolution that also hatched out the 'college
man' from the 'student' of fifty years ago.  The old-fashioned student
lived on midnight oil, worked sixteen hours a day, and only took a
'night off' once in ten months; even when he did, all he thought of
doing was to go and drink enough beer to excite him to upset a horse
car.  The 'college man' of the comic college plays the ukelele, burns
gasoline, roots at football, 'flunks' his exam., 'bones' his father,
'cuts' his classes, and above all gives the girls a good time.  Study!
Bless my soul, how can the man get time to study?  What for, anyway?
You don't _have_ to.  All you do is to 'elect' a 'snap,' 'flunk' an
oral, 'fake' an 'aegrotat' and 'get by.'  You observe that it takes a
whole new dialect to express the college man.  But anyone in college
knows what this jargon means.  People outside may interpret it as
meaning that students don't study.  If they work, it's in the summer in
a logging camp in Wisconsin, or preaching to an Eskimo mission.  But at
college they don't work; they _live_.

With the students are the 'Profs' of the comic college, as seen by the
new imagination.  And these, too, are not the actual professors of
to-day but just the ghosts of the professors that were, in their own
day, not appreciated as fun, but now 'cashed in' as literature, like an
investment made in the past.  Look at them!  See them at their
professors' committee meeting in the movies, all in mortar boards!
Real professors haven't worn them for thirty years.  So absent-minded
that they chase a fountain pen through fourteen pockets and find it
behind their ear.  But try and rob a real professor of a nickel and see
him react.  The real professor of the newer type, sits like the
president in an office and dictates, plays golf in plus fours and makes
money out of the stock exchange and his knowledge of geology.  A few of
the older type, one admits, still survive; too preoccupied to have
their hair cut, calling the same student by six different names in one
morning--college 'characters' that justify to that extent the creation
of the comic college.

      *      *      *      *      *

But first, last, and always, the very soul of the comic college is
found in the 'Co-eds.'  They are the force that made it--the Delilahs
that cut Samson's hair so short that he couldn't upset a street
car--that hurried students into 'college men' and first made professors
conscious of odd socks.

College girls in the comic college have a greater aversion to study
than even the college men.  In fact, they _don't_ study.  They 'elect'
a course in 'religion,' or a half course in 'maternity,' or an 'option'
on 'marriage.'  They live in motor cars, drive in shorts, eat only
after midnight, and dance on any and every occasion.

Are they truth or falsehood?  I haven't an idea.  Are college girls
really like that or getting to be like that?  I guess they are partly.
The early college girls wore spectacles, learned Greek, and married the
professors.  The newer college girls are descended from them, but how
much they retain of their heritage, or how much they correspond to the
reflection in the new mirror, goodness only knows!

      *      *      *      *      *

The fact is that we are seeing it so close at hand that it is almost
impossible to judge it.

This new imaginative creation of a 'comic' college is the reflection of
a profound transformation in our social life, in the part of it we call
education.  I don't want to get prosy about it, but the meaning of this
would be lost if we didn't look for the social interpretation of it.
Education, past and present, has pursued various goals.  It has never
quite known what it was after.  In early times it fitted people to die;
but this made them want to live.  Later it fitted them to learn Latin
and Greek; this had the effect of making them love English.  Later
still, education taught people to be citizens.  This made them crooks.
Later still, it taught them to be practical, to learn how to make
money; this landed them in gaol.

With all these changes college has pretty well ceased to mean, for the
average individual student, the pursuit of learning, the search after
absolute truth.  A few, of course, in the realistic studies of physical
and natural science, turn to real study for study's sake.  On the backs
of these is carried the future of scientific knowledge.  And another
few, in what is called 'liberal arts,' turn into writers and
playwrights and creative artists--but they would have, anyway.  The
real 'student' where he exists to-day is a 'sport' in the above
biological sense; and the other students are 'sports' in the real sense.

At present, as I see it, college education is coming to be looked upon
as a sort of prelude to life, a little intermission before work and
sorrow begin.  Broad-minded parents send the boys and girls to college,
because--what else can they do with them?  Let them be happy while they
can.  Let them dance a little in the sunshine.  The shadows will fall
on them soon enough.  So it comes that people say with a sort of pride,
'Yes, my son and my two girls are at college,' meaning they are happy
in the land of the blest, the land of chocolate creams, hot dogs after
midnight, of cut classes and flunked courses.  So when such parents go
to see a college movie, with 'Prexy,' with 'Profs,' and the 'Rah rah!'
they don't realize what a queer amalgamation the picture is, made up of
the old dead college of hard study, turned into romance and combining
its shadows with the shifting colours of the new.  Seen through the two
must lie, somewhere out beyond, the vision of the future college.  But
we cannot see it: the light is too bright.




XVIII

ALL IS NOT LOST!

A RECOLLECTION

I was just starting out trout fishing one day last week when I saw from
a headline in an afternoon paper that war in Europe was just about a
dead certainty--anything within twenty-four to twenty-six hours.  The
Lats (I think it was) had sent what was practically an ultimatum--the
nearest they could write to one--to the Slats, and there was no
likelihood that a high-chested people like the Slats would swallow it.
As I say, I think it was the Lats and the Slats, or it may have been
the Checks and the Shorts; at any rate, some of those high-chested
people that fill the centre of Europe, who used to be content before
the Great War to play the hand-organ and make toy clocks, and who now
fill our whole foreground.

Of course, on top of news like that I couldn't fish.  A lump rose in my
throat at the idea that unless the Slats (a high-minded people) would
back down, that meant war, and everybody knows that war means 'world
chaos' and that 'world chaos' means the end of trout fishing.  What
chance would a trout have in that?

So I came home feeling pretty sick; and then, after all, it turned out
the Slats hadn't 'picked up' the affront--by lucky chance--and, of
course, if you don't pick up a European affront right away, it goes bad.

It was too late to go trout fishing when I got the news in the evening
paper that the Lat-Slat 'crisis' was over.  But I got all set again for
the next day to go with a friend of mine, all set with everything in
the motor car--rods, tackle box, bait, fish baskets, lunch, flask.  You
know, perhaps, what fun it is getting it all packed, and the good old
jokes about what gets forgotten and what never does?  Then, just as we
were starting, bang came the news that Mussolini had called Neville
Chamberlain a 'stiff,' and that a first-class 'crisis' was imminent,
and that England had recalled all the household troops from the saloons!

Well!  Our hearts sank.  Who could fish after that?  It's all right to
try to disregard the smaller powers like Latvia and Czechoslovakia and
Lithia and Seltzer, but when it comes to the great civilized nations
like Italy and England, that's different.  So we didn't start.  And
then it turned out in a few hours that the 'crisis' had blown over.  It
appeared, after an exchange of diplomatic notes, that Mussolini had not
called Chamberlain a 'stiff' in the English sense, but had said he was
a 'stiffo': that, in Italian, means something fine, and so the crisis
passed, but it left everyone, even 4,000 miles away, pretty well
prostrated.  Even the British Cabinet itself lost half a day's grouse
shooting.

It seemed all the more pity to lose our trout fishing, because it was
just an ideal day: bright summer weather, but a wisp of cloud in it;
dry, but with a touch of wetness; what you'd call warm, but with just a
little chill--if you are a trout fisherman you will know just the day I
mean!  And the place I go to--a stream just not big enough to be a
river, or rather a river just too wide to be a stream, with open
patches of sun and shadow (you must come with me some time).  Wander
along at that stream on an afternoon in early summer and you won't care
whether the Sudeten Germans go Nazi or go crazy.

But, on the contrary, once get your mind mixed up with the Sudeten
Germans and you're not fit to go fishing.  You're disqualified from the
start.  It's the same with golf.  You can't go round the links with a
man who says on the first green, 'What about Albania?' and stands with
his club in the air, waiting to putt, while he tells you that if
Daladier can form a bloc he may make a front, and on the ninth green is
still murmuring, 'If Hitler...'  No, the only way to deal with such a
man is, when he says, 'What about Albania?' to say, 'To hell with it.'

My friend and I, as I say, lost about a week of our trout fishing over
Europe.  The war crisis was no sooner gone than there was a sudden
crash of the French franc, then a terrific naval scandal at the British
Admiralty--not a damn gun would shoot--the whole Ministry were called
back from Norway over the week-end!  Well!  You know what the European
news is: once get sunk in it and your home life, your peace of mind, is
all over.

Europe certainly can destroy your peace of mind; but, set all by
itself, that's not quite a fair statement.  You can destroy it right at
home if you try.  Lots of people can collect just as much distress at
home over the market news as people fetch back from Europe.  Take, let
us say, 'base metals.'  What they are, I don't know, but every now and
then it seems base metals which have been buoyant and lively get dull,
then stagnant, then collapse.

You've perhaps often gone through that yourself; but base metals seem
to get it specially.  I was out at a bridge party the other night, just
after the last crash in 'base metals.'  Half of the people, in spite of
every effort, looked wretched; a lot of them had been hard hit with
copper and others had had a terrible knock of manganese.  They could
hardly hold their cards.  Yet here they were in a lovely house in the
leafiest part of the city, in a huge room, something between a library
and a living-room, the evening warm enough for early summer, but cool
enough for a fire--how delightful it might have been--but 'base metals'
had crashed that afternoon, and it was only by a brave hysterical sort
of struggle that things could be kept going at all.

Even as it was, the men would drift into little clumps in the corners
and gurgle about manganese....  And then, after all, two days later,
'base metals' got 'buoyant,' kicking up like a cow in the pasture--in
fact, everything would have been great except at that very moment the
sudden backfire of Congress against the T.V.A. decision of the Supreme
Court--or, on, the other way--the backfire of the court--anyway,
another explosion in Washington as sudden and arresting as the sound of
a lamb chop blown up in a lunch wagon.

Remember, too, that during this same period of distress of which I
speak wheat fell ten cents--a thing that simply spells disaster--and
then rose eleven cents--meaning, of course, national ruin.  Dust blew
all over the Missouri Valley and the Canadian West, and then blew off
again, leaving the farmers a perfect sight!  And in with this
background of imminent disaster there was an anvil chorus of sit-down
strikers and stand-up agitators, money sterilized, credit paralysed,
confidence pulverized, and ten million unemployed sitting in a row
eating sandwiches with no proper psychological conception of the value
of their leisure.

This, I say, is the _background_.  But the funny thing is that the
foreground isn't like this at all.  The foreground has all the beauty
of summer-time, with leaves on the trees and trout in the streams, with
every golf course an artistic dream, a vast lawn of green, gay with
bright costumes of red and white, with every shimmering summer lake
dotted with its pagodas and its canoes, and splashed with bathers, with
every street of every little town gay as a mediaeval fair with its
multiform gas signs, with every corner packed with the glistening cars
of the people crowding into the magic world of the films.  Just gods!
If the pioneers who fought for economic life upon this continent could
see this picture of colour and luxury that was to cover its surface,
what would they think of us, its discontented, timorous, trembling
inhabitants, shuddering at the fleeting shadows that fly over a
landscape bathed in bright sunshine!  Surely, all is not lost.

Let us take an inventory of our distress.

The world has got into a kind of mass idea, a mass gloom, mass
apprehensiveness.  Psychologists of to-day tell us that we live on one
idea at a time and all get it together.  The idea just now is
_distress_ or worry over the imminence of something that is just going
to happen--but perhaps won't.  There is a Greek name for this, but I
forget it.  If translated it means 'fear of the front page of the
newspaper.'  Here, for example, are the things of which we are all
scared to death just now: the French franc, the Sudeten Germans
(section B, apartment 6, Czechoslovakia), the United States Supreme
Court, base metals, drought, rain, over-population, under-population,
over-production, death, life, dust.

Here, on the other hand, are the things of which we ought to be
thinking--trout fishing, golf, chicken dinners, cool drinks, mixed
bathing, summer hotels, wayside cabins--and if young enough, taking
girls out so far in motor cars that they never come back.


_Here is the European news that we read: war, more war, Mussolini,
Hitler, crash of the franc, agony in Spain, bombs, cruelty, and the
fall of freedom._

_Nonsense--that's all illusion!  Here are the real things, the French
news, for instance:_

_Summer tourists in Paris break all records....  Folies Bergre with
standing room only ... bathing costumes at Deauville simply
scandalous...  French ping-pong team beats all Germany...  Daladier
opens pup show...  President of the Republic bets a dollar on horse
race...  champagne vintage reported best in twenty years._


All about us is a beckoning world--ample as never before in its
abundance: a little out of gear, just for a spell, but only because,
speaking collectively, we are like the sudden heirs of a rich estate
quarrelling over their inheritance.

All of us, I think, in some half-conscious way, chafe at this false
distress of our submerged world.  We long to escape to another one.
Mathematicians--to ease their particular troubles as
mathematicians--take refuge in the world of a fourth dimension, where
there is no friction.  So we, at a word, at a happy fancy, seek escape
into an imaginary world.  Witness how we have all flocked to the
country of the Seven Dwarfs, a better world than our own--a world of
simple and sweet little animals, just our own style, and waving trees
and dancing sunlight, and music of voices that drips with the
waterfall, a world of kindness and co-operation each with all.  We are
drawn to this because we know it is ours, and yet we cannot reach it.

Or take, to parallel the example, that queer, bright, next-door world
that we see pictured in our advertisements.  Here, indeed, is the
country of human fancy, marvellous with the green of its grass, the
utter blueness of its water (see any travel booklet) and the shimmer of
its sand; marvellous with its motor cars glistening in the sun, its
people--youths as straight as arrows and as broad as gods, girls with
hair as golden as gamboge, and frilled children, clean enough to eat.

If you want to get relief from the French franc and the Czechoslovak,
turn to the advertising pages, and there, among green lawns and
glistening cars, trim bungalows and furnished libraries and vellum
volumes, you may see again humanity reaching into the world of
imagination for what the actual world denies us.

But the truth is that this, our actual world, would be as good as the
bright world of imagination if we would only let it be so.  Everything
is there, the smiling abundance of our unrealized paradise, the
goodwill toward men that all men feel and none dares act upon.  It is
all there for the asking, if we can only cast aside from the gateway
the evil spirits of fear and apprehension and distrust which keep us
from our kingdom.






  By the same Author

  LITERARY LAPSES
  NONSENSE NOVELS
  SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE TOWN
  BEHIND THE BEYOND
  ARCADIAN ADVENTURES WITH THE IDLE RICH
  MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER LUNACY
  ESSAYS AND LITERARY STUDIES
  FURTHER FOOLISHNESS
  FRENZIED FICTION
  THE UNSOLVED RIDDLE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
  WINSOME WINNIE AND OTHER NEW NONSENSE NOVELS
  MY DISCOVERY OF ENGLAND
  OVER THE FOOTLIGHTS, AND OTHER FANCIES
  COLLEGE DAYS
  THE GARDEN OF FOLLY
  WINNOWED WISDOM
  SHORT CIRCUITS
  THE IRON MAN AND THE TIN WOMAN
  THE LEACOCK BOOK: Selected by Ben Travers
  AFTERNOONS IN UTOPIA
  THE DRY PICKWICK
  HUMOUR: ITS THEORY AND TECHNIQUE
  FUNNY PIECES
  MY DISCOVERY OF THE WEST
  HERE ARE MY LECTURES

    THE BODLEY HEAD




[End of _Model Memoirs_ by Stephen Leacock]
