Delphi complete works of.., p.388
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 388
The President’s lady secretary, filing cards, said it was a fine day, and Plumter didn’t hear her.
She filed some more and then asked him where he lived, and, he remembered and said, “Woodsdale.” Then the buzzer buzzed and she said that the President would see us now, and so in we went.
The President rose and shook hands — with me, casually, as to someone known, but with Plumter, as evidently the main visitor, the person of the occasion.
“How do you do?” he said, “Mr.—” as he looked down at the little card— “Mr. Plumter, is it not?”
“Yes,” Plumter said.
“Ah, yes,” said the President, “Mr. Plumter of the class of . . . class of . . .”
“Yes,” Plumter said.
“And you’re now living in—”
“Woodsdale,” Plumter said.
At that moment the lady secretary slipped into the room, said something into the President’s ear to which he answered in a low voice, “Ask him kindly to wait — about five minutes.”
“Woodsdale!” he said. “Woodsdale, oh, yes, that’s out — out beyond . . .”
“Yes,” said Plumter.
“And what profession are you following, Mr. Plumter?” asks the President.
“I’m not in a profession,” Archie said. “I’m mostly in feed.”
The President hadn’t the least idea what he meant; it certainly sounded pretty hoggish but he answered as pleasantly as he could, “Ah, yes, you’re in feed, eh!”
Just then the desk telephone on the table made a gurgling sound; the President picked it up, listened, and said, “Oh, yes, very pleased, indeed, yes, in about five minutes.”
The brief pause had enabled Plumter to collect his courage for the effort he had to make. He determined to say what he had to and be done with it.
He rose and stood up — it seemed more formal and natural to say it in that attitude.
“Mr. President,” he said, “I’m afraid I—” and he cleared his throat.
The President had risen also and put out his hand with a smile; he thought Plumter was leaving . . . He would have liked to speak of lunch, but with a man mostly in feed it seemed risky.
But just as he began to speak there fell upon our ears, from somewhere outside, the loud and melodious sound of a chime of bells:
Bing! Bong! Bong!
Bong! Bing! Bing!
“Ah” — said the President, his head on one side and an appreciative smile on his face— “Ah! Our new chimes! Beautiful, aren’t they? The gift of one of our graduates, a clock tower with a chime! You may have noticed it on the left as you came up!”
As we walked away from the building I said, “I’m sorry, Archie, I didn’t know about those chimes; I haven’t been round here for a year; they are evidently just new.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said, and he added, “To hell with them!”
And just then a little incident happened to cheer him up. For there was good old Bill, the janitor, running down the front steps . . . “Just to say good-bye, if you’re off, sir,” he called, and as he joined us, “Hope you’ll come again before long, sir.”
“Thanks very much Bill . . .”
“And here’s a little note, sir, that I was to give you. The Bursar heard you was round, sir, and he said not to let you go without this. It’s a bill for breakages he’s had, sir, for years and years. He’d lost your address.”
As we moved off down the avenue, we saw in the sideways distance Professor Dim starting off for home, his Crusades, all in leather, under his arm — he waved his hand in good-bye. “That old bird,” said Plumter, “is worth the whole dam lot of them.”
Depressed? You’d be surprised how fast that sort of thing wears off . . . By the time we’d had a cocktail at the club, Plumter was beginning to feel as if we’d had a pretty notable morning . . . By the time we’d had lunch, he was explaining to men at the club that he’d been having a look round the old shop . . . and that the new Mines Building was certainly all right . . .
For you see, after all, he hadn’t bought the clock, he still had his twenty-five thousand dollars, and already a new idea was dawning on his mind . . . By the time he got to Woodsdale he was full of it all, more of a graduate than ever.
The Woodsdale By-path (Archie owned it) . . . printed in the next issue some interesting Notes on the Third Crusade, beginning “Heliogabalus, having assumed the purple . . .”
And a few weeks after that the “college boys” of Woodsdale pulled off their college dinner — put on their dinner jackets and pulled the dinner off. One of the two had bought one and the other one borrowed one — so it was all right. Archie Plumter made the speech of the evening, and he said that a college graduate who didn’t from time to time, say at least once in twenty years, visit the old place was as low as a snake.
But just a little after that came the big thing, the announcement in all the city papers, of the foundation of an endowment at the college of a series of Four Lectures on the Crusades, to be given annually by the greatest scholars in the world. You’ll see the lectures listed now right there in the front pages of the calendar among Endowments and Benefactions. They’re called The Dim Lectures on the Crusades, endowed by Archibald and Helen Plumter — four of them endowed at five hundred dollars each. Professor Dim will give them the first ten years and after that they’ll be thrown open to all the scholars of the world. My! Won’t there be a scramble?
ALLEGORY ISLAND
FOUR BUSINESS MEN were stranded, shipwrecked and penniless, upon an island in the South Seas. It was a beautiful island. Breadfruit grew on every tree, coconuts dangled at the tops of palms, while beds of oysters lay near the shore.
But for the business men it was useless. They had no “funds” to develop the island; with an advance of funds they could have gathered breadfruit and made bread. But without funds! Why, they couldn’t. They must stay hungry.
“Don’t you think,” said the weakest among them — a frail man (he had never been able to raise more than a million dollars; he’d no strength)— “Don’t you think,” he said to the biggest man, “you could climb that palm tree and throw down coconuts?” . . . “And who’ll underwrite me?” asked the other.
There it was! They were blocked and helpless; couldn’t even get an advance to wade into the sea for oysters.
So they sat there on the rocks — starving, dejected, their hair growing long. They couldn’t even shave; there was no barbers union.
On the fourth day the frail man, who was obviously sinking, said:
“If I die I want you to bury me over there on that little hill overlooking the sea.”
“We can’t bury you, Eddie,” they said. “We’ve no burial fund.”
They fell asleep on the sands. But the next morning when they woke up an Angel was standing beside them. They knew he was an Angel although he wore a morning coat and a top hat, and had grey striped trousers with spats above his boots.
“Are you an Angel?” they asked.
“Pretty much,” he answered. “That is to say, I am a director of the Bank of England, but for you just now it’s almost the same thing.”
“Funds, funds!” they exclaimed. “Can you advance us funds?”
“Certainly,” said the Angel. “I came for that. I think I see a fountain pen in your waistcoat pocket there. Thank you . . . and that ten cent scribbler . . . much obliged. Now then up you get! Light a fire, go and collect those oysters, pick some breadfruit, chase that wild goat and I’ll arrange an advance of funds while you’re doing it.”
As they sat round their fire at supper the Angel explained it all out of the scribbler.
“I have capitalized your island at two million dollars (that’s half a million each) and I have opened a current drawing account for each of you of a hundred thousand, with loans as required . . .”
What activity next day! Climb the coconut tree? Why, of course, the man was underwritten. Oysters? They wrote out an oyster policy and waded right in up to their necks.
What a change the next week or so brought! There they sat at lunch in their comfortable Banyan Club House overlooking the sea — (annual dues, a thousand dollars a year) — sat at lunch eating grilled oysters with coconut cocktails . . .
“To think,” said the little man Eddie, “that only a week ago I wanted to die!”
“All right now, anytime, Eddie,” said another . . . “We’ve a mutual burial and benefit fund. Ask the Angel if we haven’t.”
But when they looked round the Angel had vanished.
“Too bad,” said the senior man. “But in a way it doesn’t matter so much now. We can hire a clergyman. I propose we pay big money and get a really good one.”
It’s almost a pity to mention the sequel. A little later, four laboring men tried to land on the island. The others undertook to fight them off with shotguns. That started civilization. But the pity was that if they had only had the Angel with them, he would have told them to let the laborers land and to multiply all the figures in the book by two, and add a little extra, because in developing a country blessed by ample resources twice four is ten.
But the coming of labour was really only part of what happened. Just as the trouble with capital began a boatload of women was blown ashore, and then two separate canoes with rival missionaries. So that started a still more complete civilization, with machinery and increase of population till presently there were enough of them on the island to pick up sides for a war, then for a bigger war, and at last an extermination.
So, after they were all exterminated there lay Allegory Island again, empty and beautiful in the sunshine. The wind sang and the waves whitened as they rose, or sank to mere ruffles on the surface of the ocean. Then, as the days and the years went by, the lapse of time and the luxuriance of nature wiped out all trace of the visitation of civilization, and of its angers, its wars and death. There lay Allegory Island again as nature made it.
Then, at last, after many years, there came sailing to the island a ship of Socialists. And these had come across the ocean looking for a place to set up Brotherly Love. But they had been a long time in coming, for it is much slower to sail a ship on brotherly love than in the old Nova Scotia fashion.
So when the leader saw Allegory Island it looked so fresh and green and cool that he knew it was just the place for a habitation of brotherly love. He called down the main hatchway, “Gentlemen, I don’t want to ask you to overexert yourselves and I don’t want to disturb the ladies, but if some of you will come on deck I think you will agree that we have found just the very place we are looking for.”
They came at once, after a while, for they were the best-natured fellows in the world.
So presently they got the ship to the shore. They bumped a hole in it on the rocks but that didn’t matter as they wouldn’t be using it any more. They had speeches and sang community songs and went to sleep on the sands with the wind in their ears.
The next day the leader said, “Now, gentlemen, I suggest that we set ourselves to work for the production of food. Labour, ladies and gentlemen, is the sole source of value. I will, therefore, ask you to initiate with me the production of yams, mangoes, banyans, breadfruit and so forth, and the domestication of the wild dingo and the llama for their wool and of the goat for its milk and meat. We will also search the rocks for guano eggs.”
One shook his head. “It sounds like work,” he said.
But the leader answered, “How can it be work if you get no wages?”
And another said, “Can’t we have a little community singing first?” So they sat and sang.
After that — not that very day, of course — the work began, or at least it was supposed to begin. But the Island was so beautiful and so drowsy that it hardly seemed right to work. Even the leader said, “Don’t overexert yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and, above all, keep out of the sun. Mrs. McSpodden, don’t try to catch that goat — you’ll never get it.”
So the yam field was a little scratched and then neglected, and they sat round on the grass in the shade of the trees and listened to the burbling of the little brooks, and the women made daisy chains of flowers and sang to the children, and it always seemed too early to begin work, and then too late, and then it was afternoon and then sunset.
So they ate what they had brought in boxes and crates and barrels, and each day there was less and less of it. “We must work,” said the leader and yawned as he said it, and when they looked at him again he was fast asleep.
Then came all of a sudden the monsoon storms and rain, and great flashes of lightning that tore the sky, and wind and waves that smashed what was left of the ship. And there was no shelter and no food and only hissing rain.
And when the monsoon storm was over the Socialist settlement of Brotherly Love was gone. There was nothing of it but here and there little fragments of human wreckage among the rocks and trees, and bits of coloured cloth — and even that the sun and wind tore and wore away every day. Perhaps some of the people made a raft of the broken ship and got away. But if they did it was never known.
Years and years went by — centuries. And with the flight of time, nature wiped away — oh, so, easily — the little traces of man’s brief visit. A tangled vine here, a cluster of tall flowers there and it was all gone; a little calcined whiteness that once was bone, crumbling to nothing; a piece of steel oxydizing in the air till it blew away as red dust on the wind.
So once again Allegory Island was empty and the wind sang and the waves whitened and the tide marked out on the sand the record of the passing years. So many years went by, we say, that every trace of the capitalists civilization and the Socialists dream was past and gone, blown away with the wind, and rotted into the soil.
Then there came over the waves other and distant people. For these were Polynesian savages, inured for uncounted generations to the seas and islands of the Pacific . . . In a huge open boat they came, light and buoyant, all of hide and wicker and leaping the surface of the waves . . . There was a great square sail in the boat, and far out on the lee side reached an outrigger of long poles that held a float . . . Twenty flat paddles flashed in the sun on either side, and there were in all — men, women and children — sixty-two people on board . . .
The boat had come five hundred miles over the waves — but that was nothing to it . . .
As they drew near the island the paddlers, since there might be lurking enemies on the shore, chanted out their war-song . . .
A: Ki — a: Ki — a: Ki — a.
But there was no one there. They drove the boat high on the sand and landed in peace.
And here it would take the pen of a professor of archaeology to tell of “primitive culture” and explain how these savages were fitted to their environment, how easy it was to them to meet difficulties that had meant failure and death to civilized Europeans. Their boat, their knowledge of the sea — everything prepared and foreseen, not by foresight, but by instinct.
Even their food. There was no danger of starvation for them.
They had their food with them. We said there were sixty-two on the boat, the long boat that rode so easily. Two of them were tied up in thongs under the fore-peak of the boat. They were the food; plenty for a warm meal tonight, enough cold for tomorrow and another hot roast next week.
So now you can understand better the raptures of the archaeologists over primitive culture and its adaptation . . .
So it was that the savages, after a comfortable meal, sat around their little fire, which was dying low in the dusk of the warm summer evening, the soft moon just rising out of civilization. The fireflies played about them, little dots of phosphorescence in the dark — and the women sat and crooned their soft Polynesian love songs, and patted the little children’s hands as they fell asleep.
Savages love one, don’t they?
So all that would be needed would be for the savages to stay two or three thousand years on Allegory Island, and get civilized and start the round again.
I hope there are no readers of this book who are people who want to know things. If there are they may want to know whether there were ever islands in the Pacific as beautiful and inviting as Allegory Island, and whether savages could really make a voyage of five hundred miles in an open boat. For the island, as good and indeed far better, they may see that fascinating old book Anson’s Voyage Around the World (1740-44) where they may read of the South Seas Paradise Island of Tinian (lat 15′ 8″ North and longitude close to the date line of longitude 180°), and for voyages of savages in open boats across five hundred miles of the Pacific, and even double that distance, they may see that fascinating new book Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s Greenland.
But why do so?
DAMON AND PYTHIAS, BARRISTERS, SOLICITORS, ETC.
YOU REMEMBER DAMON and Pythias, of course — or at least you remember them as well as I do — the two famous friends in Roman history, or in Greek history, I forget which. The history of Syracuse, you say? Well! well! to think of that! Syracuse in New York State? Oh, the Greek Syracuse in Greece! Oh, not in Greece — the Greek Syracuse not in Greece! I’m glad to know exactly where it all was.
Anyway, as you remember, wherever Damon went Pythias went and anything Damon had Pythias could have, and the other way round. And you remember how the Tyrant of Syracuse threw Damon into prison and condemned him to death — those Tyrants were — well — simply tyrants — and as soon as Pythias heard of it, he hurried to the tyrant and said, “Don’t execute Damon; execute me in his place.” But Damon broke in and said to the tyrant, “You can’t do that; you sentenced me first; execute me and let Pythias go.” The tyrant was touched — deep down, he was all heart. He executed them both.
