Literary Lapses - Stephen Leacock
You inform me that your maiden aunt intends to help you
to entertain the party. I have not, as you know, the
honour of your aunt's acquaintance, yet I think I may
with reason surmise that she will organize games--guessing
games--in which she will ask me to name a river in Asia
beginning with a Z; on my failure to do so she will put
a hot plate down my neck as a forfeit, and the children
will clap their hands. These games, my dear young friend,
involve the use of a more adaptable intellect than mine,
and I cannot consent to be a party to them.
May I say in conclusion that I do not consider a five-cent
pen-wiper from the top branch of a Xmas tree any adequate
compensation for the kind of evening you propose.
I have the honour
To subscribe myself,
Your obedient servant.
How to Make a Million Dollars
I mix a good deal with the Millionaires. I like them. I
like their faces. I like the way they live. I like the
things they eat. The more we mix together the better I
like the things we mix.
Especially I like the way they dress, their grey check
trousers, their white check waist-coats, their heavy gold
chains, and the signet-rings that they sign their cheques
with. My! they look nice. Get six or seven of them sitting
together in the club and it's a treat to see them. And
if they get the least dust on them, men come and brush
it off. Yes, and are glad to. I'd like to take some of
the dust off them myself.
Even more than what they eat I like their intellectual
grasp. It is wonderful. Just watch them read. They simply
read all the time. Go into the club at any hour and you'll
see three or four of them at it. And the things they can
read! You'd think that a man who'd been driving hard in
the office from eleven o'clock until three, with only an
hour and a half for lunch, would be too fagged. Not a
bit. These men can sit down after office hours and read
the Sketch and the Police Gazette and the Pink Un, and
understand the jokes just as well as I can.
What I love to do is to walk up and down among them and
catch the little scraps of conversation. The other day
I heard one lean forward and say, "Well, I offered him
a million and a half and said I wouldn't give a cent
more, he could either take it or leave it--" I just longed
to break in and say, "What! what! a million and a half!
Oh! say that again! Offer it to me, to either take it or
leave it. Do try me once: I know I can: or here, make it
a plain million and let's call it done."
Not that these men are careless over money. No, sir.
Don't think it. Of course they don't take much account
of big money, a hundred thousand dollars at a shot or
anything of that sort. But little money. You've no idea
till you know them how anxious they get about a cent, or
half a cent, or less.
Why, two of them came into the club the other night just
frantic with delight: they said wheat had risen and they'd
cleaned up four cents each in less than half an hour.
They bought a dinner for sixteen on the strength of it.
I don't understand it. I've often made twice as much as
that writing for the papers and never felt like boasting
about it.
One night I heard one man say, "Well, let's call up New
York and offer them a quarter of a cent." Great heavens!
Imagine paying the cost of calling up New York, nearly
five million people, late at night and offering them a
quarter of a cent! And yet--did New York get mad? No,
they took it. Of course it's high finance. I don't pretend
to understand it. I tried after that to call up Chicago
and offer it a cent and a half, and to call up Hamilton,
Ontario, and offer it half a dollar, and the operator
only thought I was crazy.
All this shows, of course, that I've been studying how
the millionaires do it. I have. For years. I thought it
might be helpful to young men just beginning to work and
anxious to stop.
You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when
he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of
being what he is he might be what he won't; but how few
boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know
instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be?
These are awful thoughts.
At any rate, I've been gathering hints on how it is they
do it.
One thing I'm sure about. If a young man wants to make
a million dollars he's got to be mighty careful about
his diet and his living. This may seem hard. But success
is only achieved with pains.
There is no use in a young man who hopes to make a million
dollars thinking he's entitled to get up at 7.30, eat
force and poached eggs, drink cold water at lunch, and
go to bed at 10 p.m. You can't do it. I've seen too many
millionaires for that. If you want to be a millionaire
you mustn't get up till ten in the morning. They never
do. They daren't. It would be as much as their business
is worth if they were seen on the street at half-past
nine.
And the old idea of abstemiousness is all wrong. To be
a millionaire you need champagne, lots of it and all the
time. That and Scotch whisky and soda: you have to sit
up nearly all night and drink buckets of it. This is what
clears the brain for business next day. I've seen some
of these men with their brains so clear in the morning,
that their faces look positively boiled.
To live like this requires, of course, resolution. But
you can buy that by the pint.
Therefore, my dear young man, if you want to get moved
on from your present status in business, change your
life. When your landlady brings your bacon and eggs for
breakfast, throw them out of window to the dog and tell
her to bring you some chilled asparagus and a pint of
Moselle. Then telephone to your employer that you'll be
down about eleven o'clock. You will get moved on. Yes,
very quickly.
Just how the millionaires make the money is a difficult
question. But one way is this. Strike the town with five
cents in your pocket. They nearly all do this; they've
told me again and again (men with millions and millions)
that the first time they struck town they had only five
cents. That seems to have given them their start. Of
course, it's not easy to do. I've tried it several times.
I nearly did it once. I borrowed five cents, carried it
away out of town, and then turned and came back at the
town with an awful rush. If I hadn't struck a beer saloon
in the suburbs and spent the five cents I might have been
rich to-day.
Another good plan is to start something. Something on a
huge scale: something nobody ever thought of. For instance,
one man I know told me that once he was down in Mexico
without a cent (he'd lost his five in striking Central
America) and he noticed that they had no power plants.
So he started some and made a mint of money. Another man
that I know was once stranded in New York, absolutely
without a nickel. Well, it occurred to him that what was
needed were buildings ten stories higher than any that
had been put up. So he built two and sold them right
away. Ever so many millionaires begin in some such simple
way as that.
There is, of course, a much easier way than any of these.
I almost hate to tell this, because I want to do it
myself.
I learned of it just by chance one night at the club.
There is one old man there, extremely rich, with one of
the best faces of the lot, just like a hyena. I never
used to know how he had got so rich. So one evening I
asked one of the millionaires how old Bloggs had made
all his money.
"How he made it?" he answered with a sneer. "Why he made
it by taking it out of widows and orphans."
Widows and orphans! I thought, what an excellent idea.
But who would have suspected that they had it?
"And how," I asked pretty cautiously, "did he go at it
to get it out of them?"
"Why," the man answered, "he just ground them under his
heels, that was how."
Now isn't that simple? I've thought of that conversation
often since and I mean to try it. If I can get hold of
them, I'll grind them quick enough. But how to get them.
Most of the widows I know look pretty solid for that sort
of thing, and as for orphans, it must take an awful lot
of them. Meantime I am waiting, and if I ever get a large
bunch of orphans all together, I'll stamp on them and
see.
I find, too, on inquiry, that you can also grind it out
of clergymen. They say they grind nicely. But perhaps
orphans are easier.
How to Live to be 200
Twenty years ago I knew a man called Jiggins, who had
the Health Habit.
He used to take a cold plunge every morning. He said it
opened his pores. After it he took a hot sponge. He said
it closed the pores. He got so that he could open and
shut his pores at will.
Jiggins used to stand and breathe at an open window for
half an hour before dressing. He said it expanded his
lungs. He might, of course, have had it done in a shoe-store
with a boot stretcher, but after all it cost him nothing
this way, and what is half an hour?
After he had got his undershirt on, Jiggins used to hitch
himself up like a dog in harness and do Sandow exercises.
He did them forwards, backwards, and hind-side up.
He could have got a job as a dog anywhere. He spent all
his time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at the
office, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor and
see if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If he
could, then he tried some other way until he found one
that he couldn't do. Then he would spend the rest of his
lunch hour on his stomach, perfectly happy.
In the evenings in his room he used to lift iron bars,
cannon-balls, heave dumb-bells, and haul himself up to
the ceiling with his teeth. You could hear the thumps
half a mile. He liked it.
He spent half the night slinging himself around his room.
He said it made his brain clear. When he got his brain
perfectly clear, he went to bed and slept. As soon as he
woke, he began clearing it again.
Jiggins is dead. He was, of course, a pioneer, but the
fact that he dumb-belled himself to death at an early
age does not prevent a whole generation of young men from
following in his path.
They are ridden by the Health Mania.
They make themselves a nuisance.
They get up at impossible hours. They go out in silly
little suits and run Marathon heats before breakfast.
They chase around barefoot to get the dew on their feet.
They hunt for ozone. They bother about pepsin. They won't
eat meat because it has too much nitrogen. They won't
eat fruit because it hasn't any. They prefer albumen and
starch and nitrogen to huckleberry pie and doughnuts.
They won't drink water out of a tap. They won't eat
sardines out of a can. They won't use oysters out of a
pail. They won't drink milk out of a glass. They are
afraid of alcohol in any shape. Yes, sir, afraid. "Cowards."
And after all their fuss they presently incur some simple
old-fashioned illness and die like anybody else.
Now people of this sort have no chance to attain any
great age. They are on the wrong track.
Listen. Do you want to live to be really old, to enjoy
a grand, green, exuberant, boastful old age and to make
yourself a nuisance to your whole neighbourhood with your
reminiscences?
Then cut out all this nonsense. Cut it out. Get up in
the morning at a sensible hour. The time to get up is
when you have to, not before. If your office opens at
eleven, get up at ten-thirty. Take your chance on ozone.
There isn't any such thing anyway. Or, if there is, you
can buy a Thermos bottle full for five cents, and put it
on a shelf in your cupboard. If your work begins at seven
in the morning, get up at ten minutes to, but don't be
liar enough to say that you like it. It isn't exhilarating,
and you know it.
Also, drop all that cold-bath business. You never did it
when you were a boy. Don't be a fool now. If you must
take a bath (you don't really need to), take it warm.
The pleasure of getting out of a cold bed and creeping
into a hot bath beats a cold plunge to death. In any
case, stop gassing about your tub and your "shower," as
if you were the only man who ever washed.
So much for that point.
Next, take the question of germs and bacilli. Don't be
scared of them. That's all. That's the whole thing, and
if you once get on to that you never need to worry again.
If you see a bacilli, walk right up to it, and look it
in the eye. If one flies into your room, strike at it
with your hat or with a towel. Hit it as hard as you can
between the neck and the thorax. It will soon get sick
of that.
But as a matter of fact, a bacilli is perfectly quiet
and harmless if you are not afraid of it. Speak to it.
Call out to it to "lie down." It will understand. I had
a bacilli once, called Fido, that would come and lie at
my feet while I was working. I never knew a more
affectionate companion, and when it was run over by an
automobile, I buried it in the garden with genuine sorrow.
(I admit this is an exaggeration. I don't really remember
its name; it may have been Robert.)
Understand that it is only a fad of modern medicine to
say that cholera and typhoid and diphtheria are caused
by bacilli and germs; nonsense. Cholera is caused by a
frightful pain in the stomach, and diphtheria is caused
by trying to cure a sore throat.
Now take the question of food.
Eat what you want. Eat lots of it. Yes, eat too much of
it. Eat till you can just stagger across the room with
it and prop it up against a sofa cushion. Eat everything
that you like until you can't eat any more. The only test
is, can you pay for it? If you can't pay for it, don't
eat it. And listen--don't worry as to whether your food
contains starch, or albumen, or gluten, or nitrogen. If
you are a damn fool enough to want these things, go and
buy them and eat all you want of them. Go to a laundry
and get a bag of starch, and eat your fill of it. Eat
it, and take a good long drink of glue after it, and a
spoonful of Portland cement. That will gluten you, good
and solid.
If you like nitrogen, go and get a druggist to give you
a canful of it at the soda counter, and let you sip it
with a straw. Only don't think that you can mix all these
things up with your food. There isn't any nitrogen or
phosphorus or albumen in ordinary things to eat. In any
decent household all that sort of stuff is washed out in
the kitchen sink before the food is put on the table.
And just one word about fresh air and exercise. Don't
bother with either of them. Get your room full of good
air, then shut up the windows and keep it. It will keep
for years. Anyway, don't keep using your lungs all the
time. Let them rest. As for exercise, if you have to take
it, take it and put up with it. But as long as you have
the price of a hack and can hire other people to play
baseball for you and run races and do gymnastics when
you sit in the shade and smoke and watch them--great
heavens, what more do you want?
How to Avoid Getting Married
Some years ago, when I was the Editor of a Correspondence
Column, I used to receive heart-broken letters from young
men asking for advice and sympathy. They found themselves
the object of marked attentions from girls which they
scarcely knew how to deal with. They did not wish to give
pain or to seem indifferent to a love which they felt
was as ardent as it was disinterested, and yet they felt
that they could not bestow their hands where their hearts
had not spoken. They wrote to me fully and frankly, and
as one soul might write to another for relief. I accepted
their confidences as under the pledge of a secrecy, never
divulging their disclosures beyond the circulation of my
newspapers, or giving any hint of their identity other
than printing their names and addresses and their letters
in full. But I may perhaps without dishonour reproduce
one of these letters, and my answer to it, inasmuch as
the date is now months ago, and the softening hand of
Time has woven its roses--how shall I put it?--the mellow
haze of reminiscences has--what I mean is that the young
man has gone back to work and is all right again.
Here then is a letter from a young man whose name I must
not reveal, but whom I will designate as D. F., and whose
address I must not divulge, but will simply indicate as
Q. Street, West.
"DEAR MR. LEACOCK,
"For some time past I have been the recipient of very
marked attentions from a young lady. She has been calling
at the house almost every evening, and has taken me out
in her motor, and invited me to concerts and the theatre.
On these latter occasions I have insisted on her taking
my father with me, and have tried as far as possible to
prevent her saying anything to me which would be unfit
for father to hear. But my position has become a very
difficult one. I do not think it right to accept her
presents when I cannot feel that my heart is hers.
Yesterday she sent to my house a beautiful bouquet of
American Beauty roses addressed to me, and a magnificent
bunch of Timothy Hay for father. I do not know what to
say. Would it be right for father to keep all this valuable
hay? I have confided fully in father, and we have discussed
the question of presents. He thinks that there are some
that we can keep with propriety, and others that a sense
of delicacy forbids us to retain. He himself is going to
sort out the presents into the two classes. He thinks
that as far as he can see, the Hay is in class B. Meantime
I write to you, as I understand that Miss Laura Jean
Libby and Miss Beatrix Fairfax are on their vacation,
and in any case a friend of mine who follows their writings
closely tells me that they are always full.
"I enclose a dollar, because I do not think it right to
ask you to give all your valuable time and your best
thought without giving you back what it is worth."
On receipt of this I wrote back at once a private and
confidential letter which I printed in the following
edition of the paper.
"MY DEAR, DEAR BOY,
"Your letter has touched me. As soon as I opened it and
saw the green and blue tint of the dollar bill which you
had so daintily and prettily folded within the pages of
your sweet letter, I knew that the note was from someone
that I could learn to love, if our correspondence were
to continue as it had begun. I took the dollar from your
letter and kissed and fondled it a dozen times. Dear
unknown boy! I shall always keep that dollar! No matter
how much I may need it, or how many necessaries, yes,
absolute necessities, of life I may be wanting, I shall
always keep THAT dollar. Do you understand, dear? I shall
keep it. I shall not spend it. As far as the USE of it
goes, it will be just as if you had not sent it. Even if
you were to send me another dollar, I should still keep
the first one, so that no matter how many you sent, the
recollection of one first friendship would not be
contaminated with mercenary considerations. When I say
dollar, darling, of course an express order, or a postal
note, or even stamps would be all the same. But in that
case do not address me in care of this office, as I should
not like to think of your pretty little letters lying
round where others might handle them.
"But now I must stop chatting about myself, for I know
that you cannot be interested in a simple old fogey such
as I am. Let me talk to you about your letter and about
the difficult question it raises for all marriageable
young men.
"In the first place, let me tell you how glad I am that
you confide in your father. Whatever happens, go at once
to your father, put your arms about his neck, and have
a good cry together. And you are right, too, about
presents. It needs a wiser head than my poor perplexed
boy to deal with them. Take them to your father to be
sorted, or, if you feel that you must not overtax his
love, address them to me in your own pretty hand.
"And now let us talk, dear, as one heart to another.
Remember always that if a girl is to have your heart she
must be worthy of you. When you look at your own bright
innocent face in the mirror, resolve that you will give
your hand to no girl who is not just as innocent as you
are and no brighter than yourself. So that you must first
find out how innocent she is. Ask her quietly and
frankly--remember, dear, that the days of false modesty
are passing away--whether she has ever been in jail. If
she has not (and if YOU have not), then you know that
you are dealing with a dear confiding girl who will make
you a life mate. Then you must know, too, that her mind
is worthy of your own. So many men to-day are led astray
by the merely superficial graces and attractions of girls
who in reality possess no mental equipment at all. Many
a man is bitterly disillusioned after marriage when he
realises that his wife cannot solve a quadratic equation,
and that he is compelled to spend all his days with a
woman who does not know that X squared plus 2XY plus Y
squared is the same thing, or, I think nearly the same
thing, as X plus Y squared.
"Nor should the simple domestic virtues be neglected. If
a girl desires to woo you, before allowing her to press
her suit, ask her if she knows how to press yours. If
she can, let her woo; if not, tell her to whoa. But I
see I have written quite as much as I need for this
column. Won't you write again, just as before, dear boy?
"STEPHEN LEACOCK."
How to be a Doctor
Certainly the progress of science is a wonderful thing.
One can't help feeling proud of it. I must admit that I
do. Whenever I get talking to anyone--that is, to anyone
who knows even less about it than I do--about the marvellous
development of electricity, for instance, I feel as if
I had been personally responsible for it. As for the
linotype and the aeroplane and the vacuum house-cleaner,
well, I am not sure that I didn't invent them myself. I
believe that all generous-hearted men feel just the same
way about it.
However, that is not the point I am intending to discuss.
What I want to speak about is the progress of medicine.
There, if you like, is something wonderful. Any lover of
humanity (or of either sex of it) who looks back on the
achievements of medical science must feel his heart glow
and his right ventricle expand with the pericardiac
stimulus of a permissible pride.
Just think of it. A hundred years ago there were no
bacilli, no ptomaine poisoning, no diphtheria, and no
appendicitis. Rabies was but little known, and only
imperfectly developed. All of these we owe to medical
science. Even such things as psoriasis and parotitis and
trypanosomiasis, which are now household names, were
known only to the few, and were quite beyond the reach
of the great mass of the people.
Or consider the advance of the science on its practical
side. A hundred years ago it used to be supposed that
fever could be cured by the letting of blood; now we know
positively that it cannot. Even seventy years ago it was
thought that fever was curable by the administration of
sedative drugs; now we know that it isn't. For the matter
of that, as recently as thirty years ago, doctors thought
that they could heal a fever by means of low diet and
the application of ice; now they are absolutely certain
that they cannot. This instance shows the steady progress
made in the treatment of fever. But there has been the
same cheering advance all along the line. Take rheumatism.
A few generations ago people with rheumatism used to have
to carry round potatoes in their pockets as a means of
cure. Now the doctors allow them to carry absolutely
anything they like. They may go round with their pockets
full of water-melons if they wish to. It makes no
difference. Or take the treatment of epilepsy. It used
to be supposed that the first thing to do in sudden
attacks of this kind was to unfasten the patient's collar
and let him breathe; at present, on the contrary, many
doctors consider it better to button up the patient's
collar and let him choke.
In only one respect has there been a decided lack of
progress in the domain of medicine, that is in the time
it takes to become a qualified practitioner. In the good
old days a man was turned out thoroughly equipped after
putting in two winter sessions at a college and spending
his summers in running logs for a sawmill. Some of the
students were turned out even sooner. Nowadays it takes
anywhere from five to eight years to become a doctor. Of
course, one is willing to grant that our young men are
growing stupider and lazier every year. This fact will
be corroborated at once by any man over fifty years of
age. But even when this is said it seems odd that a man
should study eight years now to learn what he used to
acquire in eight months.
However, let that go. The point I want to develop is that
the modern doctor's business is an extremely simple one,
which could be acquired in about two weeks. This is the
way it is done.
The patient enters the consulting-room. "Doctor," he
says, "I have a bad pain." "Where is it?" "Here." "Stand
up," says the doctor, "and put your arms up above your
head." Then the doctor goes behind the patient and strikes
him a powerful blow in the back. "Do you feel that," he
says. "I do," says the patient. Then the doctor turns
suddenly and lets him have a left hook under the heart.
"Can you feel that," he says viciously, as the patient
falls over on the sofa in a heap. "Get up," says the
doctor, and counts ten. The patient rises. The doctor
looks him over very carefully without speaking, and then
suddenly fetches him a blow in the stomach that doubles
him up speechless. The doctor walks over to the window
and reads the morning paper for a while. Presently he
turns and begins to mutter more to himself than the
patient. "Hum!" he says, "there's a slight anaesthesia
of the tympanum." "Is that so?" says the patient, in an
agony of fear. "What can I do about it, doctor?" "Well,"
says the doctor, "I want you to keep very quiet; you'll
have to go to bed and stay there and keep quiet." In
reality, of course, the doctor hasn't the least idea what
is wrong with the man; but he DOES know that if he will
go to bed and keep quiet, awfully quiet, he'll either
get quietly well again or else die a quiet death. Meantime,
if the doctor calls every morning and thumps and beats
him, he can keep the patient submissive and perhaps force
him to confess what is wrong with him.