Literary Lapses (11 page)

 

SELF-MADE MEN

T
hey were both what we commonly call successful business-men–men with well-fed faces, heavy signet rings on fingers like sausages, and broad, comfortable waistcoats, a yard and a half round the equator. They were seated opposite each other at a table of a first-class restaurant, and had fallen into conversation while waiting to give their order to the waiter. Their talk had drifted back to their early days and how each had made his start in life when he first struck New York.

“I tell you what, Jones,” one of them was saying, “I shall never forget my first few years in this town. By George, it was pretty uphill work! Do you know, sir, when I first struck this place, I hadn't more than fifteen cents to my name, hadn't a rag except what I stood up in, and all the place I had to sleep in–you won't believe it, but it's a gospel fact just the same–was an empty tar barrel. No, sir,” he went on, leaning back and closing up his eyes into an expression of infinite experience, “no, sir, a fellow accustomed to luxury like you has simply no idea what sleeping out in a tar barrel and all that kind of thing is like.”

“My dear Robinson,” the other man rejoined briskly, “if you imagine I've had no experience of hardship of that sort, you never made a bigger mistake in your life. Why, when I first walked into this town I hadn't a cent, sir, not a cent, and as for lodging, all the place I had for months and months was an old piano box up a lane, behind a factory. Talk about hardship, I guess I had it pretty rough! You take a fellow that's used to a good warm tar barrel and put him into a piano box for a night or two, and you'll see mighty soon–”

“My dear fellow,” Robinson broke in with some irritation, “you merely show that you don't know what a tar barrel's like. Why, on winter nights, when you'd be shut in there in your piano box just as snug as you please, I used to lie awake shivering, with the draught fairly running in at the bunghole at the back.”

“Draught!” sneered the other man, with a provoking laugh, “draught! Don't talk to me about draughts. This box I speak of had a whole darned plank right off it, right on the north side too. I used to sit there studying in the evenings, and the snow would blow in a foot deep. And yet, sir,” he continued more quietly, “though I know you'll not believe it, I don't mind admitting that some of the happiest days of my life were spent in that same old box. Ah, those were good old times! Bright, innocent days, I can tell you. I'd wake up there in the mornings and fairly shout with high spirits. Of course, you may not be able to stand that kind of life–”

“Not stand it!” cried Robinson fiercely; “me not stand it! By gad! I'm made for it. I just wish I had a taste of the old life again for a while. And as for innocence! Well, I'll bet you you weren't one-tenth as innocent as I was; no, nor one-fifth, nor one-third! What a grand old life it was! You'll swear this is a darned lie and refuse to believe it–but I can remember
evenings when I'd have two or three fellows in, and we'd sit round and play pedro by a candle half the night.”

“Two or three!” laughed Jones; “why, my dear fellow, I've known half a dozen of us to sit down to supper in my piano box, and have a game of pedro afterwards; yes, and charades and forfeits, and every other darned thing. Mighty good suppers they were too! By Jove, Robinson, you fellows round this town who have ruined your digestions with high living, have no notion of the zest with which a man can sit down to a few potato peelings, or a bit of broken pie crust, or–”

“Talk about hard food,” interrupted the other. “I guess I know all about that. Many's the time I've breakfasted off a little cold porridge that somebody was going to throw away from a back-door, or that I've gone round to a livery stable and begged a little bran mash that they intended for the pigs. I'll venture to say I've eaten more hog's food–”

“Hog's food!” shouted Robinson, striking his fist savagely on the table. “I tell you hog's food suits me better than–”

He stopped speaking with a sudden grunt of surprise as the waiter appeared with the question:

“What may I bring you for dinner, gentlemen?”

“Dinner!” said Jones, after a moment of silence, “dinner! Oh, anything, nothing–I never care what I eat–give me a little cold porridge, if you've got it, or a chunk of salt pork–anything you like, it's all the same to me.”

The waiter turned with an impassive face to Robinson.

“You can bring me some of that cold porridge too,” he said, with a defiant look at Jones; “yesterday's, if you have it, and a few potato peelings and a glass of skim milk.”

There was a pause. Jones sat back in his chair and looked hard across at Robinson. For some moments the two men gazed into each other's eyes with a stern, defiant intensity.
Then Robinson turned slowly round in his seat and beckoned to the waiter, who was moving off with the muttered order on his lips.

“Here, waiter,” he said with a savage scowl, “I guess I'll change that order a little. Instead of that cold porridge I'll take–um, yes–a little hot partridge. And you might as well bring me an oyster or two on the half shell, and a mouthful of soup (mock-turtle, consommé, anything), and perhaps you might fetch along a dab of fish, and a little peck of Stilton, and a grape, or a walnut.”

The waiter turned to Jones.

“I guess I'll take the same,” he said simply, and added, “and you might bring a quart of champagne at the same time.”

And nowadays, when Jones and Robinson meet, the memory of the tar barrel and the piano box is buried as far out of sight as a home for the blind under a landslide.

 

A MODEL DIALOGUE

I
n which is shown how the drawing-room juggler may be permanently cured of his card trick.

The drawing-room juggler, having slyly got hold of the pack of cards at the end of the game of whist, says:

“Ever see any card tricks? Here's rather a good one; pick a card.”

“Thank you, I don't want a card.”

“No, but just pick one, any one you like, and I'll tell which one you pick.”

“You'll tell who?”

“No, no; I mean, I'll know which it is, don't you see? Go on now, pick a card.”

“Any one I like?”

“Yes.”

“Any colour at all?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Any suit?”

“Oh, yes; do go on.”

“Well, let me see, I'll–pick–the–ace–of–spades.”

“Great Cæsar! I mean you are to pull a card out of the pack.”

“Oh, to pull it out of the pack! Now I understand. Hand me the pack. All right–I've got it.”

“Have you picked one?”

“Yes, it's the three of hearts. Did you know it?”

“Hang it! Don't tell me like that. You spoil the thing. Here, try again. Pick a card.”

“All right, I've got it.”

“Put it back in the pack. Thanks. (Shuffle, shuffle. shuffle–flip)–There, is that it?” (triumphantly).

“I don't know. I lost sight of it.”

“Lost sight of it! Confound it, you have to look at it and see what it is.”

“Oh, you want me to look at the front of it!”

“Why, of course! Now then, pick a card.”

“All right. I've picked it. Go ahead.” (Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle–flip.)

“Say, confound you, did you put that card back in the pack?”

“Why, no. I kept it.”

“Holy Moses! Listen. Pick–a–card–just one–look at it–see what it is–then put it back–do you understand?”

“Oh, perfectly. Only I don't see how you are ever going to do it. You must be awfully clever.”

(Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle–flip.)

“There you are; that's your card, now, isn't it?” (This is the supreme moment.)

“NO. THAT IS NOT MY CARD.” (This is a flat lie, but Heaven will pardon you for it.)

“Not that card!!!! Say–just hold on a second. Here, now, watch what you're at this time. I can do this cursed thing, mind you, every time. I've done it on father, on mother, and on every one that's ever come round our place.
Pick a card. (Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle–flip, bang.) There, that's your card.”

“NO. I AM SORRY. THAT IS NOT MY CARD. But won't you try it again? Please do. Perhaps you are a little excited–I'm afraid I was rather stupid. Won't you go and sit quietly by yourself on the back verandah for half an hour and then try? You have to go home? Oh, I'm so sorry. It must be such an awfully clever little trick. Good night!”

 

BACK TO THE BUSH

I
have a friend called Billy who has the Bush Mania. By trade he is a doctor, but I do not think that he needs to sleep out of doors. In ordinary things his mind appears sound. Over the tops of his gold-rimmed spectacles, as he bends forward to speak to you, there gleams nothing but amiability and kindliness. Like all the rest of us he is, or was until he forgot it all, an extremely well-educated man.

I am aware of no criminal strain in his blood. Yet Billy is in reality hopelessly unbalanced. He has the Mania of the Open Woods.

Worse than that, he is haunted with the desire to drag his friends with him into the depths of the Bush.

Whenever we meet he starts to talk about it.

Not long ago I met him in the club.

“I wish,” he said, “you'd let me take you clear away up the Gatineau.”

“Yes, I wish I would, I don't think,” I murmured to myself, but I humoured him and said:

“How do we go, Billy, in a motor-car or by train?”

“No, we paddle.”

“And is it up-stream all the way?”

“Oh, yes,” Billy said enthusiastically.

“And how many days do we paddle all day to get up?”

“Six.”

“Couldn't we do it in less?”

“Yes,” Billy answered, feeling that I was entering into the spirit of the thing, “if we start each morning just before daylight and paddle hard till moonlight, we could do it in five days and a half.”

“Glorious! and are there portages?”

“Lots of them.”

“And at each of these do I carry two hundred pounds of stuff up a hill on my back?”

“Yes.”

“And will there be a guide, a genuine, dirty-looking Indian guide?”

“Yes.”

“And can I sleep next to him?”

“Oh, yes, if you want to.”

“And when we get to the top, what is there?”

“Well, we go over the height of land.”

“Oh, we do, do we? And is the height of land all rock and about three hundred yards up-hill? And do I carry a barrel of flour up it? And does it roll down and crush me on the other side? Look here, Billy, this trip is a great thing, but it is too luxurious for me. If you will have me paddled up the river in a large iron canoe with an awning, carried over the portages in a sedan-chair, taken across the height of land in a palanquin or a howdah, and lowered down the other side in a derrick, I'll go. Short of that, the thing would be too fattening.”

Billy was discouraged and left me. But he has since returned repeatedly to the attack.

He offers to take me to the head-waters of the Batiscan. I am content at the foot.

He wants us to go to the sources of the Attahwapiscat. I don't.

He says I ought to see the grand chutes of the Kewakasis. Why should I?

I have made Billy a counter-proposition that he strike through the Adirondacks (in the train) to New York, from there portage to Atlantic City, then to Washington, carrying our own grub (in the dining-car), camp there a few days (at the Willard), and then back, I to return by train and Billy on foot with the outfit.

The thing is still unsettled.

Billy, of course, is only one of thousands that have got this mania. And the autumn is the time when it rages at its worst.

Every day there move northward trains, packed full of lawyers, bankers, and brokers, headed for the bush. They are dressed up to look like pirates. They wear slouch hats, flannel shirts, and leather breeches with belts. They could afford much better clothes than these, but they won't use them. I don't know where they get these clothes. I think the railroad lends them out. They have guns between their knees and big knives at their hips. They smoke the worst tobacco they can find, and they carry ten gallons of alcohol per man in the baggage car.

In the intervals of telling lies to one another they read the railroad pamphlets about hunting. This kind of literature is deliberately and fiendishly contrived to infuriate their mania. I know all about these pamphlets because I write them.
I once, for instance, wrote up, from imagination, a little place called Dog Lake at the end of a branch line. The place had failed as a settlement, and the railroad had decided to turn it into a hunting resort. I did the turning. I think I did it rather well, rechristening the lake and stocking the place with suitable varieties of game. The pamphlet ran like this.

“The limpid waters of Lake Owatawetness (the name, according to the old Indian legends of the place, signifies, The Mirror of the Almighty) abound with every known variety of fish. Near to its surface, so close that the angler may reach out his hand and stroke them, schools of pike, pickerel, mackerel, doggerel, and chickerel jostle one another in the water. They rise instantaneously to the bait and swim gratefully ashore holding it in their mouths. In the middle depth of the waters of the lake, the sardine, the lobster, the kippered herring, the anchovy and other tinned varieties of fish disport themselves with evident gratification, while even lower in the pellucid depths the dog-fish, the hog-fish, the log-fish, and the sword-fish whirl about in never-ending circles.

“Nor is Lake Owatawetness merely an Angler's Paradise. Vast forests of primeval pine slope to the very shores of the lake, to which descend great droves of bears–brown, green, and bear-coloured–while as the shades of evening fall, the air is loud with the lowing of moose, cariboo, antelope, cantelope, musk-oxes, musk-rats, and other graminivorous mammalia of the forest. These enormous quadrumana generally move off about
10.30
p.m., from which hour until
11.45
p.m. the whole shore is reserved for bison and buffalo.

“After midnight hunters who so desire it can be chased through the woods, for any distance and at any speed they select, by jaguars, panthers, cougars, tigers, and jackals whose ferocity is reputed to be such that they will tear the breeches
off a man with their teeth in their eagerness to sink their fangs in his palpitating flesh. Hunters, attention! Do not miss such attractions as these!”

I have seen men–quiet, reputable, well-shaved men–reading that pamphlet of mine in the rotundas of hotels, with their eyes blazing with excitement. I think it is the jaguar attraction that hits them the hardest, because I notice them rub themselves sympathetically with their hands while they read.

Of course, you can imagine the effect of this sort of literature on the brains of men fresh from their offices, and dressed out as pirates.

They just go crazy and stay crazy.

Just watch them when they get into the bush.

Notice that well-to-do stockbroker crawling about on his stomach in the underbrush, with his spectacles shining like gig-lamps. What is he doing? He is after a cariboo that isn't there. He is “stalking” it. With his stomach. Of course, away down in his heart he knows that the cariboo isn't there and never was; but that man read my pamphlet and went crazy. He can't help it: he's
got
to stalk something. Mark him as he crawls along; see him crawl through a thimbleberry bush (very quietly so that the cariboo won't hear the noise of the prickles going into him), then through a bee's nest, gently and slowly, so that the cariboo will not take fright when the bees are stinging him. Sheer woodcraft! Yes, mark him. Mark him in any way you like. Go up behind him and paint a blue cross on the seat of his pants as he crawls. He'll never notice. He thinks he's a hunting-dog. Yet this is the man who laughs at his little son of ten for crawling round under the dining-room table with a mat over his shoulders, and pretending to be a bear.

Now see these other men in camp.

Someone has told them–I think I first started the idea
in my pamphlet–that the thing is to sleep on a pile of hemlock branches. I think I told them to listen to the wind sowing (you know the word I mean), sowing and crooning in the giant pines. So there they are upside down, doubled up on a couch of green spikes that would have killed St. Sebastian. They stare up at the sky with blood-shot, restless eyes, waiting for the crooning to begin. And there isn't a sow in sight.

Here is another man, ragged and with a six days' growth of beard, frying a piece of bacon on a stick over a little fire. Now what does he think he is? The
chef
of the Waldorf Astoria? Yes, he does, and what's more he thinks that that miserable bit of bacon, cut with a tobacco knife from a chunk of meat that lay six days in the rain, is fit to eat. What's more, he'll eat it. So will the rest. They're all crazy together.

There's another man, the Lord help him, who thinks he has the “knack” of being a carpenter. He is hammering up shelves to a tree. Till the shelves fall down he thinks he is a wizard. Yet this is the same man who swore at his wife for asking him to put up a shelf in the back kitchen. “How the blazes,” he asked, “could he nail the damn thing up? Did she think he was a plumber?”

After all, never mind.

Provided they are happy up there, let them stay.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if they didn't come back and lie about it. They get back to the city dead fagged for want of sleep, sogged with alcohol, bitten brown by the bush-flies, trampled on by the moose, and chased through the brush by bears and skunks–and they have the nerve to say that they like it.

Sometimes I think they do.

Men are only animals anyway. They like to get out into the woods and growl round at night and feel something bite them.

Only why haven't they the imagination to be able to do the same thing with less fuss? Why not take their coats and collars off in the office and crawl round on the floor and growl at one another. It would be just as good.