Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock Read online

  “It is at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, father.”

  “Ah! say you so?” rejoined the earl, with rising interest. “Oshkosh is, indeed, a grand old name. The Oshkosh are a Russian family. An Ivan Oshkosh came to England with Peter the Great and married my ancestress. Their descendant in the second degree once removed, Mixtup Oshkosh, fought at the burning of Moscow and later at the sack of Salamanca and the treaty of Adrianople. And Wisconsin too,” the old nobleman went on, his features kindling with animation, for he had a passion for heraldry, genealogy, chronology, and commercial geography; “the Wisconsins, or better, I think, the Guisconsins, are of old blood. A Guisconsin followed Henry I to Jerusalem and rescued my ancestor Hardup Oxhead from the Saracens. Another Guisconsin…”

  “Nay, father,” said Gwendoline, gently interrupting, “Wisconsin is not Edwin’s own name: that is, I believe, the name of his estate. My lover’s name is Edwin Einstein.”

  “Einstein,” repeated the earl dubiously— “an Indian name perhaps; yet the Indians are many of them of excellent family. An ancestor of mine…”

  “Father,” said Gwendoline, again interrupting, “here is a portrait of Edwin. Judge for yourself if he be noble.” With this she placed in her father’s hand an American tin-type, tinted in pink and brown. The picture represented a typical specimen of American manhood of that Anglo-Semitic type so often seen in persons of mixed English and Jewish extraction. The figure was well over five feet two inches in height and broad in proportion. The graceful sloping shoulders harmonized with the slender and well-poised waist, and with a hand pliant and yet prehensile. The pallor of the features was relieved by a drooping black moustache.

  Such was Edwin Einstein to whom Gwendoline’s heart, if not her hand, was already affianced. Their love had been so simple and yet so strange. It seemed to Gwendoline that it was but a thing of yesterday, and yet in reality they had met three weeks ago. Love had drawn them irresistibly together. To Edwin the fair English girl with her old name and wide estates possessed a charm that he scarcely dared confess to himself. He determined to woo her. To Gwendoline there was that in Edwin’s bearing, the rich jewels that he wore, the vast fortune that rumour ascribed to him, that appealed to something romantic and chivalrous in her nature. She loved to hear him speak of stocks and bonds, corners and margins, and his father’s colossal business. It all seemed so noble and so far above the sordid lives of the people about her. Edwin, too, loved to hear the girl talk of her father’s estates, of the diamond-hilted sword that the saladin had given, or had lent, to her ancestor hundreds of years ago. Her description of her father, the old earl, touched something romantic in Edwin’s generous heart. He was never tired of asking how old he was, was he robust, did a shock, a sudden shock, affect him much? and so on. Then had come the evening that Gwendoline loved to live over and over again in her mind when Edwin had asked her in his straightforward, manly way, whether — subject to certain written stipulations to be considered later — she would be his wife: and she, putting her hand confidingly in his hand, answered simply, that — subject to the consent of her father and pending always the necessary legal formalities and inquiries — she would.

  It had all seemed like a dream: and now Edwin Einstein had come in person to ask her hand from the earl, her father. Indeed, he was at this moment in the outer hall testing the gold leaf in the picture-frames with his pen-knife while waiting for his affianced to break the fateful news to Lord Oxhead.

  Gwendoline summoned her courage for a great effort. “Papa,” she said, “there is one other thing that it is fair to tell you. Edwin’s father is in business.”

  The earl started from his seat in blank amazement. “In business!” he repeated, “the father of the suitor of the daughter of an Oxhead in business! My daughter the step-daughter of the grandfather of my grandson! Are you mad, girl? It is too much, too much!”

  “But, father,” pleaded the beautiful girl in anguish, “hear me. It is Edwin’s father — Sarcophagus Einstein, senior — not Edwin himself. Edwin does nothing. He has never earned a penny. He is quite unable to support himself. You have only to see him to believe it. Indeed, dear father, he is just like us. He is here now, in this house, waiting to see you. If it were not for his great wealth…”

  “Girl,” said the earl sternly, “I care not for the man’s riches. How much has he?”

  “Fifteen million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” answered Gwendoline. Lord Oxhead leaned his head against the mantelpiece. His mind was in a whirl. He was trying to calculate the yearly interest on fifteen and a quarter million dollars at four and a half per cent reduced to pounds, shillings, and pence. It was bootless. His brain, trained by long years of high living and plain thinking, had become too subtle, too refined an instrument for arithmetic…

  * * * * *

  At this moment the door opened and Edwin Einstein stood before the earl. Gwendoline never forgot what happened. Through her life the picture of it haunted her — her lover upright at the door, his fine frank gaze fixed inquiringly on the diamond pin in her father’s necktie, and he, her father, raising from the mantelpiece a face of agonized amazement.

  “You! You!” he gasped. For a moment he stood to his full height, swaying and groping in the air, then fell prostrate his full length upon the floor. The lovers rushed to his aid. Edwin tore open his neckcloth and plucked aside his diamond pin to give him air. But it was too late. Earl Oxhead had breathed his last. Life had fled. The earl was extinct. That is to say, he was dead.

  The reason of his death was never known. Had the sight of Edwin killed him? It might have. The old family doctor, hurriedly summoned, declared his utter ignorance. This, too, was likely. Edwin himself could explain nothing. But it was observed that after the earl’s death and his marriage with Gwendoline he was a changed man; he dressed better, talked much better English.

  The wedding itself was quiet, almost sad. At Gwendoline’s request there was no wedding breakfast, no bridesmaids, and no reception, while Edwin, respecting his bride’s bereavement, insisted that there should be no best man, no flowers, no presents, and no honeymoon.

  Thus Lord Oxhead’s secret died with him. It was probably too complicated to be interesting anyway.

  Boarding-House Geometry

  DEFINITIONS AND AXIOMS

  ALL BOARDING-HOUSES ARE the same boarding-house.

  Boarders in the same boarding-house and on the same flat are equal to one another.

  A single room is that which has no parts and no magnitude.

  The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram — that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything.

  A wrangle is the disinclination of two boarders to each other that meet together but are not in the same line.

  All the other rooms being taken, a single room is said to be a double room.

  POSTULATES AND PROPOSITIONS

  A pie may be produced any number of times.

  The landlady can be reduced to her lowest terms by a series of propositions.

  A bee line may be made from any boarding-house to any other boarding-house.

  The clothes of a boarding-house bed, though produced ever so far both ways, will not meet.

  Any two meals at a boarding-house are together less than two square meals.

  If from the opposite ends of a boarding-house a line be drawn passing through all the rooms in turn, then the stovepipe which warms the boarders will lie within that line.

  On the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing.

  If there be two boarders on the same flat, and the amount of side of the one be equal to the amount of side of the other, each to each, and the wrangle between one boarder and the landlady be equal to the wrangle between the landlady and the other, then shall the weekly bills of the two boarders be equal also, each to each.

  For if not, let one bill be the greater.

  Then the other bill is less than it might have been — which is absurd.

  The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones

  SOME PEOPLE — not you nor I, because we are so awfully self-possessed — but some people, find great difficulty in saying good-bye when making a call or spending the evening. As the moment draws near when the visitor feels that he is fairly entitled to go away he rises and says abruptly, “Well, I think I…” Then the people say, “Oh, must you go now? Surely it’s early yet!” and a pitiful struggle ensues.

  I think the saddest case of this kind of thing that I ever knew was that of my poor friend Melpomenus Jones, a curate — such a dear young man, and only twenty-three! He simply couldn’t get away from people. He was too modest to tell a lie, and too religious to wish to appear rude. Now it happened that he went to call on some friends of his on the very first afternoon of his summer vacation. The next six weeks were entirely his own — absolutely nothing to do. He chatted awhile, drank two cups of tea, then braced himself for the effort and said suddenly:

  “Well, I think I…”

  But the lady of the house said, “Oh, no! Mr. Jones, can’t you really stay a little longer?”

  Jones was always truthful. “Oh, yes,” he said, “of course, I — er — can stay.”

  “Then please don’t go.”

  He stayed. He drank eleven cups of tea. Night was falling. He rose again.

  “Well now,” he said shyly, “I think I really…”

  “You must go?” said the lady politely. “I thought perhaps you could have stayed to dinner…”

  “Oh well, so I could, you know,” Jones said, “if…”

  “Then please stay, I’m sure my husband will be delighted.”

  “All right,” he said feebly, “I’ll stay,” and he sank back into his chair, just full o
f tea, and miserable.

  Papa came home. They had dinner. All through the meal Jones sat planning to leave at eight-thirty. All the family wondered whether Mr. Jones was stupid and sulky, or only stupid.

  After dinner mamma undertook to “draw him out,” and showed him photographs. She showed him all the family museum, several gross of them — photos of papa’s uncle and his wife, and mamma’s brother and his little boy, an awfully interesting photo of papa’s uncle’s friend in his Bengal uniform, an awfully well-taken photo of papa’s grandfather’s partner’s dog, and an awfully wicked one of papa as the devil for a fancy-dress ball. At eight-thirty Jones had examined seventy-one photographs. There were about sixty-nine more that he hadn’t. Jones rose.

  “I must say good night now,” he pleaded.

  “Say good night!” they said, “why it’s only half-past eight! Have you anything to do?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted, and muttered something about staying six weeks, and then laughed miserably.

  Just then it turned out that the favourite child of the family, such a dear little romp, had hidden Mr. Jones’s hat; so papa said that he must stay, and invited him to a pipe and a chat. Papa had the pipe and gave Jones the chat, and still he stayed. Every moment he meant to take the plunge, but couldn’t. Then papa began to get very tired of Jones, and fidgeted and finally said, with jocular irony, that Jones had better stay all night, they could give him a shake-down. Jones mistook his meaning and thanked him with tears in his eyes, and papa put Jones to bed in the spare room and cursed him heartily.

  After breakfast next day, papa went off to his work in the City, and left Jones playing with the baby, broken-hearted. His nerve was utterly gone. He was meaning to leave all day, but the thing had got on his mind and he simply couldn’t. When papa came home in the evening he was surprised and chagrined to find Jones still there. He thought to jockey him out with a jest, and said he thought he’d have to charge him for his board, he! he! The unhappy young man stared wildly for a moment, then wrung papa’s hand, paid him a month’s board in advance, and broke down and sobbed like a child.

  In the days that followed he was moody and unapproachable. He lived, of course, entirely in the drawing-room, and the lack of air and exercise began to tell sadly on his health. He passed his time in drinking tea and looking at the photographs. He would stand for hours gazing at the photographs of papa’s uncle’s friend in his Bengal uniform — talking to it, sometimes swearing bitterly at it. His mind was visibly failing.

  At length the crash came. They carried him upstairs in a raging delirium of fever. The illness that followed was terrible. He recognized no one, not even papa’s uncle’s friend in his Bengal uniform. At times he would start up from his bed and shriek, “Well, I think I…” and then fall back upon the pillow with a horrible laugh. Then, again, he would leap up and cry, “Another cup of tea and more photographs! More photographs! Har! Har!”

  At length, after a month of agony, on the last day of his vacation, he passed away. They say that when the last moment came, he sat up in bed with a beautiful smile of confidence playing upon his face, and said, “Well — the angels are calling me; I’m afraid I really must go now. Good afternoon.”

  And the rushing of his spirit from its prison-house was as rapid as a hunted cat passing over a garden fence.

  A Christmas Letter

  (IN ANSWER TO a young lady who has sent an invitation to be present at a children’s party)

  Madamoiselle,

  Allow me very gratefully but firmly to refuse your kind invitation. You doubtless mean well; but your ideas are unhappily mistaken.

  Let us understand one another once and for all. I cannot at my mature age participate in the sports of children with such abandon as I could wish. I entertain, and have always entertained, the sincerest regard for such games as Hunt-the-Slipper and Blind-Man’s Buff. But I have now reached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfolded and to have a powerful boy of ten hit me in the back with a hobby-horse and ask me to guess who hit me, provokes me to a fit of retaliation which could only culminate in reckless criminality. Nor can I cover my shoulders with a drawing-room rug and crawl round on my hands and knees under the pretence that I am a bear without a sense of personal insufficiency, which is painful to me.

  Neither can I look on with a complacent eye at the sad spectacle of your young clerical friend, the Reverend Mr. Uttermost Farthing, abandoning himself to such gambols and appearing in the role of life and soul of the evening. Such a degradation of his holy calling grieves me, and I cannot but suspect him of ulterior motives.

  You inform me that your maiden aunt intends to help you to entertain the party. I have not, as you know, the honour of your aunt’s acquaintance, yet I think I may with reason surmise that she will organize games — guessing games — in which she will ask me to name a river in Asia beginning with a Z; on my failure to do so she will put a hot plate down my neck as a forfeit, and the children will clap their hands. These games, my dear young friend, involve the use of a more adaptable intellect than mine, and I cannot consent to be a party to them.

  May I say in conclusion that I do not consider a five-cent pen-wiper from the top branch of a Xmas tree any adequate compensation for the kind of evening you propose.

  I have the honour

  To subscribe myself,

  Your obedient servant.

  How to Make a Million Dollars

  I MIX A good deal with the Millionaires. I like them. I like their faces. I like the way they live. I like the things they eat. The more we mix together the better I like the things we mix.

  Especially I like the way they dress, their grey check trousers, their white check waist-coats, their heavy gold chains, and the signet-rings that they sign their cheques with. My! they look nice. Get six or seven of them sitting together in the club and it’s a treat to see them. And if they get the least dust on them, men come and brush it off. Yes, and are glad to. I’d like to take some of the dust off them myself.

  Even more than what they eat I like their intellectual grasp. It is wonderful. Just watch them read. They simply read all the time. Go into the club at any hour and you’ll see three or four of them at it. And the things they can read! You’d think that a man who’d been driving hard in the office from eleven o’clock until three, with only an hour and a half for lunch, would be too fagged. Not a bit. These men can sit down after office hours and read the Sketch and the Police Gazette and the Pink Un, and understand the jokes just as well as I can.

  What I love to do is to walk up and down among them and catch the little scraps of conversation. The other day I heard one lean forward and say, “Well, I offered him a million and a half and said I wouldn’t give a cent more, he could either take it or leave it—” I just longed to break in and say, “What! what! a million and a half! Oh! say that again! Offer it to me, to either take it or leave it. Do try me once: I know I can: or here, make it a plain million and let’s call it done.”

  Not that these men are careless over money. No, sir. Don’t think it. Of course they don’t take much account of big money, a hundred thousand dollars at a shot or anything of that sort. But little money. You’ve no idea till you know them how anxious they get about a cent, or half a cent, or less.

  Why, two of them came into the club the other night just frantic with delight: they said wheat had risen and they’d cleaned up four cents each in less than half an hour. They bought a dinner for sixteen on the strength of it. I don’t understand it. I’ve often made twice as much as that writing for the papers and never felt like boasting about it.

  One night I heard one man say, “Well, let’s call up New York and offer them a quarter of a cent.” Great heavens! Imagine paying the cost of calling up New York, nearly five million people, late at night and offering them a quarter of a cent! And yet — did New York get mad? No, they took it. Of course it’s high finance. I don’t pretend to understand it. I tried after that to call up Chicago and offer it a cent and a half, and to call up Hamilton, Ontario, and offer it half a dollar, and the operator only thought I was crazy.