Category: Other Story Page 1 of 10

Greg was just doing a favor-then the small boy appeared

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Ed McNally¹, March 27, 1965.

There was a small chunky boy, about five years old, sitting on Miss Pitchett’s doorstep.

I halted. I took a firmer grip on the book in my hand.

“Hi!” said the small boy.

“Hello, there,” I responded cautiously.

I advanced slowly up the walk, rearranging my tactics. For this was wholly at variance with my expectations.

Miss Pitchett, with whom I was not acquainted, had telephoned me before lunch.

“Mr. Clark,” she said, “our mutual friend, Mr. Gillis Purcell², tells me you have a copy of old Tiger Dunlop’s Statistical Sketches³.”

“Yes,” I said, not without pride. “I have the 1832 edition, published by John Murray in London…”

“Oh, Mr. Clark,” said Miss Pitchett, “My ancestors came out to Canada in 1835, and they bought their land in the Huron Tract directly from Dr. Dunlop, who was the superintendent of the Canada Company. Could I POSSIBLY borrow the little book?”

“Why, of course,” I replied. “It is very fragile, you understand. A little paperback, 133 years old.”

“I would take the greatest care of it,” assured Miss Pitchett. “I live only four blocks over from you. I could drop by at your convenience.”

I did some fast and fancy thinking. Miss Pitchett sounded elderly to me. And it has been my experience that elderly ladies, especially unmarried elderly ladies, who are interested in family history and genealogy are inclined to be long-winded: I didn’t want to be stuck all afternoon with a long-winded lady.

“Why, Miss Pitchett,” I said, “I go for my constitutional every afternoon. And if you live only four blocks away, I’ll be delighted to drop the little book in to you.”

“Thank you,” exclaimed Miss Pitchett. “You can have no idea how I look forward to having this book in my hands. I have read everything about the old Doctor, and own most of the books about him. But I have never laid eyes…”

“It’s a delightful and humorous book,” I cut in. “He was a wonderful old scalawag.”

“My ancestors were terrified of him,” said she.

“Indeed?” said I.

“They were teetotallers.”

“Ah,” said I.

So after lunch, I got down my copy of Statistical Sketches Of Upper Canada, which, on account of its fragility, I keep in a hard-cover slip case. I glanced through it, to refresh my mind with the old boy’s hilarious descriptions of our pioneer cookery and our social customs of those gallant days. Then I set off for my walk.

And on Miss Pitchett’s doorstep sat this chunky small boy.

“Hi!” he repeated, as I came slowly up the steps.

When I rang the bell, he stood up and studied the object in my hand closely. I shifted it to the other hand.

When Miss Pitchett opened the door, he stepped in ahead of me and vanished, to my relief, when Miss Pitchett insisted that I take off my hat and coat for a few minutes.

Her living-room walls were stacked with books.

She took Statistical Sketches from me almost with reverence, and slid the slip case open.

“At last!” she said.

There was a loud clunk from back in the kitchen. It was a refrigerator door closing.

“He must be hungry,” said Miss Pitchett, jumping up. “Excuse me a moment, and I’ll get him something to eat.”

“Ah,” I said, taking Statistical Sketches back from her hand. “Little boys are always hungry.”

I could hear them chatting while I got up and studied Miss Pitchett’s shelves. It was a good collection. She had all 32 volumes of the Chronicles Of Canada (I counted them). She had the same green-and-gold bound complete works of Francis Parkman that I own. She had 10 or more of the Makers Of Canada.

“I had no peanut butter,” said Miss Pitchett, returning. “That’s what he wanted. But I gave him what we used to call a ‘piece’ when I was young.”

“I remember,” I said giving her back the book. “Thick bread and butter, plastered with brown sugar!”

“Right,” said Miss Pitchett, and we sat down to explore.

“I regret,” I said, “that I can’t leave the book with you Miss Pitchett. I remembered, after you phoned, that I had promised it to a young chap who is writing his Ph. D. thesis on the Canada Company.”

There was a sound of dishes rattling in the kitchen. Miss Pitchett sat up anxiously and listened.

“I was hoping,” she said, “to copy parts of it for my collection…”

“Well, perhaps some other time,” I suggested.

The little boy appeared at the dining-room entrance.

“I want another piece,” he said.

“Of course,” said Miss Pitchett, jumping up dutifully and accompanying the boy back to the kitchen.

I certainly was not going to leave Statistical Sketches, that fragile old treasure, in any house with any chunky small boys in it. The older the book, I recollected, the more a little boy thinks he should scribble in it, with pink or orange crayons preferred.

“Perhaps,” I said, when Miss Pitchett returned and began leafing tenderly amid the old brittle pages, “maybe toward summer, you might come over to my place and spend an afternoon or two copying out what you want.”

I figured by summer, this little boy might be off somewhere at a summer cottage with his parents.

“That would be splendid,” said Miss Pitchett, glancing up as the little boy passed in the hallway and proceeded upstairs.

So for a while we two elders sat engrossed with the little book, I finding some specially witty and ludicrous passages for her, which I read to her with what I think is a Scottish accent, like the old doctor’s. But Miss Pitchett could not pay full attention on account of various thumps and bangs coming through the ceiling.

“I had better,” she said, “slip up and see what he is doing.”

“Little boys,” I assured her, “are always up to something.”

So I had time to further inspect Miss Pitchett’s shelves, and they were full of all the right stuff.

“He’s made a sort of a den,” said Miss Pitchett, returning a little breathless, “out of chairs and my bedside table.”

“Small boys like dens,” I explained. “Little girls play house.”

“He’s got the counterpane⁴ off my bed, for a roof.”

So, a little regretfully, for that young scholar working on his Ph. D. was a sheer invention on my part, I stood up to say goodbye and put Dr. Dunlop in his slip case.

I could see Miss Pitchett was anxious to get back upstairs. The thumps and bangs were becoming a little more violent.

She helped me on with my coat and handed me my hat.

When I went to the door, she asked:

“Aren’t you taking your little boy?”

“MY little boy!” I said, astonished.

“Isn’t he yours?” she asked.

“My dear lady,” I said, “he was sitting on the doorstep when I arrived, and he stepped in ahead of me when you…”

“Good gracious!” said Miss Pitchett, heading for the foot of the stairs.

“Boy?” she called up.

“BOY!” I called up, more masterfully.

He came to the top of the stairs, holding a small china figurine in his arms.

“I found a doll,” he announced.

“Come down,” I commanded.

Miss Pitchett took the figurine from him gently. It was Royal Doulton, the one of the girl in the windswept frock.

“Boy,” I asked, “where do you live?” “Up the street.”

“How far up the street?”

“At the corner.”

“Ah,” said Miss Pitchett, “the apartment house. I THINK now I have noticed this little fellow playing about…”

We escorted him to the door. We watched him hippety-hopping down the walk and up the street.

“Miss Pitchett,” I said, “I have been thinking. I do not believe this young friend of mine, the one who is working on his Ph. D. thesis, will require Statistical Sketches for a couple of weeks or so.”

She took the slip case from my hand.

She understood perfectly.

“But,” I added, “whenever you put it down, I wonder would you be good enough to put it up there, on one of the higher shelves?”

“Oh,” cried Miss Pitchett, “you may be sure I won’t let him in again!”

We shook hands and I left.

But I will spend a couple of uneasy weeks, just the same.

Little boys can do anything.

Editor’s Notes: This story appeared in Ten Cents off Per Dozen (1979) and originally appeared in Weekend Magazine.

1. Ed McNally was the editorial cartoonist for the Montreal Star and illustrated for Weekend Magazine. ↩︎
2. Gillis Purcell was the general manager of Canadian Press from 1945 to 1969. ↩︎
3. William “Tiger” Dunlop was known for a number of things, including  his work in the Canada Company, helping to develop and populate a large part of Southern Ontario. ↩︎
4. An old-fashioned word for bedspread. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Duncan Macpherson, January 28, 1950.

“This house,” gloated my Cousin Madge, “is a gold mine.”

She glanced both proudly and distastefully around her living room.

“See that damn thing up there?” She pointed to the mantelpiece.

On it stood a small glass dome inside which, stiff and stark, a bouquet of pallid wax and linen flowers bloomed funereally in pink and cream.

“Guess,” coughed Cousin Madge hilariously, “how much it is worth?”

“I suppose,” I reflected, “it might have great sentimental value…”

“Sentimental my eye!” wheezed Cousin Madge. “That thing is worth $20!¹“

“Who to?” I checked.

“To anybody,” assured Madge. “I saw one exactly like it yesterday in an antique shop. Exactly.”

“Aw,” I protested. “Antique stores. You can’t go by the prices in antique stores. The antique dealers are up against a peculiar problem. They run stores. In stores, it is customary to put prices on things. So they just think of a number and put it on. The price of an article in an antique store, however, is merely a starting point. It indicates roughly the figure at which you are supposed to shoot. If they mark a thing like that glass dome full of wax flowers at $20, they expect you to say you would be willing to give $10. That being $8 more than they paid for it, they put on a doubtful air for a minute, and then reluctantly accept the $10.”

“You don’t like antique stores?” queried Cousin Madge, sharply.

“I love them,” I certified. “I haunt them. Antique shops, in this mass-production, consumer-conscious, price-fixed age, are one of the last refuges of individualism. The goods are individual. The seller is an individual. The customer is an individual, or he would be in a bargain basement, somewhere, instead of in a mortuary of bygone gewgaws.”

“But the prices, you said?” persisted Cousin Madge.

“Now, look!” I explained. “When you go into an antique store, you are looking for something unique. Something that cannot be bought anywhere else. Something that nobody else has got. Uncommon. Rare. And old. Facing you is a man or woman, the antique dealer, who, instead of getting a job selling mass-produced merchandise, has spent time and money, has travelled far and off the beaten track, going to a great deal of trouble to find and rescue these few, beautiful, odd things which, in this cold-blooded age, would normally have been thrown on the junk pile. Therefore, when you stand face to face with an antique dealer, two wholesome forces have met: your desire for something different and his satisfaction at having provided for your need.”

“Prices!” insisted Cousin Madge.

“No: there you go!” I protested. “You are trying to apply the principles of vulgar business to an art. The prices in an antique shop are dictated by the extent of your need or desire, in conflict with the gamble the dealer has taken in finding, buying and now offering to you this odd and curious item which, perhaps, you alone in all the world, want!”

Cousin Madge pondered this a moment, meanwhile continuing to gaze around her living room with that same expression of mingled affection and distaste.

“Twenty bucks!” she mused, as her eye again fell on that monstrosity of a glass dome with wax flowers.

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“It was my mother’s,” said Cousin Madge. “It was given to her as a wedding present by her old Aunt Maria. That must be over 50 years ago, when every parlor had a glass dome on the mantel, either flowers, or stuffed birds or small white nude statues of slender ladies with their arms draped around each others’ shoulders, standing…”

“But why have you kept it?” I needled.

“Because I didn’t know what the heck else to do with it!” snorted Cousin Madge. “I just left it there, because where else could I put it?”

“It’s very quaint,” I confessed. “Very old fashioned very…”

“Ah, that’s not the ONLY treasure,” declared Cousin Madge, hitching herself powerfully forward in her chair. “Just take a look at that mantel. See those two china vases on the end? Pure Dresden. See all those knickknacks?”

She hoisted herself up and went to the mantel, and I followed her. On the shelf must have been 30 items: lustre trays, tiny bowls, leaf-shaped dishes. A bronze slipper with a maroon velvet pincushion cunningly concealed. A gilt-handled paper knife with a horn blade.

Wordless, Cousin Madge led me to a fancy walnut table in the corner. It too was covered with bric-a-brac, a hand-painted china tray, with plums and tulips, beautifully arranged so that you had to look twice to see which was which. Madge pulled out the table drawer: it was stuffed with bric-a-brac. She led me into the dining room, where a large old-fashioned china cabinet with glass door stood back, in the gloom.

It was full of china of every period and style, as well as cut glass vases, carafes, olive trays, pickle dishes. She took them out and clinked them with her finger nail. Real stuff, see?

And silver. Silver entree dishes, silver candlesticks, silver pie servers, pickle forks, sugar tongs, salt cellars, salt bowls, all tarnished from, long disuse.

“This house,” asserted Cousin Madge loudly, “is a gold mine.”

“You should give a lot of this stuff away,” I reproved, “to your nephews and nieces.”

“The heck with them!” said Cousin Madge, heartily. “I’ve got a better idea. I’m going to make myself a little dough.”

“Are you going to try to sell some of this?”

“I got the inspiration yesterday,” announced Madge, “in that antique store. I just happened to drop in, to get a closer look at that glass dome and wax flowers. You could have knocked me over when I asked the prices! They’re terrific.”

“Sure,” I corrected, “but the value of these things of yours, tucked away in drawers, has nothing to do with the price of goods sitting for sale in an antique shop. They may sit there for months, years.”

“According to his figures,” asserted Madge, “I bet I’ve got $200 worth of junk, right here. And I’d never miss the stuff.”

“You wouldn’t get $50 for it,” I ventured.

“I bet I’d get $100,” cried Cousin Madge. “Maybe more!”

“Did you discuss the matter with the antique shop man?”

“How could I,” said Madge, “when I was asking the price of everything? I didn’t want him to think I was checking on him.”

“He probably suspected,” I offered.

“Have you got your car outside?” asked Cousin Madge.

“I’m on my way downtown, an important interview,” I hastened.

But I am always too late.

“Put the kettle on and get a cup of tea ready,” commanded Cousin Madge. “I’ll be dressed in a jiffy.”

In a few minutes, she came back downstairs carrying an empty suitcase and a large wicker market basket. From the kitchen cup- board she gathered up a bunch of old newspapers.

Then, calmly and with the decision that indicated she had given the matter all the thought it required, she proceeded to loot her home.

First of all, down off the mantel came the family heirloom, the glass dome with wax flowers. This she tenderly packed with clumps of newspaper in the big wicker market basket. Off the mantel also came lustre trays, the bronze slipper, the knife, a bulbous glass paper weight showing a picture of the Crystal Palace, the two Dresden vases. The mantel looked horribly barren when she had stripped it. But the market basket was bulging.

From tables and shelves, from the china cabinet and from the cupboard ends of the dining room sideboard, she took silver dishes, bowls, forks, servers, tongs; cut glass dishes and bowls of all sizes; china objects of every sort and description. She worked in about 12 assorted cups and saucers.

“Indian Tree,” she related, as she packed them. “Royal Doulton. Bridge prizes. Christmas presents. For years and years…”

I helped carry the loot out to my car and we set the basket and suitcase, together with an overflow carton, in the trunk of the car. Cousin Madge directed me to the street where the antique shop of her choice was located.

The instant we staggered through the door with the suitcase and basket, I knew Cousin Madge was recognized.

The antique man tightened his lips, scratched his head and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling all in one fluid gesture.

“I thought,” announced Cousin Madge, heartily, “that you might care to look over some stuff I have here. This is just a sort of overflow, that I am prepared to sacrifice, of course, provided I get a decent price.”

“Lady,” said the antique man, “look! Have I any more room for anything? Can you see ONE SPOT where I could lay anything down?”

“The things I have here,” said Cousin Madge, moving cautiously toward him between the small laden tables, the shelves, the counters, “is away ahead of anything you’ve got here.”

“No doubt, lady, no doubt,” said the antique man, who spoke with a heavy Glasgow accent. “But it so happens I am overloaded. Upstairs, in five rooms. I’ve got tons of stuff. Some of it I haven’t even unpacked in two or three years.”

“I’d like you to see this,” soothed Cousin Madge, in her best dominating style. “One look and you’ll want it.”

“Pardon me,” said the Scotsman, scratching his head with both hands, as Cousin Madge opened the suit case. “But up country, I’ve got a barrel of stuff in this town, a box of stuff in that town, that I simply haven’t got room for here.”

Cousin Madge spread the suitcase on the floor and scrunched down to unpack it. She cast the rumpled newspaper wads aside, and one by one placed the objets d’art on an antique oak bench that was handy.

Cut glass dishes, silver pickle forks with pearl handles, Indian Tree cups and saucers.

“Tch! Tch! Tch!” said the antique man.

“Now, just a minute,” whuffed Cousin Madge, signalling me to fetch forward the wicker basket.

From the market basket, flinging the balls of newspaper aside, she triumphantly drew forth the glass globe and the wax flowers; the bronze slipper; the Dresden vases.

The antique man groaned faintly.

Cousin Madge took a long breath and straightened up from her squatting position.

“Lady,” said the antique man, “I’m afraid you didn’t hear me. I tell you I have five rooms upstairs packed solid full of this stuff. Up country, in this town and in that town, I have stored barrels and packing cases…”

“This is far ahead of what you’ve got on display here,” said Cousin Madge firmly.

“Okay! Look:” said the antique dealer. “I’ll: give you $10 for the lot!”

It was his way of getting rid of her, I suppose.

But Cousin Madge looked at him with a sudden empurpling of the face and a swelling of the body.

She struggled to repeat the words, $10.

In her effort to do so, Cousin Madge took a step backward. Now Cousin Madge carries behind her a promontory of which she seems to be unaware.

As she stepped back, there was a sudden slither and a loud crash.

She had upset a table laden with treasure.

“It’s always the way,” moaned the antique dealer, as the three of us scrambled around picking up the pieces. “It’s always the ones trying to sell who smash the stuff!”

Quite a lot was broken. The spindly table on which the objets d’art had stood was broken. The lid of a small china box was smashed. A fragile glass vase, “priceless, priceless!” the dealer said, was in fragments.

The antique dealer decided, when we were all tidied up and relaxed, that he would make an inventory and let us know what we owed him. He would keep the stuff we had brought in as security.

But when I suggested that a friend of mine, an insurance adjuster, who knew a good deal about antiques, would call and help him make the inventory, the antique dealer agreed to take, at once, in payment of the damage, two cut glass pickle dishes, one pearl handled pickle fork, both Dresden vases and the glass dome with wax flowers.

When Madge and I got home with the balance of the treasures, and were seated safe and sound with a teapot, she said:

“Well, I’m glad to be rid of that glass dome and those dismal bloody flowers!”

Editor’s Note:

1. $20 in 1950 would be $256 in 2025. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, December 13, 1919.

Toronto is the artistic centre of Canada.

Also musical and dramatic. We have for proof of this the statements of concert and theatrical managers in their advertising. Of course, cynical people say that these managers make the same statements in Whitby, Hamilton, and Shakespeare, Ont. But we Torontonians recognize the ring of truth in such statements in regard to the Queen City.

We haven’t a Symphony Orchestra like Huntsville, Ont., nor a Dramatic Society like Galt. But we at least have the exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

The investigation of the artistic spirit of Toronto is a puzzling undertaking for the ordinary citizen.

Here, for instance, is this exhibition in the Grange¹. Here, surely, we will find the artistic spirit almost tangibly materialized. We will find artistic people, Toronto’s literati, artists, perhaps.

We asked a sharp and successful young bond dealer, who knew everything and everybody, where the Grange was.

“Why,” says he, “that’s Home Smith’s old residence up in behind the north-west corner of McCaul and Queen streets!”

Shades of Goldwin and ancient secessionists, how are the mighty fallen²!

However, we found the Grange, in its wide old-fashioned park set in the crowded midst of the boarding-house and foreign section. It is no longer the Grange. It is the Toronto Art Museum. A fine grey-bricked box has been built on the back of Goldwin Smith’s old residence. And in this box, are three rooms containing a hundred and seventy-two pictures by Canadian artists.

There are two knockers and three different kinds of bell handles on Goldwin Smith’s front door – a kind of an historical exhibit in themselves, possibly. We knocked and pulled all five, and a young lady opened quickly to admit us. Apparently, Goldwin Smith’s front door is the back door of the Toronto Art Museum. Anyway, we had to hasten through the privacy of the late Mr. Smith’s study (family portraits and all) to reach the box at the back.

Here we found a hundred and seventy-two pictures, twenty sculptures, six architects’ plans, thirty-six etchings, and seventy-three citizens.

And the rooms were sizzling with the artistic spirit!

Silence brooded over the place, except for the deep-breathing of a middle-aged lady of very artistic appearance, who sat back on a bench and stared intently at a picture entitled “The Beaver Dam.”

Here and there were men and women, young and old, who seemed hypnotized by some one picture. They walked slowly towards the picture of their desire, eyes half-closed. Then they would back slowly away from it. Then to one side and to the other. Their hands made peculiar gestures, and they held out their thumbs, after the manner of Roman emperors to the gladiators – thumbs up meaning “spare it,” thumbs, down, “kill it.” After going through this ritual, they heaved an expressive sigh, and moved on to another picture.

There was a plenty of long hair, steel-rimmed spectacles, English rain coats and other marks of the artistic temperament. There were untidy old ladles and elaborately dowdy young ladies in tweed suits and flat-heeled boots. Long-haired young men, with dreamy eyes and the detached, eccentric manners of poets and artists. And here and there an old man, with a feverish air, who wandered from wall to wall murmuring “Good, good!” or “bad, bad!”

In fact we saw only five perfectly ordinary people in the whole place. They looked like bank managers or brokers. They were strikingly out of place. They seemed lost. We wondered who they were and what they were doing here.

Suddenly we came upon Smivvers³, our old family plumber, sitting dejectedly on a bench.

“Hello!” we cried. “What are you doing here? Trying to spend some of your war winnings on pictures?

“No,” groaned Smivvers. “I’m with my wife!”

And be pointed to the middle-aged artistic-looking lady who was still sitting and breathing passionately as she looked at the picture of “The Beaver Dam.”

“Your wife has the artistic temperament?” we asked.

“Only recently,” groaned Smivvers.

So we sat down beside Smivvers for a rest.

“How do you like the exhibition?” we asked.

“Well,” said Smivvers, a tone of exasperation in his voice, “I’ve been around the rooms three times, and there are only twenty-seven pictures out of the whole lot that would make a decent Christmas card or calendar. The rest wouldn’t stand a chance with a good publisher.

“I’ll tell you what! Patriotism has ruined art in Canada. Apparently most of these artists have come home from the war with their hands, all calloused from digging trenches and have started right in to paint, pictures Well, you can see the results! Just look at some of them! Whoever saw a sky that color, or a tree that shape, or a purple and pink forest! My son is doing better work than that and he’s only in the senior second book. Patriotism is all right, but it shouldn’t be used to make fun of these artists before they’ve got their hands in. A lot of my plumbers that were at the war had to have a lot of training when they came back. You bet, I didn’t send them out to put in comic taps and amusing furnaces just for patriotism. The public wouldn’t stand it. I think the manager of this exhibition ought to have a heart!”

“You don’t think it’s the new art?” we asked.

“New art!” exclaimed Mr. Smivvers. “New gas pipes! The lads that did those unfinished pictures there are recovering from wounds or shell shock! The Government ought to take a hand in re-establishing our artists. Otherwise our calendars, gift cards and parlor pictures are going to the dogs!”

“Let’s mingle with some of these artists” we whispered, “and get some information on the subject.”

So the three of us began to break in on the meditations of the long-haired and untidy ones, We picked the most artistic-looking ones first. We discovered the first three to be respectively a grocer, a bank clerk and a hotel manager. The next dozen or so included salesmen, butchers, journalists, boot and shoe dealers, bill collectors, dentists and retired gentlemen.

Divil⁴ an artist did we find! Out in the corridor we held a council.

“What do you know about that!” gasped Smivvers.

So we decided that we would start from the other end, avoiding the artistic-looking people and picking on the least likely looking ones in our efforts to find an artist.

Right then we spied those five ordinary looking men whose close hair cuts, blue serge suits and polished shoes proclaimed them bankers or brokers. They were standing dejectedly in a group out in the corridor below us.

“There,” whispered Smivvers, “Let’s start with them!”

Yes, they were artists!”

In fact, they were the only artists in the building. They were just on they way out to go and play a game of golf.

They didn’t want to talk about art. They laughed, at us and shyly referred our questions to some of the experts inside. And before we could ask about the unfinished pictures, and whether they were painted in the dark as a sort of stunt, or by soldiers blinded in the war, they hustled into their coats, and fled.

So Smivvers took us around the three rooms and showed us the twenty-seven pictures he had selected as suitable for calendars or Christmas cards.

Editor’s Notes:

1. The Grange is a historic Georgian manor and was the first home of the Art Museum of Toronto. Today, it is part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. ↩︎
2. Goldwin Smith was the last resident of the Grange, and died in 1910, only 9 years before this article. He is called “Home Smith” because of his opposition to Irish Home rule. He was also against Prohibition, female suffrage and state socialism. He was also an antisemite. ↩︎
3. The headline says Snivers, but the rest of the article says Smivvers. ↩︎
4. Divil is slang for devil. It says that in the original article, perhaps a typo? Or meaning that they could not find any artists? Maybe using “devil” was discouraged at the time? So many questions…. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Duncan MacPherson, November 27, 1948.

“I’m running,” announced my neighbor Gibbs, “for school trustee.”

“Good man,” I congratulated. “I didn’t realize you were interested in education.”

“Actually,” said Gibbs, “I’m not. But I’m interested in business. I’m interested as a taxpayer. It’s time we put some hard-headed business men in as trustees, to keep control of those visionaries.”

The word visionaries suddenly brought me back to earth.

“Visionaries?” I laughed. “You’d hardly call our neighbor Peters a visionary.”

Peters, who lives across the road, has been a school trustee for fifteen years or more.

“It’s him I’m after,” confessed Gibbs, in a low voice.

I looked earnestly at Gibbs.

“You’re picking yourself,” I warned, “a pretty tough old customer to beat.”

“He’s a crook,” stated Gibbs flatly.

“Aw, not a crook,” I protested. “He’s shrewd. He’s sly. He’s cunning. But you can’t call him a crook.”

“He’s crooked,” insisted Gibbs.

“He may be a poor neighbor,” I admitted. “I grant you, he’s a crusty old crab…”

“He’s crooked,” asserted Gibbs. “Suppose you are in the stationery business, and you’re a school trustee. Suppose you quietly deflect all the plumbing contracts for the schools to one plumbing contractor. Wouldn’t you expect to get all that plumbing contractor’s stationery business?”

“Peters isn’t in the stationery business,” I reminded.

“No, but you see my point?” pursued Gibbs. “You call him shrewd. I say he’s a trustee for the business he gets out of it.”

“I imagine he’s a pretty good watchdog,” I submitted, “over any visionaries on the school board.”

“Imagine,” cried Gibbs, “the education of this great city in the hands of characters like Peters!”

“I’ve always voted for him…” I recollected.

“He’s small, he’s mean,” said Gibbs, “he’s petty. He’s hardly spoken to anybody in this neighborhood for twenty years. I’m told by collectors for charity, the community chest, Red Cross and so forth, that they never in their lives got a ten cent piece from Peters…”

“I admit he’s tight-fisted,” I regretted, “but in certain cases, that’s a virtue.”

“I’m running against him,” stated Gibbs.

“Have you announced it?”

“Yes,” said Gibbs. “At a meeting of the home and school club last night, over at the school, I announced I was running.”

“You’ll never beat him,” I confided. “You’ve only got about five weeks to campaign. You haven’t got any organization. He’s got fifteen years’ experience in electioneering.”

“With the help of a few characters like you,” smiled Gibbs, “I might give him the surprise of his life.”

“Not me,” I said hastily. “I wouldn’t touch politics – even school politics – with a ten-foot pole.”

“Our argument will be,” explained Gibbs, “that it is high time fresh blood was infused into the school board. Goodness knows what skulduggery is going on there, with the public funds. The same old gang in office year after year…”

“A whispering campaign, eh?” I reflected.

“That’s it!” cried Gibbs, eagerly. “Spread suspicion. Spread doubt. That’s the most powerful political weapon of all. Dynasties have fallen, as the result of whispering campaigns. Powerful ministries have tumbled in the dust, all from a few dirty rumors…”

“I’ll have nothing to do with it,” I informed Gibbs, firmly.

“Oh,” chuckled Gibbs, “I’m not going to spread unfounded rumors. Not me. I’m going to play a TRICK on Mr. Peters. I’m going to frame him.”

“How?” I queried.

“Childishly simple,” gloated Gibbs. “And I need your help. If I can prove to you that Peters is a cheap little crook, will you help me campaign against him?”

“If you could,” I doubted.

“Here’s all there is to it,” revealed Gibbs. “It’s a trick as old as the Caesars. You know how old Peters peaks behind the curtains in his front living room windows?”

“I’ve noticed him there,” I admitted, “smoking his pipe. It’s the way he relaxes. He sits there, thinking.”

“Relaxes my eye!” scoffed Gibbs. “He sits there to catch kids running across his lawn. He sits there hiding behind his curtains to peek and pry at his neighbors kids.”

“Aw,” I reasoned.

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” snickered Gibbs, excitedly. “I’m going to walk past Peters’ house tomorrow afternoon. It’s Sunday. And as I pass, I’ll drop my wallet accidentally, when I pull out my handkerchief…”

“Oho,” I admitted.

“First,” explained Gibbs, “I’ll make sure nobody else is coming along the street, and I’ll make sure the old skinflint is sitting at his parlor window, peeking. Now this is where you come in. You’ve got to be the witness that he picks the wallet up.”

“He’ll run to his front door,” I asserted, “and he’ll go after you…”

“I’ll bet you,” declared Gibbs, “five bucks that he comes to his door and watches me turn the corner, and then pops out and snitches my wallet.”

“Look here,” I took up the bet, “I’ll do more. If Peters does that, I’m your man! I’ll stump the district making speeches for you…!”

“Good egg!” exulted Gibbs, wringing my hand.

Right after Sunday noon dinner, Gibbs called at my side door and I let him in.

Gleefully, he produced the wallet.

“Look!” he hissed. “Six bucks¹, a five and a one. Eight street car tickets, see? Then, look at these.”

Gibbs held up two snapshots of girls in skimpy bathing suits, very skimpy…

“I borrowed these,” gaggled Gibbs gleefully, “from a friend of mine who collects leg art. Isn’t that the finishing touch…?”

“Aren’t you putting in your driver’s license and stuff…?” I asked.

“Oh, no, that would almost compel him to return the wallet,” explained Gibbs. “Nothing in it but six bucks, eight street car tickets, some snappy snap shots and my name and address in two places, see? Here’s the usual wallet identification card; and here’s an empty envelope with my name and address on it, too.”

“Now, what?” I requested.

“I’ll go and sit in my front window,” said Gibbs, “and I see the old stinker take up his usual location behind his living room curtains, I’ll watch until I see nobody else on the street. Then I’ll telephone you, and proceed with the operation.”

“I’ll watch from my front window,” I agreed.

Gibbs went back into his house.

It was that after-dinner Sunday hour when the streets are quiet. The grown-ups are home from church; the youngsters aren’t yet starting for Sunday school.

The phone rang.

“He’s all set,” cried Gibbs’s voice.

“Okay,” I replied, and went to my front window. Gibbs came out of his front walk and stood gazing up and down the street for a moment, like a gentleman contemplating a nice Sunday afternoon stroll.

Then he crossed the street and started for the corner. As he passed Peters’ house, he reached back and drew his handkerchief from his hip pocket, from under his topcoat.

His wallet flipped out and dropped onto the pavement.

Gibbs, blowing his nose, proceeded on.

My eyes leaped to Peters’ parlor window, where I grieved to behold the shadow of Mr. Peters standing. He had sprung to his feet and was alert back of the curtains.

As soon as Gibbs disappeared around the corner, I saw Peters’ shadow disappear. An instant later, he opened his front door, took a quick look up and down the street and around at the houses about. Then in his slippers, he tippy-toed out, picked up Gibbs’s wallet and hastened back into his house.

“Hm, hm, hm!” I groaned, dropping into a chair.

From the drug store, three blocks away, Gibbs telephoned a few minutes later.

“Well?” he enquired breathlessly.

“I owe you five bucks,” I muttered, and then gave him a play-by-play description of the whole affair.

In five minutes, Gibbs appeared.

He walked slowly down the street, looking this way and that on the ground, as though he had lost something. He took a particularly long time right in front of Peters’ house. And to make the tragedy complete. I could see the shadow of old Peters, as he sat, calmly smoking his pipe, behind the curtains of his parlor window.

Gibbs went into his house: and immediately popped out his side door into mine.

“We got him!” shouted Gibbs, tremendously elated. “We’ve got the so and so!”

“What do we do?” I begged.

“We wait,” propounded Gibbs, “forty-eight hours, at least, until tomorrow night. Then, with you for witness, and with half a dozen reputable citizens of this neighborhood I’ll get together, we will call upon Mr. Peters.”

“It’ll ruin him,” I muttered.

“We’ll inform him,” gloated Gibbs, “that we are going to spread the story all over town. I think he’ll resign. I think he’ll withdraw from the election. If he doesn’t…!”

“Isn’t that intimidation?” I protested. “Isn’t that’ threatening…?”

“It’s,” rejoiced Gibbs, “politics!”

We spent the evening drawing up campaign plans for Gibbs. Lists of names of leading business men in our ward who might join committees. Lists of meetings to be called, in the various schools in the ward…

Monday, we had trouble keeping our mind on our jobs. Gibbs telephoned me three times with new ideas for his campaign. We drove home together, after work.

As we pulled up in front of Gibbs’s, Mrs. Peters came to her front door and called across.

“Oh, Mr. Gibbs?” she yodelled. “My husband asked me to give you this wallet. He picked it up yesterday on the street…”

“Damn!” gritted Gibbs.

He walked slowly across and took the wallet from Mrs. Peters, thanked her, and she immediately shut the door.

Gibbs started back across the street, a look of chagrin on him, and opened the wallet.

He halted.

He lifted his eyes unbelieving from the wallet and stared wide-eyed at me.

Then he hurried.

“Come on in,” he commanded in a low voice.

I followed him into his house.

“Look at this!” he cried, when we got inside.

He held up four fifty-dollar bills²!

He also held up the five and the one dollar bill he had baited the wallet with. And the snazzy snapshots.

“What the…!” I croaked.

Gibbs fingered the four fifty-dollar bills feverishly.

“The old fool,” he cried. “I bet he’s put this wallet in his pocket. And then, absent-mindedly mistaking it for his own, stuffed this money into it…”

“Run right back with it!” I commanded.

“Probably ill-gotten gains,” ruminated Gibbs, lovingly rubbing the bills together. “He’ll probably never know what happened to them…!”

“Gibbs!” I exclaimed.

“You take a hundred,” said Gibbs, “I take a hundred. That’s fair…”

 “Gibbs!” I groaned, “the old devil was probably sitting at his window, watching, when his wife handed you that wallet…”

“Oh, my gosh!” yelled Gibbs, turning for the door.

We went together. Old Mr. Peters himself answered the bell.

“Thanks a million,” cried Gibbs, heartily, “for rescuing my wallet. But look here, Mr. Peters, there’s something wrong. I only had six dollars, and I find two hundred.”

“Okay, okay,” soothed Mr. Peters, reaching deftly and taking the four fifties in his hand and secreting them in his vest all in one smooth motion. “To tell the truth, Gibbs, I heard you were running against me for school trustee? Is that so?”

“I was thinking of it,” admitted Gibbs. “But…”

“I just wanted to assure myself,” said Peters, blandly, that you were an honest man. I stuck those four fifties in your wallet, just to… sort of…”

“Why, MR. PETERS!” gasped Gibbs, scandalized.

“Oh, well, in public life,” asserted Peters, morally, “you’ve got to be alert. You have to watch the kind of men who try to get elected. Now, for one thing, anybody can be honest about six bucks. But where $200 is concerned, that calls into play an entirely different brand of honesty. See?”

We thanked him again, heartily.

When we re-entered Gibbs’s vestibule, he turned to me.

“The old crook!” he quivered. “I wouldn’t demean myself, running against him!”

Editor’s Notes:

1. $6 in 1948 would be $82 in 2025. ↩︎
2. $200 in 1948 would be $2,725 in 2025. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, November 15, 1930.

“I have to shoot a bear,” I said to Merrill. And that was the end of Merrill and me.

“I will go apple picking with you,” said Merrill. I will go judging cattle and hogs. But never again will I go hunting or camping with you.”

“But, Merrill,” I protested, “journalism isn’t like that. Ours not to reason why. Ours but to do or die. We have been ordered to get a bear hunting story to relieve the tedium of eternal deer hunting and moose hunting stories.”

“I am engaged,” said Merrill, “in writing radio dramas for some of the largest corporations of this northern or wider half of the continent. And they have hinted that some of the enterprises I have been engaged in with you are hardly in keeping with the je ne sais quoi of a dramatist of the air. I think you had better get a new partner.¹“

“Partners are hard to get,” said I. “First Charles Vining and now you.”

“Get Jimmie Frise or Lou Marsh,” said Merrill. “Or Frederick Griffin or Bob Reade.”

“I tried them long ago,” said I, “and when we set forth on an adventure it always ended up at the coca cola fountain.”

“Well,” said Merrill, “coca cola for me, though I am not writing their scenarios.”

And it was at that moment that Pigskin Peters walked into the office.

“There you are,” said Merrill, and quietly slipped away.

Pigskin looked in the pink. He had a nice new whoopee overcoat² on and his shoes were shined. His face glowed with ruddy health.

“Where’s Jimmie?” asked Pigskin.

“Are there any races on?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, then, I guess he’s duck hunting,” said I. “How’s the old burg, Pigskin?”

“Same as ever. Say,” said Pigskin, “if I can’t find Jimmie will you do something for me?”

“What?”‘

“Take me up to the Arena and introduce me to Conny Smythe³,” said Pigskin, with a most embarrassed look.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I’m going into pro hockey,” said Pigskin, clearing his throat. “I’m taking it up.”

“Why, I never knew you were a hockey player, Pigskin.”

“I ain’t,” said Pigskin. “But I’m going to be.”

“Well, er,” said l, “usually, you know, Pigskin, you put in a good deal of time as an amateur before you go into pro. As a matter of fact, it takes years to make a pro hockey player.”

“Will you introduce me to Conny Smythe?” said Pigskin, briefly.

“Sure I will! But I was just telling you.”

“I been in training,” said Pigskin. “Everybody down home says I would make a pro hockey player. Lots of pros are over thirty years old.

“Well, we’ll have to step along, Pigskin, if we are going to see Conny at noon.”

“l Practiced Skating All Summer”

So I took Pigskin up Yonge St. to the Arena⁴ and in the dim echoing emptiness we found Conny, standing as usual with his hat on the back of his head, hands in pockets, quietly watching his boys swooping about on the ice and banging pucks with hollow booms against the boards.

“Conny, I’d like to introduce Mr. Peters,” said l.

“Glad to know you.” said Conny.

“Pigskin Peters,” said I.

“You don’t say!” cried Conny, giving Pigskin another handshake. “l know a lot about you.”

“It can’t be proved,” said Pigskin.

We all laughed.

“I wanted to see you, Mr. Smythe,” said Pigskin, doggedly, “about getting taken on by the Maple Leafs.”

When Conny doesn’t know what to say, he just grins and looks interested.

“You play much hockey, Mr. Peters?” asked Conny.

“I been in training all summer,” said Pigskin, avoiding the question. “All the boys down home say I got the makings of a real pro hockey player. We had a fellow come through last winter. He was a scout for one of the big New York clubs, and he tried to sign me on then.”

“Well,” said Conny. “H’m.”

Pigskin unbuttoned his whoopee coat and let his chest stick out. It was about the size of a good big pickle barrel. His neck is about a twenty.

“Have you done much skating?” asked Conny.

“I practiced all summer,” said Pigskin. “From June on.”

“Have you got artificial ice down in Birdseye Centre?” Conny asked with interest.

“No,” said Pigskin. “It was roller skating I was doing. I used to get up as early as four or five o’clock all summer and go out to the main highway and practice on the pavement. None of the speed cops could catch me.”

Conny looked embarrassed. He didn’t want to offend either Pigskin or me.

“Well, there’s no harm, Mr. Peters,” said he. “in putting on pair of skates and letting as what you’ve got. Harry,” he called to one of the boys hanging around, “get Mr. Peters a pair of skates.”

So Pigskin went back to the dressing room.

“What the heck!” said Conny, looking at me out of his rather steely blue eyes.

“I couldn’t help it,” I apologized. “Jim Frise couldn’t found, so Pigskin put it up to me straight to introduce him.”

“Roller skates!” snorted Conny, turning to watch his boys again.

In a few minutes Pigskin wobbled out of the dressing room wearing his usual sweater and Christy hat⁵ and supporting himself on a hockey stick.

“They kind of pinch,” he said as he came to us and passed through the gate on to the ice. Pigskin took a short slide and slipped and fell flat on his back. As he scrambled up, Happy Day, the captain, skated over to us and looked inquiringly at Conny.

“All right,” said Conny. He winked at Happy. “Shoot him a couple.”

Happy skated back and passed the word amongst the boys.

Poor Pigskin, leaning heavily on his stick, made a couple of desperate efforts to get out into centre ice, but the skates seemed bedevilled. Down he went, two, three, four times, and each time he fell he became madder. The boys on the ice came and flashed around him with the puck, like swallows around a balloon, but Pigskin was too busy.

“What’s This – The Newest Rules?”

Finally standing up and propelling himself with the stick, he came to the ringside where Conny and I were standing.

“These boots pinch,” said Pigskin. “The skates is too slippery.”

“Some other time,” said Conny. “Call on me some day when I’m not so busy.”

“Just a minute,” said Pigskin, pushing past us and staggering heavily out the corridor to the dressing room.

“What’s the big idea,” said Conny to me.

“Gee, Conny, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t know he couldn’t even skate.”

Conny seemed not to want to discuss the matter at all and turned to watch his players.

I stood waiting for Pigskin to get the skates off and rejoin me.

There came a rumbling sound, out from the dressing room. Up the alley behind us came Pigskin – on roller skates.

“Hey!” said Conny, blocking the little gate in the boards that lets the players onto the ice.

“Just a minute,” cried Pigskin, pushing at the gate. “Lemme out for just a minute. I wanta show you…”

And out he burst on to the ice, while Conny slammed the gate.

Strange sights have been seen in that Arena, from wrestling bouts to ice carnivals. But the performance that Pigskin put on was the supreme best.

No tumbling or fumbling now. All we saw was a red and white streak circle the Ice topped with an old Christy hat. A blur of red and white, in front of which brandished a hockey stick.

Nothing was said. King Clancy⁶ who was just performing a nice job at clearing the puck from the net, stopped and stared. The rest of the boys desisted in their practice and stood watching that weird blur, a sort of flying cloud or spectre that went around the rink with a humming sound coming from it.

Pigskin did a couple of pirouettes, a la winter carnival. He jumped into the air and whirled into a figure eight. Happy Day⁷, who was standing staring, with the puck on the end of his stick, was suddenly pounced on and the puck was gone. Pigskin had it, and on his roller skates, had dissolved into another mist of speed, ahead of which the puck hissed on the ice.

“Get it!” roared Conny.

The Maple Leafs carne to life and all started after Pigskin. Cotton raced into a corner after him, but when Cotton hit the boards in that corner, Pigskin was already steaming around the opposite corner.

The Arena wan now filled with shouts, from the players, from Conny and I believe from me. For with nine or ten Maple Leafs all after him, Pigskin was doing a kind of roller skating that had never been seen on land or sea. From centre ice, he suddenly, crouching down, made a shot at the north end net, and the whole net collapsed. Whereupon the team rushed in to get the puck, but Pigskin, whose knowledge of hockey appears to be confused with rugby or prize fighting, slammed his weight right into the midst of them, and when the puck came back down the ice, it was on Pigskin’s stick. And again he began to fade from sight, so fast was he going.

Happy Day skated over to us and said to Conny:

“What is this? The newest rules or something?”

“Get it!” said Conny.

Up to the other net rushed Pigskin and made another terrific shot, and the puck went right through the net and smashed the board behind.

“Here, here!” shouted Conny. “Don’t wreck the place!”

Pigskin Melts the Ice

King Clancy hooked the puck out of the broken boards and shot it out to midice, where Pigskin grabbed it, colliding with two other players who skidded on their backs. Hard pressed by the seven remaining players, Pigskin shot the puck against the boards for a rebound and a whole section of the fence fell over.

“Hay, hay!” shouted Conny, opening the gate and rushing on to the ice. “Hay, hay!”

But Pigskin, cigar clamped in his teeth, had regained the puck and was rushing away, looking for a new place to shoot it.

“Get off the ice,” yelled Conny to his boys.

“Give him the ice and when he gets tired, we can go on practicing.”

The Maple Leafs skated over the boards and sat, breathing heavily on the fence.

“Get him out of here!” said Canny to me.

“Pigskin!” I hollered. “PIGSKIN!”

But I was too late. He lifted the puck in a terrific shot, it rose like a bullet, up, up and sailed in what seemed like a long black streak through the air to the rafters, where it struck one of the solid steel beams. And struck so hard that is melted and stuck there, a sort of black pudding dangling from the steel.

Pigskin slowed down in centre ice, patted the ice with his stick and said:

“Toss us out another one.”

The Arena was very still.

“Pigskin,” said I, softly.

“Huh?”

“Come here! Mr. Smythe wants to talk to you.”

As Pigskin slid over to us, we all noticed at the same time that the Arena ice was melting. A steam was rising off it and it was just beginning to run.

Conny held out his hand. Pigskin shook it in a proud but embarrassed way.

“What do you think of me?” he said.

“Wonderful,” said Conny. “But I’m filled up for this year.”

“Couldn’t you lay nobody off and give me a chance?” asked Pigskin, crestfallen.

“They are all on contracts,” said Conny. “Or I’d do it in a minute.”

“Come on, Pigskin,” I said, “let’s get going. I’ve got an appointment at the office.”

“I think I’ll stick around here for a while,” said Pigskin, “and watch the practice.”

“There won’t be any more practice to-day,” said Conny. “The ice is melted.”

And sure enough, the whole surface of the Arena was honeycombed, especially where Pigskin had been skating.

He shook hands with all the players and with his whoopee coat on again, I walked him down Yonge St.

“Too bad, Pigskin,” I said.

“Well, I only did it to please my friends,” said Pigskin. “I didn’t want to get taken on anyway.”

“No?”

“No. I want to play with the Birdseye Centre Rovers this winter, and it was them that said I was too good for them and told me to try to turn pro.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And they’ll be glad to hear I didn’t get on the Maple Leafs.”

“I’m sure they will,” I said.

“Well, so long,” said Pigskin.

“So long.”

And he headed briskly down Bay St. for the Union station.

Editor’s Notes: This is an odd one, as it is pre-Greg and Jim, but with a fictional character from Birdseye Center as if he is real? It is interesting that he does mention the other people he had “adventures” with (Charles Vining, Merrill Denison, Jimmie Frise, Lou Marsh, Frederick Griffin and Robert Reade). The regular Greg-Jim stories would debut in 1932.

1. This is true. Merrill Denison’s playwriting career really started taking off after he left Canada for New York in 1929. He would still produce stories every now and then for the Star Weekly from New York (and illustrated by Jimmie). ↩︎
2. A Whoopee coat was a style of coat popularized by Eddie Cantor in the 1928 Broadway play Whoopee! which was also made into a 1930 movie. It seems to be describing any brightly coloured coat with eye-catching patterns. ↩︎
3. Conn Smythe was the principal owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the NHL from 1927 to 1961. ↩︎
4. This would be the Mutual Street Arena. In 1962, it was converted into a curling club and roller skating rink known as The Terrace. It was demolished in 1989. Maple Leaf Gardens would be built in 1931. ↩︎
5. This would be his regular bowler hat. Christy’s is a hatmaker. ↩︎
6. King Clancy was a player for the Toronto Maple Leafs at the time. He retired in 1937, later being a referee, a coach, and a team executive until his death in 1986. ↩︎
7. “Happy” Day was also a player at the time. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Duncan Macpherson, November 12, 1949.

“Hey, look at this!” exclaimed my neighbor, Gibbs, resting on his rake.

He was helping me rake leaves; and our pleasant Novemberous task was interrupted by the crescendo whine of an automobile coming down the street at breakneck speed.

“It’s Parker!” I cried.

Sure enough, it was our rebellious neighbor Parker. At 50 miles an hour, down the quiet street he drove madly, jamming on his brakes with a squeal and, whipping the wheel around, made a very bad and bouncy turn into his side drive, where he jerked to a stop.

“Well, well, well!” chuckled Gibbs.

Parker burst out of the car and slammed the door with violence.

“Nice day?” I called across, very neighborly.

Parker stood with jaw outthrust, staring back up the street. Then he stood glowering at the ground a moment.

“Aaahhrrfff!” he said, finally, and came slowly across the street to us.

“Look,” he grated, “three-quarters of an hour ago my wife sent me up to the corner to get a half a dozen lemons and two cans of sardines.”

“So?” encouraged Gibbs.

“I,” enunciated Parker, backing up to get room to roar, “have been THREE-QUARTERS of an hour trying to find a place to park my car a minute!”

“You should have parked,” I reproved, “up a side street.”

“Side street?” yelled Parker. “I’ve driven around six blocks of side streets. Bakers, milkmen, department store delivery trucks, not to mention a car in front of every home, instead of up the side drive, where it should be…”

“A little patience,” suggested Gibbs, “and you would have nabbed a place on the shopping street. Somebody is always moving on…”

“Somebody,” gritted Parker in a low voice, “is always moving on! I tell you, the storekeepers all along those shopping streets arrive at 8 am and park their cars in front of their stores for the WHOLE DAY!”

“They’d hardly be silly enough,” I soothed, “to do that.”

“Well, then,” shouted Parker, “why is it impossible for a casual shopper, like me, to find a parking spot for blocks and blocks around the dopy little grocery store I want to visit? Why IS it?”

Gibbs leaned his rake on the tree, and took a deep breath. This was Gibbs’ meat. He is my bright businessman neighbor.

“Look, Parker,” he said, calmly. “You are demonstrating, as you stand here, that the problem is you yourself. It isn’t traffic. It isn’t business. It isn’t economics. It’s just you. You’re an impatient, hot-tempered guy. And you are out of step with the times.”

Parker was too outraged to speak.

“The ever-changing world,” pulpitted Gibbs, “requires of mankind an ever-changing personality. The day the automobile was invented, a new type of man was called into being – a man alert, accommodating, patient and co-operative.”

“Are you suggesting…?” snorted Parker.

“The day the automobile was invented,” pursued Gibbs reverently, “the individualist, the selfish, old-fashioned, egocentric, dog-in-manger¹ type of man became an anachronism. You are an anachronism.”

Parker had never been called that before and could not think of the proper retort.

“You are a hot-tempered guy,” concluded Gibbs, “who wants to drive up to the corner for half a dozen lemons and two cans of sardines, and have everybody get out of your way so that you can attend to your insignificant business without delay.”

Parker fairly shrank with exasperation.

“Look,” he pleaded, weakly, “all I want to do is stop people – the storekeepers themselves, mostly – from parking for hours on shopping streets. And I want people on the side streets, who have side drives, to put their cars IN their side drives, instead of leaving them parked out in front, where they prevent casual shoppers from finding a few minutes’ haven. How would they like it if people like me, unable to find a place to park, drove into their idle side drives?”

The way you came tearing down the street, a minute ago…” accused Gibbs.

“I was peeved,” muttered Parker. “That’s all.”

“To participate in modern life,” charged Gibbs, “you aren’t allowed to be peeved any more. The privilege of being peeved is one of he nice, old-fashioned vices we’ve got to give up, in exchange for all the wonderful advances that technology has made on behalf of humanity. You compare the comfort, speed, security of life today with that of even 50 years ago. Wouldn’t you be willing to surrender some of your little vices and failings, like impatience, for all the incomparable benefits of technology?”

“Technology,” ventured Parker, “be damned.”

This was blasphemy to Gibbs, and he showed it.

“It’s going to take a little time.” I put in, amiably, “for people to get used to the automobile. There are still enough of us old individualists around to ball up traffic. I imagine the younger generation will adapt itself to all these problems as naturally as new generations, from time immemorial, have adapted themselves to such things as wearing clothes, instead of running around naked, or eating three meals a day, instead of merely eating whenever Poppa killed a mammoth.”

Parker began to swell up.

“I’ll tell you two radicals what I think!” he bit. “I think human society is slowly and steadily going on the rocks. I think technology is foreign to nature and foreign to human nature. I think human beings are going to be human beings all the way to eternity. Individualists in the beginning, and individualists to the bitter end. And, by golly, the automobile is showing us up every minute of every hour in the day. We’re getting meaner and trickier every year. Less co-operative, instead of more. It’s helping, along with all your other technological wonders, to develop all the worst selfish characteristics of the natural animal, man.”

“Whoa!” commanded Gibbs.

“The scientists and engineers,” ignored Parker, “forget that we are animals. They imagine we can be converted, like machines, into a newer model. It never has happened. It never will happen.”

“Whoa!” ordered Gibbs, more loudly.

“It seems to me,” I submitted, genially, “that the average man today is a more humane animal than he was a 1,000 years ago.”

“You can’t prove it,” countered Parker. “And if he is, machines didn’t help.”

“We’re getting a long way,” said Gibbs, “from the six lemons and two cans of sardines Parker is still in need of. There is no use arguing with some people. You’ve got to show them. You’ve got to demonstrate. Now, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll all get into Parker’s car there, and I’ll take the wheel. We’ll drive right back up to the shopping street. We won’t be in any rush. Because, after all, in an automobile, we are going much faster, even at 15 miles an hour, than our grandfathers could go either on foot or in a wagon.”

“I’m telephoning for the lemons,” declared Parker.

“No, I’ll show you,” insisted Gibbs. “As an optimist, as a believer in the steady, ceaseless advance of human society, I’ll take the wheel and we’ll drive up and, with all decent consideration for others, with a normal, everyday awareness of the principles of modern society I’ll guarantee to park you, within five minutes, near the store you want to buy your lemons in…”

“Heh, heh, heh,” said Parker.

Gibbs was already walking off my lawn to cross the street to Parker’s car. So Parker and I followed.

“You’ll find out,” chuckled Parker, as he got in the back seat with me. Gibbs took the wheel happily and backed us out

“I’ve been through this so often,” he smiled. “I must confess I have to take myself in hand occasionally. The antiquated, individualistic attitude dies hard. But all I do, when I feel the old impatience welling up, is to remember I’m a unit in a mechanism. Human society HAS to become a mechanism.”

In one minute, we reached the head of the street where it crosses the car line and the shopping avenue. Although it was not yet the rush hour, traffic was dense and active. Street cars and buses barged along; automobile traffic was in two speeds – those wanting to pass straight through and those desirous of stopping. This created a sort of bucking and jerking in traffic that is familiar on all shopping streets. Despite large signs hanging from the telephone poles forbidding double parking, in each block the soft drink delivery trucks and wholesale grocery trucks were double parked. Not to mention a few husbands, leaning anxiously to watch for their wives – to indicate that they were merely double parked for a minute: which isn’t really double parking, in their view.

“Where’s this store you want?” demanded Gibbs, cheerily.

“Next block,” replied Parker, happily.

The next block was a dandy. There were three trucks and two cars double parked. And besides, there was a car just ahead of us going so slowly that it was obvious its driver was also looking for a parking spot – another gentleman in quest of six lemons, probably.

“Heh, heh, heh,” said Parker, mildly, from the back seat.

“Okay, you watch!” laughed Gibbs, slackening speed and going into low gear to crawl.

We crawled half-way through the block when suddenly, from the curb, a car stuck its nose out. Gibbs speeded up sharply and drew up short, just back of the impending opening. The car preceding us tried to pull up, too. But Gibbs sounded the horn sharply. And since a woman was driving the other car, she moved obediently on.

The car coming out from the curb took its time. The driver craned his neck and watched around, as he forwarded and backed. At last he cleared, and Gibbs slid ahead, in low gear, so as to back into the opening.

As he halted and turned around to watch his step, a sudden blast of a horn sounded right under our tail.

Another car was behind us, already partly turned into the opening. Its driver was glaring and tooting his horn belligerently. Gibbs turned very red and shook his fist. The other driver edged slightly forward and bumped our rear fender, still tooting.

Gibbs, in a sudden rage, stepped on the gas and backed Parker’s car violently against the interloper.

Crash!

Out jumped the man behind. Out leaped Gibbs.

“Get out of there!” shouted the stranger. “I’ve been five times around the block…”

“I’m ahead of you,” said Gibbs, coldly. “I get the space.”

“How many times have YOU been around the block?” demanded the stranger, angrily.

“I’ve a good mind to punch you in the nose,” said Gibbs, icily.

“Yeah?” said the other, hitching up his coat sleeve.

Gibbs reached back for a punch.

The stranger punched first. He got Gibbs in the midriff, just far enough above the belt not to be a foul blow, but enough to cause Gibbs to bend sharply forward. The stranger took Gibbs by the available coat collar, turned him and shoved him back into the driver’s seat of Parker’s car. Then he slammed the door on him.

“Come on!” he snarled. “Get moving!”

“Are you fellows going to sit there…?” gasped Gibbs, furiously, still catching his breath.

“It’s your demonstration,” said Parker, mildly.

So Gibbs grabbed the gear shift, stepped on the gas and jolted us out into the tangle of traffic, all hoots and snorts of indignant horns.

And because his fountain pen was broken – he could feel the ink trickling inside his vest – we drove home.

Parker telephoned for the six lemons and two cans of sardines.

Editor’s Note:

1. Dog-in-the-manger refers to a person who spitefully prevents others from having something for that they also do not want. ↩︎

Greg’s first published story

“Hey Editor,” you might be asking, “What was Greg Clark’s first published story?” Now you might think that it was from 1912, when he started working for the Toronto Star. That would be hard to discern, as back then, most news articles were not credited, especially for a new reporter, even if he is the editor’s son. However, his first story dates back to 1905, in something called the “The School Children’s Star”, “A Weekly Newspaper Written, Illustrated, and Edited by School Children, Published Every Saturday by The Toronto Daily Star in its Regular Issue.” Each week, a different school gets to participate. On November 4, 1905, the issue is “Contributed this week by Huron Street School.” The illustrations are not credited, so they could have been done by Greg?

HOME WORK, DEAR OLD HOME WORK.

How I love the time, in the evening as I am buried deep in a Henty story¹, when my father says to me, “Now, boy, get at your home work.” And in my hunting for my school bag I come across that long lost hat, and put it in a place where it is findable in the morning. When at last I am again in the sitting room, I pull from the depths of my school bag my grammar and begin learning its beautiful rules.

I have had some experience which shows that you should do home work when your father is around. I had dropped the speller accidentally and stooped to pick it up. The Henty came up with it. Unfortunately, my pater found out my mistake, and put on a look of the most surprised amazement. I had been reading a short time, but I had not comprehended that it was not spelling. He only said that he’d been a boy once himself.

The telephone bell rang and father went down stairs to answer. For the comfort of his feet, he had put on those old noiseless slippers, but I didn’t know this. So picked up Henty to be sure that the hero got over the wall of Tippoo Sahib’s palace². There was a creak at the door, and on looking up I beheld father gazing at me out of the corner of his eye. “I-I-er–just wanted to see if he got off the wall,” I stammered.

It is said that some bad boys in Hamilton, when their parents want to test them on their work, say that their home work is up nearer the front in their spellers and grammars, so that they’ll get easy things, and are able to show off. But they are generally found out. Their parents will ask them for the book they have got their home work in, and see they have been fooling them – then, you know the rest.

But I don’t see why teachers want home work anyway. If it’s to get pupils through and get silly ones out of the class, why, just as many and just as silly ones come in again. Maybe I’m wrong, but I know most of us wish that home work wasn’t.

Anyway it always ends the same. Spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and even the heroes of Henty fade away, under the bright colors and jolly ramblings in Dreamland.

Gregory Clark, aged 13, Senior Fourth.

Editor’s Note:

1. This is G.A. Henty, an English novelist best known for his works of adventure fiction and historical fiction. These stories would have been popular with schoolboys of the era. His children’s novels typically revolved around a boy or young man living in troubled times. Henty’s heroes are uniformly intelligent, courageous, honest and resourceful with plenty of ‘pluck’ yet are also modest. These themes have made Henty’s novels popular today among many conservative Christians and homeschoolers. 122 books were published between 1867 and 1906. ↩︎
2. The particular book he is reading is The Tiger of Mysore: A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib from 1896. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, October 31, 1953.

The thing to do, when the tough young son of a tough old friend (now departed) comes to you for advice and help with regard to getting a job, is to give him a letter of introduction to the toughest old cuss you know.

To spare the innocent, as they say in the radio dramas, I will have to employ false names in this little item. We will call the young fellow Butch, and the tough old cuss will be Andrew McGurgle, president, general manager and secretary-treasurer of the firm of A. McGurgle & Co., general contractors.

When this young Butch opened my office door, I knew him instantly, though I had never heard of him before. He was the son of an old, old friend who was one of the most hard-boiled men I have ever known. He had graduated in engineering last spring; spent the summer growing muscles up in the Labrador iron-mine construction job; and he said his father, before he died, had mentioned me as a possible contact if he ever needed help in getting a job.

I hastily sized Butch up. He had the build of a shorthorn bull and the mild and gentle countenance of a Jersey heifer. Some of the darnedest men I have ever known had that Jersey-heifer look. I decided not to inflict Butch on any of my more delicate acquaintances; and my thoughts naturally turned to A. McGurgle & Co., general contractors.

I wrote Butch a nice letter to Andy. Butch walked out of my office and went to the parking lot where he had left his jalopy. He had about 40 blocks to drive out to the office and yards of McGurgle & Co. But he had not driven two blocks, in this populous city of a million people, before he almost ran down an elderly man who was defying the red light and striding across Butch’s right of way on the green light. Butch tramped on his brakes. The pedestrian was a heavy-built, brindled character with a protruding jaw. He and Butch engaged in a few well-chosen words. They were about evenly matched. I understand they turned the air bright blue all over the intersection. Butch didn’t know it, but he was addressing A. McGurgle, president, etc., etc., of A. McGurgle & Co.

He drove out to the plant and had to wait some little time, chatting with Mr. McGurgle’s secretary. Like all construction-company presidents, Andy always comes in the back door of his office. His secretary took my letter in. A moment later, Butch was summoned into the presence.

Ten minutes later, I had a telephone call.

“Lightning rods!” bellowed the voice of my old fishing friend, Andy McGurgle.

“Which?” I exclaimed.

“Lightning rods!” repeated Andy violently. “Who the Sam Hill was this crazy young chump you sent me with this letter of introduction? What would I want with lightning rods on my summer home? You know I haven’t got any summer home…”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I broke in. “What’s all this stuff about lightning rods?”

“Didn’t you send me this young punk So-and-So with a letter of introduction?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But he doesn’t sell lightning rods. I sent him to you to see if you could give him a job. I knew his dad well, a great guy. This boy graduated last spring…”

“I got all that here in the letter,” said Andy. “But you don’t mention anything about a job!”

And suddenly Andy McGurgle began to howl. He whooped and hooted and I could hear him banging his desk. When he recovered, he said:

“I thought I recognized this kid! I was just coming out from lunch at the club at noon today and was walking across the street when a car almost ran me down. A car driven by as bull-headed and bad-tempered a young punk as I ever saw. The names he called me, Greg! Why, I never heard such language…”

“Oh, yeah?” I said.

“It’s the same kid!” yelled Andy McGurgle. “Half an hour later, he comes in here with your letter! He figured I recognized him. So he goes into this act about selling me lightning rods. Look, Greg! Where do I find this boy?”

Butch had left me his telephone number. I called and left a message. About 4 P.M. a rather subdued Butch called me. I asked him how he had got along with Mr. McGurgie. Not very good, he confessed. And then he told me the whole story of nearly running down an old fathead crossing against the red light; his arrival at the McGurgle plant; and his awful moment on being ushered into the old boy’s presence.

“I figured it was hopeless,” said Butch.

“What made you think of lightning rods?” I asked.

“Well, when I stood there in front of him,” he said, “I felt a terrible need of lightning rods sticking up all over me. So I grabbed the first out that offered. I told him I was a lightning-rod salesman and went into a big act about selling him lightning rods for his summer home…”

Butch went out right away, and at 5 PM. was being shown over the McGurgle plant by his new and enthusiastic employer.

By Gregory Clark, October 22, 1927.

We were betting each other how long we could hold our breath.

“I bet you a thousand dollar bill…” began Charles.

“There’s no such thing as a thousand dollar bill,” I said.

“Yes, there is.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“There is, too.”

“I bet you a thousand dollar bill there isn’t,” I said.

And in this way was born the singular notion to make a story out of a thousand dollar bill¹.

For there are such things as $1,000 bills. Charles phoned one of his bankers, and I lost the bet.

“Pay now,” said Charles, “and I want the $1,000 in one bill.”

However, after some discussion, Charles agreed not to collect right away if I would get a $1,000 bill and take it out on to Yonge street and buy him a dollar neck-tie with it.

“I would just like to see you,” he said, “trying to buy something with a $1,000 bill.”

“Where would I get a $1,000 bill?” I demanded. “Who would trust me with it?”

The editor, standing nearby, said he would – out of the business office.

So we had the business office get us a $1,000 bill from the bank.

It was the plainest, ordinary little bill, about the size of a one dollar bill, perhaps a trifle longer and a trifle narrower, green on the face and orange on the back². It had a picture of the queen on it³, and on either side of her majesty, the neat figures 1000. Arched overhead were the words, One Thousand Dollars.

“There are not many of them,” said the bank manager. “And few of them are ever in circulation. They are used mostly between banks There are also thousand and five thousand dollar ‘legals’, which look like a Bank of England note, and are used only between banks. But this little fellow here is negotiable, just like a dollar bill.”

I wrapped it in a dollar I happened to have in my pants pocket, and grasping it firmly with my left hand in my pocket I called for Charles and we went forth to try and spend it.

“The idea,” said the editor, as we departed, “is not entirely humorous. This will test Toronto’s urbanity. If a thousand dollars knocks them dizzy, it will show that Toronto is not as big as she looks. On the other hand, if it creates no stir along Yonge street, why, Toronto is growing up.”

Charles and I agreed that we would not risk the bill in a big jewelry store, because in all probability they would change it for us right off.

“You buy me a tie, that’s all I want. And it must be a dollar tie or a ninety-five cent tie.”

“Right-o,” says I, my hand perspiring with the clench I had on that flimsy bill in my pocket, for we were now in the midst of Yonge street traffic, and I was turning over in my mind the idea of calling one of the big policemen off traffic duty to follow us.

“We’ll Just Charge It”

Furthermore, as we turned north on Yonge street, I suddenly noticed what an awful criminal looking population Toronto has got. I never noticed it before. But all at once, every face I looked at had a grim, sinister expression on it, and each face was staring peculiarly at me!

I glanced at Charles, and, by George, there was a funny look even on his familiar face.

“Ahem!” said Charles. “What do you say, Greg, if we just jump a train for New York and have a celebration on that $1,000?”

“How long would it last?” I demanded.

“That’s a fact,” said Charles. “Let’s not do that. Well, here’s Dunfield’s. I like their ties.”

We walked in and stood beside the dollar tie rack. We had to wait a few minutes. Apparently the clerks thought by our looks that we didn’t have much money. Little did they know!

Finally a salesman walked over.

“We want a tie – a dollar tie – or have you any around ninety-five cents?” asked Charles.

So we selected a tie; a jolly dollar tie.

As the salesman slipped it into the envelope, I tossed the $1,000 bill on to the showcase.

The salesman glanced at it, halted in his tracks, examined it closer, without picking it up.

“Is this the smallest you’ve got?” he asked, never turning a hair.

“Yes, it is,” I said, feeling about in different pockets to see if by chance I might have a five hundred or a couple of hundred in my match pockets or small change pocket.

“I’m afraid,” said the salesman, “that as it is after banking hours…”

“Have you anything smaller, Charles?” I asked.

Charles patted his wallet pocket thoughtfully.

“No.” said he, “I’ve nothing smaller, I’m afraid.”

We looked at the salesman. He said: “Just a moment.”

He walked back to the cashier’s desk and talked quietly with another salesman. They both returned and handed us the bill, and the tie.

“We’ll just charge it to you,” he said, “and you can drop in and pay for it another time!”

Done! Stumped! Bluff called! Anybody that presents thousand dollar bills around Dunfield’s can have tick⁴. They can easily have a dollar tie on credit. In fact, take the whole store, and you’re welcome!

Charles and I didn’t know just what to do in the face of this friendly offer. But I, lying like the deuce, as a matter of fact, said:

“No thanks, old man. I don’t like to do that. I like to pay cash for everything.”

And, somewhat crestfallen, we went out into Yonge street.

The Gaze of Suspicion

Imrie’s were the next victims.

We selected a very nice tie, smart club stripe. It was slipped into its envelope. I laid the thousand dollar bill on the show case. The salesman picked it up calmly, turned to the cash register and said:

“One from a hundred.”

“One from a thousand!” I corrected, in an alarmed voice.

The salesman stopped, looked at the bill.

“By Jove,” he said, “I slipped one of those noughts, didn’t I? Well, I’m sorry. It’s after banking hours; I can’t change this. But here-“

He slapped a check book down on the show case.

“I’ll take your cheque.”

Stumped again!

It began to look as if a thousand dollar bill did not cut much ice after all amongst the merchants of Yonge street.

I said I had no bank account – that I carried my wealth about with me – I got out of Imrie’s with as much dignity as I could, and we made for Brass’s.

There we chose a black and white tie, at ninety-five cents.

The salesman took the bill in his hand. He turned red.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked.

“It’s perfectly good,” I retorted.

“It looks all right,” said the salesman, turning it over and over and feeling it carefully.

“Feels all right. But I’m sorry; I can’t change it.”

He hung the tie back on the rack, and we I could feel upon our backs, as we walked out, the psychic impress of a gaze that was both suspicious and envious.

“Where now, Charles?”

“I think,” said Charles, “you should buy me a pot of tea.”

“Right-o.”

We went to a small but busy little tea shop and sat down and solemnly consumed a double pot of tea and three orders of cinnamon toast.

I signaled the girl. “Pay my check, please.”

And I handed her the thousand dollar bill. She never even looked at it. She picked it up casually with the slip and walked off to the cashier.

In a moment, the manager came back, all smiles:

“I’m frightfully sorry,” he said, beaming, “but you’ve caught me without… as a matter of fact, I’m most sorry, but I’ve not ten minutes ago returned from the bank. I can’t change this!”

He held the thousand dollar bill triumphantly in his hand, waved it, but maintained the air of a gentleman who was most frightfully embarrassed, socially, at being caught without any money.

“But we’ve drunk the tea and eaten the toast,” said Charles.

“Have you nothing smaller than this?”

I asked Charles if he had.

“No. I’ve not,” he retorted, “and, anyway, you invited me to tea.”

“Well, now, I’ll tell you, gentlemen,” said the manager, “it’s quite all right. You just pay this chit the next time you’re n!”

He was all for having us regular customers.

But in the end, Charles dug up the eighty cents and paid the bill, with loud protests that I had invited him to tea and might at least carry some decent sized money about with me.

Just Chicken Feed

As we left the tea room the girl who had waited on us passed us in the corridor with a pale and very much impressed little smile.

“Now where?”

“Eaton’s,” said Charles. “I feel we will meet our fate at Eaton’s.”

And as we walked north to Eaton’s, we looked at the crowd walking by. Somehow, the sinister criminal look about them that I had noticed at first had all gone. I noticed, instead, a sort of patient, harried look about them all. They seemed weary, tired. I felt a thousand dollars would do each one of them so much good.

And the humorous feel of that flimsy note in my pants pocket lost something.

“A lot of these girls,” I said to Charles, “work hard for a whole year for a thousand dollars.”

“And what,” said Charles, “would they do with it if you handed one of them that $1,000 in your pocket? Buy a fur coat.”

“Or maybe they wouldn’t believe it. Let’s try to give it away to someone!”

“If you try,” said Charles, “crippled as I am, I will bean you. You should realize by now that that $1,000 is real, and that it is mere chicken feed on Yonge street. Grab tight on it. Here’s Queen and Yonge.”

In Eaton’s we decided that it must be a girl we buy the tie from. So we hunted around, finding nothing but men clerks in the tie departments. But at last we came to the boys’ tie department, with girls behind the counter. And there, suspended on a rack was a gorgeous tie of scarlet and black stripes, the most gorgeous tie you would ever want to see, and it was marked boldly above it, “75 cents.”

“There’s the tie!” cried Charles. “And there’s the girl to sell it to us.”

She was amiable.

“That is a beautiful tie,” she agreed, passing it over to us. “You would be surprised who I sold a tie just like that to, last week!”

“Who was that?”

“Mr. Tommy Church⁵,” said the girl.

“Sold,” said Charles. “I must have this tie, even if I only use it to tie up love-letters and things in lavender.”

I laid the $1,000 bill softly on the counter.

The girl went ahead making the bill out, and then glanced at the note to see what denomination she would take the seventy-five cents out of.

“Oh!” said she.

She picked it up and studied it for a minute.

“I wouldn’t like to send that up,” she said. “Just wait a moment.”

And, taking the thousand dollar bill carelessly in her fingers so that it fluttered, she walked off, out of the circle, into the crowded aisle.

“Your Change! Thank You!”

Charles and I had the pleasure of seeing the salesgirl walking briskly off, we knew not whither, with that thousand dollar bill waving carelessly by her side as if it had been a dollar.

“Gone to see about it,” said Charles.

“I think maybe we should have gone with her,” said I.

“What,” said Charles, in a friendly way, “would the office do if you lost that bill? Would they take it out of you?”

“Hang it, Charles,” I expostulated, “don’t talk like that! I wonder where she’s gone?”

“She might lose it,” said Charles. “She might have it snatched out of her hand by some of these pickpockets.”

I went clammy all over.

And then, to my joy, appeared the young lady, coming briskly back. The time she was gone was less time than it would have taken for the tube to go up and come back with our change⁶.

She appeared smartly before us at the counter.

“Your change,” she said.

And she counted off nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents.

 Handed us the tie.

“Thank you!” said the girl in the boys’ neckwear department.

No hesitation. No doubt. What happened was that she had simply carried the bill to the cashier’s office, one floor up, handed it in, asked for change, got it, and took her seventy-five cents out of it.

So there was the end of our thousand dollar bill. All I had left of it was nine one hundred dollar bills, four twenties, a ten, a five and two twos. And a quarter.

Funny how unromantic that roll looked. Just so much spondoolicks⁷.

“Well,” said Charles.

“It looks,” said I, “as if Toronto is growing up. It is nothing to them that plain ordinary fellows haul out thousand dollar bills.”

“The races are on,” said Charles. “And the stock market is booming as never before. Maybe the good times they talk about are really here⁸. And besides, we may look a little like gamblers.”

“There’s something flattering about the reception we got all along the line. It must be the ties I wear,” said I.

“Here,” said Charles, “you take this one. I’ll never use it. It’s more your style.”

“No, Charles,” I replied. “You keep it as s souvenir of this adventure. I’ll charge it up to expenses anyway.”

Editor’s Notes: This is one of the original “stunt” stories that was done in the late 1920s and early 1930s. If you think it is odd, just consider that this would not be out of place today as a Youtube video.

1. $1000 in 1927 would be $17,915 in 2025. ↩︎
2. Here is an image of it (this would be before the creation of the Bank of Canada in 1935). ↩︎
3. That would be Queen Mary, wife of George V. ↩︎
4. In this context, “tick” is slang for “an account” or “credit”. ↩︎
5. Thomas Church was mayor of Toronto from 1915-1921, and then a Member of Parliament for a Toronto riding from 1921-1930, 1934-1950. ↩︎
6. I love the idea that they would be using pneumatic tubes for this. ↩︎
7. “Spondoolicks” is slang for money or cash. Greg sure can bring out the 19th century slang. ↩︎
8. Uh, oh. ↩︎