 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock Part 14 Back from the Land I have just come back now with the closing in of autumn to the city. I have hung up my hoe in my study. My spade is put away behind the piano. I have with me seven pounds of Paris green that I had over. Anybody who wants it may have it. I didn't like to bury it for fear of its poisoning the ground. I didn't like to throw it away for fear of its destroying cattle. I was afraid to leave it in my summer place for fear that it might poison the tramps who generally break in in November. I have it with me now. I move it from room to room as I hate to turn my back upon it. Anybody who wants it, I repeat, can have it. I should also like to give away, either to the Red Cross or to anything else, ten packets of radish seed. The early curled variety, I think. Fifteen packets of cucumber seed. The long succulent variety, I believe it says. And twenty packets of onion seed. The yellow danvers. Distinguished. I understand for its edible flavor and its nutritious properties. It is not likely that I shall ever, on this side of the grave, plant onion seed again. All these things I have with me. My vegetables are to come after me by freight. They are booked from Simcoe County to Montreal. At present they are, I believe, passing through Schenectady. But they will arrive later, all right. They were seen going through Detroit last week moving west. It is the first time that I ever sent anything by freight anywhere. I never understood before the wonderful organization of the railroads. But they tell me that there is a bad congestion of freight down south this month. If my vegetables get tangled up in that, there is no telling when they will arrive. In other words, I am one of the legion of men, quiet, determined, resolute men, who went out last spring to plant the land and who are now back. With me, and I am sure that I speak for all the others as well, it was not a question of mere pleasure. It was no love of gardening for its own sake that inspired us. It was a plain national duty. What we said to ourselves was, this war has got to stop. The men in the trenches thus far have failed to stop it. Now let us try. The whole thing, we argued, is a plain matter of food production. If we raise enough food, the Germans are bound to starve. Very good. Let us kill them. I suppose there was never a more grimly determined set of men went out from the cities than those who went out last May, as I did, to conquer the food problem. I don't mean to say that each and every one of us actually left the city, but we all went forth in the metaphorical sense. Some of the men cultivated back gardens, others took vacant lots, some went out into the suburbs, and others like myself went right out into the country. We are now back. Each of us has with him his Paris green, his hoe, and the rest of his radish seed. The time has therefore come for a plain clear statement of our experience. We have, as everybody knows, failed. We have been beaten back all along the line. Our potatoes are buried in a jungle of autumn burdock. Our radishes stand seven feet high, uneatable. Our tomatoes, when last seen, were greener than they were at the beginning of August and getting greener every week. Our celery looked as delicate as a maiden hair fern. Our Indian corn was nine feet high with a tall feathery spike on top of that, but no sign of anything eatable about it from top to bottom. I look back with a sigh of regret at those bright early days in April when we were all buying hose and talking soil and waiting for the snow to be off the ground. The street cars, as we went up and down to our offices, were a busy babble of garden talk. There was a sort of farmer-like geniality in the air. One spoke freely to strangers. Every man with a hoe was a friend. Men chewed straws in their offices and kept looking out of windows to pretend to themselves that they were afraid it might blow up rain. Got your tomatoes in? One man would ask another as they went up in the elevator. Yes, they got mine in yesterday, the other would answer. But I'm just a little afraid that this east wind may blow up a little frost. What we need now is growing weather, and the two men would drift off together from the elevator door along the corridor, their heads together in friendly colloquy. I have always regarded a lawyer as a man without a soul. There is one who lives next door to me, to whom I have not spoken in five years. Yet when I saw him one day last spring, heading for the suburbs in a pair of old trousers with a hoe in one hand and a box of celery plants in the other, I felt that I loved the man. I used to think the stockbrokers were mere sordid calculating machines. Now that I have seen whole firms of them busy at the hoe, wearing old trousers that reached to their armpits and were tied about the waist with a polka dot necktie, I know that they are men. I know that there are warm hearts beating behind those trousers. Old trousers, I say, where on earth did they all come from in such a sudden fashion last spring? Everybody had them. Who would suspect that a man would be a man drawing a salary of $10,000 a year with keeping in reserve a pair of pepper and salt breeches four sizes too large for him just in case a war should break out against Germany? Talk of German mobilization. I doubt whether the organizing power was all on their side after all. At any rate it is estimated that 50,000 pairs of old trousers were mobilized in Montreal in one week. But perhaps it was not a case of mobilization that a man would be a man with a pair of old trousers and a box of celery plants in one hand and a box of celery plants in one hand. Perhaps it was not a case of mobilization or deliberate preparedness. It was rather an illustration of the primitive instinct that is in all of us and that will out in wartime. Any man worth the name would wear old breeches all the time if the world would let him. Any man will find a polka dot tie around his waist in preference to wearing patent braces. The makers of the ties know this. That is why they make the tie four feet long. And in the same way if any manufacturer of hats will put on the market an old fedora with a limp rim and a mark with a ribbon used to be but is not, a hat guaranteed to be six years old, well weathered, well rained on and certified to have been walked over by a herd of cattle, that man will make and deserve a fortune. These at least were the fashions of last May. Alas, where are they now? The men that wore them have relapsed again into tailor-made tweeds. They have put on hard new hats. They are shining their boots again. They are shaving again. Not merely on Saturday night, but every day. They are sinking back into civilization. Yet those were bright times and I cannot forbear to linger on them. Not the least pleasant feature was our rediscovery of the morning. My neighbor on the right was always up at five. My neighbor on the left was out and about by four. With the earliest light of day little columns of smoke rose along our street from the kitchen ranges where our wives were making coffee for us before the servants got up. By six o'clock the street was alive and busy with friendly salutations. The milkman seemed a late-tommer, a poor sluggish fellow who failed to appreciate the early hours of the day. A man we found might live through quite a little illiative adventure before going to his nine o'clock office. How will you possibly get time to put in a garden? I asked one of my neighbors during this glad period of early spring before I left for the country. He exclaimed, Why, my dear fellow, I don't have to be down at the warehouse till eight thirty. Later in the summer I saw the wreck of his garden choked with weeds. Your garden, I said, is in poor shape. Garden, he said indignantly. How on earth can I find time for a garden? Do you realize that I have to be down at the warehouse at eight thirty? When I look back to our bright beginnings our failure seems hard indeed to understand. It is only when I survey the whole garden movement and melancholy retrospect that I am able to see some of the reasons for it. The principal one, I think, is the question of the season. It appears that the right time to begin gardening is last year. For many things it is well to begin the year before last. For good results one must begin even sooner. Here, for example, are the directions as I interpret them for growing asparagus. Having secured a suitable piece of ground, preferably a deep friable loam rich in nitrogen, go out three years ago and plow or dig deeply. Remain a year inactive thinking. Two years ago, pulverize the soil thoroughly. Wait a year. As soon as last year comes, set out the young shoots. Then spend a quiet winter doing nothing. The asparagus will then be ready to work at this year. This is the rock. I'm going to take a look at it. This is the rock on which we were wrecked. Few of us were men of sufficient means to spend several years in quiet thought waiting to begin gardening. Yet that is, it seems, the only way to begin. Asparagus demands a preparation of four years. To fit oneself to grow strawberries requires three years. Even for such humble things as peas, beans, and lettuce, the instructions inevitably read, plow the soil deeply in the preceding season. This is the preceding autumn. This sets up a dilemma. Which is the preceding autumn? If a man begins gardening in the spring, he is too late for last autumn and too early for this. On the other hand, if he begins in the autumn, he is again too late. He has missed this summer's crop. It is therefore ridiculous to begin in the autumn and impossible to begin in the spring. This was our first difficulty, but the second arose and instructions insist that the selection of the soil is the most important part of gardening. No doubt it is. But if a man has already selected his own backyard before he opens the book, what remedy is there? All the books lay stress on the need of a deep friable loam full of nitrogen. This I have never seen. My own plot of land I found on examination contained nothing but earth. I could see no trace of nitrogen. I deny the existence of loam. There may be such a thing, but I am admitting now in all humility of mind that I don't know what loam is. Last spring my fellow gardeners and I all talked freely of the desirability of a loam. My own opinion is that none of them had any clearer ideas about it than I had. Speaking from experience, I should say that the only soils are earth, mud, and dirt. There are no others. Perhaps a more fruitful source of failure even than the lack of loam was the attempt to apply calculation and mathematics to gardening. Thus, if one cabbage will grow in one square foot of ground, how many cabbages will grow in ten square feet of ground? Ten? Not at all. The answer is one. You will find as a matter of practical experience that however many cabbages you plant there will be only one that will really grow. This you will presently come to speak of as the cabbage. Beside it all the others till the caterpillars finally finish their existence will look but poor lean things. But the cabbage will be a source of pride and an object of display to visitors. In fact, it would ultimately have grown to be a real cabbage such as you buy for ten cents at any market, which happens to the one cabbage that is of decent size and to the one tomato that shows signs of turning red. It is really a feeble green pink and to the only melon that might have lived to ripen. They get eaten. No one but a practice professional gardener can live and sleep beside a melon three quarters ripe and a cabbage two thirds grown without going out and tearing it off the stem. All of a sudden everything is too old to eat. Radishes change overnight from delicate young shoots not large enough to put on the table into huge plants seven feet high with a root like an Irish Shalala. If you take your eyes off a lettuce bed for a week the lettuces not ready to eat when you last looked at them have changed into a tall jungle of hollyhocks. Green peas are only really the worst case of all. They change overnight from delicate little bulbs obviously too slight and dainty to pick to old cases of yellow leather filled with seeds. If I were ever to garden again a thing which is out of the bounds of possibility I should wait until a certain day and hour when all the plants were ripe and then go out with a gun and shoot them all dead so that they could grow no more. But calculation I repeat is that a lot of young producers a party of young engineers college men who took an empty farm north of the city as the scene of their summer operations they took their coats off and applied college methods they ran out first a baseline A B and measured off from it lateral spurs M N O P Q R and so on from these they took side angles with a theodolite so as to get the edges of that. I saw them working at it all through one Saturday afternoon in May they talked as they did it of the peculiar ignorance of the so-called practical farmer he never so they agreed uses his head he never I think I have their phrase correct stops to think and laying out his ground for use it never occurs to him to try to get the maximum result from a given space. If a farmer would only realize that the contents of a circle are unclosable in a given perimeter and that a circle is merely a function of its own radius what a lot of time he would save these young men that I speak of laid out their field engineer fashion with little white posts and even distances they made a blueprint of the whole thing as they planted it every corner of it was charted out the yield was calculated to a nicety they had allowed for the fact that some of the stuff might fail a coefficient of error by means of this and by reducing the variation of autumn prices to a mathematical curve those men not only knew already in the middle of May the exact yield of their farm to within half a bushel they allowed they said a variation of half a bushel per 50 acres but they knew beforehand within a few cents the market value that they would receive the figures as I remember them were simply amazing they were just so much yet there were the plain facts in front of one calculated out the thing amounted practically to a revolution in farming at least it ought to have and it would have if those young men had come again to hoe their field but it turned out most unfortunately that they were busy to their great regret they were too busy to come they had been working under a free and easy arrangement there was no compulsion each man trusted the others to be there in fact the thing was not only an experiment in food production it was also a new departure in social cooperation the first Saturday that those young men worked there were, so I have been told 75 of them driving in white steaks and running lines the next Saturday there were 15 of them planting potatoes the rest were busy and the man hoeing weeds after that silence fell upon the deserted garden broken only by the cry of the chickeny and the choo choo feeding on the waving heads of the thistles but I have indicated only two or three of the ways of failing at food production there are ever so many more what amazes me in returning to the city is to find the enormous quantities of produce of all sorts offered for sale in the markets it is an odd thing we never thought any of us of this process of increasing the supply if every patriotic man would simply take a large basket and go to the market every day and buy all that he could carry away there need be no further fear of a food famine and meantime my own vegetables are on their way they are in a soap box with bars across the top coming by freight they weigh 46 pounds including the box they represent the result of the storm yet it is pleasant to think that I shall be able to feed with them some poor family of refugees during the rigor of the winter either that or give them to the hens I certainly won't eat the rotten things myself end of part 14 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org for more information by Stephen Leacock part 15 the perplexity column as done by the jaded journalist instantaneous answers to all questions all questions written out legibly with the name and address of the sender and accompanied by one dollar answered immediately and without charge Harvard student asks can you tell me the date or on which Oliver Cromwell's father died? answer no I can't student of mathematics asks will you kindly settle a matter involving a wager between myself and a friend A bet B that a pedestrian in walking downhill over a given space and alternately stepping with either foot covers more ground than a man coasting over the same road on a bicycle answer I don't understand the question and I don't know which of you is A chess player asks is the night's gambit recognized now as a permissible opening in chess answer I don't play chess Reuben Boob asks for some time past I have been calling upon a young lady friend at her house evenings and going out with her to friends nights I should like to know if it would be all right to ask to take her alone with me to the theater answer certainly not this column is very strict about these things not alone not for a moment it is better taste to bring your father with you auction asks in playing bridge please tell me whether the third or the second player ought to discard from weakness on a long suit when trumps have been twice round answer certainly lady of society asks can you tell me whether the widow of a marquee is entitled to go into dinner before the eldest daughter of an Earl answer ha ha this is a thing we know something that we do know you put your foot in it when you asked us that we have lived this sort of thing too long ever to make any error the widow of a marquee whom you should by rights call but we overlook it you meant no harm is entitled in any hotel that we know or frequent to go into dinner whenever and as often as she likes on a dining car the rule is the other way Vassar girl asks what is the date of the birth of Karakala answer I couldn't say lexicographer asks can you tell me the proper way to spell dog answer certainly dog should be spelt properly and precisely dog when it is used in a sense to mean not a dog or one dog but two or more dogs in other words what we grammarians are accustomed to call the plural it is proper to add to it the diphthong s pronounced with a hiss like z in soup but for all these questions of spelling your best plan is to buy a copy of our standard dictionary published in ten volumes by this newspaper at forty dollars ignoramus asks can you tell me how to spell cat answer didn't you hear what we just said about how to spell dog by the dictionary care worn mother asks I am most anxious to find out the relation of the earth's diameter to its circumference can you or any of your readers ask me in it answer the earth's circumference is estimated to be three decimal one four one five nine of its diameter a fixed relation indicated by the greek letter pi if you like we will tell you what pi is shall we brink of suicide writes can you will you tell me what is the sanjak of novi bazar answer the sanjak of novi bazar is bounded on the north by its northern frontier cold and cheerless and covered during the winter with deep snow the east of the sanjak occupies a more easterly position here the sun rises at first slowly but gathering speed as it goes after having traversed the entire width of the whole sanjak the magnificent orb slowly and regretfully sinks into the west on the south where the soil is more fertile and where the land begins to be worth occupying the sanjak is or will be bounded by the british empire end of part 15 this is the libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org frenzied fiction by steven leacock part 16 simple stories of success or how to succeed in life let me begin with a sort of parable many years ago when I was on the staff of a great public school we engaged a new swimming master he was the most successful man in that capacity that we had had for years then one day it was discovered that he couldn't swim he was standing at the edge of the swimming tank explaining the breaststroke to the boys in the water once and fell in he was drowned or no, he wasn't drowned I remember he was rescued by some of the pupils whom he had taught to swim after he was resuscitated by the boys it was one of the things he had taught them the school dismissed him then some of the boys who were sorry for him taught him how to swim and he got a new job as a swimming master in another place but this time he was an utter failure he didn't swim well but they said he couldn't teach so his friends looked about to get him a new job this was just at the time when the bicycle craze came in they soon found the man a position as an instructor in bicycle riding as he had never been on a bicycle in his life he made an admirable teacher he stood fast on the ground and said now then all you need is confidence then one day he got afraid and went on a bicycle at the top of a slope to learn to ride it the bicycle ran away with him but for the skill and daring of one of his pupils who saw him and rode after him he would have been killed this story as the reader sees is endless suffice it to say that the man I speak of is now in an aviation school teaching people to fly they say he is one of the best principal factor in success is perseverance personally I think there is nothing in it if anything the truth lies the other way there is an old motto that runs if at first you don't succeed try try again this is nonsense it ought to read if at first you don't succeed quit quit at once if you can't do a thing more or less the first time while there is yet time let me illustrate this with a story I remember long years ago at a little school that I attended in the country we had a school master who used perpetually to write on the black board in a copper plate hand the motto that I have just quoted if at first you don't succeed try try again he wore plain clothes and had a hard determined face he was studying for some sort of preliminary medical examination and was saving money for a medical course every now and then he went away to the city and tried the examination and he always failed each time he came back he would write up on the black board try try again and always he looked grimmer and more determined than before the strange thing was that with all his industry and determination he would break out every now and then across roads and the school would be shut for two days then he came back more fiercely resolute than ever even children could see that the man's life was a fight it was like the battle between good and evil in Milton's epics well after he had tried it four times the school master at last passed the examination and he went away to the city in a suit of store clothes with eight hundred dollars he had a brother who was not a bit like himself but was a sort of ne'er-do-well always hard up and sponging on other people and never working and when the school master came to the city and his brother knew that he had eight hundred dollars he came to him and got him drinking and persuaded him to hand over the eight hundred dollars and to let him put it into the Louisiana State Lottery in those days the Louisiana and the use of the males and you could buy a ticket for anything from one dollar up the grand prize was two hundred thousand dollars and the seconds were a hundred thousand each so the brother persuaded the school master to put the money in he said he had a system for buying only the tickets with prime numbers that won't divide by anything and that it must win he said it was a mathematical certainty that the school master could have a back room of a saloon with a box of dominoes on the table to show the plan of it he told the school master that he himself would only take ten percent of what they made as a commission for showing the system and the school master could have the rest so in a mad moment the school master handed over his roll of money and that was the last he ever saw of it the next morning when he was up he came back to the school and he had no money to go forward so he stayed where he was in the little hotel where he had got drunk and went on drinking he looked so fierce and unkempt that in the hotel they were afraid of him and the bartenders watched him out of the corners of their eyes wondering what he would do because they knew that there was only one end possible and they waited for it to come and presently it came and he found him lying on the bed with his face grey as ashes and his eyes looking up at the ceiling he was stone dead life had beaten him and the strange thing was that the letter that the bartender carried up that morning was from the management of the Louisiana Lottery it contained a draft on New York signed by the treasurer of the state of Louisiana for two hundred thousand dollars the school master had won the grand prize the love story I am afraid is a little gloomy I put it down merely for the moral it contained and I became so absorbed in telling it that I almost forgot what the moral was that it was meant to convey but I think the idea is that if the school master had long before abandoned the study of medicine for which he was not fitted and gone in let us say for playing the banjo he might have become end man in a minstrel show yes that was it yes I suppose that anybody will admit that the peculiar quality that is called initiative the ability to act promptly on one's own judgment is a factor of the highest importance I have seen this illustrated two or three times in a very striking fashion I knew in Toronto it is long years ago a singularly bright young man whose name was Robinson he had had some training in the field business and when I knew him was on the lookout for an opening I met him one day in a great hurry with a valise in his hand where are you going I asked over to England he said there is a firm in Liverpool that have advertised that they want an agent here and I am going over to apply for the job can't you do it by letter I asked that is just it said Robinson with a chuckle in the letters I'll be the man on the spot and I'll get the job he was quite right he went over to Liverpool and was back in a fortnight with English clothes and a big salary but I cannot recommend his story to my friends in fact it should not be told too freely it is apt to be dangerous I remember once telling this story of Robinson he had lost three jobs in a bank and two in a broker's office but he knew his work and on paper he looked a good man I told him about Robinson to encourage him and the story made a great impression say that was a great scheme eh he kept repeating he had no command of words and always said the same thing over and over a few days later I met Tomlinson in the street with a valise in his hand where are you going? I asked I'm off to Mexico they're advertising for a Canadian teller for a bank in Tuscapulco I've sent my credentials down and I'm going to follow them right up in person in a thing like this the personal element is everything so Tomlinson went down to Mexico and he travelled by sea to Mexico City and then with a mule train to Tuscapulco but the males with his credentials went by land and got there two days ahead of him when Tomlinson got to Tuscapulco he went into the bank and he spoke to the junior manager and told him what he came for I'm awfully sorry the junior manager said I'm afraid that this post has just been filled then he went into an inner room to talk with the manager the tellership that you wanted a Canadian for he asked didn't you say that you have a man already? Yes said the manager he's a fellow from Toronto his name is Tomlinson I have his credentials here a first class man I've wired him to come right along at our expense and we'll keep the job open for him 10 days there's a young man outside said the junior who wants to apply for the job outside exclaimed the manager how did he get here came in on the mule train this morning says he can do the work and wants the job what's he like the manager the junior shook his head pretty dusty looking customer he said shifty looking same old story murmured the manager it's odd how these fellows drift down here isn't it up to something crooked at home I suppose understands the working of a bank I guess he understands it a little too well for my taste no no he continued tapping the papers that lay on the table now that we've got a first class man you can easily wait 10 days and the cost of the journey is nothing to the bank as compared with getting a man of Tomlinson's stamp and by the way you might telephone to the chief of police and get him to see to it that this loafer gets out of town straight off so the chief of police shut up Tomlinson in the Calaboose and then sent him down to Mexico City under a guard by the time the police were done with him he was dead broke and it took him 4 months to get back to Toronto where the place in Mexico had been filled long ago but I can imagine that some of my readers might suggest that I have hitherto been dealing only with success in a very limited way and that more interest would lie in discussing how the really great fortunes are made everybody feels an instinctive interest in knowing how our great captains of industry are financiers and railroad magnets made their money here the explanation is really a very simple one there is in fact only one way to amass a huge fortune in business or railway management one must begin at the bottom one must mount the ladder from the lowest rung but the slowest rung is everything any man who can stand upon it with his foot well poised his head erect his arms braced and his eye directed upward will inevitably mount to the top but after all I say this as a kind of afterthought vision why bother with success at all I have observed that the successful people get very little real enjoyment out of life in fact the contrary is true if I had to choose with an eye to having a really pleasant life between success and ruin I should prefer ruin every time I have several friends who are completely ruined some two or three times in a large way of course and I find that if I want to get as it ought to be and where hospitality is unhindered by mean thoughts of expense I can get it best at the house of a ruined man end of part 16 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org frenzied fiction by Stephen Leacock part 17 a local study of a universal topic note our readers are numerous readers who live in Equatorial Africa may read this under the title in Dry Timbuktu those who live in Central America will kindly call it in Dry to Hontepec it may have been for ought I know the change from a wet to a dry atmosphere I am told that biologically such things profoundly affect me I was on the train from Montreal to Toronto to fall asleep a peculiar wakefulness seemed to have seized upon me which appeared moreover to afflict the other passengers as well in the darkness of the car I could distinctly hear them groaning at intervals are they ill I asked through the curtains of the porter as he passed no sir he said they're not ill those is the Toronto passengers but that gentleman you may have heard singing in the smoking compartment he's booked through to Chicago but as is usual in such cases sleep came at last with unusual heaviness I seemed obliterated from the world till all of a sudden I found myself as it were up and dressed and seated in the observation car at the back of the train awaiting my arrival is this Toronto I asked of the Pullman conductor his finger and looked out I think so he said do we stop here I asked I think we do this morning he answered I think I heard the conductor say that they have a lot of milk cans to put off here this morning I'll just go and find out sir stop here broke in an arrestable looking gentleman in a gray tweed suit who was sitting in the next chair to mine do they stop here I should say they did indeed don't you know that any train is compelled to stop here there's a bylaw a municipal bylaw of the city of Toronto compelling every train to stop I didn't know it said the conductor humbly do you mean to say continued the arrestable gentleman that you have never read the bylaws of the city of Toronto no sir said the conductor the ignorance of these fellows said the man in gray tweed swinging his chair round again towards me we ought to have a bylaw to compel them to read the bylaws I must start an agitation for it at once here he took out a little red notebook and wrote something in it murmuring we need a new agitation anyway presently he shut the book up with a snap I noticed that there was a sort of peculiar alacrity in everything he did you sir he said have of course read our municipal bylaws oh yes I answered splendid aren't they they read like a romance you are most flattering to our city said the arrestable gentleman with a bow yet you sir I take it are not from Toronto no I answered as humbly as I could I'm from Montreal ah said the gentleman as he sat back and took a thorough look at me from Montreal are you drunk no I replied I don't think so but you are suffering for a drink said my new acquaintance eagerly you need it eh you feel already a kind of craving eh what no I answered the fact is it's rather early in the morning quite so broken the arrestable gentleman but I understand that in Montreal all the saloons are open at seven and even at that hour are crowded sir crowded I shook my head I think that has been exaggerated I said in fact we always try to avoid crowding and jostling as far as possible it is generally understood as a matter of politeness I went into the clergy the board of trade in the heads of the universities is it conceivable said the gentleman in grey one moment please till I make a note all clergy I think you said all did you not drunk at seven in the morning deplorable but here we are at the union station comodious is it not justly admired in fact all over the known world observe he continued as we alighted from the train and made our way into the station and then we went downstairs connected by flights of stairs quite unique and most convenient if you don't meet your friends downstairs all you have to do is to look upstairs if they are not there you simply come down again but stop you are going to walk up the street I'll go with you at the outer door of the station just as I had remembered it stood a group of hotel bus men and porters but how changed they were like men blasted by a great sorrow one with his back turned buried on his arm Prince George Hotel he groaned at intervals Prince George Hotel another was bending over a little handrail his head sunk his arms almost trailing to the ground King Edward he sobbed King Edward a third seated on a stool looked feebly up with tears visible in his eyes Walker House he moaned first class accommodation for take this handbag I said to one of the men to the Prince George the man ceased his groaning for a moment and turned to me with something like passion why do you come to us he protested why not go to one of the others go to him he added as he stirred with his foot a miserable being who lay huddled on the ground and murmured at intervals Queens Queens Hotel but my new friend who stood at my elbow you know the by-law take it or I'll call a policeman you know me my name's Narrowpath I'm on the council the man touched his hat and took the bag with a murmured apology come along said my companion who might now perceived to be a person of dignity and civic importance I'll walk up with you and show you the city as we go we had hardly got well upon the street before I realized the enormous change that total prohibition had effected everywhere were the bright smiling faces and singing at their tasks and early though it was cracking jokes and asking one another riddles as they worked I noticed one man evidently a city employee in a rough white suit busily cleaning the street with a broom and singing to himself how does the little busy bee improve the shining hour another employee who was handling a little hose was singing little drops of water little grains of sand little visions grand why do they sing I asked are they crazy sing said Mr. Narrowpath they can't help it they haven't had a drink of whiskey for four months a coal cart went by with a driver no longer grimy and smudged but neatly dressed with a high white collar and a white soaked tie my companion pointed at him as he passed hasn't had a glass of beer for four months he said noticed the difference that man's work is now a pleasure to him he used to spend all his evenings sitting around in the back parlors of the saloons beside the stove now what do you think he does I have no idea loads up his cart with coal and goes for a drive out in the country ah sir you who lives still under the curse of the whiskey traffic little know what a pleasure work itself becomes when drinking all that goes with it is eliminated do you see that man on the other side of the street with a tool bag yes I said a plumber is he not exactly a plumber used to drink heavily couldn't keep a job more than a week now you can't drag him from his work came to my house to fix a pipe under the kitchen sink wouldn't quit at six o'clock got in under the sink and begged to be allowed to stay said he hated to go home we had to drag him out with a rope but here we are at your hotel we entered but how changed the place seemed our feet echoed on the flagstones of the clerk silent melancholy reading the Bible he put a marker in the book and closed it murmuring Leviticus 2 then he turned to us can I have a room I asked on the first floor a cheer welled up into the clerk's eye you can have the whole first floor he said and he added with a half sob and the second two if you like I could not help contrasting his manner with what it was in the old days when the mere mention of a room to a fit of passion and when he used to tell me that I could have a cot on the roof till Tuesday and after that perhaps a bed in the stable things had changed indeed can I get breakfast in the grill room I inquired of the melancholy clerk he shook his head sadly there is no grill room he answered what would you like oh some sort of eggs I said the clerk reached down below his desk and handed me a hard boiled egg with the shell off at the end of the desk he sat back in his chair and went on reading you don't understand said Mr. Narrowpath who still stood at my elbow all that elaborate grill room breakfast business was just a mere relic of the drinking days sheer waste of time and loss of efficiency go on and eat your egg eating it now don't you feel efficient what more do you want comfort you say my dear sir more men have been ruined by the drug that ever undermined the human race but here drink your water now you're ready to go and do your business if you have any but I protested it's still only half past seven in the morning no offices will be open open exclaimed Mr. Narrowpath why they all open at daybreak now I had it is true a certain amount of business before me though of no very intricate or elaborate kind a few simple arrangements with the head of a publishing house yet in the old and unregenerate days it used to take all day to do it the wicked thing that we used to call a comfortable breakfast in the hotel grill room somehow carried one on to about ten o'clock in the morning breakfast brought with it the need of a cigar for digestion's sake and with that for very restfulness a certain perusal of the Toronto Globe properly corrected and rectified by a look through the Toronto Mail after that it had been my practice to stroll along to my publisher's office at about eleven thirty transact my business over a cigar with the genial gentleman at the head of it and then accept his invitation to launch with the feeling that a man who has put in a hard and strenuous morning's work is entitled to a few hours of relaxation I am inclined to think that in those reprehensible bygone times many other people did their business in this same way I don't think I said to Mr. Narrowpath musingly he's a comfortable sort of man nonsense said Mr. Narrowpath not at work at half past seven in Toronto the things absurd where is the office Richmond Street come along I'll go with you I've always a great liking for attending to other people's business I see you have I said it's our way here said Mr. Narrowpath with a wave of his hand every man's business as we see it Mr. Narrowpath was right my publisher's office as we entered it seemed a changed place activity and efficiency were stamped all over it my good friend the publisher was not only there but there with his coat off in ordinarily busy balling orders evidently meant for a printing room through a speaking tube yes he was shouting put whiskey and black letter capitals old English double size set it up to look attractive in Toronto and long clear type underneath excuse me he said as he broke off for a moment we have a lot of stuff going through the press this morning big distillery catalog that we are rushing through we're doing all we can Mr. Narrowpath he continued speaking with the deference due to a member of the city council to boom Toronto as a whiskey center quite right quite right said my companion rubbing his hands and now professor added the publisher speaking with rapidity your contact is all here keep you more than a moment write your name here Ms. Sniggins will you please witness this so help you God how's everything in Montreal good morning pretty quick wasn't it said Mr. Narrowpath as we stood in the street again wonderful I said feeling almost dazed why I should be able to catch the morning train back to Montreal precisely just what everybody finds business done in no time man who used to spend whole days here clear out now in 15 minutes he has so increased under our new regime that he says he wouldn't spend more than five minutes in Toronto if he were paid to but what is this I asked as we were brought to a pause in our walk at a street crossing by a great block of vehicles what are all these drays surely those look like barrels of whiskey so they are said Mr. Narrowpath proudly export whiskey fine sight isn't it must be what 20 25 loads of it this place sir mark my words I am not a person of energy and enterprise one of the greatest seats of the distillery business in fact the whiskey capital of the north but I thought I interrupted much puzzled that whiskey was prohibited here since last September export whiskey export my dear sir corrected Mr. Narrowpath we don't interfere we have never so far as I know proposed to interfere with any man's right to make an export whiskey that sir is a plain matter of business morality doesn't enter into it I see I answered but will you please tell me what is the meaning of this other crowd of drays coming in the opposite direction surely those are beer barrels are they not in a sense they are admitted Mr. Narrowpath that is they are import beer it comes in from some other province it was I imagine made in this city our breweries sir are second to none but the sin of selling it here Mr. Narrowpath raised his hat from his head and stood for a moment in a reverential attitude rests on the heads of others the press of vehicles had now thinned out and we moved on my guide still explaining in some detail the distinction between business principles and moral principles between whiskey as a curse and whiskey as a source of profit which I found myself unable to comprehend at length I ventured to interrupt yet it seems almost a pity I said that with all this beer I found an unregenerate sinner like myself should be prohibited from getting a drink a drink exclaimed Mr. Narrowpath well I should say so come right in here you can have anything you want we stepped through a street door into a large long room why exclaimed in surprise this is a bar nonsense said my friend the bar in this province is forbidden we've done with the foul thing forever this is an import shipping companies delivery office but this long counter it's not a counter it's a desk and that bartender in his white jacket he's not a bartender he's an import goods delivery clerk well you have gentlemen said the import clerk polishing a glass as he spoke two whiskey and sodas said my friend long ones the import clerk mixed the drinks and set them on the desk I was about to take one but he interrupted the desk telephone that stood beside him and I heard him calling up Montreal hello Montreal is that Montreal well say I've just received an offer here for two whiskey and sodas at sixty cents shall I close with it all right gentlemen Montreal has affected the sale there you are dreadful isn't it said Mr. Narrowpath the sunken depraved condition of your city of Montreal actually selling whiskey deplorable Mr. Narrowpath I said would you mind telling me something I fear I am a little confused after what I have seen here as to what your new legislation has been you have not then I understand prohibited the making of whiskey oh no we see no harm in that nor the sale of it certainly not said Mr. Narrowpath not have sold properly nor the drinking of it oh no that least of all we attach no harm whatever would you tell me then I asked since you have not forbidden the making nor the selling nor the buying nor the drinking of whiskey just what is it that you have prohibited what is the difference between Montreal and Toronto Mr. Narrowpath put down his glass on the desk in front of him he gazed at me with open mouth astonishment Toronto he guessed Montreal and Toronto the difference between Montreal I stood waiting for him to explain but as I did so I seemed to become aware that a voice not Mr. Narrowpath but a voice close at my ear was repeating Toronto Toronto Toronto I sat up with a start still in my birth in the Pullman car with the voice of the porter calling through the curtains Toronto Toronto so it had only been a dream I pulled up the blind and looked out of the window spread out at its feet it looked quite unchanged just the same pleasant old place as cheerful as self conceited as kindly as hospitable as quarrelsome as wholesome as moral and as loyal and as disagreeable as it always was porter I said is it true that there is prohibition here now the porter shook his head I ain't heard of it he said end of part 17 this is a LibriVox recording they're in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock part 18 Merry Christmas my dear young friend said father time as he laid his hand gently upon my shoulder you are entirely wrong then I looked up over my shoulder from the table at which I was sitting but I had known or felt for at least the last half hour that he was standing somewhere near me you have had I do not doubt good reader more than once that strange uncanny feeling that there is someone unseen standing beside you in a darkened room let us say with a dying fire when the night has grown late and the October wind sounds low outside and when through the thin curtain that we call reality the unseen world starts for a moment in my dreaming sense you have had it yes I know you have never mind telling me about it stop I don't want to hear about that strange presentiment you had the nitrant Eliza broker leg don't let's bother with your experience I want to tell mine you are quite mistaken my dear young friend repeated father time quite wrong young friend I said my mind as one's mind is apt to in such a case your pardon he answered gently he had a gentle way with him had father time the fault is in my failing eyes I took you at first sight for something under a hundred under a hundred I expostulated well I should think so your pardon again said time the fault is in my failing memory I forgot I heard him breathe the wistful hollow sigh very ancient and dim he seemed as he stood beside me but I did not turn to look upon him I had no need to I knew his form in the inner and clearer side of things as well as every human being knows by innate instinct the unseen face and form of father time I could hear him murmuring beside me short short your life is short till the sound of it seemed to mingle I heard ticking of a clock somewhere in the silent house then I remembered what he had said how do you know that I am wrong I asked then how can you tell what I was thinking you said it out loud answered father time but it wouldn't have mattered anyway you said that Christmas was all played out and done with yes I admitted that's what I said and what makes you think that he questioned stooping so it seemed to me yes I've been sitting here for hours sitting till goodness only knows how far into the night trying to think out something to write for a Christmas story and it won't go it can't be done not in these awful days a Christmas story yes you see father time I explained glad with a foolish little vanity of my trade to be able to tell him something that I thought enlightening all the Christmas stuff I thought it would have surprised him but I was mistaken dear me he said not till October what a rush how well I remember in ancient Egypt as I think you call it seeing them getting out their Christmas things all cut and hieroglyphics always two or three years ahead two or three years I exclaimed said time that was nothing why in Babylon they used to get their Christmas jokes ready but the public preferred them so Egypt I said Babylon but surely father time there was no Christmas in those days I thought my dear boy he interrupted gravely don't you know that there has always been Christmas I was silent father time had moved across the room and stood beside the fireplace leaning on the mantle piece the little wreaths of smoke from the fading fire seemed to mingle with his shadowy outline what is it that is wrong with Christmas why I answered all the romance the joy the beauty of it has gone crushed and killed by the greed of commerce and the horrors of war I am not as you thought I was a hundred years old but I can conjure up as anybody can a picture of Christmas in the good old days of a hundred years ago the quaint old fashioned houses standing deep among the evergreens with the light twinkling from the windows on the snow the fire roaring on the hearth the merry guests grouped about its blaze and the little children with their eyes dancing in the Christmas firelight waiting for father Christmas in his fine mummery of red and white and cotton wool to hand the presents from the yuletide tree I can see it I added as if it were yesterday it was but yesterday said father time and his voice seemed to soften with the memory of bygone years I remember it well that was Christmas indeed give me back such days as those with the good old cheer the old stage coaches and the gabled inns and the warm red wine the snap dragon and the Christmas tree and I'll believe again in Christmas yes and father Christmas himself believe in him said time quietly you may well do that he happens to be standing outside in the street at this moment outside I exclaimed I said father time he's frightened and he dare not come in unless you ask him may I call him in I signified a scent and father time went to the window for a moment and beckoned into the darkened street then I heard footsteps clumsy and hesitant they seemed upon the stairs and in a moment a figure stood framed in the doorway the figure of father Christmas he stood shuffling his feet a timid apologetic look upon his face and in my mind's eye from childhood up the face in form of father Christmas as well as that of old time himself everybody knows or once knew him a jolly little rounded man with a great muffler wound about him a packet of toys upon his back and with such merry twinkling eyes and rosy cheeks as are only given by the touch of the driving snow and the rude fun of the north wind while there was once a time he would run running warm to the heart but now how changed all draggled with the mud and rain he stood as if no house had sheltered him these three years past his old red jersey was tattered in a dozen places his muffler frayed and rambled the bundle of toys that he dragged with him in a net seemed wet and worn till the cardboard boxes gaped asunder there were boxes among them I vowed that he must have been carrying but most of all I noted the change that had come over the face of father Christmas the old brave look of cheery confidence was gone the smile that had beamed responsive to the laughing eyes of countless children around unnumbered Christmas trees was there no more and in the place of it there showed a look of timid apology of apprehensiveness as of one who has asked in vain the warmth and shelter of a human home such a look is the harsh cruelty of the world has stamped upon the faces of its outcasts so stood father Christmas shuffling upon the threshold fumbling his poor tattered hat in his hand shall I come in he said his eyes appealingly on father time come said time he turned to speak to me your room is dark turn up the lights he's used to light bright light and plenty of it the dark has frightened him and finally the tattered figure before us father Christmas advanced the timid step across the floor then he paused as if in sudden fear is this floor mined he said no no said time soothingly and to me he added in a murmured whisper he's afraid he was blown up in a mine in no man's land between the trenches at Christmas time in 1914 it broke his nerve may I put my toys on that machine gun asked father Christmas timidly it will help to keep them dry it is not a machine gun said time gently see it is only a pile of books upon the sofa and to me he whispered they turned a machine gun on him in the streets of Warsaw he thinks he sees them everywhere since then it's all right father Christmas I said speaking as cheerily as I could while I rose and stirred the fire into a blaze there are no machine guns here and there are no mines I said I said father Christmas lowering his tattered hat still further and attempting something of a humble bow a writer are you Hans Anderson perhaps not quite I answered but a great writer I do not doubt said the old man with a humble courtesy that he had learned it well maybe centuries ago in the yuletide season of his northern home the world owes much to its great books I carry some of the greatest with me always he began fumbling among the limp and tattered packages that he carried look the house that Jack built a marvelous deep thing sir and this the babes in the wood will you take it sir a poor present but a present still not so long ago I gave them in thousands every Christmas time none seem to want them now he looked appealingly towards father time as the week may look towards the strong for help and guidance he repeated and I could see the tears start in his eyes why is it so has the world forgotten its sympathy with the lost children wandering in the wood all the world I heard time murmur with a sigh is wandering in the wood but out loud he spoke to father Christmas and cheery admonition tut tut good Christmas he said you must cheer up here sit in this chair the biggest one so beside the fire he turned to a blaze more wood that's better and listen good old friend to the wind outside almost a Christmas wind is it not merry and boisterous enough for all the evil times it stirs among old Christmas seated himself beside the fire his hands outstretched towards the flames something of his old time cheeriness seemed to flicker across his features as he warmed himself at the blaze that's better he murmured of old I never felt it so no matter what the wind the world seemed warm about me why is it not so now you see said time speaking low in a whisper from my ear alone how sunken broken he is will you not help gladly I answered if I can all can said father time every one of us meantime Christmas had turned towards me a questioning I in which however there seemed to revive some little have you perhaps he asked half timidly schnapps schnapps I repeated eh schnapps a glass of it to drink your health might warm my heart again I think ah I said something to drink his one failing whispered time if it is one forgive it him he was used to it for centuries give it him if you have it I keep a little in the house I said reluctantly perhaps in case of illness tuts tuts and father time as something as near as could be to a smile passed over his shadowy face in case of illness they used to say that an ancient Babylon here let me pour it for him drink father Christmas drink marvelous it was to see the old man smack his lips as he drank his glass of liquor neat after the fashion of old Norway marvelous too to see the way in which with the warmth of the fire and the generous blow of the spirits his face changed and brightened till the old time cheerfulness beamed again upon it he looked about him as it were with a new and growing interest a pleasant room he said and what better sir than the wind without an a brave fire within then his eye fell upon the mantel piece where lay among the litter of books and pipes a little toy horse ah ha said father Christmas almost gaily one I answered the sweetest boy in all the world I'll be bound he is said father Christmas and he broke now into a merry laugh that did one's heart good to hear they all are lord bless me the number that I have seen and each and every one and quite right too the sweetest child in all the world and how old do you say two and a half all but two months except a week the very sweetest age of all the old man broke again into such jolly chuckling of laughter that his snow white locks shook upon his head but stop a bit he added this horse is broken tut tut a hind leg nearly off this won't do he had the toy in his lap in a moment mending it it was wonderful to see for all his age how deft his fingers were time he said and it was amusing to note that his voice had assumed almost an authoritative tone that's right here hold your finger across the knot there now then a bit of beeswax what no beeswax how ill supplied your houses are today how can you mend toys sir without beeswax still it will stand up now I tried to murmur my best thanks but father Christmas waved my gratitude aside nonsense he said that's nothing that's my life I would like a book too I have them here in the packet here sir jack and the beanstalk most profound thing I read it to myself often still how damp it is praise sir will you let me dry my books before your fire only too willingly I said how wet and torn they are father Christmas had risen from his chair and was fumbling among his tattered packages taking from them his children's books all limp and draggled born he murmured and his voice sank again into sadness I have carried them these three years past look these were for little children in Belgium and in Serbia can I get them to them thank you time gently shook his head a presently perhaps said father Christmas if I dry and mend them look some of them were inscribed already this one see you was written with father's love why has it never come to him on the page he stood bowed over his little books his hands trembling as he turned to the pages then he looked up the old fear upon his face again that sound he said listen it is guns I hear them no no I said it is nothing only a car passing in the street below listen he said hear that again voices crying no no I answered not voices only the night wind among the trees my children's voices he exclaimed I hear them everywhere they come to me in every wind and I see them as I wander in the night and storm my children torn and dying in the trenches beaten into the ground I hear them crying from the hospitals each one to me still as I knew him once a little child time time he cried reaching out his arms in appeal give me back my children they do not die in vain time murmured gently only moaned in answer give me back my children then he sank down upon his pile of books and toys his head buried in his arms you see said time his heart is breaking and will you not help him if you can only too gladly I replied but what is there to do this said father time listen he stood before me grave and solemn a shadowy figure but half seen though he was close beside me through the curtained windows there came already the first dim brightening of dawn the world that once you knew said father time seems broken and destroyed about you you must not let them know the children the cruelty and the horror and the hate that racks the world today keep it from them someday he will know here time pointed to the prostrate form of father Christmas that his children for all to live in a world where countless happy children shall hold bright their memory forever but for the children of today save and spare them all you can from the evil hate and horror of the war later they will know and understand not yet give them back their merry Christmas and its kind thoughts and its Christmas charity till later on there shall be with it again peace upon earth goodwill towards men his voice ceased it seemed to vanish as it were in the wind I looked up father time and Christmas had vanished from the room the fire was low and the day was breaking visibly outside let us begin I murmured I will mend this broken horse end of part 18 end of frenzied fiction by Stephen Lee cock