Literary Lapses Read online

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

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

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

  If from the opposite ends of a boarding-house a line bedrawn passing through all the rooms in turn, then thestovepipe which warms the boarders will lie within thatline.

  On the same bill and on the same side of it there shouldnot be two charges for the same thing.

  If there be two boarders on the same flat, and the amountof side of the one be equal to the amount of side of theother, each to each, and the wrangle between one boarderand the landlady be equal to the wrangle between thelandlady and the other, then shall the weekly bills ofthe 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--whichis absurd.

  The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones

  Some people--not you nor I, because we are so awfullyself-possessed--but some people, find great difficultyin saying good-bye when making a call or spending theevening. As the moment draws near when the visitor feelsthat he is fairly entitled to go away he rises and saysabruptly, "Well, I think I..." Then the people say, "Oh,must you go now? Surely it's early yet!" and a pitifulstruggle ensues.

  I think the saddest case of this kind of thing that Iever 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 modestto tell a lie, and too religious to wish to appear rude.Now it happened that he went to call on some friends ofhis on the very first afternoon of his summer vacation.The next six weeks were entirely his own--absolutelynothing 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'tyou 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 perhapsyou 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 sankback into his chair, just full of tea, and miserable.

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

  After dinner mamma undertook to "draw him out," and showedhim photographs. She showed him all the family museum,several gross of them--photos of papa's uncle and hiswife, and mamma's brother and his little boy, an awfullyinteresting photo of papa's uncle's friend in his Bengaluniform, an awfully well-taken photo of papa's grandfather'spartner's dog, and an awfully wicked one of papa as thedevil for a fancy-dress ball. At eight-thirty Jones hadexamined seventy-one photographs. There were aboutsixty-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-pasteight! Have you anything to do?"

  "Nothing," he admitted, and muttered something aboutstaying six weeks, and then laughed miserably.

  Just then it turned out that the favourite child of thefamily, such a dear little romp, had hidden Mr. Jones'shat; so papa said that he must stay, and invited him toa pipe and a chat. Papa had the pipe and gave Jones thechat, and still he stayed. Every moment he meant to takethe plunge, but couldn't. Then papa began to get verytired of Jones, and fidgeted and finally said, withjocular irony, that Jones had better stay all night, theycould give him a shake-down. Jones mistook his meaningand thanked him with tears in his eyes, and papa putJones to bed in the spare room and cursed him heartily.

  After breakfast next day, papa went off to his work in theCity, 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 andchagrined to find Jones still there. He thought to jockeyhim out with a jest, and said he thought he'd have to chargehim for his board, he! he! The unhappy young man staredwildly for a moment, then wrung papa's hand, paid him amonth's board in advance, and broke down and sobbed likea child.

  In the days that followed he was moody and unapproachable.He lived, of course, entirely in the drawing-room, andthe lack of air and exercise began to tell sadly on hishealth. He passed his time in drinking tea and lookingat the photographs. He would stand for hours gazing atthe photographs of papa's uncle's friend in his Bengaluniform--talking to it, sometimes swearing bitterly atit. His mind was visibly failing.

  At length the crash came. They carried him upstairs ina raging delirium of fever. The illness that followedwas terrible. He recognized no one, not even papa'suncle's friend in his Bengal uniform. At times he wouldstart 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 oftea and more photographs! More photographs! Har! Har!"

  At length, after a month of agony, on the last day ofhis vacation, he passed away. They say that when the lastmoment came, he sat up in bed with a beautiful smile ofconfidence playing upon his face, and said, "Well--theangels are calling me; I'm afraid I really must go now.Good afternoon."

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

  A Christmas Letter

  (In answer to a young lady who has sent an invitation tobe present at a children's party)

  Madamoiselle,

  Allow me very gratefully but firmly to refuse your kindinvitation. You doubtless mean well; but your ideas areunhappily mistaken.

  Let us understand one another once and for all. I cannotat my mature age participate in the sports of childrenwith such abandon as I could wish. I entertain, and havealways entertained, the sincerest regard for such gamesas Hunt-the-Slipper and Blind-Man's Buff. But I have nowreached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfoldedand to have a powerful boy of ten hit me in the back witha hobby-horse and ask me to guess who hit me, provokesme to a fit of retaliation which could only culminate inreckless criminality. Nor can I cover my shoulders witha drawing-room rug and crawl round on my hands and kneesunder the pretence that I am a bear without a sense ofpersonal insufficiency, which is painful to me.

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

  You inform me that your maiden aunt intends to help youto entertain the party. I have not, as you know, thehonour of your aunt's acquaintance, yet I think I maywith reason surmise that she will organize games--guessinggames--in which she will ask me to name a river in Asiabeginning with a Z; on my failure to do so she will puta hot plate down my neck as a forfeit, and the childrenwill 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-centpen-wiper from the top branch of a Xmas tree any adequatecompensation 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. Ilike their faces. I like the way they live. I like thethings they eat. The more we mix tog
ether the better Ilike the things we mix.

  Especially I like the way they dress, their grey checktrousers, their white check waist-coats, their heavy goldchains, and the signet-rings that they sign their chequeswith. My! they look nice. Get six or seven of them sittingtogether in the club and it's a treat to see them. Andif they get the least dust on them, men come and brushit off. Yes, and are glad to. I'd like to take some ofthe dust off them myself.

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

  What I love to do is to walk up and down among them andcatch the little scraps of conversation. The other dayI heard one lean forward and say, "Well, I offered hima million and a half and said I wouldn't give a centmore, he could either take it or leave it--" I just longedto break in and say, "What! what! a million and a half!Oh! say that again! Offer it to me, to either take it orleave it. Do try me once: I know I can: or here, make ita 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 accountof big money, a hundred thousand dollars at a shot oranything of that sort. But little money. You've no ideatill you know them how anxious they get about a cent, orhalf a cent, or less.

  Why, two of them came into the club the other night justfrantic with delight: they said wheat had risen and they'dcleaned 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 asthat writing for the papers and never felt like boastingabout it.

  One night I heard one man say, "Well, let's call up NewYork and offer them a quarter of a cent." Great heavens!Imagine paying the cost of calling up New York, nearlyfive million people, late at night and offering them aquarter of a cent! And yet--did New York get mad? No,they took it. Of course it's high finance. I don't pretendto understand it. I tried after that to call up Chicagoand offer it a cent and a half, and to call up Hamilton,Ontario, and offer it half a dollar, and the operatoronly thought I was crazy.

  All this shows, of course, that I've been studying howthe millionaires do it. I have. For years. I thought itmight be helpful to young men just beginning to work andanxious to stop.

  You know, many a man realizes late in life that if whenhe was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead ofbeing what he is he might be what he won't; but how fewboys stop to think that if they knew what they don't knowinstead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be?These are awful thoughts.

  At any rate, I've been gathering hints on how it is theydo it.

  One thing I'm sure about. If a young man wants to makea million dollars he's got to be mighty careful abouthis diet and his living. This may seem hard. But successis only achieved with pains.

  There is no use in a young man who hopes to make a milliondollars thinking he's entitled to get up at 7.30, eatforce and poached eggs, drink cold water at lunch, andgo to bed at 10 p.m. You can't do it. I've seen too manymillionaires for that. If you want to be a millionaireyou mustn't get up till ten in the morning. They neverdo. They daren't. It would be as much as their businessis worth if they were seen on the street at half-pastnine.

  And the old idea of abstemiousness is all wrong. To bea millionaire you need champagne, lots of it and all thetime. That and Scotch whisky and soda: you have to situp nearly all night and drink buckets of it. This is whatclears the brain for business next day. I've seen someof these men with their brains so clear in the morning,that their faces look positively boiled.

  To live like this requires, of course, resolution. Butyou can buy that by the pint.

  Therefore, my dear young man, if you want to get movedon from your present status in business, change yourlife. When your landlady brings your bacon and eggs forbreakfast, throw them out of window to the dog and tellher to bring you some chilled asparagus and a pint ofMoselle. Then telephone to your employer that you'll bedown about eleven o'clock. You will get moved on. Yes,very quickly.

  Just how the millionaires make the money is a difficultquestion. But one way is this. Strike the town with fivecents in your pocket. They nearly all do this; they'vetold me again and again (men with millions and millions)that the first time they struck town they had only fivecents. That seems to have given them their start. Ofcourse, it's not easy to do. I've tried it several times.I nearly did it once. I borrowed five cents, carried itaway out of town, and then turned and came back at thetown with an awful rush. If I hadn't struck a beer saloonin the suburbs and spent the five cents I might have beenrich to-day.

  Another good plan is to start something. Something on ahuge scale: something nobody ever thought of. For instance,one man I know told me that once he was down in Mexicowithout a cent (he'd lost his five in striking CentralAmerica) and he noticed that they had no power plants.So he started some and made a mint of money. Another manthat I know was once stranded in New York, absolutelywithout a nickel. Well, it occurred to him that what wasneeded were buildings ten stories higher than any thathad been put up. So he built two and sold them rightaway. Ever so many millionaires begin in some such simpleway as that.

  There is, of course, a much easier way than any of these.I almost hate to tell this, because I want to do itmyself.

  I learned of it just by chance one night at the club.There is one old man there, extremely rich, with one ofthe best faces of the lot, just like a hyena. I neverused to know how he had got so rich. So one evening Iasked one of the millionaires how old Bloggs had madeall his money.

  "How he made it?" he answered with a sneer. "Why he madeit by taking it out of widows and orphans."

  Widows and orphans! I thought, what an excellent idea.But who would have suspected that they had it?

  "And how," I asked pretty cautiously, "did he go at itto get it out of them?"

  "Why," the man answered, "he just ground them under hisheels, that was how."

  Now isn't that simple? I've thought of that conversationoften since and I mean to try it. If I can get hold ofthem, I'll grind them quick enough. But how to get them.Most of the widows I know look pretty solid for that sortof thing, and as for orphans, it must take an awful lotof them. Meantime I am waiting, and if I ever get a largebunch of orphans all together, I'll stamp on them andsee.

  I find, too, on inquiry, that you can also grind it outof clergymen. They say they grind nicely. But perhapsorphans are easier.

  How to Live to be 200

  Twenty years ago I knew a man called Jiggins, who hadthe Health Habit.

  He used to take a cold plunge every morning. He said itopened his pores. After it he took a hot sponge. He saidit closed the pores. He got so that he could open andshut his pores at will.

  Jiggins used to stand and breathe at an open window forhalf an hour before dressing. He said it expanded hislungs. He might, of course, have had it done in a shoe-storewith a boot stretcher, but after all it cost him nothingthis way, and what is half an hour?

  After he had got his undershirt on, Jiggins used to hitchhimself up like a dog in harness and do Sandow exercises.He did them forwards, backwards, and hind-side up.

  He could have got a job as a dog anywhere. He spent allhis time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at theoffice, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor andsee if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If hecould, then he tried some other way until he found onethat he couldn't do. Then he would spend the rest of hislunch hour on his stomach, perfectly happy.

  In the evenings in his room he used to lift iron bars,cannon-balls, heave dumb-bells, and haul himself up tothe ceiling with his teeth. You could hear the
thumpshalf a mile. He liked it.

  He spent half the night slinging himself around his room.He said it made his brain clear. When he got his brainperfectly clear, he went to bed and slept. As soon as hewoke, he began clearing it again.

  Jiggins is dead. He was, of course, a pioneer, but thefact that he dumb-belled himself to death at an earlyage does not prevent a whole generation of young men fromfollowing in his path.

  They are ridden by the Health Mania.

  They make themselves a nuisance.

  They get up at impossible hours. They go out in sillylittle suits and run Marathon heats before breakfast.They chase around barefoot to get the dew on their feet.They hunt for ozone. They bother about pepsin. They won'teat meat because it has too much nitrogen. They won'teat fruit because it hasn't any. They prefer albumen andstarch and nitrogen to huckleberry pie and doughnuts.They won't drink water out of a tap. They won't eatsardines out of a can. They won't use oysters out of apail. They won't drink milk out of a glass. They areafraid of alcohol in any shape. Yes, sir, afraid. "Cowards."

  And after all their fuss they presently incur some simpleold-fashioned illness and die like anybody else.

  Now people of this sort have no chance to attain anygreat age. They are on the wrong track.

  Listen. Do you want to live to be really old, to enjoya grand, green, exuberant, boastful old age and to makeyourself a nuisance to your whole neighbourhood with yourreminiscences?

  Then cut out all this nonsense. Cut it out. Get up inthe morning at a sensible hour. The time to get up iswhen you have to, not before. If your office opens ateleven, get up at ten-thirty. Take your chance on ozone.There isn't any such thing anyway. Or, if there is, youcan buy a Thermos bottle full for five cents, and put iton a shelf in your cupboard. If your work begins at sevenin the morning, get up at ten minutes to, but don't beliar enough to say that you like it. It isn't exhilarating,and you know it.