MONDAY. Rose early. Swept out the White House. Cooked breakfast. Prayers. Sat in the garden reading my book on Congressional Government. What a wonderful thing it is! Why doesn't Congress live up to it? Certainly a lovely morning. Sat for some time thinking how beautiful the world is. I defy anyone to make a better. Afterwards determined to utter this defiance publicly and fearlessly. Shall put in list of fearless defiances for July speeches. Shall probably use it in Oklahoma.
9.30 a.m. Bad news. British ship Torpid torpedoed by a torpedo. Tense atmosphere all over Washington. Retreated instantly to the pigeon-house and shut the door. I must think. At all costs. And no one shall hurry me.
10 a.m. Have thought. Came out of pigeon-house. It is all right. I wonder I didn't think of it sooner. The point is perfectly simple. If Admiral Tirpitz torpedoed the Torpid with a torpedo, where's the torpedo Admiral Tirpitz torped? In other words, how do they know it's a torpedo? The idea seems absolutely overwhelming. Wrote notes at once to England and to Germany.
11 a.m. Gave out my idea to the Ass Press. Tense feeling at Washington vanished instantly and utterly. Feeling now loose. In fact everything splendid. Money became easy at once. Marks rose. Exports jumped. Gold reserve swelled.
3 p.m. Slightly bad news. Appears there is trouble in the Island of Piccolo Domingo. Looked it up on map. Is one of the smaller West Indies. We don't own it. I imagine Roosevelt must have overlooked it. An American has been in trouble there: was refused a drink after closing time and burnt down saloon. Is now in jail. Shall send at once our latest battleship—the Woodrow—new design, both ends alike, escorted by double-ended coal barges the Wilson, the President, the Professor and the Thinker. Shall take firm stand on American rights. Piccolo Domingo must either surrender the American alive, or give him to us dead.
TUESDAY. A lovely day. Rose early. Put flowers in all the vases. Laid a wreath of early japonica beside my egg-cup on the breakfast table. Cabinet to morning prayers and breakfast. Prayed for better guidance.
9 a.m. Trouble, bad trouble. First of all Roosevelt has an interview in the morning papers in which he asks why I don't treat Germany as I treat Piccolo Domingo. Now, what a fool question! Can't he see why? Roosevelt never could see reason. Bryan also has an interview: wants to know why I don't treat Piccolo Domingo as I treat Germany? Doesn't he know why?
Result: strained feeling in Washington. Morning mail bad.
10 a.m. British Admiralty communication. To the pigeon-house at once. They offer to send piece of torpedo, fragment of ship and selected portions of dead American citizens.
Have come out of pigeon-house. Have cabled back: How do they know it is a torpedo, how do they know it is a fragment, how do they know he was an American who said he was dead?
My answer has helped. Feeling in Washington easier at once. General buoyancy. Loans and discounts doubled.
As I expected—a note from Germany. Chancellor very explicit. Says not only did they not torpedo the Torpid, but that on the day (whenever it was) that the steamer was torpedoed they had no submarines at sea, no torpedoes in their submarines, and nothing really explosive in their torpedoes. Offers, very kindly, to fill in the date of sworn statement as soon as we furnish accurate date of incident. Adds that his own theory is that the Torpid was sunk by somebody throwing rocks at it from the shore. Wish, somehow, that he had not added this argument.
More bad news: Further trouble in Mexico. Appears General Villa is not dead. He has again crossed the border, shot up a saloon and retreated to the mountains of Huahuapaxtapetl. Have issued instructions to have the place looked up on the map and send the whole army to it, but without in any way violating the neutrality of Mexico.
Late cables from England. Two more ships torpedoed. American passenger lost. Name of Roosevelt. Christian name not Theodore but William. Cabled expression of regret.
WEDNESDAY. Rose sad at heart. Did not work in garden. Tried to weed a little grass along the paths but simply couldn't. This is a cruel job. How was it that Roosevelt grew stout on it? His nature must be different from mine. What a miserable nature he must have.
Received delegations. From Kansas, on the prospect of the corn crop: they said the number of hogs in Kansas will double. Congratulated them. From Idaho, on the blight on the root crop: they say there will soon not be a hog left in Idaho. Expressed my sorrow. From Michigan, beet sugar growers urging a higher percentage of sugar in beets. Took firm stand: said I stand where I stood and I stood where I stand. They went away dazzled, delighted.
Mail and telegrams. British Admiralty. Torpid Incident. Send further samples. Fragment of valise, parts of cow-hide trunk (dead passenger's luggage) which, they say, could not have been made except in Nevada.
Cabled that the incident is closed and that I stand where I stood and that I am what I am. Situation in Washington relieved at once. General feeling that I shall not make war.
Second Cable from England. The Two New Cases. Claim both ships torpedoed. Offer proofs. Situation very grave. Feeling in Washington very tense. Roosevelt out with a signed statement, What will the President Do? Surely he knows what I will do.
Cables from Germany. Chancellor now positive as to Torpid. Sworn evidence that she was sunk by some one throwing a rock. Sample of rock to follow. Communication also from Germany regarding the New Cases. Draws attention to fact that all of the crews who were not drowned were saved. An important point. Assures this government that everything ascertainable will be ascertained, but that pending juridical verification any imperial exemplification must be held categorically allegorical. How well these Germans write!
THURSDAY. A dull morning. Up early and read Congressional Government. Breakfast. Prayers. We prayed for the United States, for the citizens, for the Congress (both houses, especially the Senate), and for the Cabinet. Is there any one else?
Trouble. Accident to naval flotilla en route to Piccolo Domingo. The new battleship the Woodrow has broken down. Fault in structure. Tried to go with both ends first. Appeared impossible. Went sideways a little and is sinking. Wireless from the barges the Wilson, the Thinker and others. They are standing by. They wire that they will continue to stand by. Why on earth do they do that? Shall cable them to act.
Feeling in Washington gloomy.
FRIDAY. Rose early and tried to sweep out the White House.
Had little heart for it. The dust gathers in the corners.
How did Roosevelt manage to keep it so clean? An idea!
I must get a vacuum cleaner! But where can I get a vacuum?
Took my head in my hands and thought: problem solved.
Can get the vacuum all right.
Good news. Villa dead again. Feeling in Washington relieved.
Trouble. Ship torpedoed. News just came from the French Government. Full-rigged ship, the Ping-Yan, sailing out of Ping Pong, French Cochin China, and cleared for Hoo-Ra, Indo-Arabia. No American citizens on board, but one American citizen with ticket left behind on wharf at Ping Pong. Claims damages. Complicated case. Feeling in Washington much disturbed. Sterling exchange fell and wouldn't get up. French Admiralty urge treaty of 1778. German Chancellor admits torpedoing ship but denies that it was full-rigged. Captain of submarine drew picture of ship as it sank. His picture unlike any known ship of French navy.
SATURDAY. A day of trouble. Villa came to life and crossed the border. Our army looking for him in Mexico: inquiry by wire, are they authorised to come back? General Carranza asks leave to invade Canada. Piccolo Domingo expedition has failed. The Woodrow is still sinking. The President and the Thinker cable that they are still standing by and will continue to stand where they have stood. British Admiralty sending shipload of fragments. German Admiralty sending shipload of affidavits. Feeling in Washington depressed to the lowest depths. Sterling sinking. Marks falling. Exports dwindling.
An idea: Is this job worth while? I wonder if Billy Sunday would take it?
Spent the evening watering the crocuses. Whoever is here a year from now is welcome to them. They tell me that Hughes hates crocuses. Watered them very carefully.
SUNDAY. Good news! Just heard from Princeton University. I am to come back, and everything will be forgiven and forgotten.
Let me admit at the outset that I write this essay without adequate material. I have never known, I have never seen, any rich people. Very often I have thought that I had found them. But it turned out that it was not so. They were not rich at all. They were quite poor. They were hard up. They were pushed for money. They didn't know where to turn for ten thousand dollars.
In all the cases that I have examined this same error has crept in. I had often imagined, from the fact of people keeping fifteen servants, that they were rich. I had supposed that because a woman rode down town in a limousine to buy a fifty-dollar hat, she must be well to do. Not at all. All these people turn out on examination to be not rich. They are cramped. They say it themselves. Pinched, I think, is the word they use. When I see a glittering group of eight people in a stage box at the opera, I know that they are all pinched. The fact that they ride home in a limousine has nothing to do with it.
A friend of mine who has ten thousand dollars a year told me the other day with a sigh that he found it quite impossible to keep up with the rich. On his income he couldn't do it. A family that I know who have twenty thousand a year have told me the same thing. They can't keep up with the rich. There is no use trying. A man that I respect very much who has an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from his law practice has told me with the greatest frankness that he finds it absolutely impossible to keep up with the rich. He says it is better to face the brutal fact of being poor. He says he can only give me a plain meal, what he calls a home dinner —it takes three men and two women to serve it—and he begs me to put up with it.
As far as I remember, I have never met Mr. Carnegie. But I know that if I did he would tell me that he found it quite impossible to keep up with Mr. Rockefeller. No doubt Mr. Rockefeller has the same feeling.
On the other hand there are, and there must be rich people, somewhere. I run across traces of them all the time. The janitor in the building where I work has told me that he has a rich cousin in England who is in the South-Western Railway and gets ten pounds a week. He says the railway wouldn't know what to do without him. In the same way the lady who washes at my house has a rich uncle. He lives in Winnipeg and owns his own house, clear, and has two girls at the high school.
But these are only reported cases of richness. I cannot vouch for them myself.
When I speak therefore of rich people and discuss whether they are happy, it is understood that I am merely drawing my conclusions from the people whom I see and know.
My judgment is that the rich undergo cruel trials and bitter tragedies of which the poor know nothing.
In the first place I find that the rich suffer perpetually from money troubles. The poor sit snugly at home while sterling exchange falls ten points in a day. Do they care? Not a bit. An adverse balance of trade washes over the nation like a flood. Who have to mop it up? The rich. Call money rushes up to a hundred per cent, and the poor can still sit and laugh at a ten cent moving picture show and forget it.
But the rich are troubled by money all the time.
I know a man, for example—his name is Spugg—whose private bank account was overdrawn last month twenty thousand dollars. He told me so at dinner at his club, with apologies for feeling out of sorts. He said it was bothering him. He said he thought it rather unfair of his bank to have called his attention to it. I could sympathise, in a sort of way, with his feelings. My own account was overdrawn twenty cents at the time. I knew that if the bank began calling in overdrafts it might be my turn next. Spugg said he supposed he'd have to telephone his secretary in the morning to sell some bonds and cover it. It seemed an awful thing to have to do. Poor people are never driven to this sort of thing. I have known cases of their having to sell a little furniture, perhaps, but imagine having to sell the very bonds out of one's desk. There's a bitterness about it that the poor man can never know.
With this same man, Mr. Spugg, I have often talked of the problem of wealth. He is a self-made man and he has told me again and again that the wealth he has accumulated is a mere burden to him. He says that he was much happier when he had only the plain, simple things of life. Often as I sit at dinner with him over a meal of nine courses, he tells me how much he would prefer a plain bit of boiled pork with a little mashed turnip. He says that if he had his way he would make his dinner out of a couple of sausages, fried with a bit of bread. I forgot what it is that stands in his way. I have seen Spugg put aside his glass of champagne—or his glass after he had drunk his champagne—with an expression of something like contempt. He says that he remembers a running creek at the back of his father's farm where he used to lie at full length upon the grass and drink his fill. Champagne, he says, never tasted like that. I have suggested that he should lie on his stomach on the floor of the club and drink a saucerful of soda water. But he won't.
I know well that my friend Spugg would be glad to be rid of his wealth altogether, if such a thing were possible. Till I understood about these things, I always imagined that wealth could be given away. It appears that it cannot. It is a burden that one must carry. Wealth, if one has enough of it, becomes a form of social service. One regards it as a means of doing good to the world, of helping to brighten the lives of others—in a word, a solemn trust. Spugg has often talked with me so long and so late on this topic—the duty of brightening the lives of others—that the waiter who held blue flames for his cigarettes fell asleep against a door post, and the chauffeur outside froze to the seat of his motor.
Spugg's wealth, I say, he regards as a solemn trust. I have often asked him why he didn't give it, for example, to a college. But he tells me that unfortunately he is not a college man. I have called his attention to the need of further pensions for college professors; after all that Mr. Carnegie and others have done, there are still thousands and thousands of old professors of thirty-five and even forty, working away day after day and getting nothing but what they earn themselves, and with no provision beyond the age of eighty-five. But Mr. Spugg says that these men are the nation's heroes. Their work is its own reward.
But, after all, Mr. Spugg's troubles—for he is a single man with no ties—are in a sense selfish. It is perhaps in the homes, or more properly in the residences, of the rich that the great silent tragedies are being enacted every day—tragedies of which the fortunate poor know and can know nothing.
I saw such a case only a few nights ago at the house of the Ashcroft-Fowlers, where I was dining. As we went in to dinner, Mrs. Ashcroft-Fowler said in a quiet aside to her husband, "Has Meadows spoken?" He shook his head rather gloomily and answered, "No, he has said nothing yet." I saw them exchange a glance of quiet sympathy and mutual help, like people in trouble, who love one another.
They were old friends and my heart beat for them. All through the dinner as Meadows—he was their butler—poured out the wine with each course, I could feel that some great trouble was impending over my friends.
After Mrs. Ashcroft-Fowler had risen and left us, and we were alone over our port wine, I drew my chair near to Fowler's and I said, "My dear Fowler, I'm an old friend and you'll excuse me if I seem to be taking a liberty. But I can see that you and your wife are in trouble."
"Yes," he said very sadly and quietly, "we are."
"Excuse me," I said. "Tell me—for it makes a thing easier if one talks about it—is it anything about Meadows?"
"Yes," he said, "it is about Meadows."
There was silence for a moment, but I knew already what Fowler was going to say. I could feel it coming.
"Meadows," he said presently, constraining himself to speak with as little emotion as possible, "is leaving us."
"Poor old chap!" I said, taking his hand.
"It's hard, isn't it?" he said. "Franklin left last winter—no fault of ours; we did everything we could —and now Meadows."
There was almost a sob in his voice.
"He hasn't spoken definitely as yet," Fowler went on, "but we know there's hardly any chance of his staying."
"Does he give any reason?" I asked.
"Nothing specific," said Fowler. "It's just a sheer case of incompatibility. Meadows doesn't like us."
He put his hand over his face and was silent.
I left very quietly a little later, without going up to the drawing-room. A few days afterwards I heard that Meadows had gone. The Ashcroft-Fowlers, I am told, are giving up in despair. They are going to take a little suite of ten rooms and four baths in the Grand Palaver Hotel, and rough it there for the winter.
Yet one must not draw a picture of the rich in colours altogether gloomy. There are cases among them of genuine, light-hearted happiness.
I have observed this is especially the case among those of the rich who have the good fortune to get ruined, absolutely and completely ruined. They may do this on the Stock Exchange or by banking or in a dozen other ways. The business side of getting ruined is not difficult.
Once the rich are ruined, they are, as far as my observation goes, all right. They can then have anything they want.
I saw this point illustrated again just recently. I was walking with a friend of mine and a motor passed bearing a neatly dressed young man, chatting gaily with a pretty woman. My friend raised his hat and gave it a jaunty and cheery swing in the air as if to wave goodwill and happiness.
"Poor old Edward Overjoy!" he said, as the motor moved out of sight.
"What's wrong with him?" I asked.
"Hadn't you heard?" said my friend. "He's ruined—absolutely cleaned out—not a cent left."
"Dear me!" I said. "That's awfully hard. I suppose he'll have to sell that beautiful motor?"
My friend shook his head.
"Oh, no," he said. "He'll hardly do that. I don't think his wife would care to sell that."
My friend was right. The Overjoys have not sold their motor. Neither have they sold their magnificent sandstone residence. They are too much attached to it, I believe, to sell it. Some people thought they would have given up their box at the opera. But it appears not. They are too musical to care to do that. Meantime it is a matter of general notoriety that the Overjoys are absolutely ruined; in fact, they haven't a single cent. You could buy Overjoy—so I am informed—for ten dollars.
But I observe that he still wears a seal-lined coat worth at least five hundred.
It is only fair that at the back of this book I should be allowed a few pages to myself to put down some things that I really think.
Until two weeks ago I might have taken my pen in hand to write about humour with the confident air of an acknowledged professional.
But that time is past. Such claim as I had has been taken from me. In fact I stand unmasked. An English reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said of my writing, "What is there, after all, in Professor Leacock's humour but a rather ingenious mixture of hyperbole and myosis?"
The man was right. How he stumbled upon this trade secret I do not know. But I am willing to admit, since the truth is out, that it has long been my custom in preparing an article of a humorous nature to go down to the cellar and mix up half a gallon of myosis with a pint of hyperbole. If I want to give the article a decidedly literary character, I find it well to put in about half a pint of paresis. The whole thing is amazingly simple.
But I only mention this by way of introduction and to dispel any idea that I am conceited enough to write about humour, with the professional authority of Ella Wheeler Wilcox writing about love, or Eva Tanguay talking about dancing.
All that I dare claim is that I have as much sense of humour as other people. And, oddly enough, I notice that everybody else makes this same claim. Any man will admit, if need be, that his sight is not good, or that he cannot swim, or shoots badly with a rifle, but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him a mortal affront.
"No," said a friend of mine the other day, "I never go to Grand Opera," and then he added with an air of pride, "You see, I have absolutely no ear for music."
"You don't say so!" I exclaimed.
"None!" he went on. "I can't tell one tune from another. I don't know Home, Sweet Home from God Save the King. I can't tell whether a man is tuning a violin or playing a sonata."
He seemed to get prouder and prouder over each item of his own deficiency. He ended by saying that he had a dog at his house that had a far better ear for music than he had. As soon as his wife or any visitor started to play the piano the dog always began to howl—plaintively, he said—as if it were hurt. He himself never did this.
When he had finished I made what I thought a harmless comment.
"I suppose," I said, "that you find your sense of humour deficient in the same way: the two generally go together."
My friend was livid with rage in a moment.
"Sense of humour!" he said. "My sense of humour! Me without a sense of humour! Why, I suppose I've a keener sense of humour than any man, or any two men, in this city!"
From that he turned to bitter personal attack. He said that my sense of humour seemed to have withered altogether.
He left me, still quivering with indignation.
Personally, however, I do not mind making the admission, however damaging it may be, that there are certain forms of so-called humour, or, at least, fun, which I am quite unable to appreciate. Chief among these is that ancient thing called the Practical Joke.
"You never knew McGann, did you?" a friend of mine asked me the other day.
When I said I had never known McGann, he shook his head with a sigh, and said:
"Ah, you should have known McGann. He had the greatest sense of humour of any man I ever knew—always full of jokes. I remember one night at the boarding-house where we were, he stretched a string across the passage-way and then rang the dinner bell. One of the boarders broke his leg. We nearly died laughing."
"Dear me!" I said. "What a humorist! Did he often do things like that?"
"Oh, yes, he was at them all the time. He used to put tar in the tomato soup, and beeswax and tin-tacks on the chairs. He was full of ideas. They seemed to come to him without any trouble."
McGann, I understand, is dead. I am not sorry for it. Indeed, I think that for most of us the time has gone by when we can see the fun of putting tacks on chairs, or thistles in beds, or live snakes in people's boots.
To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice. I admit that there is in all of us a certain vein of the old original demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin. It ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin. But it is. When a skater on a pond who is describing graceful circles, and showing off before the crowd, breaks through the ice and gets a ducking, everybody shouts with joy. To the original savage, the cream of the joke in such cases was found if the man who slipped broke his neck, or the man who went through the ice never came up again. I can imagine a group of prehistoric men standing round the ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing till their sides split. If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric newspaper, the affair would have headed up: "Amusing Incident. Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and Is Drowned."
But our sense of humour under civilisation has been weakened. Much of the fun of this sort of thing has been lost on us.
Children, however, still retain a large share of this primitive sense of enjoyment.
I remember once watching two little boys making snow-balls at the side of the street and getting ready a little store of them to use. As they worked, there came along an old man wearing a silk hat, and belonging by appearance to the class of "jolly old gentlemen." When he saw the boys his gold spectacles gleamed with kindly enjoyment. He began waving his arms and calling, "Now, then, boys, free shot at me! free shot!" In his gaiety he had, without noticing it, edged himself over the sidewalk on to the street. An express cart collided with him and knocked him over on his back in a heap of snow. He lay there gasping and trying to get the snow off his face and spectacles. The boys gathered up their snow-balls and took a run toward him. "Free shot!" they yelled. "Soak him! Soak him!"
I repeat, however, that for me, as I suppose for most of us, it is a prime condition of humour that it must be without harm or malice, nor should it convey incidentally any real picture of sorrow or suffering or death. There is a great deal in the humour of Scotland (I admit its general merit) which seems to me not being a Scotchman, to sin in this respect. Take this familiar story (I quote it as something already known and not for the sake of telling it).
A Scotchman had a sister-in-law—his wife's sister—with whom he could never agree. He always objected to going anywhere with her, and in spite of his wife's entreaties always refused to do so. The wife was taken mortally ill and as she lay dying, she whispered, "John, ye'll drive Janet with you to the funeral, will ye no?" The Scotchman, after an internal struggle, answered, "Margaret, I'll do it for ye, but it'll spoil my day."
Whatever humour there may be in this is lost for me by the actual and vivid picture that it conjures up—the dying wife, the darkened room and the last whispered request.
No doubt the Scotch see things differently. That wonderful people—whom personally I cannot too much admire—always seem to me to prefer adversity to sunshine, to welcome the prospect of a pretty general damnation, and to live with grim cheerfulness within the very shadow of death. Alone among the nations they have converted the devil —under such names as Old Horny—into a familiar acquaintance not without a certain grim charm of his own. No doubt also there enters into their humour something of the original barbaric attitude towards things. For a primitive people who saw death often and at first hand, and for whom the future world was a vivid reality that could be felt, as it were, in the midnight forest and heard in the roaring storm, it was no doubt natural to turn the flank of terror by forcing a merry and jovial acquaintance with the unseen world. Such a practice as a wake, and the merry-making about the corpse, carry us back to the twilight of the world, with the poor savage in his bewildered misery, pretending that his dead still lived. Our funeral with its black trappings and its elaborate ceremonies is the lineal descendant of a merry-making. Our undertaker is, by evolution, a genial master of ceremonies, keeping things lively at the death-dance. Thus have the ceremonies and the trappings of death been transformed in the course of ages till the forced gaiety is gone, and the black hearse and the gloomy mutes betoken the cold dignity of our despair.
But I fear this article is getting serious. I must apologise.
I was about to say, when I wandered from the point, that there is another form of humour which I am also quite unable to appreciate. This is that particular form of story which may be called, par excellence, the English Anecdote. It always deals with persons of rank and birth, and, except for the exalted nature of the subject itself, is, as far as I can see, absolutely pointless.
This is the kind of thing that I mean.
"His Grace the Fourth Duke of Marlborough was noted for the open-handed hospitality which reigned at Blenheim, the family seat, during his regime. One day on going in to luncheon it was discovered that there were thirty guests present, whereas the table only held covers for twenty-one. 'Oh, well,' said the Duke, not a whit abashed, 'some of us will have to eat standing up.' Everybody, of course, roared with laughter."
My only wonder is that they didn't kill themselves with it. A mere roar doesn't seem enough to do justice to such a story as this.
The Duke of Wellington has been made the storm-centre of three generations of wit of this sort. In fact the typical Duke of Wellington story has been reduced to a thin skeleton such as this:
"A young subaltern once met the Duke of Wellington coming out of Westminster Abbey. 'Good morning, your Grace,' he said, 'rather a wet morning.' 'Yes' said the Duke, with a very rigid bow, 'but it was a damn sight wetter, sir, on the morning of Waterloo.' The young subaltern, rightly rebuked, hung his head."
Nor is it only the English who sin in regard to anecdotes.
One can indeed make the sweeping assertion that the telling of stories as a mode of amusing others ought to be kept within strict limits. Few people realise how extremely difficult it is to tell a story so as to reproduce the real fun of it—to "get it over" as the actors say. The mere "facts" of a story seldom make it funny. It needs the right words, with every word in its proper place. Here and there, perhaps once in a hundred times, a story turns up which needs no telling. The humour of it turns so completely on a sudden twist or incongruity in the denouement of it that no narrator, however clumsy, can altogether fumble it.