Delphi complete works of.., p.399
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 399
As the dialogue had progressed Jeff had gradually transformed old Mr. Crittenden — shampoo’d, massaged, shaved, creamed, powdered and, at the end, splashed with lilac till he smelt like the 24th of May itself — he was disengaged out of the chair, fit for the bees to settle on him.
“I don’t have to explain it,” repeated old Tom. “I leave that to these here economists.”
I felt that was for me.
“You’re right,” I said, “as to the mystery of the economics of it — this mystery of the poverty of peace and the prosperity of war. It’s an economic paradox . . .”
I saw Jeff look at me apprehensively at the word “economics.” He knew by instinct that economics won’t go in a barber shop. What’s more, there’d been some talk there one day about cutting out unnecessary industries and some one had claimed that shaving was non-essential. Jeff himself claimed it a war service — look at all the great generals — you’ve seen these pictures of MacNaughton?
So, as I say, he looked apprehensive when I began to speak.
“What Mr. Ilsley intends to do,” I continued, “is to make the most of every productive industry — like this farm of Mr. Crittenden’s — and to keep the consumer away from everything not absolutely essential.”
Jeff looked across again.
“You’re next,” he said.
A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH
WELL, THE THING is done. The big Loan’s been raised. Mariposa passed its quota of a million dollars at 9:30 a.m. this very morning. All the bells rang and the factory whistles blew, and all the people have been out on the street laughing and talking and congratulating one another. I haven’t seen anybody work all day, except Jeff, the Mariposa barber and his four assistants. It’s been a real day for shaving. There’s war service for you. You see, there were quite a lot of fellers who took a pledge that they wouldn’t shave till the million dollars was raised. Jeff’s clearing them up first. Then there are all the fellers going to the big lunch at noon, and the big later evening dinner at six o’clock. Talk of essential industries, eh.
But, do you know, perhaps it’s just as well that the Victory Loan Campaign is closing. It was beginning to have a queer effect on the town, disrupting its social life. You know, in a place like Mariposa you can’t get along without certain fixed animosities, fixed oppositions — people who differ from other people, and even people who don’t speak to other people because they differ from them.
Well, between ourselves, all that was beginning to break down. Quite frankly, people are not accustomed to such good will all round, and this Loan Campaign has been threatening to undermine our fixed way of living. I admit it’s the price we pay for Victory in War. But all the same it’s different. When I see a man like old Major Henge shaking hands, right on the street, with a man like old Edward Flint, and asking him what’s the news of his son at the front — and telling about his own boy, a prisoner of war in Germany — and forgetting that he is still holding old Flint’s hand while he’s talking — well, I ask myself what things are coming to.
I wouldn’t believe it except that I saw it. I was there. I was walking down Main Street with Major Henge and I saw old Flint coming and wondered how we could dodge him. Look at it this way: Major Henge is a life-long conservative, a member of the Church of England — Edward Flint is a Liberal or worse, and never goes inside a church. It seems queer, doesn’t it, that they would stand and talk right where everybody could see them?
But even that wasn’t the half of it. You’d see Continuing Presbyterians, the strict ones who never used to drink anything but whiskey, sitting at a soda-water fountain beside a Baptist; or Roman Catholics attending meetings in the Protestant High School. You felt somehow as if society was breaking away from its moorings, as if we never would get back again to where we used to be. And if you said that to any of the people they said, “Why should we?”
They told me — I wasn’t there — that the Church of England clergyman in his sermon last Sunday made a reference to “our Russian brothers.” That’s going pretty far, isn’t it?
Along with that there has been a lot of pretty wild talk as to what they want to do in Mariposa after the war. It seems that the Loan — the realization that they could raise a million dollars in a little town like ours — has gone to their heads. They say that if we could spend it for war, why not raise another Loan for peace? Why not spend money on better houses, better schools, do something for the children on a big scale — knock down the old Central School, not fit to teach a decent child in. If you said it was only the poorer children who went there, they answered, why shouldn’t the poor children have as good a chance as the rich ones?
As old Oliver Croke, the grouchy lawyer (the town grouch) says, we might just about as well be in Russia.
And with that there went all sorts of what they called town planning. For instance, everybody has suddenly decided that Main Street is too cramped and narrow; they want to knock down one side of it and throw it into the lake. A meeting of all the business men on the north side voted for demolishing their side of the street — their side, mind you — isn’t that magnanimous? the south side business men will probably vote to sacrifice their side — just taking what they get from the Government to rebuild. It’s the new spirit, or rather the old, that St. Paul speaks of, each man seeking the other’s wealth.
Everybody is so full of hope, too, about it all — hope and social betterment. They all agree that we must make a great effort to uplift the poor, only just now we can’t find any poor.
The thing came to a head this afternoon at a meeting that we tried to have after the Loan Quota was declared. It was meant to be the annual meeting of the Conservative Party. The idea was to seize the moment of enthusiasm over the Loan and use it to enthuse the Conservative Party. And Angus Gorse says — he’s an old friend of mine who is the local organizer of the party — you’ve got to catch the Conservatives while they are awake.
Well, the meeting was the flattest failure from the beginning. Major Henge who spoke at the start, began saying, “We must admit that the Liberal Party has done great service to this Dominion—” and what did the audience do but start to clap and stamp their feet. Well, you can’t run a Conservative Party that way. As Angus said to me, the moment you get that sort of dry rot in the Party it’s all over. There’s no room for that good will stuff if you’re out to win.
Things reached a climax when a speaker referred to Mr. Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister, as a “Great Canadian Patriot.” That was pretty strong. Angus Gorse felt it necessary to appeal to the Chair; he said that he was sorry to criticize but he must ask whether such an expression was in order. The Chairman ruled that it was quite in order “provided the speaker meant it by way of a joke. As no doubt he did.” The speaker said he meant it in real earnest. The Chairman said he must ask him to withdraw the expression; he would put it to them this way, he said: What would Mr. Mackenzie King himself think if he heard that his name had been used in this way in a Conservative meeting? After Mr. King’s long years of devoted service — or rather, let us say, his long years of trying to delude the people of this country — it would be painful to him, as a man, even a low one, to hear that a Conservative Meeting had called him a Patriot. So the speaker said that he would withdraw the words but he gave fair warning that he was going to say them, to shout them, outside after the meeting. The Chairman said that that was all right and he was heartily in accord with him. Then someone called out, “Three cheers for—” and others called, “Order, Order,” and there was quite a little confusion.
Then came the final surprise, the climax.
Our proposed candidate, Colonel Trelawney, stood up to speak. And when he spoke they were all still.
He spoke very quietly, never raised his voice. But they all listened. You see, he lost his son, his only child, in the first year of the War, and so it was thought that the people might show their appreciation of his son’s sacrifice, by sending Colonel Trelawney to Parliament. The strange thing was that no one would have thought of that before the war, because Colonel Trelawney was always so cold and distant and hardly seemed to know people on the street. Now, since he lost his son, he seems so quiet. They feel as if they knew him but they still can’t speak to him.
Colonel Trelawney said that he would ask them to withdraw his name. He felt that the sitting (Liberal) member, elected for two Parliaments already, should be kept in. What we should do he said, was to elect the best man, whether he was a Conservative or a Liberal. There was no room now, he said, for such divisions.
After that there was nothing more to be said. The meeting adjourned.
I walked across from the meeting to Jeff’s barber shop with Angus Gorse. Angus was greatly disturbed. He said that the weak spot in that argument was that if you tried to pick the best man, as likely as not you’d get a Liberal. Look, he said, at some of the skunks we’ve succeeded in electing in Mariposa in past years. Well, could you do that without party organization and party feeling? No, a skunk would be nowhere, never get in anywhere. Well, there you were.
Inside Jeff’s place there was quite a crowd and excitement because, as I said, they were crowding in to get shaved for the big dinner — dinner at six o’clock, mind you. After that there was to be a general meeting in the Town Hall, and a big speaker up from the City. “That man,” said Jeff, “when he gets well started is good for two hours, any time. You don’t want to miss that.”
I did. But I didn’t say so.
The streets were full of people, all afternoon and till sundown, everybody talking and friendly, and all so easy with one another. It seems so different from what it used to be. But for the price paid for it, it would seem a wonderful world.
I was in Jeff’s shop again just after sundown before starting to walk home. Through the window you could see, sideways, a little down the street, a knot of people gathering, and hear the beating of a drum, and voices singing, and then a speaker talking to the crowd.
As the man spoke, an echo, or an eddy, somehow caught up his voice and it came for a moment clear and distinct through the partly open window— “a new heaven and a new earth.”
“What’s that, Jeff?” asked a customer in the chair, “a Victory meeting?” “No,” said Jeff, “it’s nothing. It’s just a religious revival.”
“Oh,” said the customer, “nothing real.”
A new heaven and a new earth — the words seemed to echo still as I walked away from the town and beside the lake towards my home. The evening was closing in around me — as it is every evening at my age — and from the lighted town behind me, and in the evening breeze gathering off the lake, the sound still came— “a new heaven and a new earth.”
FINIS
Last Leaves
CONTENTS
Are Witty Women Attractive to Men?
Living with Murder
What Can Izaak Walton Teach Us?
A Lecture on Walking
Good-bye, Motor Car!
Common Sense and the Universe
An Apology for the British Empire
Britain and Canada
Old Phases and New
Generals I Have Trained
This Business of Prophecy
Rebuilding the Cities
Casting Out Animosity
Woman’s Level
The School Is the Lever
To Every Child
Gold
Can We Beat Inflation?
Uncle Sam, Good Neighbour
An Allegory
All Right, Mr. Roosevelt
(Canada and the United States)
Alice Walks in Wonderland
Gilbert’s “Bab” Ballads
LAST LEAVES
AMONG THE ARTICLES AND ESSAYS COLLECTED HERE IN “LAST LEAVES” ARE A GROUP OF HUMOROUS SELECTIONS WHICH STEPHEN LEACOCK WROTE FOR THE MOST PART DURING THE LAST YEAR, SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF HIS BOOK OF SIMILAR SKETCHES, “HAPPY STORIES, JUST TO LAUGH AT.”
Are Witty Women Attractive to Men?
SLAVES MURMUR TO one another in their chains. They whisper what they think of their masters. In the same way the generality of men, being enslaved by women, whisper, when in safety, what they think. Slave No. 1 in his Club murmurs to Slave No. 2 that women have no sense of humour. Slave No. 2 agrees, and Slave No. 3, overhearing from his armchair, says quite boldly, “They certainly have not.” After which quite a colloquy ensues among the slaves. But when the wife of Slave No. 1 asks at dinner what was the talk at the Club, he answers, “Oh, nothing much.” Yet his inmost feeling is that women have no sense of humour, and if a woman is witty, she has somehow come by it wrongly. He daren’t speak right out, but I will speak for him.
Having been asked to answer the question, “Are witty women attractive to men,” I answer decidedly, “No.” Having said this I dodge behind the Editor and explain it.
There are, of course, a lot of immediate qualifications to be made to it. In the first place, are witty people in general attractive to anybody? Not as a rule. They get tiresome. It is terribly hard to be witty without getting conceited about it. I used to be very witty myself, till I learned to be careful about it. People don’t like it. There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike — information and wit. Most people — most men at any rate — like to gather up information out of the Digests, which are the passion of the hour. But they won’t take it from you. You’re not a Digest. So, too, with wit. They’ve learned by experience that if they laugh at one thing, they’ll have to go on.... So if this applies to men with men, it applies all the more to men with women. Luckily women don’t go in for information; or if they give it, it is so incorrect as to be harmless.
In the next place, it goes without saying that some witty women are attractive to some men. This, by a happy disposition of providence, happens to all kinds of women, like attracting unlike. Hence witty women always have silent husbands. That’s why they got married. There is a particularly decent type of man who finds it restful not to have to talk. When, in his youth, he meets a girl who talks all the time, that exactly suits him. He doesn’t have to say anything. Ten years later you’ll see them enter a drawing room together. The host says to the man, “Looks like an early winter,” and he answers, “Certainly does!” The host says, “Have a cocktail,” and he answers, “Certainly will.” By that time his wife has started in on the conversation; he doesn’t have to talk any more. People commonly call this type an adoring husband. He isn’t. His wife is just a sort of fire screen. The real adoring husband overtalks his wife, overdominates her, pays with unexpected presents for easy forgiveness of his ill temper, and never knows that he adored her till it is too late, because now she cannot hear it....
We will add another qualification, that one reason why some men don’t care for the society of witty women is because of their own egotism. They want to be it. A wise woman sitting down to talk beside such a man will not try to be witty. She will say, “I suppose you’re just as busy as ever!”
All men, you see, have the idea that they are always busy, and if they are not, a woman can soon persuade them that they are. Just say, “I don’t see how you do it all,” without saying what all is.
Another very good opening for women sufficiently self-possessed is to say, “Well, I hear you are to be congratulated again!” You see there is always something; either the office staff gave him a stick last month, or the Rotary Club elected him an Elder Brother. He’ll find something. If he doesn’t, then say to him that if he hasn’t heard of it yet, you are certainly not going to tell. Then don’t see him for a month, till the Fireman’s Benevolent Union has elected him an Honorary Ash Can. He’ll get something if you wait.
So you see there are ever so many ways for women to make a hit without trying to be witty.
Nor have women, themselves, any particular use for witty men. Instinctively they admire courage, though unhappily courage often goes with brutality and savagery. In the next degree they admire the courage of character of strong people on whom one can rely. But intellect comes last. Unhappily, women also have their superficial admirations, things they fall for — it’s too bad, but they do. Women are apt to fall for a poet, for anything with long hair and a reputation. Round him they cluster, searching his thoughts. He probably hasn’t got any. But wit, in all the procession, comes last, with only a cap and bells behind it.
Another thing is this. By this very restriction of their province of humour, women are saved from some of the silly stuff that affects the conversation of men. Take puns. They have pretty well died out now. The last of the punsters is probably dead, or in hiding. But many of us can still remember the social nuisance of the inveterate punster. This man followed conversation as a shark follows a ship, or, to shift the simile, he was like Jack Horner and stuck in his thumb to pull out a pun. Women never make puns; never did; they think them silly. Perhaps they can’t make them — I hope not.
Nor have women that unhappy passion for repeating funny stories in order to make a hit, which becomes a sort of mental obsession with many men. The “funny story” is a queer thing in our American life. I think it must have begun on the porch of the Kentucky store where they whittled sticks all day. At any rate, it has become a kind of institution. It is now a convention that all speakers at banquets must begin with a funny story. I am quite sure that if the Archbishop of Canterbury were invited to address the Episcopal Church of America, the senior bishop would introduce him with a story about an old darky, and the Archbishop would rise to reply with a story about a commercial traveller. These stories run riot in our social life and often turn what might be a pleasant dinner into an agonized competition, punctuated with ruminating silence. Women keep away from this. They like talk about people, preferably about themselves, or else about their children, with their husband as a poor third, and Winston Churchill competing with Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek for fourth place. It may not be funny but it’s better than darkies and commercial travellers....
