Mr. Joe Greaves is a respected member of the newspaper printing trade in Port Arthur. But 12 years ago, he was Pte. Joe Greaves.
And one day the sergeant-major said to him:
“What’s your line?”
“Driver,” offered Joe. “Jeeps, trucks, lorries.”
“Civil life?” checked the S.M.
“Printer,” said Joe. “Newspaper.”
“Ha!” said the S.M.
And that is how Joe was instructed to report himself forthwith to the Public Relations unit of the First Canadian Division, which was fighting in Italy.
And that is how Joe found himself driving a jeep with me in the back seat.
Now, I am going to make this story as respectful of myself as I can. After all, a man at my age owes himself a little consideration. Sitting there in the back seat of the jeep, I was 51 years old, which is pretty creaky in war time, even for a war correspondent. To keep up with kids of 19 or 23, with colonels only 25 years of age, and brigadiers 29, you have got to be nimble.
Nimble in the wits, if not in the joints. To begin with, I had one advantage: I had been an army officer in the previous war, and had several medal ribbons brightening up my ill-fitting battle dress. I used to carry my left chest a little forward of my right chest when dealing with these young strangers. They had no ribbons yet.
And further to confuse them, I had another heritage from the first war. In that famous war, I had been scared right up to the edge of my steel helmet, with the result that, while my hair under the helmet stayed brown, my side hair turned white. And by growing these white sideburns luxuriantly, I found I could create a sort of Foxy Grandpa1 image that puzzled the young soldiers sorely. Until they saw my green-and-gold “War Correspondent” insignia on my shoulders, they might suppose I was the Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, or perhaps the general’s uncle. Many a sentry, seeing me approach, would get the spasms trying to decide whether to give me a mere butt salute, a present arms, or to turn out the guard. Nothing like a good bunch of white sidewhiskers in war time.
Pte. Joe Greaves, on first seeing me sitting plump in the back seat of the jeep he was destined to drive for many a thousand mile in the Italian mountains, was duly impressed and confused. To add to his confusion, he told me afterwards, I reminded him of his Grandpa.
Joe was three things above all: a skilled and daring driver, a joyous laugher, and a most gentle heart.
But he hadn’t driven me more than 10 miles before he made the horrifying discovery that he had with him perhaps the worst back-seat driver in the world.
Capt. Gordon Hutton, M.C., of Vancouver, who was our conducting officer, and sat in the front seat of the jeep beside Joe, put it into the official records that he had, in his previous experience, encountered some 200 back-seat drivers, and that I was as bad as all the 200 put together.
It may be so. But, as I told them over and over, after all, God made me. Joe loved driving, and a jeep, to a young soldier, was something like a sports car. He didn’t own it. He didn’t have to pay for its upkeep. Boy!
And here were the mountain roads of Italy, hairpin turns, obstacles, vast abysses without rails to lend spice to every twist and turn…
But in the back seat, the champion back-seat driver of the world, a feeble, cantankerous old gentleman who reminded him of his grandfather, and who roused in Joe’s gentle and respectful nature every sentiment of consideration…
It was a cruel situation. And with lively interest, I set myself to watch it work itself out.
At every burst of speed down a mountain road, I bellowed. At every turn, I shouted caution. If we raced too close into the dust cloud of a 10-ton truck’s tail, I howled. Uphill, I demanded the jeep’s double-low gear. Downhill, I pleaded.
Joe’s happy laughter died. In a few days, his weight began to fall. In the mornings, he came slowly to his job. In the evenings, when he let me out at my quarters, he raced away in flying cinders. Captain Hutton watched us out of the corner of his eye.
High in the sad, agonized mountains of Molise, where surely no poet ever sang, we were hop-skip-and-jeeping over disaster-riven mountain roads and I was practically popping, when there suddenly, on a jagged turn, appeared before us the smoking wreckage of a lorry that had struck a ratchet mine a little while before. It was strewn all over the narrow road and up the steep mountainside.
Joe Greaves jammed the brakes and we crept up on the gruesome spectacle.
Joe locked the hand brake, bailed out. Up the steep bank he scrambled and started wrestling in the wreckage.
Down he bounded, bearing in his hands the steering wheel of the lorry and a broken bit of its column. He hoisted them over the side of the jeep into my lap.
“There!” he cried triumphantly. “Now you can drive too!”
This is in reference to Foxy Grandpa, a comic strip that started in 1900 and was a bout an old guy who was just as mischievous as the kids in the comics at the time. “Foxy” at the time meant cunning or crafty, and not the more modern slang definition of attractive. ↩︎
Lord Byng, then Sir Julian, was popular with the Canadians as corps commander insofar as general officers were capable of being known to the troops.
For brigadiers were rare enough birds in the select company of the old tin hats, let alone corps commanders.
But Sir Julian inspected us a few times – few enough, indeed, to win the real gratitude of the muddy trench hounds. He dropped in unexpectedly on us at our work or play. He popped without warning into billets or training field, saw us as we were, not as we pretended to be on carefully preened parades for him.
And to us, he appeared a real general. He seemed so entirely at his ease. Generals as a class were usually a fiercely tailored and starched lot, sitting their horses just so, uttering certain set clipped remarks, as if they were playing a part.
Sir Julian struck us as a man accustomed to his part. His uniform didn’t seem to distress him. He wore it easily, loosely, as if he had had it for years. He wore amazing grey- green canvas leggings! Yes, sir. Astonishing. No other general of our acquaintance could have dared forego the rich, shining knee boots of generalhood. But Sir Julian not only wore outrageous canvas leggings, but he carried an absurd little stick instead of the massive riding-crop of his high estate. And frequently – tell it not in G. H. Q – frequently he had one or more of his tunic buttons undone.
That made him a figure of interest to the rank and file. He came one day before the Vimy show to inspect us near Lillers. We were doing the tapes. And a watchful eye was kept for the party of horsemen or the red-flagged grey motor car that would advise us of his approach.
But around a copse, on foot, came a small party of brass hats and caught us unawares. The usual stiff group of immaculate red tabs, but at the head of them a tall, long-legged, easy figure who walked as though he were accustomed (like us, egad, poor gravel crushers), to walk.
This was Sir Julian, our leader. He came and walked along our platoons. Our buttons blazed. Not a button, not a strap was out of place. We scarcely breathed as the great corps commander strode close before us. But picture our rapture and relief when we noted that three of the august tunic buttons were undone.
Did he stop and tick our buttons? Did he examine our chins, or ask us to show him our iron rations? No. In a rather high voice, he asked the company commander –
“What are you doing?”
And when he was told –
“Let’s see you do it,” he said.
And we galumphed gaily over the mimic attack on the tapes, at our ease before a general who was at his ease and had three buttons undone. And when the sham attack ended on a hill-top, we looked back, and the corps commander waved his little stick to us and went on to other battalions in the next stubble field.
So we had a hunch that this man knew what he was doing with us. He didn’t seem highty-tighty. We began to appreciate the fact that we were getting a remarkably thorough training for this Vimy show. We noted the plenty of maps, air photos and intelligence reports that were showered upon us, even down to the humble lance-jack and section commander. We had a feeling of confidence, which was half the battle of Vimy Ridge.
And word was whispered down to us from colonel to captain, sergeant and buck, that this was the ingenious hand of Sir Julian. His good name followed him after he left the Canadians; and in that fateful March, 1918, when we heard Byng’s Third Army was on our right, we felt no alarm.
He started the Corps School in 1916, which proved the most invaluable liaison between divisions. For in those early days, the First Division did not altogether love the Second, and the Third Division was an unknown infant. Sir Julian dealt with this as soon as he took command of the corps. The Corps School brought officers and N.C.O.’s from all divisions together, put them to sleep together in tents, had them eat and live together in huts. And lo, the little antagonisms vanished.
He got his point of view on Jack Canuck at first hand. At Houdain, on the outskirts of which was his headquarters in the Chateau of Ranchicourt, he came suddenly one morning into the barn in which I was superintending a fatigue party cleaning the billet.
Hs asked numerous questions about us, our regiment, where from, how billets should be cleaned, what offenses the different members of the fatigue party had committed to win this distinction, had we been long out in France, what had we for breakfast, were we married, any children, had we been shooting lately, what was that man limping for, did many of the men get drunk ever, how old is that man there?
I had no idea who my inquisitor was. His red tabs confused me. But his perfectly easy, friendly manner set me at rest, in spite of the presence of another brass-hat, who stood stiffly and importantly at the door of the barn. Some brigade officer or other, I said —
When I described my friend to my seniors at mess that noon, I was horrified to learn it was without question the corps commander. Lumme, a lieutenant-general! But, as Ortheris1 said, I was a recruity then.
Editor’s Note:
In the collection of short stories “Soldiers Three” by Rudyard Kipling, the cockney soldier Ortheris expresses deep contempt for recruits (“recruities”) who whine about their rights. ↩︎
“What do you serve your blood donors in the Presbyterian Hospital after the ordeal?” asked Cousin Madge. “Scotch whiskey?”
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Duncan Macpherson, May 27, 1950.
“Quick!” came the hoarse voice of my Cousin Madge over the telephone. “Come in your car!”
“But…uh…” I explained.
“Quick! I have no time to argue!” chopped Cousin Madge. “Drive me to the hospital!”
She hung up. I hung up, and leaped for my hat and the car keys on the mantel.
Every family has its Cousin Madge – one of those grand old girls; spinsters, yes; a little violent and opinionated, maybe; but commanding. And the family, while it may not exactly revolve around her, certainly can be set in large circular motions by her.
I ran for the car. What could be wrong with poor Cousin Madge? A heart attack, possibly? Or a violent onset of gallstones? Cousin Madge is large and meaty. It is only three blocks to Cousin Madge’s from my place. And I got there in record time. I backed into her side drive so as to be able to speed away, the minute I had the dear old girl in the car.
She came bursting out the front door.
“Easy!” I begged, scrambling out to assist her.
“Get back in!” she barked, as she bounded down the steps.
“What is it, what is it?” I quavered, taking her arm.
“It isn’t me,” she cried, backing powerfully through the car door into her seat. “It’s a blood transfusion.”
“Blood ..?” I checked, hurrying around to my door of the car.
“I just heard it on the radio,” puffed Cousin Madge, as I started out the drive. “A poor man is dying down at the Presbyterian Hospital for the want of some Jantze Four1.”
“Some what?” I pleaded.
“Some Number One!” yelled Madge, patting her hat down into position for a fast ride. “Some Group A. Step on it!”
I stepped on it. The Presbyterian Hospital is a good six miles across town.
“I don’t get it.” I ventured.
“I’ve got it,” declared Cousin Madge, grimly but proudly. “My blood is one of those rare types that only maybe four per cent of the human race has got. Jantze Four, some doctors call it. Others call it Number One type, or type A. And this guy is dying; so they put out an emergency call on the radio…”
“My dear Madge,” I protested, slowing the car a little. “You can’t give blood transfusions at your age.”
“Listen!” hissed Cousin Madge, reaching over with her left foot and stepping on my right foot on the gas. “I gave blood 22 times during the war.”
“You were five, eight years younger.”
“Get cracking!” grated Cousin Madge, giving her hat another jerk and leaning forward. “This is my business. If there one thing I’ve got lots of, it’s blood. And if am the fortunate possessor of one of the rare types of blood, who am I to decline it to a poor man who is a fellow Jantze Four?”
“I think you’re crazy,” I muttered, as we hurtled through the busy streets.
Cousin Madge sat in haughty but slightly forward-crouching silence for a couple of blocks.
“It might occur to you,” she said, finally, “that it has not been my privilege to give life to any children. But if I can give life to some poor devil…”
“Pardon me, Madge,” I offered humbly.
So we dodged and darted through the city streets while Cousin Madge did a little quiet sniffling.
“I hope,” she gulped, “I hope we’re not too late, that’s all! And I was just sitting here wondering if the Presbyterian Hospital would take my blood. I’m an Anglican, you know.”
“Madge!” I scoffed. “Blood is non-denominational! Blood, you might say, is international. What a silly thought!”
“Oh, you never know!” asserted Cousin Madge. “I’ve never been in the Presbyterian Hospital. Maybe they have some rules. I’m not too sure I would want any Presbyterian blood…”
“If a man is dying…” I pointed out.
“We all have our principles,” declared Cousin Madge firmly. “If they start asking me my religion, I’ll say I’m Presbyterian.”
“Good for you!” I agreed.
And with a final swoosh, we rounded the wide bend in the approach to the Presbyterian Hospital and skidded through the gates onto the gravel.
Cousin Madge bounded out, leaving me to park the car. She headed powerfully for the entrance doors. By the time I reached the lobby, there was no sign of her.
“Did a lady…?” I queried the nurse at the desk.
“Blood transfusion?” the girl clicked. “Down that corridor. Turn left, and the fourth door…”
The door was open when I reached the blood transfusion clinic. And there was Cousin Madge, her hat and coat off, rolling her right sleeve up, and directing a young male technician in white, as well as a nurse, how to proceed with their business.
“This arm,” barked Cousin Madge, “has the fewest scars on it.”
“Let’s see the other,” suggested the technician meekly, after a glance at Cousin Madge’s forearm.
“This one, you hear?” bellowed Cousin Madge. “Look here, young man, I was giving gallons of blood while you were still in short pants.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the technician. “Please come inside to the cot.”
“How much do you want?” enquired Cousin Madge, generously. “Fifty cc’s?”
“That will be wonderful,” said the nurse.
I followed cautiously to the door of the inner office.
“Is this your husband?” asked the technician.
“My cousin,” corrected Cousin Madge. “But let him in, I want him to see this…”
Cousin Madge sat on the cot and rolled herself back.
It was obviously an emergency, the way the technician and nurse worked. They swabbed Cousin Madge’s forearm with alcohol. The technician examined the inside of the forearm closely for an instant. Then he whipped a black bandage, such as they choke your arm with for blood pressure count, and wrapped it around Madge’s upper arm.
“Open and close your hand,” commanded the technician.
Cousin Madge opened and closed her fist. This was to pump the blood into her forearm to cause the veins to stick out, so the technician could select a good spot for the needle.
Before my horrified gaze the young white-clad man calmly picked up a slant-pointed needle, attached to a rubber tube, and plunged it into Cousin Madge’s lusty vein.
She did not even wince.
The technician hastily undid the bandage. On a low table, I noticed a glass jar about the size of a pint pickle bottle. And suddenly, into it from the rubber tube, squirted the bright red fluid of Cousin Madge’s life.
After a momentary stare, I began to feel slightly dizzy.
I averted my gaze and stared at the white wall.
I took a very deep breath.
“Hey!” charged Cousin Madge. “Get him out of here!
The young nurse took my sleeve and led me into the outer room.
“Lie down on that couch a minute,” she smiled.
“My blood…” I woozied, “my blood isn’t the right type…”
“Oh, we’re not taking yours,” she assured me. “Bit on the side of the couch and bend over, with your head as low as you can put it…”
So while I sat with my head resolutely bowed to my knees, the nurse returned to the inner room and Cousin Madge.
After a few minutes, I felt a little easier and sat up. An elderly doctor appeared at the door.
“How’s it coming?” he asked tersely.
“Squirting like a fire hose,” replied the technician. “I’ll have fifty cc’s in another five minutes…”
“Give me,” commanded the older doctor, “40 cc’s when you get it.”
“Right, sir!”
The older doctor vanished silently.
And suddenly in the humming hospital the druggy-scented hospital, full of quiet, swift footed people in white and slow-moving patients humbly carrying their hats and wandering the corridors or slouching on the benches and chairs, I got a sense of the drama that is staged here, day and night, minute by minute. Out the door from the inner room sprang the young nurse, holding the blood-red bottle as if it were indeed a chalice.
The young technician appeared and smiled at me. “You can come in now,” he said.
Cousin Madge was reclining on the cot, as large as life. Her arm lay with a white pad of cotton covering the needle puncture.
They only took 40 cc’s,” she scoffed. “I could give a bucket.”
“We needed the 40,” explained the young fellow, “right away. It was a case of speed.”
“Wasn’t I fast enough, letting it down?” scorned Cousin Madge.
“You were wonderful,” assured the young man. “In five minutes it will be tested, in the lab; and then it will be going into the patient.”
“Tested?” bit Madge.
“We have to confirm,” said the young fellow, “the type, and make sure there is no infection… uh…”
“You’ll find that,” cut in Cousin Madge, “good, pure, 100 per cent blood. It will be a tonic to him.”
“I’m sure it will,” said the young technician, earnestly.
Cousin Madge studied him up and down.”
“Are you a Presbyterian?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, I’m a Baptist,” said the young chap.
“Isn’t this the Presbyterian Hospital?” enquired Madge.
“Oh, yes, that’s just its name,” explained the technician.
“Personally, I’m an Anglican,” announced Cousin Madge, mildly.
“Indeed,” said the technician, removing the dab of cotton from Cousin Madge’s arm and inspecting the little blue mark.
He then took a fresh bit of cotton and secured it to her arm with a small piece of adhesive.
He glanced at his watch.
“You should rest 15 minutes…” he began.
Cousin Madge swung her legs off the cot.
“Listen, young man,” she said, “I’ve been through this too often to be coddled around like a beginner. What do you serve your blood donors in the Presbyterian Hospital after the ordeal? Scotch whiskey?”
“Tea, madam,” said the boy, “or coffee.”
“During the war,” related Cousin Madge, as she rolled her sleeve down, “I had snorts of brandy, glasses of sherry…”
The young nurse came sweeping back into the room, extending an envelope towards Cousin Madge.
“Pardon ME!” snorted Cousin Madge, drawing up. “I am not a professional donor. This was voluntary.”
“Mr. Ginsberg insisted,” assured the nurse, “that I MUST give this to whoever offered their blood.”
Cousin Madge reached for the envelope.
“Mr. WHO did you say?” she checked.
“Mr. Ginsberg,” said the nurse, “who’s going to be rallying in half an hour.”
“I’ve got an idea!” exulted Cousin Madge.
She thanked the young technician, she kissed the young nurse, she waved me ahead of her out the door to act as her equerry. And we sailed down the hall and out the big doors and over to my car.
“Drive north!” rang Cousin Madge imperiously. “Drive north to the boulevard and turn west.”
“It’s a long way round…” I offered.
“North!” commanded Cousin Madge.
So we drove north to the boulevard and then west. And when we came abreast of St. Joseph’s Hospital Cousin Madge directed me to turn in the drive.
Out we piled and entered the wide doors of the older and even quieter hospital than the Presbyterian.
At the switchboard sat a black-clad sister.
“You have a drive for funds on now, sister?” enquired Cousin Madge.
“It ends today,” said the sister.
“Did you go over the top?”
“Not,” smiled the sister, “quite.”
“See if this will do it, maybe,” said Cousin Madge, handing in the envelope with the $25 in it.
If didn’t, it should have.
“Blood, by gum,” resounded Cousin Madge, as we re-piled ourselves into my car, “is just plain human!”
Editor’s’ Notes:
The first doctor to recognize the different types of blood was Jan Janský in 1907. He classified blood into four distinct groups (I, II, III, and IV). Type 4 is the modern Type AB. ↩︎
The new room for expectant fathers at the Private Patients’ Pavilion of the General hospital in Toronto is a smart little room containing three chairs and a prim settee, big enough for two to sit on. As if two expectant fathers would ever want to sit that close together!
The room has no pictures in it. It has only a mirror, in which the fathers may inspect their haggard faces. A few nice cheering pictures such as “Napoleon in Hades” or “Dante, the Smoke Inspector” would be a gracious thing to hang in this room.
Some six years ago1, The Star Weekly suggested to the General hospital that in planning its new pavilion it should include a cinder track and a small dressing room well supplied with running shorts, for the use of expectant fathers, so that during their hours of suspense they might consume the time humanely by running fiercely around and around the track. The General hospital has ignored the suggestion, and has given us instead a little stylish sitting room with a mirror and chairs so comfortable that the only thing the fathers can do is sit and listen to the hollow beating of their hearts.
The least they could do would be to provide private rooms, or at least little cubicles or alcoves, so that each father might be secluded alone with his fright and terror.
When you arrive at the hospital, breathless and scared, you are shown into this little club room by a kindly and reassuring Head. She has not much time for you, but she pats you on the back (nearly every man is about the right size to pat on the back when he is about to become a father!) and thrusts you into the room and tells you it won’t be long.
Thank your stars if the room is empty.
But if it is a club room, heaven help you. Man is a gregarious creature. He loves the company of his fellow man. Especially in time of trouble or danger, does he crave the companionship of other men, and braver men.
But strange, in this trouble, which seems the greatest trouble a man can meet, the sight of other men fills him with loathing and bitterness.
I have often been chased by a bull when I chanced to cross a corner of a field which held both my trout streams and his wives. And I am sure if I had had horns I would have chased the three forlorn looking objects out of the waiting room the morning I was recently ushered into it.
Sitting over by the window was a young man, a mere stripling, and it was sheer bumptiousness and conceit on his part to assume to be a father. I disliked him the moment I set eyes on him. He had a white, long face, and his lower lip looked as if it might tremble any minute. And he sat staring at nothing, and seemed to be listening.
In the double settee sat a tall, haggard man who looked as if he might have two or three children already, but it didn’t make any difference to him. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, and slowly, slowly, he rubbed his palms hard against his gaunt cheeks.
In the third chair lay back a stout little man, and he shaded his eyes with his hand. He was motionless. He did not move a lip or a finger tip. I had to stoop down and tuck in a shoe lace in order to see that his eyes were wide open and unblinking. If he had been asleep, I was about to do something to awaken him.
I sat down in the fourth chair and glared belligerently around at them. But they did not raise their eyes. For them, I was not in the room.
I cleared my throat as a warning to them in case any of them might dare to speak.
But they looked as if they would never speak again.
Out in the hall the feet of hurrying nurses passed and repassed. And at every footstep the young chap at the window half rose from his chair and raised terrified eyes to the door. But no nurses came in.
The tall, bony man rubbed his palms slowly and interminably up and down his cheeks. Apparently he had not shaved overnight, for presently I heard a faint and most irritating rasping sound.
The small man slumped down in his chair and did not even blink. I felt like demanding that he blink. I blinked several times for him, to relieve the strain.
The tiny voice of a baby wailed somewhere in the hall outside. And we all ceased breathing. I thought the young kid at the window might never breathe again.
He turned his tired face to look out the window and his lips moved as if he were speaking. Maybe he was promising God something.
I wondered how long the others had been sitting here. Then there came sharp footsteps approaching and into our midst walked a stout, sandy man very well dressed, with loud tie and loud handkerchief to match. He grinned around at us. None of us saw him.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said in a jolly voice, “don’t let it get on your nerves.”
None of us paid the slightest attention, except the young chap, who got up eagerly and said, “Have a chair, sir.”
The ruddy man sat down at once, clapped his hands like a commercial man sitting down in a Pullman smoker, all prepared to start the discussion.
“Ah,” said he. “Well, here we are again! Fifth time for me! Getting to be a habit. I would be at the office if it weren’t that I expect to be seeing my new one in half an hour or so. Ha, ha!”
The young chap stood for a moment looking down at this sturdy monster and then suddenly walked out of the room. I could see him passing and repassing the door as he marched the corridor.
The ruddy one stared around at the rest of us, with a look of pity on his face. He sighed heartily. Just to show he had the last word, he took out a cigarette and a morning paper and ignored us.
How glad we were! The lank man continued to rub his jaws, and the short man to lie back with shaded and unblinking eyes.
A smiling nurse appeared at the door. She crooked her finger at the tall, gaunt man. He nearly fell over as he leaped up, his mouth open, unable to ask the question.
“Girl,” I heard the nurse say with a gulp. So I knew that lonely big bony man wanted a girl. Or maybe his wife did.
Hardly had the door cleared before another nurse appeared with that look on her face, and she stooped over the small man shading his eyes. The nurse nodded. Her white cap was like a flame in the heavens. The little man rose tremblingly. His mouth. worked and he turned his face from us as he blindly followed the nurse out of the room.
Then the young kid appeared at the door. His white face was damp. He looked at me beseechingly, as if I knew the answer to his question. He hovered in the door. Why do some fellows want to be fathers at that age?
I winked at him, and he thanked me with his eyes for that wink. He put his hands together when he sat down, and squeezed his arms between his knees.
Then another nurse bounced in. Just bounced. Maybe she was the young kid’s sister, but she just leaped across to him, they met in mid-air, she seized his elbows and the two of them bounced out of the room without a sound or a word. I wish I knew if it was a boy or a girl. Not that it matters. But that young kid of a man deserved a boy. I mean, he would give some little boy a wonderful time. I wouldn’t doubt he had miniature hockey sticks and cricket pads and boxing gloves all ready in the rumble seat of his roadster waiting out on University Avenue. I don’t even know if he had a roadster. But he was that kind of a kid. Whatever came to him, he was waiting for it!
Now the ruddy man behind the morning paper was alone with me. He lowered the paper and looked at me. I rose and walked out towards the hall. I wanted no conversation.
In the hall I met my sister. A minute later I met a cousin of mine who is interne on this marvellous floor. He had just come from headquarters of the Stork. He held out his hand and announced that I was now a mother, for I had a daughter.
And as we marched like an army with banners up the corridor, the ruddy man was standing forlornly in the waiting room door.
His half hour was up. And now he was to do overtime.
Alone.
Editor’s Note: This is another story regarding the birth of Greg’s daughter Elizabeth, who was born on April 9, 1931. You can read about her coming home here. She was the last surviving child of Greg. She passed away recently, on December 29, 2025 at the age of ninety-four.
You can read Greg’s cinder track scheme here. This was based on the last time he was there when Greg Jr. was born in 1925. ↩︎
When the porter conducted me down to my reservation, seat 5 in the chair car, I glanced covertly around at the chairs adjacent. It was an eight-hour journey ahead of me, the whole long day. I looked forward to spending the trip snoozing, gazing out the window at the coming of spring, reading a little bit, snoozing some more. And everything could be spoiled if, in one of the seats beside me or across from me, some chatterbox of a casual acquaintance were to be my neighbor, who would gas and blather away, mile after mile, hour after hour.
What might be worse, of course, would be two middle-aged women with brand new hairdos, on their way to some convention, who, in strident society voices, would ruin the whole journey by tirelessly interrupting each other, debating their plans. It was with pleasure I noted, with my first cautious glance, that my immediate neighbors were complete strangers, already deeply immersed in their newspapers, and not at all the chatty type. The seat directly across from me, chair 6, was not yet occupied. I hoped for the best.
I got a couple of magazines and a good fishing book out of my bag and disposed the bag and my coat up in the rack. I shook out the morning paper, swung my chair firmly around to face out the window, and snuggled down for a pleasant and restful eight hours.
Just as the train started, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, the porter approaching with a bag. Behind him came an elderly man. I was lucky. It was a stranger. With a little shrug of content, I snuggled deeper in my seat. He was in chair 6.
I heard him thank the porter quietly. His voice was deep and kindly. A beautiful voice.
After watching out the window at the passing suburbs in the bright morning, I decided to swing my chair around casually and have a look at chair 6. He was just lighting a cigarette and had one of those 35-cent paper back novels laid ready on his knee.
His head was shaggy, gray and noble. His profile was intensely interesting, a strong curved nose, splendid rugged forehead, humorous mouth. His eyes glanced out from under bristly brows. And he was tanned, even at this time of year, a deep, grained brown. Not a Florida tan, I thought to myself. This is a man from the North. Perhaps he is some famous mining geologist from Yellowknife.
His tweed suit was rough and costly. My glance ran down to his boots: they were those soft, walnutty ankle boots, obviously handmade. By Lob, of London, I bet myself, or at least by Tricker, also of London1.
He picked up the cheap paper novel and opened it with a sigh of pleasant relaxation. The more I looked at this magnificent old man, the more excited I became. Across his chest he wore an old-fashioned watch chain from which dangled some curious charm. On his left hand, I saw the iron finger ring of the Engineers. There could be no doubt about it; across from me sat one of the great Canadians. I cleared my throat and rattled my newspaper. He was already lost in page one of his tawdry novel.
After a while, I swung around and tried to enjoy the passing fields and woods. But I felt easier when turned slightly, so as to be able to seize an opportunity, if it presented itself, of opening a conversation. He swung his chair to face out his window.
An hour went by, two hours. He never took his eyes off his book. And he read dreadfully slowly. What a way, I thought, for a man of his stamp to waste his time, reading trash. I dipped into my fishing book. I glanced through magazines. I coughed, sighed. When he goes to lunch in the dining car, I figured. I will follow, in the hope of getting to the same table. But he fell asleep at lunch time; and after a long wait, I went in without him. He came in, to another table, just as I was preparing to leave.
The miles, the hours clicked by. I never remember a more restless journey. Not once did the distinguished old man meet my glance or indicate the slightest awareness of me, He was literally sunk in his book.
We neared the journey’s end. I thought perhaps he would finish the book in time for five minutes, 10 minutes, so that I could at least discover who and what he was. But it was a race between him and the book and the train. It was a dead heat. We lumbered into the station. People were all putting on their coats, as was I.
He finished the book and tossed it aside, stood up with a bright, kindly gaze around. He smiled at me, I at him, as he put on his hat.
“Do you know,” he said, “I believe I have read that damned book before!”
And I never did find out who and what he was.
Editor’s Notes: This story appeared in Greg’s Choice (1961).
Greg clutched his precious paperback. It had to be protected from eager little hands that like to scribble.
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.
Ed McNally was the editorial cartoonist for the Montreal Star and illustrated for Weekend Magazine. ↩︎
Gillis Purcell was the general manager of Canadian Press from 1945 to 1969. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
As Cousin Madge stepped back, there was a sudden slither and a loud crash.
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!”
How they coming? shouted Lou with the slush slashing past his head.
By Gregory Clark, January 3, 1931.
Lou Marsh all his life has looked as if he were going some place.
Even when he is only walking from the sporting department to the composing room he looks as if he were getting a kick out of it.
And all my life I have wished I could be going with Lou wherever he was going. But I knew my legs wouldn’t hold out.
The other afternoon Lou went charging by with a little cigar butt wedged in the corner of his jaw and looking even more than ordinarily marshy. And twenty years of silence went bust.
Out we galloped to the street, around a corner and into Lou’s car, where it was parked under a “Strictly No Parking” sign.
He drives the way he writes. Lou is largely responsible for the state of traffic in downtown Toronto. The swells he leaves last for hours.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Dufferin,” said Lou. “Harness races. We are going to buy a pool.”
“There isn’t any racing this time of year,” said I.
“Isn’t there?” said Lou. “There isn’t any racing any other time of year, you mean.”
“What kind of racing is it?” I asked, bracing my feet against the floorboards.
“Harness racing. Trottin’ races, pacers. On ice. On slush. In the mud. Big fat man sitting on a little wee bicycle down under the horse’s tail. All races run in heats.”
“What are heats?”
“Sections,” said Lou. “Like tripe. You pick a horse. It runs four races. Comes second each time and yet can still win the race. You get to like a horse that way. Fall in love with a horse.”
“I never knew about this,” said I.
“Lots of people don’t,” said Lou. “But lots of people don’t know about rasslin’.”
“I agree with you about rasslin’,” I said. “Rasslin’ is terrible.”
“Rasslin’ is the greatest sport in world,” said Lou.
“But—but,” I stammered, “I thought you—”
“Sure,” said Lou. “I changed my mind. Good to change your mind every once in a while. Like your shirt. It’s cleaner and it feels better.”
With a swish and a swoop we pulled up at Dufferin race track, bumped over the curb and pulled up on the boulevard.
Dufferin race track2 is a little merry-go-round track from a country fair dropped down right in the heart of Toronto. Its grandstand is a little grandstand exactly like the one at Birdseye Center. Its betting enclosures are fussy little barn-beamed stables without paint or varnish. Its judge’s stand is on this side, the crowd side, of the track, so that you can holler up to the judges if you are so minded. It is a little bit of home in the heart of the big city to thousands of lonely people from up-country.
And in the winter, when the trottin’ races are on, it is more like Coboconk or Omemee than ever.
A Hunch on Commodore Fish
If the ground in front of the grandstand gets muddy they just bring the straw out of the stables In wheelbarrows and make a sweet-smelling path of it so that you can get your overshoes or storm rubbers and maybe the back of your overalls into as near a homelike condition as possible. Lou said that was atmosphere. I don’t know what he meant.
Lou led me up to the gate, where a fellow in an old beaver coat was standing guard, taking your cash money.
“I’m the lieutenant-governor,” said Lou. “and this is my aide de cong.”
“I never heard of you.” said the gateman, grinning and letting us past.
The boys who follow the trotting races are certainly worlds removed from the crowd you see at the common race tracks. There are no foreigners at the trottin’ races, no sports, no young brokers and no spats. The old beaver and coon coats are the only touch of the elegant. Plenty of peak caps with ear-flaps. Plenty of woolen mufflers. Pale faces, which are the majority at the Woodbine, cause you to go up to them, even if they are perfect strangers, and ask how they have been keeping lately.
It’s old home week when there is trottin’ at Dufferin.
The races hadn’t started when Lou and I got there, but there were several horses warming up on the track. Not the pretty sleek effeminate horses you see at the running races, but plain horses, just a little on the skinny side, with steam coming off them, sitting down behind them, on little gigs made with bicycle tire wheels, big fat men wearing rubber suits.
“Lou,” said I, “look at the gait of those horses!”
“Pacers and trotters,” said Lou. “Some roll like a woozy sailor. Action like a tandem bike, both legs together. A pacer puts both his right legs forward at the same time, then both his left. A trotter hits on all four corners alternately. But it’s a fast gait either way. They can sure pick ’em up and set ’em down fast when they’re let.”
He took me by the elbow add rushed me down past the grandstand to the little sheds at the north end where I could hear voices yelling.
In the gloom of the beamed sheds, with only rusty old braziers warming the air, a tight packed crowd was gathered around a sort of booth raised up, where men were chalking figures on a blackboard.
“That’s just Ching Hare takin’ bets on the heat,” said Lou, shoving me through the jam. “Come on down and buy a pool. That’s where you get some real gamblin’.”
At the back end of the sheds a pudgy little man with a hard hat over one eye, his coat open and thrown back and his hands jammed down into cross pockets in his pants, with watch-chain dangling across the bulge, was singing something. He was one of the sportiest, most charming little men you ever saw.
“Come—on,” he sang, “don’t—let—the—wheels—of—commerce stand—still! Who’ll buy—the—rest—of—this—pool? Take off your leather vests. Don’t—tell—me—that—you—are—going—to—let—a–chance—like—Bingo Boy—pass—by—for—a—buck—don’t—tell—me… Bingo Boy—Bingo Boy—best—horse—in—the—race… I just sold Molasses—there’s a sweet thing for you—for fifty for one if you like Bingo Boy. It’s the chance of your blooming life.”
Lou was studying his card.
“Look at that,” he said. “That one.”
I saw the name: “Commodore Fish.”
“A pure hunch,” said Lou. “Commodore for me, since I’m the admiral of the sea flea fleet. And fish for you. We’ll buy the pool on him.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“These fellows are selling pools,” said Lou. “When he finishes selling the pool he is on now we’ll up and say we will buy the pool on Commodore Fish—that’s in the third race—for twenty dollars. Then he will sell the other five horses in the race for whatever he can get. Maybe he will sell the other horses for two dollars each. That makes the pool thirty bucks. If our horse wins we take the whole pool.”
“That’s a lot simpler than ordinary betting,” said l.
“Simpler in more ways than you think,” said Lou.
Mingling With the Real Ammonia Boys
He listened while the quaint little man, who never took his hands out of his cross pockets, finished persuading the boys standing around to take up the rest of the horses in the pool he was selling. He had to lump the last three horses in one bunch and he sold them for two dollars the lot. The fellow who bought them had three chances for two dollars to win the race.
Then Lou stepped up.
“I’ll pay $20 for Commodore Fish in the third race,” said he.
“Twenty—dollars—on—the—Fish horse—in—the—third,” droned the little man. “I’ll get you thirty against that.” And right away several of the boys spoke up and took other horses in that race. The whole pool quickly came to fifty-six dollars.
“Not so good,” said Lou. I don’t like that. The boys don’t seem to like Commodore Fish. They jumped at our twenty.”
“Here’s my ten now,” said I.
“Listen,” said Lou, “Get out there and walk around the crowd and see what you can hear. Whenever you get close to anybody that smells strong of horse stay by him. The horsier they smell, the more they know. Some of them sleep with these skins. See if any of the real ammonia boys have anything good to say for Commodore Fish.”
I went out and mingled with the crowd.
I watched them run a heat. Instead of lining the horses up at a barrier they wheel them back, let them take off to a running start, and if they are in good order as they come past the judge’s stand the starter, yelling through a megaphone, shouts, “Go!”
it isn’t a good start, which happens three times out four, the starter up in the hencoop on stilts, hammers a little bell and the horses with their little buggies wheel around, go back down the track and try again.
It is the most personal sort of race.
“Come up that pole horse,” roars the starter as the horses come hurrying up for the running start.
But the pole horse always seems to be in trouble. It never does the right thing. But about the fourth or fifth try the starter gets tired and lets the race go anyway.
And while all these false starts are being made you hang over the rail studying the beasts and can get a good idea of which is the good one. Then you can run to the betting shed and get a bet up even after the horses have left the starting line.
I found one very horsey old man in a worn beaver coat.
“What about Commodore Fish in the third race?” I asked him.
“What about it?” demanded the old gent.
“Is he any good?”
“He’s the best horse in the race.” said the old chap, spitting brown. “He’s the best horse on the track, what’s more. I ought to know, cause I own him.”
So I hurried and told Lou.
Lou came and watched the heats with me.
“What do the horses wear all those garters and things for?” I asked Lou.
“To tickle them,” said Lou, “and make them step out smarter.”
“They’ve got a lot of junk on them,” said l.
“Everything but a windshield wiper,” said Lou. “Which is the thing they need most.”
It was very slushy that day.
A Swell Ride Anyway
One of the horses had a kind of billiard cue tied up along his neck and sticking up beside his head.
“That’s the pole horse, I suppose,” said l.
“Sure,” said Lou. He wears that billiard cue as a sign to the boys that he is shooting in this race.”
“He wears that billiard cue as a sign to the boys that he is shooting in this race,” said Lou.“Who’s holding up the wheels of commerce?”
The fifth start was all jammed up, with Commodore Fish rushing three lengths ahead of everybody.
“If you don’t keep back of the pole horse I’ll attend to you.” roared the starter. “The next time you cone down in front I’ll set you down!”
The sixth start, Commodore Fish bounded away four lengths ahead of the field.
“Out!” roared the starter.
“Just a minute,” growled Lou, grabbing me by the slack of my chest. “Old man, I’m going to drive that hoss.”
And with a bound Lou was over the fence, dragging me out amongst the wheeling, plunging horses and little hissing wheels.
“Get out of your pew,” said Lou, jamming his Borsalino down over his ears. The driver in the messy rubber overalls got down with a grunt.
“Charley Snow says I’m to team him,” said Lou as he leaped into the seat of the tiny buggy. Charley Snow was the starter, so there was no argument.
“Get up there behind me,” said Lou to me, grimly. “Get some kind of a holt of me and hang on.”
“What’s the idea?” I whinnied.
“My neck’s to short to be a good trottin’ driver,” said Lou. “You perch there and tell me how they’re coming behind me. I’m going away on the Bill Daly.”
The horse wheeled. There a cloud of horses, slush, spray, snorting, yelling, and in wild howling rush we were away on Lou’s Bill Daly—whatever that is.
Away on the Bill Daly
A wild yell.
It sounded like “go.”
I heard no bell.
And all I could see was a blur of fence, a great cloud of slush behind me, and I hooked my heels into Lou’s pockets, slang my arms under his, and let her go.
We were yards ahead. Then all the other horses faded from view. We were going to win by a lap.
“Wow!” I howled into Lou’s ear. “Let her go!”
“How they coming?” shouted Lou., with the slush slashing past his head as he laid the gad. We were throwing up a bow wave like a coal barge cleaving a wake like a destroyer.
“They’re a mile back,” I yelled.
I felt the curve of the second turn. Then I felt Lou straighten up and heave on the reins. I looked over his entirely ruined shoulder. Ahead of us, on the home stretch, the other horses in the heat were just breaking away on the start.
Lou hauled Commodore Fish to a lope.
“Did you hear any bell?” he demanded grimly.
“l did not,” said l, angrily.
“Why didn’t you tell me they weren’t behind us?” roared Lou.
“I couldn’t see for the slush,” said I. “Anyway, I thought we were winning.”
Lou pulled the Fish horse up at the stables, where the old gent in the worn beaver coat and the fat man in the soiled rubber suit were waiting for us.
“Your ears,” said the old gent, kindly, “has got to be more or less trained to hear that bell.”
“If this guy hadn’t been betting against us in that pool,” said Lou, “he could have won the race.”
“He’s my son,” said the old gent, “and we allus splits our winnings.”
Lou was plastered with slush, hat and all. I was not much better off, on my exposed side.
“Well,” said Lou. “it was a swell ride anyway, wasn’t it?”
“It was great.”
“You couldn’t run out and hop on a bangtail lake that down at the Woodbine,” said Lou.
“Not with all those swells there,” said I.
“That’s why I like trottin’ races,” said Lou. “Something personal and intimate and easy going about it.”
“You’re covered with slush,” said I. “Your outside clothes are ruined.”
“And we lost ten bucks each,” said Lou.
“I paid you mine,” said l.
“Sure. But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
“It’s been swell,” said I.
“I’ll take you lots of places if you like,” said Lou.
“That will be great,” said I, scraping off some of the slush. It had oats in it.
But once every thirty or forty years is often enough to go places with Lou.
When I see him going by with that look on his face from now on I am going to have an engagement.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of those pre-Greg-Jim stories with a different partner, this time Lou Marsh, one of the pioneers of sports journalism in Canada, working at the Toronto Star for 43 years. In 1931 he was the sports editor, a position he held until his death in 1936.
Dufferin Park Racetrack was a racetrack for thoroughbred horse races located on Dufferin Street in Toronto. It was demolished in 1955 and its stakes races moved to Woodbine Racetrack as part of a consolidation of racetracks in the Toronto area. ↩︎
Their hands made peculiar gestures, and they held out their thumbs after the manner of Romance emperors to the gladiators – thumbs up meaning “spare it” – thumbs down, “kill it.”
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:
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. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
The headline says Snivers, but the rest of the article says Smivvers. ↩︎
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…. ↩︎
Gibbs was out to champion a cause, seeking election to the town’s school board.
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.
Then in his slippers, he tip-toed outside and picked up Gibbs’ wallet
“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.
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!”
