 Chapter 7 The Progress of Human Knowledge The restoration of whiskers, a neglected factor in the decline of knowledge. There comes a time in the life of Western civilization, when it is the duty of every well-wisher of the world, to speak out what is in his mind. Such a time is now. The growth of the clean-shaving habit in this epoch is becoming everywhere a serious national menace. The loss of dignity and prestige, the decline of respect towards the aged, the notable change in the character and caliber of our legislators, college presidents, and ministers of the gospel, is and are assuming proportions which urgently demand concerted national action. The writer of this article stood recently upon the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street in New York. That is to say, I stood there myself. Let there be no concealment in this thing. Stood there and counted the clean-shaven men who passed and the men with whiskers. Out of the first half million counted, only 4.19 men per cent had whiskers. The man that I counted as .19 had just a little fringe of fluff, so to speak, on his cheeks. It was hard to class him, so I called him .19. The same calculation may be made with the same results in any of the great eastern cities. It is not till one passes a line drawn through Fargo, Omaha, and Galveston that whiskers reach 15 per cent. And this 15 per cent line is moving westward. Ten years ago it was at Decatur, Illinois. It is not there now. In another ten years the line will have reached the Rocky Mountains. In twenty years the entire nation will be clean-shaven. The moment to act is now. It is time for the people to pause and realize what whiskers have meant to human civilization. We turn to the records of history. Adam. He had a dark brown beard slightly pointed. Noah. He had a long white beard that reached his waist. Then Noah, clean-shaven, and with his eyebrows darkened with black dye, and with little beady eyes looking down under a straw hat. You can't? Of course not, and yet that man saved our whole race. Nestor and Aristotle had white beards. Socrates whiskers covered so much of his face that you could hardly see him through them. Caesar had a rough red beard. The Vikings had long-sighted moustaches. So had Buffalo Bill and Charles II and Bret Hart. Grant and Lee wore beards. But these great precedents are being disregarded. All the dignitaries and leaders of today are fashioning themselves into the likeness of schoolboys. Take the typical case of the college president. A generation ago the college president had a flowing white beard. It was part of his equipment. I remember well the venerable gentleman who was the head of the university when I received my degree thirty-something years ago. I shall always recall the profound respect that the students felt towards him. Yet it was not what the man said, it was the way in which he laid his no white whiskers on his reading desk. This lent profundity to all his thought. It was, I think, in the year 1892 that the president of a Western college shaved off his whiskers and threw them in the Mississippi. The fatal idea spread. President after president was tempted by it. Then, at this very juncture, the invention of the safety razor, removing all danger to human life from the process of shaving, brought a clean shave within the reach even of the most cautious. The president of the modern college and his senior professors are not to be distinguished from their first-year students. Remove the whiskers and you remove the man. The whole stature and appearance of him shrink. His shoulders contract. His frame diminishes. His little bowler hat swallows and envelops his trivial spulk. The loss of scholarship is irreparable. Is it any wonder that Greek is dead, that Latin is dying, and that the old-time learning of the colleges gives place to a mere mechanical routine? But most deplorable of all is the damage that is being done to imaginative literature. Here, for example, are a few quotations selected, quite at random, from the great literature of the past to show the close interdependence of personality and whiskers. The duke remains seated in deep thought, passing his luxuriant beard slowly through his fingers. Weed up. Imagine what an impressive thing that must have been. The duke could take his beard and let it trickle slowly through his fingers, like rippling silk. No wonder that the duke could think when he could do that. But all that can remain of that sort of passage in the books of today would run. The duke remained seated in deep thought, passing his fingers aimlessly through the air, a foot from his face, as if seeking a groping for something that he could not find. Here again is a selection from the poet Gray's magnificent description of a Welsh bard. All loose his hoary hair, his beard a-streamed, like a meteor to the troubled wind. Gray, the bard. The splendid picture, the bard standing in the wind, with the sparks flying from his whiskers in all direction, is gone. Or again, take Longfellow, the opening lines of Evangeline. This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks stand like druids of old, with beards that rest on their bosoms. What a pity to have to change this to read. This is the forest primeval, the round smooth dronk of the gumtree, looks like a college professor divested entirely of whiskers. In place of these noble pictures of the past, we have nothing but the smooth, shaven hero of modern fiction, with his soupy-looking face, hardly to be distinguished from a girl's. He may be seen on the cover of any of our monthly magazines. What can he do? He can press his clean shaven face close, close to hers. One admits, of course, that he has a certain advantage here, if he had whiskers he couldn't get nearly as close to her. But can he let his beard a-streamed, like a meteor to the wind, with sparks of phosphorus flying off of it in all directions? Can he pass his beard through his hand? No. Can he stand like a druid of old? He can't. As yet, happily, there are certain domains of our national life to which the prevailing degeneracy has not penetrated. The stage, the moving picture, and the grand opera still hold their own. The stage villain still has his black beard. The southern colonel still retains his mustaceos. The scholar, the wise man, and the magician of the moving picture keeps his black skull cap and his long white beard. The Wagnerian opera is as hearsuit as ever, and those who have been privileged to see the pretty little operetta that Reginald Lecoven left behind him will have been pleased to note that Ripman Winkle has a beard, like an Ostermore mattress, reaching to his ears. But can the stage stand alone? It cannot. Something must be done. Fortunately for our civilization, the best section of the public is already becoming alarmed. An effort is being made. A number of big, warm-hearted men and a quantity of great, big, warm-hearted women are banding themselves together. This is a good sign. Whenever they do this, and it is what they always do, one feels that as soon as a sufficient number are all banded together, something will be done. As far as the United States is concerned, to my mind, there is only one possible remedy, an amendment to the Constitution. Something, of course, might be done with magic lantern slides or with moving pictures, or by taking up subscriptions, but these things demand money and time. Amending the Constitution does not. Experience is showing that it is a very, very simple thing, demanding only a little good will and forbearance as to what amendment gets through first. It is only fair that certain amendments now under discussion should have precedence. The proposal set up from Kansas for amending the Constitution so as to improve the breed of steers in the West, and the Illinois amendment for shortening the distance between Chicago and the sea are both admirable. But when these are carried, an amendment in regard to the restoration of whiskers should be the earliest of our national cares. Individual freedom has its limits. It is not true that a man's whiskers are his own. It is not true that he has the right to remove them. John Stuart Mill thought so, but Mill was wrong. Every individual is but a part of society, and if his station is such that a flowing white beard is demanded by it, his duty is obvious. No one would wish to carry too far the supremacy of the state. But a constitutional provision of a temperate character imposing compulsory white beards on college presidents, ministers, poets, ambassadors, and grand opera singers would take rank at once as equal and common sense in general utility with some of the most notable amendments to the Constitution of this country. Then and now the college news of 40 years ago and the college news of today. Medicals take a night off, as reported 40 years ago. Last night the students of the medical faculty took a night off and held their annual parade of the town. Forming up on the campus outside the windows of the dissecting room, the meds moved in a compact body down College Avenue. Policemen and McConaughey who tried to stop them at the corner of Main Street was knocked senseless and was deposited by two of the boys down the cold chute of the First National Bank. After upsetting a horse car, the driver of which sustained certain injuries by inadvertently falling under the horse, the boys proceeded to the corner of Main and First Streets where speeches were made exalting the progress of the medical school and where two more policemen were knocked senseless. The procession moved up town again towards the president's residence, carrying with it the front door of the First Baptist Church. After setting fire to the president's house, the students adjourned to the campus where they started a bonfire, in which unfortunately one or two bystanders were accidentally burned about the feet, hands, head, and body. The arrival of a body of mounted police supported by a couple of squadrons of cavalry brought the evening to a close. President Foybal, on being interviewed this morning, stated that the damages to his house were quite insignificant, amounting to little more than the destruction of his furniture. The police, who were unfortunately injured in their attempt to interfere with the students, are reported as doing nicely. The driver of the streetcar will be at work again in a week, and a cheerful tone pervades the whole college. The president further stated that the relations between the students and the town had never been better. Medicals take a night off as reported today. Last night the students at the medical faculty took a night off from their arduous labors, and were the guests of the ladies reception committee at the YWCA building on Third Street. After the singing of a few of the better-known medical hymns, and after being treated to a harmonium solo and B-flat by the organist of the insane asylum, the students listened with evident enjoyment to a talk by the reverend Mr. Week of the first Baptist Church on the subject, Where is hell is it here? After the pastor had said everything that could be said on this interesting topic, each student was given a dish of ice cream and a donut. The president of the college, and thanking the ladies of the YWCA for their cordial reception, said that he was sure the students would now return to their studies with renewed eagerness. After singing Rock Me to Sleep Mother, the gathering broke up at 9.30. Philosophical Society meets as it was used to 40 years ago. Last night the Philosophical Society held the third of its bi-weekly beer parties at the supper room of the men's residence. After the reading of the minutes coupled with the drinking of beer followed by the usual routine of drinking the health of the outgoing officers of the week, and the toast of welcome to the officers of the week following, the chairman invited the members to fill their glasses and listen, if they cared too, to a paper by Mr. Easy on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Mr. Easy, while expressing his regret that he had not had time to prepare a paper on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, delivered in place of it an excellent rendition of Brett Hart's Even Chinese. At the close of the recitation, the chairman announced that the debate, which had been announced on the topic on mathematical judgments synthetically a priori, had been abandoned owing to the fact that the topic involved more preparation than the members of the society were prepared to give to it. He suggested instead that the society, after filling its glasses, should invite Mr. Freak of the senior class to give his imitation of the two cats quarreling on a roof. The invitation was followed by similar exercises and the meeting was sustained to a late hour, those of the members who went home leaving at about 2 a.m. Philosophical Society meets as it does today. Last night, a very pleasing meeting of the Philosophical Society was held in the parlor of the women's residence in the Martha Washington building. Professor Strong, in opening the meeting, said that she was glad to see among the members of the society a very creditable number of men. If she might use the phrase, she said no professor could feel that her work was satisfactory unless she could attract a certain number of men students. The professor then read her paper on the sociological elimination of the delinquent. As the paper only lasted an hour and a half, it was listened to in a luxury of enjoyment. The professor, then having thrown the meeting open to questions, and a question having been asked, she very kindly spoke for another hour. At the close of the address, a vote was taken on the resolution that the humbler classes of society ought to be chloroformed and was carried unanimously. Discipline Committee reports, as it reported, 40 years ago. The report is published this morning of the semi-annual meeting of the Discipline Committee of the Faculty of the College. This committee, consisting of the senior professors of the faculty, was established, as readers will recall, about two years ago, with the object of elevating the moral tone of the student body by expulsion, fines, and the application of the criminal law. The chairman reported that the committee had every reason to be gratified with the progress made during the period of its existence. The number of cases of suspension of students from lectures had increased under the operation of the committee by 40%. Students warned by 60%. Students found guilty of drunkenness by 70%. And students expelled for unbecoming and insubordinate conduct, 95%. The report enumerates a new schedule of fines calculating to raise still higher the discipline of the institution and recommends hereafter that every student guilty of striking or kicking a professor be brought before the committee and warned. The committee adds a further recommendation to the effect that measures be taken to let the student body understand that their presence at the university can only be tolerated within reasonable limits. Student control committee reports as it reports today. The report is published this morning of the semiannual meeting of the students control committee at the university. This committee, as readers will recall, was established about two years ago with a view to raising the academic standard of the college. It is empowered not only to institute inquiries as to the capacity of the professors, but to recommend the expulsion of those of them who seemed to the students committee to be lacking in personality or deficient in PEP. The opening pages of the report deal with the case of the president of the college. A subcommittee appointed from among the fourth year students in accountancy have been sitting on the case of the president for six weeks. Their report is in the main favorable and their decision is that he may stay. But the subcommittee passed severe strictures on his home life and recommend that he has too many children for him to be able to give full attention to his college work and suggest a change in the future. The committee accepts and adopts the recommendation of the second year class in philosophy who report that the professors lectures are over their heads and ask for his dismissal. A similar request comes from the third year students in mathematics who report that the professors lectures are below their standards. The committee has received and laid upon the table the report of the fourth year class in commerce to the effect that they have thus far failed to understand any of the lectures that were ever given them and ask that they be given their degrees and let go. The committee acknowledges in its report the gratifying statement made by the chairman of the trustees in his annual report to the effect that student control marks another milestone on the arduous path that is leading the college to its ultimate end. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of the Garden of Folly by Stephen Leacock this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8 Little Glimpses of the Future in America The final solution of the transportation problem and extract from the New York Daily Press of 1930 Resumption of the mail coach service. We are happy to announce to our readers that the mail coach service between New York City and Philadelphia, which has been temporarily suspended since 1840, is to be resumed this week. By a fortunate chance, the well-known and highly popular coach, the Martin Van Buren, has been discovered still in her yard where she was placed when she was set aside pending the experimental use of the railway which has proved such a costly failure. Under the new arrangement, passengers booked for Philadelphia are guaranteed of departure and arrival at the hour specified. Subject only to the hazards of the weather, the Martin Van Buren will leave her place of departure, the Andrew Jackson Hostelry, corner of Wall Street and the Albany Post Road at or about daybreak on the morning of every Monday. This commodious coach has accommodation for 10 inside and 10 outside passengers. There is ample accommodation in the boot for all parcels and personal luggage. Passengers, desirous of putting luggage in the boot, however, are requested to come to the booking office three days in advance to effect the necessary signature of vouchers and to take the necessary oaths of allegiance and citizenship. In order to avoid the present delays in the operation of the tunnel traffic, the Van Buren will be taken across the river on a barge. Passengers may keep their seat during the transit or for a small extra fee may be carried across if the wind serves in a hoi. The Van Buren will proceed at full speed across New Jersey. Absolutely no stops will be made except for the change of horses for meals and for the night. When the moon serves, the Van Buren will continue her journey still at full speed until 9 p.m. She will arrive in Philadelphia barring being struck by lightning on the afternoon of the third day out of New York. The greatest satisfaction is expressed everywhere in business circles over the prospect of the speed and certainty offered by the new service. A peculiar and pathetic interest attaches to the fact that the four horses which drew the Van Buren on her last trip out of New York are all dead. Other similar ones, however, have been secured from the handsome cab service of Fifth Avenue. Many of those who have seen the new team declare that it is hard to believe that they are not the original horses. Two. Form of application to be used in the not very far future in trying to secure a hotel room. One. Letter from the applicant. The management. The Socus Hotel. New York, dear sirs. I beg to apply for a room to be available for my use one month from the present date and usable for one day. I am a young man of good habits, a Presbyterian, a graduate of Harvard and a non-smoker. If you will see fit, sirs, to trust me with a room, I shall do my utmost to occupy it in a way entirely to your satisfaction. My testimonials are enclosed herewith. Very faithfully, Edward Eat Anything. Two. Testimonial from the President of Harvard. The management. The Socus Hotel. New York, dear sirs. This is to certify that Mr. Edward Eat Anything attended the undergraduate course at Harvard for a number of years and obtained the baccalaureate degree in arts. His course included English literature courses one, two, and six, mathematics four and five, and Latin six and eight. I consider him in every way fitted to occupy your room. Very faithfully, blank, President Harvard University. Three. From the pastor of the Broad Street Second Baptist Church. The management. The Socus Hotel. New York, dear sirs. My young friend, Mr. Edward Eat Anything, informs me that he is an applicant for a position as a rumor under your management. He was, for over four years, a member of my congregation, and I have great pleasure in testifying that the level of his spiritual life is so high that you can with safety place him even on the top floor of your hotel. Very faithfully, blank, pastor. Four. Certificate from the Metropolitan Emergency Guarantee and Insurance Company. To whom it may concern. Mr. Eat Anything is ensured in and by this company in compensation for all possible accidents resulting from rooming in a hotel. Any management, permitting him to occupy a room, is hereby assured that the Metropolitan Guarantee Company will see that he leaves the room either alive or dead at daybreak of the day following his occupancy. Five. Answer from the Socus Hotel Company. Mr. Eat Anything, dear sir. We have much pleasure in informing you that your application for a room has been accepted by the board of pardons of this hotel and ratified by the Conciliation Council of the Waiters Union. The room will be ready for your occupancy at midnight of the day mentioned, and you are requested to leave it at or before daybreak. An extra charge will be made for sleeping in the bed or for the use of the window. Three. List of Honor. Pullman Company Announcement for March 1930. At a meeting of the directorate of the Pullman Car Company, lower births were awarded as following for the month of March. The names mentioned below have been placed in order of merit. Here follow, after the custom of the epic, the full honor roll of those to whom lower births have been given. Four. If the immigration laws keep on improving, extracts from an article in a National Encyclopedia of 1975 entitled Deportation, Rise and Growth of. The practice of deportation first originated in the years of the Great War, during which the United States, aided by the Serbians, the Siamese, and other allies conquered Germany. It was first applied to the Reds or radicals. It proved an immediate success. The demand at once arose for the deportation of other classes of the community. The deportation of the Socialists and the Syndicalists were carried out in the years 1925 to 1930. The next deportation was that of the entire population of Paterson, New Jersey. A slight opposition was raised in the press at the time, but the improved appearance of the city of Paterson, after the inhabitants were removed, silenced, complaint. The decade following witnessed the deportation of the Osteopaths, the Chiropetist, and the Homeopathists. The movement now assumed a racial or ethnographic character. In spite of furious opposition, it was decided to deport the Irish and to insist on their living in Ireland. The claim of the Irish that they were law-abiding citizens threw the case into the Supreme Court, where after the dynamiting of three of the justices, the survivors held that the plea of the Irish was good. A similar claim, raised by the Greek fruit-sellers, sea-under-peanuts, was held void. The movement now assumed a distinctly religious character. The deportation of the Presbyterians may be said to have marked an epoch. All those who witnessed their departure from New York Harbor, when a hundred pipers played a lock-a-bar no more upon a hundred sets of bagpipes, felt that they never wanted to go through such an experience again. Sea-under-music definition of. This deportation was followed by that of the Mayflower Society, the sons and daughters of the Revolution, the Mexican War veterans, and other bodies whose existence had become a national danger. Of late years, the deportation movement has undergone a marked decline. The new sense of emptiness in space is inducing a feeling of loneliness throughout North America. Open regret is now expressed at certain of the deportations. It is widely felt that it was a mistake to send the grand opera artist, the choral societies, and other harmless bodies out of the country. It is expected that the present decade will witness a turn of the tide. Sea-under-tide. 5. The Socialization of the Church A paragraph taken from any local paper in any country or town in the year 1930. The vaudeable and minstrel show put on at the Fourth Street Church last night was in every sense a marked success. The occasion proved that the choice of the new pastor is indeed an admirable one. We have never, even at the Gayety Theatre, seen better black face work than that of the Reverend Mr. Hopgood last night, while his buck and wing dancing is better than that of any spiritual worker seen among us for a decade. Several of the elders and church wardens as endemen almost rival the honors of Mr. Hopgood. The dancing of the ladies of the congregation, who formed the chorus, particularly pleased us. All together we felt the chairman was quite justified in his boast that the modern church has put the saloon out of business. 6. Of the British lecturer, Habit Gros, items from a New York daily of 1933. King George V lectured to a fair-sized audience at the Princess Theatre yesterday afternoon. The King's delivery is quite good, and the comments on his personality are quite encouraging. Interviewed at the Biltmore today, King George expressed his surprise and pleasure at the size of America, for which he prophesies a bright future. Birmingham, New York, May 2. Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. George Clémenceau have made a favorable impression here with their readings from the Treaty of Versailles. The British ambassador has been accepted for the summer season work of the Orpheum Circuit. His platform work in his first appearance at Mauck, Chunk, Pennsylvania, is pronounced decidedly good. His work will do much to create a better feeling between Singapore and Siam. End of chapter 8. Chapter 9 of The Garden of Folly by Stephen Leacock This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9. My Unposted Correspondence It is an old adage that second thoughts are best. This is especially true when second thoughts are fortified by the inertia of a lazy disposition, averse to trouble. Like many other people, I find myself constantly impelled to write letters upon sudden impulse, or at least to frame them in my mind. But whether written or only framed, a much more agreeable process, somehow they never get posted. These letters are addressed, for example, to the directors of theaters to tell them that their place is a fire trap, and that I, for one, never propose to enter it again, and that therefore such a poor profit as they are able to make, must henceforth be made without me. But on second thoughts, after all, what if the place is a fire trap? Why bother? Let the other people burn. And anyway, I rather think they are to have a musical review there the week after next, which I might like to see. Better chance it. Another set of letters are framed to the immigration authorities in the United States to tell them that I cannot consent to this everlasting questioning at the border. If the thing persists, I tell them frankly, I must stop coming and going into their country. Indeed, I find that this is the general view of people of both nations who come and go across the Canadian border. I have listened to conversations in the smoking end of the Pullman car, which would make the President of the United States shake in his shoes. Once or twice, I have almost written a strong letter. Nothing stopped me except the fear that they might take me at my word and keep me out. But at other times, the letters are not only framed, but all written and signed, and only held back through the momentary difficulty of finding an envelope. Witness this example. Letter of protest to the Light, Heat and Power Company serves. Your account for $41.85 just received this morning convinces me you are a pack of robbers. This bill, which professes to represent an unpaid account for three months, is incorrect. I paid you before. I know I did. The mere fact that I have got no receipt or anything of that sort is neither here nor there. I know I paid you because I have a distinct feeling that I have paid you. This is a feeling which you ought to respect. My wife also remembers distinctly that she paid your collection man or at any rate a collection man at the door. And anyway, look at the account itself. It is absolutely preposterous. $6 for cooking gas in one month. It cannot be. We live plainly, and by heaven you couldn't use $6 worth of heat on all that we eat in a month if you tried. Then look at this charge for electric lighting. What is all this stuff about kilowatts? I never had any kilowatts from you, and you have charged me apparently for thousands of them. My strong conviction is that man of yours who reached the meter is a hired scoundrel. In any case, let me tell you this quite firmly. I will not pay this bill. If need be, I will go to prison for it for ten years, but I won't pay. Remember also that you cannot tyrannize over me as easily as you think. I have powerful friends. I know the cashier in one of our biggest banks, and a friend of mine knows the mayor quite intimately and calls him Charlie. You may find that if you lay a hand on me, you are up against a body of public opinion that will shipwreck your company. Yours savagely. By the time this letter has been written, and my wife has made a copy of it, so that when legal proceedings begin, we can read it out to the whole court. It is a dinner time, and too late to bother to post the letter, in addition to which there don't seem to be any envelopes in the whole Blessed House. After dinner I forget about it, and next morning when I see the letter lying on my table, I begin to have doubts about the whole thing. After all, what's the good of a lot of fuss? The light company are scoundrels, but the way to deal with scoundrels is to be broad-minded. Furthermore, are they scoundrels? I'm not so sure, on reflection, that the collector was theirs, after all. I seem to remember that he was collecting for the home for the blind, and that a big charge for the gas might be connected in a way with our having left the cooking stove burning all night once or twice by accident. And after all, I have no receipts. Oh, sure, let the thing go. The company, if they only knew it, have had a mighty narrow escape. After this I will keep receipts, check them either myself, lie and wait for them, and then, when they least think of it, overwhelm with an action for criminal conspiracy. But, meanwhile, let it go. Here is the letter which I actually posted. The light, heat, and power company, dear sirs, enclose with apologies my check for forty-one dollars and eighty-five cents, your sincerely. I suppose there are people in the company's office who open letters like that every month without realizing the wealth of invective that lies behind them. Let me turn to a similar example. Letter to the head office of the railway company in regard to the loss of my umbrella. Here is a letter which speaks for itself. I have written it at least twenty times, so has everybody, but I have never yet posted it. Nevertheless, let the railway company be careful. The letter runs thus, dear sirs. I write to the head office of your company, because I have failed to get plain simple justice from any of your hired officials. Last week I left my umbrella in one of your Pullman cars. The name of the car I regret to say I cannot remember, but it was either Belgravia or Ashdown, or some name of that sort. The names of all your cars I may say sound alike to me, and anyway, you cannot expect me to remember them. Very good. I left my umbrella in this car. I want it back. It is not the value of the umbrella that I care about. What I really mean is that it's not the value of it, but the price of it. The thing concerned is matter of general principle, and when you hit me on a general principle, you hit me where I live. It will be not at all difficult for you to locate my umbrella, as it was left on the car between New York and Boston one day early last week. Up to the present time, I have been unable to get any satisfaction, whatever, from your officials. I have been told that your district superintendent in New York is carrying an umbrella that is either mine or somebody's. May I add in conclusion that if I do not receive prompt satisfaction in this matter, I shall refer it to my solicitor. I am your sir, etc., etc. Please note the very firm and decisive ending of this letter to the railway company. I am sure that, had it been sent, they would have been compelled to take action. It was only prevented being sent by my finding my umbrella under the hall table. Another impulse from which often springs my unposted correspondence is an access of sudden philanthropy. Every time I hear that 10,000 Chinese have been drowned in a flood of the Wangou River, I dash off a letter with a check in it for $50, and the signature, a friend of China. But before it is posted, I recall the fact that after all, there are a terrible lot of Chinaman in the world, four billion, is it? Or is that the issue of German marks per day? Anyway, there are so many that if they don't get drowned, what are they to do? Better wait for the next flood, anyway, so the letter is never sent. But second thoughts dull the edge of philanthropy every time. Indeed, sometimes the current of good deeds gets turned from its channel in the very process of giving. As witness this letter of a type that I am sure is quite familiar, sudden access of philanthropy after hearing a missionary appeal, the Reverend John Jungle Talk, dear sir, enclosed, please find my check for $100, $100. You do not know me, but I listened, sir, this morning to your sermon on behalf of the tabloid Negroes of Danganika. I do not quite grasp where those Negroes live, but your account of their condition has touched me to the quick. I am immensely moved by that story of yours about the old Negro woman who wanted to hear a gramophone before she died, or to die after hearing a gramophone. I forget for the moment which. These people, you told us of, are in a deplorable condition. They are without Bibles. They have no books, no soap, no hot water. I think you said hot water. In fact, they are in a bad way. And on the top of all this, I gather that unscrupulous traitors have come into the country and are selling rum and whiskey to the natives for a few cents a bottle. This is terrible. In fact, sir, I find that as I write this letter, I am inclined instead of sending you the $100 to offer the higher sacrifice of personal service. I gather that you are to sail in a few weeks' time going from here to San Francisco and there by steamer to wherever it is that the tabloid Negroes live. I am more than half inclined to come along. If you can collect enough money for the two of us, I will gladly do so. Meantime, I will hold back the check of which I spoke. Very sincerely in the spirit, a PS that whiskey you spoke of, is it Scotch or Irish? I might have included above the letters which I don't write about the scorching of motors along my street. The other streets matter less. Letters complaining that there are too many flag days, letters on daylight saving, street cleaning, fly killing, the League of Nations. In fact, it's endless. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of The Garden of Folly by Stephen Leacock This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10 Letters to the New Rulers of the World Number 1 To the Secretary of the League of Nations, Respected Sir. I have learned, as has everybody here in my hometown, with unconcealed delight of this new convention that you have just concluded in regard to the Kalmuc hinterland of the Oxus District. As we understand it here in our town, this convention will establish a distinct modus vivende as between Mongolian Kalmucs and the Tartarian honeysuckles. It will set up a new sphere of influence, the boundaries of which we are as yet unable to trace on the railway and steamship map of the world in our new Union Depot, but which we feel assured will extend at least 50 miles in either direction and will stop only when it has to. As citizens of a great country, it fills us with a new pride in this nation to reflect that the whole of this hinterland, both back and front, will now be thrown open to the proselytized, Christianized, and internationalized, penetrated, and fumigated under the mandate of this country. What you have done, Sir, is a big thing, and when we realize that it has taken only six years for you to do it, we are filled with enthusiasm as to what you are destined to do. Nor has this been the sole result of your years of labor. The citizens of our town have followed with a fascinated interest each stage of your achievements. Your handling of the claims of Formosa to a share of the control of the Ho-Hon Canal was masterly. On the news that you had succeeded in submitting to arbitration the claims of the Dutch bondholders of the Peking-Ankau Railway, our citizens turned out and held a torchlight procession on the main street. When the word came that you had successfully arranged to status quo on the backwaters of the Upper Congo, there was an enthusiasm and excitement upon our streets such as we have not seen since the silver election of 1896. Under the circumstances, therefore, respected Sir, I am certain that you will not mind a few words. I will not say of protest, but of friendly criticism. We readily admit in our town all that you have done for us, you have lifted us as we fully recognize into what is a larger atmosphere. When you look back to the narrow horizon of politics, as they were in this town, you will recall our sending Alderman McGinnis and the Johnson boys to the penitentiary, we stand appalled. It is a splendid thing to think that our politics now turn upon the larger and bigger issues of the world, such as the Kalmux, the Colchucks, and the internationalization of the Gulf of Kamchatka. It would have done you good, Sir, could you have listened to the masterly debate at our Mechanics Institute last week on the establishment of a Six Nation Control over the trolley line from Jerusalem and Jericho. But, Sir, to be very frank, there is a certain apprehension in our town that this thing is being pushed just a little too far. We are willing to be as international as anybody. Our citizens can breathe as large an atmosphere as the Kalmux or the Gambodians, or any of them, but what begins to worry us is whether these other people are going to be international, too. We feel somehow that your league ought, if we may use a metaphor, to play a little bit nearer home, not all the games, but at least some of them. There are a lot of things in this town that we think might properly claim your attention. I don't know whether you are aware of the state of our sewers and the need for practically ripping up the main street and relaying them. Here is a thing in which we think the Kalmux might care to help us out. Also, if you would discuss with the Gambodians of the Sumatra hinterland the question of their taking a hand in the irrigation of Murphy's flats, just the other side you remember of where the old Murphy homestead was, it might make for good feeling all around. Put very briefly, Sir, our one criticism of your achievements, and it is only said in the kindest possible way, is that your league is all right, but somehow the gate receipts of it seem to go in the wrong direction. Number 2 To A Disconsolate King My dear Charles Mary Augustus Felix Agismund, you will pardon me, I hope, this brief method of address. For the moment I cannot recall the rest of your names. I need hardly say how delighted and honored I was to receive a letter from you, written all in your own hand, and spelt, as I saw at once, without help. It was perhaps wrong of you to pay insufficient postage on it, but I do not forget that you were once a king, and cannot at once get over it. You write in what are evidently wretchedly low spirits. You say that you are living in Schlitz and Bad Untelwein, if I get you right, in the simplest conceivable way, you have laid aside your royal title, and are living incognito, as the hereditary count in and of Salsons Schlitz. You have only a single ballot and no retinue. You launch, you tell me, very plainly each day upon a pint of Rheinwein, and an egg, and at dinner you have merely a chop or a cutlet, and a couple of quarts of Rudesbeger. You retire to bed, it seems, after a plain supper, a forkful of macaroni, I think you said, with about half a tumbler of old schnapps. Of all the thousands who fed at your table in the days of your kingship, none you say care now to share your simple fare. This is too bad. If they had you and your little table in New York, they could give you the choice of a lineup of friends that would reach from the winter garden to the battery. But that is by the way. The point is that you are singularly disconsolate. You tell me that at times you have thought of suicide. At other times you have almost made up your mind to work. Both of these things are bad, and I beg of you, my dear Sigismund, that before adopting either of these alternatives, you will listen to a little quiet advice, and will sit tight in schlitz and Bad Unterwein till things brighten up a bit. Unless I much mistake, my dear Charles Mary Felix, the world has not finished with you yet, nor won't have for a long time to come. It turns out I am sorry to say that the world is still an infinitely sillier place than we had imagined. You remember that morning when you ran away from your hereditary principality, concealed in a packing case and covered up with a load of hay. All the world roared with laughter at the ignominy and cowardice of your flight. You seemed all of a sudden changed into a comic figure. Your silly little dignity, the uniforms that you wore and that you changed twenty times a day, the metals which you bestowed upon yourself, the insignia of the duck's feather which you yourself instituted. All these things became suddenly laughable. We thought that Europe had become sensible and rational, and was done with the absurdity of autocratic kings. I tell you frankly, Charles Mary Felix, you and your silly baubles, had been no sooner swept into the little heap than a thousand new kinds of folly sprang up to replace you. The married Czechoslovak and the unredeemed Italian ran up a bill of taxes for peaceful citizens like myself to pay. I have contributed my share to expeditions to Kiev, to Baku, and to Teheran, and to Timbuktu. General Judenstich is conducting huge operations against General Gorfinski in Estonia, and I can't even remember which is my general and where Estonia is. I have occupied Anatolia, and I don't want it. I have got an international gendarmerie in Albania that I think are a pack of bums, eating their heads off at my expense. As to Bulgaria, Bukovini, and Deveserabia, I believe I voiced the sentiments of billions of free-born income taxpayers. When I say take them, Charles Felix, they are all yours. The time is coming, I am certain, when a new pack of fools will come and hunt you up in your exile in Schlitz and Badundavine, clap a field Marshall's uniform on you, put you in a bomb-proof motor car, and rush you back to your hereditary palace. They will announce that you have performed prodigies of personal bravery. You will wear again your twenty uniforms a day. You will give twenty-five cents to a blind beggar and be called the father of your people. I give you notice, Mary Augustus, that when this happens I shall not lift a finger to stop it, for it appears that our poor humanity, its head still singing with the cruel buffeting of the war, is incapable of moving forward and can only stagger round in a circle. 3. To a Plumber My very dear sir, it is now four hours since you have been sitting under the sink in my kitchen, smoking. You have turned off the water in the basement of my house, and you have made the space under the sink dry and comfortable, and you are sitting there. I understand that you are waiting for the return of your fellow Plumber, who has gone away to bring back a bigger wrench than the one you have with you. The moment is therefore opportune for me to write these few lines, which I shall presently place in an envelope and deliver to you on your departure. I do not wish in any way to seem to reflect upon the apparent delateriness with which your work has been done. I am certain that is only apparent and not real. I pass over the fact that my house has now for two weeks, then without an adequate water supply. I do not resent it that you have spent each morning for a fortnut in my kitchen. I am not insensible, sir, to the charm of your presence there under the sink, and I recognize the stimulus which it affords to the intellectual life of my cook. I am quite aware, sir, that all of these things are outside of the legitimate scope of complaint, for I understand that they are imposed upon you by your order. It is the command, I believe, of your local union that you must not use a wrench without sending for an assistant. It is an order of your federated brotherhood that you must not handle a screwdriver, except in the presence of a carpenter and before witnesses. And it is the positive command of the international order to which you belong, that you must not finish any job until it has been declared finishable by a majority boat of the qualified plumbers of your district. These things, no doubt, make for the gaiety and variety of industry, but interpose, I fear, a check upon the rapidity of your operations. But what I have wanted to say to you, good sir, is this. You find yourself in possession of what used to be called, in the Middle Ages, a mystery, something which you can do and which other people cannot. And you are working your mystery for all it is worth. Indeed, I am inclined to think that you are working it for rather more than it is worth. I think it only fair to tell you that a movement is now on foot which may jeopardize your existence. A number of our national universities have already opened departments of plumbing which threaten to bring your mysterious knowledge within reach even of the most educated. Some of the brightest scientific minds of the country are applying themselves to find out just how you do it. I have myself already listened to a course of six speculative lectures on the theory of the kitchen tap, in which the lecturer was bold enough to say that the time is soon coming when it will be known absolutely and positively to the scientific world how to put on a washer. Already, sir, pamphlets are being freely circulated dealing with the origin and nature of the hot water furnace. It has been already discovered that the water moves to and fro in the pipes of the furnace with sufficient regularity and continuity of movement to render it capable of reduction to a scientific law. We shall know before long just what it is you do to the thing, to stop it from sizzling. You perceive then, my dear sir, that the moment is one which ought to give you room for anxious thought. You are perhaps not aware that a book has been published under the ominous title Every Man, His Own Plumber. It has been suppressed very rightly by the United States government as tending to subvert society and reduce it to a pulp. But it, at least, foreshadows, sir, the grim possibilities of the future. May I, in conclusion, make a personal request. If you have any friends who are in the bell-hanging business, or the electrical repair industry, or the broken window monopoly, or the loose chair-leg combine, will you kindly show them this letter. Number four, to a hotel manager, noble and exalted sir. I am well aware, as I stand before you at the desk of your rotunda, of what a worm I am. There is, as far as I can see it, no reasonable excuse for my existence. I have, so it appears, no reservation, and yet I have had the impertinence to come here and sue for a room. The contempt with which you gaze upon me is only too well justified. It is of no use for me to plead that I did not know that I was coming and that my journey to your city was entirely unpremeditated. All this only indicates, as you justly express by the look upon your face, an ill-regulated life unfit for your consideration. I am well aware, sir, that I ought to have written to you four months ago, and entered myself upon your waiting list for accommodation. And I know that even in that case, my chance of obtaining a room would have had to depend upon my continued merit of good conduct. You inform me that if I lean up against this desk until one o'clock, there is a possibility that a gentleman may vacate room 4601. This is glad news indeed. I shall stand here with pleasure, and I am sure that you will not consider me disqualified, if I stand first upon one leg and then upon the other. It is a habit that I have acquired in such hotels as yours. Meantime, my dear sir, I should like, while I lean against the desk, to set down upon paper in a few words just what I think of you. I cannot help but contrast you, sir, with the old-time proprietor whom you have replaced. The change, I do not doubt, is altogether salutary, and yet in certain aspects I cannot but regret it. The old-time hotel man was accustomed to meet me with an outstretched hand and a genial smile. He greeted me by my name, and though I knew that he had read it on my valise, my gratification was nonetheless. A room? Why, that man could find me a room if I turned up at midnight in the middle of a grand army convention. A room? Why, the mere suggestion of my not getting a room filled him with distress. Sooner than see me sleepless he would put me in with two commercial men from the west, perfect gentleman as he himself informed me. He would put me along with four others on the billiard table, establish me behind a screen in a quiet corner of a corridor, or stop. Rather than see me suffer, he would offer, it was a safe thing, to turn out of his own room. As to a bath, neither he nor I ever thought of it. Observe that this man's hotel was very different from yours. In it was a no-palm room filled with rubber trees and resonant with the music of a Hungarian orchestra, no peacock corridor in which the dangerous debutante in the drooping hat shoots languorous glances at the passerby. In point of pleasure and relaxation in his hotel there was nothing other than the bar. That was the sole resort, a quiet place below the stairs, with a sanded floor and a long counter. And here it was that we stood in friendly converse, drinking whisky and water while the chief clerk was fix me up a room. In those brave days we drank whisky and water right after breakfast. We were supposed to need it. Now, sir, I admit that you and your kind have made wonderful changes in our hotels. You have filled them with music and palm trees and debutants. You have taught our people to drink English tea at five o'clock in the afternoon. You have borrowed the Café Chantant of the French and combined it with the grill room of the British. You have introduced afternoon dances and midnight suppers, and you have gathered about you, I admit it and I thank you for it, all the prettiest women in New York to decorate your corridors. You have become, and in a certain sense you are entitled to be, one of the new rulers of the world. But this, I ask, do not push your sovereignty too far. If you do, there will be the inevitable reaction and revolution. A movement will be put on foot to build in your city a few hotels of the bygone type, of the old days when the guests were guests indeed, and the kindly public and their host. A hotel with only one bath for every twenty-five guests, with dinner served only in the main dining room when the bell rings, without a single rubber-tree in the whole extent of it. But, and this is the essential point, with something of the old-fashioned courtesy and kindness and quiet which you are banishing from your palatial doors. What? The gentleman has vacated room forty-six-o-one? Ah, ah, a gentleman indeed. Quick, give me the pen and let me sign. I take back all that I have written. And, by the way, which is the way to the lunch-room, where the Syrian dancing-girls are, I shall want to eat there. Before I begin this letter, let me explain that of course I am myself a believer in prohibition. I think that water, especially clear cold water, I don't care for muddy water, is a beautiful drink. I had a glass of it the other day, and it seemed wonderfully limpid and transparent. Almost like gin. Moreover, in the town in which I live, my friends and I have seen prohibition in actual operation, and we are all enthusiastic over it. Crime is lessening every day. Murder is becoming almost unknown. Not a single one of my friends was murdered all last summer. The sale of boys' boots had increased a hundred percent. Some of the boys here have no less than eight or ten pairs. Bank deposits are rising. Credit is expanding, and work is almost ceasing. These are very gratifying things, and when we look back upon the old days, my friends and I wonder how we could have led the life that we did. I remember that very often in the middle of the morning we used deliberately to go out from our business and drink a glass of lager beer. Why we did this I cannot now conceive. Beer, sir, as you yourself are aware, contains neither proteins nor albumin. It has less nitrogen in it than common starch, and is not nearly so rich in effervescent hydrogen as ordinary baking soda. In short, its food value is not to be compared with tan bark or with common emuselage. Nowadays, if I find that I flag at all in morning work, I take a little nip of baking soda and a couple of licks of muselage, and in a moment I am willing and anxious to work again. I remember, too, that in the old times, in the winter evenings, we used to sit around the fire in one another's houses, smoking and drinking hot toddy. No doubt you remember the awful stuff. We generally used to make ours with bourbon whiskey and hot water, with just a dash of rum, with half a dozen lumps of white sugar in it, and with nutmeg powdered over the top. I think we used to put a curled slice of lemon peel into the rotten stuff, and then served it in a tall tumbler with a long spoon in it. We used to sit and suck this beastly mixture all evening, and carry on a perfectly aimless conversation with no selected subject of discussion, and with absolutely no attempt to improve our minds at all. As things are now, I have entirely cut all such idle acquaintanceship and such waste of time. I like to come home after my work and after drinking four or five glasses of water, spend the evening with some good book of statistics, improving myself. I am then ready to converse, should an occasion arise, in such a way as to put conversation where it ought to be. You will, therefore, readily understand that all my friends and I are enthusiastic over prohibition. If you were to ask us to go back to things as they were, but please do not do so, we should devote against it by a majority of easily two hundred percent. It is on this account, with all the more confidence, that I am able to draw your attention to one or two points in themselves very small things, in which we think that the present regime might be amended. The first of these is the mere percentage, as it is commonly called, of the beer that is permitted to be sold. This is evidently a matter of very secondary concern, and one on which no one would wish to dogmatize, but my friends and I feel that this percentage might profitably be placed at about, say, in rough numbers, twenty percent. We should feel that at twenty percent we were getting a more adequate return upon the money expended. At the same time we lay no great stress on the particular figure itself. Twenty, thirty, or possibly still better, forty percent would prove quite acceptable to us. Another point is the abolition of the bar. Here we are all agreed the bar is done with forever. We never want to see it back. But we do feel that if we could have some quiet place where one could purchase beverages of the kind I have described, some plain room with tables and a seat or two, and possibly a free lunch counter and a weighing machine, we should feel better to carry out the general purport of the prohibition idea. There are several of my friends who have not been weighed since the first of July of 1919, and are suffering grave inconvenience thereby. I do not suggest a such a place should be allowed to operate after the old unrestrained fashion of the bars that kept open practically all night. It should be placed under sharp regulation. My friends and I feel that any such place should be rigidly closed at two o'clock a.m., with perhaps special facilities for access at a later hour to the weighing machine and the lunch counter. These, however, are mere details of organization which, as we see it, do not in the least impair the general principle. As to whiskey and the stronger spirits, we feel that there is not a single word to be said for them. My friends and I are convinced that the use of these things as a beverage is deleterious to the last degree. We unite in declaring that they should be regarded as medicine and as medicine only. Two or three small incidents have occurred among us lately which have corroborated our opinion upon this point. Not very long ago, one of my friends was taken just outside of my door with a very sharp pain or stitch in his side. For the moment I was at a loss what to do when it occurred to me that possibly a medicinal application of whiskey might prove effective. I took him into my house and administered it at once and was delighted to observe the color come back into his cheeks. It was some hours before I was unable to remove him, but I finally ventured to put him into a hack, crosswise on the two seats, and the poor fellow was, I believe, safely placed against his own door by the hackman without further mishap. Such incidents as this have convinced us that the sale of whiskey should be rigidly restricted to those who needed at the time when they needed and in the quantity that they happened to need. These suggestions, my dear sir, are intended merely as suggestions, as mere ad-dembrations of possible modifications of the present system. We understand that there is some talk of reconsidering and redrafting the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. If this is so, I think it would be well to embody these suggestions in the new amendment. I am certain that upon these terms the Supreme Court of the United States would have no trouble with its interpretation. Number six, to a spiritualist. Dear friend and brother in the darkness, I sent you last week a thought wave or movement of the ether, but it has apparently not reached you. I willed it in your direction, and it seemed at the time to be moving toward you with gratifying rapidity, but I fear that it has gone clean past you. I am not, however, surprised or discouraged at this. In the little spiritualistic circle to which I belong, we have already learned to take the failures with the successes. We directed last week a thought wave at Senator Lodge, but we have no reason to think that it hit him. The week before we had sent one with special force at Mr. McKinsey King, and there is no sign that it struck him. Our medium, Miss Mutt, tells us that very often a thought wave becomes supercharged and loses touch with the ethirical vibrations, and we all think this very likely. So I am not discouraged that my little message of congratulation and suggestion has gone astray. If I only had you near me, I could get the message into you in a moment by putting the tips of my fingers on your cranium and willing it into you. But as I cannot do that, I hope you will not mind if I have recourse to pen and ink. What I want to say to you, first of all, is to congratulate you upon the splendid work that you have been doing in the world during the last few years. Until your recent activities began, things were getting into a dreadful condition. Belief in everything seemed to be dying out. All idea of a material hell had had to be abandoned, and there seemed nothing left. But now all that has been completely changed, and I am sure that the little circle to which I belong is only one among thousands that are bringing hope and light to a world that was growing dark. I am sure that you will be glad to learn that in our little circle, our experiments have been singularly successful. We began in the very simplest way because Ms. Mutt, our medium, said that it was better to begin with simple things so as to find out whether our members offered an easy mark to the ether waves sent from the other side, and they did. As our first experiment, we all sat round a table with our fingers just barely touching it. We all had our eyes bandaged except Ms. Mutt, and we put the light out in the room to avoid the cross vibrations. We were all delighted to find that the table at once began lifting its legs in the air and making wraps on the floor, and presently it ran right around the room and then climbed up the wall. Ms. Mutt had to coax it down again. This of course is only a very simple thing, and Ms. Mutt, our medium, explained it all very clearly by telling us that the table had moved out of the subliminal plane and had to got into a plane of its own. But at first it seemed quite surprising. After that we went on to quite a lot of other experiments and sent telepathic messages clear out into space beyond the stars, and produced actual bodies and raised the dead, and things like that. These are only little things of course, and to you I am sure they sound nothing, but I can't tell you how these simple little experiments pleased and delighted us. Our seances in our little circle have now taken a more or less regular form. We meet on Tuesday evenings at eight, and first we have coffee, and then Ms. Mutt goes into a trance and calls up for us the spirits of any of the great people in history. The members generally vote as to who is to be called up, but if there is any dispute the hostess of the evening decides what spirit is to come. We have had to Machiavelli and Queen Elizabeth and a Roman emperor who was awfully good, though I forget his name for the minute. Machiavelli gave us a most interesting talk on the tariff, and made it as clear as anything. He said that where he is they understand all about it. At nine o'clock Ms. Mutt comes out of the trance, and we have cake and ice cream and a range where the next meeting will be. So I need hardly tell you that in our little circle we appreciate very much indeed the sort of work that you and other leaders are doing. Ms. Mutt, our medium, says that it will be splendid when you yourself are on the other side. We shall send a wave at you right away. I am sure then that you will not take amiss the very few words of criticism that I feel inclined to add to my letter. Perhaps I should not exactly call it criticism so much as suggestion as to how things might be made better still. As things are now we have all felt a certain amount of disappointment at what seems to be the low mental standard of the spirits that talk to us. Machiavelli for instance seemed to get all mixed up about what Ad Valorum duties meant, and when McSmiley, one of our members who is in the wool trade, asked him about schedule K he seemed to get quite angry, and he said that where he was there was no schedule K. Ms. Mutt, our medium, reminded us afterward that Machiavelli had died of softening of the brain, so I suppose that accounts for it. But I never knew that George Washington's brain had softened too before he died, and that poor Longfellow had had it very badly, indeed, apparently for years. I think, sir, that it will help along seances like ours immensely if you could manage to do something to keep up the education of the spirits. Ms. Mutt says that they have books on the other side, just as we do here, but one wonders if they read them. I suppose that in the sense they must get fearfully restless rushing around in the void, and it must be hard for them to sit down quietly and pick up a book. But I do believe that if they could be persuaded to do so, it would be a splendid thing for them. Perhaps, too, they could be taught to play bridge, or to knit. But I think that something really ought to be done to brighten up their minds a bit. McSmiley left our little group after the Machiavelli evening because he said the spirits were just a pack of dubs. We all felt that this was wrong, but we decided at once to send out a thought wave at you and ask about it. I am so sorry that nothing seems to have hit you. End of Chapter 10 End of The Garden of Folly by Stephen Leacock