Delphi complete works of.., p.303
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 303
“Yo! ho! and a bottle of Bilge,” I sang as I handed my glass for more. . . .
Upstairs and outside no doubt was the light flood of summer sunshine and the garish day. But down below in the depths of the cool cellars, there sat Meadows and I as far removed from the world of to-day as the pirates themselves whose memories we toasted in glass after glass of Bilge. . . .
Ah, well-a-day! It is but a sad world! Let those whose cold hearts and puritanical standards may condemn us, do so if they wish. For me I have no regrets for that long-drawn afternoon in which the magic draughts of the old Bilgewater spread its charm, quart after quart, upon our souls. . . .
How many? My memory fails. I can recall the vision of Meadows seen through a half-haze still repeating, “Another glass, sir”; recall his telling me the story of his life — his early struggles in a city pumping station, his apprenticeship in an aqueduct, his first real job in a soda-water factory and his elevation to the post of chief water-cooler in a big hotel, from which, ripe with experience, he moved to his present situation.
So passed and waned the afternoon. There they found us, I admit, Meadows and me, asleep beside the noble cask of Bilge. My merry host and his guests — shouting in vain for Meadows, calling in vain for Spring-Water Cocktails and Ditchwater Loving Cup — at last descended and found us, and woke us with their laughter.
The good old man, I believe, toddled off to his private pantry, where no doubt he continued his slumber. For myself I had to make the best face I could against the merriments of my friends and drink a few more quarts of Ditch, Pond and Pump Water for good-fellowship’s sake.
But the afternoon remains a pleasant reminiscence of old days now fading on our social horizon. . . .
THE FLYING CARPET. BUT WHERE COULD IT FLY TO, NOW?
SUDDENLY THERE APPEARED to me the other day, in the midst of my daily life — as a dream, or a moment’s reverie, or, if you will, as a reality — the Magic Arabian, the Flying Carpet.
Swarthy and dark he was, with a red fez and dangling jewellery and a beard as of Haroun al Raschid, once Caliph of Bagdad.
On the ground before me he spread his Magic Carpet, bright with interwoven red and gold and tasselled at the corners, with all the tints of the golden sands of Samarkand.
“Buy it,” he said.
“What is it for?” I asked.
“Sit but on it and utter a wish and it shall transport you to the ends of the earth: it shall take you into the uttermost corners of the globe; there you shall see the strange people of the world, the dwellers of the unknown frozen regions of the North where life itself expires; the pygmy men of the jungles of Equatorial Africa, the grand Llama of Tibet — —”
“You speak with imagination,” I said. “Who are you?”
“I am the shade of Hasheesh, the Arabian poet.”
“Dead long?”
“Since the year of the Great Plague, the Arabian year 700.”
“What do I have to pay for the carpet?” I asked.
“One hundred shekels of beaten silver.”
“Can I have a ride first and try it out and see if it is worth it?”
“Come,” said Hasheesh, and we sat down on the carpet. “What will you see first?”
“I would like to go first,” I answered, “first of all to the Frozen North where the lonely Eskimos live in their igloos of snow — —”
Even as I spoke the carpet rushed up into the air and we were borne away with incredible speed.
A moment later, as it seemed, we descended in the Arctic regions. But it was not so very snowy, mostly piles of rock. Nor did we see any igloos of snow, but what seemed to be, here and there, low houses of stone.
An Eskimo came walking towards us. He was not dressed in furs, but in an ordinary golf suit with a forage cap on his head and a bag of clubs in his hand. He was smoking a cigarette.
I went out to meet him.
“I saw your plane coming,” he said. “You’ve parked it behind that rock, haven’t you? The black fellow’s your pilot, isn’t he? You seemed to be making very good time.”
“Yes,” I said, “we came fast.”
“As a matter of fact,” continued the Eskimo, “I was rather afraid you might come a nasty cropper, landing where you did. Most of the planes that come land farther over that way beyond the Golf Club.”
“Do you have a Golf Club?” I inquired.
“Why, of course,” he said.
“What? Up here in the Frozen North?”
“My dear fellow,” laughed the Eskimo. “Do drop that ‘frozen north’ stuff. It’s entirely played out. But I’m afraid I’m forgetting my duty to a stranger. You must be tired. Perhaps you’d like some tea, or if you care to come over to the Kayak Club I can give you some really good whisky. My bootlegger is absolutely reliable.”
“No, thank you,” I said, “I’m not thirsty.”
“Well, what about a game of golf? Come across to the club and I’ll get a couple of chaps to make a foursome.”
We walked over to the great igloo of stone that constituted the clubhouse of the Kayak Club.
A number of Eskimos were seated about, smoking cigarettes and drinking dry ginger ale.
One of them was talking earnestly —
“I don’t claim,” he was saying, “that the gold standard was perfect. But the way I see it is, that now we are off the gold standard here in Sloopernaavik, we’d better stay off. It was a shock, and for a while we were on thin ice. But things are cooling off and the gold standard, at two grains troy to the kyak — —”
“Just wait a minute,” I said to my companion. “I want to go back and speak to my pilot.”
I went back to where Hasheesh was sitting on the carpet behind some big rocks.
I sat down beside him. “Hasheesh,” I said, “this place is no good for me. There is no uttermost corner of the earth about this.”
With a rush the carpet was up in the air. I was conscious of passing with incredible speed over the ocean thousands of feet below, of rushing across the green plains of Europe, of passing over the vast ranges of the Himalayas, and then all in a moment we dropped down in Tibet.
The Grand Llama was seated on the piazza of the Llama House. (Rooms from twelve shillings up.)
He was in a rocking chair and had his feet upon another. He wore a flowing robe, but it was really a linen duster — the kind they wear up in the Welsh mountains.
He was talking to a couple of other Llamas.
“I tell you, gentlemen,” he was saying, “the best thing that ever happened to us, was when the Americans bumped us off the gold standard. I don’t say that it didn’t work fairly well for a time. But I always felt that one of these centuries it would break down. If we do bring it back, it certainly won’t be at the old rate of two pennyweights to the goal. You see, the gold standard — —”
At this moment the Grand Llama noticed my approach and turned towards me with a polite bow.
“We were speaking of the gold standard,” he said. “Perhaps, sir, if you have just planed over from Europe, you can tell us the latest news of its operation. Is the Mint price of the English sovereign as compared with New York discount on sterling —— ?”
“It is,” I said, “and I’ll tell you all about it. But just sit quiet in your rocking chair for a minute while I speak to my chauffeur.”
I went across the hotel court-yard (dogs only admitted when on a leash) to where Hasheesh sat beside a flower-bed of American Beauty roses and a hedge of English ivy.
“Hasheesh,” I said, “get out the carpet and beat it. This uttermost end of the earth is no better than the other. Let us hit it out for the real thing this time. Make tracks for the very heart of Equatorial Africa where the pygmies live.”
And at the word the Magic Carpet rose again into the air. It rushed across the great snows of the Himalayas and the sandy deserts of Baluchistan. The Red Sea passed as a streak of blue and then the deserts and the Nile, and after that the great Equatorial forests in endless billows of green.
Where we landed there was an open space in the forest covered with grass and sand, and built in it a huge kraal of dried grass, a vast structure like an enormous beehive.
From within the great kraal there came the babel of hundreds of voices and the measured beat of the tom-toms.
“Ha! Ha!” I exclaimed. “This is the real thing at last!”
Towards us there came from the kraal across the grass, two pygmies.
They were diminutive little men dressed in gingerbread suits with Derby hats.
“Howdy?” they said, both together with a friendly grin.
“How-do-you-do?” I answered. “And will you please tell me what is going on? Are you practising the sacred rites of Voodoo in the big kraal over there?”
“No, no,” said the senior pygmy with another grin. “It’s the Kiwanis Club. We generally have our meetings on Mondays, but this is the first Monday in the month and so it’s Ladies’ Day. They’re at lunch now, but the speeches haven’t yet begun.”
“Luncheon!” I said. “Speeches! Ladies’ Day! And is this Africa?”
“It’s Africa all right,” laughed the pygmy. “But do come inside. The Chairman sent us out to invite you in. You’ll just be in time to see them take the straw vote.”
“The straw vote?” I asked.
“Yes, they’re beating the tom-toms for silence now, and then they’ll take the vote.”
“What is it about?” I inquired.
“They are voting to see whether, here in Pygmalia, we’ll abandon the gold standard for the coco-nut standard. Some of them think that the gold standard — —”
“Hasheesh!” I murmured, “the carpet — quick, the carpet. Let me get back to where I came from.”
And with that I was back again in the department store where I was buying rugs for my new house. Before me on the floor was the rug of red and gold with tasselled edges from Samarkand, which had occasioned my reverie.
Beside it knelt the Arabian attendant with the beard of Haroun al Raschid — or was he Arabian or just sunburned from his summer vacation?
“This,” he was saying, “is a very valuable rug.”
“It is indeed,” I answered.
COME AND SEE OUR TOWN. HOW THE VISITOR FEELS WHEN SHOWN AROUND
IT OFTEN FALLS to my lot, as no doubt to that of other people, to be “shown around the town.” Most people whose business or pleasure takes them into our smaller towns will know just what I mean. You land at the railway station, step out of the train, and there he is waiting for you — your host or your friend, your customer or your patron, or whatever he happens to be — waiting to take you for a ride around the town.
You had hoped, though you knew it was no use hoping, that he would not be there, that you might get a chance to go quietly to the hotel by yourself, that he might miss the train, or that by good luck he might be ill — dangerously ill. But no, he was there. He was always there.
“Glad to see you,” he called, as he backed his car to the edge of the platform at the railway station. “Get right in and we’ll take a little run around the town before I drop you at the hotel. Wait a minute, I’m afraid that door don’t quite catch —— There!
“Little wet, isn’t it? It’s a pity you didn’t come yesterday. Everything was looking much better. On a damp morning like this, things don’t look so good.”
[“They certainly don’t,” I said, only I said it to myself. “In fact, if you ask me my private opinion of your town, I should say it looks about the dingiest, meanest place I was ever in.” This, I say, I merely thought to myself; in these monologues with the local patriot you never get a chance to speak out; at best, you can only murmur. He does all the broadcasting.]
“Around the station here, of course,” he continued, “it always looks burnt-up and dusty so far on in the summer as this. You really ought to have been here in May, when the peonies were out. They sometimes call this place, ‘Peony Town.’ They say it’s the greatest place for peonies east of the Mississippi. Pity you couldn’t have come sooner and seen them.”
[“Pity!” I murmured. “It’s a heart-break. If I’d been here in May, I’d have been clean back safe home right now.”]
“Now here we cross the river — I’ll have to drive a bit slow because this bridge is not as sound as it ought to be. They call this the Grand River. Of course, it’s run down pretty small now and so late in the season it’s full of mud, but it’s a great sight here in April when the water’s high. I wish you had been here in April to see it — —”
[“I wish I had,” I thought, “then I needn’t have come in May.”]
“ — farther up the river — it’s quite a few miles — are the Forks; they say it’s about the most beautiful spot in North America. I’ve heard people say who have been across to Europe that there isn’t a more lovely spot anywhere in Europe than right up here at the Forks. I wish you could stay over a day and I could drive you up there and you’d be astonished.”
[“Astonished!” I said. “I’d fall dead. Only, thank heaven, there is no power in the physical universe that will keep me off the 5 p.m. train this afternoon.”]
“Now, this, what we’re coming into, is the business section — —”
[“Let me understand myself,” I murmured. “Do you mean that this little collection of two-story houses, with the hardware store on one side and the drug store on the other, is actually called a business section? This!”]
“The town is pretty quiet to-day. But I wish you could stay over till Saturday night and see this place when all the farmers come in.”
[“What a treat!”]
“Here is our new Y.M.C.A. building. They say that it is about the most handsome building of the sort south of the Great Lakes. And that next to it is the public library. They say it’s one of the best-designed libraries north of the Equator. It’s got 10,000 books, or is it 100,000? I forget. It’s closed to-day, or I’d take you in and have a look around. You’d be interested in meeting Mr. Smith, the librarian. I’m sorry you couldn’t have stayed over till to-morrow.”
[“Too bad,” I murmured.]
“Now, that’s our new hospital up that street. If you put your head out of the window and twist it a little sideways, you can see the front door of it. I can’t take you up, because it’s a one-way street and they’ve got the traffic stopped, and, anyway, the pavement’s torn up. But if you get your head a little farther out (shove your shoulders through the window) you could see the main entrance. I wish I could have taken you up there. I’d have introduced you to Dr. Smith, the resident doctor. You’d have been interested in seeing him.”
[I realized that another big opportunity had slipped past.]
“That’s our new United church along up that side, just past the trees. I can’t drive you right to it, because they’ve got the pavement up, and, anyway, the pastor, the Reverend Mr. Smith, is away on his vacation. If you could have come next month, he’d have been back. You’d have been interested in seeing him.”
[Another chance lost.]
On such an occasion this semi-monologue is carried on for about half an hour. At the end of this time you have learned that the population of the town is 13,400, but that undoubtedly it is really larger than that, as the census work was crooked; that if people only knew about it, it would be the greatest tourist centre east of the Rockies; that, even now, it is the third largest paper-bag making centre west of Paterson, N.J.; that the pavement is torn up in front of the United church, the hospital, the County Historical Museum, and the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, so you can’t see them; that most of the interesting people, including the Head of the Asylum, the Warden of the Jail, the Chief of the Fire Brigade, and the Manager of the First National Bank, are out of town on their vacations; that you should have seen the town when the river was higher or lower; when the chestnut trees were out or else when they were dead; that you should have come in April — or in May — or in October — but not now; that you should have waited till the new rink was completed; that by coming to-day you have missed your whole chance of being at the chicken supper of the Rotary Club; that you’ve struck the one day when the band doesn’t play in the park — the one day when no farmers come to town — the one day, the worst day, the meanest day of all the year to visit what ought to be, if it had its deserts, the most admired spot in America.
And yet, please remember, there are two sides to this thing. Do you realize that the gentleman who has so kindly driven around his town for nothing goes back to his house and slings down his hat on the hall table with a sigh of weariness?
“My goodness,” he says to his wife, “I drove a man all around the town (they’d asked me to) and showed him everything, and he just sat there and didn’t say a word; just seemed a regular nut.”
Such are we all to one another.
INFLATION AND DEFLATION or FLATION IN AND DE
A LITTLE WHILE ago — just after the War ended, wasn’t it? — everybody was absorbed in the idea of making things “bigger and brighter.” There was a movement for a “bigger and brighter London,” “bigger and brighter schools,” “bigger and brighter gaols.” These mass ideas always take effect. Things really began to get bigger and bigger, and brighter and brighter. Houses grew higher; apartments got larger; the streets got wider; the hotels went up, servants went up, food went up. Trains went faster; buses went still faster; motor-cars went faster still. Babies ran at two: children bicycled at six: old people flew at sixty.
Everything inflated and expanded. Narrow people got broad. Heavy people got light. Small-minded people got wider ideas. The whole race improved. There were beauty contests in every village, marathons for old men, efficiency tests for imbeciles and imbecility tests for the efficient.
