Delphi complete works of.., p.70
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 70
There is no need to recount here in detail the glorious triumph of the election day itself. It will always be remembered as the purest, cleanest election ever held in the precincts of the city. The citizens’ organization turned out in overwhelming force to guarantee that it should be so. Bands of Dr. Boomer’s students, armed with baseball bats, surrounded the polls to guarantee fair play. Any man wishing to cast an unclean vote was driven from the booth: all those attempting to introduce any element of brute force or rowdyism into the election were cracked over the head. In the lower part of the town scores of willing workers, recruited often from the humblest classes, kept order with pickaxes. In every part of the city motor cars, supplied by all the leading businessmen, lawyers, and doctors of the city, acted as patrols to see that no unfair use should be made of other vehicles in carrying voters to the polls.
It was a foregone victory from the first — overwhelming and complete. The cohorts of darkness were so completely routed that it was practically impossible to find them. As it fell dusk the streets were filled with roaring and surging crowds celebrating the great victory for clean government, while in front of every newspaper office huge lantern pictures of Mayor McGrath the Champion of Pure Government, and O. Skinyer, the People’s Solicitor, and the other nominees of the league, called forth cheer after cheer of frenzied enthusiasm.
They held that night in celebration a great reception at the Mausoleum Club on Plutoria Avenue, given at its own suggestion by the city. The city, indeed, insisted on it.
Nor was there ever witnessed even in that home of art and refinement a scene of greater charm. In the spacious corridor of the club a Hungarian band wafted Viennese music from Tyrolese flutes through the rubber trees. There was champagne bubbling at a score of sideboards where noiseless waiters poured it into goblets as broad and flat as floating water-lily leaves. And through it all moved the shepherds and shepherdesses of that beautiful Arcadia — the shepherds in their Tuxedo jackets, with vast white shirt-fronts broad as the map of Africa, with spotless white waistcoats girdling their equators, wearing heavy gold watch-chains and little patent shoes blacker than sin itself — and the shepherdesses in foaming billows of silks of every colour of the kaleidoscope, their hair bound with glittering headbands or coiled with white feathers, the very symbol of municipal purity. One would search in vain the pages of pastoral literature to find the equal of it.
And as they talked, the good news spread from group to group that it was already known that the new franchise of the Citizens’ Light was to be made for two centuries so as to give the company a fair chance to see what it could do. At the word of it, the grave faces of manly bondholders flushed with pride, and the soft eyes of listening shareholders laughed back in joy. For they had no doubt or fear, now that clean government had come. They knew what the company could do.
Thus all night long, outside of the club, the soft note of the motor horns arriving and departing wakened the sleeping leaves of the elm trees with their message of good tidings. And all night long, within its lighted corridors, the bubbling champagne whispered to the listening rubber trees of the new salvation of the city. So the night waxed and waned till the slow day broke, dimming with its cheap prosaic glare the shaded beauty of the artificial light, and the people of the city — the best of them — drove home to their well-earned sleep; and the others — in the lower parts of the city — rose to their daily toil.
END
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
CONTENTS
SPOOF. A Thousand-Guinea Novel. New! Fascinating! Perplexing!
THE READING PUBLIC. A BOOK STORE STUDY
AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB
RAM SPUDD THE NEW WORLD SINGER.
ARISTOCRATIC ANECDOTES OR LITTLE STORIES OF GREAT PEOPLE
EDUCATION MADE AGREEABLE OR THE DIVERSIONS OF A PROFESSOR
AN EVERY-DAY EXPERIENCE
TRUTHFUL ORATORY
OUR LITERARY BUREAU
SPEEDING UP BUSINESS
WHO IS ALSO WHO
PASSIONATE PARAGRAPHS
WEEJEE THE PET DOG
SIDELIGHTS ON THE SUPERMEN
THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER
IN THE GOOD TIME AFTER THE WAR
PREFACE
THE PRUDENT HUSBANDMAN, after having taken from his field all the straw that is there, rakes it over with a wooden rake and gets as much again. The wise child, after the lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons from the bottom of it and squeezes them into a still larger brew. So does the sagacious author, after having sold his material to the magazines and been paid for it, clap it into book-covers and give it another squeeze. But in the present case the author is of a nice conscience and anxious to place responsibility where it is due. He therefore wishes to make all proper acknowledgments to the editors of Vanity Fair, The American Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Life, Puck, The Century, Methuen’s Annual, and all others who are in any way implicated in the making of this book.
STEPHEN LEACOCK.
McGill University, Montreal. Oct. 1, 1915.
SPOOF. A Thousand-Guinea Novel. New! Fascinating! Perplexing!
CHAPTER I
Readers are requested to note that this novel has taken our special prize of a cheque for a thousand guineas. This alone guarantees for all intelligent readers a palpitating interest in every line of it. Among the thousands of MSS. which reached us — many of them coming in carts early in the morning, and moving in a dense phalanx, indistinguishable from the Covent Garden Market waggons; others pouring down our coal-chute during the working hours of the day; and others again being slipped surreptitiously into our letter-box by pale, timid girls, scarcely more than children, after nightfall (in fact many of them came in their night-gowns), — this manuscript alone was the sole one — in fact the only one — to receive the prize of a cheque of a thousand guineas. To other competitors we may have given, inadvertently perhaps, a bag of sovereigns or a string of pearls, but to this story alone is awarded the first prize by the unanimous decision of our judges.
When we say that the latter body included two members of the Cabinet, two Lords of the Admiralty, and two bishops, with power in case of dispute to send all the MSS. to the Czar of Russia, our readers will breathe a sigh of relief to learn that the decision was instant and unanimous. Each one of them, in reply to our telegram, answered immediately SPOOF.
This novel represents the last word in up-to-date fiction. It is well known that the modern novel has got far beyond the point of mere story-telling. The childish attempt to INTEREST the reader has long since been abandoned by all the best writers. They refuse to do it. The modern novel must convey a message, or else it must paint a picture, or remove a veil, or open a new chapter in human psychology. Otherwise it is no good. SPOOF does all of these things. The reader rises from its perusal perplexed, troubled, and yet so filled with information that rising itself is a difficulty.
We cannot, for obvious reasons, insert the whole of the first chapter. But the portion here presented was praised by The Saturday Afternoon Review as giving one of the most graphic and at the same time realistic pictures of America ever written in fiction.
Of the characters whom our readers are to imagine seated on the deck — on one of the many decks (all connected by elevators) — of the Gloritania, one word may be said. Vere de Lancy is (as the reviewers have under oath declared) a typical young Englishman of the upper class. He is nephew to the Duke of — , but of this fact no one on the ship, except the captain, the purser, the steward, and the passengers are, or is, aware.
In order entirely to conceal his identity, Vere de Lancy is travelling under the assumed name of Lancy de Vere. In order the better to hide the object of his journey, Lancy de Vere (as we shall now call him, though our readers will be able at any moment to turn his name backwards) has given it to be understood that he is travelling merely as a gentleman anxious to see America. This naturally baffles all those in contact with him.
The girl at his side — but perhaps we may best let her speak for herself.
Somehow as they sat together on the deck of the great steamer in the afterglow of the sunken sun, listening to the throbbing of the propeller (a rare sound which neither of them of course had ever heard before), de Vere felt that he must speak to her. Something of the mystery of the girl fascinated him. What was she doing here alone with no one but her mother and her maid, on the bosom of the Atlantic? Why was she here? Why was she not somewhere else? The thing puzzled, perplexed him. It would not let him alone. It fastened upon his brain. Somehow he felt that if he tried to drive it away, it might nip him in the ankle.
In the end he spoke.
“And you, too,” he said, leaning over her deck-chair, “are going to America?”
He had suspected this ever since the boat left Liverpool. Now at length he framed his growing conviction into words.
“Yes,” she assented, and then timidly, “it is 3,213 miles wide, is it not?”
“Yes,” he said, “and 1,781 miles deep! It reaches from the forty-ninth parallel to the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, “what a vivid picture! I seem to see it.”
“Its major axis,” he went on, his voice sinking almost to a caress, “is formed by the Rocky Mountains, which are practically a prolongation of the Cordilleran Range. It is drained,” he continued —
“How splendid!” said the girl.
“Yes, is it not? It is drained by the Mississippi, by the St. Lawrence, and — dare I say it? — by the Upper Colorado.”
Somehow his hand had found hers in the half gloaming, but she did not check him.
“Go on,” she said very simply; “I think I ought to hear it.”
“The great central plain of the interior,” he continued, “is formed by a vast alluvial deposit carried down as silt by the Mississippi. East of this the range of the Alleghanies, nowhere more than eight thousand feet in height, forms a secondary or subordinate axis from which the watershed falls to the Atlantic.”
He was speaking very quietly but earnestly. No man had ever spoken to her like this before.
“What a wonderful picture!” she murmured half to herself, half aloud, and half not aloud and half not to herself.
“Through the whole of it,” de Vere went on, “there run railways, most of them from east to west, though a few run from west to east. The Pennsylvania system alone has twenty-one thousand miles of track.”
“Twenty-one thousand miles,” she repeated; already she felt her will strangely subordinate to his.
He was holding her hand firmly clasped in his and looking into her face.
“Dare I tell you,” he whispered, “how many employees it has?”
“Yes,” she gasped, unable to resist.
“A hundred and fourteen thousand,” he said.
There was silence. They were both thinking. Presently she spoke, timidly.
“Are there any cities there?”
“Cities!” he said enthusiastically, “ah, yes! let me try to give you a word-picture of them. Vast cities — with tall buildings, reaching to the very sky. Why, for instance, the new Woolworth Building in New York—”
“Yes, yes,” she broke in quickly, “how high is it?”
“Seven hundred and fifty feet.”
The girl turned and faced him.
“Don’t,” she said. “I can’t bear it. Some other time, perhaps, but not now.”
She had risen and was gathering up her wraps. “And you,” she said, “why are you going to America?”
“Why?” he answered. “Because I want to see, to know, to learn. And when I have learned and seen and known, I want other people to see and to learn and to know. I want to write it all down, all the vast palpitating picture of it. Ah! if I only could — I want to see” (and here he passed his hand through his hair as if trying to remember) “something of the relations of labour and capital, of the extraordinary development of industrial machinery, of the new and intricate organisation of corporation finance, and in particular I want to try to analyse — no one has ever done it yet — the men who guide and drive it all. I want to set down the psychology of the multimillionaire!”
He paused. The girl stood irresolute. She was thinking (apparently, for if not, why stand there?).
“Perhaps,” she faltered, “I could help you.”
“You!”
“Yes, I might.” She hesitated. “I — I — come from America.”
“You!” said de Vere in astonishment. “With a face and voice like yours! It is impossible!”
The boldness of the compliment held her speechless for a moment.
“I do,” she said; “my people lived just outside of Cohoes.”
“They couldn’t have,” he said passionately.
“I shouldn’t speak to you like this,” the girl went on, “but it’s because I feel from what you have said that you know and love America. And I think I can help you.”
“You mean,” he said, divining her idea, “that you can help me to meet a multimillionaire?”
“Yes,” she answered, still hesitating.
“You know one?”
“Yes,” still hesitating, “I know ONE.”
She seemed about to say more, her lips had already opened, when suddenly the dull raucous blast of the foghorn (they used a raucous one on this ship on purpose) cut the night air. Wet fog rolled in about them, wetting everything.
The girl shivered.
“I must go,” she said; “good night.”
For a moment de Vere was about to detain her. The wild thought leaped to his mind to ask her her name or at least her mother’s. With a powerful effort he checked himself.
“Good night,” he said.
She was gone.
CHAPTER II
Limits of space forbid the insertion of the whole of this chapter. Its opening contains one of the most vivid word-pictures of the inside of an American customs house ever pictured in words. From the customs wharf de Vere is driven in a taxi to the Belmont. Here he engages a room; here, too, he sleeps; here also, though cautiously at first, he eats. All this is so admirably described that only those who have driven in a taxi to an hotel and slept there can hope to appreciate it.
Limits of space also forbid our describing in full de Vere’s vain quest in New York of the beautiful creature whom he had met on the steamer and whom he had lost from sight in the aigrette department of the customs house. A thousand times he cursed his folly in not having asked her name.
Meanwhile no word comes from her, till suddenly, mysteriously, unexpectedly, on the fourth day a note is handed to de Vere by the Third Assistant Head Waiter of the Belmont. It is addressed in a lady’s hand. He tears it open. It contains only the written words, “Call on Mr. J. Superman Overgold. He is a multimillionaire. He expects you.”
To leap into a taxi (from the third story of the Belmont) was the work of a moment. To drive to the office of Mr. Overgold was less. The portion of the novel which follows is perhaps the most notable part of it. It is this part of the chapter which the Hibbert Journal declares to be the best piece of psychological analysis that appears in any novel of the season. We reproduce it here.
“Exactly, exactly,” said de Vere, writing rapidly in his note-book as he sat in one of the deep leather armchairs of the luxurious office of Mr. Overgold. “So you sometimes feel as if the whole thing were not worth while.”
“I do,” said Mr. Overgold. “I can’t help asking myself what it all means. Is life, after all, merely a series of immaterial phenomena, self-developing and based solely on sensation and reaction, or is it something else?”
He paused for a moment to sign a cheque for $10,000 and throw it out of the window, and then went on, speaking still with the terse brevity of a man of business.
“Is sensation everywhere or is there perception too? On what grounds, if any, may the hypothesis of a self-explanatory consciousness be rejected? In how far are we warranted in supposing that innate ideas are inconsistent with pure materialism?”
De Vere listened, fascinated. Fortunately for himself, he was a University man, fresh from the examination halls of his Alma Mater. He was able to respond at once.
“I think,” he said modestly, “I grasp your thought. You mean — to what extent are we prepared to endorse Hegel’s dictum of immaterial evolution?”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Overgold. “How far, if at all, do we substantiate the Kantian hypothesis of the transcendental?”
“Precisely,” said de Vere eagerly. “And for what reasons [naming them] must we reject Spencer’s theory of the unknowable?”
“Entirely so,” continued Mr. Overgold. “And why, if at all, does Bergsonian illusionism differ from pure nothingness?”
They both paused.
Mr. Overgold had risen. There was great weariness in his manner.
“It saddens one, does it not?” he said.
He had picked up a bundle of Panama two per cent. gold bonds and was looking at them in contempt.
“The emptiness of it all!” he muttered. He extended the bonds to de Vere.
“Do you want them,” he said, “or shall I throw them away?”
“Give them to me,” said de Vere quietly; “they are not worth the throwing.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Overgold, speaking half to himself, as he replaced the bonds in his desk. “It is a burden that I must carry alone. I have no right to ask any one to share it. But come,” he continued, “I fear I am sadly lacking in the duties of international hospitality. I am forgetting what I owe to Anglo-American courtesy. I am neglecting the new obligations of our common Indo-Chinese policy. My motor is at the door. Pray let me take you to my house to lunch.”
