First Wodehouse stories for Vanity Fair (USA)

8/3/2019 First Wodehouse stories for Vanity Fair (USA)

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THE PHYSICAL CULTURE PERILAnd How the Nation May Easily Be Saved From ItBy P. G. WodehouseAuthor of The Intrusion of Jimmy, The Little Nugget, etc.Vanity Fair (May 1914)

PHYSICAL culture is in the air just now. Where, a few years ago, the average man

sprang from bed to bath and from bath to breakfast-table, he now postpones hisonslaught on the boiled egg for a matter of fifteen minutes. These fifteen minutes he devotes to a series of bendings and stretchings which in the course of time are guaranteed to turn him into a demi-god. The advertisement pages of the magazines are congested with portraits of stern-looking, semi-nude individuals withbulging muscles and fifty-inch chests, who urge the reader to write to them forillustrated booklet. Weedy persons, hitherto in the Chippendale class, are developing all sort of unsuspected thews, and the moderately muscular citizen (provided he has written for and obtained the small illustrated booklet) begins to have grave doubts as to whether he will be able, if he goes on at this rate, to getthe sleeves of his overcoat over his biceps.

To the superficial thinker this is all very splendid. The vapid and irreflectiveobserver looks with approval on the growing band of village blacksmiths in ourmidst. But you and I, reader, shake our heads. We are uneasy. We go deeper intothe matter, and we are not happy in our minds. We realize that all this physicalimprovement must have its effect on the soul.

A MAN who does anything regularly is practically certain to become a bore. Man is by nature so irregular that, if he takes a cold bath every day or keeps a diary every day or does physical exercises every day, he is sure to be too proud ofhimself to keep quiet about it. He cannot help gloating over the weaker vesselswho turn on the hot tap, forget to enter anything after January the fifth, and s

hirk the matutinal development of their sinews. He will drag the subject into any conversation in which he happens to be engaged. And especially is this so as regards physical culture.

The monotony of doing these exercises every morning is so appalling that it is practically an impossibility not to boast of having gone through with them. Manya man who has been completely reticent on the topic of his business successes and his social achievements has become a mere babbler after completing a month ofphysical culture without missing a day. It is the same spirit which led Vikingsin the old days to burst into song when they had succeeded in cleaving some tough foeman to the chine.

AGAIN, it is alleged by scientists that it is impossible for the physical culturist to keep himself from becoming hearty, especially at breakfast, in other words a pest. Take my own case. Once upon a time I was the most delightful person you ever met. I would totter in to breakfast of a morning with dull eyes, and sinkwearily into a chair. There I would remain, silent and consequently inoffensive, the model breakfaster. No lively conversation from me. No quips. No cranks. Nospeeches beginning I see by the paper that ... Nothing but silence, a soggy, soothing silence. If I wanted anything, I pointed. If spoken to, I grunted. You hadto look at me to be sure that I was there. Those were the days when my nickname

in the home was Little Sunshine.

Then one day some officious friend, who would not leave well alone, suggested th


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at I should start those exercises which you see advertised everywhere. I weaklyconsented. I wrote for the small illustrated booklet. And now I am a different man. Little by little I have become just like that offensive young man you see inthe advertisements of the give-you-new-life kind of medicines, the young man who stands by the bedside of his sleepy friend, and says, What! Still in bed, old man! Why, I have been out with the hounds a good two hours. Nothing tires me since I tried Peabody and Finklesteins Liquid Radium. At breakfast I am hearty and tal

kative. Throughout the day I breeze about with my chest expanded, a nuisance toall whom I encounter. I slap backs. My handshake is like the bite of a horse.

NATURALLY, this has lost me a great many friends. But far worse has been the effect on my moral fiber. Before, I was modest. Now, I despise practically everybody except professional pugilists. I meet some great philosopher, and, instead oflooking with reverence at his nobby forehead, I merely feel that, if he tried totouch his toes thirty times without bending his knees, he would be in the hospital for a week. An eminent divine is to me simply a man who would have a prettythin time if he tried to lie on his back and wave his legs fifteen times in the

air without stopping. I look forward to a future spent entirely in the society of Gotch, and Willie Ritchie.

There is another danger. I heard, or read, somewhere of a mild and inoffensive man to whom Nature, in her blind way, had given a wonderful right-hand punch. Whenever he got into an argument, he could not help feeling that there the punch was and it would be a pity to waste it. The knowledge that he possessed that superb hay-maker was a perpetual menace to him. He went through life a haunted man. Am I to become like him? Already, after doing these exercises for a few weeks, Ihave a waist-line of the consistency of fairly stale bread. In time it must infallibly become like iron. There is a rudimentary muscle growing behind my right shoulder-blade. It looks like an orange and is getting larger every day. About this time next year, I shall be a sort of human bomb. I will do my very best to co

ntrol myself, but suppose a momentary irritation gets the better of me and I letmyself go! It does not bear thinking of.

BROODING tensely over this state of things, I have, I think, hit on a remedy. What is required is a system of spiritual exercises which shall methodically develop the soul so that it keeps pace with the muscles and the self-esteem.

Let us say that you open with that exercise where you put your feet under the chest of drawers and sit up suddenly. Well, under my new system, instead of thinking of the effect of this maneuver on the abdominal muscles, you concentrate yourmind on some such formula as, I must remember that I have not yet subscribed tothe model farm for tuberculous cows.

Having completed this exercise, you stand erect and swing the arms from left toright and from right to left without moving the lower half of the body. As you do this, say to yourself, This, I know, is where I get the steel-and-indiarubber results on my deltoids, but I must not forget that there are hundreds of men whose confining work in the sweat shops has entirely deprived them of opportunitiesto contract eugenic marriages.

This treatment, you will find, induces a humble frame of mind admirably calculated to counterbalance the sinful pride engendered by your physical exercises.

Space forbids a complete list of these spiritual culture exercises, but I am nowpreparing a small illustrated booklet, particulars of which will be found in the advertising pages. The accompanying portrait is from the booklet and shows me


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standing with my hands behind my head and with large, vulgar muscles standing out all over me. But there is a vast difference, which you will discover when youlook at my face. I am not wearing the offensively preoccupied expression of mostphysical-culture advertisements. You will notice a rapt, seraphic expression inthe eyes and a soft and spiritual suggestion of humility about the mouth.

(Note - This was PGWs first contribution to Vanity Fair)

~~~ The End ~~~

THE LITERATURE OF THE FUTUREOr Every Man His Own FuturistBy P. G. WodehouseAuthor of The Little Nugget, The White Hope, etc.Vanity Fair (June 1914)WHAT is the art of writing? Simply, when you boil it down, being able to put plain statements in an uncommon way. The men who make the money get it for having the sense to think out a new way of saying commonplace things in advance of theirtrade rivals.

The ordinary man, who is not an artist, if asked to describe Jones crossing Thirty-third Street, would say, Jones crossed Thirtythird Street.

But hand the same subject to the giants of the craft, and watch them get busy onit. Mr. Arnold Bennett would treat it as a trilogy. Vol. I, Jones childhood. Vol. II, Jones, after a manhood in the Potteries, comes to New York. Circumstancesbring him to Thirty-third Street. Vol. III, Jones crosses Thirty-third Street. Result, dollars per word, and instant sale of dramatic and moving picture rights.

Sir A. Conan Doyle would have Jones drop the Maharajah%Ers Emerald under the elevated or pick up a paper covered with cipher writing, and Sherlock Holmes would have The Mystery of Thirty-third Street on his hands.

Mr. Robert W. Chambers Jones (an extraordinarily handsome man) would meet a deliriously beautiful girl just where the up-town traffic gets you when you try to dodge the down-town traffic, and they would be married in the street opposite Macys.

If Jones crossed Thirty-third Street under the guidance of Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim, the traffic cop would turn out to be the Missing Ambassador whom everybodythought had been blown up by Nihilists.

Different, you see, in every case. That is the secret. That is why authors havegold bathtubs, and are able to afford eggs for breakfast. I am going to have themtoo. For I have invented a new form of literary expression.

MY SECRET is simple. I can afford to give it away, because I have three crates full of manuscripts of the new literature in my sitting-room, and shall have floo


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chicken.

We start off with Jones. Nothing obscure about that? All clear so far? Very well, then. Just as Jones steps off the side-walk, he cannons into a stout man fromHackensack, who is visiting New York because his wife has gone to Philadelphia to sit at the bed-side of a girlhoods friend who has contracted mumps through kissing her sisters little boy. If that can be better expressed than by the word Zunk,

I shall be surprised.

Jones then begins to cross the road. Whoosh. An automobile just misses him. Wow, heexclaims. Then, pulling himself together for the effort, he says, Now. Ah! and resumes his journey. Clangclangclangclang An ambulance wagon shaves his trouser-leg.He exclaims Wow, then, mopping his forehead, Whew. Woof, a rushing pedestrian has bued center and nearly upset him. He begins to say Kindly look where you are going,sir, when Brrrrrrrrrrrr, an elevated train drowns his voice.

AND now the action begins to quicken, the plot to thicken, and the subscribers t

o get their moneys worth. As the noise of the elevated train dies away, he hearsa clear, girlish voice enquiring of the policeman, Where do I? It is Jacqueline, themost beautiful girl outside an all-fiction magazine. He gazes at her ardently.Has he met his affinity? Whoosh. Another automobile just misses him. He cries outin a startled voice, and his thoughts are distracted from the girl, so that he hears a news-boy calling the extras. Another elevated train passes overhead. He looks up Broadway, and sees a sign advertising Browns Balsam for the Bilious. Wha-a-aaaa! A surface-car comes to a halt beside him. He looks to the right, and seesthe Herald Building, which suggests printing-machines to his mind. As he standsthere, a dog runs past, yelling, and at the same moment his eye is caught by theHerald Square Moving-Picture Theatre. Another automobile whizzes by. Then a cryof rapture escapes him. Through the throng he has again caught sight of Jacqueline. This time he is in no doubt. She is his affinity. He gives her the burning

stare, and as he does so, oblivious to all else but her, along comes a fire engine and rams him squarely. The crowd cries Hi! With one loud exhalation he fallsunconscious.

And there you are, with the heroine on the stage and the action moving like theTwentieth Century Limited; and all in half-a-dozen lines.

My invention is the compressed soup tablet of literature. In a busy age like this it supplies a long-felt want. It is vivid. It grips. It has the punch. It hascome to stay. How humanity has got along without it all these years is more thanI can understand.

It is ridiculously easy. Try it yourself. Here is one about a smart dance in NewYork. Anybody can see the whole picture.

Why, how do you . . . Hotter than . . . Swish-sh . . . SwishLittle more punch . .. Green wig. . . Hi! You! . . . La-de-dum, dum-de-dum . . . dum-de . . . What a face! . . . This mine? . . . Zing-Zing-Zzzz . . . Look out, Etta . . . Dancing drugstore . . . Umpty-ump . . . Awfully sorry . . . Brrrrrrrrum . . . Hole in his sock . . . No, mine has one less hop . . . Clean collars upstairs . . . Puffpuff .. . Chocolate Eclair . . . Whang . . . O!!! Pop . . . Maxixe and Braz . . . Argentine . . . Back-up, cant you? . . . She really is divorced . . . Thank God! . .. Whew! Cigarette? . . . Glass champagne? . . . Call my car!

My futuristic literature is going to make me very rich. Of this I am so certain

that I have already been at great pains to choose the colors for my automobiles.I shall never go out with less than three motors. Then, if the one I am in hasa blow-out, I can get into the next, and go on without waste of time. The word w


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ill go round that I am out will my motors and tired business men will rush to their windows and envy me. I am now at work picking out names for my butlers. Thatis a little more difficult than picking colors for my motors, since no two canbe alike.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE KNUTS O LONDONDesperate Fellows All, and the DistinctionBetween the Knut and the BloodNuts, By P. G. Wodehouse Drawings by Fish

Vanity Fair (Sept. 1914)

IM GILBERT, the filbert,The nut with a k.,

The pride of Piccadilly,The blas rou;

Oh, Hades, the ladies,Theyd leave their wooden huts

For Gilbert, the filbert,The colonel of the nuts.

So runs the refrain of the song which all London is whistling at the present moment, and American visitors probably wonder why Gilbert should apparently take pr

ide in the absence of sanity implied by his description of himself as a Nut. Butin England the word nut has a different meaning. The Nut of London is the descendant of the Beau, the Buck, the Macaroni, the Johnnie, the Swell, and the Dude.

Nobody knows how the word came into existence in its present sense. London seemed to awake one morning convinced that the only proper term for the young man cutting a swathe through its midst on his fathers money was the term Nut, or Knut, asou must spell it to be in the movement. Overnight it had been calling these young men Johnnies, boys and lads.

George Grossmith was the first to emphasize the distinction between the Nut andthe Blood. The Blood was a young man who caused riots in restaurants: the Nut istoo listless to do anything so energetic. For listlessness ande20a certain airof world-weariness, combined withe20a colored collar, a small moustache, a drooping carriage%rC the minimum of frontal development%rC and a high-power racing-car, are the chief qualifications of the Nut. He is bored to death, but he does itsimply because its done.

The Nut is faithful to tradition. He appears on Church Parade: he never misses the Eton and Harrow cricket-match with its promenade between the innings: on Sundays aged and decrepit Nuts may be seen in Boulters Lock, dreaming peacefully while their female equivalents, the flappers, wield the punt-poles, for women must work through men may sleep, and the Bath Club, with its mixed bathing, is one ofhis chosen retreats.

His chief forms of relaxation are dancing and bread-throwing. The only time a Nut really sits up and begins to display animation is when a hard roll, thrown bya friend across the table, takes him in the eye, and he reaches out for another


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to throw back.

WHAT becomes of the Nuts is as great a problem as what becomes of the pins. Perhaps they die: perhaps they turn into something else: though it is difficult to i

magine a genuine Nut being anything but himself. With the Blood it was different. After he had thrown a sufficient number of plates at a sufficient number of waiters, and wrenched enough knockers from their doors to soothe his too energeticsoul, he turned naturally to pursuits where energy was a commercial asset. Butthe Nut is not a product of misdirected energy: he is a sort of clam, endowed with just enough power of motion to enable him to get into a taxicab and say Murrays. The most plausible theory is that he just evaporates like a fog, and somebody,passing by, sees his clothes lying there and takes them away.

He speaks a language of his own. Pleasant happenings brace him awfully: unpleasanthappenings feed him. A friend is a stout fellow: an enemy a tick. Just at present haffects a few Americanisms, and will attach the word some to practically every nou

n he uses.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE

It is Stagey and Artificial. But oh! What a Training School for SoldiersBy a Hardened Week-ender--Drawings by FishVanity Fair (October 1914)IT has never been clearly decided whether English country-house life came into being to keep the English playwright from the bread-line, or whether the playwright owes his existence to the country-house. The only thing certain is that, if there had been no country-houses, many deserving dramatists would have had to getright out and work.

The thoughtful visitor, coming away from an English country-house, cannot resistthe feeling that, as soon as he has got out of sight, they will strike the scene. His late host will take off his whiskers and go off and talk politics with thebutler: the ingenue, to whom he so nearly proposed last night, will change her dress and go out to supper: while the stage hands pull down the fine old mansion,the rose-garden, and the terrace, and store them in a shed ready for the next production.

The whole atmosphere is of the stage. You enter (r. c) through the front door onto a hall scene. Various characters are scattered about gracefully drinking tea. Inthe background, Jakes, the faithful butler. Your hostess comes forward and speaks a line: you reply: and from that moment you become part of the action of the piece. Not until you are in the train that is bearing you to London do you shakeoff the stage effect.

It is the fault of the dramatists, in all probability. You have seen so many pla

ys, the third act of which took place in the hall of Sir Raymond Protheros country-house in Shropshire, that you cannot get away from the thing. The countryhousefascinates the dramatist, principally because it is the one atmosphere in which


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he cannot make a mistake. All country-houses are alike, always have been alike,and always will be alike. The types of residents and visitors are eternal. Thereis the Lord of the Manor, smooth-faced but wearing small whiskers: the Lady Bountiful, mild and aristocratic, with her hair preceding her in a neat bun on theroad to Heaven: the Son and Heir, the catch of the county, smooth-haired, reserved, almost meek. He knows his value, but he will not let himself get puffed up about it.

NEXT the Guests. The sadfaced golfer, the stern tennis-player, the terrace-haunting sentimentalists, the mother with daughter, the smart lady with dog, and mostimportant of all, the Colonel.

He is nearly always a colonel, unless he is a major. If he is a civilian, he owns property in Wales. But he is hardly ever a civilian. It seems to be almost a rule that the Permanent Guest should be connected with the military. He, more even than the butler, helps to establish that air of peace which is the key-note ofthe atmosphere of the country-house. On the stage he is sometimes a barrister o

r a Cabinet Minister, and his duty is to be the Man Who Keeps His Head, the ManWho Knows The World, the Man Who Has The Fatherly Scene with the Heroine. Her husband does not understand her: she has temperament, he merely exists for sport:she is going to run away with the young man with the black hair brushed back over his head. And then she collides with this gentle, kindly, cynical, understanding man with the strong face, and he talks to her. After he has talked to her fortwenty minutes or so, she feels that her husband isnt so bad after all, and so you get the happy ending. He also detects adventuresses.

The servants are comic relief.

To a thinking man, there is something a little eerie about the country-house. What is there in its atmosphere that makes everybody so exactly alike? The stage explanation is the only one that satisfies the intellect. If the country-house isnot a stage set, how can one explain the fact that people who in London are individuals become types as soon as they have passed its portals? This is not a wild statement: it can be supported by evidence. Each week throughout the year theLondon illustrated papers print country-house groups. Each group is exactly the same as every other group. The editor could substitute the%r0interesting picture ofthe house-party at Weevils, the Hampshire seat of Lord Maxted%yD for some familiarfaces at the shoot at Blore Manor, Herts, without anybody noticing the change, not even the people in the photographs. Yet in London each of these persons has adistinct individuality of his or her own, and would be offended at the suggestion that he or she could be taken for somebody else.

THAT is why the country-house is so restful. Your private troubles fade as you enter it: the world seems very far away: you have nothing to think of except thepart for which you have been cast. Off stage, you are a man with pronounced views on a variety of different subjects: once in the country-house, you become a mere inspector of horses, a prodder of pigs, an unnoticed unit at the breakfast-table.

Progress, flooding the land, has but trickled over the country-house. The carriage has given place to the automobile, and that is all. All the grand old beliefs

still flourish, chiefly the belief that one bath-room is enough for thirty people. If England once got the idea that there is any other way for a man to cleanhimself than in a round tin saucer filled to the brim with an inch and a half of


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water, good-bye to Empire. Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, theBoer War in the bachelor bedrooms of Englands country-houses. Hardened by their privations at Woosted Beeches, Salop, and The Oaks, Northants, the gentlemen of England were ready for anything that came along. If they had to go days on end without a sight of water, they said to themselves, Well, it might be worse. We might be spending the week-end somewhere and chasing the soap round the tin saucer on a cold morning!

That is the spirit which wins battles.

It has always been a mystery to me what are the qualifications which admit you to the One Bath-Room. To me it has always been a kind of Pisgah. I have heard ittalked about, and I have even seen it: but I have never been there. For me the tin saucer and the inch and a half of water. Perhaps it is reserved as a gracefulmark of reverence for Age. Certainly, the lucky devils I have met on their waythere with dressing-gowns and sponges have always been elderly men of the retired general or colonel type. And even they have their troubles. They have to bathe

to schedule. Five minutes delay between the sheets, and the colonels tub is spoilt by the frenzied snorts of impatience and anger from the general, entrenched inthe passage, waiting his turn. This time-sheet business leads, too, to occasional embarrassment, as when the hostess said to the honored guest, When would you like your bath in the morning? and he replied, My time is your time, Mrs. Brown.

THE lack of bathing facilities is not the only drawback to country-house visiting. Indeed, the keynote of the country-house may be said to be a kind of luxurious discomfort. The average party consists of people fifty percent of whom are meeting each other for the first time: they have from Friday or Saturday evening toMonday morning to get acquainted. This is about two years eleven months and a f

ew days less than the minimum period in which the average Briton can get acquainted with anyone. An air of restraint broods over the gathering. Good-fellowshipexists in patches, but the bulk of the temporary population of the house has thetense demeanour of those who have set themselves a task and mean to fulfil it.They have contracted to stay till Monday morning, and they mean to do it; but itis too much to expect them to do it rollickingly. I have seen week-enders at country-houses, who probably had no notion that they were not the life and soul ofthe party, pottering about in a dejected way that would have caused comment ina Siberian salt-mine. There seems to be no escape from this frame of mind. If your host is one of those hosts who believe in letting guests alone to amuse themselves, the probability is that the guests, being of the class who are not strongin the way of mental resources, will be passively bored. The active host, on the other hand, who hounds his guests and insists on their doing something all thetime, whether they like it or not, is an active evil. It is a hard world.

~~~ The End ~~~


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THE NOBLE ART OF FALCONRYAnd the Gradual Extinction of the Sport in EnglandBy P. G. WodehouseAuthor of The Little Nugget, The White Hope, etc.Vanity Fair (October 1914)THE Sport of Falconry is still seen a good deal in England and Scotland, although every year has witnessed a diminution of interest in it. It has ceased to grip

the great heart of the public. No crowds assemble to watch somebodys merlin pulloff a double header with somebody elses peregrine. The motto of the day is: Golf, and the world golfs with you; hawk, and you hawk alone.

The sport consists of sicking falcons or hawks onto perfectly inoffensive birdsof other species, and standing by in a negligent attitude while the party of thefirst part does all sorts of unpleasant things to the party of the second part.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which I occasionally turn to polish up my information on the few things I do not already know all about, the decayof falconry was due to the enclosure of waste lands, agricultural improvements,

and the introduction of firearms into the sporting field. Of these, it was thelast that hit the fine old pastime hardest. Thinking men, faced with the alternative of watching a bird amuse itself or having the time of their lives pepperinggamekeepers with small shot, did not hesitate for an instant. They saw in a flash what had always been the great objection to hawking, viz., that the hawk gotall the cheers and spot-light, while the human in the background was merely a super, supporting the star. No man of spirit can endure for long to play second fiddle to a mere bird, so when firearms came along, the populace grabbed them as one man; and since then the hawk has been resting.

Another reason why the sport waned in favor was because it failed to cater to the man in the cheap seats who is the backbone of every sport. Falcons and hawks, says one writer, were allotted to degrees and orders of men according to rank and

station for instance, to the emperor the eagle and vulture, to royalty the jerfalcons, to an earl the peregrine, to a yeoman the goshawk, to a priest the sparrow-hawk, and to a knave or servant the useless kestrel. Do you imagine that, underthose conditions, the knaves or servants, who formed the bulk of the sporting public, were going to throng into the bleachers and spend all their spare cash onfalconry extras? After a knave or servant had failed for the nth time to get his kestrel to do anything but eat and sleep, he began to ask himself What am I getting out of this? The emperor could not understand the mans grievance. I cant thinkwhat on earth youre always grumbling about, he would say. Its the greatest sport inthe world. Why, Ive just been out with Clarence, my vulture, and we had a corkingtime. Thats all very well, said the knave or servant peevishly, but my kestrel, Reginald, might be an I. W. W. for all the work hes done so far.

But, if neither of these causes had been strong enough to extinguish falconry,the vocabulary of the sport would have done it. Your enthusiast can put up witha certain amount of slang in connection with his favorite sport, but there are limits. No man objects to having to read that Baker poled a leaguer over the sun pasture for the circuit, but suppose this same man had to follow a national pastime with words like bewits, brail, cere, creance, eyas, frounce, imping, jonk, mew, pannel, ramage, seeling, tiercel, varvels, and yarak inextricably mixed up with it! He would be a wreck months before the Worlds Series. It was no sinecure tobe a sporting writer in the days of falconry. If you printed a statement that the Earl of Vavasours peregrine had mantled, when all the time it had really rakedout, you would have all the annoyance of (1) changing your act, (2) hunting foranother job, or (3) accompanying the headsman into the operating theatre.


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BUT of all the men who must have cursed the day that falconry was ever invented,the birds trainers must have had the greatest grievance. The following, says a learned authority, is an outline of the process of training hawks, and then proceedsto fill a dozen closely-printed pages. A perusal of it has left me with the impression that the only thing you do not have to do in training a hawk is to teachit the Maxixe. Everything else has been provided for. The hawk, says our authority, will easily be induced to feed by drawing a beefsteak over her feet, brushing

her legs at the same time with a wing, and now and then, as she snaps, slippinga morsel into her mouth. To my mind, a bird which makes such a fuss about its meals does not deserve them. There is no need to pamper a bird. Bring it its beefsteak on a plate with a little water-cress and a few French fried potatoes, and,I submit, you have done your part.

(Note - This also appeared in 1932 in Louder and Funnier; Plum was a noble recycler far ahead of his time.)

~~~ The End ~~~

STIRRING SCENES INWAR STRICKENLONDON

Lady Clara and Her SetDo Heavy Work for

the Sufferers

Text by Wodehouse andDrawings by Fish

IN such London theatres as still keep open, knitting army-socks is all the ragejust now. You can do a leg during a four-act comedy, and even at a Vaudeville performance, where there is more to distract the mind, a steady knitter may roundout a heel. The only drawback to an otherwise praise-worthy practice is that itexcites the actors so. The leading juvenile whose love-making in a current playcaused Lady Clara to drop no fewer than six stitches in the course of a single act has become so insufferably swollen-headed that, according to his jealous comrades of the Green-Room club, he will not speak to a soul except Sir Herbert Tree, and then only when Sir Herbert speaks first.

MERELY an archaeological interest applies to the picture below representing divers nuts, or lads of the village, foregathering with the female of the species ina London night-club. Alas! Under the new military regulations, even night-clubsmust conform with the rule which closes all places which sell alcoholic liquorat eleven sharp every night. A night-club which closes at eleven might just as well be an afternoon club, and Lady Clara

s set is reeling under the blow. This picture shows a scene of nightly occurence before the new law was passed. The apparently agonized gentleman on the extreme left is parting with a few coins to a

fair bandit who is going the round of the club.

THE war has done one thing, at any rate. It has brought out the latent resource


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and ingenuity of young Aubrey FitzCholmondbanks, the pride of the Bachelors Club.A martial spirit glows in Aburey

s concave bosom, but he is near-sighted and color-blind, and the recruiting sergeants won

t look at him. They arguenot withoutreason, say those who have seen Aubrey in action among the grousethat if he loosed off a rifle at General von Kluck

s army, he would in all probability wing General Gallieni. In this crisis Aubrey has risen to the occasion nobly. He allows Lady Clara

s set to practice bandaging on himshowing for the Nth time that he also

serves who only standsand sits.

IT is with a pang of envy, which he tries vainly to suppress, that poor CorporalFrederick Smith, whose scared gaze is just visible above the coverlet in the picture, hears the reports of his late companions privations at the front. Smith was the first soldier to be invalided home, suffering from a bullet-graze in the forehead. The Red Cross has done its best for him. In one hour, it is officiallystated, the suffering corporal had his face washed four times, and in the same space his temperature was taken so often that, when the thermometer was finally removed, he had acquired the taste and begged to be allowed to chew another. The

five nursesamong them, Lady Clara%x0

who cluster about his bedside have but one regret: owing to the nature of his wound they cannot part his hair. But there is alw

ays a bright side to everything; and it is probably this fact that has enabled Corporal Smith to escape brain-fever. The doctors on the right are considering his plea for more nurses, the kindly gentleman on the right would give in, but themedic with the mustache is for amputating the entire nursing staff.

LADY CLARA DREAMS Lady Clara, worn out with sock-knitting and Red Cross training, falls asleep and dreams of next year

s Cowes, next year

s Trouville, and nextyear

s Opera.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE PLEASURES OF DUELLING IN GERMANYBy P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (December 1914)


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WHATEVER else of significance the Great War in Europe has had for the thoughtfulman, the point of greatest interest in it has been the extraordinary toughnessof the German Crown Prince.

It was, if we remember rightly, in the first week of hostilities that he began being killed, and, once started, he has kept bravely at it ever since. It is nowno rare experience for him to be killed three times in a single day, and in loca

lities distant from each other several hundred miles.

Now it is obvious to the meanest capacity that only the most rigorous training in early youth could have given him this superb Teutonic stamina. An American, reared only on college football and homemade pie, would have expired at his firstor second death. At the outside, dissolution number three would have set his friends to buying immortelles and to relating stories of how kind he had always been to animals. The difference in the case of the Crown Prince was that he was trained on the mensur, or German students duel. General Von Klucks favorite pastime as a boy was a go-as-you-please mensur.

If you can survive it, you can survive anythingfrom a bursting shell to a course

in German kultur. Anybody can go through an ordinary duel but imagine survivingthe following ceremonies on a hot summer evening.

The student first dons a shirt and trousers of white cotton. Over these his dressers place a huge leather coat, and on this they buckle a padded sleeve and a collar four inches high. A leather eye-guard is the next item, covering the eyes,the nose and the forehead. The poor fellow then puts on a large, thick glove, and the preparations are nearly complete. Having done all this to the human junk-shop, his so-called friends lean him against a chair. They look at him thoughtfully. There must be something else they can do to make dear old Wilhelm look a bigger fool, but for the moment they cannot think what it is. They then chalk the palm of his glove and the soles of his feet and finally, they rub grease on his eye-guards. That seems to finish the thing. Nobody can think of anything else, so

they put a sword into the poor fellows hand, introduce him to another walking dummy, get out a couple of china wash basins, to catch the blood, and then tell him to go in and chop bits off his adversary, whichas far as his what-the-well-dressed-man-is-wearing-this-season costume will permithe proceeds to do, and the mensur has begun.

FOUR blows make a ging: sixty gings make a mensur. It sounds like an extract from a table of distances, and you would expect it to continue, Five mensurs make one rod, pole or perch; but the ging turns out to be only another name for what wecall a round in boxing. A great point about the student duel is that both principals must hit at exactly the same time. Other rules are that they must not move either foot or head, must not parry, and must not feint. It would not be German ifthere were not a whole lot of things that were forbidden. In fact, there seemsto be so little that they may do, beyond gashing their cheeks, that the thoughtirresistibly occurs, to the non-German reader, that a great deal of time and trouble would be saved if these earnest young men were given ordinary safety razorsand told to shave themselves. We are no duellist, but only this morning, when we were getting our beard under control, we gave ourself schlaegerstroke which would have made the biggest kind of a hit in a ging.

THIS duelling is not a casual affair. You cannot run into the kitchen for a meat

-axe; into the bedroom for a pair of pillows; into the garage for the chauffeursmotor-goggles, and then go out and begin vivisecting your fellow-man. That wouldnot be complicated enough for Germany. The whole thing must be carefully system


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atized. There are two types of duelling associations which have their branches in every German University. This enables the restless student to leave his nose in Heidelberg, his right ear in Gttingen, and a sliver of his chin in Dsseldorfthuscombining the pleasures of travel with the delights of a barroom argument.

ATTACHED to each University duelling club is a verein. A verein ishow shall we put it?Perhaps it can best be described as a verein. It is a place where the students, when they are not duelling, sit around and sing college songs. Naturally a man who has spent years in listening to college songs holds life less dear than one who has been through no such perils. Anyone who has ever sat on the porch ofa Summer hotel while four or five sophomores were singing Boola-Boolain close harmonywill heartily endorse this statement.

~~~ The End ~~~

THOUGHTS ON HOME LIFEBy P. G. WodehouseVanity Fair (December 1914)

I. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE HOMEEVERY now and then a writer in one of the papers will ask What has become of theHome? and then other writers reply that the Home has disappeared, and it is not unlikely that some of them will tap a fruity line of sentiment on the subject ofthe Home. There is nothing that appeals so much to the man who lives in a hoteland spends all his spare time at restaurants, as the Home. He would run a mile to avoid it himself, but he thinks it a splendid thing for the rest of humanity.

Opinions differ as to what it was that slew the Home. Some trace its decease tothe improved facilities for travel. Others blame the Tango. There is reason to think that janitors had a good deal to do with it. You cannot have a Home withoutchildren, and janitors, for some reason or other, always object to children. Asthe secret of modern life was to get in solid with the janitor, children naturally became obsolete.

More probably, however, the disappearance of the Home was directly due to the custom of taking family breakfast. This was the real cause of dissolution: the increased facilities for travel merely enabled the sufferers to get away, they having previously been forced to choose between staying on or walking off. It was that fact that made the Home so impregnable in the early days of civilization. Itwas a little community cut off from the world. The only horse attached to the establishment belonged to Father, and he kept a hawk-like eye on it. You had to trudge along on your own feet if you wished to shake the family: and, even if youdid, you were bound to run into some other family, who would adopt you, thus starting all the trouble over again. You were, in a word, all dressed up and no pla

ce to go. So you just set your teeth, and endured it. There was no getting awayfrom the family breakfast in those days.


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PEOPLE write lightly about family breakfast, just as he jests at scars who neverfelt a wound. I have just been reading a Book of Etiquette, written by a womanwho obviously knows nothing of the horrors of these old-time feasts. In the section devoted to Home Etiquette, she says, Busy as you may be, it is only a small compliment to your household to sit down to the family breakfast with an air of g

ood-will toward everybody.

There speaks one who has never staggered into the dining-room with one of thoseearly morning headaches and gazed across the table at the repulsive, semi-humancountenances of parents, brothers and sisters. There they sit, the brutes! eating their cereal and grape-fruit, and you must watch them and even exchange remarks with them. To be expected to do this with an air of good-will towards everybodyis too much. If one gets through the meal without any definitely homicidal thoughts one has done all that can reasonably be asked.

THERE may be those who spring from their beds with a gay song upon their lips and greet the new day with rollicking merriment. To these, if they exist, breakfast is a meal like other meals, and may safely be shared with their species. But to most of us breakfast is not so much a meal as a kind of painful restoration ofvitality. It is the crucial moment of the day. We may pull through or we may not. We shall be able to tell more certainly after we have had our three cups of coffee and absorbed the baseball news. Meanwhile, absolute quiet and seclusion isessential. The man who would expect us to exhibit airs of good-will and even engage in conversation would demand sparkling small-talk from a Prussian Uhlan.

The Home has perished because it would not realize this vital truth. It herded us all together at the worst hour of the day. It had no consideration for the weakness of the flesh.

How different is the near-Home, which has superseded it. The morning sun shinesbrightly in on an empty dining-room. Father has had his cold coffee and under-boiled egg and has gone off to business. John, the eldest son, a little fatigued from dancing the fox-trot till six a.m., is making a wholesome and nourishing repast in bed off a dry cracker and a brandy-and-soda. Mabel, the daughter, who wasplaying auction bridge last night and got home just before John, has yet to hearoused from her refreshing slumber. Mother is at Reno, waiting for her case toget on the calendar. And over the entire establishment broods a sort of cozy peace. How different from the dark days when Mother sat entrenched behind the urns,while Father burrowed like a rabbit into the recesses of the morning paper, andthe chicks kicked each other under the table and made personal remarks in bitter undertones.

THERE were good points, no doubt, about the Home, but it would not keep abreastof modern progress. In earlier days, before modern progress began to zip along,on first speed, children would frequently go through life with one set of parents. In these days of easy divorce things have become too complex for the poor lambs. That kindly, grey-haired man who pays the bills is not really Father. He isthe man Mother married after she had divorced Father for incompatibility of temperament and extreme cruelty because he could not learn the rouli-rouli, and struck the toy Pomeranian with a teaspoon. That sweet-faced, gentle woman who is sopatient with them, when they declare no-trumps on a spade hand, is not really Mo

ther. She is the woman whom Fatherwho is not really Fathermarried when Mother, whohad divorced Fatherwho was really Fatherdivorced Father who was not really Father.


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The home could not survive these things. It expired with a gurgle. It now possesses a purely archaeological interest for us.

II. HOME LIFE IN THE COUNTRYIF home life has survived at all it is in the country. No one for an instant could believe in the existence of it in the city. Suspecting that there might still

be a semblance of it in the rural districts, I recently announced my intentionof settling in the country for the Fall and Winter. The principal comment of myfriends was that I should find it dull. Dull! I am becoming a nervous wreck. Myganglions are vibrating like a tuning-fork.

I was bitten by a dog, run over by a bicycle, and deprived of a bath, all withinthe space of twenty-four hours.

The charm of the country is that you never know what is going to happen next. Inthe city everything is orderly and expected. In the city, you know that, if yousignal to a car to stop, it will go on: if you ask the waiter for lobster Newburg, he will bring you chicken la King: if you buy a front orchestra chair, it wi

ll be next to the foyer and behind a stout pillar. But in the country you cannotmake your calculations ahead. The dog that fawns on you on Monday night is quite likely to pin you by the ankle on Tuesday morning. And so with all the other flora and fauna of the countryside. There is no relying on them.

HAVE you ever realized the charm of going to bed with the sporting chance that you may not be able to wash next day? Only a dweller in the country can understand the thrill of seeing water actually emerging from a tap. It is like the climaxof an absorbing drama. One morning, aqua pura in large quantities: next morningjust a gurgle and nothing more. The morning tub in the country combines the medicinal properties of Carlsbad with the fiercer gambling excitements of Monte Car

lo.

You, who have only to step outside your door to get the latest edition of the last edition of the evening paper, can never know the breathless excitement of walking a mile and a half to the post-office to collect the matutinal sheet. It maybe there, or it may not. There are no rules. It entirely depends on the whim ofsome one in New York. True, he contracted to mail you a paper every day, but hehas a rooted idea that you will be just as well pleased if you receive no paperone day and two the next, and he acts on it. Gradually, as the post-office appears in view, the tension becomes almost insupportable. You end by dashing in atthe door like an excitable Marathon runner. And, when, fortune being kind, you actually hold the paper in your hand,then you feel like some watcher of the skies,when a new planet swims into his ken, or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyeshe stared at the Pacific, and all his men looked at each other with a wild surprise, silent, upon a peak in Darien.

I have asked several of the villagers here and they say they all feel just likethat.

THERE is an elasticity about the rule of the road as concerns vehicular trafficin these parts which prevents life from ever becoming dull. To bicycle anywhereexcept on the foot-path is considered bad form, especially after dark. Lamps arenot being worn this Fall, and bells have gone out of fashion. To wander, theref

ore, outside the confines of ones own grounds, when dusk has fallen, is to experience all the delights of a charge of Uhlans, and some notable attempts to lowerthe standing long-jump record have recently been made in the neighborhood.


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These footpath-riders have a certain excuse for their actions, in that a band ofable and energetic signori, armed with pickaxes, have lately descended upon theplace, and are converting the high roads into whatif it were not for the known fact of Italys neutralityone would take for military trenches. But I do not resenttheir activities, for they provide me with an admirable form of exercise. I knowno finer method of getting up an appetite for lunch than to sit on a gate with

a pipe and watch a score of Italians breaking up a road. Sometimes, when the foreman has been particularly vigilant, I have staggered home, hardly able to put one foot before the other.

Yes, it is a tense, restless life, this that I have chosen.

Macbeth alone is enough to keep one from stagnating. He is a small smoky-blue kitten who has adopted me, and I call him Macbeth because he murders sleep. Try asI may, I cannot arrange my hours of rest to coincide with his. If I go to bed at nine-thirty, so as to be able to rise with him at six, he selects that night for sitting up till the small hours. If I sit up, he wants to turn in at eight, with the idea of starting the day well at about five in the morning. Just as I ha

ve settled down to rest, and am dozing off, from the porch outside comes his well known mew. I rise and admit him. He curls up, to all appearances in for the night. An hour later he is demanding to he let out again with all the passionate energy of a prisoned soul struggling to be free.

SUCH is life in Belleville, Long Island,a pulsating affair. But I am glad I came.I am growing thin, and there are dark circles under my eyes from the pace at which I am living, but I am glad I came. The hermits life teaches resource. One learns that it is possible to consume food without the assistance of relays of dancers performing the latest steps in the vicinity of ones soup. In the absence of street-cars one re-discovers the lost art of walking. One comes to realize that t

he day really begins earlier than ten oclock, and that nine-thirty can be quite agood bed-time. And you appreciate your dinner all the more when the butcher, happy, careless soul, has forgotten to call and you have had to walk three miles,avoiding bicycles all the time, and leaping trenches, and dodging dogs, to procure the wherewithal to keep body and soul together.

The country has developed in me a new attitude toward life. I find myself more disposed to look with kindliness and tolerance upon those whom I knew to be my inferiorsmentally, physically and otherwise. Indeed, I am almost ready to accept the idea of the essential Brotherhood of Man, an idea which, in the city, I regarded as distastefulnot to say vulgar.

Yes, there are worse things than home life in the country.

~~~ The End ~~~

COMMUTING AT THE THEATREA Playgoers Plea for Dramatic Trip TicketsBy Pelham Grenville


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Vanity Fair (January 1915)

IT seems to be universally admitted that the past seasonlike all other previous seasonshas been the worst in the history of the New York stage, and earnest enquirers are trying to ascertain the reason.

One cause assigned for the lean times is that the plays have been bad. The absurdity of this hypothesis may be proved by a glance at the theatrical advertisements.

These all show that every piece produced is "a striking, smashing, stupendous, genuine, or indubitable, hit. Each play is what the public has been waiting twentyyears to see; and the only trouble is that the public, having waited so long, seems to feel that it may as well go on waiting a little longer. And, while it isdoing so, the management finds that it forgot to insert three words in its advertisement. It proceeds to repair the omission. The Last Week are the words in question. They are possibly the saddest words that pen can form.

I have given much thought to this subject, and I have been rewarded with a solution, so simple that it seems strange that it has never been put into practice. Like all great ideas, it was waiting, ready to be picked up by anyone.

The railroads have already tried the scheme with success and there is no reasonwhy the theatres should not resort to the same expedient.

I refer to the mileage system.

ALL railroads recognize that the purest of pleasures may cloy, so, instead of forcing their patrons every time to travel the entire distance of a journey or not

travel at all, they say, in effect, See here, old man, you like traveling and Ilike having you travel, but it does get a bit tedious after a while, doesnt it? Well, Ill tell you what well do: you pay me so much, and then you can come and travel in instalments whenever you feel inclined, till youve used up all of your little white trip ticket-book.

And so with the theatres !

What is really the trouble with the New York drama is that it has reached such astage of striking, stupendous, smashing, genuine, and indubitable hittishness, that the ordinary man is not equal to a sustained orgy of it. After about half anhour of it the pleasure becomes too delirious, and he wishes that he might be elsewhere. But he has paid his two dollars, and the instinct of the commercial-minded citizen compels him to sit the thing out and not let the management get ahead of him by seventy-five cents of his hard-earned money. The result is that he gets surfeited with the smashing excellence of the play, and, next time, when hehas two dollars to spare, he craftily adds it to his little savings in a toy bank, and the most stupendous hit New York has seen in a hundred and eleven years hasto be withdrawn after a weeks run.

BUT suppose that that man had a mileage ticket.

What then? Why, as soon as the superb technique and the sparkling dialogue of th

e dramatist gave him that feeling of complete satiety which is such a never-failing by-product of the modern play, out he would rush.


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A few nights at home would enable him to recuperate, and back he would come to enjoy another twenty minutes or so of the intoxicating pleasure. If the originalplay happened to be in the storehouse by that time, he would be entitledby his mileage ticketto a seat for the next hit at the same theatre.

The ideal arrangement, of course, would be if the various managements could cometo some sort of understanding and consent to a species of pooling arrangement.

If this could be done, the mileage ticket would be good for any theatre, at anytime, and the demand for them would infallibly be enormous. How frequently it has happened that, in the middle of the first act of one of those tense dramas with wicked millionaires in them, you have said to yourself, After all, theres nothing like musical comedy ! And does it not generally happen that, just as the stoutcomedian of The Girl From Speonk is being discovered by his jealous wife flirtingwith a blonde goddess in the chorus, you have mused wistfully, If I get out of this alive, me for the legitimate!"

ANY doctor will tell you that the best rest is a change of work. There is no work that can comparein its exhausting qualitywith the labor of watching a modern play. To be able to switch at will from one theatre to another in the middle of a performance, would be the saving of many playgoers.

And one enormous advantage of this system would be that nobody would ever be obliged to see the last act of any piece. The flaw in most plays is that the publicdemands a big situation at the end of the last act but one. It is easy enough for the dramatist to cook up that big situation, but it is apparently impossiblefor him ever to unscramble it in the last act. Under the mileage system the entire audience would leave after applauding the big curtain in the penultimate act ofa mediaeval costume play, and there would not have to be any last act at all. At present, the poor audience have to stay on, however reluctantly, to prevent th

e management from getting fifty cents of their money for nothing.

IN its operation, this new mileage system would be simplicity itself. The theatregoer would purchase from a general office a ticket for so many hours at the theatre. One night, obeying that impulse, he would stroll into a musical comedy. His ticket would be punched by the time clock at the door. Finding, after the opening chorus, that there is a German comedian in the piece, he promptly removes himself. The attendant at the clock punches his ticket again, to show to the attendant at the next theatre that the victim has used up seven minutes of his purchased time. In this way, if the victim lives, his ticket is eventually exhausted.

In the present condition of the great American drama a fastidious man might makea ten-hour ticket last out the entire season.

~~~ The End ~~~

THE CHARMS OF COUNTRY LIFEBy P. G. Wodehouse


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Vanity Fair (January 1915)THE ART OF COUNTRY CONVERSATIONYOU have to go to the country to learn the art of conversation.

I think it must be the telephone which has made it a lost art in the city. The telephone practically necessitates brevity. Your main aim is to say as much as you can before you are cut off, or before your partner in the chat develops either

deafness or that high throaty voice which sounds as if he were dropping something rapidly on a sheet of tin. Here in the country, when we want to talk, we walka few miles, take a seat, and give the morning and early afternoon to it.

I suppose it must be the rural quiet which causes it, but every topic of conversation seems so exciting in Hopeville. In the city I am rather easily bored by subjects in which I have no immediate personal interest. But here I can sit, day after day, listening to my next-door neighbour talking about his kitchen-range, and enjoy every minute of it.

It does not sound a very promising subject, a kitchen-range, but these things depend entirely on treatment. This man treats it broadly. He tells me what his fat

her thought of the kitchen-range, what his wife said about it last week, how thehired gir1 behaved when she first saw it, and ever so many other things. He hasnever run dry on the subject of the kitchen-range, and I feel that he never will. There is a glint in his eye which tells me that he is prepared to talk it outon these lines if it takes all winter. Up to now he has, I am convinced, merelytouched the fringe of the great topic. He has things to say about the kitchen-range which are undreamt of in my philosophy. Besides which, he has so far only repeated all his remarks three times, and I am very much mistaken if he considersa remark a remark until it has gone into at least twelve editions.

That is the key to the art of conversation, and it is that which is so neglectedin urban circles. When you have told the tired business-man two or three timeswhat you said to your mother about the kitchen-range, he begins to look at his w

atch and jerk his head towards those rude signs you see in business officesTalk Quick, Check it with your hat, and the like.

My neighbour would be lost in such an atmosphere.

ECONOMY is the theme which inspires another neighbour of mine in Hopeville. He will talk for a whole morning with an almost lyrical fervour of methods of securing bacon a cent cheaper than the ordinary man would have believed possible. Thelimited nature of our acquaintance has prevented me from probing his religious views as deeply as I could wish: but I feel sure that his idea of Heaven is%2pa place where you can get bacon a cent cheaper than at the local grocer

s. I stillthrill at the dramatic way in which he told me the story of how, by walking fourmiles into a neighbouring town, he bought a dozen eggs for forty-eight cents,eggs, mark you, differing in no way from those which the local robbers are sellingat fifty cents a dozen. The way he worked the thing up, starting with his firstflash-like vision that there might be a place where eggs were only forty-eight cents a dozen, describing his journeywith all its hopes and fearsand culminating inthe great moment when the man in the town assured him officially that forty-eight cents a dozen was the price, made the story of Columbus little venture seem like the tentative effort of a timid novice.

The recital takes more than an hour every time he tells it, but it stirs the blood like some old saga.

One reason why we are such pre-eminent conversationalists in the country is thatwe do not gabble. We talk slow. We chew our words. We specialise in Macready pa


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uses. I have waited sometimes for over a minute while an unfortunate noun hung in mid-air without visible support until its verb slowly emerged and held it up.That is one of the things which make the charm of country conversation. In the city, if you let your attention wander for an instant, the talk has whizzed pastyou: but here you can go out and feed the chickens and play with the dog and plant a bulb or two, and come back and find the conversation pretty much where youleft it.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON COUNTRY CHARITYTHE incident of the proposed wooden leg for John Harrison Wilbur has left me with a deeper respect for the importance in the scheme of things of those colored Lotties, gray-eyed Mollies, and yellow-haired Huldas, who are such common objectsof the wayside in the metropolis, than I have ever had, greatly as I have always appreciated the efforts of the New York maid to minister to my comfort. In thecity a maid is a mere convenience,a something outside ourselves that makes for meals at regular hours. Here, in the country, she is an essential, a life-saver.

For some reason I have not yet been able to secure a maid. Those in the know tell me that after the middle of the month maids will inundate me. Almost everyone

in the village knows somebody who would do for me, and they will send her up thisevening. Yet somehow maids never materialise; and, when a ring comes at the door, I have to answer it myself.

If I had had a maid, I should never have heard of John Harrison Wilbur. The maidwould have interviewed the shock-headed youth in the red sweater and routed himwith the information that the master, or He, or His Nibs, as the case might be, wastoo busy to be disturbed. As it was, I went to the door, and the youth, withouta word, thrust a paper into my hand.

IT seemed from the paper that someone named John Harrison Wilbur had recently lo

st a leg, and it was proposed to supply him with a wooden substitute. The shock-headed youths attitude implied that my co-operation might be taken for granted, and that the only question was how much was I good for.

I scanned the list. One subscriber, probably a millionaire manufacturer of wooden legs, had come across with a whole dollar. Others had gone as low as ten cents. I had in my possession, at the moment, five cents.

I fingered my five cents, and put it back.

True, from one point of view, it was rather handsome of me to be even nickelly sympathetic with a man whom I had never seen, and whose very existence I rather doubted. But, with the production of that list, the thing had become competitive.The wooden leg had receded into the background, and the main point at issue waswhether I was or was not a piker.

I put myself down for a quarter, and told him to call again and collect. Since then John Harrison Wilburs wooden leg has spread like a miasma, poisoning my wholelife.

The next time he called, I had a ten-dollar bill, but no quarter. The situationthen was not so embarrassing. In this hamlet it is recognised that to possess only a ten-dollar bill is to be temporarily without funds. The grocer can sometimes change a five-dollar bill, but anything higher is waste paper. I told the boyto call again.

Life moves slowly in these parts. Each of his visits during the next week foundme still with the un-negotiable bill. I told him to call again.


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THE real embarrassment set in at his next appearance. I had a dollar, and from the glint in his eye I could see that he thought that now we had arrived somewhere. Two schools of thought were represented on my front porch that winter afternoon. The shock-headed youth belonged to the school which held that, after all, wh

at was the difference between a dollar and a quarter of a dollar to a man like me. I belonged to the opposite school, the main plank in whose platform was thatI was hanged if I was going to squander a whole dollar on what was a sheer luxury, to wit, the supplying of John Harrison Wilbur with a wooden leg.

We faced each other silently.

It was awkward. I was practically telling this youth that I didnt care seventy-five cents whether one who was probably a boyhood chum of his ever walked again ornot. In effect I was saying to him, For seventy-five cents I could set this chumof yours bounding about the country-side like a mustang of the prairie, but I withhold that seventy-five cents. It was most unpleasant.

Then the injustice of the thing stirred me. It was not my fault if John HarrisonWilbur had lost a leg. Why should I be penalised for his carelessness? I told the boy to call again.

But it is useless to try and soothe oneself by logic in affairs of this kind. John Harrison Wilburs wooden leg haunts me like a specter. Lying awake at night I have visions of John Harrison Wilbur hopping sorrowfully about on one foot. It isbecoming intolerable. I know perfectly well that, next time the shock-headed youth calls, I shall have half a dollar in my pocket, and that he will get it outof me. And a portion of my mind still clings to the belief that there is no JohnHarrison Wilbur, and that my fifty cents will simply go towards maintaining theshock-headed youth in the style to which he has been accustomed.

A maid would have saved me all this. I must get a maid at once. I have just meta man who says that he has heard of a girl in Yaphank. This sounds promising. Ihave never visited Yaphank, but, from the sound of it, it should be even more rural than my present abode. Probably a girl in Yaphank would look on Hopeville asa maelstrom of vivid incident. I seem to see her revelling in the fierce rush of life outside the post-office (only a mile and a half from my door). Her face is a little flushed with the mad whirl of it all. I see her jostling her way through the dense crowd of two boys and a dog at the corner by the drug-store, a little dazed by the stream of traffic (a bicycle and the grocers cart), but loving every moment of it. This is the life! I seem to hear her cry. This is certainly thelife.

~~~ The End ~~~

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