Delphi complete works of.., p.262
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 262
So the inquirer, his interview terminated, goes back to his fellows. He will tell of what he has heard. He will tell it eight or ten times that evening and repeat it at intervals for days and months afterwards. He will say that it was the most marvelous thing he ever listened to. He will say the woman knew all the names of all his deceased relations, named them without hesitation, and told him all about them.
All this is what he will say.
And the more often he tells all this, the more completely the inquirer feels that the mystery of mysteries is solved.
But, in the meantime, when the interviewer has left the Parlor of the Spirits, Nadir the Nameless helps his wife to rise from the tawdry little couch.
Her face is weary and sad.
“You’re tired, dear,” says the Astrologer gently. “Come into the other room. I’ve made some tea.”
“Ain’t I seen that fella here before?” asks the medium wearily.
“Yes, I think he was here one day last week,” says Nadir. “But I’m not sure.”
Nadir the Nameless and his wife don’t keep elaborate track of their clients. There is a myth abroad that they follow them about and dig up all kinds of information about them in secret. They don’t. Why should they? Uncle William is good enough.
“Look,” says Nadir the Nameless, as they sit down in the back room. “I’ve got the supper all ready for you.”
“You’re so good, Fred,” says the medium.
Then she begins to cry softly. “I was thinking of Nan,” she says. “All day while I was working I was thinking of Nan.”
Nan was the little daughter of Nadir the Nameless, and Abracadabra, his wife. She died last week. But do they call her up from the spirit world? Ah, no! Leave that for Uncle William and such.
“Don’t cry,” says Nadir. “Wait while I go and take the card out of the window. You mustn’t work any more to-day.”
“But there’s the rent, Fred,” says the wife, pausing in her tears.
“Never mind; we’ll manage somehow. And listen, dear, you take this fifty cents that that guy paid for his revelation and buy some flowers for Nan’s grave. To-morrow’s Sunday. Wait till I go and wash, and we’ll have tea. Don’t cry, dear. Don’t cry.”
And, with this first and last of human consolations on his lips, he leaves her to herself.
THE END
Laugh with Leacock
CONTENTS
My Financial Career
Buggam Grange: A Good Old Ghost Story
How We Kept Mother’s Day. As Related by a Member of the Family
The Laundry Problem. A Yearning for the Good Old Days of the Humble Washerwoman
The Great Detective
The Old, Old Story of How Five Men Went Fishing
Guido the Gimlet of Ghent: A Romance of Chivalry
The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
Cast Up by the Sea. A Sea Coast Melodrama (As Thrown up for 30 cents) — Period, 1880
How My Wife and I Built Our Home for $4.90. Related in the Manner of the Best Models in the Magazines
Softening the Stories for the Children. But Don’t Do It: They Prefer Them Rough
The Everlasting Angler
The Golfomaniac
Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen. Synopsis of Previous Chapters:. There are no Previous Chapters.
Letters to the New Rulers of the World
The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias
My Lost Dollar
Personal Experiments with the Black Bass
The Restoration of Whiskers a Neglected Factor in the Decline of Knowledge
Old Junk and New Money. A Little Study in the Latest Antiques
Oxford as I See It
The Snoopopaths or Fifty Stories in One
My Affair with My Landlord
The Give and Take of Travel. A Study in Petty Larceny, Pro and Con
The Retroactive Existence of Mr. Juggins
Homer and Humbug, an Academic Discussion
“We Have with Us To-Night”
Caroline’s Christmas: or, The Inexplicable Infant
Father Knickerbocker — A Fantasy
Simple Stories of Success or How to Succeed in Life
Historical Drama
Humour As I See It
L’Envoi. The Faded Actor
Dear Professor Leacock:
There is a pretty story which probably comes to us in more languages than most of us read about a captain who is ordered by his superiors to select a number of his men for some extraordinary and hazardous duty. Whereupon, having summoned his company or troop before him, according to the manner which the various times and places where the incident occurs may dictate, the young leader repeats the special orders, and, since the service is not in the regular line of duty, asks for individual volunteers. Immediately, as the old story goes, the entire body steps forward, each man convinced of his own best fitness to represent the others in the special hazard of the moment — a pretty gesture, indeed, but one which leaves the perplexed subaltern in the predicament of making his own choice.
Well, something like that has been our experience in summoning to the desk your score of volumes and selecting therefrom some one thousand words or more, to make this book. We hoped for volunteers, but found the entire contents ready to be chosen. It was not what to include, but what to turn down, that bothered us — and since you cannot possibly telescope a dozen and a half volumes into one, no matter how extensive that one is, the casualties turned out to be numerous. I thought this explanation of the contents of the book should be made to you, the author, by me, the subaltern who had the job of editorial selection. But I should also like to make the point for the sake of those unfortunates who always find in a prize collection of this sort that the judges have left their particular loving-cup just outside the trophy-room door, rendering the whole exhibition for them both null and void. If anyone in reading this volume should feel that the very cream of your jesting has been omitted, some consolation may be found in the suggestion that a reading of what is here will dry up the worst case of lamentation. As a second hint — if one of these unfortunates must have that forgotten pièce de résistance, it is still probably available in its original setting, and for him who shall say it alone is not worth the price of the entire volume?
An interesting fact came to notice in the making of this collection of your best work. Before doing so we had written to a dozen or more of the sharpest and wittiest minds of our day, telling them that we were planning this book as a sort of surprise package to you in honor of your twentieth year as an author and your sixtieth as a citizen in a world the happier for your laughter and good fun. We asked each of these distinguished gentlemen, among other things, what his favorite Leacock story or essay might be and, curiously enough, the piece of yours which has been most often requested is not humorous at all but a most shrewd discussion of present-day education, under the caption of “Oxford as I See It.” Apparently the old tradition that a humorous man must always be funny has been broken. But not for long; the second most popular sketch you ever wrote is that irresistible account of your first experience in banking. And the most famous single incident in your entire literary career occurs in the story of “Gertrude the Governess,” — more specifically in the description of the phenomenal departure of the disinherited young man and the manner in which he disperses himself from the immediate proximity of his home. All three of these high-spots, of course, will be found in the present volume.
A moment ago I confessed that before making this selection we dropped a hint to some of your friends that this was a jovial occasion in which they might perhaps wish to join. All of what they said in reply may not best be printed for the public eye, as perhaps now and then too intimate and laudatory for anything but a sincere and secret blush; yet never were truer words said than the graceful compliments they have paid you, which we are appending in the order they happened to reach us, and in which these well-wishers of yours are joined by the reader, your devoted publisher, and
The Editor.
Irvin S. Cobb —
“I can’t pick out my favorite Leacock story, because all Leacock stories are favorites of mine. How are you going to choose one pearl from a string of perfect pearls? This Leacock is a great humorist, a great person, a great soul and I love him for the laughs he has made.”
Charles (Chic) Sale —
“In rounding out the sixtieth year of his varied and remarkable career, Mr. Stephen Leacock deserves the congratulations of a world made happier by his efforts. For a number of years it has been my good fortune to count Stephen Leacock among my closest friends. This personal contact has strengthened my conviction, held for a longer period, that he is one of our greatest humorists. His works are among my prized possessions.”
George Ade —
“Stephen Leacock has achieved the distinction of being a happy combination of the drawing-room Englishman and the liberated and unconventional American. He is a college professor who can be a quizzical fun-maker without sacrificing his dignity as a member of the Faculty. His mortar-board is tilted at just the right angle. He inherits the genial traditions of Lamb, Thackeray and Lewis Carroll and has absorbed, across the Canadian border, the delightful unconventionalities of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Mark Twain, with possibly a slight flavor of Will Rogers. His contributions to current good reading help to prove that an author may be entertaining without straining for effects or violating any of the conventions. He is a critic without rancor, a satirist who never loses his temper, and a commentator whose unusual point of view enables him to be amusing at all times and didactic never.”
Robert Benchley —
“I have just returned from abroad, and I hope that it is not too late for me to say that I have enjoyed Leacock’s works so much that I have written everything that he ever wrote — anywhere from one to five years after him. In case the proof-reader thinks that I meant ‘I have read everything that he ever wrote,’ please tell him that I really meant ‘written.’ ”
Harry Leon Wilson —
“Your note reminded me that I was late in observing an ancient custom of my house — the annual complete rereading of Leacock. I began at once with an eye out for my ‘favorite’ chapter or story. I haven’t found one yet, though if made to choose it would have to be the Nonsense Novels. My complaint about Leacock is that his volumes go. Casual book bandits never molest my set of Plutarch or the works of Herbert Spencer. I suggest a Leacock edition, the volumes strung on a chain, stout padlocks at either end. And I wish their author many happy returns from the years and his publishers.”
Homer Croy —
“Your letter picked me up in Hollywood where I am endeavoring to raise the moral tone of the movies. I like it out here, although there is not as much shooting as I expected. I’ll never forget the day I stumbled onto Stephen Leacock. Well, I’ve been spending money on him ever since. He must be a rich man.”
Christopher Morley —
“I wish I knew how to say, on this sharp spur of the moment, the just word made perfect in honor of Saint Stephen, LL.D. — Doctor of Living Laughter. I was never certain whether 1910 should be more famous for the appearance of Halley’s Comet, or the publication of Leacock’s first book of irresponsibilities. I can only say that had I been a student at McGill I should have specialized in Political Economy, merely to hear him lecture. I can pay no greater tribute.”
Ellis Parker Butler —
“Stephen Leacock’s humor is like a well-woven Scotch plaid — honest and comfortable and satisfying, and all-fired funny when worn as a knee-length kilt for a university professor to do jigs in. Leacock is our premier parodist.”
Donald Ogden Stewart —
“The only reason that I could not tell you my favorite Leacock story or chapter is that if I started to go back through his works I should probably find so many things that I have since used myself that the blow to my pride would cause me to throw my typewriter out of the window. And if I threw my typewriter out of the window, I should starve. I owe Stephen Leacock a great deal — so does every contemporary American humorist — but I would prefer not to know the exact extent of my debt. Ignorance is golden.”
Will Cuppy —
“He deserves all the laurels and commendations possible right now, when this frightful world is full of imitation, synthetic and otherwise half-witted humorists, and by that I do not mean myself. He is the real grand-daddy of the best ones of the day still. As I remarked, not unsapiently, in my last review of Leacock, ‘Any book by Stephen Leacock has the tremendous advantage to start with of being by Stephen Leacock.’ ”
Nunnally Johnson —
“I was reading Stephen Leacock when I was in high school and I am still reading him. Writers of humor I have found to be a most poisonous crew, none of them seeming to have anything but loathing and contempt for the stuff of any other. I can think of but two names that are exempt from this harpooning, and Mr. Leacock’s is one. Such nonsense as he writes never gets old or outdated to me; it is always fun, great fun to read.”
Lawton Mackall —
“Professor Leacock’s literary lunacy (equine sagacity in disguise) has been one of the most exhilarating and sanifying influences at large in the universe. As an eminent economist he has shown us the need of better regulation of public futilities. As a philosopher he has tested popular notions by carrying them to their logical confusions. As a critic he has diagnosed the comedy of literary manners. As a man of feeling he has been kind to the balloons he has popped; not pricking them maliciously, nor bashing them with a debunker’s axe, but gently fomenting their inflation — till they burst with a spontaneous BANG!”
George S. Chappell —
“Mr. Leacock is so much more than a humorist. He is a searching critic. But for his humor alone he deserves the crown. His work is so robust, so direct, so well-written, so clean, so human and to me so perfect of its kind that I am delighted to have this opportunity of paying my tribute to him. He has brought me much happiness which my one little contact with him at a Coffee House luncheon only enhanced, for he is one of those fine, bluff, jolly men who looks and talks just the way he writes.”
Gelett Burgess —
“Though I say it as shouldn’t, it takes a fine, scientific mind to write good nonsense and Stephen Leacock has placed himself in the class of Edward Lear, Dodgson, “Phœnix,” Barrie, Oliver Herford and the author of Felix the Cat. I have enjoyed everything that Leacock has written, and I know how rare is the power of dissociation, so to speak, that creates such work. Long may he wave his magic pen!”
My Financial Career
WHEN I GO into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.
The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.
I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.
So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager.
I went up to a wicket marked “Accountant.” The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.
“Can I see the manager?” I said, and added solemnly, “alone.” I don’t know why I said “alone.”
“Certainly,” said the accountant, and fetched him.
The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.
“Are you the manager?” I said. God knows I didn’t doubt it.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can I see you,” I asked, “alone?” I didn’t want to say “alone” again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.
The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.
“Come in here,” he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.
“We are safe from interruption here,” he said; “sit down.”
We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.
“You are one of Pinkerton’s men, I presume,” he said.
He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.
“No, not from Pinkerton’s,” I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.
“To tell the truth,” I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, “I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank.”
The manager looked relieved but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.
“A large account, I suppose,” he said.
“Fairly large,” I whispered. “I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly.”
The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.
“Mr. Montgomery,” he said unkindly loud, “this gentleman is opening an account, he will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning.”
I rose.
A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.
“Good morning,” I said, and stepped into the safe.
“Come out,” said the manager coldly, and showed me the other way.
I went up to the accountant’s wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a quick convulsive movement as if I were doing a conjuring trick.
My face was ghastly pale.
“Here,” I said, “deposit it.” The tone of the words seemed to mean, “Let us do this painful thing while the fit is on us.”
