Category: Greg-Jim Story Page 2 of 31

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 10, 1938.

Greg and Jimmie take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year

“Heigh-Ho,” sighed Jimmie Frise, stretching, “summer’s over.”

“Now we’ve got to turn from grasshoppers,” I agreed, “into ants.”

“New Year’s Day,” stated Jimmie, “ought to be somewhere around this time of year instead of in the dead of winter. Because in reality, each year really begins about now, when summer’s ended, and we all knuckle down to the grind.”

“That,” I admitted, “is a real idea.”

“How did this January the first business start,” inquired Jim, “as the beginning of the year?”

“Julius Caesar,” I informed him.

“Oh, him,” muttered Jim, bitterly; remembering his far-off unhappy high school days.

“Yes, sir,” I declared, “Julius Caesar adopted what he called the Julian calendar, in his own honor. And to this day, all over the western world, as if his empire were not in the dust a thousand years, we go on honoring old Caesar by obeying his edicts.”

“It’s time we changed,” stated Jim. “I can’t think of any time of year being less the beginning of anything than January the first is just the dreary middle of the winter, the dreary middle of the long laborious year.”

“Even the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians,” I advised Jim, “had the right idea. They began their year on September 21, at the autumn solstice.”

“The Egyptians?” cried Jim. “Good gracious, how did we ever get ourselves mixed up with the Romans? Why didn’t we stick with the ancient Egyptians? They’d haye handed us down something like a little civilization, instead of all this glorification of Julius Caesar.”

“Well, you see,” I explained, “the Egyptians could see a year begin and a year end. They saw the crops develop and the calves get born and the year come to its fulness. Then they gathered the crop and that ended the year. They began a new year in September, when a year begins now as it began then. Here we are back from our vacation. Everybody is back from vacation. All the hot dog stands are shuttered. All the highways are getting the has-been look. The show is over. The stage is being dismantled and the properties piled against the wall. Summer’s carnival is ended and here we are back to the grind. The year begins.”

“It ought to be New Year’s,” repeated Jim firmly. “How I hated Latin and algebra.”

“The Jews,” I stated, “begin their civil year still on September 6.”

“Why didn’t we stick with the Jews?” demanded Jim. “All we took was their Bible. We would have been better off if we had taken their calendar and their laws and everything else.”

“My, how vindictive you are,” I smiled. “Who would dream that Julius Caesar could be so alive after 2,000 years?”

“I am happy to learn,” stated Jim, “that Latin is now an optional subject in nearly all civilized nations on the globe.”

“The school year begins in September,” I reminded us. “The, fiscal year begins on October 1. I wonder what we could do to start an agitation for the abandonment of January 1, and the adoption of September 15 as New Year’s Day?”

“Ah, it would be great,” cried Jimmie. “What a lovely season of the year. With its hale winds and its ripeness and vigor. How we could set the stage for a new year’s celebration about September 15.”

“Even nature herself,” I pointed out, “goes into a sort of celebration, turning her leaves scarlet and orange, and all her fields golden.”

Dawn of New Work Year

“Instead of going out into a sleet storm on a blizzard,” went on Jim, “as we do in January, we could stage such a September carnival as would fill every man, woman, and child with a sort of joy at getting back to work again. The dawn of the new year of work.”

“It could be a festival of industry,” I recounted.

“Oh, it could be a great day,” cried Jim. “In the cities, the carnivals, the visiting and inspection of big industrial plants, all decked out, the banquets of employees; and in the country, the farmers painting their barns and hauling in the implements to be painted and repaired for another year’s toil, instead of being left to rot in a far corner of the farthest pasture. And at midnight, at the stroke of midnight, all the factory whistles would blow and all the workers of the world would gather about their shops and factories and offices, brilliantly lighted and bedecked, and a new year would have begun.”

“It’s a beautiful idea,” I confessed. “I think we ought to do something about it.”

“By the way,” said Jim, yawning and pushing his drawing table back a little, “what are we going to do this coming year? I never felt so empty of ideas in my life as I do right now.”

“It’s just the reaction,” I assured him. “Everybody feels like this at the beginning of autumn. It’s a sort of let down after the activity of summer.”

“That’s a funny thing,” declared Jim. “We work harder in summer than any other time of year, yet in summer, there is less accomplished than any other season. Business slacks off. Everybody is away having fun. Yet we exhaust ourselves.”

“Rightly so,” I said. “Summer is the real end of the year. We celebrate the end of the year’s work with a vacation. And we exhaust ourselves having fun.”

“That shows you the true nature of man,” said Jim. “Man’s natural instinct is to have fun.”

“We’ll have to get together right away,” I proposed, shoving back my typewriter desk so as to get my feet up on the edge, “we’ll have to get together in a regular conference and decide on plans for the coming season.”

“Yaw,” yawned Jim, “we’ve really got to. Here we are dawdling through life, writing a few simple stories and drawing a few simple cartoons. Just earning our bread, that’s all.”

“What more can any man do?” I submitted, relaxing.

“Talent,” declared Jim, “is that which a man has in his power. Genius is that which has a man in its power. Why can’t we do something, this winter, on a big scale? Why can’t we do some serious work, like against war or to promote the brotherhood of man?”

“Who’d read it?” I inquired.

“Well,” said Jim, “we’ve presumably got somebody reading your stories now and presumably somebody looking at my cartoons. They’d read the stuff.”

“But they wouldn’t read it again,” I pointed out.

“They’d read it before they knew it wasn’t any good,” explained Jim. “And we’d have scored before they knew it. Let’s work out one tremendous article about world peace or the brotherhood of man or something important like that. Let’s sock it all into one grand big smash. All our regular readers will read it before they discover it’s no good. And we’ll have done our life’s work. Our one noble deed. Our one worthy opus. I hate to pass away, being only a cartoonist.”

Intended to Be Great

“I often see,” I admitted, “a queer expression my family’s face and on the faces of friends and companions. I’ve sometimes wondered if it was pity that I should be so dumb as I am when I write.”

“Can we help it?” demanded Jim, a little angrily, though resting his arms on his drawing board and relaxing his head upon them. “Can we help it if we are only cartoonists and scribblers?”

“I always intended,” I confessed, “to be a great man. I used to read great books and plan what a great book I would write some day. I remember I had a row of books on my desk, as a young man, a row of books like Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ and ‘Sartor Resartus’¹ and Plato’s Republic’ and things like that. I remember how I used to come in at night, after a long day spent covering the waterfront or reporting the police court, and I would look with dignity at that row of great books and they would look back with dignity at me. It was a nice feeling to come in at night to that little room and look at those books.”

“Me,” said Jim, drowsily and unhappily, “I used to get from the library big heavy books about Michael Angelo, full of illustrations not only of his finished masterpieces but with fragments of his rough sketches and drawings preciously preserved across the centuries, and I would pore over these drawings, dreaming and practising, thinking some day I would paint great murals and travel from one country to another, in the wide world, painting the frescoes of cathedrals and vast canvasses that would hang in museums for silent multitudes of people to come and gaze at, breathless and wide-eyed.”

“Ho, hum,” I sighed. “I remember the bronze book ends that held up that long row of noble books. They were bronze moose. I can see those two bronze moose yet, peeping invitingly around the ends of the row of books. I think the end book around which one moose peeped was Maeterlinck’s ‘Treasure of the Humble,’² and at the other end, the moose spied at me from the corner of Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man,’ The books are gone, now. I gave them to my son. He was glad to have them. I can see him often, now, looking at them in a soft way, and they looking up at him with a quiet dignity. But I saved the two bronze moose book ends.”

“What do you do with them now?” inquired Jim, faintly.

“I use them for a rack on the mantel, to rest my good Mauser rifle on,” I confessed.

“That’s the way life is,” sighed Jimmie. “The commonplace always triumphs.”

He was resting his cheek on his arms now and his eyes were closed.

“Here,” I exclaimed, “snap out of it. Let’s do a little figuring. Let’s figure out our stories and cartoons for the next couple of weeks, anyway.”

Jim opened one eye and it had a blank expression in it.

“Think of it,” I cried, “seven, eight, nine years we have been up here, like flagpole sitters³, banging out a story and a cartoon a week…”

“Twenty years,” muttered Jim. “Twenty years for me. Fifty-two times twenty?”

“Flagpole sitters, that’s what we are Jim,” I assured him loudly, because he was obviously slipping away. “Just a couple of flagpole sitters.”

Here we are,” I propounded, “at the start of the new year, in the lovely September, with a whole fine year ahead of us. Think of all the white paper that lies ahead of us. Fifty square yards of drawing paper that you have to fill in the next 50 weeks with just your cartoon alone.”

“Ughhhh,” said Jim.

“And another 50 square yards for this cartoon for me,” I urged. “Jimmie, wake up. Summer’s over. We must be up and doing.”

But he just drew a long slow breath and snuggled a little on his arms.

“And think,” I shouted, “of the thousands of miles of newsprint that we’ve got to help smear. Tens of thousands of miles of newsprint, lots of which is still little trees growing in the swamps up north of Lake Superior somewhere. Think of that.”

“Zzzzzzz,” said Jim, just like in the comics. So I sat and looked at this grizzle-headed old artilleryman snoozing on his drawing desk, this wielder of billiard cues, this lover of pumps and barns and all the homely things of life, and saw in him all the people of the world, in all countries; the workers and the toilers, all flagpole sitters on jobs not amusing in the least; the men who wield axes and handle tools, eternally making the same things; the men and women who go each day at dawn to the same shop and the same store, forever and ever, and glad of it, to handle goods and bow across a counter to the old familiar and the unfamiliar faces.

I thought of sailors at sea, scrubbing decks and knowing they are five, four, three days from land, and that the land will be the same old land as ever. Of all the patient land, round and round, where men till and sow and garner, knowing that no fortune ever was hid beneath any acre, and only by determination. and patience, will even, the daily bread come up out of the earth.

Of rich men, I thought, and how ashamed they often must be, though their faces are proud. Of rulers and governors and presidents and princes, and how in the night time often they must weep.

Of women, young and lovely and afraid. Of cruelty and despair in nations bright upon the map. Of carelessness in a hundred million hearts. Of loneliness, in a hundred million hearts.

Of loveliness unutterable, glinting for an instant in a thousand million hearts, a glint, an instant, of joy, of delight, of pleasure, of happiness, this moment, countless as the pebbles on a shore, at this instant all over the earth, men, women, and children, feeling in their minds and hearts those beads of colored instants…

“Jimmie,” I said, but not very loud. “Jim, wake up. It’s a new year. Summer’s ended. Autumn is here. Winter’s coming. We must work. We must toil. The whole world is waking.”

But Jim just went on gently breathing.

So I shifted my heels a little better on the edge, and lowered my eyelids just to take the weight off them, and in a little moment, I knew that another crowded year of glorious life had begun.

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on September 2, 1942 as “Time for Toil”.

1. Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books is an 1831 novel by Thomas Carlyle. ↩︎
2. The Treasure of the Humble is a collection of thirteen essays by Maurice Maeterlinck. ↩︎
3. Flagpole sitting was a test of endurance and a fad in the 1920s. I believe Greg and Jim worked on the top floor of the Old Toronto Star Building, which is why he would say this. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 9, 1933.

“I see,” said Jimmie Frise, “that roller skating has ousted dancing at the amusement parks.”

“Ousted it, eh?” said I.

“It’s cooler than dancing, in the summer,” said Jimmie. “You just glide around and get a lovely breeze. Whereas dancing is kind of stuffy for hot weather. Do you dance?”

“No, Jimmie,” I said. “I have never learned to dance. When I was young I was always terrified that if I got up and took hold of a girl I would suddenly hug her. I’m like that. Sudden, you know. And nowadays, when it is quite all right to hug them, I’m too old.”

“Don’t you barn dance?” asked Jimmie.

“I’ve tried barn dancing,” I admitted, “but I always get paired with one of those great big healthy country girls, and instead of me whirling her off her feet, she whirls me off my feet. And you don’t know how sensitive we little people are about our feet being off the ground. Why, the only reason I work so hard and make money is to have a motor car. I’ve got to have a motor car, because my pride suffers so in a street car. Don’t tell anybody, but when I am sitting in a street car, my feet hang six inches off the ground. It’s terribly humiliating.”

“Well, sir,” said Jimmie. “I’d have thought you would be a very nice dancer.”

“No,” I said sadly. “I’m too emotional.”

“But you could roller skate,” said Jim. “I suggest we go down some evening and try a whirl at roller skating. You wouldn’t dare hug a girl on roller skates. It’s too risky. And you could pick a nice little wisp of a city girl.”

“That’s the trouble,” I said. “I have no taste for these wispy little city girls. The kind of girls I like are great big healthy country girls. I’d like to roller skate with a lovely big country girl. She could whirl me around all she likes on roller skates.”

“Let’s go down some night,” said Jimmie.

“How about our wives?” I suggested. “Would they mind?”

“Certainly not,” said Jim. “They know we do these things as part of our professional duty. Finding out what the other half of the world is doing, and recording it.”

“Well, in that case,” I said.

So that hot night, we drove down to the beach and walked over to the roller-skating casino¹.

Slow, wavey music was lilting out of the big round casino, and as we paid our way in, we saw a wonderful throng of young people, swinging gracefully and smoothly about the big circular hardwood floor.

“That looks cool²,” said Jim.

We were shown into a booth where a man handed us out roller skates. We sat down on the bench and fastened them on. Now, the roller skates I remember must have been a cheaper kind. They did not have such a greased lightning action as these new model ones. They must have ball bearings and a lot of grease on them.

“Oops,” said Jimmie, standing up and taking short, careful steps. He quivered all over, but not from excitement. Just from keeping his balance.

I got up and, without even trying, I rolled easily over to Jimmie. As we took each other’s arm, we sat down heavily. A young gentleman assisted us up to our feet.

“May I help you?” he asked. Such a nice boy.

“If you don’t mind,” I said. “Just help us over to that railing.”

We stood still and he shoved us over to the railing, where we took a good hold.

“My goodness,” said Jimmie, “how they have speeded up these roller skates.”

“They are awful quick on the get-away,” I said. “Free wheeling, sort of.”

We clung to the railing and watched the solid mass of skaters whirling by in long, lazy strides, to the music.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “we might come down some morning, when there is nobody here, and do a little practising.”

“Never take your hand from the plow,” said Jim, “once you have set to it.”

“Well, you start,” said I. “I’ll wait and see how you do it.”

“We’ll go hand in hand,” said Jim.

A little unsteadily, we edged along the railing and got near the entrance to the floor. The nearer we got to the surging, sweeping throng, the more terrifying it became.

“Jimmie.” I exclaimed, “we should never get out there. It’s ridiculous.”

“Once we are in the whirl, we will just be pushed along,” said he. “Come on.”

Holding hands, we stepped on to the floor and let her roll. We rolled about ten feet with all the skaters weaving gracefully wide of us. Then a couple bunted Jimmie slightly, as he took one of those staggery steps you take on roller skates, which whirled him about facing me. We clutched. Fell. And about twenty people piled on top of us, like a rugby scrimmage.

The same kind young man who picked us up before came and unscrambled us. He was some sort of an attendant.

“If you gentlemen can’t skate—” he said.

“Oh, we can skate,” said Jimmie, clinging to a pillar in the centre of the floor. “It just takes a few minutes for it to come back to us.”

Staggering and Stumbling

Hand in hand, we staggered and stumbled into the swing again, and got around once very nicely, without anybody being upset, even us, before the music stopped.

“Let’s practise now for a minute while everybody is off the floor,” said Jimmie. So we went around once again, hand in hand, with everybody very interested in us. They were laughing at Jimmie, his long legs looked so funny taking such little short steps. I just stood still, and Jim slid me along with him. Occasionally, my right foot would start to go another direction, but with a little effort, I could get it steered back in the right direction before it was too late.

The music started, and the floor filled up with the jam, and we went around five times before the band stopped again. We did much better. I took several steps all on my own, and except for once, when my right, or outer leg, got too far away for me to pull it back, everything went fine. It was Jim who saved me. He steered me for the side lines, and just as I was about to sit down with my right leg pointing to Niagara Falls, Ont., and my left toward Orillia, I came slam up against the railing.

Just behind the railing, a very large girl, whom I at once recognized as a lovely big country girl, was resting on her elbows. And as I came zooming in, all spread wide, she reached forward and caught me by the collar and held me steady until I got my balance.

“Whoa, boy!” she said, cheerfully.

As we proceeded on our way, Jimmie whispered:

“Now, there’s the girl for you. Two hundred pounds, if she’s an ounce. I bet she can skate like a truck.”

“She said ‘whoa boy’ to me,” I said.

“Well, that’s a sort of introduction,” said Jimmie, who was perspiring a little. “The next round, you had better get her to take you around.”

“Am I a burden to you?” I demanded. “Do you think I am doing nothing but hold on to you?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Jim. “Only I think that big girl could whirl you around better and, anyway, it would look nicer than seeing two grizzled old birds like us holding hands round and round.”

“Very well,” I said. “I’ll manage by myself.”

When the band ended, Jim went over and spoke to two girls who sing in the choir, and one of them said she would be very glad indeed to skate with Mr. Frise.

Between bands, you go out back of the railing, and I slithered and staggered around the curve until I came to where the big girl was still leaning splendidly on the railing. She happened to see me approaching and she turned around and smiled at me.

“Well, well,” she said. “And how’s it going?”

“Suddenly, thank you,” I said, taking hold of the railing. “I don’t seem to get the hang of this business.”

“It isn’t a hang,” she said. “It’s a glide. Look: you can’t fall if you tried.”

And she took a quick whirl on her skates and the whole two hundred pounds of her spun around gracefully.

“Marvellous,” I said. “Are you from the country?”

“Yes, why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I like country people,” I said. “They are sort of secure and safe.”

“Where’s your tall friend?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s found a couple of girls from the choir who will help him around,” I said.

“Well, in that case,” said the big girl, “maybe I might have the pleasure of steering you around this next band.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” I cried. “Would you really?”

“Certainly,” said the big girl, so strong, so secure.

Long, Sweeping Curves

The band started almost at once, and the big girl, whose name I never got, unfortunately, because I would like her relations in the country to know about this, took me by the elbow and slid me along the railing and out on to the floor. Before I knew where I was, I was moving around that big circle in long, sweeping curves, the other people, the walls, the pillars, were all a blur, it was like flying, floating, diving. I saw skaters ahead, and, just as I held my breath for the crash, we swooped sideways past them. Boy, was I whirling! And all in step with the music, too.”

“There’s your gentleman friend,” said a voice somewhere above me.

But all I saw of Jimmie was a grayish blur.

We swooped in toward the middle. We swept out toward the edge. I could feel the skates heating under my feet.

“How are you coming?” asked the voice on high.

“Great,” I said.

“All right, we’ll put a little pep into it, then,” said the big girl, as she took a firmer grip of my arm.

Jimmie said afterwards that it was the most wonderful spectacle he ever saw. The band forgot to quit. Two by two, the other skaters got out of the way and fled to the sides or else got right out of the casino.

“You were not only standing straight out,” said Jimmie, when I recovered consciousness. “Some of the time, your feet were actually pointing up about fifteen degrees.”

All I recall was a sensation like being on the dip the dips³. Which, of course, I never went on but the once, some years ago. I could hear the big girl breathing. She had me by the wrist, and sometimes by the elbow. All was a blur. We went around and around, the music getting faster and faster. I shut my eyes.

“Wheeeeee!” cried the big girl. “Atta boy!”

“Pardon me,” I said, with my eyes shut.

“You’re the kind of partner I like,” panted the big girl, off there in the blur and hum. “Whooop!”

That was one of the times I must have been sticking up in the air. I heard cheers, yells, and thunderous applause, but I did not bow. I just kept my eyes shut, and took a hold of the big girl’s sleeve with my other hand.

“Are you engaged for the next band?” panted the big girl. “May I have you for the next band?”

I pretended to be asleep.

I could tell by the sound that all the skaters were off the floor, but the band kept tooting away and the applause mounted.

Suddenly there was an awful crash. What happened was that Jimmie, feeling responsible for me, and thinking I was being made a fool of in public, simply slid out on to the floor and tripped the big girl deliberately. Jimmie, on his hands and knees, slid me along the floor to the exit, and when I came to I was in the little lobby, with my skates off.

“Where is she?” I asked Jimmie.

“Waiting inside for you,” said Jim.

“Oh, please!” I begged.

“It’s all right,” said Jim. “I said I’d bring you back as soon as we brought you to, but we’re sneaking out this back door right now.”

We sneaked. There was a big crowd outside, waiting to see the next performance through the lattice work. But Jim led me through safely, and we got to the car without any embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” said Jim.

“I’ll never live it down,” I said. “I am ruined!”

“Nobody could recognize you,” said Jimmie. “Not even me. You were just a blur.

“Small men,” I said, “should never at tempt dancing, skating or any other of the paired social activities. They should be the strong, silent type that is contemptuous of trifling things like dancing.”

“And anyway,” said Jim, “small men should stick to small girls.”

“You can’t control your taste,” I submitted.

“Yes, but you don’t have to let your taste break your neck,” retorted Jimmie.

So we decided not to take up roller skating.

Editor’s Notes:

1. In this case, “casino” goes by the definition of “a building or room used for social amusements”. ↩︎
2. In another change of slang, Jimmie just means it looks like a way of keeping cool. “Cool” as slang wasn’t used until later in the 1930s by jazz musicians and it took longer after that for use in the general public. ↩︎
3. “Dip the Dips” was the name of several early roller coasters. Apparently there was one at Hanlan’s Point in Toronto starting in 1908. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 17, 1935.

“After supper,” said Jimmie Frise, “how would you like to run up to North Toronto with me? Eddie phoned me this afternoon from Muskoka. He thinks he left the gas heater on in his cellar.”

“Anything, Jim,” I said. “Anything to break the monotony. If you suggested going to a movie, even, I would agree. This summer bachelor life is the bunk. Bored to death. World weary.”

“Eddie went to Muskoka,” said Jim, “the day before yesterday. And he woke up last night with the awful feeling that he had come away and left the heater on. You know that feeling.”

“This summer bachelor life,” I pursued, “is getting me down. There our wives are in the country, thinking we are up to all kinds of things. Throwing wild parties. Wine and song, anyway, if not women. And look at us. Wilted, dank, damp, limp, frowsy.”

“I bet if Eddie did leave the heater on,” said Jim, “there’ll be a heck of a cloud of steam if we turn on his taps.”

“If he did leave it on,” I said, “let’s both have a bath at Eddie’s expense. It will save the trouble of me going home and putting on that swell patent heater of mine and waiting till midnight for a couple of gallons of lukewarm water.”

“That’s an idea,” said Jim. “Eddie has all his keys with him. But he said I’d have no trouble getting in via the southeast cellar window, over the laundry tubs. There is a broken lock on that window. All we have to do is give a good shove and it opens.”

“I wonder if Eddie has a shower?” I asked.

“It’s his new house. I’ve never been in it,” said Jim. “But I suppose a modern house has at least one shower in its three or four bathrooms.”

“Me for a shower,” I said. “Good and hot. A slather of soap suds. Wash them off with a hot shower. And then, gradually, gradually, turn it cooler and cooler, until you have got it ice-cold, chilling you right to the marrow of your bones. Boy, I’d stay cool for forty-eight hours if I could get a good shower to-night.”

“Poor Eddie,” said Jim. “Sitting up there at his cottage, unable to enjoy the beauties of water and rock and sky, because he has the fidgets over this gas heater. I promised to call him long-distance to-night. He’ll sleep easy anyway.”

“Will we eat together to-night?” I asked.

“We can go to Eddie’s straight from downtown,” agreed Jim.

During the hot spells in summer Jim and I do not often eat supper together because we get on each other’s nerves. We can eat breakfast together fine. Lunch is not so good. But supper is generally fatal. Either I whine about the food or else Jimmie eats watermelon. I can’t bear to be in the same room with Jim when he eats watermelon. He thoops the seeds. He says he can’t get any kick out of watermelon unless he thoops the seeds. Thooping the seeds is sort of shooting them. Sometimes he shoots them at me. Or at a waitress. Or at a cup. It is like tiddly-winks, only worse. Jim just gets a kind of wild look in his eyes and starts thooping watermelon seeds, and all the begging, pleading and swearing in the world won’t stop him. It is only one of the mild insanities that we summer bachelors suffer from. Jim says I moan and sigh all summer. But it isn’t half as bad as thooping watermelon seeds. Don’t you think so?

“You choose the restaurant then,” I said. So we had a nice supper at a restaurant of Jim’s choosing. I paid the waitress 50 cents to say there was no watermelon. I ate tomato aspic jelly¹, cucumbers and radishes, which left no cause for whining.

Jim had pickled pigs’ tails and French stick bread, his two pets.

And after supper we drove up to Eddie’s. Eddie lives on one of those streets of north Yonge street where all the houses try so hard to be different that they are all the same. One of those streets which are deserted from July 1 to August 31. No children, no dogs and rarely a poor deserted summer bachelor disturbs the grass grown silence of these streets. Blinds drawn, morning papers for the past three weeks lying rolled on the verandas. Vines heavy. Leaves drowsing.

“One-forty-seven,” said Jim, as I thrust the touring car smoothly along the silent evening street.

No. 147 was a very nice house. Its grass was cut. Its windows had not that neglected look of blinds long drawn.

“You can tell Eddie only went away yesterday,” I agreed. “Where would Eddie get the money for a house like this?”

“He got it on a mortgage,” said Jim. “Instead of putting the money he made in 1929 back into stocks he put it into mortgages.”

“Ah, wise guy,” I said, as we walked up Eddie’s side drive.

“No,” said Jim. “Religious. He doesn’t believe in gambling.”

Eddie’s garden was lovely.

“A man is a fool,” I said, “to raise a garden like this and then go away at the best of it to some dopey cottage up amongst the poison ivy and bracken.”

We found the southeast cellar window. We could see the laundry tubs below it dimly. And we set to work on it. Jimmie shoved. I shoved. We pushed with our feet. We got a clothes prop in the garden and pried.

“H’m,” said Jim, “if that lock is broken it’s a good one.”

So Jim got a piece of iron off the rose pergola and, using it as a jimmie, pried the window open, smashing the lock if it wasn’t smashed already.

We slid down, via the laundry tubs. We lighted matches and found the gas heater. It was off.

“Poor Eddie,” said Jim. “Just like him. Of course he turned it off. I never knew a man more careful. Yet I never knew a man that worried more.”

“Well,” I said, “no bath.”

“Why not?” cried Jimmie. “Eddie wouldn’t begrudge us a couple of baths. Not after he put us to all this trouble. Let’s light it. We can then go up and have a look at his library. He has some wonderful books. And guns! Say, let’s see his guns.”

So Jim scratched a match and lighted the big new-fangled gas heater, and then led me up the cellar stairs.

Through the kitchen and dining room we strolled, and the living room. The living room was walled with beautiful oil paintings, great, big, rich, gold-framed paintings of dim cows and obscure, little, squatty, dull buildings. Real art. Imported art. Art the Old Country got sick of and sold to the new world.

“Eddie sure has rich tastes,” I exclaimed.

“I never knew he went in for paintings,” said Jim. “I guess it must be his wife.”

Upstairs we proceeded, peeping into large spacious bedrooms with colored counterpanes on the beds and luscious walnut furniture.

“Ho, ho,” said Jim. “Eddie has certainly gone up in the world. No wonder he hasn’t had me out to his new house. He must be hobnobbing with the swells now. Last time I was in his house he had iron beds painted brown and no wallpaper on the walls. Just a young fellow making his way in the world.”

“Don’t Try Anything Funny”

We found the library, but it was only a little room. There was no great display of books. Just a set of twenty volumes of one of those correspondence courses which fits you to be anything from a chartered accountant to a railroad engineer. And a few books like “How to Think,” “How to Succeed,” “The Art of Living.”

“H’m,” said I.

“Eddie has a wonderful library,” said Jim. Probably he has it somewhere else, in the attic.”

But in the attic we found nothing much but an old bicycle carefully wrapped in brown paper, some children’s garden playthings like teeters, slides and so forth, also very carefully put away in paper.

“Eddie sure has grown careful,” surmized Jim. “I suppose once you start being a success in life you get canny about everything. Even worn-out toys.”

So we went downstairs again, and sat in the little library waiting for the water to get hot. Jim found a couple of towels in the linen cupboard. I skimmed through a couple of the large, brightly bound books on “How to Think.” They were pretty lousy.

“It is always a surprise,” said Jim, “to discover what your friends read.”

And after a little while Jim said the water was hot and that sure enough there was a shower. So, me first, we had a shower and felt invigorated after the cold sting of the water. We took our time drying and had a couple of smokes while I read Jim some of the elegant bits out of the “How to Think.” Then we dressed and went downstairs and as we started down the cellar steps Jim opened the ice-box door.

“Look at here,” he cried.

And the ice box was loaded with stuff, a ham, two or three heads of lettuce, some tins of anchovies, bottle of olives, cheese, butter.

“Let’s have a snack,” suggested Jimmie. “We’ll be doing them a favor eating this stuff up. People are fools to go away and leave a lot of perishables in the ice-box. I’ll tell Eddie he didn’t forget the gas heater, but his wife forgot the ice-box.

“Well,” I said, “I guess I could eat a few anchovies.”

So we spread out a little feast and were just sitting down to it when we heard a key in the front door.

“What the heck?” said Jim.

“Hello,” came a deep voice from the front hall. “Who’s that?”

“Who are you?” retorted Jim.

Heavy footsteps approached and in the kitchen door stood a large pale man.

“So,” he said, half in and half out, “caught red-handed, eh?”

“What do you want in here?” demanded Jim.

“What do I want?” said the pale man, grimly, “in my own house?”

“Whose house?” mumbled Jimmie, half-rising. “Your huh-why-whuh?”

“Sit down, my man,” warned the big chap and he came a little farther into the kitchen, revealing a golf stick with an iron head in his right hand. “Please sit right down, boys, and don’t try anything funny. I’m an old athlete myself.”

A Student of Psychology

“Isn’t this Mr. Eddie Bilby’s house?” asked Jimmie in a nervous voice.

“My, my,” said the large pale gentleman. “What a clever idea! Isn’t this Mr. Somebody’s house? Well, well!”

He edged a little farther into the kitchen, got a chair in front of him and hefted the golf club a little handier.

“If you wish,” I contributed, “we will go now.”

“Oh, no you won’t,” said the gentleman. “You make a move, either one of you, and you’ll leave here in an ambulance instead of a patrol wagon.

Jim stood up.

“I assure you,” began Jimmie.

“Pardon me-” I said.

“Shut up,” roared the big fellow. “If ever I had the ill fortune to encounter criminals I would not, as most people would, call the police. I would seize the opportunity to help them to try to show them the error of their ways. I am one who has little faith in penal institutions.”

He licked his lips, straightened up and sort of set himself as if to deliver an oration he had been preparing for twenty years.

“I,” he began, “am not one who believes in penal institutions, in the cruelty of imprisonment as a means of deterring crime. I have studied psychology. I realize that criminals are born, not made. You cannot help yourself. Your fault is biological. If God made you a crook, how then can you help being what you are? Will cruelty change God’s handiwork? No. A thousand times no.”

“Pardon the interruption-” I said, with dignity.

“Will you shut up?” cried the pale gentleman angrily. “Listen, I have looked forward to this opportunity for years, nobody will listen to my idea, but now you’re going to. So shut up. Or take the consequences. As I was saying, I can see you both belong to a low grade of intelligence. I have, as I say, studied psychology. I understand all the latest systems of intelligence tests. I have gone farther than most into the relation of physiognomy and the outward manifestations of a low mental grade. At a glance I can tell, with reasonable accuracy, the intelligence rating of the average man. That is why I am successful in my chosen profession of life insurance. Now, as I say, I can tell your rating. I see you are of a low mental grade. But does that fill me with loathing of you? Not at all. Not at all.”

How To Cure Crime

“Then,” I began.

“One more crack out of you,” he snarled, “and I’ll forget my humanity send for the police. Now, shut up. As I say, I am inspired by your obvious handicap not to imprison you, not to clap you into jail, not to subject you to the senseless cruelty of our so-called system of justice, but to try to aid you, to exhort and persuade you. In a word, I hope, having you at this disadvantage, to prove to you that the path you are following cannot help but lead you to disaster. Whereas if you follow the path of truth and honesty, you will avoid all trouble with constituted authority.”

He cleared his throat. He shifted the chair aside, so that he could stand forth before us, with one leg bent and his arm raised in a gesture, one finger pointing upward.

“What,” he said, in a deep thrilling voice, his pale face paler with passion and his eyes looking far off and blazing with an inward light, “what profiteth it a man that he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? In this instance, how could you gain the whole world? At most you might have got a few objects of silver, maybe a valuable painting or two which you could not dispose of without grave risk? Yet for this pittance, this husks that the swine do eat, you two poor chaps have risked your souls.”

A dull boom sounded. A faint thud and shudder shook the room. The orator paused and listened. We heard a hissing sound.

“Eddie’s boiler,” said Jim.

“What did you say your friend’s name is?” asked the reformer, narrowly.

“Mr. Eddie Bilby,” said Jim. “At No. 147.”

“This.” said the reformer, a little dejectedly, “is No. 149. I don’t know the gentleman next door. He only moved in six months ago. Is he a shortish man with a bald head?”

“Yes, and has three children, two girls and a boy,” said Jimmie.

“It sounds like him,” said the pale gentleman, licking his lips regretfully.

We hastened out. We had taken the wrong house. Through Eddie’s cellar window, with a match, we saw billows of steam.

So, reversing the charges, we telephoned Eddie from the gentleman’s house next door.

And then the gentleman took us upstairs to his den, with the twenty volumes of success and “How to Think” and he told us his views about how to cure crime, and from there we got on to the Hepburn² government and the banking system of Canada and they general condition of the world.

Which is one of the various ways summer bachelors spend their evenings.

Editor’s Notes:

This story was repeated on August 21, 1943 with the same title.

1. This is a very old-fashioned recipe that is not often made anymore. It is tomatoes, celery, and parsley in gelatin. ↩︎
2. Mitch Hepburn, the Premier of Ontario at the time. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 5, 1939.

Greg and Jim find that what looks like an interesting stopping place produces monkey business in more senses than one

“Why is it,” demanded Jimmie Frise, “we didn’t stop for that poor chap back there?”

“We didn’t like his looks,” I suggested. “He looked sort of sticky.”

“He was probably a very worthy citizen,” countered Jim. “Maybe he was some poor chap hurrying to the bedside of his dying mother.”

“The law of averages is in his favor,” I reminded. “He signals 100 cars. The 101st picks him up.”

“I often wonder,” mused Jim, “why it is we pick one guy up and pass up 50 others. What is it about certain people that causes us to stop and pick them up? And what is it about hundreds of others that causes us to go right by them?”

“If our curiosity is aroused,” I submitted, “we usually stop. For example, last year I saw a young bum on the road with a bunch of flowers in his hand. I couldn’t help stopping for him. When I asked him why he was carrying flowers, he said it was to arouse curiosity in people so they would stop and pick him up. I never felt so indignant in my life.”

“I guess it’s a combination of things,” said Jim. “For instance, conscience. I have often passed a dozen hitch-hikers and then I began to feel mean, so I stopped at the very next one.”

“And probably got a far less pleasant companion in your journey,” I pointed out, “than if you had selected one of the earlier ones.”

“I’ve had some terrible specimens,” confessed Jim. “I’ve been itchy for a week after picking some of them up. Just imagination. But imaginary fleas are as bad as real ones.”

“The whole hitch-hiking game is difficult,” I stated. “On humanitarian grounds, we ought to give a lift to everybody. It is the parable of the good Samaritan in modern garb. But at the same time, it has a lot of evils. For example, the way those young beggars walk backward along the edge of the highway, thumbing. They walk just far enough out on the pavement to obstruct you, so that to pass them, you have to swing out. I have had some awful narrow squeaks passing cars that were swinging out to miss those backing-up hitch-hikers.”

“It is against the law to hitch-hike,” said Jim. “Yet the police pass hundreds of them every day on the highways.”

“Some laws are in force,” said I, “just in case they are needed. They are like the cop’s gun. He has it in case he needs it, but just because he has a gun is no reason why he should go around shooting it off all the time.”

“How about these?” cried Jim, as we approached two men with packsacks sadly thumbing at us as we approached.

We slowed the car slightly while we looked them over. Two more villainous gents it would be hard to imagine. They were scowling, they had blue stubble on their chins, they looked as if they had just broken out of prison and a life sentence and their clothes seemed damp. But they were thumbing in a commanding way.

“Step on it,” I said.

And as we went by, the two errant gentlemen shouted abusive epithets after us, their teeth bared.

“Phew,” said Jim. “Imagine that pair in the back seat.”

People Mostly Disagree

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “there are people who would actually pick those two up?”

“You can’t judge all mankind by us,” replied Jim. “No two people look exactly alike, and no two people really have the same impressions, the same thoughts or ideas. I don’t suppose any two people actually see alike. Or hear alike. How a rose smells to me may be entirely different from the way it smells to you.”

“In general, though,” I argued, “we all agree on what is nice and what isn’t nice.”

“In general, we disagree, you mean,” said Jim. “The girl one man would marry isn’t the girl 1,000 other men would. And the 1,000 girls those men would marry, the one man would no more marry than he’d marry a freight engine.”

“How about movie stars?” I inquired. “There seems to be general agreement as to them?”

“But who’d marry them?” demanded Jim. “Think that over. How many of the most beautiful movie stars you admire would you want to have around the house all the time?”

“There’s something in what you say,” I confessed. “They’d be an awful problem, wouldn’t they?”

“No, sir,” said Jim, “people for the most part disagree on all major points. Look at the political parties. Look at the religions. Look at the styles in furniture, in clothes, even in food. When I walk through a cafeteria, I always wonder who the heck is going to eat most of the junk on display. Because out of the whole shebang, I can see only one thing I want.”

“I guess we are more different than we generally suppose,” I agreed.

“That’s why somebody is likely to pick up those two thugs back there,” said Jim. “No doubt there are thousands of people who shudder at the thought of picking up a student preacher as we shudder at the thought of picking up those hyenas.”

“I once picked up a student preacher,” I admitted. “He rode all the way from Bradford to Bracebridge with me, and he talked the whole way about the evils of tobacco.”

“Did he convert you?” asked Jim.

“He converted me to never pick up pious-looking people again,” I averred. “I like a sort of medium-boiled hitch-hiker. I don’t go for thugs and I don’t go for saints in human form.”

“You’re very choosey in your benevolence,” remarked Jim.

“I have one rule,” I stated. “If anything looks interesting, I stop.”

We were by now slowing through one of the nice little cities we pass through on our way to Muskoka, and because the traffic in these places is all angle parked and therefore tangled up beyond all belief, with cars trying to go both ways and cars trying to back out of angle parking and girls in shorts jay-walking and gentlemen of all ages trying to drive a car and take in the scenery at the same time, Jim and I have long ago resorted to the plan of detouring off the main streets of these little summery cities and going around through the residential streets.

And as we drove slowly, as becomes residential streets, we saw a scene of considerable excitement ahead.

“Okay,” cried Jimmie, “here’s something interesting. Do we stop?”

“You bet,” I proposed.

So we stopped and hopped out.

Speaking Commandingly

Amongst a bevy of children, an organ grinder and his monkey were staging a most unusual act. The organ grinder was rolling on the ground emitting loud foreign cries, and the monkey, in its little red and green uniform, was dancing up and down like a maniac, round and round its master on the ground.

As we ran across, a motorcycle cop arrived and leaped off his bike.

“He’s sick,” said Jim.

The cop ran over and knelt down by the organ grinder, and the monkey, baring its teeth, savagely rushed in as if to attack the law.

“Here,” yelled the cop, kicking at the monkey and signalling to Jim and me, “keep that brat away.”

“There’s no string,” shouted Jim.

“Shoo him,” shouted the cop, rolling the organ grinder over.

“Stand back, children,” I said, commandingly. “I’ll keep the children back, Jim. You attend to the monkey.”

“If it had a string on it,” cried Jim anxiously. “Or if I had a club.”

The monkey was jibbering in a high squeaky voice, baring its fangs horribly and dancing wildly around, in and out, trying to get a bite at the bent part of the policeman.

“It’s appendicitis, likely,” said the cop, straightening up. “I’ll throw him in my side car. You gents look after this monkey until I get back.”

“Take our car,” I suggested eagerly.

“No thanks,” said the cop, arching away from another attack by the bounding little beast. “I don’t want any sick man and a monkey both in any car with me. How would you like to bring them both in your car, and I’ll ride ahead, clearing the traffic?”

“We’ll guard the monkey until you get back,” I agreed hurriedly. “Stand back, you children.”

And I went busily in a circle, a wide circle, holding the excited children back.

“Jim,” I commanded, “try to chase the brute up a tree.”

Jim warily circled around the monkey, while the traffic officer hoisted the stricken organ grinder heavily to his feet and dragged him over to the side car.

The monkey did not know whether to follow his master or to stay with the grind organ which was lying on the ground. It raced pitifully after his master, Jim heading it off with wild whoops; then it raced back and jumped on the organ, bounding up and down and shrieking tiny shrieks.

“Hey,” shouted Jim. “The next time it gets off the organ, you pick the organ up and start to play. Maybe that will soothe it.”

“O, yeah,” I protested.

But the children were well back by now and a lady was issuing loud commands from a nearby veranda. And there was really nothing else for me to do.

“Okay,” cried Jim, as the monkey took a last despairing run after the departing motorcycle.

I picked up the organ, ready to drop it if the beast attempted to return to it, and started to wind the handle. It played “The Music Goes Round and Round.”¹

With a wild leap, the little monkey started for me, a look of joy on its face.

“Shoo!” I shouted, stamping the one leg of the organ.

“Hoy,” shouted Jim, cutting in with flailing arms and large leaps.

And the monkey, instead of leaping on to the organ, which I was in the act of jettisoning, wheeled and leaped up a Hydro pole instead. Six feet up, arms and legs wrapped around the pole, it clung there, glaring angrily and with purpose at Jim and then at me, making up its mind.

“Chase it higher,” I shouted, winding furiously. “Chase it to the top.”

Jim ducked in and slapped the post safely below the monkey. And with a deft snatch, the beast took Jim’s new straw hat, a lovely new boater, the mate to mine, which we had purchased only this morning at one of those August straw hat sales.

“Here,” said Jim. “Give me that.”

And Stop For Nothing

But the monkey, as slick as a sailor, climbed aloft and proceeded to bite, rip, tear and unwind Jimmie’s lovely hat.

“Here,” shouted Jim, starting to shinny up the pole.

“Jim,” I laughed, winding the music heartily, “don’t do that. Leave it up there.”

“That’s my hat,” shouted Jim.

“A hat is a cheap price to pay, if we can keep it up there,” I pointed out, as the children gathered round me.

“Yes, somebody else’s hat is always a cheap price,” sneered Jim, eyeing mine.

When the monkey had torn Jim’s to its ultimate ribbon and flung the last fragment at us in irate fury, it crouched in deep meditation, eyeing me intently. I played very sweetly. I played slow. I played fast.

“He sees your hat,” sang Jimmie heartily.

“Stand over near the pole,” I commanded.

“You stand there,” suggested Jim.

“Don’t let him come down,” I shouted. “Keep him up. Keep him up. Goodness knows what we’re in for if we let him down.”

“Throw him up your hat,” offered Jim. “

“Don’t be a fool,” I retorted. “One hat is enough.”

“Throw him the hat,” cried Jim. “He’s starting down.”

And in fact the horrid beast was shifting position and starting to back down the pole.

“Hoy, shoo, ffft, scat,” I shouted, grinding very loud on the organ, which was still playing the same tune over and over.

“Your hat,” said Jim, ceremoniously, lifting my hat off, as both my hands were engaged.

Jimmie walked over and held that hat up to the monkey. It looked down, accepted the hat, climbed to the top again and, with an air of fury, and a little more deliberately, proceeded to rip my good hat to pieces, flinging the pieces at us with an almost human derision.

“Suppose I run down the street,” suggested Jim, “and find another August hat sale? Give me a couple of bucks and I’ll buy you one and I’ll get one for myself. We may need quite a supply of hats before the day’s up.”

“Stay right here,” I ground.

“May I take a whirl at the organ?” suggested Jim, very polished. “You’re sweating.”

But at that moment we heard the welcome roar of a motorcycle, and back came the cop with a gentleman in the side car armed with a large net.

“The dog catcher,” cried all the little children.

And in no time at all, the dog catcher had scooped the little monkey into the net and transferred it into a large sack.

“Whew,” said Jimmie and I.

“Thanks very much,” said the speed cop. “Maybe they give some kind of medal for this sort of thing. I’ll see you get it.”

“How’s the patient?” asked Jim.

“He’s okay,” said the cop. “Been eating too much pop corn, the doctor said. Nothing serious.”

So he drove off with the dog catcher and the bass organ and the bag.

“Look here, gentleman,” called the lady who had been watching from the veranda. “Don’t leave all that litter on that lawn.”

We looked very indignant, but picked up all the pieces of straw hat and made a neat pile of them on the side of the road.

“The best thing,” I said, as we got back in the car, “is to nick up nobody and stop for nothing.”

Editor’s Notes:

1. The Music Goes ‘Round and Around is a popular song written in 1935. It can be heard here. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 28, 1934.

“Did you ever,” asked Jimmie Frise, “do any flying?”

“In the war,” I said, “I once went up by accident.”

“By accident?”

“Yes,” I explained. “Out of curiosity I visited an aerodrome and there I bumped into a chap I knew. He said he would like to drive me down to see my brother at an aerodrome about fifty miles away. That was four days’ march for us infantry. So I said swell. He led me over to an aeroplane. He assisted me in. He got in front. Before I came to I was rushing through the air, with the earth tilted up on its edge below me, and he couldn’t hear me yelling to stop.”

That must have been awful,” sympathized Jim.

“It was,” I assured him. “You have to think fast in this life. When he said ‘drive me down’ I thought he meant in one of those numerous trucks, motorcycle sidecars and so forth that the air force was equipped with. But there I was, pushing through the air at a frightful speed, with towns and slag heaps of mines zipping past underneath, and me clinging to a piano stool in the back end of a sort of a box kite called a Bristol Fighter¹. Phew!”

“Did you like it?” asked Jim.

“After I got down,” I explained, “I liked it fine. That is the main thing about flying. Once you are on the ground flying is a lovely sensation.”

“Do you get giddy?” inquired Jim.

“I can’t hang a picture from a step- ladder,” I assured him, “without either losing my balance or having to go and lie down for half an hour.”

“You get sea sick too,” pointed out Jim.

“Indeed I do,” said I.

“It is all imagination,” declared Jim.

“Is that so?” I sneered.

“Absolutely imagination,” repeated Jim. “All those feelings of giddiness, dizziness, sea sickness, car sickness are just the result of having a soft and limp mind. You can control almost everything by your mind.”

“Listen,” I said, “if I get on a merry-go-round I get so dizzy I can’t walk straight for two or three hours. My knees turn to jelly. My heart flutters. My head swims. I feel I am still on the merry-go-round, going round and round. I walk in big curves, thinking I am going straight.”

“All nonsense,” stated Jim loudly. “Perfect nonsense. Your imagination is playing tricks with you. Probably always has. What you need is a little discipline of your mind. You must get it into your head that mind has power over matter. You can will yourself to be warm when you think you are cold. Or to be cool when you think you are hot.”

“Rubbish,” I said, unbuttoning my vest, because it was a hot day.

On the Neck of a Giraffe

“A man of your intelligence,” said Jimmie, “should know the power of his own mind. You could be a steeplejack. You could be an ironworker on some of those thirty and forty storey buildings away up there in the sky…”

“Stop, Jimmie, stop!” I commanded. “I am getting slightly ill just thinking of it.”

“Really,” declared Jim, “you ought to do something about it. You have been letting your mind go limp for so long, by George, you some day may not be able to control it at all. Why don’t you try to control your feelings?”

“I am what I am,” I stated.

“Free will,” retorted Jim. “You have free will, haven’t you? Just say to yourself, I can climb the tallest ladder and not feel dizzy.'”

“I feel dizzy just thinking about a tall ladder.” I replied.

“Tell you what we’ll do,” said Jimmie. “To-night we’ll go down to Sunnyside². We’ll get aboard the merry-go-round and I’ll sit beside you and keep your mind drilled. I’ll take charge and keep saying. ‘You’re not dizzy, it can’t make you dizzy, you are enjoying the breeze, you are enjoying the fun,’ and if you get dizzy, after really making-up your mind not to, I’ll draw your nose without that jag in it after this.”

That jag in the nose happens to be the one sore spot in a long and happy friendship.

“I’ll try,” I agreed.

Jimmie and I both love amusement parks. We like the smell of them and the sound of them and the sights of them. We love to see our fellow men unawares. We love to watch men and women and youths and children and babies all off parade, going along with never a thought or a care. And you can see them more careless at amusement parks than anywhere else. In their eyes is the true expression of themselves, unaware, unguarded. And those expressions are so much more lovely than the expressions they put on.

Jimmie, a man of action, led me resolutely to the merry-go-round. It was mostly occupied by young girls in fluffy dresses who stand holding on to the neck of a giraffe or a lion and whirl round and round with a breeze against them, and by perspiring young fathers holding two-year-old pop-eyes on the back of a zebra for a tiger.

The music slacked, the merry-go-round slowed and in the rush of people off it and on Jimmie and I got discreetly aboard the inner ring of animals, I choosing a giraffe and Jimmie a lion. Jim sat crossways and with easy grace. I got my feet in the stirrups and took a good warm clutch on the long neck of the giraffe.

“Ha, ha,” I laughed excitedly. “It can’t make me dizzy.”

“Atta boy,” said Jim.

A lone lady, middle-aged, thin and anxious looking, struggled to climb aboard a prancing horse just ahead of me and found it too difficult. She turned and, with a nervous smile, held her purse out to me.

“Pardon me,” she said, “would you hold my purse, please?”

“Certainly, madam,” said I, remembering I have an honest face.

I took the purse, a brown, rather young-looking purse for so lean and severe a lady. She tried to mount the horse again; last-minute people were scampering aboard, grabbing what was left. The merry-go-round started and the lady, moving away from the horse, with a little gesture of fright, took a quick run and jumped off just as the machine got going.

Whirling Through Space

“Hey, lady!” I called, above the music, waving the purse.

But I had to attend to other matters. The merry-go-round started its wild surging, round and round, and I was busily engaged in getting a good strong hug, with both arms and both elbows, around the neck of the giraffe.

“Atta boy,” came Jim’s voice from behind me: “this can’t make you dizzy! You’re o.k. You’re enjoying it. The breeze. The whirl, eh!”

There was a wild blur of faces and bodies passing me and to look for the lady who had given me her purse was out of the question, so every time I came past where I thought she had got off I waved the purse slightly to reassure her.

Blur, music, surge, blur, blur, blur. I began to feel rather damp and the familiar sensation of weakness at the knees, elbows and wrists began to creep over me.

“Atta boy,” cried Jim, above the rowdy music. “From now on, no crook in your nose. It’s a promise!”

I clung tighter to the giraffe’s neck. I felt myself leaning far out to the edge, though I knew by the feel of the giraffe’s neck that I was still square on top of it.

Blur, blur, blur. Would the fool thing never stop! I ceased waving the purse. I hoped the lady would be right handy when I got off, because I did not want to have to weave my way amongst any crowd when I got off. I had no feeling any more, but just a vast empty wheeling sensation. My eyes felt permanently crossed. I gripped the giraffe’s neck until my arms ached, yet I felt as if I were leaning at an incredible angle far off to the right.

“Hold tight; it’ll soon be over,” assured Jimmie.

I felt he could tell I was not earning a straight nose.

I felt the whirling machine start to slacken. I clung all the tighter. Slowly it came to a stop, but I and the giraffe kept whirling straight onward, forever and forever, round and round. I could see the crowds climbing down and off and new ones scrambling on and up. But I just held grimly until Jim came and helped me off.

“Not so good, eh?” asked Jim, steadying me.

“WooooOOOOOooooo,”I assured him. I wove dimly amongst the wild beasts.

Two young ladies got in front of us.

“That’s my purse!” hissed one of them. She made a snatch at it.

“Pardon me,” I said unsteadily, “but it is not. A lady much older in a gray woollen dress gave me…”

“Give me my purse or I’ll scream police,” cried the young lady, angrily but quietly.

“Hush!” interposed Jimmie. “Come outside, please. There is some mistake.”

“I’ll scream police,” warned the young lady, while she and the other girl followed me, close.

“I’ll Call the Police”

But in the dimness of the merry-go-round we paused.

“You are not the person who gave me this purse,” I said, while Jimmie held me up.

“That’s my purse. My name is in it and five dollars,” said the young lady shrilly. “And it was snatched out of my hand in the crowd here not ten minutes ago!”

“Miss,” I said, “so help me, a middle-aged lady gave it to me to hold.”

“Look in it. My name is Brown. It’s written inside the cover.”

I opened it. There was “Brown” written inside the flap.

“There,” she said. “And five dollars.”

I opened it.

There was nothing in it at all. Not even a copper.

“Oh,” wailed the young lady. “I’ll call the police.”

“Wait a minute,” cautioned Jim. “Just a second. I tell you I saw the lady give him the purse!”

“You’re both thieves,” cried the young lady more loudly, and her friend started taking a deep breath to let out a yell.

“Shhhh!” I begged. “Look, won’t you believe that this purse was given to me? Maybe the other lady snatched it from you and then got me to hold it.”

“Will the police believe that?” asked the girl suspiciously. “We’ll see.”

And she started to swell up for a yell.

“Here,” cried Jim, “don’t be foolish. It will just create a lot of trouble. Here, give her five dollars.”

“I won’t be gypped,” I cried, while around me the lights whirled and the music of the new revolving merry-go-round made me lurch and cling to Jim’s arm.

“How dare you?” cried the young lady.

I reached in and gave her my one bill, a five.

She put it in the purse.

“The very bill,” said she, glancing at it easily, “that was in it before.”

She and her friend whirled their skirts at us and vanished in the throng.

“Let’s,” said Jimmie, “follow them. I bet you any money in the world that the older woman is working with them and that you were framed. I bet they are a gang. I bet she wouldn’t have yelled for the police for five hundred dollars. Come on.”

“WhoooOOOOoooo, Jimmie,” I begged. “Don’t let go of me.”

We went over to a bench and while Jim sat, talking loudly about how one woman planted the purse and another one claimed it, I went on a private journey, round and round, round and round, sitting on that magic bench that went nowhere, yet went round and round.

After about half an hour of silent prayer, concentration, contemplation and sitting with eyes squeezed tight shut I asked Jimmie:

“How about the twist in my nose?”

“That,” said Jim, not unkindly, “is not a jag or a twist. It is a crook in your nose. And it stays in, in memory of this night.”

Which I suppose is only fair to a man with a limp mind.

Editor’s Notes:

1. This would be a Bristol F.2 Fighter. ↩︎
2. The Sunnyside Amusement Park existed from 1922 until 1955. ↩︎