"Greg and Jim"

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 20, 1943.

“Forty cents!¹” protested Jimmie Frise loudly. “Forty cents to develop a film!”

“Ah,” I explained, “but that includes printing the snaps, too. If they’re any good.”

“Forty cents,” muttered Jimmie. “I bet there isn’t two cents’ worth of chemicals used. In fact, the way they put through 500 amateur rolls of film at one time, in a bathtub, I bet the chemicals wouldn’t cost a fraction of one cent per roll.”

“There’s the overhead,” I explained.

“Some little old dirty damp darkroom,” snorted Jimmie. “In some back attic of some old downtown warehouse.”

“Okay,” I submitted. “Then why don’t you develop your own rolls? You say it used to be a hobby of yours when you were a kid.”

“As a matter of fact,” declared Jimmie, “everybody who takes pictures should develop his own. Not only is it a fascinating hobby. It rounds out the whole art of photography. All over this city are nice, happy people with cameras, shooting pictures for all they’re worth. Pictures of soldier sons or soldier sweethearts in their new uniform. Pictures of new babies. Pictures of new brides. A lot of happy, eager people doing their best to capture in pictures a moment, a mood, a crisis of joy or happiness. And then what happens?”

“I know,” I said. “They can’t buy any film.”

“No,” cried Jim. “Suppose they have a film. In 100 different places, at different times of day, by different lights, sunlit, dull or almost dark, these pictures are taken and then rushed to the corner drug store. From the drug store they are collected by the bathtub corporations that develop and print the pictures. The precious, hope-laden films, shot by all these expectant amateurs, are rushed downtown to some damp mass production darkroom, where the whole works are dumped into hog troughs, bathtubs and vats with 19 cents’ worth of chemicals taken from barrels. The whole lot is swished and whirled around for a few minutes and then fished out.”

We Shouldn’t Dogmatize

“What do you expect for 40 cents?” I inquired.

“Well,” declared Jim, “every one of those films in those hog troughs and bathtubs was taken under different conditions of light, under varying conditions of expertness. To get the best out of them, every one of them should, be developed separately, in front of a ruby light, the operator watching with expert care to see that the utmost value of the film is preserved, giving it neither too much nor too little development…”

“Maybe you can get that kind of developing,” I suggested, “by paying for it. But it would be a lot more than 40 cents for a roll all developed and printed.”

“I’ll bet you more swell pictures,” declared Jim, “are ruined by mass development than by amateur shutter snapping.”

“What do you expect?” I demanded. “This is democracy. This is not technocracy. Under our system, anybody is free to buy a camera and shoot pictures. Some buy cheap cameras and never learn how to run them. Others buy costly cameras and make a technical and intricate hobby of it. The ones who buy the cheap cameras and never learn how to operate them are perfectly content to take their films down to the drug store and let the bathtub boys develop them. If they turn out lousy, the least surprised of all is the owner of the cheap camera who doesn’t know how to run it. That’s democracy. It permits anybody own a $500 camera or a $2 camera: whatever you like. It also permits anybody to become his own amateur developer. It also permits a bunch of the boys to organize a little company and gallop around daily, by motor car, to all the drug stores, picking up rolls and pitching them into bathtubs.”

“Democracy,” agreed Jim, “gives elbow room for all the saps. Imagine a guy paying $500 for a camera.”

“And imagine a guy,” I inserted, “paying $2 for a camera and then not knowing how to run it.”

“The more money spent, the bigger the sap,” maintained Jim.

“False,” I decided. “Because maybe the guy who spent the $500 has plenty of money, and if he hadn’t spent it on a camera he might have spent it on a 10-year subscription to all the professional hockey games until the end of the season of 1953. You can never dogmatize about the way a guy spends his money. Maybe the sap who bought the $2 camera and then didn’t learn how to operate it spent $498 on a lawyer to get him out of a breach-of-promise suit. No, sir. You never can say one man is a sap and another isn’t. The safest course is to believe that everybody is a sap. Then you can’t go wrong.”

Sly Digs At Democracy

“Is this a veiled attack on democracy?” inquired Jim sternly.

“Not at all,” I assured him. “The question is: Does democracy breed saps? Or do saps breed democracy? Hitler tried to find out. So he’s finding out.”

“Look here,” exclaimed Jimmie, “you’ve been taking some pretty sly digs at democracy lately. What goes on? Where do you stand?”

“It isn’t democracy,” I explained. “It’s just humanity. Look: we live under a free, democratic system of government in which the elected representatives of the people sit in parliament. Is that agreed?”

“Correct,” said Jim stoutly. “Representative government.”

“Okay,” I submitted. “An election is coming along. So, in the riding in which we live a meeting is held to choose a candidate for the Liberal party. Is that meeting announced? Maybe. If it is, would you and I give up movie to attend it? Maybe. At any rate, in St. Hoosis Hall in our riding on the 27th a meeting is held of the St. Hoosis riding Liberal Association. Forty-seven guys turn up, of whom 16 are professional politicians, each bringing a friend, making 16 more, and the rest of the 47 are guys out for a walk to the corner to buy cigarettes who, seeing St. Hoosis Hall doors open, walked in.”

“Aw now,” protested Jim.

“Meantime,” I went on, “in St. Pollywog’s Hall, in the same riding, the St. Hoosis riding Conservative Association is holding its nomination meeting. It being Toronto, no fewer than 51 people are in attendance. Maybe the same night, in a church basement or in a dancing academy up two flights, the C.C.F. are holding their nomination meeting. It being a slightly northerly section of Toronto, no fewer than 60 people are present.”

“Aw,” said Jimmie.

“Now,” I explained, “besides these riding associations there are the provincial party committees. And besides the provincial and district committees there are the federal party headquarters, with big offices in Ottawa. Now, who do you think is the chairman at each of these three nomination meetings here in St. Hoosis riding in Toronto? Is it just some guy was on his way down to the corner to buy smokes? Or is it somebody they even know about away up in Ottawa, in those national head offices? Which do you think?”

“Aw,” protested Jimmie loudly.

“At any rate,” I pursued, “at each of these three meetings, you might describe as secret societies except there isn’t a tyler² at the door, highly successful nominations are arrived at. Speakers speak. The calamitous state of the country or vice versa, is dealt with. The candidates are introduced – that is, in case the local boys have fallen out – and then all those entitled, that is, the authentic and accredited members of the St. Hoosis riding Liberal, Conservative or C.C.F. Associations, are called upon to vote. Thus are chosen the people’s representatives in our free, democratic system of government.”

“Aw, that’s cynical,” protested Jimmie.

“Look.” I cried, “you can have your choice: three. The election comes along, and it’s like Christmas. We have three Santa Claus parades instead of one. The three parties parade their people’s choice up and down, and we line the thoroughfares, cheering madly and choosing our one true, genuine Santa Claus. And when it’s all over, the people’s choice is elected. The representative of the people. One of these three guys selected, very, veeeery cautiously, at a little semi-private meeting in a semi-private ward by a little gathering of professionals.”

“We could all attend if we liked,” cried Jimmie.

“So could we all develop our own films,” I submitted. “But it’s easier to just drop them in the drug store on our way past.”

“What you’ve just said upsets me,” muttered Jim. “You make it all sound so cynical.”

“What I’ve just said,” I retorted, “is not mine at all, not a all, not a word of it. It has been said by this country’s very best men, its greatest editors, its greatest preachers, teachers and statesmen for 100 years. If you don’t care for good pictures, okay: let the bathtub boys do your developing and printing. If you don’t care about government – which is how you and your children are to live – okay, leave it to the bathtub boys.”

Jimmie sat silent and grim for a long minute.

“I haven’t got,” he said at last, “a really decent picture of you in my whole album. I’ve got a few snaps of you up fishing at Lac Alexandre and a couple of deer hunting poses. But with that swell old camera of mine I’m entitled to a real, true, characteristic picture of you. We’ve been partners a long time now. I want you to quit at 4 today and we’ll call at my house…”

So we quit at 10 to 4, which is all right for creative workers like us, who are just as liable to run into a million-dollar idea, or a ten-dollar one, which is just as good, riding on a street car as sitting at a dumb desk; and we got to Jim’s before 4.30 p.m., with a fine, ambient winter afternoon light. And Jimmie got his camera and his light meter and sat me on the veranda pillars and made six shots of me at various angles, and I made six shots of him.

“Now,” said Jim, triumphantly, “surprise!”

Unknown to me, he had bought a supply of chemicals, developer and hypo³. And a box of print paper.

And, taking me down to the fruit cellar, he explored amid the barrels and boxes and emerged with a portable ruby light of ancient vintage and several old-fashioned black trays.

“Wonderful,” I crowed. “Why didn’t you tell me you had this equipment long ago. We could have had barrels of fun.”

“After I was first married,” said Jim, “I tinkered with photography. I haven’t even seen this stuff in 25 years. But I knew it was here.”

Jim washed out the trays in the laundry and brought them in full of water of the right temperature. A big tray for washing. lesser trays, one for the developer and one for the hypo or fixing bath. He set them all out in precise like a hostess arranging a table before the guests arrive.

“Orderly procedure,” he explained, “is the whole secret of the job. As a matter of fact, developing and printing pictures is childishly simple. Organize it and you can’t go wrong.”

He then explained to me the process. With the ruby light casting its warm and secret radiance around, we would unroll the spools and then immerse the negative in the developing tray, running it, by a process of up and down, through the chemical for a period of from three to eight minutes, watching all the time, in the glow of the ruby light, to see how fast the developer worked and how the impressions on the emulsion side were coming.

Then, rinsing the film in the water bath, which, under ideal arrangements not possible in a fruit cellar, would be running water, the film would be dipped and run up and down in the fixing bath until all the emulsion was good and hard.

“Then,” said Jim, “15 minutes in the water to wash, and we hang her up to dry. Tonight, after dinner, you come over and we print. Printing is the sport. You can really experiment for artistic results. You can enlarge parts of it. For example, that one I took of you in profile, I’ll enlarge just the head. If I’m any judge, there was a Byronic pose to that one…”

“Come on, come on,” I urged, removing my coat. “Which will I do?”

“I’ll mix the chemicals and you do the slow, even running up and down of the film through the bath.”

“Okay,” I said.

“One last look,” said Jim, checking over each tray, each package of chemical, each spool, all in readiness. “Okay.”

He turned on the ruby light and reached up and switched off the bright bulb.

In the dim ruddy glow, there was an air of mystery, of science, of exploration.

“Wait a minute,” cautioned Jim, “until our eyes get used to the light.”

Main Thing is Ideals

“Stand back a minute,” said Jim, leaning over the trays. And with a spoon he measured out the chemicals, smoothing off the chemicals like a chemist himself. With a stick, he stirred.

“Okay,” he said. “Unroll the first negative.”

I reached and got one of the spools and broke the seal. Carefully I peeled off the outer covering until I came to the film, which I detached according to Jim’s instructions. It was wiry and curly.

“Hold it carefully by the ends,” said Jim, “and now run it slowly and evenly through the bath.”

He stood, superintending. And I dipped the film in the tepid chemical and felt it soften as it slid up, down in the solution.

“How’s it coming?” demanded Jimmie, bending down to get the film between him and the ruby light. “Is it soft?”

“It’s getting wiry again,” I said. “It was soft at first.”

“Whoa,” commanded Jim. “Hold it still in front of the light.”

I held it dripping over the tray while Jim leaned close and peered at it against the red light.

“H’m,” said he.

And before I could utter a word, he reached up and turned on the bright light overhead. In his hand he held one of the packages of chemical, which he was studying intently.

“Just as I feared,” he said bitterly. “You put it in the hypo first!”

“I,” I yelled. “I put it in the hypo!”

So we agreed that, even if we do try to do things right, whether it has to do with representative government or merely developing photographs, it very often means only a lot of fussing, with little result.

“With saps like us,” I explained to Jimmie, after we had properly developed the second roll and found that I had had my finger in front of the lens each time, “the main thing is we at least have high ideals.”

“That’s what really matters,” confessed Jim.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. 40 cents in 1943 would be $7 in 2025. ↩︎
2. A tyler in Freemasonry is an appointed officer stationed outside the closed door of a lodge room to guard against unauthorized intruders. ↩︎
3. Hypo is is the traditional term for Sodium Thiosulfate ($N{a}_2{S}_2{O}_3$), which is used to fix, or stabilize, images as a final step in the photographic processing of film or paper. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 13, 1937.

“I may be a little late,” said Jimmie Frise, “coming back from lunch. Just tell anybody that asks I’ve gone up town.”

“Pool again, eh?” I supposed.

“What of it?” asked Jim, a little grimly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems a little odd to me that you can mix around with those pool sharks. They’re not your kind.”

“Oh, yes they are,” said Jim. “What do you know about it anyway. You’ve never even been in a pool room.”

“I go by what I hear,” I informed him. “Pool rooms are joints.”

“Call them billiard parlors,” said Jim. “See how that sounds.”

“Even so,” I disagreed.

“Listen,” said Jim, “some of the finest men in this country are billiard players. Many of the finest homes in Canada have billiard rooms. All the best and most exclusive clubs have billiard rooms where our leaders in industry and finance play every noon hour. In fact, the billiard rooms are the most crowded rooms of all.”

“I was referring,” I said, “to pool rooms.”

“What’s the difference?” demanded Jim. “Billiard rooms for rich guys. Pool rooms for poor guys. It’s the same thing.”

“There are better ways to employ your lunch hour leisure,” I declared.

“I suppose,” sneered Jimmie, “you mean I should come to lunch with you and listen to you and your fishing friends gassing about trout fishing and trout flies and four-ounce rods and 4X gut and so forth?”

“The trout season,” I stated, “is only eleven weeks away. It’s time you were thinking about your plans for the coming season.”

“I like a little action,” said Jimmie. “I never could figure out what all you thousands of lunchers have to gas about all through a long lunch hour. The sight of them mystifies me. Sitting blathering.”

“Many of them,” I advised, “are talking about sport, like us anglers.”

“The greatest modern sport,” announced Jim, “is blather. The reason golf, fishing, shooting and that sort of thing is popular is because it gives, for the least effort, the most amount of blather. Ten months you sit on the tail of your coat blathering about fishing, for two months of fishing, during which you actually fish about three or four times.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” I confessed.

“Give me action,” said Jim. “Even Russian pool. You can play it all the year round. You don’t just talk about it.”

“Of course, Jim,” I explained to him, “the age of action is coming to an end. The great age of action is right now in its last stages. The sooner we realize that, and take up conversation as the only course open to us, the happier we will be.”

“Do You Call That Action?”

“Why,” scoffed Jimmie, “there never was a greater era of action in human history than the present. What are you talking about?”

“Action?” I inquired. “Now?”

“Yes, action, now,” cried Jim. “Never in human history has there been such action as in these last few years. Think of the highways, boiling with traffic to the ends of the earth. Planes racing through the sky. Great cities towering into the heavens, filled with an action incomparable in all our long story.”

“My dear boy,” I protested, “how ridiculous. Come to the window.”

We stood at the window looking down into the street, with the traffic jamming past, hundreds of cars moving in a great parade.

“Do you call that action?” I inquired.

“I certainly do,” said Jim.

“Every man in that whole parade,” I informed him, “is sitting down.”

“What of it?” asked Jim.

“Do you call it action,” I demanded, “with everybody sitting down?”

“Er…,” said Jim.

“Only seventy years ago,” I told him, “and there are dozens of men in this building that old, when men wanted to do anything, there had to be action. They had to stand up and walk. You speak of aeroplanes streaking across the sky. Sure. They can cross the continent now in a day. Seventy years ago, when they wanted to cross the continent, that called for action. It took weeks to plan and organize the trip. Action. They had to drive covered wagons. Paddle canoes and row York boats. Action. They had to climb mountains and cut roads. Cross plains and deserts, carrying their supplies and water. Action. Action. Action.”

“What I mean by action,” began Jimmie.

“Just a second,” I interrupted. “When things were made, a few years ago, blacksmiths had to toil and labor. Now a skinny little guy turns a handle or presses a button on a giant machine. Action is already vanishing from the earth. In olden days, when Nelson wanted a ship, it took hundreds of men, toiling for months by hand, to make him his Victory. When Nelson sailed into action, it was action. They ran in close to the enemy, blew him to blazes and then boarded him with pike and cutlass. Action.”

“Ha, ha,” laughed Jim. “How about the last war? Twenty million men killed in action.”

“Killed in inaction,” I corrected. “Never was there a more dreadful example of the decline of action as that last war. Millions of men herded into trenches, where they stood, perfectly helpless, to be slaughtered by machines. Waiting in cellars and dugouts for death to come hurtling out of the sky. In old wars, there was action. Armies marched on foot. They met. They attacked each other with axes and spears and stabbed and jabbed and had some fun. Modern war is a dreadful thing of inaction. Men stand and wait. Machines do the rest.”

“Er ” said Jim.

“Never in the history of the world,” I insisted, “has action, by which I mean the activity of men, been less. We are marching steadily towards the end of all action. The day is not far distant when all mankind will have nothing to do but just sit.”

“And talk,” said Jim.

“Yes, sit and talk,” I agreed. “I am an angler. But the fish are vanishing. Presently, there will be no fish left for me to catch. But if I can talk about fishing for ten months of the year, it won’t be so hard for me to talk about it for twelve months.”

“I’ll play pool,” chose Jim.

“No, there won’t be room,” I explained. “The human race is multiplying so fast that in another couple of hundred years there will be no space left for action of any sort, least of all for idle pool players. The end of the picture is simply this-the entire human race, packed closely together, sitting talking.”

“Tough Game, Dis Russian”

“It’s a swell prospect,” said Jim.

“Come to lunch with me,” I said, “and meet the anglers.”

“Come pool shooting with me,” countered Jimmie, “and get a little action.”

“A lot of action,” I scoffed, “there is in poking a few oversize marbles around a table.”

“There’s a lot more action than you suppose,” said Jim. “Billiards is a real game. It can be played all year round. It can be played by young and old. Size or strength do not count. It trains your eye and mind. Develops your faculties. Teaches you control, judgment, caution.”

“I have all of those things I need,” I informed him. “I’m too cautious as it is. My eyes see more than I can take in. My judgment informs me it is better to sit and talk than to go around pool rooms and other joints looking for action.”

“You’ve never been in a pool room?” asked Jim.

“Never,” I said, proudly.

“I never took you for a man,” mused Jim, “who entertained prejudices, without knowing anything about the subject. I thought you had an inquiring mind. I thought…”

“If you put it that way,” I agreed.

So we went out and had a stand-up sandwich at a counter and then got Jim’s car at the parking lot and drove uptown to one of several pool rooms which Jimmie frequents in his almost religious quest of mankind. Jim says it must be dreadfully dreary knowing only one class of people.

We entered a shabby little tobacco shop, which from the outside appeared to be nothing more than a tobacco shop. But back of the tiny store, there was a large, dim, smoky pool room, with six green tables planing off into the foggy distance, green-shaded lights suspended above the table and a hum of human sound as, around each table, groups of men, with their hats on and their coats off, bent and straightened at this curious game of poking man-sized marbles around.

The proprietor, a cat-like little man with an eye shade, with a purring voice and a permanently crouched attitude, greeted Jim heartily.

“Chimmie,” he cried. “It’s a pleasure.”

As we walked back of the partition, and entered the big room with its tables, nearly everybody knew Jim and hailed him loudly and affectionately as Chimmie. Most of them held cigar butts clenched in their front teeth, and wore their hats on the back of their heads. We strolled along to the far end of the pool room and there we found a sort of high bench running along the wall like in a shoe shine parlor. Green plush. Up on to this we hoisted ourselves to watch the game at this farthest table.

“Howsa goin’, Chimmie?” cried a long limber man, with gold teeth, enthusiastically. “Play ya soons dis is over.”

“Okay, Smiler,” agreed Jim, pushing his own hat back and suddenly looking very tough. Jim shifted his cigar to his front teeth. Suddenly my amiable friend Jimmie was transformed, by these slight alterations and by a sort of inward change, into as hard-boiled an individual as there was in the whole place.

“Fine looking bunch,” I said quietly.

“What’s dat?” said Jim, and the expression in his eye caused me to overlook the matter.

We watched. The game was Russian pool¹. Jim explained to me, out of the corner of his mouth, and with sundry curious expressions and technical terms, that the white ball was the shooter, and the other four balls, red, blue, green and yellow, each had a different value. If you sunk each ball in its proper pocket, you made the number of points the ball was worth. If you sunk it in the wrong pocket, you were deducted the value of the ball and lost as well all the points you had so far scored.

“But dat,” explained Jim, “ain’t de woist of it. De game is a hundred, see? If you makes your hundred, see, you is okay. But suppose you is ninety-six and sinks de yellow ball which is woit nine points, see?”

“How interesting,” I agreed, sitting back a little from this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of my own intimate acquaintance.

“Well, den,” said Chimmie, “you busts. You goes right back to nuttin’ again. She’s a tough game, dis Russian.”

By the time the game before us ended, a good many of the players had finished their games at other tables and the pool room was emptying. The cat-like proprietor walked, crouched and purring, amid the tables, and as the crowd thinned, I noted that only the cream of the collection were being left, the cigar-buttiest, the hat-tiltedest, the side-talkers. A sinister air seemed to flow around me.

Jim’s turn finally came and taking off his overcoat, he jumped down and took a cue and chalked up, while the boy in the white coat came and set up the five colored balls for the new game between Jim and the curiously slender, gold-toothed man named Smiler.

Smiler won the toss and the break and caromed and pocketed a score of 22 in no time. And then accidentally sunk the blue ball in the yellow pocket.

“Cheese,” said Smiler, “I can’t hit an elephant with a scoop shovel. I been shootin’ like dat all week, Chimmie.”

Chimmie carefully hung up his hat. Slowly chalked his cue. Rolled up his sleeves. The yellow ball was hanging right over its pocket.

Chimmie leaned out and rested his entire upper works on the pool table. He set his cue against the white ball and made a few tiny, experimental passes with the cue tip.

A sudden sharp stabbed silence filled the room.

All eyes turned to the far end, at the doorway. Standing staring sternly at the partition were two very large men in fedoras.

“Nix,” hissed Smiler.

Chimmie, all in one graceful, snakelike motion, laid down his cue, withdrew his length off the table, swept up his coat, hat and me, taking me by the elbow. Almost without a sound and certainly without a single pause in one long continuous motion, Chimmie swept us backward where a door was already opening to the hand of Smiler.

“Come on,” said Chim.

Smiler led, with long legs flinging slush and mud, down a narrow lane walled with garbage cans and packing cases, around couple of bends, through a shed, around a stable, up another lane, and over an eight-foot fence. They boosted me over. I got splinters in my hand as I was flung into the yard of a surprised-looking little house. Down the alley we sped, and into the street where, suddenly slowing, we formed three abreast, walked, with unconcern, but with slush and mud on our coats and pant legs, down the street, like three citizens returning from lunch to their affairs.

“Well, said Smiler, “Chimmie, dat was a tough break.”

“It’s de foist time,” said Chim, “I’ve had dat yellow ball hung on de pocket like dat for munts. Munts and munts. Of all de luck.”

“Pardon me,” I said, “but what was all the excitement, if I may ask?”

“Poor old Hoibie,” explained Chimmie, “was pinched again. Tree times in a year.”

“Pinched. What for?” I demanded.

“A little hand book he runs,” explained Smiler. “Just a little book on de races, see?”

“Why did we have to run?” I demanded.

“If you is found in,” explained Smiler, “you is found in, see? Found in a gambling joint, see? Ten bucks and costs.”

Smiler accompanied us around about to our car and bade us adieu.

“Well,” said Jim, Jim once more, with no cigar butt and looking just the same as ever, “well, you saw a little action after all.”

“I got splinters in my hands. I nearly fell in that muck in the lane,” I admitted.

“You got action, though.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I suppose, in the field of morals, there will always be action. Even when there is no other action any more.”

---

Editor’s Note:

1. Jim has mentioned playing Russian pool before, but since there are many games with that name, I was not quite certain which he played. Since this story provides a description, it seems to be similar to the variant called Slosh. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 7, 1942.

“When this war is over,” enunciated Jimmie Frise, “this world is going to be a different place.”

“No, Jim,” I asserted, “you’ve just been reading the propaganda. What you’ve got to read is history. This world never changes.”

“Are you insinuating,” demanded Jim, “that our propaganda isn’t true?”

“Well, the German propaganda started all this stuff about a new and better world, a new order and so forth,” I pointed out. “Later, we took up the cry.”

“You had better be careful,” warned Jimmie, “what you say about propaganda.”

“Is it all right if I just think about it?” I inquired.

“It’s better not even to think about it,” advised Jim. “Then you can’t get into any trouble. In wartime, ours not to reason why. Ours but to do and die.”

“Very well,” I surrendered. “But all the same, I think we ought to read history. In times like these, it is good for the soul to read history. It gives you courage.”

“Does history suggest,” asked Jimmie, “that the world won’t be a better place after this war?”

“All history teaches,” I explained, “is that nothing ever changes. What happened to men in ancient Babylon is happening to men in modern Toronto and modern Birdseye Center. There is a wise old saying that history repeats itself. That is just a silly and high-sounding way of saying that men do the same things over and over again, forever and ever.”

“Then, you mean there will always be wars…?” questioned Jimmie darkly.

“I’ll tell you when there will be no more wars, Jim,” I declaimed. “There will be no more wars when no motorist tries to pass another motorist on the highway. When boys no longer fight in schoolyards, wars will end. When women no longer shove each other around at bargain counters, when hockey and baseball and golf are forbidden by law, wars will cease.”

“Puh,” said Jimmie. “No connection.”

“All the connection there is,” I declared. “I’ll tell you when war will end. When you turn the other cheek, war will end. If a motorist, trying to pass you on the street, cuts in ahead of you and bashes in your front left hand fender, and you get out of your car and go and shake hands with him and pat him on the back and plead with him to cease weeping – then wars will end. Read history, Jim. Read history.”

“If history is as cynical as all that…” uttered Jim.

Just the Form Chart

“History is just the form chart, Jim,” I explained. “You’re a racing man. You like horse-racing. How do you decide to bet on a horse?”

“I play hunches,” asserted Jimmie. “I stick a pin through my program and bet all the horses the pinhole punctures. Or else, if I see a guy run over by a truck on my way to the race-track and then find a horse named Smashem on the program, I bet Smashem for all I’m worth.”

“Do you win?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” confessed Jim. “But not often. It’s as good a way as any, though.”

“Better than the form chart?” I protested. “Why, Jim, that’s absurd. In the form chart, you see the full record of all the horses. You see who their sire and dam were, and what blood they’ve got in them. You see all the races they’ve run and how they did in them. You see all the conditions under which they ran: whether muddy track or track fast; whether they run best in the spring, summer, autumn or winter: whether they are due for another win any day now, or whether they’ve had too many wins lately to be likely to win again. That’s what they call form. That’s history. It’s the record.”

“I play hunches,” insisted Jim. “Form charts give me a headache.”

“So you’ve got a hunch,” I followed up, “regarding the war. You’ve got a hunch that the world is going to be a better place after this war?”

“Well, what do you think?” countered Jimmie.

“To tell you the truth, Jim.” I surrendered. “I think so too. But it is not going to be a better place for the rich and powerful. It is not going to be a better place for comfortable guys like you and me and our families. It is not going to be a better place for kings and dukes and barons. It is not going to be a better place for millionaires and smart guys and clever people. It is only going to be a better place for the mass of mankind.”

“And what’s the matter with that?” demanded Jimmie.

“Nothing,” I assured him. “But it does sound kind of funny to hear you, a comfortable cartoonist, making good money for just sitting at a drawing board twiddling your fingers lazily, talking about a better world that is coming. It won’t be better for you. The world that is to come won’t be able to afford to pay fancy wages to cartoonists any more than it will be able to pay a hundred thousand a year to some clever guy who can operate a factory so smartly that he puts all other factories out of business.”

“When I say a better world,” explained Jimmie, “I do not refer to dollars and cents.”

“Most people do,” I assured him. “When public men speak over the radio about the new world that is coming, 99 per cent. of the listeners automatically translate that, in their thoughts, to better wages, a nicer house, more clothes, a new car…”

“Look,” interrupted Jimmie, “if I am going to be paid truck driver’s wages for being a cartoonist, then I am going to be a truck driver. Because it’s a lot more fun to drive a truck than to have to sit here, week after week, year after year, thinking up a new idea every day.”

“Okay, you be a truck driver then,” I agreed, “and let somebody do the cartooning that really loves being a cartoonist, who gets more kick out of drawing a cartoon than out of drawing a fat pay envelope.”

“That would have been me, 30 years ago,” sighed Jimmie. “When you are young, you don’t worry about the wages. You work for the thrill, the adventure of it. Then, as you grow older, your fingers start to crook.”

“History teaches,” I stated, “that men never change, that men will go to war for one cause or another, every generation. The cause is always high and holy. But whether the cause is the natural one that makes boys fight in schoolyards, or whether it is the one that makes you want to knock the block off the guy who cuts in ahead of you on the highway, fight we must.”

“I don’t like that,” declared Jim.

“Fine,” I said. “Then go ahead sticking pins through programs. But history also teaches something else. There is only one central core, one backbone to all history, Greek, Roman, European, Asiatic, ancient, modern-one thing upon which all historians can agree. And that is, that with the passage of time, freedom, power, happiness and privilege is broadening out, ever and ever, from the few to the many. More and more of humanity is being set free from slavery and bondage with every century. Come conquerors, come tyrants, come Charlemagne and his Holy Roman hosts, come Philip of Spain with his world conquering Spaniards, come Elizabeth of England with her Drake and Raleigh and Hawkins and Frobisher… only one thing is eternally true through all the million pages of history: and that is, that the common man, the plain, happy, hungry, insignificant common man is freer, happier, more powerful, has a greater share in life than he had in the 50-year period preceding any page you like to delve into in history, all across the ages.”

“Weelllll,” cried Jimmie heartily, “what more do we want?”

“All right then,” I concluded, “but 10 years from now, don’t expect any sympathy from me when you start complaining about the fact that street car motormen earn nearly as much as cartoonists.”

“When I think of the better world to come,” said Jim, “I have in mind a world where people will be more secure not only as regards money, but as regards life itself. After this war, there is going to be a terrific reaction. There is going to be the most gosh- awful uprising of League of Nations sentiment and humanitarian enterprises. After all this insane slaughter not only of fighting men but of harmless bystanders, there is bound to be a terrific kick-back in human nature. Disarmament, world peace organizations, international brotherhoods…”

“There will also be a powerful group,” I pointed out, “who will insist on keeping big standing armies, and more battleships and war factories.”

“They will be snowed under, as usual,” stated Jim. “The mass of mankind will be thoroughly sick of war. As we all were after the last war. Our whole generation will be ashamed of itself, for having gone mad. We will settle back to cultivate the better human qualities within us. Maybe a golden age will dawn, a golden age of art and beauty and literature and music.”

“During which,” I interpolated, “somebody else will be secretly arming with shovels and wooden practise tanks against us.”

A Perfect Example

“You’re terribly cynical,” accused Jim.

“No, sir,” I protested. “I’m childishly simple. I read history. And believe it.”

“Aw,” groaned Jimmie, “how soft and how hard we humans can be! One minute, we are up with the angels, gentle, kindly, filled with humane and lofty ideals: destroying slums; passing mighty legislation to free another vast group of our fellow men from injustice and cruelty; dreaming splendid dreams; writing sublime books, plays, music. The next minute, we are down with the devils, destroying one another like wild men. I am weary of war. I am hungry for gentleness. I just want to go and stand in the streets and watch children at play. I want to take my old dog on my knees and fondle his ears. I… I …”

“Which reminds me,” I interrupted, “of the purpose of my visit, this fine Sunday afternoon.

“By the way, yes,” agreed Jim. “Take your coat off. What have you got in the bag?”

“This is bread, Jim,” I said, opening the bag. “I’m on my way down to Sunnyside Beach to feed the wild ducks. I called to see if you’ll come for the walk.”

Jim was already up on his feet.

“And I’ll get some bread crusts, too,” he said.

So from Jim’s bread box we filched all the crusts and odds and ends of bread and filled the paper bag full to the top. And then we went forth into the fine winter afternoon and walked down to Sunnyside, only five blocks south. Old Rusty, Jim’s feeble-minded Irish water spaniel, joined us.

“Get that dope on a leash,” I warned, “or he’ll chase all the ducks out to sea.”

“He wouldn’t harm a duck,” scoffed Jim. “He’d love to see them.”

“He can see them, all right,” I said. “But get a leash.”

Which unfortunately Jim did, and when we neared the lake, Jim put Rusty on the leash and we walked over the trodden snow beach to the icy water’s edge, where numbers of people, with children, were tossing bread and corn to the mallards, black duck, and a few species of other wild duck which find a winter haven in the open water off Toronto’s pleasure beach.

At first, the ducks were scared of Rusty, even though he was on a leash, and they swam to visit other people who were tossing bread. But with friendly and wheedling calls, Jimmie and I both tossed bread far out and coaxed the ducks toward us. Rusty whined softly.

“The old fool,” said Jim, “He goes to sleep in the duck blind when the hunting season’s on. But now he is all of a tremble.”

“Isn’t it strange,” I mused. “Less than 15 weeks ago, when the duck season was open, we were risking our lives out in harsh blizzards, crouched down in wet, sodden swamps, trying to shoot these beautiful creatures. And here we are, tenderly feeding them.”

“It is a perfect example,” agreed Jim, tossing bread to the ducks now only five feet out from the edge of the ice, “of what I was saying about human nature. One minute, we are full of tenderness. The next, we are shooting guns.”

“I Didn’t Laugh Once”

“Quaaack, quack, quack,” I soothed, tossing broken particles of the bread to the lustrous mallards and the handsome proud black ducks. “You never see ducks like this in the shooting season. When you are hunting, a duck is a wild, racing creature out in the wind going 50 miles an hour. Just a dark swift pattern against the gray sky. Tempting the sporting instinct. But here, on the water, they are queer, comic, greedy little beautiful creatures…”

“It’s quite possible,” said Jim queerly, “that we might actually have shot at these very ducks, up north. And here we are, feeding them like pets.”

“Aw, they’re cute, Jim,” I cried. “Look at that mallard. Look at the expression. Why, he’s smiling!”

“Your attitude towards ducks,” said Jim, “and towards men, depends largely on where and how you see them.”

“I’m almost ready to say,” I said, “that I have nothing against ducks.”

“Hyah,” yelled Jimmie suddenly.

For Rusty, who had been lurking us while we tossed the crusts, whining faintly, gave a violent leap, leash or no leash, in an attempt to break Jim’s hold and make a grab at the nearest duck, a handsome mallard busy with a large hunk of bread.

The leash caught me around the knees, and before Jim could get a proper jerk, Rusty had rounded me and hauled my feet from under me.

The ice, bathed not only by the lake but by the fine sun, was wet and horribly smooth. I felt myself sliding even as my feet went up.

“Whoa, don’t go in there,” warned Jimmie.

But what good are warnings? In a sitting posture, I went in. It was not deep. In fact, it was quite shallow. I raised my feet in the air and was able to hold my upper portions fairly upright, with the result that only my least dignified portions were immersed in the bitter and icy waters of Lake Ontario.

Rusty splashed me a little and the ducks made a great outcry which caused many of my fellow citizens, who might otherwise not have seen me, to witness what they thought was an attempt on my part to snatch a duck.

“I’ve a good mind,” yelled one gentleman who, with his wife and baby, were standing nearby, “to call the cops.”

Jim assisted me out. I was wet only amidships, though it trickled icily down my legs and into my boots. But a brisk walk up street for home soon removed the chills.

“You’ve got to give me credit,” said Jimmie, when he left me at my sidewalk, “I didn’t laugh once.”

“Damn all ducks,” was all I replied.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 27, 1934.

“We,” said Jimmy Frise, “lead a pretty humdrum life.”

“You and me?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Jimmie. “Think of all the prize fighters, and the rich people that ride horses over high jumps, and the actors dancing in all the vaudeville theatres and everything.”

“Yes, but think,” I said, “of all the long rows of houses, miles and miles of rows of houses, and in them all the people sitting doing nothing, nothing is happening, nothing ever has happened, and nothing ever will happen!”

“But think of firemen,” said Jimmie, “never knowing what minute the fire bell will ring and they go lashing out into the icy streets, in dark and storm, to fight the demon fire. Think of Gordon Sinclair¹ going to Darkest Africa. Of detectives, in the middle of the night, creeping along dark alleys, right here in Toronto, with guns in their hands, their teeth bared.”

“And think,” I said, “of all the people yawning in Toronto and lying back in their chairs, waiting for bed time, half asleep.”

“You have no romance in your soul,” said Jim. “Life should be an adventure.”

“In Toronto?” I asked.

“Yes, in Toronto. I bet you there is not a single street in Toronto, no matter how short,” said Jim, “in which, at this moment, tremendous adventure is not being enacted. Romance, tragedy, thrill, revenge, hate, yes, murder!”

“Not murder, Jim!” I cried. “Toronto won’t put up with murder. I grant you a little romance, yes. Romance of a decent sort. But revenge, murder, hate, all those things, no. Not at all.”

“You’re a typical Torontonian,” said Jim, caustically.

“I ought to be,” I said, proudly. “My great-grandfather was born here, in the village of York. I have remote ancestors buried under all the biggest skyscrapers in Toronto. There is not a downtown corner that one of my forebears did not own at one time or another and traded them to Jesse Ketchum² for a hundred acres in Markham township.”

“You certainly show it,” said Jim. “In all my travels, from Lindsay to St. Thomas, I never knew anybody like the Torontonians for dodging life, though it be right under their noses.”

“We don’t dodge life, Jimmie,” I explained, “we just keep it calm and orderly.”

“You are only fooling yourselves,” said Jim. “Life and adventure are going on, right under your noses but you are too dumb to see it.”

“I defy you,” I said; “I defy you to show me any life going on in Toronto. I defy you!”

“Why,” cried Jimmie, “we could go and stand on any corner in Toronto, and unless you were too timid, adventure would come along and sweep you off in its embrace before you knew where you were!”

“Nothing of the sort,” I said. “A policeman would come along and order us to move on. That’s all that would happen.”

Challenging Adventure

“Would you like to try?” demanded Jimmie, his eyes narrow.

“It would be no use,” I said. “I know my Toronto.”

“Would you risk standing with me,” said Jim, levelly, “at any corner you like in Toronto and accepting the first adventure that comes along?”

“We would just feel silly,” I said. “Watching all the married couples out window-shopping after dinner.”

“You are as usual evading the question,” said Jim. “Will you come with me now, to-night, and stand on a corner and accept the first adventure that comes to us? Will you?”

“It is after 9 o’clock, Jim,” I said. “There will be only a few people walking along, coming from the first show at the movies.”

“I challenge you,” said Jim; “I challenge you to come right now and stand on any corner you like and see if adventure doesn’t come along and smack us on the nose!”

“It’s 9.20,” I said, “but I’ll come.”

So we got in Jim’s car that was out in front and we drove down along Bloor toward the city.

“There you are, Jimmie,” I said, waving at the familiar scene. “The only bright spots are the Italian fruit stores and, as you see, they are starting to carry the stuff indoors, preparatory to closing up. A few blonde ladies in lingerie shops standing looking sadly out their windows. Drug stores very busy selling cough remedies and soaps. Adventure, thank goodness, has been eliminated from Toronto the Good.”

“Name a corner,” said Jim, briefly.

“All right,” I said, “let’s just scramble it. Turn two blocks up, two blocks right, one block up and one block right, and where that will bring us out, I don’t know.”

“One corner is as good as another,” said Jim, turning up at a street I never saw before. We drove up two blocks, turned right and drove two blocks, then north another block and then right. Jim slowed down near the corner and parked. We got out. It was a typical west end corner. There were pleasant houses all around up and down the four streets at which we stood. Their lights burned dimly. Bridge lamps³ glowed softly in windows. Nobody moved. Not a living soul was to be seen. It was now twenty to 10 o’clock, and in all those pleasant, safe, comfortable homes there was not a sign or shadow of life. The Hydro lights glowed brightly.

“H’m,” I said, as we strolled to the corner and took up our stand.

“H’m is right,” said Jimmie. “Just look about you. Would you ever dream that in this quiet, peaceful neighborhood romances are being staged, tragedies and dramas being enacted? Can you hear screams, yells? Can you detect the odor of poisons, lethal gases, blood?”

“Jimmie,” I hushed him, “lower your voice!”

The calm was beautiful. For such a calm have we true Torontonians labored and voted and paid our taxes for a century.

“Know What You’re Up Against?”

We stood side by side. A car drove along the street. It turned carefully into a side drive. The gentleman driving it closed his garage doors. He stamped his feet carefully on the front walk to knock off any mud or snow that might be adhering to his feet. He coughed. He let himself into his house. All was quiet again.

“Well, well,” I said. “The great, wicked city!”

A boy on a bicycle rode past, singing softly to himself.

Two more cars drove carefully and pleasantly up the street.

“All I can hear,” I said, “is a faint radio, and if it isn’t Seth Parker⁴, it is one of his imitators.”

“Just wait,” said Jimmie, “this quiet is ominous, menacing.”

I smiled.

A car came slowly along to us. Two men were in it. As it came even with us, it braked and stopped.

The man at the wheel leaned out the window and said quietly:

“Are you the gents that were expecting us?”

My heart stopped beating.

“Yes,” said Jimmie.

“Hop in,” said the driver, reaching back and opening the rear door of the car. Jimmie took me by the elbow and shoved me into the car, ahead of him. He slid in beside me and slammed the door. The car started and the driver stepped on it. We lurched around the first corner and, gathering speed, raced southward.

“Easy,” I said nervously. “Not too fast.”

The second man in the car turned and rested his arm on the back of the front seat.

“We got to make it snappy,” he said.

“The Big Boy don’t like waiting around on a job like this.”

“No, of course,” said Jim, squeezing my knee.

“Was you waiting long?” asked the man facing us. I could feel him inspecting us with gleaming eyes as we flashed rapidly past lamp after lamp.

“No,” said Jim. “We hadn’t waited five minutes.”

“We wasn’t sure of the streets up in this swell neighborhood,” said the man. “Say, you gents don’t look much like what we expected to meet.”

“Is that so?” said Jim.

“No, we was looking for something…. well… a little more… how do you say it?”

“Sophisticated?” suggested Jim.

“Sure, that’s it,” said the man beside the driver. We were going faster than ever. We were headed out Queen St.

“Oh, I guess you can’t tell by the looks of a man what is inside of him,” said Jim.

“You sure can’t,” said he. “But still, I guess you gents know what you’re up against? Huh? You know what end of a gun is loaded. Ha, ha!”

“Ha, ha,” said Jimmie.

“Ha, ha,” said I. Jimmie squeezed my knee again.

Little Guys are the Big Shots

“The Big Guy.” continued the man in front, “he don’t want to deal with no pikers. He says to me, if these two guys can’t come across, then we’re going to deal with somebody acrost the line. See? Somebody that knows this sort of business. Regular guys, you understand?”

“Oh, sure,” said Jimmie.

“Have you had much experience along these lines?” asked the man in front, respectfully.

“Enough, I think,” said Jim, dryly.

“What I mean to say,” said he, “the thing you are going to do to-night isn’t done every day, is it? Not in Toronto.”

“No,” said Jim. “I guess it will give the old town quite a jolt.”

“It sure will,” said the man in front.

“You’ll have to keep mum,” warned Jimmie.

“I don’t want anybody going around shooting off his mouth, you understand.”

“No, sir: no, sir,” said the man in front. “The Big Boy has got me trained. I only wish I was big enough in your racket to swing a thing like this myself.”

“Why don’t you try some time?” asked Jimmie.

“Me?” cried the man. “Huh, I haven’t got the nerve. If I was all hopped up, and could keep myself hopped up for a year, I might take one swipe at it. But I know my limits, I leave jobs like this to the sharp shooters.”

“Excuse me,” I broke in.

But Jimmie grabbed my knee so sharply that all I could do was lean back in the seat and bite my tongue.

“Uh?” said the man in front. “What’s the little guy got to do?”

“Oh,” said Jimmie, “he’s the real performer to-night.”

But

“Excuse ME,” cried the man in front, jovially. “I beg your pardon, mister. I ought to of knew. All my life, I’ve noticed that it is the little guys that is the big shots. Leave it to a little guy to step in, do the trick and make a slick getaway.”

“I don’t shoot,” I stated, despite Jim’s sudden grab at the soft part of my leg above the knee.

“Haw, haw,” laughed the man in front, and even the driver laughed, though he should have been attending to his driving at the speed we were going. We were lacing in amongst some dirty old downtown back streets.

“Haw, haw, haw,” laughed the man in front. “Oh, no. You don’t shoot. Not if the Big Boy has picked you for this job. Listen, he never picked a muff in his life he’s worked with gents in your line of business all over North America.”

“In Chicago?” I asked.

“Yes, in Chicago,” said the man in front. “And that’s a tough town to work in, I’m telling you.”

“Ohhhhhh,” I said.

“I beg pardon?” asked the man.

“My friend was just yawning,” said Jimmie.

A Fit Place For a Murder

The car had slowed. We were picking our way down a narrow, half-lighted street. The back of warehouses, tall blind brick walls were massed about and above us, as the car jolted carefully in the narrow, ill-paved lane.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’re driving around to the back,” said the man in front. “The front doors are padlocked and under police guard. The Big Boy has the key to the back.”

“Police?” I asked.

“Sure,” said he. “The house is empty. isn’t it?”

“Ohhhhhhhh,” I said again.

“Uh?” said the man in front.

“My friend always gets sleepy when he he’s excited,” explained Jimmie.

“He ought to be excited,” said the man in front. The car had stopped in the shadowiest spot in all the long, narrow lane, and he was out and had opened the car door.

“Follow me,” he said quietly. “And hey, Andy, turn off them lights and wait ready to drive these gents wherever they say when the job’s over.”

He stepped up and unlocked the small door in the tall, ghostly brick wall.

“Jimmie,” I hissed, stepping tight against him, “this is gone far enough!”

“You’re going through with it,” replied Jim, in a murmur. “Get in there.”

The man was holding the door open for us, and we saw a narrow, dusty, unused corridor, dimly lighted by a dirty bulb hanging from the ceiling.

“Jim,” I said, “if I go another step, you’ll carry me!”

“Very well, I’ll carry you,” hissed Jim.

“Step along, gents,” said the man, whom I now saw to be a short, swarthy individual of foreign appearance.

Jim shoved me in, and the man slammed the door behind us.

“Watch your step,” said he.

He led us along the corridor, through dark chambers filled with the smell of dust and mould. It was a queer, unearthly place. A fit place for a murder.

We came out in a vast, empty chamber, filled with darkness. At a rough table on a platform sat a small man with a flashlight burning beside him.

“The Big Boy,” whispered our guide.

Jim took my arm and we walked across the creaking board floor, amidst that vast, echoing chamber, with its gaunt shadows cast by the tiny beam of the flashlight.

“Ah,” cried the Big Boy, leaping up. He was a tiny, weazened little foreigner, with his coat collar turned up and a wicked light in his close-set eyes. “So here you are!”

“Yes,” said Jimmie. “This is the man you want to deal with.”

The Big Boy reached excitedly and shook my hand.

“Are you prepared to do the job?” he cried.

“No,” I shouted, my voice echoing in the empty, forbidding and ghostly emptiness. “No, I am not!”

“You what!” gasped the Big Boy.

“My friend,” thrust in Jimmie, standing forward, “like all geniuses, is a little mad. That is his idea of a joke. Of course, he will do the job. Tell him what it is.”

“We’re Two Gunmen, See?”

“Listen,” said the Big Boy, swelling himself up, and staring hypnotically at me. “I picked you on your record. I heard about you all over America. I know what you can do. You’re the man I want.”

“No, I’m not,” I cried loudly. “You’ve got me wrong. I’m a law-abiding citizen of the city of Toronto. My forebears were archdeacons. Their portraits hang in Trinity College. I’m no gunman! Never!”

“Ha, ha,” laughed the Big Boy, like a rooster crowing. “That’s what I want exactly. A law-abiding citizen. The guy that runs this theatre for me has got to be law-abiding, or it would never get by.”

“Theatre?” I exclaimed.

“Sure, theatre,” said the Big Boy, puzzled. “What did you think it was, a bank?”

I gazed around at the fearful shadows.

“Aw, now, Mr. Perkins,” cried the Big Boy, “I know she looks terrible. But she’s been empty now three years. That’s why I got the lease so cheap, see?”

“Theatre?” I repeated. And Jimmie was standing closer to me.

“Sure,” said the Big Boy. “I want you should run this theatre for me. I got a swell lease. I pay you what you asked in your letter. I give you free hand. All I want is you should run it, and you know your way around Toronto.”

“I didn’t write you any letter,” I said. By now, I was getting a grip on myself.

“Listen,” said the Big Boy, shrinking inside his overcoat, “aren’t you Mr. Perkins? Hey, Sam, Andy! Come here. Who’s this you brought in here?”

The man who had sat in front of the car walked forward out of the shadows and stared at us.

“They was at the corner where he said to pick him up,” said the man.

“What is this?” yelled the Big Boy, shrilly. “A hold-up?”

“What was you doing at that corner? And getting in our car?” demanded the man called Sam, standing dangerously.

“Just a second,” hissed Jimmie. “We’re two gunmen, see? And we were waiting on that corner for an appointment with a job we have to do to-night. See?”

“Gunmen,” whispered the Big Boy and Sam, backing away.

“Yes,” said Jim. “And when this bird pulled up in a car we thought he was our party.”

“Oh, gosh,” breathed Sam. “Gunmen! In my car!”

“Excuse it,” said the Big Boy, hurriedly. “My boys will take you back. They’ll take you anywhere you say, gentlemen. Right away.”

“No, thanks,” said Jim. “We’ll have nobody driving us, thanks. Show us out.”

“Yes, sir; yes, sir,” said Sam, wobbling for the narrow corridor.

He let us out. Jim and I walked hastily down the lane. We got out to King St. and got in a King car headed west.

“Ah,” breathed Jimmie triumphantly. “So what!”

“Well,” I laughed, “so there was your adventure. A theatre lease!”

“Pardon me,” cried Jim. “We thought they were murderers, and they think we are gunmen. Isn’t that adventure enough for all of us?”

“But it is only thinking,” I exclaimed. “This is Toronto!”

“I know,” countered Jimmie. “But adventure and romance is mostly in our minds anyway.”

“I insist,” I said, “that adventure in Toronto is mostly misunderstanding.”

And it was after 11 o’clock when we got home.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. Gordon Sinclair was a popular international reporter for the Toronto Star at the time. Before World War 2, international reporting was still considered romantic and mysterious, especially outside of Europe and North America. ↩︎
2. Jesse Ketchum was a political figure in Upper Canada in the early 19th century. ↩︎
3. A bridge lamp is a floor lamp that has an adjustable arm and is used to light up the floor or a small side table. ↩︎
4. Phillips Lord was an American radio program writer, creator, producer and narrator. He became a national radio personality after creating the character “Seth Parker”, a clergyman and backwoods philosopher, telling stories of rural New England life featuring ordinary folks singing hymns and telling jokes and stories. ↩︎