When Jim was first hired, he was a staff illustrator so he had to draw whatever was needed. One thing he did a lot in the early days was draw title illustrations for some sections of the newspaper. In this case, the Star Weekly was serializing the book “The Garden of Fate” by Roy Norton.
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:
This illustration accompanied an article by Gil O’Mourne about the number of sandwiches Torontonians eat.
This illustration accompanied an article on the High Park Zoo.
The Toronto Railway Company had a franchise to run Toronto streetcars from 1891 to 1921. However, there came to be problems with interpretation of the franchise terms, for the city. A series of annexations, especially in 1908–12, significantly extended the city limits. After many attempts to force the TRC to serve these areas, the city created its own street railway operation, the Toronto Civic Railways, to do so, and built several routes. This comic shows that you would have to pay another fare to use the other system. In 1921, with the end of the franchise, the city merged TRC and TCR into the Toronto Transportation Commission.
Some Make a Living Writing Speeches for Other Men to Deliver-Some, Again, are Handwriting Experts and Tree Surgeons – Some Catch Rats, and Others Collect Cigar Stubs.
By Gregory Clark, January 10, 1914.
In a city the size of Toronto there are many queer trades and professions, practised by only a few men, and preserved from becoming common trades by the narrowness of their scope and the smallness of their patronage. Among the strangest are the professional speech writers, of whom several are said to have plenty to do in Toronto, whose names, however, are little known except to some of Toronto’s best after-dinner speakers, who jealously guard the names of their particular geniuses. Mr. Arthur Hawkes the well-known politician and journalist, used to be, in his young days in the Old Country, one of these professional speechwriters. It was fine, says Mr. Hawkes, as well as inspiring, to go to a meeting and hear some dignified town councillor spouting forth your own words, swinging his arms according to your bracketed directions, and to hear him thunderously applauded at the end, into the bargain.
Another queer profession, one that in Toronto is practised by only two men, is that of the handwriting expert. He figures in law suits, trials. and in the preparation of criminal cases. The two Toronto experts are W. H. Shaw, of the shorthand school, and O. B. Stanton, the Yonge street stationer.
Mr. Stanton, and his father before him, have figured in many a famous criminal case in Toronto. The method used in determining whether, say, a cheque is a forgery or not, is to have a photographic enlargement of cheque and of a sample of the genuine signature made, many sizes larger than ordinary writing. With past experience and training, the handwriting expert goes to the particular letters and particular curves, and angles of letters, and compares the cheque with the genuine sample. He knows certain rules, chiefly common rules of simple psychology, which show him where a man cannot disguise his writing and these rules he explains to judge or jury.
In Europe, in Paris, principally. the study of hand-writing in relation to crime is highly developed.
Tracing a letter to a particular typewriting machine, a thing that figures In some criminal cases, is one expert profession. But the papers and samples have to be sent to New York from Toronto in cases of extreme doubt.
Tree Surgery
Tree-Doctoring and tree surgery is practised by three or four firms in Toronto. In Queen’s Park subjects of tree surgery can be seen – grand old oaks, with the side of their trunks filled in with black asphalt. If a gentleman falls in love with a tree under which he romped as a boy on the home farm, and wishes to have it placed on his front lawn in the city, for his children to romp under, these firms will undertake to transplant it – any number of miles.
In connection with the detection of crime, there is the finger-print expert, only one of which works in Toronto Mr. Hugh Duncan, of the Detective Department. He blackens the convicts’ hands, takes prints of them on paper, and these are considerably enlarged into photographs. These are kept on file.
In case a finger print is found on paper or an article of furniture connected with a crime, it is moistened, powdered lightly, and pressed on to paper. If it corresponds with the suspect’s finger print, it is regarded as most damaging evidence by the police.
Autograph hunting as a profession is said to have its exponents in Toronto, although no explicit examples are to be had. An amusing case is that of a Frenchman, Ludovic Picard, who made a steady income out of autograph hunting for many years. His most successful coup was accomplished with a letter in which he posed as “one of the unappreciated who is meditating suicide, and seeks for counsel and aid in this hour of sore distress.” This effusion drew a number of celebrities, including Beranger and Heine1. Lacordaire sent ten closely written pages, which were promptly converted into cash. Dickens also fell a victim, and took trouble to answer in French. Eventually Picard was shown up in the press by Jules Sandeau, and had to seek another occupation.
Rat-Catching
In the lower stratum of society, in the “submerged tenth,” a great number of queer professions flourish, none queerer being that of the professional rat-catcher, or “rat-eater,” as the police call them. Every big establishment has to have the services of these quaint professors, modified pied pipers. Eaton’s, Simpson’s, and the St. Lawrence Market find them indispensable. At night-fall these “rat-eaters” enter the darkened edifices, and in those nooks and crannies where their professional knowledge directs them, they set traps and lay poison. They are paid prices, ranging from 1 to 5 cents, according to the anxiety of the proprietors, per rat head.
The boot beggar’s queer trade borders close on vagrant crime or mendicancy. The boot-beggar calls at your door, a pitiable sight, with his toes protruding from dilapidated boots, and tearfully begs a pair of old boots. If you respond, as you are likely to do, he walks down the street to where his wife is standing, on the watch for a stray policeman, and hands her your boots to add to her already bulging apron-full. Detective William Wallace, of the Toronto staff, who is a devoted student of all these petty forms of crime and queer turns of human nature, says that the boot beggar averages 80 cents per pair for the old boots he gets for nothing, when, sold to the junk dealer.
Picking Up Cigar Butts
The city man who rises with the sun in the summer for the sake of health will often see a man much resembling the comic paper’s hobo, shambling along the streets picking up cigar-butts and cigarette ends. This is a profession, as they seldom smoke what they rescue from the gutter. Where the tobacco goes is a mystery to the police. But it is suspected that it goes whence it come back into the mouth of the smoker, in the form of a cheap cigar or cheap cigarette. These hoboes are “snipe-shooters” of the police lists.
The “finders” are closely allied to the “snipe shooters,” only they frequent the busy corners and fronts of hotels and theatres at daybreak; and carefully turn over the papers and rubbish in search of dropped coins and car tickets. It is surprising to learn from the police that these men “find” enough to make a living, miserable though it be.
The “pollackers” are other early birds, or early worms, as the case may be, who search through the garbage barrels of the city in search of tea-lead2, bottles, rags – all of which are merchandise in the eyes of the slum dwellers.
A profession that has a slight following in Toronto is that of “sandwiching”- being a human advertising board. Stray vagrants from London, where the human back is considered a good advertising ground, sometimes offer their services to Toronto firms.
Editor’s Notes: This is one of Greg’s earliest credited works in the Star Weekly. Sometimes when he was first credited, it was as Gregg Clark, like in this one. I’m not sure if that was a typo or he wanted to be called that initially.
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.
“Hey, Lou, how about taking me?”
Lou halted. He halts like a collision.
“How much money you got?” asked Lou.
“About ten dollars1,” said I weakly.
“Come on,” said Lou, charging for the elevator.
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.”
Lou crashes more gates than One-Eyed Connelly3.
“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.”
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.
Surveys Now Being Made of City to Determine Best Types of Social Meeting – Places to Take Place of Old “Poor Men’s Clubs” – To Use Old Barrooms?
Br Gregory Clark, December 27, 1919.
Toronto has had a happy old year, in which has come peace, and the marching back of tens of thousands of her sons, the overturning of the rickety political wagon and the final and irrevocable ousting of booze.
A fairly happy and industrious old year!
In the Happy New Year, which, out of old custom, is being predicted with Dickensian fervor these few days by one and all, such matters as prices, wages, the building of a new political bus, the embalming and final burial of the remains of Old Bill Booze, stand out as demanding some of the happy industry such as dispensed in 1919.
But one of the most interesting undertakings of the coming year is the discovery of a substitute for the bar, something to take the place of the saloon in the social arrangement, the provision of the “poor man’s club.”
And it speaks well for the powers that be that already the united churches of Canada, the Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army, and other agencies vitally interested in the needs of man are all seriously bent to the task of finding a substitute for the bar.
When even the liquor interests reluctantly admitted that the bar-room was doomed as a social institution, everyone recognized that something had been taken away from a certain great class of our citizenship. There was some justice in the claim that the saloon was the “poor man’s club.” With its passing, the man who could not afford to belong to institutions for human intercourse such as clubs and societies, had to fall back on the pool rooms, bowling alleys, barber shops, and public meetings.
Home life has been stimulated. The married man who used to frequent his “club” down at the corner and commune with his fellows over a scuttle of beer, has found new pleasures in the company of his family.
Hundreds Hunt Companionship
But all men are not married. Hence the success of hundreds of piffling public meetings in the past year. Hence the hordes of young men aimlessly wandering about down town after business hours, seeking entertainment and accepting whatever chanceth.
Since the passing of the bar, movies, poolrooms, bowling alleys have met the social needs of men. The well-to-do still have their tea rooms, cosy and congenial, where they can sit and relax. But tea rooms are no places for the working man, with their atmosphere of gush and giggle, oolong and macaroons.
Can Toronto successfully operate coffee houses to take the place of the bar rooms?
Quiet, leisurely places where coffee, tea, sandwiches, etc., are sold at a modest price, where plain men can sit of an evening as long as they like, as our fathers did of old in the coffee houses of Britain, and as our American brethren are attempting to do across the border now.
The Interchurch Forward Movement is studying that question.
Rev. Peter Bryce is now making a social survey of Toronto, one object of which is the investigation of the social needs of every district of the city, and the discovery of what form the social and recreational centres should take.
The Y.M.C.A., which is now operating the Red Triangle Club1 at Queen and Victoria streets for returned soldiers, proposes to maintain the premises as a down-town social organization when, in due course, the military work comes to an end.
The Salvation Army has been operating its Soldiers’ Hostel in the old Krausman Hotel2 at King and Church streets for four years. Its military nature has been undergoing a gradual change, weaving itself back into the civic fabric. And Commissioner Richards of the Salvation Army is studying its development closely, with the idea of discovering the most complete form of social agency for the present day.
The time may not be far distant when many of the old saloons of Toronto may flourish again, not as fountains of evil, where homes were poisoned and lives withered, but as coffee houses where men can gather for the simple and ancient pleasure of being together.
Roosevelt Coffee Houses
In the United States this problem is receiving different treatments from different organizations.
The latest development is that undertaken by the three sons of Theodore Roosevelt. They are leading a movement for the re-establishment of the coffee house as it was before the advent of the saloon. For, three hundred years ago, saloons were unknown in Britain or the United States. There were taverns. But men gathered in coffee houses for relaxation and recreation, not in the gin mills. Coffee houses date back to the thirteenth century. Saloons were a modern development, the product of the Georgian era, the drunken era.
The first in the Roosevelt boys’ chain of coffee houses is on West Forty-fourth street, New York. It is a quiet, humble shop, formerly a barroom. It is filled with tables. Coffee, tea, milk, cheese sandwiches are sold. It is a sort of leisurely soda parlor. But there is none of the hustle and rush of a restaurant about it. It is designed for fellowship.
And it is not run for profit, but to be self-supporting only.
The survey of Toronto now being made by Rev. Peter Bryce is not a complete accounting of the entire area of the city, but covers a number of typical and representative districts.
The intimacy of the study of these districts, which is being made by professional sociologists can be judged by these headings, which direct the workers to the information required:
Total population of district, nationalities and numbers of each, principal occupation, special industrial groups in area, what changes in area in ten years; what educational institutions, what attendance; what churches in area, attendance, with charts and maps; what missions, Sunday schools, settlements, with attendance; what playgrounds, movies, theatres, poolrooms, bowling alleys; what places of evil influence. And the student of each district is to enquire into what policy or change of policy is required.
As to the Salvation Army, Commissioner Richards says:
“The Army that has taken over the lepers of Java, the Inebriates Island of New Zealand; which patrols the shores of Norway and Denmark for wrecked sailors, and has raised the Lord’s banner in every part of the world, will not fail to give Toronto just what it needs for the social welfare of its people.”
Editor’s Notes: The Toronto Star was editorially in favour of Prohibition, so Greg had to write the way he did about the evils of alcohol, though I don’t think he believed it personally.
Things Have Greatly Improved of Late, But There Is Still Considerable Confusion as to Authority, and Our Heroes and Their Families Suffer – Suggestions as to Remedying Conditions.
By Gregory Clark, December 18, 1915.
Toronto, the city that Ottawa called “the place that put the kick in kick,” has already begun to speculate as to how long the present organization for the care of returned soldiers can last. That it fails utterly to recognize the tremendous proportions and the hidden dangers of the problem is evident from the fact that no permanent and far-reaching plans are being laid, even though the problem is already posed in no small figures. That the present organization is shifting of responsibility from one place to another until no responsibility remains is pitifully plain.
It is six months since the first of our heroes began return to us. Three of those six months were passed in what might be called indifference to the problem. Originally the returning men were landed at Halifax, lodged in a jail, given a typewritten sheet of flimsy paper that purported to be a discharge, and were so launched over the Dominion home. After a few weeks the Discharge Depot at Quebec began to deal exclusively with the men. It was hopelessly undermanned. What short-sighted, foolish, and ineffectual means were taken by the Discharge Depot to cope with the problem are well-known now that the tragedy, oft-repeated, of sick men being discharged and left to court death with their own devices.
The last three months have seen the awakening. These tales of woe, of consumptives discharged, of money promised but never coming, have been written up fully in the press, despite very plausible charges that the press was attempting to hamstring the Government.
Now, after six months of battle with the problem the soldier who returns has a much better and more considerate reception than his comrades who preceded him. When he lands at Halifax, instead of being lodged in Melville Prison or on the docks, he is taken by train to Quebec in the best of coaches, and three square meals. At Quebec a sufficiently increased staff of doctors meet him. If, like 75 per cent. of returned soldiers, he is in need of medical care, he is sent forward to a central convalescent home. In the past he would have been lodged in none too clean immigration sheds, taken before a medical board, given his discharge, and a sum of money, and tuned adrift. Now he travels with a party to the convalescent home. He is enrolled on the books, and allowed to go home for a few days. His money is forwarded to the divisional officers. Thus far all is ship-shape. He is the charge of a well-conducted system. He cannot, even if he will, go out and kill himself by superinducing pneumonia or tuberculosis.
Discharge Depot Regulations
These matters are very clearly dealt with in the regulations of the Discharge Depot at Ottawa, which are here given for the first time:
Class No. 1: Men who are cured and ready for discharge are given discharge with pay and arrears, also fifteen days advance pay, so as to enable them to procure a situation in civil life, and, if deemed necessary, one pair of boots and their choice of a civilian suit of clothes and overcoat or the regulation allowance of $13.00 for purchase of same.
“Class No. 2: Men suffering from complaints which will probably respond under treatment or who require time and rest to be restored to normal health; men in this class are privileged to go to a Military Hospital or Convalescent Home, or if the case appears to be one which could be so disposed of, will be permitted to return to their homes and families until formally discharged. They are entitled to pay and arrears to date and advance pay for one month; boots, if required, and their choice of either civilian clothes or an allowance of $13.00 for same, and are not given a Discharge Certificate, but instead, a descriptive certificate stating that the holder is in Class No. 2, and entitled to the privileges provided for in such class.
“Class No. 3: Men permanently disabled in such a way as to be not likely to be needing other treatment, such disability having been caused by military service. Men in this class are riven a Certificate with a description of the individual and stating that he is in Class No. 3. He is given pay and arrears to date, with advance pay for one month; pair of boots, if necessary, and is choice of civilian clothes or an allowance of $13.00 for same. In the case of the above class an advance in cash, not to exceed $20, will be paid to every man, and immediately upon departure of the men from Quebec, a cheque for a sum not exceeding $100.00 will be forwarded to the A.A.G.1 of the Division to which the man belongs issuable to him on reaching home, after his case has been dealt with by the Division authorities. Each man’s address and last pay certificate will be immediately forwarded from the Discharge Depot at Quebec to Ottawa, where a special branch has teen formed to handle all future, payments.”
Things are Better Now
The scores who returned before this new order of things have a terrible tale of suffering and neglect to tell. It is a joyful thing to be able to say that at last after months of neglect, these splendid fellows are being looked out for. Numbers of them have been taken into the military hospitals. The others, who are not so badly off in health, have received the back pay that has been so outrageously neglected.
But this is only the medical side that is so excellent. May it improve! May it continue the good work! And no doubt it will under the guidance of Lieut.-Col. Marlow, the A.D.M.S., whose ideas have been largely followed out in the recent reorganization of the system. It is proposed to institute a series of branch convalescent homes all over the Province. And a further improvement is that the Discharge Depot is to move over to Liverpool, and all the clerical work will be done on board ship, so that the returned men will have no heel-kicking to do around to do around Quebec.
The fault, however, lies in the fact that there is no central head, no single office or officer responsible for this great work that will be with us for a generation. The Military Hospitals Commission was appointed by the Government to deal with the problem generally. Then sub-commissions requested in the Province, and the Soldiers’ Aid Commission was appointed to deal with the problem generally. Then the municipalities were requested to do a little something, and the Mayor of this city appointed a Soldiers’ Welcome Committee, and a military secretary, who opened a special office in the City Hall where returned soldiers are directed.
A Confusion of Authorities
Thus, the Military Hospitals Commission wrote the returned soldiers for full particulars. The Soldiers’ Aid Commission wrote likewise and enclosed a blank form of questions to the number of dozens to be filled in. The city wrote to returned soldiers asking them to enrol on a list in the City Clerk’s office. Military Hospitals Commission has a local office.
From the Military Hospitals Commission, from just plain Militia Department, from the Pensions and Claims Board, and from the Paymaster-General, the returned soldier receives equally authoritative letters. When it comes to his writing, he has not the faintest idea to which he should refer. He is confused by the multiplicity of departments, the variety of authorities. It is an almost unheard of thing for a man to receive an answer to a letter within a week. And I have seen answers coming a month after the original letter was sent.
Such confusion must surely go. The duty of attacking and solving the problem is certainly the duty of the State. And the only solution can be in the formation of a distinct department, or at least a very distinct branch of the Militia Department, with powers over the pay, pensions, and medical departments. The longer we dawdle along under the present system and larger the problem becomes, the harder will it be to break away from it in time to avoid the great dangers and the grave injustices and cruelties that are in it.
No scattered commissions, not knowing what the other is doing, but a single, clearly defined department. permanent and fully manned, with its officers, in every city and town. The Pensions Board cannot deal with the problem. For it is vastly greater than mere pensioning. It is the reinstatement into civil life of those whom the State has removed from civil life. It is the fathering of those forever helpless in the nation’s name. It is the work of re-making as many as possible into contributors again to the nation’s life.
Permanent Jobs Wanted
The present system is so vain. The human element has gone out of it. Money is being sent, very late. Jobs are being got by the Provincial organization, the Soldiers’ Aid Commission. But what is a temporary job? The men must be re-made fit to go into a job permanently. Christmas mails are not forever. But remade muscles, remade lungs, built by a period of rest with a liberal allowance, and then a job that to the best of the commission’s and the soldier’s belief is a permanent job – these are different matters. The State must remake the man and then find him one job. If the commissions flutter about, getting job after job or giving money in place of lacking jobs to men, all will end in disillusionment, disgust, confusion.
Samples of the confusion arising out of too many authorities are not scarce. One man who was given subsistence for three. months was neglected for one month, left on his uppers, in fact. When he raised complaint the medical officers of the division came to him and said, “If you are too sick to work, then enter the convalescent home.”
The soldier had a wife and three children to support. He was doing it at the expense of his health, which was officially marked “unfit,” from wounds and trench exposure. The military officials, however, acting on the belief that it is safer to discount such cases as this as false, put it up to the man. He entered the home. His wife and three children went unprovided for. He had written to the Militia Department, to the Hospitals Commission, and to the Pay Department about his case. He did not receive money for his family until his story was printed in The Star Weekly and Daily Star.
In such a case as this the divisional authorities were in no way to blame. Not until the recent reorganization of the Discharge Depot were the divisions fully notified of their returned men.
Princess Pat a Peddler
Another case in point is that of a Princess Pat man whom I discovered peddling metal polish.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“To make ends meet,” said this man who had taken part in some of the greatest battles around Ypres.
From his papers I learned that he had come home in October, was discharged, and was recommended to have $50 a month for three months. He received his $50 in October, but in November he only received $30. He wrote at once to Ottawa and received a reply from Mr. E. H. Scammell, secretary of the Military Hospitals Commission, explaining that $20 had been deducted on account of assigned pay for August and September, 1914, over a year ago, which had not hitherto been deducted from pay.
“I have a wife and six children. I unable even to do the lightest kind of work, but seeing that the officials do not consider these things and send me only $30 for the month, rent and all, I am obliged to peddle metal polish.”
“Man, didn’t you write back and explain at once?” I cried.
“Oh, yes,” said the soldier.
But he got no reply. Furthermore, he is of the opinion that there was no such thing as assigned pay that early in the war. It was, he believes, instituted later.
The Militia Department is overloaded, as it is, with the business of sending soldiers away from Canada. That department at least cannot be blamed for regarding the returned soldiers as of secondary importance There should be department to consider the returned soldier as of prime importance. It should take charge of every soldier the moment he is released from the hospital in England, and should thereafter never let go until the man is fit again, working at a job; or, if unfitted for life, pensioned and cared-for for life. There should be none of these horrible cases of neglect. There should never be a soldier peddling pencils because his money did not come from Ottawa. There should be no referring from one department to another, long, dreadful days to the returned men: light, busy, chatty, and talk full days for the officials.
The Soldier Who Spat Blood
I shall not soon forget an experience in this regard. At the street entrance of the Toronto office of one of the committees I met a returned soldier coming out.
“Hello, Bill!”
“Hello,” said Bill, the soldier with three wounds and destroyed lungs. “I’ve just been listening to a lady and gent telling me I’m no soldier. Why? Because I grew peeved when they said, for the fourth time in ten days, that they had written to Ottawa about my case. I want money! My kids need food! My God!”
And in a sort of fury he spat.
He spat blood!
When I reached the offices the soldier had come from I was assured that the soldier was a kicker and a drinker, and a greedy grasper-
“He is a hero, twice in action, thrice wounded, and now in our midst with tuberculosis on him,” I pointed out.
“Well, we’ve written to Ottawa and that’s all that can be done,” replied the officials.
Editor’s Notes: The Department of Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment was only established in 1918 to handle the major problem of returning Canadian servicemen to civilian life after the First World War. In 1928 it merged with the Department of Health to form the Department of Pensions and National Health. The department of Veterans Affairs was not created until 1944.
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:
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