Further Foolishness by Stephen Leacock
S >>
Stephen Leacock >> Further Foolishness
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11
A dull man. Dull is the only word I can think of that
exactly describes him--dull and prosy. I don't say that
he is not a good man. He may be. I don't say that he is
not. I have never seen any sign of it, if he is. But I
make it a rule never to say anything to take away a man's
character.
And his sermons! Really that sermon he gave last Sunday
on Esau seemed to me the absolute limit. I wish you could
have heard it. I mean to say--drivel. I said to my wife
and some friends, as we walked away from the church, that
a sermon like that seemed to me to come from the dregs
of the human intellect. Mind you, I don't believe in
criticising a sermon. I always feel it a sacred obligation
never to offer a word of criticism. When I say that the
sermon was _punk_, I don't say it as criticism. I merely
state it as a fact. And to think that we pay that man
eighteen hundred dollars a year! And he's in debt all
the time at that. What does he do with it? He can't spend
it. It's not as if he had a large family (they've only
four children). It's just a case of sheer extravagance.
He runs about all the time. Last year it was a trip to
a Synod Meeting at New York--away four whole days; and
two years before that, dashing off to a Scripture Conference
at Boston, and away nearly a whole week, and his wife
with him!
What I say is that if a man's going to spend his time
gadding about the country like that--here to-day and
there to-morrow--how on earth can he attend to his
parochial duties?
I'm a religious man. At least I trust I am. I believe
--and more and more as I get older--in eternal punishment.
I see the need of it when I look about me. As I say, I
trust I am a religious man, but when it comes to subscribing
fifty dollars as they want us to, to get the man out of
debt, I say "No."
True religion, as I see it, is not connected with money.
(III) HIS PARTNER AT BRIDGE
The man is a complete ass. How a man like that has the
nerve to sit down at a bridge table, I don't know. I
wouldn't mind if the man had any idea--even the faintest
idea--of how to play. But he hasn't any. Three times I
signalled to him to throw the lead into my hand and he
wouldn't: I knew that our only ghost of a chance was to
let me do all the playing. But the ass couldn't see it.
He even had the supreme nerve to ask me what I meant by
leading diamonds when he had signalled that he had none.
I couldn't help asking him, as politely as I could, why
he had disregarded my signal for spades. He had the gall
to ask in reply why I had overlooked his signal for clubs
in the second hand round; the very time, mind you, when
I had led a three spot as a sign to him to let me play
the whole game. I couldn't help saying to him, at the
end of the evening, in a tone of such evident satire that
anyone but an ass would have recognised it, that I had
seldom had as keen an evening at cards.
But he didn't see it. The irony of it was lost on him.
The jackass merely said--quite amiably and unconsciously
--that he thought I'd play a good game presently. Me!
Play a good game presently!
I gave him a look, just one look as I went out! But I
don't think he saw it. He was talking to some one else.
(IV) HIS HOSTESS AT DINNER
On what principle that woman makes up her dinner parties
is more than human brain can devise. Mind you, I like
going out to dinner. To my mind it's the very best form
of social entertainment. But I like to find myself among
people that can talk, not among a pack of numbskulls.
What I like is good general conversation, about things
worth talking about. But among a crowd of idiots like
that what can you expect? You'd think that even society
people would be interested, or pretend to be, in real
things. But not a bit. I had hardly started to talk about
the rate of exchange on the German mark in relation to
the fall of sterling bills--a thing that you would think
a whole table full of people would be glad to listen
to--when first thing I knew the whole lot of them had
ceased paying any attention and were listening to an
insufferable ass of an Englishman--I forget his name.
You'd hardly suppose that just because a man has been in
Flanders and has his arm in a sling and has to have his
food cut up by the butler, that's any reason for having
a whole table full of people listening to him. And
especially the women: they have a way of listening to a
fool like that with their elbows on the table that is
positively sickening.
I felt that the whole thing was out of taste and tried
in vain, in one of the pauses, to give a lead to my
hostess by referring to the prospect of a shipping subsidy
bill going through to offset the register of alien ships.
But she was too utterly dense to take it up. She never
even turned her head. All through dinner that ass talked
--he and that silly young actor they're always asking
there that is perpetually doing imitations of the vaudeville
people. That kind of thing may be all right, for those
who care for it--I frankly don't--outside a theatre. But
to my mind the idea of trying to throw people into fits
of laughter at a dinner-table is simply execrable taste.
I cannot see the sense of people shrieking with laughter
at dinner. I have, I suppose, a better sense of humour
than most people. But to my mind a humourous story should
be told quietly and slowly in a way to bring out the
point of the humour and to make it quite clear by preparing
for it with proper explanations. But with people like
that I find I no sooner get well started with a story
than some fool or other breaks in. I had a most amusing
experience the other day--that is, about fifteen years
ago--at a summer hotel in the Adirondacks, that one would
think would have amused even a shallow lot of people like
those, but I had no sooner started to tell it--or had
hardly done more than to describe the Adirondacks in a
general way--than, first thing I know, my hostess, stupid
woman, had risen and all the ladies were trooping out.
As to getting in a word edgeways with the men over the
cigars--perfectly impossible! They're worse than the
women. They were all buzzing round the infernal Englishman
with questions about Flanders and the army at the front.
I tried in vain to get their attention for a minute to
give them my impressions of the Belgian peasantry (during
my visit there in 1885), but my host simply turned to me
for a second and said, "Have some more port?" and was
back again listening to the asinine Englishman.
And when we went upstairs to the drawing-room I found
myself, to my disgust, side-tracked in a corner of the
room with that supreme old jackass of a professor--their
uncle, I think, or something of the sort. In all my life
I never met a prosier man. He bored me blue with long
accounts of his visit to Serbia and his impressions of
the Serbian peasantry in 1875.
I should have left early, but it would have been too
noticeable.
The trouble with a woman like that is that she asks the
wrong people to her parties.
BUT,
(V) HIS LITTLE SON
You haven't seen him? Why, that's incredible. You must
have. He goes past your house every day on his way to
his kindergarten. You must have seen him a thousand
times. And he's a boy you couldn't help noticing. You'd
pick that boy out among a hundred, right away. "There's
a remarkable boy," you'd say. I notice people always turn
and look at him on the street. He's just the image of
me. Everybody notices it at once.
How old? He's twelve. Twelve and two weeks yesterday.
But he's so bright you'd think he was fifteen. And the
things he says! You'd laugh! I've written a lot of them
down in a book for fear of losing them. Some day when
you come up to the house I'll read them to you. Come some
evening. Come early so that we'll have lots of time. He
said to me one day, "Dad" (he always calls me Dad), "what
makes the sky blue?" Pretty thoughtful, eh, for a little
fellow of twelve? He's always asking questions like that.
I wish I could remember half of them.
And I'm bringing him up right, I tell you. I got him a
little savings box a while ago, and have got him taught
to put all his money in it, and not give any of it away,
so that when he grows up he'll be all right.
On his last birthday I put a five dollar gold piece into
it for him and explained to him what five dollars meant,
and what a lot you could do with it if you hung on to
it. You ought to have seen him listen.
"Dad," he says, "I guess you're the kindest man in the
world, aren't you?"
Come up some time and see him.
IX. More than Twice-told Tales; or,
Every Man his Own Hero
(I)
The familiar story told about himself by the Commercial
Traveller who sold goods to the man who was regarded as
impossible.
"What," they said, "you're getting off at Midgeville?
You're going to give the Jones Hardware Company a try,
eh?"--and then they all started laughing and giving me
the merry ha! ha! Well, I just got my grip packed and
didn't say a thing and when the train slowed up for
Midgeville, out I slid. "Give my love to old man Jones,"
one of the boys called after me, "and get yourself a
couple of porous plasters and a pair of splints before
you tackle him!"--and then they all gave me the ha! ha!
again, out of the window as the train pulled out.
Well, I walked uptown from the station to the Jones
Hardware Company. "Is Mr. Jones in the office?" I asked
of one of the young fellers behind the counter. "He's in
the office," he says, "all right, but I guess you can't
see him," he says--and he looked at my grip. "What name
shall I say?" says he. "Don't say any name at all," I
says. "Just open the door and let me in."
Well, there was old man Jones sitting scowling over his
desk, biting his pen in that way he has. He looked up
when I came in. "See here, young man," he says, "you
can't sell me any hardware," he says. "Mr. Jones," I
says, "I don't _want_ to sell you any hardware. I'm not
_here_ to sell you any hardware. I know," I says, "as
well as you do," I says, "that I couldn't sell any hardware
if I tried to. But," I says, "I guess it don't do any
harm to open up this sample case, and show you some
hardware," I says. "Young man," says he, "if you start
opening up that sample case in here, you'll lose your
time, that's all"--and he turned off sort of sideways
and began looking over some letters.
"That's _all right_, Mr. Jones," I says. "That's _all
right_. I'm _here_ to lose my time. But I'm not going
out of this room till you take a look anyway at some of
this new cutlery I'm carrying."
So open I throws my sample case right across the end of
his desk. "Look at that knife," I says, "Mr. Jones. Just
look at it: clear Sheffield at three-thirty the dozen
and they're a knife that will last till you wear the haft
off it." "Oh, pshaw," he growled, "I don't want no knives;
there's nothing in knives--"
Well I _knew_ he didn't want knives, see? I _knew_ it.
But the way I opened up the sample case it showed up,
just by accident so to speak, a box of those new electric
burners--adjustable, you know--they'll take heat off any
size of socket you like and use it for any mortal thing
in the house. I saw old Jones had his eyes on them in a
minute. "What's those things you got there?" he growls,
"those in the box?" "Oh," I said, "that's just a new
line," I said, "the boss wanted me to take along: some
sort of electric rig for heating," I said, "but I don't
think there's anything to it. But here, now, Mr. Jones,
is a spoon I've got on this trip--it's the new Delphide
--you can't tell that, sir, from silver. No, sir," I
says, "I defy any man, money down, to tell that there
Delphide from genuine refined silver, and they're a spoon
that'll last--"
"Let me see one of those burners," says old man Jones,
breaking in.
Well, sir, in about two minutes more, I had one of the
burners fixed on to the light socket, and old Jones, with
his coat off, boiling water in a tin cup (out of the
store) and timing it with his watch.
The next day I pulled into Toledo and went and joined
the other boys up to the Jefferson House. "Well," they
says, "have you got that plaster on?" and started in to
give me the ha! ha! again. "Oh, I don't know," I says.
"I guess _this_ is some plaster, isn't it?" and I took
out of my pocket an order from old man Jones for two
thousand adjustable burners, at four-twenty with two off.
"Some plaster, eh?" I says.
Well, sir, the boys looked sick.
Old man Jones gets all his stuff from our house now. Oh,
he ain't bad at all when you get to know him.
(II)
The well-known story told by the man who has once had a
strange psychic experience.
...What you say about presentiments reminds me of a strange
experience that I had myself.
I was sitting by myself one night very late, reading. I
don't remember just what it was that I was reading. I
think it was--or no, I don't remember _what_ it was.
Well, anyway, I was sitting up late reading quietly till
it got pretty late on in the night. I don't remember
just how late it was--half-past two, I think, or perhaps
three--or, no, I don't remember. But, anyway, I was
sitting up by myself very late reading. As I say, it was
late, and, after all the noises in the street had stopped,
the house somehow seemed to get awfully still and quiet.
Well, all of a sudden I became aware of a sort of strange
feeling--I hardly know how to describe it--I seemed to
become aware of something, as if something were near me.
I put down my book and looked around, but could see
nothing. I started to read again, but I hadn't read more
than a page, or say a page and a half--or no, not more
than a page, when again all of a sudden I felt an
overwhelming sense of--something. I can't explain just
what the feeling was, but a queer sense as if there was
something somewhere.
Well, I'm not of a timorous disposition naturally--at
least I don't think I am--but absolutely I felt as if I
couldn't stay in the room. I got up out of my chair and
walked down the stairs, in the dark, to the dining-room.
I felt all the way as if some one were following me. Do
you know, I was absolutely trembling when I got into the
dining-room and got the lights turned on. I walked over
to the sideboard and poured myself out a drink of whisky
and soda. As you know, I never take anything as a rule
--or, at any rate, only when I am sitting round talking
as we are now--but I always like to keep a decanter of
whisky in the house, and a little soda, in case of my
wife or one of the children being taken ill in the night.
Well, I took a drink and then I said to myself, I said,
"See here, I'm going to see this thing through." So I
turned back and walked straight upstairs again to my
room. I fully expected something queer was going to happen
and was prepared for it. But do you know when I walked
into the room again the feeling, or presentiment, or
whatever it was I had had, was absolutely gone. There
was my book lying just where I had left it and the reading
lamp still burning on the table, just as it had been,
and my chair just where I had pushed it back. But I felt
nothing, absolutely nothing. I sat and waited awhile,
but I still felt _nothing_.
I went downstairs again to put out the lights in the
dining-room. I noticed as I passed the sideboard that
I was still shaking a little. So I took a small drink of
whisky--though as a rule I never care to take more than
one drink--unless when I am sitting talking as we are
here.
Well, I had hardly taken it when I felt an odd sort of
psychic feeling--a sort of drowsiness. I remember, in a
dim way, going to bed, and then I remember nothing till
I woke up next morning.
And here's the strange part of it. I had hardly got down
to the office after breakfast when I got a wire to tell
me that my mother-in-law had broken her arm in Cincinnati.
Strange, wasn't it? No, _not_ at half-past two during
that night--that's the inexplicable part of it. She had
broken it at half-past eleven the morning before. But
you notice it was _half-past_ in each case. That's the
queer way these things go.
Of course, I don't pretend to _explain it_. I suppose it
simply means that I am telepathic--that's all. I imagine
that, if I wanted to, I could talk with the dead and all
that kind of thing. But I feel somehow that I don't want
to.
Eh? Thank you, I will--though I seldom take more than--
thanks, thanks, that's plenty of soda in it.
(III)
The familiar narrative in which the Successful Business
Man recounts the early struggles by which he made good.
...No, sir, I had no early advantages whatever. I was brought
up plain and hard--try one of these cigars; they cost me
fifty cents each. In fact, I practically had no schooling
at all. When I left school I didn't know how to read,
not to read good. It's only since I've been in business
that I've learned to write English, that is so as to use
it right. But I'll guarantee to say there isn't a man in
the shoe business to-day can write a better letter than
I can. But all that I know is what I've learned myself.
Why, I can't do fractions even now. I don't see that a
man need. And I never learned no geography, except what
I got for myself off railroad folders. I don't believe
a man _needs_ more than that anyway. I've got my boy at
Harvard now. His mother was set on it. But I don't see
that he learns anything, or nothing that will help him
any in business. They say they learn them character and
manners in the colleges, but, as I see it, a man can get
all that just as well in business--is that wine all right?
If not, tell me and I'll give the head waiter hell; they
charge enough for it; what you're drinking costs me
four-fifty a bottle.
But I was starting to tell you about my early start in
business. I had it good and hard all right. Why when I
struck New York--I was sixteen then--I had just eighty
cents to my name. I lived on it for nearly a week while
I was walking round hunting for a job. I used to get soup
for three cents, and roast beef with potatoes, all you
could eat, for eight cents, that tasted better than anything
I can ever get in this damn club. It was down somewhere
on Sixth Avenue, but I've forgotten the way to it.
Well, about the sixth day I got a job, down in a shoe
factory, working on a machine. I guess you've never seen
shoe-machinery, have you? No, you wouldn't likely. It's
complicated. Even in those days there were thirty-five
machines went to the making of a shoe, and now we use as
many as fifty-four. I'd never seen the machines before,
but the foreman took me on. "You look strong," he said
"I'll give you a try anyway."
So I started in. I didn't know anything. But I made good
from the first day. I got four a week at the start, and
after two months I got a raise to four-twenty-five.
Well, after I'd worked there about three months, I went
up to the floor manager of the flat I worked on, and I
said, "Say, Mr. Jones, do you want to save ten dollars
a week on expenses?" "How?" says he. "Why," I said, "that
foreman I'm working under on the machine, I've watched
him, and I can do his job; dismiss him and I'll take over
his work at half what you pay him." "Can you do the work?"
he says. "Try me out," I said. "Fire him and give me a
chance." "Well," he said, "I like your spirit anyway;
you've got the right sort of stuff in you."
So he fired the foreman and I took over the job and held
it down. It was hard at first, but I worked twelve hours
a day, and studied up a book on factory machinery at
night. Well, after I'd been on that work for about a
year, I went in one day to the general manager downstairs,
and I said, "Mr. Thompson, do you want to save about a
hundred dollars a month on your overhead costs?" "How
can I do that?" says he. "Sit down." "Why," I said, "you
dismiss Mr. Jones and give me his place as manager of
the floor, and I'll undertake to do his work, and mine
with it, at a hundred less than you're paying now." He
turned and went into the inner office, and I could hear
him talking to Mr. Evans, the managing director. "The
young fellow certainly has character," I heard him say.
Then he came out and he said, "Well, we're going to give
you a try anyway: we like to help out our employes all
we can, you know; and you've got the sort of stuff in
you that we're looking for."
So they dismissed Jones next day and I took over his job
and did it easy. It was nothing anyway. The higher up
you get in business, the easier it is if you know how.
I held that job two years, and I saved all my salary
except twenty-five dollars a month, and I lived on that.
I never spent any money anyway. I went once to see Irving
do this Macbeth for twenty-five cents, and once I went
to a concert and saw a man play the violin for fifteen
cents in the gallery. But I don't believe you get much
out of the theatre anyway; as I see it, there's nothing
to it.
Well, after a while I went one day to Mr. Evans's office
and I said, "Mr. Evans, I want you to dismiss Mr. Thompson,
the general manager." "Why, what's he done?" he says.
"Nothing," I said, "but I can take over his job on top
of mine and you can pay me the salary you give him and
save what you're paying me now." "Sounds good to me," he
says.
So they let Thompson go and I took his place. That, of
course, is where I got my real start, because, you see,
I could control the output and run the costs up and down
just where I liked. I suppose you don't know anything
about costs and all that--they don't teach that sort of
thing in colleges--but even you would understand something
about dividends and would see that an energetic man with
lots of character and business in him, If he's general
manager can just do what he likes with the costs, especially
the overhead, and the shareholders have just got to take
what he gives them and be glad to. You see they can't
fire him--not when he's got it all in his own hands--for
fear it will all go to pieces.
Why would I want to run it that way for? Well, I'll tell
you. I had a notion by that time that the business was
getting so big that Mr. Evans, the managing director,
and most of the board had pretty well lost track of the
details and didn't understand it. There's an awful lot,
you know, in the shoe business. It's not like ordinary
things. It's complicated. And so I'd got an idea that I
would shove them clean out of it--or most of them.
So I went one night to see the president, old Guggenbaum,
up at his residence. He didn't only have this business,
but he was in a lot of other things as well, and he was
a mighty hard man to see. He wouldn't let any man see
him unless he knew first what he was going to say. But
I went up to his residence at night, and I saw him there.
I talked first with his daughter, and I said I just had
to see him. I said it so she didn't dare refuse. There's
a way in talking to women that they won't say no.
So I showed Mr. Guggenbaum what I could do with the stock.
"I can put that dividend," I says, "clean down to zero--and
they'll none of them know why. You can buy the lot of
them out at your own price, and after that I'll put the
dividend back to fifteen, or twenty, in two years."
"And where do _you_ come in?" says the old man, with a
sort of hard look. He had a fine business head, the old
man, at least in those days.
So I explained to him where I came in. "All right," he
said. "Go ahead. But I'll put nothing in writing." "Mr.
Guggenbaum, you don't need to," I said. "You're as fair
and square as I am and that's enough for me."
His daughter let me out of the house door when I went.
I guess she'd been pretty scared that she'd done wrong
about letting me in. But I said to her it was all right,
and after that when I wanted to see the old man I'd always
ask for her and she'd see that I got in all right.
Got them squeezed out? Oh, yes, easy. There wasn't any
trouble about that. You see the old man worked up a sort
of jolt in wholesale leather on one side, and I fixed up
a strike of the hands on the other. We passed the dividend
two quarters running, and within a year we had them all
scared out and the bulk of the little shareholders, of
course, trooped out after them. They always do. The old
man picked up the stock when they dropped it, and one-half
of it he handed over to me.
That's what put me where I am now, do you see, with the
whole control of the industry in two states and more than
that now, because we have the Amalgamated Tanneries in
with us, so it's practically all one concern.
Guggenbaum? Did I squeeze him out? No, I didn't because,
you see, I didn't have to. The way it was--well, I tell
you--I used to go up to the house, see, to arrange things
with him--and the way it was--why, you see, I married
his daughter, see, so I didn't exactly _need_ to squeeze
him out. He lives up with us now, but he's pretty old
and past business. In fact, I do it all for him now, and
pretty well everything he has is signed over to my wife.
She has no head for it, and she's sort of timid anyway
--always was--so I manage it all. Of course, if anything
happens to the old man, then we get it all. I don't think
he'll last long. I notice him each day, how weak he's
getting.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11