Delphi complete works of.., p.214
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 214
Under these circumstances a man of careless disposition and absent mind easily annexes and easily loses small items of property. In a Pullman car there is no difficulty whatever, if one has the disposition for it, in saying to a man sitting beside you, “Good morning, sir. It looks like a beautiful day,” and then reaching over and packing his hair brush into your valise. If he is the right kind of man he will never notice it, or at best he will say in return, “A beautiful morning,” and then take away your necktie.
There is, let it be noticed, all the difference in the world between this process and petty larceny.
The thing I mean couldn’t possibly be done by a thief. He wouldn’t have the nerve, the quiet assurance, the manner. It is the absolute innocence of the thing that does it. For example, if a man offers me a cigarette I find that I take his cigarette case and put it in my pocket. When I rise from my hotel dinner I carry away the napkin. When I leave my hotel room I always take away the key.
There is no real sense in this: I have more hotel keys than I can use as it is. But the fault is partly with our hotels. So many of them put up a little notice beside the door that reads, “Have You Forgotten Anything?” When ever I see this I stand in thought a minute and then it occurs to me, “Why of course, the Key!” and I take it with me.
I am aware that there is a class of persons — women mostly — who carry away spoons and other things deliberately as souvenirs. But I disclaim all connection with that kind of thing. That is not what I meant at all.
I would never take a valuable spoon, unless I happened to be using it at the table to open the back of my watch, or something of the sort. But when I sign my name on the hotel book I keep the pen. Similarly and in all fairness, I give up my own fountain pen to the telegraph clerk. The theory works both ways.
As a rule, there is nothing more in all this than a harmless give and take, a sort of profit and loss account to which any traveler easily becomes accustomed. But at the same time one should be careful. The theory may go a little too far. I remember not long ago coming home from a theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, with a lady’s white silk scarf about my neck.
I had no notion how it got to be there. Whether the woman had carelessly wrapped it about my neck in mistake for her own, or whether I had unwound it off her, I cannot say. But I regret the incident and will gladly put the scarf back on her neck at any time. I will also take this occasion to express my regret for the pair of boots which I put on in a Pullman car in Syracuse in the dark of a winter morning.
There is a special arrangement on the New York Central whereby at Syracuse passengers making connections for the South are allowed to get up at four and dress while the others are still asleep. There are signs put up adjuring everybody to keep as quiet as possible. Naturally, these passengers get the best of everything and, within limits, it is fair enough as they have to get up so early. But the boots of which I speak outclass anything I ever bought for myself and I am sorry about them.
Our American railways have very wisely taken firm grounds on this problem of property mislaid or exchanged or lost on the Pullman cars. As everybody knows when one of our trains reaches a depot the passengers leave it with as mad a haste as if it were full of smallpox. In fact, they are all lined up at the door like cattle in a pen ready to break loose before the train stops. What happens to the car itself afterwards they don’t care. It is only known to those who have left a hair brush in the car and tried to find it.
But in reality, the car is instantly rushed off to a siding, its number-placard taken out of the window so that it cannot be distinguished, after which a vacuum cleaner is turned on and sucks up any loose property that is left in it. Meantime the porter has avoided all detection by an instantaneous change of costume in which he appears disguised as a member of the Pittsburgh Yacht Club. If he could be caught at this time his pockets would be found to be full of fountain pens, rings and current magazines.
I do not mean to imply for a moment that our railways are acting in a dishonest way in the matter. On the contrary, they have no intention of keeping or annexing their passengers’ property. But very naturally they do not want a lot of random people rummaging through their cars. They endeavor, however, through their central offices to make as fair a division of the lost-and-found property as they can. Anyone applying in the proper way can have some of it. I have always found in this respect the greatest readiness to give me a fair share of everything.
A few months ago for example I had occasion to send to the Canadian National Railway a telegram which read, “Have left gray fedora hat with black band on your Toronto-Chicago train.” Within an hour I got back a message, “Your gray fedora hat being sent you from Windsor, Ontario.” And a little later on the same day I received another message which read, “Sending gray hat from Chicago,” and an hour after that “Gray hat found at Sheboygan, Michigan.”
Indeed, I think I am not exaggerating when I say that any of our great Canadian and American Railways will send you anything of that sort if you telegraph for it. In my own case the theory has become a regular practice. I telegraph to the New York Central, “Please forward me spring overcoat in a light gray or fawn,” and they send it immediately; or I call up the Canadian Pacific on the telephone and ask them if they can let me have a pair of tan boots and if possible a suit of golf clothes.
I have found that our leading hotels are even more punctilious in respect to their things than the railways. It is now hardly safe to attempt to leave in their rooms anything that one doesn’t want. Last month, having cut my razor strop so badly that it was of no further use, I was foolish enough to leave it hanging in a room in the Biltmore Hotel in New York. On my return home I got a letter which read: “Dear Sir: We beg to inform you that you have left your razor strop in room 2216. We have had your strop packed in excelsior packing and await your instructions in regard to it.”
I telegraphed back, “Please keep razor strop. You may have it.” After which in due course I got a further letter which said, “We are pleased to inform you that the razor strop which you so generously gave to this Company has been laid before our board of directors who have directed us to express their delight and appreciation at your generous gift. Any time you want a room and bath let us know.”
Great National Problems
The Laundry Problem
A Yearning for the Good Old Days of the Humble Washerwoman
A long time ago, thirty or forty years ago, there used to exist a humble being called a Washerwoman. It was her simple function to appear at intervals with a huge basket, carry away soiled clothes, and bring them back as snow-white linen.
The washerwoman is gone now. Her place is taken by the Amalgamated Laundry Company. She is gone but I want her back.
The washerwoman, in fact and fiction, was supposed to represent the bottom of everything. She could just manage to exist. She was the last word. Now the Amalgamated Laundry Company uses hydro-electric power, has an office like a bank, and delivers its goods out of a huge hearse driven by a chauffeur in livery. But I want that humble woman back.
In the old days any woman deserted and abandoned in the world took in washing. When all else failed there was at least that. Any woman who wanted to show her independent spirit and force of character threatened to take in washing. It was the last resort of a noble mind. In many of the great works of fiction the heroine’s mother almost took in washing.
Women whose ancestry went back to the crusades very nearly, though never quite, started to wash when the discovery of the missing will saved them from the suds. But nowadays if a woman exclaimed, “What shall I do? I am alone in the world! I will open an Amalgamated Laundry!” — it would not sound the same.
The operation of the old system — as I recall it from the days of forty years ago — was very simple. The washerwoman used to call and take away my shirt and my collar and while she washed them I wore my other shirt and my other collar. When she came back we changed over. She always had one and I had one. In those days any young man in a fair position needed two shirts.
Where the poor washerwoman was hopelessly simple was that she never destroyed or injured the shirt. She never even thought to bite a piece out with her teeth. When she brought it back it looked softer and better than ever. It never occurred to her to tear out one of the sleeves. If she broke out a button in washing, she humbly sewed it on again.
When she ironed the shirt it never occurred to the simple soul to burn a brown mark right across it. The woman lacked imagination. In other words, modern industrialism was in its infancy.
I have never witnessed at first hand the processes of a modern incorporated laundry company using up-to-date machinery. But I can easily construct in my imagination a vision of what is done when a package of washing is received. The shirts are first sorted out and taken to an expert who rapidly sprinkles them with sulphuric acid.
Then they go to the coloring room where they are dipped in a solution of yellow stain. From this they pass to the machine-gun room where holes are shot in them and from there by an automatic carrier to the hydraulic tearing room where the sleeves are torn out. After that they are squeezed absolutely flat under enormous pressure which puts them into such a shape that the buttons can all be ripped up at a single scrape by an expert button ripper.
The last process is altogether handwork and accounts, I am informed, for the heavy cost. A good button-ripper with an expert knowledge of the breaking strain of material, easily earns fifty dollars a day. But the work is very exacting, as not a single button is expected to escape his eye. Of late the big laundries are employing new chemical methods, such as mustard gas, tear bombs, and star shells.
Collars, I understand, are treated in the same way, though the process varies a little according as the aim is to produce the Fuzzled Edge Finish or the Split Side Slit. The general idea, of course, in any first class laundry, is to see that no shirt or collar ever comes back twice. If it should happen to do so, it is sent at once to the Final Destruction Department, who put gun cotton under it and blow it into six bits. It is then labelled “damaged” and sent home in a special conveyance with an attendant in the morning.
Had the poor washerwoman kept a machine-gun and a little dynamite, she could have made a fortune. But she didn’t know it. In the old days a washerwoman washed a shirt for ten-twelfths of a cent — or ten cents a dozen pieces. The best laundries, those which deny all admission to their offices and send back their laundry under an armed guard, now charge one dollar to wash a shirt, with a special rate of twelve dollars a dozen.
On the same scale the washerwoman’s wages would be multiplied by a hundred and twenty. She really represented in value an income of fifty dollars a year. Had it been known, she could have been incorporated and dividends picked off her like huckleberries.
Now that I think of it, she was worth even more than that. With the modern laundry a shirt may be worn twice, for one day each time. After that it is blown up. And it costs four dollars to buy a new one. In the old days a shirt lasted till a man outgrew it. As a man approached middle life he found, with a certain satisfaction, that he had outgrown his shirt. He had to spend seventy-five cents on a new one, and that one lasted till he was buried in it.
Had some poor woman only known enough to pick up one of these shirts and bite the neck out of it, she might have started something really big.
But even when all this has been said there remains more yet. In the old days if you had a complaint to make to the washerwoman you said it to her straight out. She was there. And she heard the complaint and sneaked away with tears in her eyes to her humble home where she read the Bible and drank gin.
But now if you have a complaint to make to an Amalgamated Laundry Corporation, you can’t find it. There is no use complaining to the chauffeur in livery. He never saw a shirt in his life.
There is no use going to the office. All you find there are groups of lady employees sheltered behind a cast-iron grating. They never saw your shirt. Don’t ask them. They have their office work and in the evening they take extension lectures on the modern drama. They wouldn’t know a shirt if they saw it.
Nor can you write to the company. I speak here of what I know for I have tried to lay a complaint before a laundry company in writing, and I know the futility of it. Here is the letter I wrote:
To the Board of Directors,
The Amalgamated Universal Laundry Company
Gentlemen:
I wish you would try to be a little more careful with my shirt. I mean the pink one. I think you put a little more starch in the neck the last time than you intended and it all seems stuck together.
Very faithfully yours, —
But the only answer I got was a communication in the following terms:
Dear Sir,
Folio 110,615. Department 0412. Received February 19th, 9.26 A.M. Read March 19th, 8.23 A.M. Sent down April 19th 4.01 A.M. Sent up May 19th 2 A.M.
We beg to inform you that your communication as above will be laid before the shareholders at the next general meeting. In answering kindly indicate folio, department, street, age and occupation. No complaints received under names or in words.
Yours,
Folio 0016.
After that I felt it was hopeless to go on. My only chance for the future is that I may get to know some beautiful rich woman and perhaps her husband will run away and leave her weeping and penniless and drinking gin, and then I will appear in the doorway and will say, “Dry your tears, dear, dear friend; there is prosperity for you yet; you shall wash my shirt.”
The Questionnaire Nuisance
A Plan to Curb Zealous Investigators in Their Thirst for Knowledge
Everybody who manages an office or carries on a profession or teaches in a college, is getting to be familiar with the thing called “questionnaire.” It is a sheet of questions or inquiries sent round broadcast and supposed to deal with some kind of social investigation. Some of these questions come direct from the insane asylums, but others purport to come from students, investigators, and social workers. But wherever they come from, they are rapidly developing into a first class national nuisance.
Here for example on my desk is a letter which reads:
“I am a graduate of the Myopia Woman’s College of Agricultural Technology, and I am making a special investigation of the government ownership of cold storage plants. Will you please write me the history of any three governments which you know to possess cold storage plants? Will you also let me have your opinion on coldness, on storage, and on plants?”
Here is another one that came in by the same mail:
“I am a social worker in Nut College, Nutwood on the Hum, and am making out a chart or diagram to show whether the length of the human ear is receding or going right ahead. Will you kindly measure your ears and let me know about their growth? Keep me advised if they start.”
Along with these are letters asking me to give my opinion, with reasons, whether or not elected aldermen are more crooked than aldermen not even fit to be elected; asking where I stand on the short ballot and what I think of prison reform and the union of the Presbyterian churches.
I have come to the conclusion that something decisive has got to be done about these questionnaires; so I have decided in the interests of myself and other sufferers to write out a model answer for one of them and afterwards to let that answer suffice for all the others. Here is the one that I have selected for answering. I didn’t make it up. It is the genuine article, as anyone used to these things will recognize at once.
It runs as follows:
“Dear Sir:
“I am an American college student and I have been selected along with Mr. John Q. Beanhead of the class of 1926, of whom you may have heard, to represent the Bohunk Agriculture College in the forthcoming debate against Skidoo Academy. Our subject of debate is to be on the question: Resolved, that the United States should adopt a parliamentary system of government. Knowing that you have the knowledge of these problems, and trusting that you will be pleased to answer at once, I have selected the following questions which I hope will not take too much of your valuable time to answer:
“1. How does the efficiency of the British government compare with that of the United States?
“2. Do you think the minority has too much power in the United States?
“3. What is your opinion of a democracy?
“4. What is a responsible government?
“5. How would the adoption of the British system affect our Supreme Court?
“I will sincerely appreciate any further suggestions which you may care to make in answer to these questions or concerning any advantage or defect of either system, or any other system.
“Yours truly.
“O. Y. KNOTT.”
The answer which I prepared for Mr. Knott reads as follows:
“Dear Sir:
“As soon as I heard from your letter that the big debate is on between Bohunk and Skidoo, I was thrilled with excitement. Can we win it? Can we put enough international energy behind you and Mr. Beanhead (Do I know of him? How can you ask it?) to drive the thing through? I want to say at once that in this business you are to regard my own time as absolutely valueless. I may tell you frankly that from now until the big debate is pulled off I purpose to lay aside every other concern in life and devote myself to your service. I couldn’t possibly answer your question in any other way.
“So now let me turn to your actual questions. You ask first, ‘How does the efficiency of the British government compare with that of the United States?’
“Here is a nice, straightforward, manly question. You won’t object if my answer is of rather extended length, and you must not mind if it takes me a week to get it ready for you. I shall not only have to handle a good deal of historical material, but I also propose to cable to Mr. Stanley Baldwin and ask him how the efficiency of his government is standing right now.
