"Greg and Jim"

“If anything makes me sick,” declared Jimmie Frise, “it’s spring house-cleaning.”

“The law ought to be,” I agreed, “that spring house-cleaning had to be done on and not before May first. Then it would coincide with the opening of the trout season.”

“Perfect, perfect,” cried Jim. “Then the men could all go trout fishing for three or four days and leave the women to their frenzy.”

“Personally,” I submitted, “I can’t see the use of spring cleaning. It makes no difference. They’re always sweeping and dusting and using the vacuum anyway. They never rest. I think it is a kind of a spring disease in women, like trout fishing or gardening with men.”

“I wouldn’t doubt that at all,” said Jim. “They go kind of nuts, don’t they? They get all flushed and a wild look in their eyes?”

“It’s a form of spring fever,” I assured Jim. “Nature gives us all these deep instincts, like falling in love in June and feeling very industrious and saving in September, in order to keep us alive and going. This spring cleaning business probably dates away back to the cave man. I bet the caves were in a mess by the time spring came.”

“Old gnawed bones, and ashes and everything,” agreed Jim.

“So all the females of the cave man species,” I followed, “were suddenly filled with a furious fever of energy, and they got to work and held a kind of bone flinging and ash chucking orgy, to clean out the cave. It’s the same thing as in a wren, when she returns to the bird house in our gardens. She goes mad flinging out all the old sticks and debris of last year’s nests. If nature sends a lady wren nutty, there is no reason why it shouldn’t work with women.”

“Yet, the pity of it is,” said Jim, “that this fever isn’t necessary any more. Women keep homes clean all the year around, every day, sometimes twice a day. All this rumpus is sheer nuisance.”

“You can’t reason with them,” I warned.

“Naturally,” said Jim. “You can’t reason with a man in fever delirium. That’s what it is, spring delirium.”

“Do you think,” I asked, “we could talk it over with them and get them to put off until May first?”

“So we could go fishing until it’s over?” mused Jim.

“It’s a perfect arrangement,” I submitted.

“Yeah,” muttered Jim, “but there’s one little difficulty. My family has got me in a corner. They have it all arranged that I am to clean up the attic.”

“Do that in advance,” I cried. “Get it over with.”

“I might do that,” admitted Jim.

“It isn’t the work that upsets men,” I explained. “It’s the way the whole house is thrown into a wreck for nearly a week. That’s what gets a man’s goat. I don’t mind a little work.”

Antipathy To a Broom

“Would you help me with my attic?” inquired Jim.

“Why not?” I retorted. “What’s the trick about your attic?”

“Well, in a way,” said Jim, “the attic is mine, you see? All my stuff is up there. Guns, fishing tackle, decoys, work bench. I’ve got that old work bench up there. I’ve been tinkering at making decoys and things and there’s a lot of shavings and sawdust.”

“Aaaaah,” I said.

“That’s. why the women insist on me cleaning it up,” explained Jim. “I promised I’d clean it up last year. And the year before, I agreed to, and I did clean it up in a kind of a way. But they say it is my job and this year they’re kind of ganged up on me.”

“Of course, what you could do,” I offered, “is let it go to the bitter end and then one day you’ll come home and find they’ve done it in desperation.”

“They can’t,” said Jim. “I’ve got the key. I keep the attic locked ever since the days the kids were small. I didn’t want them going up and messing around my tackle and guns and stuff.”

“And you don’t want them messing around there now?” I added.

“Certainly not,” said Jim. “Even downstairs, where things are organized, I can never find anything I want after spring cleaning. It takes me about six weeks to get the house reorganized after spring cleaning. But if they ever got up into my attic, good heavens, I might never find anything again, ever,”

“I guess it’s up to you,” I sighed.

“I’m afraid it is,” said Jim. “The sawdust and shavings and things sometimes drift down through the cracks under the door. They are even saying that the sawdust is seeping through the ceilings. A man by rights ought to have a little cabin down at the foot of his yard, shouldn’t he?”

“After his kids start to grow up,” I agreed, “a man’s house is no longer his castle. It becomes only a sort of checker-board on which he plays a steadily losing game.”

“It was good of you offer to come and help me with the attic,” felt out Jim.

“Not at all,” I said, providing it’s not some night I can’t get away.”

“Oh, I’ll let you pick the night,” said Jim; which is a pretty low trick.

“I’m not particularly good at domestic work,” I submitted. “In fact, I have been told I am more a nuisance than a help.”

“Don’t you believe it,” cried Jim, heartily. “You’re a tidy little fellow. You can sweep while I shift the bigger stuff around.”

“Hm,” said I, neither positive nor negative; because there is some deep antipathy in my nature to a broom. Maybe some of my ancestors were stable boys.

To Clean Up the Attic

At any rate, Jim referred in a casual way to the cleaning of his attic from day to day, and finally, he tricked me.

“Did you hear about that short newsreel picture about bird dogs?” Jim inquired sweetly.

“No, where is it?” I asked.

“It’s at some theatre on Bloor St.,” said Jim. “I’ll look it up. It shows bird dogs pointing quail, and the gunners walking up to the point and flushing the birds and making lefts and rights. Boy, they say it is one of the most wonderful sport pictures ever produced.”

“Let’s go tonight,” I said promptly.

“Can you get off tonight?” asked Jim, pointedly.

“This is the first night I’ve got to myself in a week,” I assured him.

So Jim got up and pretended to hunt through the theatre ads for the picture and couldn’t find it. Then he telephoned one of the movie exchanges, and they said the picture wouldn’t be showing in the local theatres for another month.

“I must,” said Jim, innocently, “have seen the ad somewhere else. But say, look here, if you’re free tonight, how about coming over and giving me a hand with that attic of mine.”

“Er,” I said.

“Let’s get it over and done with. It’s only a month to the fishing season. You wouldn’t want me tied up with a lot of house-cleaning on May the first?” demanded Jim.

And since I couldn’t think of any graceful excuse, I was roped.

“It’s a perfect night for it,” continued Jim. “The family is all going to be out. We can have the house to ourselves. If we find any short cuts, we can use them, with nobody around.”

“Like chucking shavings, et cetera, out the attic window,” I instanced.

So waiting until around 8 o’clock to allow Jim’s family to leave the house and also to allow my supper to settle, I strolled around to Jim’s and he led me without delay upstairs and via the little stairway into the attic, which is just one big unfinished room, perfectly suited to a man’s needs.

It was a mess. No wonder Jim kept the attic door locked and the key in his pocket. One corner was full of decoy ducks, like coal heaped in a coal bin. Another corner had an enormous heap of what appeared to be old magazines, hunting coats, rubber boots and fish baskets. In the midst stood a small carpenter’s work bench, and a foot deep all around it lay a drift of shavings, sawdust, hunks of wood, and all the ingredients of a fine life devoted to making things of no particular value or success.

“Well, Jimmie,” I said, “quite an evening’s work.”

“Now,” said Jim, very energetic. “I’ve got it figured out. I’ll start shifting everything to a new place, like, and you follow me with the broom.”

“If your wife,” I said, “ever saw this place.”

“I’ve been scared stiff this last few months,” admitted Jim. “Haunted, by day and by night.”

I peeled off my coat and hung it on a nail. Jim handed me the broom.

“I’ll start here, with these decoys,” suggested Jim. “I’ll shift them all over to that corner, and you sweep. Then when you catch up to me, I’ll shift the decoys and what will be under them to another corner, and so on. We’ll keep going around and around, see, until it is all cleaned up.”

“That’s the way the women do,” I admitted. “Shift everything around.”

So Jim started picking up big armfuls of decoys and carting them to the next corner, and to fill in the time, I started batting with the broom at the dusty rough, unfinished planking and rafters of the attic wall and ceiling.

Suddenly, in the garish light of the naked electric light bulb, something fluttered out from the planks.

“A bat,” I shouted.

Jim dropped an armful of ducks and peered into the already dusty glare of light.

“Where?” he demanded.

We stood perfectly still, and heard a small scratching sound.

“Here,” I said, swinging the broom.

The bat leaped heavily into space and wobbled sleepily around, narrowly missing our heads.

“Swing it,” roared Jim, snatching up a long piece of scantling that lay in the debris on the floor.

I swung. The bat ducked. I ducked; the bat swung.

“Look out,” shouted Jim, charging for the narrow stairway. “It’ll get downstairs.”

But he was too late. The bat, attracted perhaps by the warm current of air coming up the attic stairway, followed down, and we were just in time to see it wobble on half-wakened wings, into the glow of light at the foot of the attic stairs.

“After it,” commanded Jimmie, fiercely. “The women would go crazy if they saw that bat in the house.”

Riot and Confusion

Down the stairs we thundered, and commenced a cautious search, in room after room, listening, holding our breath, waiting to hear the faint scratching of the bat hiding behind some picture or mirror.

“Prod around,” said Jim.

So we prodded around, shoving at pictures on the wall, shifting dressers and keeping a wary eye.

“Turn on the bright lights,” I commanded, “blind the beast.”

Suddenly, soundlessly, the little bat came staggering and wobbling along the hallway ceiling and darted into the room.

Jim swung. The chandelier crashed terribly and splintered glass flew in all directions. The bat darted out.

“After it!” shouted Jim, colliding his hunk of scantling along walls and doors.

I heard another violent crash. Jim had swung at the bat in the front bedroom and swiped all the ornaments off the top of a chest of drawers.

“Downstairs,” cried Jim, leading the chase.

“Be careful,” I begged. “Don’t wreck the house.”

“Better wreck the house than have that bat, in it when the folks get home,” gasped Jimmie, crouched and searching like a gangster in a movie.

We found the bat after we had disarranged all the pictures in the living room and shifted all the furniture and upset everything on the buffet. It was up in the chandelier.

“Poke with your broom,” whispered Jim. “Poke it out towards me.”

Jim poised like a baseball player, gripping the scantling mightily.

I poked with the broom at the poor little beastie. fluttered out towards Jim.

Jim swung. The chandelier swayed madly, tinkled into a thousand splinters of glass and then, slowly losing its wiry grip of the ceiling, came down with about a square foot of plaster.

“I missed,” moaned Jim.

“Like heck you did,” I said, from my shelter under the dining-room table.

The house was full of dust, riot and confusion.

“Where did it go?” I begged.

“I saw it go upstairs again,” said Jim wearily.

So we followed. After 10 minutes, we found under the bathtub. It eluded us again, and to our joy, it turned up the attic stairs again.

“Good,” said Jim. “Now we’ve got it on our own territory.”

So we went after it, and got into Jim’s private attic just in time to see the bewildered little creature alight flat against the rough beams of the ceiling and tuck itself cleverly and quickly in behind some great two-inch stringers of the roof.

“Aaaaah,” sighed Jim. “Leave him there. Leave him right there, still in his winter sleep, the little devil, and some nice spring evening, I’ll open the window and let him fly out.”

“It’s best to leave a bat alone,” I agreed. “Just let him fly away.”

“He sure has wasted the evening,” said Jim.

“We’d better quit this job,” I offered, “and go down and straighten things up the best way we can before the folks get back.”

So we turned the light off, carefully locked the door, went down and telephoned the drug store for a couple of dozen new light bulbs, and straightened all the pictures and dusted everything, and did the best we could with the fallen chandelier.

“There’ll be the dickens to pay,” I said, after we had worked for an hour and still everything looked disturbed, somehow.

“It’ll give them a taste,” said Jim, “of what we men have to suffer when they’re spring cleaning.”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 30, 1946.

“Aw, the poor little tyke!” exclaimed Jimmie Frise.

As we promenaded along the neighborhood shopping street, we were halted by the screaming outcries of a baby in a perambulator parked outside a store.

The busy afternoon traffic, consisting of women mostly, went happily by, arms full of parcels.

And not one of them so much as cast a glance at the roaring baby.

“You’d think some of these women,” I said indignantly, “would at least take a look to see if a safety-pin is sticking into it.”

We went over and looked down at the child.

It was a boy child. You could tell that by the wide mouth and the general snubbiness and chubbiness of it. Its mouth was stretched wide enough to swallow an orange, its eyes were tight shut, tears flowed over its cheeks. And it screamed.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I leaned down soothingly “Hey.”

The baby seemed to shut off its wind. Opened its eyes wide. Took one agonized look at me and then seemed to have a convulsion. It turned a maroon color. Shut its eyes. Opened its mouth. Bent itself back deeper in the pram and–roared!

Jimmie and I moved on. We stopped a couple of doors farther along and looked back.

“Just look at those women passing by,” I gritted. “Not one of them paying the slightest…”

“Women,” explained Jim. “aren’t so sensitive to a baby screaming as men. They’re used to it They know it doesn’t mean anything. They realize it’s just a baby’s way of taking exercise.”

“Exercise?” I snorted. “That baby’s dying. That baby’s suffering. I bet a safety-pin is sticking two inches into it.”

“Pawff,” said Jim. “It’s just scared. Maybe it was asleep when its mother left it there to go into the store for a minute. The pram stops and the baby wakes up. It looks around and starts to roar for its mamma. Probably it is one of those bad-tempered babies.”

We paused and glanced back.

“Just look at those heartless dames,” I pointed out.

Right beside the baby, three middle-aged women, their arms full of parcels, had stopped to chatter gaily. They didn’t even so much as glance at the baby. They leaned forward towards each other and got off witticisms that must have been killing, the way they leaned away from each other and laughed. We could hear their voices from where we stood. They had to talk loudly to hear, each other above the howling of the infant. Yet not one of these kindly housewives gave the child so much as a sideways glance.

“You see?” said Jim. “Women don’t get all overheated over a child bawling. They know it’s just routine. It’s part of the scene. Perfectly natural.”

“Darn it,” I said, the piercing screams penetrating my nerves. “Let’s go on.”

So we wandered along the block, in the pleasant sunshine, locking at the shopping crowd and in the windows, and gradually getting out of earshot. In front of nearly all the stores, babies were parked in prams Some of them were asleep. Some were awake, looking solemnly at the moving figures of the traffic. Some looked scared and self-conscious, even at two years of age.

“I think a mother, Jim,” I enunciated, “takes an awful chance leaving a baby alone in a pram like this out in front of stores. I don’t mean for fear of having it stolen, nor even having something knock the pram over and injure the baby. What I mean is, a little baby can get a scare or a fright that might affect it psychologically all the rest of its life.”

“Not At Six Inches”

“Pawff,” scoffed Jimmie. “These women have to do their shopping, don’t they? Should they leave the baby alone at home? Should they burden themselves in the store with a big, wriggling, fat armful of baby?”

“Nobody knows,” I asserted, “at what age a human being begins to learn. We used to think that the age of seven was the beginning of the power of reasoning in a child. But lately, the psychologists are doubting this. They think a child starts to observe and learn from the hour of its birth.”

“So what?” said Jim, as we strolled.

“A baby,” I exampled, “is left sitting out here alone in front of a store. He is a little alarmed at being left. He sees his mother vanish. He observes all manner of queer strangers swarming by. He notes the rumble of motor traffic and the growing roar of a street car passing. All this excites him and makes him tense. Suddenly, a playful dog comes along, jumps up and puts his front paws on the edge of the pram and looks, with laughing tongue hanging out, into the baby’s face. At a distance of six inches.”

“So?” said Jim.

“Now, that baby,” I said, “has never seen a dog close up before. The glittering eyes, the lolling tongue, the white sharp teeth! Why, that baby is likely to get such a scare his whole future life will be altered, misshapen. possibly ruined.”

“What nonsense!” cried Jim. “Why, every child loves doggies…”

“But not suddenly,” I countered, “close up, at six inches, at a time the baby is already keyed up. I assure you, Mr. Frise, courage is largely a matter of never having been scared before until now. If we could get all children to the age of 10 without ever having known what fright is, we would have a noble race indeed.”

“I believe in treating ’em rough,” replied Jim. “Pampering is what softens us. Get a baby used to the rough and tumble of life, and he’ll grow up a useful citizen.”

“I don’t know,” I mused. “I’ve been reading all this stuff in the papers about tragic fires and children left by their parents alone in the house…”

“There I agree with you,” said Jim. “Little children should never be left alone…”

“How about all these kids being left alone along the street, right here?” I demanded quickly. “It’s exactly the same thing. Convenience. The convenience of the parents is what makes them leave small children alone in the house. It is convenience that leaves these babies out in front of the stores.”

“It’s a far different thing,” protested Jimmie.

“Nothing is different,” I explained, “when it is the same at the root. What we’ve got to get after, these days, is that whole business of the convenience of the parents It is not merely at the root of these fire tragedies. It is at the root of the juvenile delinquency problem¹. The convenience of the parents is the reason why a child has time or inclination to get into serious mischief.”

“Maybe not the convenience of the parents,” corrected Jim. “How about the convenience of the parents’ boss? Or the convenience of our present form of society, which permits parents of young children to work long hours in order merely to live and keep their children alive. What would you think of a law that forbade the mothers of children between infancy and 14 years of age working at any job that took them from their homes?”

“But thousands would starve!” I protested.

“Not if we paid a proper mother’s allowance,” triumphed Jim. “If a woman can prove she can earn $30 a week and has a baby, she would automatically get a pension of $30 a week until the child was 14.”

“The millennium!²” I scoffed.

“No, that’s a proper and rational system of pension,” stated Jim firmly. “We’ve got to have children. We’ve got to have good children. Okay, we pay the mothers what they have demonstrated they can earn, in order to free them for their proper job of motherhood.”

Educate the Parents

“You’ve got something there, Jim,” I ad mitted. “Only, it will come high on the taxpayer.”

“Things are going to come a lot higher on the taxpayer,” agreed Jim, “before the world is through with its present difficulties. We are all so busy trying to escape taxes that our taxes are rising all the time due to our stinginess. If we want good men and women, we’ve got to have good babies and good boys and girls.”

“What’s your solution,” I inquired, “of the juvenile delinquency problem?”

“It is not juvenile delinquency at all, it’s adult delinquency,” replied Jim. “If a child is brought up on a delinquency charge, it is the parents who should be tried. And if any punishment is meted out, it should be the parents who are punished.”

“Aw, an awful lot of parents of juvenile delinquents,” I protested, “are poor, weak, worried, helpless little women…”

“Okay, then,” corrected Jimmie. “If the parents are not punishable, for neglect, then they are fit subjects for education. The court should sentence such parents to a six months course in child care and child psychology. There should be a large school maintained, just the way we maintain jails and prisons. It would be a ‘corrective institution’ in the best sense of the word. An all-year-round school, night and day, for the correction of the parents of juvenile delinquents.”

“Jim,” I admired, pausing, “you’re in great form today. It must be the spring sunshine. Let’s turn and walk back now.”

We had come to the end of the interesting blocks of the neighborhood shopping district. Every neighborhood shopping district has an interesting stretch. But it dwindles off, at both ends, into dull and uninteresting blocks.

“I hope that kid,” I said, “has stopped screaming by now.”

“Nobody’d let it yell,” said Jim, “for five or 10 minutes on end.”

But, when we reached the first block again, above the racket of traffic, I thought I could hear faint piercing shrieks. We quickened our pace. And sure enough, ever louder grew the screams, and we came in sight of the cake shop, in front of which the same pram stood and the same ear-splitting uproar continued.

“Jim,” I cried, starting to double, “we’ve got to do something. This is unbearable!”

When we arrived, the same crowd of nice local housewives was hurrying smilingly along or stopping to chatter, in complete indifference to the riot right under their feet.

A small boy with a dog was standing looking into, the pram with an expression of quiet interest and enjoyment. He was watching the twisting and yowling of the blue-clad baby with considerable satisfaction. He was making his own mouth go in imitation of the contortions of the baby’s.

“Here,” I said, pushing the little boy aside, “let me have him.”

And I scooped the baby up in my arms. Now, it is 20 years since I last changed a diaper. But I remembered enough to make the necessary exploration to satisfy myself that there was no safety-pin sticking into him.

“What do we do?” demanded Jim, taking hold of the pram handles.

“I’ll hold it up,” I suggested, “to the cake store window.”

And I went and held the infant up high before the cake store windows and let it screech and yowl and wrestle and twist. There were six ladies shopping in the cake store. I elevated my eyebrows anxiously at all of them, one after the other, through the window: but they all shook their heads and shrugged.

The baby by this time was really having a fit, and quite a number of people began to slow down and start a small crowd of spectators.

“Where on earth,” I demanded, “can the woman be?”

I moved over to the windows of the self-serve grocery store next to the cake shop and held the child up at both its windows. Large numbers of customers came and looked, but none of them showed any maternal interest.

“Call inside,” suggested Jimmie.

So I went in to the turnstile inside the grocery and held the screaming baby aloft. This attracted silence.

“Is the mother of this child,” I bellowed above the baby’s clamor, “in this store?”

Several ladies came running from the back of the store, but none of them was the mother.

I went outside and joined Jimmie in front of the cake store, where he was hanging on to the pram.

“Put it back,” hissed Jim. “Stick it back in the pram and let’s get the heck out of here.”

“Jim,” I stated angrily, “this is a matter of public concern. This is something that has to be dealt with. This may be an ABANDONED CHILD!”

“That’s what suddenly occurred to me,” gritted Jim, “so let’s get the heck…”

“JIM!” I said very shocked, from behind the squalling brat’s bonnet.

“Let ‘Em Holler!”

At which moment, a shrill scream from up the street brought the attention of us all, including the crowd of loitering shoppers and the little boy with the dog, to a young woman sprinting towards us, her arms outstretched, emitting a short, high yelp at every jump.

She grabbed the baby from me and almost bowled me over.

“You brutes!” she choked.

“You brutes!” echoed two ladies in the rapidly growing crowd.

An elderly man with spectacles took a short jujutsu hold on Jimmie’s arm from behind and pinned him.

A lady stepped to my flank, drew a quart bottle of milk from a paper bag and assumed a threatening attitude.

“Don’t you move!” she warned, laying the bottle back to throw.

And at that exact instant, Constable Angus McLeod, a good friend of Jim’s and mine – we go jack-rabbit hunting – loomed from the back of the crowd, saying:

“Here, here, here, what goes on!”

“These brutes,” sobbed the mother, “stole my baby…”

Angus looked at us sternly.

“Angus,” I said, “for Pete’s sake…”

The little boy with the dog piped up:

“I saw two little girls,” he said, “wheel the baby from away up the street. They left it

here.”

“Good for you, boy…” I began.

“Just a second,” said Angus. “Now, boy, what was this?”

“I saw two little girls, their names is Minnie and Lana,” he said, “wheel the baby from up at the other end of the block. And they left it here.”

“And how did you get mixed up?” inquired Angus, turning to us.

“The child,” I stated hotly, “was having a conniption fit. It was screeching. I simply picked it up to see if a pin was sticking into it…”

“Uzzy mussies wuzzy,” cried the mother, clutching the child.

“Uzzy muzzy nothing,” said Angus to her. “It serves you right. Leaving a baby loose out on the public highway. It’s a mercy worse didn’t happen.”

“I was only in the store a minute…” protested the young woman.

“We’ve been listening to this baby yell,” I interrupted, “for 15 minutes…”

“I met a friend I haven’t seen for YEARS…” faltered the young mother. “It didn’t seem only a minute or two…”

“Let it be a lesson to you,” propounded Angus to her and with his arms brushed all and sundry on their way.

“Boys,” he said, as we sauntered back along the street, “let me give you a piece of advice from a professional policeman. Never interfere in a domestic situation, under any circumstances. Whether it be man or woman, old maid, mother-in-law or baby, never, never interfere in a domestic situation.”

“You mean.” I said, “let ’em holler?”

“Let ’em holler,” said Angus.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. During and after the war there was an increase in youth crime that caused a lot of hand-wringing. ↩︎
2. I’m not entirely sure what this exclamation means. At the time was the discussion over social security, old-age pensions, and family allowances. I think the idea was that these programs were new and “futuristic” and therefore bringing closer the new millennium where things would be better. It might also have been a derogatory term against those who were in favour of it. ↩︎

What chance has a heckler now? Half the audience are ex-hecklers who know all the tricks

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 21, 1942.

“With the way business is going,” said Jimmie Frise, “it is about time we began looking around for some nice juicy government job.”

“Why so?” I inquired. “There will always be newspapers, won’t there?”

“Maybe so,” countered Jim, “but will newspapers be bothered with the kind of stuff we can do? That’s the problem we’ve got to face. The world is getting more serious all the time. Everything is being rationed. Step by step, government is taking over everything. One of these days they’ll take over the newspapers.”

“Oh, yeah?” I demanded. “How about the freedom of the press?”

“Well, is that any more precious than the freedom,” retorted Jim, “of a man to buy what he likes and sell what he likes? Is it any more precious than freedom of speech? And there are a lot of guys locked up in concentration camps¹, right in this province, who speeched too freely. Ah, no, my boy. one of these days, they will ration newspapers and some chartered accountant will come in as administrator of our newspapers. And the first two guys he will throw out will be us. We’re only frills.”

“Frills!” I snorted.

“Sure,” said Jim. “We’re just a luxury, like ripe olives. What the newspapers will print, under government control, will be the facts. A newspaper will read like a Canadian National time table. You will get the weather forecast and the speech in full of the minister of justice. With applause after each paragraph.”

“How long would the people put up with such nonsense?” I scoffed.

“Quite as long.” submitted Jim, “as they would put up with gas rationing and wage and price ceilings, and rationing of sugar and tires and clothes and all else. In the name of war, my dear sir, we will put up with anything. There is only one good job to have nowadays; and that’s a government job.”

“Well, I never expected to live to see the day,” I heaved.

“Who do you know up at Ottawa?” asked Jim. “We ought to have some pull. Couldn’t you get the job of collector of customs or something for the Port of Toronto? Think of all the fishing tackle that would pass through your hands as collector of customs.”

“Those days are gone forever, Jim,” I sighed. “There was a day when a man with pull could wangle himself into a job regardless of what his qualifications were. But government is no longer merely political. It is becoming industrial, financial, social and everything else. It is becoming expert. There are no better bankers in the banking business than the government has working for it now. And no better industrialists working on their own than are working for the government. In the old days, a smart financial man or a smart manufacturer could make a million dollars as easily as rolling over in bed. But the day came when the government took it all off him in taxes and super taxes. Why should a man worry about his own business and the government’s as well? So all the smart guys are working for the government, making just as much as they had left over after the government was through with them in the old days; and having a lot of fun as well.”

The True Art of Heckling

“I guess,” admitted Jim ruefully, “we haven’t got anything the government wants.”

“We could do propaganda,” I suggested.

“Propaganda won’t be necessary any more,” explained Jim, “when the government controls everything. There won’t be any opposition to propaganda.”

“We could take an active part in politics,” I offered.

“Too late,” said Jim hollowly. “There are about 20,000 guys ahead of us.”

“I attended quite a number of political meetings this last two or three years, Jim,” I said earnestly. “I could get witnesses to prove it,”

“Did you heckle?” demanded Jimmie.

“Heckle?” I inquired.

“You don’t take an active interest in politics unless you heckle,” stated Jim. “When I was a young kid, I loved to go to political meetings to help heckle. Down in Birdseye Center, we had a School of Heckling. It was run by a bad old guy who owned the harness shop in the village. Whenever a meeting was scheduled for our community, old Sam, the harness maker, would start his school for hecklers and we would all gather in the harness shop and learn our parts.”

“You must have been very young,” I suggested.

“Ah, you think of heckling,” said Jim, “as merely asking questions. The true art of heckling is the art of putting a meeting on the bum whether with questions or marbles or chair legs…”

“Marbles?” I protested.

“Look,” said Jim. “The meeting is called to order and proceeds. All is quiet and orderly. The chairman makes his speech. The business of the meeting is disposed of. Then the speakers begin, warming up the audience for the main speaker of the evening who is not yet arrived, but who is momentarily. He, of course, is a prominent politician, making speeches in half a dozen parts of the riding in the one night.”

“It’s the same today,” I confessed.

“Now,” said Jim, “old Sam, the master heckler, is in the audience. And we, his pupils of all ages, from boys of 15 up to old gentlemen of eighty, are discreetly scattered over the hall in little groups. The best way to seat hecklers is this: put the main heckler of the group in the middle, with a guard on either side of him. In the row in front of him, two men, sitting directly in front. And in the row directly behind, three more, to keep people from beaning him.”

“That makes eight hecklers to a squad,” I calculated.

“Correct,” said Jim. “Now, when the candidate arrives, the applause and cheers break out and the hecklers let go a few boos.”

“Correct,” I remembered.

“He has no time to waste,” said Jim. “And as soon as he reaches the platform, the chairman introduces him and he gets going. The first thing that happens, right up near the front row, an elderly gentleman in the audience gets his foot caught in the rungs of his chair.”

“How do you mean?” I inquired.

“It’s very simple,” explained Jim. “As soon as the speaker gets nicely started, you see this old bird up near the front starting to squirm and struggle. Everybody around him tries to help him. He has got his foot twisted around in the side rungs of the chair he is sitting on. The more he struggles, the more excited he gets, and the chair starts banging and people stand up to help him and before they get his foot free, there has been a dandy disturbance. Everybody at the back is shouting ‘sit down’ and the speaker has had to stop his speech, and is looking embarrassed, the way all politicians in a hurry look.”

“Oh, boy,” I gloated.

“When quiet is restored,” went on Jim, “and the speaker gets nicely going again, the marbles start. From three or four different parts of the hall, you hear marbles starting to roll. You hear them fall ticking on the floor and then quietly rolling. At a little distance, you can’t hear them at all. But nearby you can hear them and you can’t help but look down at them and twist around to try and stop them with your foot. If you have four or five fellows with marbles scattered over the hall, and they all start at the one time, you have got people squirming and twisting all over the place.

“Gee, Jim,” I breathed.

“Oh, then there are the questions, asked by the squads,” said Jim, “and the lady who takes ill and jumps up, holding her hands to her mouth and running for the door. That’s usually reserved until right at the place the speaker starts his real oratory. Then there is the late comer. He should be a farmer. He comes in, right at the peak of the speech, and walks up the aisle, to the front, looking for a seat, stopping and looking up each row as he starts back from the front. He should even attempt to walk in two or three of the rows of seats, even when there isn’t a seat. That always creates a swell confusion.”

“Jim,” I interrupted. “You’ve got it. We will found a heckling school. Right here in Toronto. We can get hundreds of students enrolled. We can wreck any meeting in the country. The government would have to reward us with jobs. Maybe they would make us senators.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “I was noticing just the other day that they are having some sort of reorganization of the council up in George township. The reeve and half the council have gone to war and they are having trouble appointing substitutes.”

“Not a township meeting,” I protested.

“We’ve got to get some practice,” declared Jim. “There is no use starting anything without knowing a little about it. Maybe this heckling school idea is only another hare-brained enterprise. We ought to do a little experimenting, in a small way. before we launch out.”

So we found out that they were having a big meeting in George township on Thursday night. We got 25 cents worth of marbles. I borrowed an old press camera from Tom Wilson, our cameraman. It had no lens, which is the valuable part of a camera anyway; but it did have the flash bulb attachment which was what we wanted. And I loaded my pockets, in true press cameraman style, with the little flash bulbs they use.

The meeting was crowded for a fact. We got there at half-past seven in order to look the ground over, and even so, the hall was almost filled already. Jim got a seat in the second row. And I, identified as a newspaperman by the camera I carried open and ready in my hands, was permitted to sit at the edge of the platform.

By eight o’clock, the hall was full and all the space at the back taken up with standing room only.

The meeting was called to order at 8.05 sharp and the chairman, a very masterful looking gentleman in a blue suit, outlined the situation. He pointed out that two factions existed in the township. These factions had an equal right to be heard. He was going to see they received a hearing. And at this point of his speech, a very large policeman walked slowly down the aisle and wheeled and walked slowly back.

The first speaker was indignant looking gentleman. He was one of those people who was born with an indignant expression on his face. His manner of speech was indignant. He would utter a quick sentence. Then pause and glare around. Then utter another quick sentence. And a long pause, to let it sink in.

This was pie for Jimmie. He got his foot caught in the rung of his chair. He started to squirm. He started to struggle. He began to fight. The chair rattled and banged finally Jim and the chair and everything fell over, causing a great excitement. Fifteen people got to their feet in the first two rows to help him, and the whole hall got to its feet to see what the trouble was. The indignant man was now very indignant, because the pause was all of two minutes and he forgot what he had been saying.

Jimmie kept stirring and fidgetting and rubbing his ankle, which irritated the speaker terribly. Finally, Jim got up and hobbled out to the aisle.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” he inquired, in a hoarse whisper.

Ten rows back, he almost collapsed on his poor ankle, and a young lad of about 15 gave Jim his aisle seat. Jim sank into it.

The speaker had now wound up and was really pounding his fist into his palm. I stealthily slid down off the platform edge and crept along with my camera raised. I huddled there a few minutes, aiming my camera at him. Then I let fly. The flash bulb caused everybody in the place to rise half in their seats. The speaker forgot his argument. I crept back to my place and hoisted myself up on the edge of the platform again.

“Now,” rasped the indignant man, “in the first place…”

Up around Jimmie, in the tenth row, I saw people stirring and twisting in their seats. The marbles had started. Balloons at a hockey game are nothing to marbles. Everybody wants to kick a marble.

“Order, order,” warned the chairman, quietly.

The speaker had ceased speaking and was glaring redly at the meeting. People on the sides were standing up to see what was going on in the middle. I slid off the platform edge and began creeping, bent over, towards speaker again. I aimed the empty camera at him. Bang went the flash bulb.

“He’s a Fake”

“Order!” bellowed the chairman, hammering on the table.

When I turned away from dazzling the speaker, I saw Jim was surrounded by a struggling group of citizens.

All over the hall, people were standing and jumping on their chairs to see the excitement. I started to shove and fight my way up the aisle, my camera held high, as if to try to get a picture of the melee around Jim.

“Hey,” I heard a voice yell, “this bird has no lens in his camera! I know something about cameras..! He’s a fake.”

Hands gripped my shoulders. All was hubbub and riot. Strange angry faces swept around me and I was yanked this way and that. The policeman got me, and after one look at my camera, seeing the big gaping hole where the lens should be, hoisted me aloft and carried me out.

Jim was gripped by two large citizens who happened to find a pocket full of marbles on him.

We went out the door about the same time. And down the steps.

The policeman followed us down and out to our car, professionally.

“None of them tricks around here,” he said, not unkindly. “The minute you pulled that old trick with your foot in the rungs of the chair, there was at least fifty old-timers in that meeting who knew what was up.”

“Well, they didn’t need to get so rough,” declared Jim. “One of those big birds nearly twisted my arm off.”

“Who do you represent?” inquired the cop. “Henderson or Billings?”

“Never heard of them,” said Jim. “We were just out for some fun.”

“Well, times have changed,” said the cop. “People are taking an interest in public affairs now. It isn’t politics they’re interested in, any more. It’s themselves they’re interested in. And when people get interested in themselves, woe betide any monkey business from politicians or anybody else.”

“Have you any kids?” asked Jim. “Here’s some marbles for them.”

---

Editor’s Note:

1. Note that at the time, concentration camp would be a generic term for an internment camp of some type. Now the term is more associated with the Nazi interment and death camps of World War 2. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 14, 1936.

“March,” said Jimmie Frise, “is the most miserable month of the year.”

“Especially,” I contributed, “the middle of March. Because by the end of March you can smell April.”

“March,” went on Jim, “is like three o’clock of the morning of the year.”

“All my friends who are bums,” I stated, “tell me March is a terribly hard month for them. They can’t make a touch. Not a touch. It is as if, in March, people have come to the end of their kindness.”

“It’s like that hour,” continued Jim, “before the beginning of the dawn.”

“Well, I know that hour,” I cried. “For two years in the war I saw every dawn. Winter, summer, storm, or fine. I saw the dawn. In the trenches we stood to arms, every man jack, cook, bugler and all, at one hour before the dawn. And there we stood, millions of us, all nations, friend and foe, in league-long lines, hushed, waiting, watching, tense.”

“It was the hour of attack,” said Jim.

“Like some queer, pagan, ghastly worshippers, we stood,” I recited, “in those foul ditches looking up at the black and dreadful sky. Little winds moaned. It was cold, with a ghostly cold. It was the hour before the first cock crew. The hour when bones rise out of the ground in a danse macabre. And all around us were bones. Bones of our comrades, our companions, of only yesterday.”

“You know dawns,” admitted Jim.

“Aye,” I said. “I have no love for the hour before the dawn nor for the month of March.”

“The ancients said,” declared Jimmie, “that March was the season of disasters.”

“So it would be,” I explained, “because the blood in us is running cold and thin after the long winter. Our hearts are colder, our emotions checked and sluggish. Wars might start in March, massacres, pogroms. The best instincts of humanity are mere stubble by March.”

“And in September, at their full flower and fruit,” said Jim. “Ah, how I love September.”

“I love June,” I admitted. “June, about the sixth.”

“Let us watch our step this month,” said Jim, who was at the steering wheel, and we were nearly home. “Let us tip off our friends to be watchful. Let us try to be kind and friendly. Let us try consciously to inject a little warmth of heart into life in this exhausted and embittered season.”

“Maybe we could see a bum any minute,” I agreed. “I’ve got a dime¹. It would be nice to just pull up beside the curb and open the door and suddenly toss a bum a dime.”

“You’ve got the idea,” said Jim.

We drove along. How dirty the streets, with their foul shoals of ice and snow in the shelter of the houses all along the south side of the streets. The old tin cans, papers gummed into the slush and ice of a whole winter. The untidiness of March, the usedness, the second-handness.

The Little Brown Dog

A lady in her house dress was standing out on the sidewalk and as we passed her I saw she was weeping. Her face was screwed up and she was huddling her arms about her, clutching her elbows in her palms.

“Whoa, Jim,” I commanded. “What’s the matter here?”

Jim backed the car. I leaped out and hurried to the lady.

“My little dog,” she wept. “She’s gone. I can’t find her anywhere. I’ve been in all the yards. Not a sign.”

And she stopped speaking because her voice had gone up into only a squeak.

“Ma’am,” I said, “we’ll help you find your dog. What kind of a dog was it?”

“A little brown dog,” wept the lady.

“What breed, ma’am?” I asked.

“I forget,” said the lady, biting her lips. “A little brown dog. A dear little one.”

“Pekingese?” I inquired. “Pomeranian?”

“No, no,” wept the lady. “A little brown one, about like that. O-ho! I have had her six years and she never disappeared before.”

“A lady dog, ma’am?” I inquired.

“Yes, her name is Dollie.”

“We’ll drive around the block,” I comforted her. “We’ll find her. She hasn’t been gone long?”

“About half an hour,” the lady squeaked, wiping her nose in a small ball of hanky.

“We’ll get her in no time,” I assured her, starting for the car.

“What is it?” asked Jim eagerly.

“She’s lost her dog.” I explained, “so I said we’d drive around a block or two and find it for her.”

“Well,” said Jim, starting the car, “it isn’t exactly a disaster or a massacre. But after all it is the month of March.”

“It’s a small brown dog,” I informed Jim.

So we drove around a block, slowly, looking in all the side drives and stopping at each turn to look up and down all vistas. There were plenty of dogs. But no little brown ones. When we came past the lady again, she was still standing hugging her arms around her and looking down side drives and calling, “Dollie, Dollie,” in a high, anxious voice.

I waved reassuringly to her and called out the window:

“We’ll do a couple more blocks.”

And she said “Thank you” heart brokenly.

“Curious,” I said, as we turned to circle another block, “the way some women love a dog. Almost like a child.”

“Lots of men go kind of crazy over a dog, too,” said Jim.

We saw wirehairs and spaniels, police dogs and Bostons, but no little brown dogs. Then we saw a small brown spaniel, and slowed up, but it was named Joe, as a little boy told us. He hadn’t seen any dog you would call Dollie around.

In the distance we saw a flock of dogs romping on the street, so we drove away up and studied them. But there were no little brown dogs there either. Just to be sure I called “Dollie” out the window, but none of them looked at us. They were busy.

“Aw, let’s go home,” said Jim.

“There you go,” I said. “March has got you, too. We can do a couple more blocks without doing ourselves any harm, and think of the decent thing we would do if we could restore that lady her dog.”

“All right,” said Jim, and we turned another way and made a circle of two more blocks. We saw setters and terriers and Scotties; we saw a great big black Newfoundland and a dachshund, but no little brown lady dog.

Seized By the Collar

“Listen,” said Jim, “a dog always turns up. Let’s go on home, rather than go back and tell the poor woman we saw no sign of her pup. It will be kinder to leave her thinking we are still chasing all over creation looking for it than to turn up and say we haven’t seen it in ten blocks.”

“I suppose,” I confessed. “But it is a pretty Marchy trick just the same. I bet if this was June we’d keep on looking.”

“Forget it,” said Jim, and steered for home.

But hardly had we got into our stride before there, trotting down the sidewalk on little twinkling feet, with a plume of a tail curled back over her back, was the cutest little brown you ever did see.

“Dollie,” I hailed merrily.

And the little creature halted, wheeled, set its head on one side and looked up at us brightly. “Hello, Dollie.” I said warmly.

“Pick her up,” said Jim.

So I got out and went to Dollie. But Dollie, with large bug eyes pointing in two opposite directions and with a look of constitutional alarm in both of them, started to waddle off on her mincing tiny feet. I followed, coaxingly.

“H’yuh, h’yuh,” I wheedled, “Pfft, sktch, sktch, h’yuh, Dollie.”

Jim coasted slowly alongside of us.

“Jim,” I said quietly, “park and come and help me. She is naturally timid. She’s lost and nervous. We’ll have to corner her.”

So Jim, with a loud sigh, parked the car, got out and joined me. Dollie had halted at a side drive and was looking back suspiciously at us.

We walked casually closer. I turned in the side drive just as she did. I ran and got ahead of her and, spreading my arms wide, cut off her retreat while Jim, dashing from behind, swept Dollie up in his arms, and we walked out the drive.

“Nice Dollie,” I soothed, patting the head of the little gold-fishy looking dog, who wriggled and yapped in a silly little voice.

We tossed her in the back seat and got aboard. As Jim drove off, I thought I heard a shout, and looked back, and saw a man looking out the front door of the house we had been alongside. I naturally supposed that he was perhaps curious at what we had been doing in his side drive. But there was no use stopping and going back, just to satisfy idle curiosity.

We drove five blocks back to where the lady lived. But she was not in sight when we slowed up.

“Toot your horn a few times,” I said, “and I’ll try this house here, where she was in front of.”

Another lady answered the door. No, she said, there was no dog lost there. So I tried the houses next door, both sides.

“Would you know of a lady, a neighbor,” I asked at these houses, when they said they had no dog lost, “who would have lost a little brown dog?”

They thought, and looked up at the sky and put their fingers on their teeth, but couldn’t think of any such lady.

“Maybe,” called Jim, above Dollie’s loud and angry yapping, “she lives across the road. Try a couple of houses on this other side.”

So I was just asking at the third house when a car came up with a rush, pulled in just ahead of Jim’s car, and a man in his shirt sleeves leaped out and tore around at Jimmie. I heard loud shouting between them and hurried across. The stout, dark, shirt-sleeved man had Dollie in his arms and was standing with one foot inside Jim’s car, shaking his huge fist under Jim’s nose.

“Sir.” I protested, coming up.

“You,” he yelled. “You little dog-thief. I’ve got you both, eh?”

With his free hand, his fist hand, he seized me roughly by the overcoat collar and gave me a shake.

“Pardon me,” I said. “Pardon me, my man.”

“I’ll my man you,” he yelled. He was one of those stout dark men with black, sort of bloodshot eyes, who are usually retired around fifty years of age, and like to be in shirtsleeves, and mostly you see them working around their houses, putting up pergolas or making stone terraces.

Looking For a Lady

So I just let him hold my collar. I have found that if you just let a man hold your collar, he gets tired of it in a minute.

“No fines for you,” continued the man, and people were coming to their front doors, and home-goers were pausing on the sidewalk. “I’ve been watching out for you for weeks. This is three times you have stolen my dog.”

I heard an ominous mutter from the gathering spectators, and two or three men walked nearer.

“Dog thieves,” announced the coatless-man, giving me another swing by the collar and taking kick at Jim’s shins in the car. “You know the racket? Steal a dog and then collect the reward. Look at them! Well dressed, with a car, even if it is an old junk heap.”

“Just a moment,” shouted Jim. “We were helping a lady find her dog.”

“Oho,” roared our captor. “Listen to that for a tale.”

“I was just looking for the lady when you came along,” I informed him.

“Looking for the lady,” yelled he. “You were in the very act of trying to snatch another dog here when I came along.”

“I was calling from door to door to try to find the lady,” I declared.

“From door to door?” screamed the man. “Looking for a lady? You were helping her find a dog?”

“We saw her standing on the street, right along here,” I protested anxiously; “she was crying, and we said we’d help her find her dog. From her description…”

“Haw, haw,” bellowed the man, smiling fiercely around at the half a dozen spectators now closing rather tightly around us. “Haw, haw, they saw a lady crying on the street! Haw, haw! Gentlemen, what will we do with them? I see you are all dog lovers. Do we wait here and hand them over to the police, who will let them off on suspended sentence or something? Or…?”

And he grinned fiendishly around the circle of faces.

“Or,” he roared, “will we all take a kick at them that will be a lesson to these kind of birds never to show their ugly mugs in this neighborhood again? Hey?”

“A good idea,” muttered everybody, “that’s the stuff, deal with it, community spirit, that’s the stuff.”

Strange how a crowd – even a crowd of your own good neighbors – is always on the side of the accuser in a case like this. Around us, not a friendly eye showed. As far as these seven or eight gentlemen and ladies were concerned, every word our accuser had to say was true. Any dogs I have ever talked to have told me the greatest fear a dog has is to be down. A dog must keep his feet. For the instant it down, in a fight, every dog is against it. It is the same with humans. Accuse, and every eye narrows against the accused.

“Jim,” I said, quietly, “say something amusing and friendly. Don’t argue. Be witty. Attract a smile.”

But inch by inch and step by step, the kindly home-going citizens were edging closer, forming a ring around us, closing in for the kill.

And just as I felt fresh hands take hold of my collar, I heard Jim yell:

“There she is!”

And along the street, with a little brown dog in her arms, came our lady, weeping no more, but with her face radiant and her head up.

“That’s the woman,” I shouted. “Ask her, ask her!”

The lady came up and, on seeing us, announced gladly that we were two gentlemen who had offered to help her find her dog.

“I found her,” she added. “I found her playing along at the corner. The darling.”

And she kissed it.

Hands fell away from us. But faces did not relax. In fact, the man in the shirt-sleeves still scowled suspiciously at us.

“Well,” he grunted through his nose. “Maybe so. Maybe so. But I still don’t like your looks. I still think it was just a frame-up. If any more dogs are lost in this neighborhood…”

And h shoved out his jaw at us, menacingly. And mutters and mumbles from the rest of the neighbors accompanied me as I got back into the car.

“Thank you, all the same,” called the lady with the little brown dog.

“Don’t mention it, ma’am,” I assured her.

So we continued our way home.

“March,” said Jim, snapping his teeth. “I guess the less you do in March, the better.”

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on March 18, 1944 as “No Love for March”.

1. Ten cents in 1936 would be $2.20 in 2025. ↩︎