By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 25, 1933.
“Sometimes,” said Jimmie Frise, “I think you are a Communist.”
“Far from it,” I said. “I’m a Naturalist. It’s a new party, and I’m the president of it and all the members.”
“What does it stand for?” asked Jim.
“Well, we want everything divided up in such a way that nobody can get too much, and everybody can have some. But we don’t want any changes in men.”
“How do you mean no changes in men?”
“All the other reform parties,” I said, “want everything changed, but most of all they want to change men. The Communists want all mankind to destroy their private ambitions so that there is no ambition but the State’s. The Socialists want all men to be born with the idea that nothing matters but the welfare of society. The less advanced reformers offer us all kinds of good things, but also want men to be good, too. They want men to be like geometrical designs. Workers, spiritual, pious, modernized, mechanized, without any bad habits. Just doomed to a strictly sanitary, safe, sensible, eight-hour day, organized, tame, the kind of life you can see in the advertisements in a United States children’s magazine.”
“I hope you are not scoffing at modern life,” said Jimmie.
“Mercy, no!” I said. “But us Naturalists want the changes without changing men. We have the funny idea that you can’t change men anyway. Reorganize business and industry so as to put a sane limit on the wolfish-impulse of some of us, just the way you would put a collar and leash on the larger and lively dogs. But don’t muzzle all the pooches in all creation.”
“That’s a good line,” said Jim. “Why don’t you go into politics?”
“I will consult the party,” I said. “But we Naturalists don’t believe in politics. We want all men to be Grits and Tories and all kinds of radicals, and have a good time. We want them to be natural. The Naturalist party plans to give the world all the benefits the Tories, Grits and Communists offer, without demanding any change in themselves whatsoever. They can still be greedy and selfish, mean and lousy, happy and lazy, hard-working and ambitious, dull and stupid, and we’ll guarantee that no harm can come to them. We assert the right of all men to be natural. To establish that right, we are going to topple over all tyrants who prevent men from eating, because eating is the most natural thing on earth.”
Reforming the Other Fellow
“Excuse me,” said Jim, “but how will you handle the sincere reformers?”
“It is natural for some men,” I said, “to want to reform their fellow-men.”
“Correct,” said Jim.
“And it is natural for other men to want to be reformed.”
“Exactly,” said Jim.
“So we’ll let them amuse each other,” I said. “What we Naturalists deny is the right of anybody to reform us if we don’t want to be reformed.”
“How about murderers?” asked Jim. “They naturally want to murder.”
“And the rest of us naturally want to hang them, so that’s all right.”
“I see,” said Jim.
“We can get a lot of improvements,” I said, “without trying to improve men. That’s where we are all stuck to-day. All our schemes fall down because we won’t let nature alone. It’s like cows. Over a couple of centuries, we have made a lot of improvement in cows. We are getting a lot of milk from them and a lot more beef. But you start trying to tinker with the intelligence of cows and see where you get.”
Jim and I were sitting, during this brilliant conversation, on the window sill of a store over on Parliament St. This is a habit Jim and I have brought to the big city with us from the small village where we were born and raised.1 Every village has large numbers of wide window sills on its stores for the public to sit on. But in the whole of Toronto, Jimmie and I have found only two. And when we are feeling a little depressed, we always go and sit on one or the other of these store window sills. If you know of any others, we would be glad to add them to our list of good sitting places.
As we reached this point in our conversation, a well-dressed man walked rapidly past us, down Parliament St. He had a derby hat and a gray coat and gloves. He walked with a purposeful stride.
“How far would you get,” asked Jim, quietly, “with that guy with all this Naturalist stuff?”
“He’s perfectly happy,” I said. “Leave him alone.”
“What would you say he was?” asked Jim, as the tall, tidy figure swung down the street from us, full of vim, heading resolutely for some place, with purpose written all over him.
“I’d say he was a young executive in a trust company,” I suggested.
“Or an insurance man,” said Jim. “Let’s follow him and see where he goes.”
We rose off the window sill and started down Parliament St. after the stranger.
“This is interesting,” I exclaimed, as we lengthened our pace to keep him in sight. “Following a busy man and seeing what impels him on his way.”
Down Parliament to Queen we marched, and he turned along Queen, on the north side, looking neither to the right nor the left, but striding with the air of a man walking for his health’s sake, and with a definite program in his mind.
Past homely little stores, factories, warehouse, and we came to Sherbourne, which he crossed, still on the north side. A few doors along was a cigar store with a great variety of English tobacco in the window, and our man halted abruptly, and stood so long looking in the window that Jim and I had to walk back and forward the distance between two hydro poles before he suddenly turned and marched westward again on Queen, looking neither to the right nor the left.
Suddenly he veered and crossed the road. We followed. He stopped in front of a shoe repair shop in which there was only a few laces, a couple of new knives with curled blades and some spools of heavy linen for sewing shoes.
For three whole minutes he stood looking at these objects.
On again he marched, past Church St., past a great big store full of bicycles and motorcycles and wrenches and headlamps, where I would love to have dallied a moment, but right past Victoria he strode, and then crossed at Yonge to the north side and into a store he disappeared.
“What the dickens is he?” I asked.
Jim led me on and we saw him vanish down the basement stairs of the store. It was no trick to follow him down there, because he slowly wandered up one aisle and down the other, his gloved hands behind him, looking with intense interest at compartments full of screws and nails, hooks for screen doors, files, hinges. Plates, breadboards, trowels for picking up slices of pie. Paper lamp shades. Rolls of wire.
With slow, intense interest, he walked completely around the basement, looking at every single bin, and stopping to stare at many of them.
Then with resolution written all over him, he made for the stairs, and threaded his way rapidly out of that store and entered another nearby.
“This has got me beat,” I said.
But Jimmie just grinned and led me after him.
Straight through this second store, past the shirts, the sweaters, the hats, through the motor accessories and the sporting goods, out past the cameras and the perfumes, he strode, and suddenly he stopped at the soap. The soap is a whole section. Slowly, pace by pace, hands clasped behind him, he walked, head forward, carefully studying every foot of soap. He paused at some scented and warped cakes. He paused again at a pile of bars of castile like a log chimney. He went right around. the section, taking all of five minutes to examine each item.
“He’s off!” hissed Jim.
The End of the Chase
And away we galloped, in his wake, as he made his way rapidly and resolutely toward the doors.
And now he marched into still another store. Past the tobacco, past the stationery and the diaries, past the aisle circles where the pretty girls sell stockings and beads, right past the love birds, clean through the bulbs of hyacinth and tulip, down past the umbrellas and walking sticks, through the books. with never a glance to the glittering piles of literature, he advanced, and stopped in front of the elevators.
We caught up with him. We stopped for the elevator too.
It arrived. We got in. We rose to the second floor.
Out he stopped, smartly. We followed.
Past towels and tablecloths, linens and sheets he sped, and suddenly halted in the midst of the blankets. With the same head-thrust-forward air of fascination, he walked slowly amidst the blankets, looking long at the soft white ones, halting reverently before the colored and striped ones, spending so long amidst the motor rugs that a clerk came forward. But he merely shook his head.
Then, like a war horse, up came his head and he marched for the down escalator which we took behind him. Past the shirts and the underwear he made for the door. We followed him.
“Probably,” I said, “his wife was talking about getting some new blankets.”
“And soap,” said Jim.
“The chase will soon be over,” I said, “for he’ll likely duck into one of these skyscrapers.”
“And we’ll follow him,” said Jim. “I’ll bet he is an advertising man.”
“Or a broker,” I said.
“We’ll follow him right to his desk,” said Jim. “He’s got me excited.”
But on down Bay he led us, past the tall buildings one after another.
“Heading for the broker belt,” hissed Jim. He turned into a restaurant.
“Aw,” I said.
On his heels we followed.
As he came into the restaurant, there were half a dozen bright-looking young fellows gathered about the whiffle board.2
The whiffle board is a children’s game. which is played by shooting marbles up a sloping board and seeing what holes they drop into. The holes are numbered from ten to three hundred.
“Hello, boys,” cried our man gaily.
“Hello, George!” cried the gang.
The young executive took off his gloves and put them in his pocket.
He unbuttoned his overcoat. Tilted his derby back on his head.
And then, with a smile of pleasure all over his long, clever, happy face, he stepped up to the whiffleboard and joined the group around it.
Hurrying Nowhere
Jim and I went over and sat down and ordered coffee.
“So what?” said Jim.
“Hurrying nowhere,” I said.
“They look like a nice bunch of lads,” said Jim. “Let’s go up and join them and find out what that man does. I hate to quit now.”
“No,” I said. “I’d rather not know what he does now.”
“Why not?”
“Because he fits so perfectly into the Naturalist theory,” I said. “I bet you if you could follow every man for one day of his life, you would discover the most astonishing things. The tiny things he is interested in. The hours he spends in idleness, or what appears to be idleness to other eyes. The small childishness of our day, and how resolute and purposeful we are about it!”
“I can see it,” said Jim, tenderly. “Follow every man from the time he gets up until he goes to bed, and you don’t meet up much with his beliefs or politics. There isn’t much pattern to his day, although there may be a pattern to his life.”
“Just a natural man,” I said.
One of the young men at the whiffle board walked over toward us. He had left his hat hanging on the coat hook beside our table. As he reached up for it he smiled at us and called me by name, although I did not recognize him.
“Oh,” I said quietly, at this fortunate circumstance, “we were wondering about that man there with the gray coat. The one who came in just a couple of minutes ago.”
“Yes? said the young man.
“Er – what business is he in?” I asked.
“Well, as a matter of fact, he isn’t in any business,” said the young man, leaning down confidentially. “He has been out of work for over a year.”
“Oh, dear.”
“In fact, he is nearly crazy over it,” went on the young man.
“Mm-mm,” said Jim and I.
The young chap nodded and left us. “How about enlisting him in the Naturalist party?” asked Jim.
“All the time we were following him,” I said aimlessly.
“Anyway, how about letting me join your party?” said Jimmie.
“Nope,” I said sadly, “it’s a one-man party.”
Which shows you that there is a lot of thinking going on in various places, but not much action.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of their earlier stories, and it feels like they were still trying to work out the formula.
- This makes the point that this was an earlier story. Greg would not imply that he was from a small town later. This was a fabrication too. ↩︎
- Whiffle Boards were the precursors to the pinball machine. This seems to be early in their development as the linked article indicates that they were only invented 2 years previously in 1931. ↩︎
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