By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 8, 1948.
Jim and Greg learn that guddling is not so much a sport as it is a hazard
“Let’s guddle them!” suggested Jimmie Frise suddenly.
“Guddle?” I questioned.
“Tickle,” explained Jimmie. “It’s the Scotch word for tickling trout. Did you never hear of tickling trout?”
“I’ve heard of it,” I admitted. “But I don’t believe everything I hear.”
We were standing on a wooden bridge, having met after a fruitless morning. We had been up at dawn, and had fished nearly a mile of a very beautiful trout stream without having connected with a single keepable fish. Being strictly fly fishermen, we had started together, wading the stream side by side. But after an hour had passed without any luck, we had separated; Jimmie turning downstream until he was out of sight. Whereupon, he rolled over a log on the river bank and got himself a good big fishworm. And I, being sure he was unable to see me, managed to catch a very small chub, which I sliced up with my knife, using its tail as bait. By such niceties – I mean, the care we take not to see each other or to be seen – are the fine old traditions of fly fishing maintained.
Jim drifted his gob of worm down under all the logs and into all the quiet pools. I dribbled my chub tail through all the riffles and rapids, and let it dangle far into the eddies and backwaters at the foot. But something was wrong. The trout were not in the mood. Nary a fish did we get.
“Guddling trout,” declared Jimmie, “is said to be no end of fun. And you get the biggest ones that way.”
I shifted my fly rod from one hand to the other, holding it so Jim could see it. Of course, all traces of chub tail had been removed. A march Brown decorated the end of my leader.
“Guddling,” I said, with dignity, “is hardly a thing that fly fishermen could stoop to.”
“Aw, you misunderstand me,” said Jim, easily. “Here we are, with nothing to do. The trout aren’t rising to the fly. Now, what would ordinary trout fishermen do in this case? Why, they would start bait fishing. They’d go and roll over a log and find a worm. Or they’d catch a chub and slice it up for bait.”
“But not us,” I stated firmly.
“I wasn’t suggesting that we guddle trout,” pursued Jim, “merely to capture some trout. I thought we could try out something we’ve often read about in the old fishing books.”
“Izaak Walton mentions it,” I admitted, “in ‘The Compleat Angler1.”‘
“Yes, and I’ve talked to Scotchmen,” assured Jim, “who have often done it back home in Scotland.”
“I doubt if you could do it here in Canada.” I suggested. “Conditions are different.”
“Not in the least,” cried Jim. “All you have to do, according to what I’ve heard, is find a place in the stream with a low bank where the water has cut under the bank, making a hole. That’s where the trout hide. That’s where the big ones go when they aren’t out feeding in the fast water. A trout has to have some repose. You don’t suppose a trout is going to spend 24 hours a day fighting the current out there in the fast water…”
“Then what do you do?” I asked.
“It’s really a poacher’s trick,” confessed Jim. “You have to be a poacher at heart to be a successful guddler.”
“If we got any,” I submitted, “we could throw them back. We’re not poachers. It would be just for the experience we’d do it. If we happened to get a big trout, even a two-pounder, we’d throw it back.”
“Certainly,” agreed Jim. “Well, as I was saying, you have to be as skilful as a poacher. You have to approach the low bank very quietly and cautiously, so as not to shake the bank with your footfall. Then you lie down on the bank, with your arm bared to the shoulder. You cautiously slide your hand down into the water, and in under the bank. If there is a hole, you explore it, barely moving your hand, as you feel for the smooth, cold sides of a trout.”
“At the sight of your hand,” I scoffed. “a trout would be a mile away.”
“No, it’s dark in those holes under the bank,” declared Jim. “According to what I’ve heard and read about guddling, the trout might move away from your hand, when it feels you touch it. In fact, that’s how you know a trout is in there, but THAT is where the guddling or tickling process begins. The minute you touch something that moves, you start your fingers moving delicately, as you grope around. And when you touch the trout, you start gently and delicately tickling its stomach. It stays perfectly still! It LIKES it! You continue tickling slowly along until your hand reaches its neck. Then you GRAB!”
Jimmie was demonstrating the system as he spoke, delicately waving his fingers in the air.
“Ugh!” I shuddered. “Suppose you guddled an eel! Suppose it was a mudcat you grabbed by the neck?”
“In a trout stream, like this,” said Jim glancing affectionately about at the rippling water, “it wouldn’t be eels or mudcats. It would be a trout. There’s nothing but trout in such beautiful water as this, except a few little chub.”
“Jim,” I said, “I’d be willing to watch you guddle. But I don’t quite see myself sticking my bare arm into the ice cold water up to the shoulder and risking my hand down in any dark unseen hole under the bank.”
“Did you see any trout this morning?” asked Jim, leaning his fly rod against the bridge railing.
“Oh, there’s plenty of trout here,” I assured him. “I saw schools of them darting madly up and down stream, as I waded. Some of them were beauties. But they wouldn’t touch a thing I offered them. Flies, that is.”
“In a trout stream, like this.” said Jim glancing affectionately about at the rippling water, “it wouldn’t be eels or mudcats. It would be a trout. There’s nothing but trout in such beautiful water as this, except a few little chub.”
“Jim,” I said, “I’d be willing to watch you guddle. But I don’t quite see myself sticking my bare arm into the lee cold water up to the shoulder and risking my hand down in any dark unseen hole under the bank.”
“Did you see any trout this morning?” asked Jim, leaning his fly rod against the bridge railing.
“Oh, there’s plenty of trout here.” I assured him. “I saw schools of them darting madly up and down stream, as I waded. Some of them were beauties. But they wouldn’t touch a thing I offered-them. Flies, that is.”
“Did you spot any really good big ones?” pressed Jim.
“I saw a real dandy, maybe a 15-incher,” I admitted grudgingly. “It was up at that pool where the wire fence crosses the stream.”
“Aha!” cried Jim. “The very place! I didn’t see any big ones this morning. I saw plenty of nice ones. But no lunkers. What do you say we go up to that fence pool?”
So we picked up our rods and went out to the pasture fields to save time. Rather than wade up, or push our way through the cedars and alders that border the stream, we went over the fields about one-third of a mile until we came to the wire fence which leads down though the woods and crosses the brook to keep the cattle from straying.
We parked our rods in the cedars and proceeded, very cautiously, through the thick underbrush, until we came to the pool. Up stream from the fence, the little river roared and rattled over a rapids created by boulders and gravel and old logs and roots that has accumulated over the years. Just before the fence crossed, the rapids gushed out into a long eddy. And this side of the fence, the eddy slowed into a beautiful narrow pool, three or four feet deep, and quiet and shadowy: a paradise for resting trout.
“Move like a cat!” whispered Jim, as we crouched in the brushwood.
I nodded. There is something that brings a lump into the throat of a fly fisherman in the sight of such a pool that lay before us. Though there were no leaves yet on the trees, there were enough cedars and a pine or two to shade the pool at all times of the day. The water, smooth and sparkling from its passage over the rapids up above, coiled crystal clear through the sombre pool.
It was secret, mysterious, curiously wild.
“Where did you see the big fellow?” murmured Jim.
“It came from downstream, there,” I pointed, “and he was poised in the middle of the pool. When he saw me, he darted upstream a little way and then turned in toward the bank.”
“Which bank?” hissed Jim.
“This one,” I whispered. “That’s the last I saw of him.”
“Easy now,” warned Jim. “We’ll stand up slowly, and take a look. If he’s visible…”
From our crouched position in the brush, we cautiously seated ourselves. Jim suddenly squatted, dragging me down with him.
“He’s there!” quivered Jim. “He’s two pounds, if he’s an ounce! My gosh! And he saw me…!”
“Aw!” I consoled.
“But he darted this way!” gloated Jim low, starting to remove his windbreaker. “Easy!”
He rolled up his shirt sleeve, right arm.
“Jim,” I warned, “do be careful, fumbling around…”
“Tempting the unknown!” whispered Jim. “The famous Henry Van Dyke2, remember what he said? ‘Nothing so attracts human nature as tempting the Unknown with a fishing line!'”
“Yeah, with a fishing line,” I muttered. But not your HAND!”
Jim had got his sleeve rolled as high on his biceps as it would go.
“Now!” he whuffed.
Crouching low, he began crawling on hands and knees toward the boggy bank. Six feet from its edge, he lay flat on his stomach and began inching himself forward like a commando fighter, barely moving. Three feet from the edge, he lowered his head until he was flattened completely. His right arm began to extend. His hand reached the grassy margin and disappeared into it. Slowly, he wormed forward and I saw his arm start to vanish over and down.
I could see he was now so completely advanced to the edge that his shoulder was over the bend and his whole arm must be immersed.
Suddenly, he turned his face toward me and it was lighted with an unholy glee. His mouth was open and his eyes were starting from their sockets.
“Easy!” I warned.
Jim’s eyes rolled as he felt cautiously at something unseen, deep in that shadowy depth. His body tensed.
I saw him suddenly convulse as he made a vicious grab.
“Watch out!” he yelled, heaving.
Then he really DID yell.
For, instead of pitching a two pound trout out onto the bank, he was grabbed and held by some implacable and unseen force. He struggled furiously, he writhed and whipped around on the bank, digging his knees in, yelling and thrashing.
His arm, well over the elbow in the water, was gripped and held. I rushed forward, seizing an old dead stick. But in his struggles, Jim had muddied the water of the pool, and the current was spreading the silt in clouds. I could see nothing but Jim’s white arm disappearing in the clouds.
“Jim! Jim!” I yelled. “What is it?”
“I don’t know!” gasped Jim, holding his arm still, while perspiration burst in beads on his face.
“Does it hurt?” I begged.
“Like fury,” choked Jim, biting his lip.
“Maybe a snapping turtle?” I cried, poising my stick. “Maybe a giant snapping turtle? Is it chewing?”
“No, it’s just got me…” collapsed Jim.
“Let the mud settle,” I gritted. “Keep still. I’ll get you out of this.”
I crouched on the bank, watching over the side, my club at the ready.
The mud and silt, wafted by the current, thinned, cleared. I had a swift vision of Jim’s hand. Something dark and terrible had hold of it, straight across.
The silt wafted thinner. I caught sight of what seemed be old rusty chain. It cleared more. Like glimpsing the moon through flying clouds, I saw Jim’s hand gripped by a dirty old muskrat trap.
“Look!” I commanded, heavily.
Jim looked. We reached down and pried the trap loose. His hand was red, but not skinned.
“Some poacher,” I snarled indignantly, “abandoned that old trap there…!”
Jim was nursing and rubbing his hand.
“Fly fishermen,” he growled, “have no business…”
“Guddling,” I concluded.
Editor’s Notes:
- The Compleat Angler is a book by Izaak Walton, first published in 1653. It is a celebration, in prose and verse, of the art and spirit of fishing. ↩︎
- Henry van Dyke was a professor of English literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923. ↩︎
After the sinking of the Titanic, some people noticed the similarity to the book The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility, written in 1898. There was demand for a reprinting in 1912, and the Toronto Star published some of it, which Jimmie illustrated.
Jimmie made a series of comics depicting the townsfolk of Birsdeye Center taking the Noazark to London for the Coronation of King George VI.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 4, 1935.
“Don’t,” said Jimmis Frise, “let us make the same mistake we made last year.”
“We made so many?” I inquired.
“I mean about arriving up in Algoma in such rotten condition. We spent half our fishing trip trying to get into condition to fish. Let’s this year get into good shape before we go, so we can enjoy the full week,”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “Holidays are so few and far between for us city people, we ought to go into training before entering the wilds. I remember that third day. The day we waded up the Agawa. I thought I was going to die about four o’clock.”
“We were in awful shape,” said Jim. “We had no right to go into the bush in such a helpless condition. Actually, you had to be carried by the guide.”
“I was not,” I protested. “He just lifted me over a few fallen trees now and then.”
“Anyway, you lay down at last and told us to abandon you to your fate; you remember that?” said Jim.
“You were pretty far gone yourself,” I accused.
“Don’t let us argue,” suggested Jim. “We both admit we were in poor shape. This year, we take a couple of weeks before we go to harden ourselves.”
“Walking is all we need,” I said. “Let us make a pact to start walking every night after supper, either for a short walk or a long walk, until we leave for Algoma.”
“Agreed,” Jim said.
So for a week, we walked, rain or shine. These last few rainy nights, we took short walks, briskly around three or four blocks, near home. On fine nights, we drove in the car out to the suburbs, and strode along the earth roads past the radish farms and amidst the little patched-up cottages of the market gardeners.
And the effect was wonderful. Our legs hardened. We lost a little of the pud-wud1. Our lungs flowed easier.
“Walking is wonderful,” said Jim, as we got in the car to seek out a new neighborhood. “I wish we could write something that would inspire people to walk. Why, I feel ten years younger as the result of this past week.”
“What’s more,” I pointed out, “we are seeing something of our own city. These market garden districts we have been tramping through. I have driven through them scores of times and never saw them. You can’t see anything from a motor car. Walking is the pace to which our eyes and minds are naturally attuned.”
“We could make these walking exercises both instructive and healthful,” said Jim. “Where will we go to-night?”
“Let’s go up to Forest Hill Village and see the beautiful homes,” I suggested.
“I say we go down town,” disagreed Jim. “Down in some of the foreign sections. I haven’t been through them for years and years. I wonder if they still call it St. John’s Ward?2“
“By jove, there’s an idea,” I applauded. “When I was a young police reporter, I used to know every nook and cranny of St. John’s Ward. Back in the days of Inspector Geddes and his merry men. They were cleaning up ‘the Ward’, as we called it then. They were raiding and busting in doors and hauling in wagon loads of screaming and kicking foreigners at all hours of the day and night. Those were the gay old days. But they cleaned it up.”
Music in the Old Ward
“You wouldn’t recognize it now,” said Jim. “It is all ladies’ dress shops.”
“I remember, when I was at Varsity,” I said, “no student would think of taking a short cut down town or home through the Ward after dark. He’d be slugged.”
“It’s a choice residential suburb now,” said Jim. “There are already down-town apartments rising in it. Fashionable people will soon be having apartments in the Ward and homes in the country, out by Brampton or Oakville.”
“Let’s go down and walk around there,” I said. “We want a walk. Let make it informative. Let’s walk through the Ward.”
So we parked on Bay St. and went for a smart walk up through a Chinese quarter and past new modern factories and mills, and bright newly renovated apartments where thirty years ago was a slum. We went through sections filled with crowds of foreigners, with hundreds of children romping in the evening; but all was happy and cheerful, and the foreigners sat on their front steps as if it were under their vine and fig tree.
“Thirty years ago,” I pointed out, “these people would not have been so secure and happy.”
“Every other house was a joint of some kind or another,” agreed Jim, who, as a young artist, used to have to come into the Ward to draw diagrams showing an X where the body was found.
It grew dark, and still we walked, with limbs now springy and tireless. We passed from district to district, where all was crowded but all was clean and orderly.
“I could walk up Algoma’s tallest mountain to-night,” said Jim. “How long have we been walking?”
“Forty minutes,” I said. “Let’s go for one hour. I feel like a young horse. I could whinny.”
Down dark streets, and up streets we never knew were in Toronto we strode.
“Psst,” said Jim, laying hold of my arm. “Music. Dance music.”
A bright, gay and mellow music smote the air.
“Jim,” I cried, do you know what that instrument is?”
“I hear fiddles,” said Jim.
“And a chimbalom3,” I cried. “Hear that mellow music like a very soft piano? That’s a chimbalom. It is a Hungarian or Bulgarian musical instrument. Like a xylophone, only with wires. The player uses two little round-headed hammers and plays on the wires. It’s lovely.”
We stood in the dark little street, listening.
“That’s some music,”, admitted Jim.
“It’s a Hungarian or Russian dance. Like a Polonaise,” I breathed. “And can that boy play the chimbalom!”
We walked slowly until we were abreast of the old house from which the music came. Violins, a mandolin or two, a concertina and the chimbalom throbbed a wild, thrilling dance melody onto the air. Men were going into the house. Other men were resting on the porch, smoking. Past the window shades, shadows came and went.
“Sounds to me like a country dance,” said Jim, kicking his feet in that funny little itchy way the farmers do when the dance first starts.
“There’s the thing to put us in condition,” I said. “I wish I knew how to do square dances.”
“They’re easy,” said Jim. “You just join a set and do what the others do. You could catch onto a square dance in about one try. Get a girl for a partner who knows the dance, and she’ll signal you what to do.”
Jim by now was taking little steps this way and little steps that way, raising his feet in a curious jerky way at the end of each run.
Queen of the Dance
“Now, you take this music,” said Jim. “It sounds foreign of course, but you could do a dance to it as perfectly as you could to ‘Little Brown Jug.’ For example.”
And there in the quiet street, to the music from the house, Jim began skipping forward and skipping back, balancing all, wheeling and turning, with a little bow at the end of the forward steps and a little kick at the end of the backward steps.
“See?” he cried. “Isn’t that swell?”
Suddenly, he made a grab at me and started swinging me around.
“Wheeeee!” he yelled.
Two of the men on the dark porch where the cigarettes glowed, came down and watched us.
When the music stopped, Jim, breathing heavily, stood back and laughed.
“Some music,” he said to the strangers.
“Why you no come in?” asked one of the men. He was a big good-looking foreigner. He had a fine gray suit on.
“You come in dance?” he asked. “She free. You no pay. You dance good. You come be my friend?”
“How about it?” asked Jim.
“O.K. with me,” I agreed.
“You be my friend,” said the foreigner, leading us up the walk.
The big old parlor and dining room had been thrown into a single dancing chamber. The halls and walls were crowded with hearty-looking people. I don’t know what nationality they were, but they were large and blondish, with broad faces and bright glittering eyes. And their big white teeth gleamed at us with friendship, when the gentleman who brought us in introduced us.
They made way for us along the wall. On the far end of the dining room, a platform had been rigged up and a sort of throne made of a chair with a bright striped drape over it. On this throne sat a rather magnificent young woman. She wore a white party dress. Her bright brass-colored hair was tied up strangely with ribbons. She had great competent hands resting on her large lap, and her brilliant light gray eyes surveyed the crowd eagerly, above brightly flushed cheeks.
“Queen of the May, I suppose,” I murmured to Jim.
The musicians were grouped below the throne, and the chimbalom, half the size of a piano, was presided over by a fierce moustached gentleman with a wild shock of hair, who appeared to be about to blow up. He waved his two little padded drum sticks. He gave a preliminary flourish across the strings. The loveliest mellow notes rang out and melted together in the air. Into the middle of the room leaped everybody.
“Just get in circle,” said our host.
“I don’t dance,” I said, abashed.
Jim got into the circle.
The music rang out. The fiddles sang, the chimbalom gave its wild haunting melody. The concertina whanged. And the room became a sea of bobbing, whirling figures.
The dance was really very simple. You took three steps forward, three steps back, whirled on your own axis, three times, with the middle finger of your right hand touching the crown of your head. That little gesture, with the hand held over your head and the finger lightly touching your crown, gave a strange element of grace to a dance that was otherwise very childish.
Three forward, three back, they went, then three times spinning, with the hand aloft. Then, each grabbing a partner, either lady or gentleman, it didn’t matter, they whirled three times in a tight embrace.
“That’s easy,” I said to myself.
After two minutes of it, I decided to act. Jim was getting far more exercise than I. Those hills of Algoma would not daunt me. Neither would this simple country dance from somewhere far over the sea.
I watched my chance and leaped into the circle. There was a little cry and murmur of applause as I leaped in. Many of them gave me perspiring smiles. Old Jim was opposite me.
“I’ll show him up,” I muttered.
I was fresh. I was full of pep. The three steps forward I took were not the shuffling steps they were taking. I pranced like a young bull. The three steps back, I stamped with every step. When I whirled, I went four times around, and my right hand was flexed with infinite grace over my head.
When the time came to whirl a partner, I whirled Jimmie, and he was dizzy when I let him go.
Wilder grew the music. Gayer and more bullish and masculine grew my dancing. So this was dancing? So this gay, leaping and light-footed stamping, this whirling and swinging, was dancing!
When with a final whoosh the music ended, I was the centre of an enthusiastic crowd, who shook my hands and patted me on the back. And the lady on the throne threw me a bunch of flowers she had been holding.
“You great dancer,” said our host, as we rested against the wall. “You have what we call ‘It’ in my language.”
Jimmie was breathless and delighted, “Boy,” he said, “we’re coming down here every Tuesday night. And can you dance! Say, you’re a revelation. Why didn’t you show this side of you before? You’d be a sensation up in the country.”
“Oh,” I said off-handed, “it’s just a case of letting yourself go.”
Again the chimbalom sang out its sweet warning. Again we danced, and again. Three dances we did, and with each dance, fewer dancers took the floor. The dances grew wilder and faster. After the second, Jim dropped out and stood along the wall with his friend, our host, chatting.
The third dance, only eight people were left on the floor; all men, and I was one of them. If I may say so, I was one of them in a very special sense. In fact, they were all watching me, even while they danced. With excited eyes, they observed my foot work, the height of my jumps, the crash of my feet landing flatly, yet muscularly, on the floor.
And swollen up in white splendor sat the young lady on the throne, with eyes for no other dancer but me.
“If she’s the judge,” I said to myself, “I get the prize.”
But as this last dance came to an end, the chimbalom player shouted something, and with one accord, the entire room suddenly leaped forward, and like in a grand chorus, they started dancing a last, final and hectic ecstasy.
I saw Jim whirling nearer and nearer.
And then he drew alongside of me, and delivered me a short, vicious and savage kick in the shins.
With a howl I fell to the floor, grabbing my ankle.
But the dancers never stopped. In a kind of triumph, they went right on dancing ignoring me except to look down on me with laughter and white flashing teeth and flushed faces.
I crawled to the side lines.
I started to crawl out the door. Jim came and took me under the arms and helped me up. We hobbled out on the porch.
“Jimmie,” I gasped, “of all the filthy, unforgivable things!”
“Listen,” said Jim, quickly. “This was a kind of May Day celebration. They call this the marriage dance. That girl on the throne is looking for husband. The best man gets her. The man that dances the best and the longest.”
“Jimmie!”
“When I heard that from our friend,” said Jim, “I just waded in and disqualified you. If you fall, you’re out.”
“Let’s,” I said, “get the heck out of here.”
“Shouldn’t we pay our respects to the company?” Jim asked.
“Let’s,” I said, “get the heck out of here!”
So with Jim holding my arm, we got the heck out of there.
Editor’s Notes:
- I’m guessing this means pudge or fat. ↩︎
- The Ward (formally St. John’s Ward) was a neighbourhood in central Toronto in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many new immigrants first settled in the neighbourhood. ↩︎
- The cimbalom is a type of chordophone composed of a large, trapezoidal box on legs with metal strings stretched across its top and a damping pedal underneath. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, May 2, 1931.
The new room for expectant fathers at the Private Patients’ Pavilion of the General hospital in Toronto is a smart little room containing three chairs and a prim settee, big enough for two to sit on. As if two expectant fathers would ever want to sit that close together!
The room has no pictures in it. It has only a mirror, in which the fathers may inspect their haggard faces. A few nice cheering pictures such as “Napoleon in Hades” or “Dante, the Smoke Inspector” would be a gracious thing to hang in this room.
Some six years ago1, The Star Weekly suggested to the General hospital that in planning its new pavilion it should include a cinder track and a small dressing room well supplied with running shorts, for the use of expectant fathers, so that during their hours of suspense they might consume the time humanely by running fiercely around and around the track. The General hospital has ignored the suggestion, and has given us instead a little stylish sitting room with a mirror and chairs so comfortable that the only thing the fathers can do is sit and listen to the hollow beating of their hearts.
The least they could do would be to provide private rooms, or at least little cubicles or alcoves, so that each father might be secluded alone with his fright and terror.
When you arrive at the hospital, breathless and scared, you are shown into this little club room by a kindly and reassuring Head. She has not much time for you, but she pats you on the back (nearly every man is about the right size to pat on the back when he is about to become a father!) and thrusts you into the room and tells you it won’t be long.
Thank your stars if the room is empty.
But if it is a club room, heaven help you. Man is a gregarious creature. He loves the company of his fellow man. Especially in time of trouble or danger, does he crave the companionship of other men, and braver men.
But strange, in this trouble, which seems the greatest trouble a man can meet, the sight of other men fills him with loathing and bitterness.
I have often been chased by a bull when I chanced to cross a corner of a field which held both my trout streams and his wives. And I am sure if I had had horns I would have chased the three forlorn looking objects out of the waiting room the morning I was recently ushered into it.
Sitting over by the window was a young man, a mere stripling, and it was sheer bumptiousness and conceit on his part to assume to be a father. I disliked him the moment I set eyes on him. He had a white, long face, and his lower lip looked as if it might tremble any minute. And he sat staring at nothing, and seemed to be listening.
In the double settee sat a tall, haggard man who looked as if he might have two or three children already, but it didn’t make any difference to him. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, and slowly, slowly, he rubbed his palms hard against his gaunt cheeks.
In the third chair lay back a stout little man, and he shaded his eyes with his hand. He was motionless. He did not move a lip or a finger tip. I had to stoop down and tuck in a shoe lace in order to see that his eyes were wide open and unblinking. If he had been asleep, I was about to do something to awaken him.
I sat down in the fourth chair and glared belligerently around at them. But they did not raise their eyes. For them, I was not in the room.
I cleared my throat as a warning to them in case any of them might dare to speak.
But they looked as if they would never speak again.
Out in the hall the feet of hurrying nurses passed and repassed. And at every footstep the young chap at the window half rose from his chair and raised terrified eyes to the door. But no nurses came in.
The tall, bony man rubbed his palms slowly and interminably up and down his cheeks. Apparently he had not shaved overnight, for presently I heard a faint and most irritating rasping sound.
The small man slumped down in his chair and did not even blink. I felt like demanding that he blink. I blinked several times for him, to relieve the strain.
The tiny voice of a baby wailed somewhere in the hall outside. And we all ceased breathing. I thought the young kid at the window might never breathe again.
He turned his tired face to look out the window and his lips moved as if he were speaking. Maybe he was promising God something.
I wondered how long the others had been sitting here. Then there came sharp footsteps approaching and into our midst walked a stout, sandy man very well dressed, with loud tie and loud handkerchief to match. He grinned around at us. None of us saw him.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said in a jolly voice, “don’t let it get on your nerves.”
None of us paid the slightest attention, except the young chap, who got up eagerly and said, “Have a chair, sir.”
The ruddy man sat down at once, clapped his hands like a commercial man sitting down in a Pullman smoker, all prepared to start the discussion.
“Ah,” said he. “Well, here we are again! Fifth time for me! Getting to be a habit. I would be at the office if it weren’t that I expect to be seeing my new one in half an hour or so. Ha, ha!”
The young chap stood for a moment looking down at this sturdy monster and then suddenly walked out of the room. I could see him passing and repassing the door as he marched the corridor.
The ruddy one stared around at the rest of us, with a look of pity on his face. He sighed heartily. Just to show he had the last word, he took out a cigarette and a morning paper and ignored us.
How glad we were! The lank man continued to rub his jaws, and the short man to lie back with shaded and unblinking eyes.
A smiling nurse appeared at the door. She crooked her finger at the tall, gaunt man. He nearly fell over as he leaped up, his mouth open, unable to ask the question.
“Girl,” I heard the nurse say with a gulp. So I knew that lonely big bony man wanted a girl. Or maybe his wife did.
Hardly had the door cleared before another nurse appeared with that look on her face, and she stooped over the small man shading his eyes. The nurse nodded. Her white cap was like a flame in the heavens. The little man rose tremblingly. His mouth. worked and he turned his face from us as he blindly followed the nurse out of the room.
Then the young kid appeared at the door. His white face was damp. He looked at me beseechingly, as if I knew the answer to his question. He hovered in the door. Why do some fellows want to be fathers at that age?
I winked at him, and he thanked me with his eyes for that wink. He put his hands together when he sat down, and squeezed his arms between his knees.
Then another nurse bounced in. Just bounced. Maybe she was the young kid’s sister, but she just leaped across to him, they met in mid-air, she seized his elbows and the two of them bounced out of the room without a sound or a word. I wish I knew if it was a boy or a girl. Not that it matters. But that young kid of a man deserved a boy. I mean, he would give some little boy a wonderful time. I wouldn’t doubt he had miniature hockey sticks and cricket pads and boxing gloves all ready in the rumble seat of his roadster waiting out on University Avenue. I don’t even know if he had a roadster. But he was that kind of a kid. Whatever came to him, he was waiting for it!
Now the ruddy man behind the morning paper was alone with me. He lowered the paper and looked at me. I rose and walked out towards the hall. I wanted no conversation.
In the hall I met my sister. A minute later I met a cousin of mine who is interne on this marvellous floor. He had just come from headquarters of the Stork. He held out his hand and announced that I was now a mother, for I had a daughter.
And as we marched like an army with banners up the corridor, the ruddy man was standing forlornly in the waiting room door.
His half hour was up. And now he was to do overtime.
Alone.
Editor’s Note: This is another story regarding the birth of Greg’s daughter Elizabeth, who was born on April 9, 1931. You can read about her coming home here. She was the last surviving child of Greg. She passed away recently, on December 29, 2025 at the age of ninety-four.
In the Spring, a married man’s fancy turns to thoughts of gardening
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jimmy Frise, April 23, 1938.
“Fifty-fifty,” said Jimmie Frise. “You help me with my garden and I help you with yours.”
“I don’t know,” I hesitated. “A garden is a curiously personal and intimate sort of thing. I doubt if there is much I could trust you to do in my garden.”
“Well,” said Jim, “there is plenty you could do for me in my garden. The leaves off that poplar have drifted in all the corners like snowdrifts. I’ve got a program in mind for shifting several of my flowering bushes to make room for annuals.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” I admitted. “But how would it be fifty-fifty if I have nothing for you to do and you have so much for me?”
“Aren’t you doing any rockery projects this spring?” asked Jim. “Aren’t you building any trellises or anything that I am pretty handy at?”
“No,” I stated, “I have my garden set. It’s just the way I like it. All am going to do is fork it and spade it a little, to let in the spring sunshine and the soft April rains. Loosen the mould around the tulips and iris. Shake a little life-giving air in around the waking roots of the delphiniums and perennial phlox.”
“You have a swell garden,” said Jim wistfully. “That is why I was asking you to give me a hand with mine. I envy you your garden. Your gardening sense.”
“Ah,” I said, “that’s different. You are appealing to me as a master.”
“I am appealing to your better nature, too,” pleaded Jim. “There are some men who seem to have a power. They seem to have life in their very hands. What they touch thrives.”
“Ah,” I said, gratefully.
“I feel,” said Jim, earnestly, “that if I could get you to come into my garden, to touch the soil and bend over the places in the earth where the little plants are sleeping now, their roots weak and thin, why, it would be like the Pied Piper, calling the flowers from the earth, to come and bloom.”
Mmmm,” I said, delighted.
“You come down to-night after supper,” said Jim, “and I’ll pay you back. I’ll come and do some forking and spading for you.”
“No, sir,” I assured him. “Nobody does any forking around my garden. You’d puncture all the bulbs and uproot all the perennials. I’ve had people help me before. No, sir, a garden is a one-man job. But…”
“But what?” inquired Jim eagerly.
“In view of the fact,” I submitted, “that you have been intelligent enough to recognize certain talents I have in relation to earth and sky and rain and flowers. I will be glad to come down this evening and give you a little of my time.”
“Great,” cried Jimmie. “Great. I can see my garden blooming already. All my garden needs is a visitation. From somebody that has the power.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” I informed him, mysteriously, as if I had at my beck and call all the forces of nature. It is a nice feeling to be looked up to; especially if you are a short man.
White-Collar Garden
So after supper I strolled down to Jim’s in the limpid April air and found him busy transporting tools, rakes, spades from the cellar up into the garden.
Jim’s garden is the average garden. It has various shrubs, such as lilac and spiraea spaced at normal intervals around the edge, with the usual dense clumps of iris, badly thinned and rapidly going back in quality and quantity; a few perennial phlox stick their tender shoots up, already looking for the blight that is sure to catch them; and scattered in between these mathematically spaced familiars are sundry odds and ends that Jim cannot remember whether they are the relics of forgotten perennials or maybe annuals that feebly seeded themselves last fall. One thing Jim is always sure of. And that is golden glow.
In the corners of the wire fence are great matted heaps of poplar leaves blown down in the fall from those handsome trees which developers of new home-sites always plant because they grow so quickly and lend a treey look to the property. And in due time these poplars have to come down, thus restoring the original treeless nature of the property, because they shed a thick and imperishable leaf, their great roots, like subterranean pythons, go seeking for moist drains and the corners of houses, where they devilishly heave and thrust. Ah, the poplar is not my idea of a tree, except for the sound of it on a drowsy summer’s day, or the shine of it in the glorious sunset of June, and maybe as a good place to look for deer along about November with a rifle cocked over the crook of the arm.
“Skoal,” cried Jimmie.
“Muzzle-toff,” I replied, which is a form of greeting.
“I’m just getting out the tools,” gasped Jimmie, exertionally.
“So I observe,” I admitted, feeling the need of a rustic chair or garden chair, none of which Jimmie had yet brought up from the cellar.
“Let’s look around first,” said Jim, taking my arm. “Let’s see what I’ve got.”
“You’ve got,” I said, surveying the garden, “the usual white-collar garden. A lot of conventional junk, like bushes that flower for a week and then relapse to sullen green growing. A few tulips and iris that, in a brief burst, will bloom much paler and smaller than the seed catalogue pictures, and then will settle down to a hearty summer of eating up all the nourishment in your borders.”
“I’ll put in some verbenas and things, for summer,” explained Jim.
“Yes, but these hardy perennials,” I explained, “will crowd and elbow, those timid strangers of a brief summer… your perennials are the real residents of this garden. Why not put in summer-looking perennials?”
“No,” said Jim; “no more permanent stuff. You see, this feeling about a garden only lasts with me for a couple of weeks about this time of year. In another month I won’t have the slightest interest. By June 20 I will come out after supper, turn on the hose, rest the nozzle on a brick and let her flow. I’ll be interested in something else by then. I don’t want anything in here I have to fret over all summer.”
“I thought you invited me down here,” I said stiffly, “in the capacity of a consultant. I can stand here and lay out for you a garden as nice as my own, with something in it to bloom every week of the year, from frost to frost.”
“Nnn, nnn,” said Jim, shaking his head. “You fit a garden to me; don’t try to fit me to a garden. I envy you your garden, of course. I think you do wonders. But I don’t want to be enslaved by any garden.”
“Who’s enslaved?” I demanded indignantly.
“No, no; don’t misunderstand me,” cried Jim anxiously, leading me slowly around by the arm towards the stack of shovels and rakes against the back kitchen wall. “Some men are holus bolus and others are just casual. All I want to do is satisfy this temporary feeling I’ve got to make a nice little garden. I thought, after we rake up and burn these leaves1, see, that maybe we might shift that spiraea over there into that bare corner where the dogs killed a dandy pink spiraea I had, and then, that lilac…”
“Never shift a lilac,” I disagreed.
“Let’s get the leaves piled up,” said Jim, letting go of my arm and seizing a toothed rake with one hand and a bamboo grass rake with the other. He proffered me the iron rake.
“That bamboo rake is no good for leaves,” I protested. “That’s for combing over a lawn.”
“I can scoop them up with this,” cried Jim, heading for the first corner. “Watch.”
But I got him to take a spade instead, and while he loosened up the matted heaps I raked them out on to a bare patch of the garden lawn near the back of the garden, where a fire would do the least harm.
Jim dug and pattered and ran in twice to answer the telephone, though both times somebody got there ahead of him. He also found things on the ground which several times required his close attention, so that he had to lean on his spade and stare intently. One of the neighbors was in his own garden and Jim had to get into two or three spirited little passages of conversation, though the neighbor, fortunately, was a real garden enthusiast and did not have any time to waste in gossip. In short, Jim used the spade as little as possible in the half hour it took me to rake the leaves ready for burning. But there is a profound satisfaction in seeing through people that sometimes repays a man for doing a little extra work.
“Hey,” cried Jim suddenly, “you’ve got it all done! My dear chap, I didn’t invite you down here to do all my work.”
“I left that one spot for you,” I replied, handing Jim the unexpected rake and pointing out a particularly mucky and matted pile of leaves tangled in under a section of the wire fence.
“Aw, we can skip that bit,” said Jim.
“I’ll light the fire,” I said, “while you hoke those out to one side until we get a good fire going that will burn them.”
So very unhappily Jim set to work raking out the pile I had carefully preserved for him, and he grunted and sighed a good deal, while I, having a small fire started, kept an eye on him; and he knew it.
The leaves caught and a nice flame danced.
“Ah,” said Jim, joyously letting the rake handle drop. “The odor of spring. Leaves burning.”
“You can have a nice garden, Jim,” I said. “All you need is the ambition. Now, on this rose arbor you want to buy a good Paul Scarlett or a Blaze.”
That arbor has a jinx on it,” said Jim. “I’ve tried three different ramblers on it, and they either don’t ramble at all or they do nothing but ramble and never bloom.”
“How much do you pay?” I inquired.
“Fifteen cents,” said Jim, “the regular price.”
“Hmmmf,” I laughed. “Can you imagine paying five dollars for a rose bush?”
“I certainly can’t,” said Jim.
Then you can’t imagine a garden,” I informed him, “Now, over here, along this fence, you have an ideal border of delphiniums, with tall yellow marigolds in front of them and red or henna verbenas, scrambling along the foreground.”
And we strolled along the border, still flattened and cracked by winter and spring and no sign of a fork in it, while behind us the leaf fire crackled cheerily and fragrant smoke wafted around.
“Hey,” said Jim, “the arbor!”
The leaf fire had taken hold of Jim’s pile of leaves next to mine and had actually caught on to the cedar sticks of the fragile rose arbor.
“Quick,” I said; the hose.”
He was already half way to the back door. In a jiffy he was returning, uncoiling the old black hose as he ran. I seized the nozzle.
“Quick, my lad.” I said, “turn it on.”
Jim dashed back to the kitchen door and down the cellar steps. I could hear him shouting. I could also hear the sharp crackle of the arbor and a steadily increasing roar as the fire took hold of it. The flames leaped bright and gay and the first of 40 little boys of the neighborhood vaulted the fence.
“See what Mr. Frise is yelling,” I commanded.
Everything Works for the Best
The little boy listened down the cellar steps.
“He says,” called the boy, “that he has to shift the storm windows. They’re stacked right where the tap is that turns on the hose.”
“Tell him to hurray,” I called.
“Hurry, Mr. Frise,” communicated the little boy, while bicycles began to arrive and neighbors began to come running.
The water came. I felt the hose stiffen and struggle. But none came out the nozzle. Jim leaped up the cellar stairs.
“Ach,” he cried, “the connections!”
All the water was running slobbily out of, one of those brass joints that are in the hoses of most people who dabble at gardening.
“Join her up.” I yelled.
Jim grabbed the hose at the joint and tried to screw it together. Water squirted in all directions and I got a couple of irresponsible jets out of the nozzle.
“Hurry,” I shouted. “Jam it in and hold it.”
“Pah,” protested Jim, water showering him.
He got the joint together and knelt, holding it grimly. A couple of violent and explosive squirts came out the nozzle and then it quit again.
“The other joint,” shouted Jim, running back towards the house where another joint had pushed open.
“Oh, well,” I called, “it’s too late now, anyway.”
Jim knelt by the other joint and looked. The arbor was now rising in slender and merry red and orange feathers and ribbons of flame. It was crackling with joy, as if, from the very beginning of time, this particular cedar wood had been predestined to burn rather than to spend its life supporting roses.
“Watch out,” shouted Jim, grabbing the hose in two hands. Again he vanished in a smother of irresponsible spray. Again the hose coughed violently a couple of times, threw a couple of wild squirts and then gurgled and quit.
“The other joint again,” I pointed out.
And indeed the first joint had again pushed itself open.
So Jim ran in and got a pail from the cellar and slowly filled it from the smoothly running but useless rubber hose, and by the time he got the pail full 19 little boys, all breathless off bicycles, had succeeded in batting and stamping and patting out the fire in the rose arbor which, except for a couple of blackened stakes, now lay coiling in embery ecstasy of destiny on the ground, as cedar wood does.
“Oh, well,” said Jim, “that arbor always did have a jinx on it. Maybe the next arbor will be lucky.”
“Anyway, wood ashes are very good for the soil,” I agreed. “And you can dig in some nice ashes here.”
“Now I come to think of it,” said Jim, surveying the ruins, “I don’t believe I’ll have an arbor there. That arbor always looked kind of useless. I think I’ll just plant another spiraea bush there. And maybe a couple of iris roots.”
“Everything works out for the best in most people’s gardens,” I suggested.
“Yes, sir,” said Jim, “a nice spiraea bush.”
“O.K., said, I, handing him the nozzle of the hose, which he proceeded to coil back up and put down cellar for the time being, there being no watering to do for some weeks yet.
Editor’s Notes: There was one strange thing with the printing of this story, that only someone very familiar with the stories would notice. Every story I’ve looked at always says “Illustrated by James Frise”, whereas this one says “Jimmy Frise”. Also, though typos are occasional in stories can happen, this one had a whole paragraph repeated. Perhaps there was an inexperienced typesetter this week? Or an inexperienced editor looking at the proofs?
Also, I haven’t brought up Canadian vs. American spelling before. I often see what I would consider American spelling these older stories (like “Arbor” over “Arbour”). It seems that while British spelling was common in the 19th century and earlier, the 20th century used more American spelling. I’m not sure when the switch commonly changed, but I do see that American spelling could occur up to the 1960s. For Greg in particular, he could have published a story in the 1960s with American spelling, but when it was collected into a book in the 1970s, Canadian spelling was substituted.
- Burning leaves became illegal in the 1960s. ↩︎
By Gregory Clark, April 25, 1953.
When the porter conducted me down to my reservation, seat 5 in the chair car, I glanced covertly around at the chairs adjacent. It was an eight-hour journey ahead of me, the whole long day. I looked forward to spending the trip snoozing, gazing out the window at the coming of spring, reading a little bit, snoozing some more. And everything could be spoiled if, in one of the seats beside me or across from me, some chatterbox of a casual acquaintance were to be my neighbor, who would gas and blather away, mile after mile, hour after hour.
What might be worse, of course, would be two middle-aged women with brand new hairdos, on their way to some convention, who, in strident society voices, would ruin the whole journey by tirelessly interrupting each other, debating their plans. It was with pleasure I noted, with my first cautious glance, that my immediate neighbors were complete strangers, already deeply immersed in their newspapers, and not at all the chatty type. The seat directly across from me, chair 6, was not yet occupied. I hoped for the best.
I got a couple of magazines and a good fishing book out of my bag and disposed the bag and my coat up in the rack. I shook out the morning paper, swung my chair firmly around to face out the window, and snuggled down for a pleasant and restful eight hours.
Just as the train started, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, the porter approaching with a bag. Behind him came an elderly man. I was lucky. It was a stranger. With a little shrug of content, I snuggled deeper in my seat. He was in chair 6.
I heard him thank the porter quietly. His voice was deep and kindly. A beautiful voice.
After watching out the window at the passing suburbs in the bright morning, I decided to swing my chair around casually and have a look at chair 6. He was just lighting a cigarette and had one of those 35-cent paper back novels laid ready on his knee.
His head was shaggy, gray and noble. His profile was intensely interesting, a strong curved nose, splendid rugged forehead, humorous mouth. His eyes glanced out from under bristly brows. And he was tanned, even at this time of year, a deep, grained brown. Not a Florida tan, I thought to myself. This is a man from the North. Perhaps he is some famous mining geologist from Yellowknife.
His tweed suit was rough and costly. My glance ran down to his boots: they were those soft, walnutty ankle boots, obviously handmade. By Lob, of London, I bet myself, or at least by Tricker, also of London1.
He picked up the cheap paper novel and opened it with a sigh of pleasant relaxation. The more I looked at this magnificent old man, the more excited I became. Across his chest he wore an old-fashioned watch chain from which dangled some curious charm. On his left hand, I saw the iron finger ring of the Engineers. There could be no doubt about it; across from me sat one of the great Canadians. I cleared my throat and rattled my newspaper. He was already lost in page one of his tawdry novel.
After a while, I swung around and tried to enjoy the passing fields and woods. But I felt easier when turned slightly, so as to be able to seize an opportunity, if it presented itself, of opening a conversation. He swung his chair to face out his window.
An hour went by, two hours. He never took his eyes off his book. And he read dreadfully slowly. What a way, I thought, for a man of his stamp to waste his time, reading trash. I dipped into my fishing book. I glanced through magazines. I coughed, sighed. When he goes to lunch in the dining car, I figured. I will follow, in the hope of getting to the same table. But he fell asleep at lunch time; and after a long wait, I went in without him. He came in, to another table, just as I was preparing to leave.
The miles, the hours clicked by. I never remember a more restless journey. Not once did the distinguished old man meet my glance or indicate the slightest awareness of me, He was literally sunk in his book.
We neared the journey’s end. I thought perhaps he would finish the book in time for five minutes, 10 minutes, so that I could at least discover who and what he was. But it was a race between him and the book and the train. It was a dead heat. We lumbered into the station. People were all putting on their coats, as was I.
He finished the book and tossed it aside, stood up with a bright, kindly gaze around. He smiled at me, I at him, as he put on his hat.
“Do you know,” he said, “I believe I have read that damned book before!”
And I never did find out who and what he was.
Editor’s Notes: This story appeared in Greg’s Choice (1961).
