Delphi complete works of.., p.254
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 254
The president then spoke of the wonderful advances recently made in practical science: he touched lightly upon the electric flat iron, the new electric facial massage, and the improved mechanical clippers. He said the times demanded further specialization: we needed highly trained men for the back of the neck; we must have more intensive work on the mustache and better designs for behind the ears. The old-fashioned general practitioner, prepared to cut anything and everything, was becoming, the president said, a thing of the past. We were consigning him to the hair-basket.
We must educate the public to understand that two barbers for every customer is becoming an absolute necessity; to these, he said, there should properly be added an anesthetist to keep the customer asleep. In the old days, which he could himself recall after fifty years of practice, the academy, — still called a shop — was small and quiet. The customer fell asleep of himself; all that was needed was to give him yesterday’s newspaper.
This has changed. The unavoidable noise of the overhead shampoo (he would not for a moment deny its utility), the rattle of the electric clipper, and the terrifying hiss of the hot irons kept the customers awake. The only remedy, as he saw it, was an extended use of anesthetics. This again demanded wider knowledge and a raising of the standard of the profession.
We have got to face the fact, said the president, that the course must be lengthened. Four weeks, he would say it positively and with conviction, is too short a time for turning out a highly-equipped man. The time has arrived when we must work for a six weeks’ course.
At this juncture the arrival of Dean Follicle called forth from the students loud cries of “You’re next!” followed by the college yell of Rah! Rah! Shampoo!
The Dean, in rising to speak, said that he was entirely in accord with the President on the matter of raising the general standard. He might perhaps refer to the monograph that he had published under the title of What a Barber Should Know. Any professor of practical capilletics — he would not say barber — must be a man of education, a wide man. Their customers — or should he say their patients? — expect it. When they come to your chairs, gentlemen, continued the Dean, they want information. They want to know who won last night’s boxing match. It is your duty to tell them. More than that, they want to know who is going to win the boxing match, or the horse race or the ball game, not of yesterday, but of next week. It is your duty to keep them posted.
These people come to you with confidence. They put themselves into your hands for twenty-five minutes; they allow you to cover them with a steamed towel, which precludes all argument. They cannot answer back. This, then, is your opportunity for enlarging their minds and extending their range of knowledge. You must keep them informed of the presidential election; you must understand the wet and dry laws of your state; you must follow every line of sport. In short, gentlemen, you must have made a study of yesterday’s newspaper from cover to cover.
A man who has read yesterday’s paper is a cultivated man, a well-informed man, an agreeable man; one who has not betrayed himself as an ignoramus unfit to handle a pair of scissors.
There had been, said the Dean, some little criticism, he would not say complaint, in regard to the examination paper on General Knowledge which had been given to this year’s graduating class. It had been said that the questions were hard. He would name some of them and let the audience judge for themselves. For example: Who is Mussolini? What is the salary of a big league ball player? Who flew where? How do they divide the money of a prize fight?
It was claimed that these questions were hard. They were meant to be hard; only a man who knows that Mussolini is “some guy” — or else is not — can hope to interest his customer in European politics.
The Dean then briefly referred to the question of Latin. He believed that the time has come when Latin must be made compulsory and that every graduate must have at least a week of it. So many of our preparations made up now have Latin names, such as Sine Qua Non and Ne Plus Ultra, that no graduate can hope to rise in his profession without Latin. He could name at least six Latin words that had been of the greatest use to him.
At the end of his speech Dean Follicle touched for a moment on the question of Women. He did not know, he said, of any greater problem in the profession than that of Women. The women of to-day were insisting on having their hair cut. And we must cut it for them. If we don’t cut it, some one else will. We cannot stop progress.
Is short hair, he asked, here to stay? He looked on this as perhaps the most important social question of the hour. To answer it would require a deep knowledge of history, social science, and human and animal psychology. But what we need, argued Dean Follicle, is to meet the situation both ways, so that we can do business whichever way.
The applause that greeted the Dean’s address showed how deeply interested the audience had been.
President Clip then handed out the degrees to each graduate and declared that he and the Dean would go back to their chairs and the other boys might have the rest of the noon hour free.
The meeting broke up with college yells and cheers for Alma Mater.
Correspondence Manual Number One
A FOUNDATION GUIDE-BOOK for All the Others
Everybody is aware of the vast amount of instruction that is carried on to-day by correspondence courses. It is, I suppose, literally true that one may now acquire the whole of an education in this manner. Not only is instruction given in all the various branches of learning, but also in the practical arts. Courses are offered in telegraphy, stenography, advertising, plumbing, and even in the purely mechanical things, such as short-story-writing, play-writing, the making of scenarios and how to earn a living by poetry.
Everybody also has admired the clearness and simplicity with which the manuals are composed. Take, for example, the one entitled, How to Learn the Alphabet by Correspondence. The pictures of the letters A, B, and C are drawn with such absolute sincerity and faith as to be unmistakable; while the pupil is gently led from C to D, from D to E, until a knowledge of the whole alphabet is acquired, and the pupil is ready to pass on to volume 2, How to Synchronize the Alphabet into Words.
But even with all this, it seems to me that the process has not gone far enough. There are still people who need help. We must remember that there are a great many persons who have had practically no early advantages, and who seem almost totally deficient and incapable in practical life. Thus one hears it said of such a one that he doesn’t know enough to pound sand, or doesn’t know enough to come in out of the wet, or again we say of this or that person that he doesn’t know enough to plant beans.
It is these people whom I propose to help by preparing a fundamental manual, under the name of Correspondence Manual Number One. This little book is meant as the absolute ground work of knowledge. It starts right at the beginning. It takes nothing for granted. Not only is no previous knowledge needed for commencing the study, but on the contrary any previous knowledge might be a drawback.
part i
How to Pound Sand
This section of the little manual has on its cover two pictures, one showing a young man lying on the ground prostrate with despair; beside him a heap of sand — unpounded. He doesn’t know how to pound it! He has no one to help or guide him. The picture carries a printed legend below it, “He couldn’t pound sand.”
The other picture shows the same young man, upright and smiling in a debonair negligee shirt, knickers, and golf stockings and shoes, standing in front of a newly acquired bungalow and calling through the open door, “Look, mother, come and see me pound it.”
Below this are the clear and simple instructions:
“In order to pound sand, it is first necessary to acquire a fair-sized heap of sand. First-class sand may be obtained from a first-class sand-pit, or may be purchased direct from our office in Post Office Box 75,000, Lower Half. To any student of the course sending in a special sand order of one dollar, we will forward ten cents’ worth of sand.
“A pounder may be obtained by picking up any old stick or board or scantling, or it can be bought from an up-to-date hardware firm, provided they see you coming, for about three dollars.
“Having obtained the sand and the pounder, the pupil is now in a position to undertake Lesson I. For this the instructions are as follows:
“Take the pounder (P) in the two hands (H and H) and stand directly over the sand (S). Now lift the pounder in the air (A) and direct it with the eye (E) towards the center of the sand (S) on which it is let fall with considerable force (CF).
“Lesson II. Repeat Lesson I.
“Lesson III. Repeat Lesson II.
“Lesson IV. Repeat Lesson III.
“Four lessons make up a course, but pupils who desire to carry the work further may pay another fee and take another four.”
part two
How to Come in Out of the Wet
A second section of the course, not to be attempted until section one has been thoroughly learned, gives practical instructions in How to Come in Out of the Wet. Like Section I, it is illustrated with a little double illustration, the first part of which is labeled, He Didn’t Come In, and showing a young man lying on his own doorstep on a rainy day — drowned. The other part shows a young man, much better dressed, knocking at the door of a house and saying, “Let me in, mother, it’s going to rain.”
The instructional part of the section begins with a discussion of the nature of rain.
Lesson I
What Is Rain?
“What is rain? Rain may be said to consist scientifically of a precipitation of spherical globules of hydrated oxygen, or, what is the same thing, oxydized hydrogen, falling through the atmosphere.
“Get this thoroughly in your mind and then go on to Lesson II on, Why Does Rain Fall?”
Lesson II
Why Does Rain Fall?
“Why Does Rain Fall? Because the specific gravity of the precipitated globule is greater than that of the surrounding atmosphere.
“Repeat this till you feel strong enough to go on.”
But, there! It would never do to give away the whole course of instruction. Suffice it to say that the practical part, How to Get in Out of the Wet, may be easily acquired by a pupil of average intelligence and diligence after a few weeks of practice on wet days. Still more advanced exercises are given, for a further fee, for graduate students who propose to live in equatorial Africa or on the mosquito coast of Honduras.
On the back of the Manual is a little illustration called, His Salary Doubled Again. It shows a young man coming in triumphant to a bright room newly furnished and containing also a young woman and a baby. He is bursting in, radiant with happiness, with a sand-pounder in his hand, shaking the rain off his hat, and with a packet of beans and a hoe in his other hand. Beneath it the words, — Course II: How to Plant Beans.
V
IN THE GOLF STREAM
The Golfomaniac
WE RIDE IN and out pretty often together, he and I, on a suburban train.
That’s how I came to talk to him. “Fine morning,” I said as I sat down beside him yesterday and opened a newspaper.
“Great!” he answered, “the grass is drying out fast now and the greens will soon be all right to play.”
“Yes,” I said, “the sun is getting higher and the days are decidedly lengthening.”
“For the matter of that,” said my friend, “a man could begin to play at six in the morning easily. In fact, I’ve often wondered that there’s so little golf played before breakfast. We happened to be talking about golf, a few of us last night — I don’t know how it came up — and we were saying that it seems a pity that some of the best part of the day, say, from five o’clock to seven-thirty, is never used.”
“That’s true,” I answered, and then, to shift the subject, I said, looking out of the window:
“It’s a pretty bit of country just here, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he replied, “but it seems a shame they make no use of it — just a few market gardens and things like that. Why, I noticed along here acres and acres of just glass — some kind of houses for plants or something — and whole fields full of lettuce and things like that. It’s a pity they don’t make something of it. I was remarking only the other day as I came along in the train with a friend of mine, that you could easily lay out an eighteen-hole course anywhere here.”
“Could you?” I said.
“Oh, yes. This ground, you know, is an excellent light soil to shovel up into bunkers. You could drive some big ditches through it and make one or two deep holes — the kind they have on some of the French links. In fact, improve it to any extent.”
I glanced at my morning paper. “I see,” I said, “that it is again rumored that Lloyd George is at last definitely to retire.”
“Funny thing about Lloyd George,” answered my friend. “He never played, you know; most extraordinary thing — don’t you think? — for a man in his position. Balfour, of course, was very different: I remember when I was over in Scotland last summer I had the honor of going around the course at Dumfries just after Lord Balfour. Pretty interesting experience, don’t you think?”
“Were you over on business?” I asked.
“No, not exactly. I went to get a golf ball, a particular golf ball. Of course, I didn’t go merely for that. I wanted to get a mashie as well. The only way, you know, to get just what you want is to go to Scotland for it.”
“Did you see much of Scotland?”
“I saw it all. I was on the links at St. Andrews and I visited the Loch Lomond course and the course at Inverness. In fact, I saw everything.”
“It’s an interesting country, isn’t it, historically?”
“It certainly is. Do you know they have played there for over five hundred years! Think of it! They showed me at Loch Lomond the place where they said Robert the Bruce played the Red Douglas (I think that was the other party — at any rate, Bruce was one of them), and I saw where Bonnie Prince Charlie disguised himself as a caddie when the Duke of Cumberland’s soldiers were looking for him. Oh, it’s a wonderful country historically.”
After that I let a silence intervene so as to get a new start. Then I looked up again from my newspaper.
“Look at this,” I said, pointing to a headline, United States Navy Ordered Again to Nicaragua. “Looks like more trouble, doesn’t it?”
“Did you see in the paper a while back,” said my companion, “that the United States Navy Department is now making golf compulsory at the training school at Annapolis? That’s progressive, isn’t it? I suppose it will have to mean shorter cruises at sea; in fact, probably lessen the use of the navy for sea purposes. But it will raise the standard.”
“I suppose so,” I answered. “Did you read about this extraordinary murder case on Long Island?”
“No,” he said. “I never read murder cases. They don’t interest me. In fact, I think this whole continent is getting over-preoccupied with them — —”
“Yes, but this case had such odd features — —”
“Oh, they all have,” he replied, with an air of weariness. “Each one is just boomed by the papers to make a sensation — —”
“I know, but in this case it seems that the man was killed with a blow from a golf club.”
“What’s that? Eh, what’s that? Killed him with a blow from a golf club!!”
“Yes, some kind of club — —”
“I wonder if it was an iron — let me see the paper — though, for the matter of that, I imagine that a blow with even a wooden driver, let alone one of the steel-handled drivers — where does it say it? — pshaw, it only just says ‘a blow with golf club.’ It’s a pity the papers don’t write these things up with more detail, isn’t it? But perhaps it will be better in the afternoon paper. . . .”
“Have you played golf much?” I inquired. I saw it was no use to talk of anything else.
“No,” answered my companion, “I am sorry to say I haven’t. You see, I began late. I’ve only played twenty years, twenty-one if you count the year that’s beginning in May. I don’t know what I was doing. I wasted about half my life. In fact, it wasn’t till I was well over thirty that I caught on to the game. I suppose a lot of us look back over our lives that way and realize what we have lost.
“And even as it is,” he continued, “I don’t get much chance to play. At the best I can only manage about four afternoons a week, though of course I get most of Saturday and all Sunday. I get my holiday in the summer, but it’s only a month, and that’s nothing. In the winter I manage to take a run South for a game once or twice and perhaps a little swack at it around Easter, but only a week at a time. I’m too busy — that’s the plain truth of it.” He sighed. “It’s hard to leave the office before two,” he said. “Something always turns up.”
And after that he went on to tell me something of the technique of the game, illustrate it with a golf ball on the seat of the car, and the peculiar mental poise needed for driving, and the neat, quick action of the wrist (he showed me how it worked) that is needed to undercut a ball so that it flies straight up in the air. He explained to me how you can do practically anything with a golf ball, provided that you keep your mind absolutely poised and your eye in shape, and your body a trained machine. It appears that even Bobby Jones of Atlanta and people like that fall short very often from the high standard set up by my golfing friend in the suburban car.
So, later in the day, meeting some one in my club who was a person of authority on such things, I made inquiry about my friend. “I rode into town with Llewellyn Smith,” I said. “I think he belongs to your golf club. He’s a great player, isn’t he?”
