Delphi complete works of.., p.332
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 332
Still I think it was mistaken judgement to begin with a New England dinner. Those old colonial settlers, you’ve got to remember, were a pretty tough lot, out of doors in the open air all day, and, of course, they’d never been really used to anything; and they hadn’t had four cocktails before they sat down. And I hadn’t realized before what it meant cooking all the stuff in one big pot; it all comes out, meat and cabbage and vegetables and bones, in one great wet flop! I thought of stuff I’d read about Indian dog feasts (that was the same time as the Puritans, wasn’t it?) and I couldn’t eat it. That was all about it. I couldn’t.
Still I don’t mean the evening was so bad. All the twenty members were on hand and there was such a lot of initial enthusiasm it was bound to carry the thing through. Watergrass kept dozing off to sleep from having walked there, and Stewart, of course, was peeved, but on the whole it went pretty well. The conversation was good but not quite of the kind that I’d been expecting. There wasn’t any architecture or archaeology stuff. We talked mostly about Mr. Roosevelt. Merrill made an analysis of him: it was certainly brilliant — I couldn’t follow most of it. But the idea was to show that Roosevelt is a world force and, if I got it right, should have been expected even if he hadn’t turned up. We broke up about ten-thirty, with pretty good feeling all round, and with everybody promising to be on deck two weeks later for the Marseilles dinner that Des Rois was to arrange.
That, I will admit straight out, was a mistake — that bouillabaisse stuff. I don’t say the Marseilles people don’t eat it. They’re fishermen and they’re in sea air all the time and in sea air you can eat anything. But that stuff! Did you ever see it? And the thing after it called tripe à la mode de Caen — it’s French and means ‘canned tripe’ — of all the ghastly-looking mess! Taste? I’ve no notion — I couldn’t touch it. One rather dirty thing was that Des Rois didn’t eat it. He’d ordered an English mutton chop for himself. I had some cheese, all full of holes, and some figs — but, of course, I’m not kicking at that — I ate when I got home. The talk, though, was really good. Merrill got talking of Mr. Roosevelt and made an analysis of him — a new one, it was two weeks since the other one — and that led us to talk of a wide range of things like the New Deal and Mr. Roosevelt’s attitude to the courts and what Mr. Roosevelt would do with ‘big business’ — in fact, we ranged all over the place.
One thing, though, bothered us, which we hadn’t noticed so much the first night — the seats. You see, they had no backs to them. The Old Cow-stable is all done up artistically with long narrow tables of heavy old wood — the kind the monks used to eat at in the place called, what was it? — the refractory, or the penitentiary, or something — anyway, those narrow tables. With tables of that sort the seats have to be just long heavy benches with no backs: anything else would be hopelessly inartistic. But you sit on that thing for two hours and a half and you’ll see where you are. With monks it was different: they were looking for it. But we weren’t. So that meant we broke up about nine-fifteen: and as a matter of fact, three or four of the men — I mean apart from Watergrass and Cluny Stewart — hadn’t turned up at all.
But the next meeting wasn’t so bad. That Mexican stuff, if you only take a little of it, is good. A little of that hot chili-tobasco stuff on a little edge of bread is all right and helps you to wash a drink down. I guess the Mexicans eat it all right; they would. But you see, at a dinner club you don’t really need much to eat — that is not the idea — it’s a way of bringing fellows together and then they can go off and get something to eat elsewhere later. So we just sat around and had smokes and drinks, and dipped bits of toast in the chile con carne. The talk was all right, too. We were discussing Mr. Roosevelt, and some of the fellows were saying that he really represented a sort of world force — well, you know, that we have to put up with him. We broke up at eight-thirty and got back into town in time for a bite at the club — just a snack of cold lobster or something. But I was sorry to see that there were only thirteen present — and even at that several fellows offered to drop out so as to break the hoodoo of thirteen. In fact three went.
The Hungarian dinner was the last, so there’s no use in getting mad about it. That stuff, that Goulash, is just poison! And anyway how can you eat — I mean men of our age, we’re all around forty to fifty — if you’re not getting any exercise, and are sitting around drinking cocktails? You can’t eat! I just hated the idea as I felt that Hungarian dinner getting nearer, that Goulash, I mean! You don’t know how the notion gets you when you belong to a dinner club that you’ve got to eat! Eat? Who wants to eat? I heard after though I didn’t know it at the time that one or two members were knocked right out, knocked flat, after that Goulash! They were crazy enough to eat it. And that sour Hungarian wine — Magyak-Buda — ugh! The Hungarians after all — as somebody said after dinner — are not a civilized people: we were discussing Mr. Roosevelt and that had led up to the idea of civilization. Look at their government! or for the matter of fact, their religion — I don’t mean I know what they are; I mean that the fellow who had eaten the Goulash said, look at them!
Anyway, the Goulash dinner ended it. We all knew it at the time. One of the members who had been in India and knew a cousin of Kipling’s, was supposed to be getting up a Bengal dinner — curried duck with mangoes. But he says he can’t get any mangoes. That’s all right. We understand. The Club is over.
And yet, isn’t human nature queer! Within a few months, or a year, they’ll be calling it the ‘good old Dinner Club’ — and talking about the dinners of chile con carne and bouillabaisse with the wonderful talk about Mr. Roosevelt.
HOW TEACHERS SWIM
When I was teaching at Upper Canada College, ever so many years ago, some benefactor of the school endowed and equipped a big swimming tank for the boys. So the question arose of getting a swimming teacher.
At a masters’ meeting the principal announced to us that he had found a teacher.
‘He seems,’ he said, ‘just the man for the job. He’s young and he’s an athletic-looking fellow, civil-spoken and with the best references. He has certificates for boxing, and several medals for gymnastics. I think he’s just what we want.’
There was a general murmur of assent. No one seemed inclined to offer any objection. But the principal, an honourable man, had an afterthought in his mind and felt that he had to mention it.
‘There’s only one possible objection to this young man,’ he added, ‘he has never — he doesn’t know — that is, he can’t swim.’
There was a momentary sensation but not much. We were all experienced teachers. We knew how little that mattered.
The young man was engaged and some of the boys taught him to swim and he turned out a huge success...
As a matter of fact there is an educational principle involved in that. You can teach best a thing that you don’t know. That is, you’re learning it yourself.
I remember a similar instance at the same school when I was the senior master and made the timetable. One of my colleagues came to me and said, ‘I wish you could arrange to put me down to teach German to the lower commercial.’
‘I didn’t know that you knew German,’ I said.
‘I don’t,’ he answered, ‘that’s just it. I studied it a little, years ago, but I’ve forgotten it all completely.’
‘All right,’ I said, and I arranged it. It worked fine. There were two or three German-speaking boys from Berlin, Ontario, in the class and they told him the pronunciation. He moved with them next year to a higher class and kept nearly even with them till matriculation.
HOW TO LOSE MONEY
(FOR AMATEURS)
WE MAY DEFINE business in a broad, general way as the art of losing money. This is only a rough-and-ready definition to which numerous exceptions will be found.
Indeed, very often business, even if losing a certain amount of money, is carried on for other reasons. As one of my big business friends said to me the other day, ‘What else can I do?’ Many of my business friends — the big ones — ask me that: what else can they do? I don’t know what else they can do.
Or very often a business connection is of such long standing, of generations, perhaps, that it is difficult to stop. I am thinking here of my friend Sir John Overwarp, the big thread man. Sir John is the senior partner of Overwarp, Underwarp, and Shuttle. In fact he is Overwarp, Underwarp, and Shuttle. They are probably the biggest thread people in the world. They are the thread people. They have works in Sheffield, Bradfield, Oldfield — in short, they have so many works they don’t know where they are.
Well, the other day Sir John said to me (he speaks to me): ‘We’ve been in thread now for five generations. I don’t know how I could get out of it.’ After five generations in thread you get all tangled up in it. Somebody told me that Sir John’s shareholders are going to let him out. It’ll be nice of them if they do.
But business habit is business habit. I knew a man, one of the McDuffs of Duff (they came from Duff), who had been in Scotch whiskey, and in nothing else, for years and years. He had travelled round the world in it four times. It seemed to follow him. You could notice it.
Then there’s the sense of responsibility — I mean, responsibility to other people. I know quite well the French financier, the Baron de Citrouille (it is pronounced Citrouille), who brought a great quantity of French money out to America, and lost it here. He couldn’t have lost the half of it in France, but here he was able to do what is called ‘spread his loss.’ Some of the big men can spread their loss over half the continent.
But these, of course, are the big men — what are called the captains of industry. It is not wise to try to begin with discussing such large-scale operations as theirs. It might give the beginner a sense of despair. Some of these men are known to lose a million dollars a day. The business beginner asks, ‘Can I do that?’ I answer, ‘Not yet, but you can learn.’
One has to realize that these are selected men winnowed out, as it were, from the crowd; they are men who probably had even at the beginning a flair for business and kept on getting more and more flair. The word flair is French. It is pronounced flair and means in a general way more or less what we call in English a flair.
These big men, indeed, are distinguished not so much by what they do as by what they can’t do or won’t do. I once knew (I knew him only once) Sir Humphrey Dumphrey, the big electrical man: he was probably the biggest electrical man in Europe, except perhaps the Italians Nitti and Dotti. Sir Humphrey said to me: ‘Look at me. I can’t do fractions.’ I looked at him. He couldn’t do them.
Or take Sir Hamstein Gorfinkel, the great British financier. He said he couldn’t recite the Lord’s Prayer: couldn’t or wouldn’t.
But these men are in a class by themselves.
When I say I want to talk about business and how money can be lost, even in a small way, I naturally wish to begin with simple things. Young people just entering on life realize that if only they had money now, even a moderate sum, they could find opportunities to lose it that would never come later.
There are so many choices to be made, such a difficulty in selecting a career, that young people need help. ‘Should I live in the country?’ a young lady asked me at a reception. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘away in, as far as you can get.’
‘My son,’ wrote an old friend, ‘shows every disposition to be a stock-broker. What should I do about it?’
‘Shoot him,’ I answered.
One should start with some of the simpler ways of losing money, such as chicken-raising, dry duck farming, keeping bees and wasps, along with such things as horticulture and germicide. Bigger things could come later, such as how to build a transcontinental navy. One must start humbly.
THE FAMILIAR MAGIC OF FISHING
A PULLMAN CAR TRANSFORMED INTO A TROUT STREAM
THEY SAT TOGETHER in the smokers’ end of a Pullman car. They didn’t know one another. They were strangers. They weren’t talking to one another — why talk anyway? A man always feels tough and only half alive in the morning on a Pullman car — no need to make conversation with the damn fool, so thought each of them.
Outside, the February snow blew against the windows. One saw dim outlines of trees, mostly spruce. ‘Where are we?’ said one of the men. He said it half by accident. He hadn’t spoken for an hour.
‘Just at the end of the bush country,’ the other man answered. ‘That’s Washago Junction. I recognize it by that piece of bush.’
‘You know this country?’ said the first man.
‘Oh, yes, I come up here fishing all the time.’
‘Is that so? ARE THERE FISH HERE?’
‘Trout.’
‘Trout, eh?’ said the second man, trying to get his face close to the pane so as to see the trout. ‘There are trout streams here?’
He spoke almost reverently, as if in a church.
‘Oh, yes, lots of them, all through here. There are some little lakes further in, but here it’s mostly streams.’
‘You fish with flies?’
‘Well, you can all right where it’s a little open but of course there’s a lot of it where the bush is so thick that you can’t get room to cast. I don’t mind admitting it, when I can’t get room to cast, I’ll fish with bait every time, with worms.’
‘I’ll say so!’ said the other man. ‘And mind you, there’s a whole lot more skill in fishing with worms than people think. You get a place where the stream takes a sharp turn right under a big log in the water — say, for instance, there was a log over there...’ He pointed at the other side of the little room.
‘Yes,’ said the listener. He could see the log, too. Being fishermen, it was very clearly right there for both of them.
‘ — now, we’ll say it’s all thick brush—’
‘Yes,’ assented the other man; in fact, he could feel the brush all round him. He couldn’t have moved his arm if he’d tried.
‘ — now, you see, you get your line on the bottom — there’s apt to be a little bit of hard sand or gravel in a place like this right in the middle of the channel — and you reach out your line...’
The speaker sat forward in his chair till he was — or thought he was — on his hands and knees. The other man bent his back a little — (the brush wouldn’t let him bend much), and they were both on their hands and knees.
‘ — you get a good bait on your hook, the bigger the better, it travels easier and won’t catch, and you let it just — roll — roll — along with the water....’
There was tense excitement in the little room. Both men followed breathlessly the rolling line.... ‘You’ll never get snagged,’ the speaker continued, talking low, as trout are easily frightened, ‘if you let the line take its own way. It’ll go into the deepest hole — and then, by George! you feel Mr. Trout take a snap at it, and out he comes!’
He landed the trout right on the floor of the room, a perfect beauty with white-edged fins and bright vermilion spots on the deep, firm-fleshed sides.
And with that the two men went on to discuss telescope rods and whether the damn things really work, or whether one wouldn’t rather have a bamboo rod in little sections — you can put it all into your valise. And then they talked of whether you can really make a cast with a rod made in small sections, and the second man showed that you could by making a cast right there in the car, of over sixty feet — and landed another trout.
And the man who didn’t know the Washago section said he came from West Virginia, so the first man asked him if it wasn’t too hot for trout down there, but it seems not, or at least not up in the hills. In fact, the second man took the first man away up into the hills above the Kenowsha and cooled him right off, and then fed him on trout with West Virginia bacon that he cooked over a brush fire.
So that led to talk about how a brown trout can stay in water up to seventy degrees; but after all, is a brown trout any damn good anyway: would you call it a trout in the real sense? ... and for the matter of that even a rainbow trout isn’t in it with a straight speckled brook trout: the colour may be all right, but for sport and for eating, there’s no comparison.
And incidentally they told one another who they were and the first man said that he was in hardware and the second man, it seemed, was in paper boxes; but they weren’t really. They were both in trout.
And when the porter came to the door and said to one of them, ‘Toronto, sir, you change here!’ they said good-bye like old friends.
And the first man said to the second man that if he ever got as far down as Buckhannon, he must certainly take him to the Kenowsha; and the second man said that if the first man ever got as far up as Toronto, he must certainly take him up into the Washago country....
And each, when he got home, said to his wife, ‘I met a hell of a nice feller on the train coming down.’
And that’s why fishermen’s wives are never jealous of them when they leave home.
OVERWORKING THE ALPHABET
I ADMIT THAT this is the age of brevity. Our rapid life demands condensed speech. We have not enough leisure to talk like Daniel Webster. Even our words must be cut to the shortest limits. We have no time to say telephone and debutante and cinematograph and automobile. Not at all: we phone an invitation to the cinema, and our debs ride in cars and planes.
