Tag: 1935 Page 1 of 5

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 30, 1935.

“Life,” said Jimmie Frise, “is getting safer every year, anyway.”

“I disagree,” I announced.

“Not,” said Jim, “in the mere matter of accidents on highways and in factories. What I mean, in the larger sense. Every year the chances of persecution, tyranny and oppression grow slimmer.”

“I disagree,” I declared.

“Bullies,” stated Jim, “in government, in business, in the community, in the family used to be on every hand. Tyrants who made miserable the lives of all who were dependent on them. To-day the bully is all but eliminated.”

“Bosh,” said I.

“Take the family first,” said Jim. “Until just recently, within the last twenty-five years, a young man had to run away to sea in order to escape from a tyrannical father. To-day the boy can go and get a job in a brokerage house and make more money than his old man. Not only does this freedom affect young men. It applies to young women also. In former times a young girl could not run away to sea. But to-day she can run down to the department store and get a job and go live with a girl chum in an apartment.”

“Jobs are so easy to get,” I sneered.

“I am speaking in broad principles,” admonished Jim. “The detail may be a little confused. But you must admit the modern parent dare not be a bully.”

“And how does this apply,” I inquired, “to foremen and managers and so forth?”

“A great change has come over the world in the past few years,” explained Jim, “so that public opinion to-day is intolerant of tyranny. Trades unionism in the past 40 years has practically put an end to the bully in the shop. Every business executive knows that his business will be affected if the opinion goes abroad that he is a hard or brutal taskmaster. The minute a man begins to set himself up as a boss, the whole world turns against him.”

“In Germany, for example,” I scoffed, “and Italy.”

“You little know,” said Jim, “what former bullies those two men, Hitler and Mussolini, have supplanted. Until they came along, those countries had a dictator in every village, in every town, hereditary, pompous, vicious bullies. Counts and dukes and all sorts of things, and a girl dared not be pretty in any village and no young man dared walk the earth proudly, the way God intended young men to walk, for fear of those perfumed bullies riding by in barouches¹ or on horseback.”

“You’ve been reading novels by lady authors,” I accused.

“Throughout the world,” sang Jim, passionately, “there is now a vast court of public opinion to safeguard us plain citizens from the tyranny of our would-be masters. Since the dawn of time, the mass of mankind have been the victims of every bully that came along. Our entire social system was based on bullies. Bullies national and bullies local. The struggle for freedom has been nothing more or less than the slow and painful elimination of bullies.”

“You are very clever,” I pointed out, “at putting things into a nutshell. But you know what eats nuts.”

“I Could Frame You”

“Less than a hundred years ago,” claimed Jim, “you and I could be framed by anybody. Do you realize the press gang could have come along and snapped us up on the street and carried us off to war?”

“There was no press gang in the last war,” I argued, “yet we were snapped up.”

“A hundred years back,” insisted Jim, “if the local squire or the neighborhood bully took a dislike to us, for any reason, they could have planted a few dead rabbits in our back shed and then deported us to Australia as poachers?”

“I can quote you cases not a year old,” I countered, “where innocent men have been railroaded.”

“You don’t follow me it all,” cried Jim. I “What I am getting is the safety, the security of the average citizen to-day as compared with only a hundred years ago. We generally think of our improved condition in terms of street cars and highways, modern plumbing and radio and that sort of thing. The greatest thing in the history of the past hundred years is the growth of a solid public opinion that safeguards us from the greed, jealousy, malice and hate of those who set themselves up as masters.”

“I could frame you,” I declared, “in five minutes. I could set you on the spot so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. I could have you in danger of your life, by golly…”

“Heh, heh, heh,” said Jimmie.

And we drove on. We were heading for Kingston, where, in the bays of the St. Lawrence along that still romantic shore, some late fall ducks lingered in the land of their birth before perilously launching themselves across the border toward the Gulf of Mexico, and 8,000,000 American gunners en route.

And Jim and I, as guests of a newspaperman of our autumnal acquaintance, were to urge these wildfowl on their way with a few belated bangs of a shotgun.

I felt my nose running, for it was a chilly day. I drew forth my hankie. And when I removed it, the white hankie was dabbed with gleaming scarlet.

“Hang it,” I muttered. “Another nose bleed.”

“I never knew anybody,” said Jim, “with such a flimsy grip on his blood as you.”

“And shooting, too,” I complained. “Every shot, my nose will start to bleed.”

“Put something cold down the back of your neck,” advised Jim, who was driving.

So I slid a chilly bottle opener down my neck, and continued to dab, until my handkerchief was pretty well incarnadined with my vital fluid.

“Jim,” I said, “this reminds me, we forgot to telephone Tom about the rain slicker for me. That’s important. I won’t go out without a slicker. Let’s stop at the next gas station along the way and see if they have a phone. And if they have, phone Tom to be sure to get a slicker, size forty, for me and put it in his bag. For sure. I nearly died last fall.”

“O.K.,” said Jim.

I gave my nose a tweak. And was promptly rewarded with a fresh flow of blood. I reached for a fresh hankie to catch the spurt.

“Here’s a station,” said Jim.

Ahead off the highway, a lonely but brightly painted gas emporium stood on the bleak road. No signs of life showed, but by the number of pumps and the breadth of the gravel, we surmised the proprietor would be a sufficiently enterprising man to have a telephone.

As we slowed to enter, I climbed over into the back.

“It’s started again,” I explained to Jim. “I’ve got to get a fresh hankie out of my bag.”

Jim drove in and stopped in front of the pump and got out.

“Coming in?” he asked.

“No,” said I, bending low.

I knew he would send somebody out to look at the radiator and oil. That’s the kind of car he has.

The instant I heard his feet crunch away, I hastily tied the blood-stained handkerchief around my face, snatched a handful of dust and grit off the floor of the car and smeared it, with blood, all over my forehead and ears, and rumpled my hair. Quickly shifting a dunnage bag and a valise, I crawled on to the floor, drew the bags on top of me and lay still.

In a moment I heard the gas station door open and a man with a merry whistle approached the car.

I groaned.

I moaned terribly.

I heard the man’s feet halt on the gravel.

“Help, help,” I groaned, muffled. “For mercy’s sake, help.”

I could see the man’s head as he peered white-faced in the car window.

“In heaven’s name,” I groaned, “save me, save me.”

He opened the car door.

“Hello, there,” he said weakly.

“Quick,” I gasped. “They are kidnapping me. Quick, help me up.”

I struggled and got the dunnage bag off me and raised my blood-stained face from the floor. The man instantly slammed the door. I heard Jim’s voice as he came out the gas station:

“There’ll be a telephone there?”

“Oh, sure,” replied a jolly voice. “I cut my phone off at the end of the tourist season, see? But they’ll have a phone at the corners. All winter.”

“Help, help,” I shouted.

Jim ran to the car. I heard him open the door, but I also heard other footsteps crunching rapidly on the gravel, a mutter of quick voices, and then, to my joy, I heard a loud grunt from Jim, a lot of slithering on the gravel, heavy breathing, gasps and thuds.

“Hey,” yelled Jim.

The car door opened, and the pale-faced man, with a big fat man with curly hair stared in. Then they seized me and dragged me from the car.

“Thank heavens,” I cried. “Oh, thank heavens.”

Then they bounded back on Jim who was just slowly staggering to his feet.

“Don’t let him shoot,” I screamed.

The two garage men wound themselves around Jim, heaved savagely and all three went violently to the earth.

“What the…” bellowed Jim, but gravel cut off his words.

And there they struggled and sprawled, while they went all over him for a gun.

“Tie him up,” I warned.

And the pale man whipped off his belt and strapped Jim’s arms above the elbow behind his back.

“Quick,” I cried. “There will be another carload of them along any minute. Run this car around the back.”

The pale man jumped in Jim’s car and in a second, had skidded it out of sight behind the gas station. While I, with a large woollen sock I got from my bag, gagged Jim.

“So he can’t yell at them as they pass?” I explained to the fat man who held Jim in a grizzly bear embrace. “Let’s take him inside.”

We led Jimmie inside the station, where it was cosy. Jim’s eyes glared at me, over the gray sock, with an expression of utter amazement.

“Sit down, you,” I snarled.

“What is this,” gasped the fat man, running his hand through his curly hair.

“It’s a kidnapping, that’s what it is,” I said. “This man is part of a gang of desperate American crooks. I fell foul of them in a little matter that doesn’t interest you, see? So they just took me for a ride.”

“But… but…” spluttered the fat man, “this has nothing to do with me? What if they find out I…?”

His eyes bulged with horror.

“We’ll Bump Him Off”

“Say,” he said, “the less I get mixed up in this the better? Let me go and get the police.”

The pale man had entered.

“Eddie,” said the fat man, “we’re mixed up in some damn thing or other. Gangsters.”

And his shaking hand indicated both Jim and me.

“Listen, buddy.” I said in a tough voice. “There is only one way you can handle this. Any minute, another car is coming by here. They may or may not stop. The toughest gang in America is in that car, see?”

“Oh, oh, ohh,” said the fat man looking angrily at his pale assistant who had been the means of bringing this disaster upon an innocent gas station on a lonely Ontario highway.

“Listen, buddy, just listen,” I snarled “Only one way. If you let this guy go, see, you’re finished. Even if you hand him over to the cops, you’re finished, see? There is only one way out of this mess for you?”

“Wha…wha…wha…?” asked the fat man.

I indicated Jim and drew my finger across my neck.

“We’ll take him out into the bushes back here,” I said slowly, “bump him off and bury him where nobody will ever find him. I beat it, see? Over the border. It’s the last you ever hear of it.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” wailed the fat man.

The pale man just slipped lower and lower down the wall he was leaning against, and after looking with horror at me, slowly closed his eyes.

“You can’t take it, huh?” I sneered. “Well, if you leave this guy loose, you’re as good as dead right now, both of you. You interfered in a snatch, see?”

The fat man began to shake.

“Then, here’s the next best thing,” I snarled. “Help me get this guy back into his car. Tie him up, tight, see? We’ll bury him under the baggage. Then when the other car passes, I’ll drive off and attend to the job myself down the road apiece. But if either of you ever opens your mouth about this, it’ll be just too bad. Just tooooo bad, see?”

I stood up and watched, guardedly out of the window. A car came rushing along whizzed by with three innocent citizens sitting in it.

“There they go,” I hissed, leaping back from the window.

Jim was sitting, exhausted and gagged, but his eyes burned with a baleful light at me.

“Now, boys,” I said, briskly, “let’s get this guy into the car. Stand up, you!”

And then I felt a hard bump in the middle of my back.

“Hands up,” said a sharp voice.

“Hey,” I exclaimed, but raising my arms. It was the pale man. He had a shotgun against my back.

“Let’s,” he cried in a quavering voice “let’s take them both back in the bushes, Bill. We don’t want to get mixed up with gangs, either side.”

“Well,” said the fat man, eyeing us eagerly.

“Just a couple of dirty crooks,” cried the pale one, “it won’t make any difference. And nobody will know but us two. Come on.”

“Just a minute, please,” I stated.

“Shut up,” yelped the pale man, giving me a dig in the back with the shotgun.

“Now, listen, Eddie,” said the fat man, “we’ve got to have an understanding about this. You’re pretty darn gabby. Remember that incident about Norah? How do I know I can trust you if we bump these two guys off? I admit it is the safest thing to do. But how do I know you won’t get drunk and blab?”

“I’ll do the shooting myself,” quavered Eddie. “Then I won’t dare, see? But let’s get out of this jam, and get out of it fast.”

So you see I had to tell them.

I had to explain it was all a little joke, and begged them to unmuffle Jimmie, so he could explain, too.

At first, Jimmie was inclined to borrow Eddie’s shotgun, but when he got quiet, and I was allowed to make a speech explaining about how Jimmie had said the world was safe for democracy, we all had a nice laugh together, and we bought eight gallons of gas and a quart of oil, and everything was hunky dooley.

“But,” said Jim, as we drove away, “I see your point.”

“So do I,” I admitted.

---

Editor’s Note:

1. A barouche is a large, open, four-wheeled carriage, both heavy and luxurious, drawn by two horses.  ↩︎

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie’s garden was lovely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well,” I said, “no bath.”

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

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

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

“Eddie sure has rich tastes,” I exclaimed.

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

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

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

“Don’t Try Anything Funny”

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

“H’m,” said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Look at here,” he cried.

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

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

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

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

“What the heck?” said Jim.

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

“Who are you?” retorted Jim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Student of Psychology

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

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

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

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

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

Jim stood up.

“I assure you,” began Jimmie.

“Pardon me-” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

How To Cure Crime

“Then,” I began.

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

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

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

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

“Eddie’s boiler,” said Jim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Editor’s Notes:

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

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

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 8, 1935.

“The nerve,” said Jimmie Frise, “of some people.”

We had just passed a rather cheesey-looking individual on the highway, who thumbed us most imperatively as we sailed by.

“He looked,” I admitted, “as if you might get bugs from him.”

“Why a raggedy-looking specimen like that,” said Jim, “should expect a lift is more than I can understand. I don’t mind giving a lift to a respectable-looking person, but some of the hikers who thumb most commandingly should hardly expect to be allowed in at a dog fight.”

“Maybe we could write something,” I suggested, “that would suggest to hikers that they clean themselves up. Let’s tip off the hiking fraternity that the ratio of the lifts they get is in exact proportion to their clean and tidy appearance.”

“Not a bad idea,” said Jim. “Yet I’m a little leery of those too tidy ones. Last week, I gave a lift to a very polished gentleman along by Port Hope, and he wondered if I wouldn’t be so kind as to run him up a few miles north of the highway to some forsaken little dump he mentioned.”

“The nerve!”

“Yes,” said Jimmie, “and when I refused, he got out of my car with all the outraged airs of a bank president who couldn’t get front row seats at the box office.”

“This whole business of hitch hikers is queer one,” I related. “I know a chap who was signalled by a nice-looking girl on the highway out near Oakville. She stepped right out in front of the car and he had to stop. She was in a hurry to get to Toronto. So he took her aboard. Just as they came over the Humber bridge, the girl suddenly tore her blouse and rumpled her hair, and started to scream. My friend slowed down in fright and astonishment. ‘Now,’ says the nice young lady, there’s a cop at the far end of the bridge. You come across with $5 or I’ll lean out and scream at him, and what a nice mess you’ll be in!””

“Good grief!” gasped Jimmie. “What did he do?”

“He did the only sensible thing,” I delighted to tell him. “He drove straight to the cop, and said, ‘Here’s a young lady who signalled me for a ride out the highway, and now she has torn her dress and said she’d scream to you if I didn’t hand her over $5.’ And the cop said, ‘Good, we’ve been on the watch for this jane for three weeks,’ so they all drove up to the police station.”

“Boy,” breathed Jim, “I wouldn’t know what to do in a jam like that.”

“I knew another chap picked up a young man and a girl,” I told, “and they said they were going to Orillia. My friend was going to Gravenhurst, so he said hop in. When they were passing one of those swamps beyond Barrie, the girl, who said she had once lived on a farm near there, told about a wonderful cold spring that bubbled out of the earth right near the road. The coldest, loveliest water you ever tasted.”

“I see what’s coming,” said Jim.

“So,” I related, “they stopped by the road and everybody got out and went into the cedar swamp. And the girl led the way into the thicket and said it’s right around here somewhere, so they scattered out to look, when my friend heard his car start.”

“Holy,” said Jim.

“So by the time my friend got out to the pavement,” I concluded, “there was his car vanishing up the road at sixty miles an hour. He flagged a lift and gave chase, but the car had disappeared. You can’t expect the first guy you beg a lift off to hit sixty. He got the police at Orillia to help him. But the next he saw his car, it was in Goderich, with a seized engine, and all his property gone out of it, and old tires on it in place of the good tires.”

“Well I never,” confessed Jimmie.

“The great thing is,” I stated, “don’t pick anybody up. It is better to be a meanie a thousand times than to try to explain something to your wife even once.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Jim. “There is enough trouble in this world, dealing only with your immediate friends and relatives, without getting yourself tangled up with strangers.”

We drove along in philosophic silence.

“Yet it seems a pity,” pursued Jim, “that a thousand deserving people, with sore feet and weary hearts, should have to be left standing on the side of the road all for the fear of the one scoundrel.”

“You can pretty well tell,” I said, “what a man is like from the outside. Men, for the most part, are pretty simple and straight-forward. Most men are not schemers.”

“I hate schemers,” declared Jim. “But I pride myself on the fact that I can smell a schemer a mile off. I can tell by their eyes. They have an honest, wide-eyed sort of look. They look you right in the eye.”

“I thought it was the other way around,” I exclaimed. “I thought schemers were shifty-eyed and never could meet your gaze.”

“That’s a lot of stuff you read in novels,” said Jim. “Just think of your friends. Think of the most honest of them all. Is he wide-eyed and innocent?”

I thought for a moment.

“No, by George,” I admitted, “now that you mention it, he has a shy and shifty glance. I never noticed that before.”

“It’s always the way,” pointed out Jim. “Human nature, at its best, is shy and timid and kindly and uncertain. But the boys who are certain and bold and crafty, they are the ones who look you bung in the eye.”

“Well, sir, that’s news to me,” I agreed.

Ahead of us, far up Yonge street, as we zoomed along for Lake Simcoe, we saw a figure of a man hobbling painfully on a stick.

As we neared him, we saw that he was elderly and bowed, and his foot was done up in a bandage. He was barely able to hobble.

“Poor chap,” said Jim, “I wonder if he has far to go?”

“This is an exception,” I admitted. “We couldn’t really pass him by.”

Jimmie was already slackening the car. We drew up ahead of the poor old chap, and as we did so, his face lighted up with pleased surprise and he hastened as fast as his bandaged foot would let him.

“Have you far to go?” called Jim, as I opened the car door.

“Just a little way,” cried the old man anxiously. “Up two cross roads, and then in one concession.”

“We can’t see you hobbling along like that,” said Jim.

“It’s a mighty sore foot,” said the old chap. “But of course I wouldn’t expect you to drive me right in. Just you gentlemen leave me on the corner, and somebody will come along sooner or later and take me in.”

“Not at all, not at all,” assured Jim. “We’ve nothing to do. We’re just going fishing. It won’t be ten minutes out of our way.”

The old chap’s face was a delight to behold, at this information.

“You’ll take me right to the door?” he exclaimed. “Well, now, I call that mighty fine of you gentlemen. You don’t find many folks that way these days.”

He got in the back seat and made himself comfortable. I noticed how wide and innocent and blue his eyes were. He had a candid gaze, if ever a man did. But I realized that in the country they have a more gentle and innocent outlook on life than we city slickers. They don’t have to be so crafty in the country.

“Two roads up,” said Jim, as he got the car booming along again.

“Two roads up, and then turn right, and it’s just near the end of the concession,” said the old chap. “My, this is nice of you. And what a nice big car you’ve got.”

“We couldn’t very well pass a man of your age, struggling along the way you were going,” admitted Jim. “Did you hurt your foot?”

“No, it isn’t exactly hurt,” contributed the old chap. “It’s a kind of sciaticky¹ or arthritis or something. It catches me something terrible. And then all of a sudden it leaves me.”

“It isn’t gout?” asked Jim.

“No, not gout,” said the old chap. “I hardly ever took a drink in my life, scarcely. I think it’s what we used to call the rheumatics. But it’s an awful painful thing.”

Delivering a Blue Paper

“It must be bad getting around, if you’re a farmer,” suggested Jim.

“I’m not exactly a farmer,” said the old chap. I was turned to face him and I noticed how clear and guileless his eyes were. I thought of Gray’s Elegy² and honest plowmen and all sorts of things. “No, I ain’t a farmer, exactly, although I have done farming.”

“What is your business?” asked Jim.

“Well, I’m a kind of an official,” said the old chap, proudly. “I’m a kind of sheriff’s man, a kind of bailiff, so to speak.”

“You ought to have plenty to do these days,” laughed Jimmie over his shoulder. “Throwing people off their farms and that sort of thing.”

“Oh, yes, I get some fun,” said the old chap.

“Is this the turn?” called Jim.

“Yes, this is it,” said the bailiff. “Now, if you feel you can’t waste the time…”

“Nonsense,” cried Jim. “It won’t take us five minutes. One concession over?”

“One concession,” agreed the old fellow. So we turned east and swung along a nice gravel road, passing farms on right and left.

“You live in here?” asked Jim.

“No,” said the bailiff, “I’m just delivering a paper in here. If it wouldn’t put you out any, I thought, maybe, while you are turning your car around, you might wait until I deliver the paper, and then I could get a lift back out to the road…”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Jim, but he gave me a look just the same.

“You gentlemen certainly are very kind,” said the bailiff. “I hope some day I can return you the favor.”

“It’s quite all right,” said Jim. “You won’t be long?”

“The next lane,” said the old fellow. “Just run up the next lane. You can see the farm house from here, see? And while you turn the car around, I can just pop this document in and be right aboard again.”

He seemed a little breathless. His wide. innocent eyes were shining with suppressed excitement.

Up the lane we ran, and into a farmyard in the midst of which stood a tidy house. But it had a sort of fortified look, if I make myself clear. There were no implements nor buck saws leaning about, not even a chair on the front porch. The blinds were down.

“Everybody away?” I said.

“No, he’ll be in all right,” said the old gentleman, as we drew up alongside the back door. He was shaking with excitement. He opened the car door quickly and hopped out, at the same time drawing a large blue paper from his pocket.

Jim started to turn the car. The old chap, whose sciaticky seemed much improved, skipped to the door and rapped loudly. The door opened, and as we were busy backing the car and turning it, I saw a huge man in overalls, with stubble all over his chin, looking fiercely out of the crack of the door down at the little man who was holding out the blue paper.

As we completed the turn in the yard. and started to back up to the door again for our passenger, we were both astonished to see him running wildly down the lane past us, with no trace of sciaticky at all in his foot, and behind him, taking large jumps and stooping to pick up handfuls of sods and gravel, the big man was bounding, shouting angrily and hurling the divots at the back of the neck of the little old bailiff.

“Here, here,” said Jim, starting the car. But the big chap was returning towards us with giant strides. We stopped.

The big fellow reached in and seized Jimmie by the scruff of his necktie and shirt front.

“So,” he said, “you’re a couple of professional bullies, eh? Who’s the little squirt, eh? Would it be Jack Dempsey³, maybe?”

And before I could say a word, he had reached past Jimmie and, seizing the brim of my hat, yanked it down over my nose.

“Keep out of here,” roared the big man, giving Jim’s head an awful waggle with that grip he had of Jim’s tie. “Don’t show your snoot around here, if you don’t want to be kicked over that there barn.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jim.

“Yes, sir,” said I.

Jim started the car. Down the lane we rocked, and made the turn. Far ahead, just vanishing over a rise in the road, we saw the bailiff. He was making time a high school boy would envy.

“I’ll run over him,” grated Jim, slamming into high gear.

As we came near, the bailiff jumped off into the grassy ditch. The bandage on his foot had come loose and was trailing. His face was flushed and he seemed to laughing.

“Would you mind,” shouted Jim, “explaining what this is all about?”

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” assured the little man, with anxious looks down the road. “I was serving eviction papers on him.”

“And what’s this about us being prize-fighters?” inquired Jimmie icily.

“Oh, I just told him for fun that I had a couple of hired prize-fighters along with me in the car,” deprecated the little old man.

“He nearly strangled me,” declared Jim, “with my own necktie.”

“He pulled my hat over my eyes,” I added indignantly.

“He didn’t catch me,” said the little bailiff, proudly.

“By the way, what about that sore foot?” demanded Jim. “You were hardly able to walk when we first saw you fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh, just one of those things a bailiff has to think of,” said he, stooping to unwind the bandages. “I couldn’t get any of the local boys to come with me. They wouldn’t even come in a car. They wouldn’t even come as far as the lane, and wait down on the road. No, sir. I couldn’t get anybody in the whole township to come with me to serve those papers. So I just had to use strategy. I had six cars stop before you came along, but I wanted the right car, and that was you.”

“Strategy,” sneered Jim. “Strategy. A dirty trick, I call it.”

“If you were a bailiff,” said the old chap his rosy face bright with indignation, “you wouldn’t call it a dirty trick to try to get somebody to come with you to serve eviction papers on a man like that.”

In the distance, we heard buggy wheels flying on gravel.

“Hey,” gasped the little old man, scrambling towards us.

But Jim just slammed her into gear and away.

“Strategy,” he yelled back.

And we never waited to see whether be caught him or not.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. He means Sciatica, pain, weakness, numbness, or tingling in the leg. ↩︎
2. This is Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, a poem by Thomas Gray. ↩︎
3. Jack Dempsey was a famous boxer. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 2, 1935.

“What,” asked Jimmie Frise, sarcastically, “are you wearing that particular expression for?”

I was driving. We were bowling along Bloor street.

“What expression?” I inquired.

“An expression,” stated Jim, “of abject humility. A disgusting, lowly, Uriah Heep expression.”

“You saw that speed cop, didn’t you?” I demanded.

“Yes, I did,” said Jim. “And that is what I am getting at. You are driving along, perfectly natural. Suddenly, you see a speed cop standing on the curb. And you deflate yourself like a toy balloon. You fairly sag with humility. You cringe like a dog. You actually fawned in your seat. You did it so glaringly that the cop couldn’t help but see it.”

“I intended the cop to see it,” I explained. I did it for him.”

“Disgusting,” said Jim.

“Disgusting nothing,” I retorted. “That is how you don’t get summonses.”

“Absurd,” snorted Jim. “A cop is a hired official. We hire them. They work for us. The way you act, you’d think they were our masters.”

“A cop,” I expounded, “has a greater sense of majesty than anybody else in the world. No king left on earth has as much sense of personal majesty as a cop.”

“What of it?” cried Jim. “I’d take more pleasure in puncturing their sense of majesty than in contributing to it. The way you do.”

“Listen, Jim,” I begged. “Use your common sense. How does a cop select those to whom he will send summonses?”

“Why,” exclaimed Jim, “he selects those that speed or otherwise break the law.”

“Now it is you who are absurd,” I triumphed. “How many people in this city don’t break the speed laws every day?”

“Oh, well, I suppose there are a good many that do,” admitted Jim.

“A good many!” I cried. “Listen, Jim, the only people who don’t go faster than 20 miles an hour in Toronto are those who can’t. There is a certain type of wooden-jointed man, the kind of man who has to stop and think for a minute before he even picks up his knife and fork at the dinner table; and there is a certain kind of timid, middle-aged lady; but those are the only people in the city who don’t every day, every time they go driving, in short, every block they drive, exceed the speed limit.”

“I know. I know,” cut in Jim, “but the cops use a little reason. They only pick out the excessive speeders.”

“Aha,” I derided, “but did you ever get a summons for going thirty-one miles an hour?”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Jim.

“Yet you know thousands of your fellow citizens go more than thirty-one every day all around you?”

“Sure,” confessed Jim.

“Very well,” I inquired, “how did the cop pick on you out of all the thousands that were doing the same thing?”

“Er,” said Jim.

Why Does a Cop Pick You?

“Exactly,” I stated. “Exactly. He didn’t like your looks, that’s why he selected you. Every day a cop has to pick up so many people for speeding, see? He has thousands to pick from. Therefore, who does he pick?”

“Er,” said Jim.

“I’ll tell you,” I interrupted. “A cop is a human being, just like us. But he has a sense of majesty. The ones he picks, out of all the pickings, is the one that offends his sense of majesty, first. Or the one that, for some reason or another, he doesn’t like the look of.”

“This is awful,” gasped Jim.

“Sure, it’s awful,” I agreed. “It puts the whole problem of right and wrong back where it was in the middle-ages or in the time of Pontius Pilate.”

“How can we escape being selected?” asked Jim.

“By kow-towing,” I stated promptly. “By paying reverence to his majesty the cop. By slowing down when you pass him, even if you are only going as fast as all the other cars in the line. That little sudden slow down you do when you see a cop is a salute to him. A genuflexion. It is a bow to his majesty. He can’t help but love it. You and me, if we were cops, we’d love it. It would tickle us.”

“It won’t come very easy to me,” said Jim.

“All you have to do is look impressed,” I said. “People use the same expression whenever they meet the boss on the street. So what’s the difference? They don’t mean it then and they don’t mean it with the cop. It’s just a little social device. Treat a cop with reverence and you’ll never get a summons.”

“To hell with it,” suddenly Jim shouted. “To hell with it. I won’t do it. I’ll kow-tow to no cop. To nobody. To no bishop or king. To nobody. I won’t do it.”

“Dear me,” I said, for Jim was sitting up straight and glaring about, and I knew full well there would be a cop pretty soon, just along past that rise by High Park.

“What’s more,” said Jim, “I’m going out of my way to stand erect in the presence of all these artificial majesties. The majesty of wealth, pah!”

“Wait until we get past High Park,” I cautioned him.

“Pooie,” shouted Jim, “pooie to riches and power and authority. I’ll stand on my own two feet. I’ll curtsey to no cop.”

“Rich men,” I said, laughingly, “give me a pain, Jim. There has always been a trick I’d love to play on rich men. Did I ever tell you about it?”

“Cops,” sneered Jim. “Majesty.”

“My trick,” I said, “is to stand outside some club downtown, one of those rich men’s clubs, and hold a fifty-cent piece in my hand. Just as some of these big shots come down the steps of their club and step on to the sidewalk, looking very well fed and important and chatting together, I drop the fifty-cent piece on the pavement behind them.”

“And what?” said Jim, a little interested.

“See these big shots wheel as if they had been stung,” I crowed, “snatching at their pockets and all poised to make a grab for the coin.”

“It would be fun,” confessed Jim, somewhat mollified. We were now passing High Park, and the cop wasn’t there.

“Let’s do it,” I said. “For half an hour we could have more fun than a picnic.”

Which was the birth of our idea, and the next day, at noon, we hurried lunch and went and stood at a certain club where many wealthy citizens take their midday repast.

It was my fifty cents. A big, new, tingling one. I dropped it a few times, and it made a loud, rousing ring on the pavement.

The Ring of a Coin

I recommend this trick to you. You can make anybody in the world wheel around like a shot. You can make old and young, the deaf, the halt and the blind¹, millionaires and bums – everybody stop in their tracks and grab for their pockets or purses. All with the merry ring of a coin dropped on the pavement. I wonder if it isn’t the saddest fact left in the world, today?

We took up our stand, as if we had just met on the street and were chatting about the weather.

The first citizens to emerge from the club were two tall, tweedy-dressed men in their late forties, keen-looking, bronzed, alert. As they turned on to the sidewalk, clink went the coin.

Both wheeled, the shorter one taking at grip on the arm of the other, as if to prevent him from getting there first. With a smile I picked the coin up; and blushing furiously, the two general managers straightened and hastened down the street.

The next was a large and lonely individual, troubled with his feet. He lowered himself down the steps with great care, one step at a time. Groaning and grunting, he reached the sidewalk.

He turned away. I dropped the coin.

“Ah!” gasped the decrepit chairman of the board, slapping both hands to his pockets, and turning with obvious difficulty. His eyes were popping from his head, and his soft mouth was wide open in the expression of one who has been clubbed on the head.

I picked up the coin with a smile. The gentleman stood, staring coldly at me for a long moment, doubtful, suspicious, his wrinkled fingers softly feeling the outside of his pockets.

At last, while Jim and I chatted briskly, he seemed to reach a decision. He turned away and walked down the street. I suppose he entered it in the books as a loss.

The next lot were three youngish men. The next after them, two very severe-faced gentlemen, pale and bony-jawed, their expression one of unrelaxed vigilance. When they die, it will be hard to get their eyes shut. All these wheeled, as everybody wheels. As you and I and Jimmie, as all the world wheels, to the siren jingle of a coin.

“I’m getting a little tired of this,” I said. “It makes me want to cry, not laugh.”

“Just one more,” gloated Jim. “Let’s try to knock off at least a president of something. Somebody. who is always having his pictures in the papers.”

But the next one that came out was another single. He was a short, stoutish gentleman in a bowler hat. He had a walking stick. He moved with short, waddling steps. His face, though round, was all shut up like a nut cracker. His eyes seemed shut. His mouth was tight shut, and walled in between little round pouchy cheeks. His ears were small and shut up close to his head. Down the steps he trotted briskly, carefully.

I dropped the coin.

The little man, never pausing, wheeled like a polo pony and before I could even start to stoop, down came a large, flat shoe, a shoe with no toe caps², a square toed, well made shoe, slap on top of my fifty-cent piece.

“Pardon me,” I said, half stooping.

But the stubby little man himself stooped, carefully slid his boot to one side, until the edge of the coin was visible, and then with a cleverly bent finger, he released it, snapped it up and popped it in his pants pocket.

“Ah,” he sighed, comfortably, and started to move off, without even so much as looking at Jim or me. He seemed utterly unaware of us.

To Torment the Rich

“Just a minute, there,” said Jim, taking hold of the gentleman’s sleeve.

“What do you want?” demanded the gentleman crisply.

“That was my friend’s fifty cents,” warned Jim, standing close to the gentleman.

“It was nothing of the kind,” said the gentleman, not unkindly, but very finally, “I dropped it myself.”

“Now, just a minute,” said Jim, still gripping the gentleman’s sleeve, and drawing himself up. “I say I saw my friend drop it.”

“Why,” said the gentleman, pulling his arm free, “you two cheap thieves, trying to… Why, the very… I’ll call a policeman at once, the very…”

“Call a cop,” agreed Jim, loudly.

“No, no,” I cried. “Jimmie, no, no.”

The gentleman, pausing to stare us grimly up and down, turned and walked proudly down the street.

“Why not let him call a cop? Let us call a cop,” cried Jim.

“Don’t be absurd,” I pleaded. “Would a cop believe us against an obviously wealthy gentleman?”

“Gentleman,” sneered Jim. “I never saw anybody so quick with his feet in my life. And I bet he was sixty.”

“He’s been stamping on dimes and nickels and quarters all his life, Jim,” I said. “He’s had practice.”

“I’ve got a new idea for hell,” said Jim, as we went slowly back to work, I jingling twenty cents left in my pocket. “A special hell for rich men.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

“It will be a vast chamber, immense,” said Jim, raptly. “It will be entirely of black basalt or chalcedony³. Jet black. Its floor will be polished and hard. Its walls will be filled with little cubby holes and niches in which the spirits of rich men will hide at night. But all day long, the Devil, sitting in a balcony up above and armed with a big scoop shovel, will keep shovelling scoopfuls of dimes and nickels out, and flinging them so that they will scatter all over that polished onyx floor, jingling and dancing and ringing and running and spinning. And there the spirits of the rich men, millions of them, bereft of all their earthly passions except their greatest one, will crawl and scramble and fight and claw like maniacs after the dimes and nickels. To all eternity, forever and ever, chasing madly, furiously, after the dimes and nickels.”

“I’m glad you’re just Jim Frise,” I breathed.

“And they will all have little overalls on, with leather-lined pockets,” said Jim. “And every night they take the dimes and nickels into the little caves in the vast walls of chalcedony or onyx. But every morning. when they wake, all the dimes and nickels will be gone.”

“Oh, Jimmie,” I protested. “That is the cruellest thing I ever heard of.”

“Sure,” said Jim. “But it’s just a human little fancy. I’m human. Cops are human. Rich men are human. Everybody’s human. So let me have my fancies, the same as everybody else.”

So we went to the Morgue, as we call a newspaper filing room, and we hunted all through the clippings and pictures of the local rich men, but we couldn’t find any trace, even in the Morgue, of the little man with the shut face who got my fifty cents.

So that made it possible for us to write this story. Because if we knew who it was, we probably wouldn’t dare.

---

Editor’s Notes: This story appeared in both Which We Did (1936) and Silver Linings (1978).

1. This is from the King James Bible, Luke 14:21: “So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.” The “halt and the blind” would now be translated as the “blind and the lame.” ↩︎
2. This was likely the style at the time. ↩︎
3. This is just a type of stone, that can come in black. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 19, 1935.

“The sap,” hissed Jimmie Frise.

Behind us, as we drove, came a car with its horn snorting at us.

“Does he expect me,” snarled Jimmie, “to pull in behind one of these parked cars and stop and let him past?”

Arp, arp went the horn, right at our tail. Parked cars were scattered along Bloor St., so that to accommodate our noisy friend either we had to get in behind one of them and stop or else keep on going.

Finally, letting the horn loose in a long, steady blast, the car passed us. The driver and his friend, both young men, leaned and glared at us. And vanished down the street haughtily.

That sort of thing,” said Jim, “gets my nanny. I couldn’t pull aside, except in a small space between parked cars. If I went faster he would have wanted to go faster still. So what the heck? Why all the tumult?”

“The city fathers are right,” I declared. “There is far too much noise, far too much horn tooting, banging, slamming.”

“That campaign for a civic quiet is old stuff,” said Jim. “In the past fifteen years somebody has brought it up every season. I don’t expect much results.”

Bloor St. was loud with sound, bright with lights. Street cars rumbled and rattled. Cars hooted and clattered. Boys yelled. Horses clip-clopped. Parkers slammed car doors. Motormen heeled bells. Dogs barked. Peanut whistles blew. A radio squawked from out a store door. A street orator bellowed from a side street. Street cars ground to sudden stops. Motor car wheels squealed. A truck loaded with boxes battered lazily along.

“Such a din,” I said.

“When you come to listen to it,” agreed Jim, “it is kind of staggering, isn’t it?”

“And most of it idle,” I added. “Just listen to this street car ahead. Listen to him dinging that bell. There is nothing ahead of him. He’s just got the habit.”

“Horn blowing is a habit, too,” said Jim. “Just listen.”

And as we drove we listened. It was a medley of horns. Short and long, high and low, the car horns, near and far, filled the world with small, nervous, impatient sound. Sound to which we have become accustomed and never notice. But once we do notice it, it gets on our nerves, haunts us, as when we suddenly become acutely aware of a cricket chirping, a cricket that has been chirping forever and we hadn’t been aware. of it.

“Yet,” said Jim, briefly thumbing his car horn and making a brief toot, “there is a case in point. That guy was just pulling away from the curb. If I hadn’t tooted, he would have kept on coming out and I would have bumped him. Or if I had stopped suddenly, the guys behind me would have bumped me. See? There I go again. That’s twice in one block I’ve had to toot.”

Man a Noisy Animal

“And why?” I asked. “Because we drivers have become too lazy to twist our necks and look out behind when we start away from the curb. We expect the horn. We start out and if no horn toots that means all is clear. It’s laziness at the bottom of all this horn tooting.”

“Mankind,” stated Jim, “is a noisy animal. Market places are noisy places. These business streets are noisy the way an Oriental bazaar or the Canadian National Exhibition is noisy. Selling is a matter of attracting attention. You can’t sell in silence.”

“Privately, Jim,” I offered, “I wouldn’t like too much silence. We will be silent so long presently. Somehow I love all this towny racket. It makes me imagine that I am part of something alive, vigorous, joyous. Joy is loud. Sorrow is silent.”

“Me, too,” said Jim, tooting his car horn sharply at a bicycle ahead that was most carefully hugging the proper side of the road. “I always toot at bicycles. I have a feeling I am going to hit every bicycle I ever pass. Never get over it. Yes, sir, I love the noise of cities. For five years¹ I have missed, with a frequent sense of yearning, the tumult of a rivetting machine building tall buildings. Do you realize we haven’t heard that sound in all these years?”

“I like a steam shovel,” I said. “I think 99 out of the 100 men who stand staring at steam shovels aren’t looking at all. They are listening.”

“Which is lovelier,” asked Jim, “the sight of the fire-reels tearing along the city street or the sound of them? The scream of the siren. The roar of the engine and thunder of wheels.”

“It’s the sound,” I agreed.

“Yes, there’s something very dear about the sounds, the noise, of a city,” decreed Jimmie. “If you come downtown Sunday morning and see this city barren and deserted it has a sort of eerie and frightening effect. You are glad to get out of it. It feels strangely like a cemetery.”

“In the night,” I added, “when I am lying in bed I love the sound of footsteps tapping past my house.”

“I will be glad,” stated Jim, “when the noise of this city and all the great cities of the world gets real bad again; when high in the sky the rivetting hammers roar and down in the hopelessly crowded streets the traffic fights and snarls; truck drivers thundering through laden with merchandise to refuel the frantic stores; excited salesmen scrambling raucously for parking space; and the public so eager, so hurrying, so greedy and gay they can’t even hear the gigantic din of good times all around.”

“Aye,” I said. “It’s when we have nothing much to do but complain that we bother about civic noises.”

Thus we left Bloor St. and turned up Bathurst and sped up Bathurst to St. Clair and turned east into that distinguished region of mansions which was our destination. We were going up to put the finishing touches on a little duck shooting trip and our rich friend, as usual, couldn’t find his gun, so we were going up to help him find it. Last year I found it in his nursery.

Shattering the Silence

Off St. Clair into one of those noble streets we turned. Spacious lawns, quite respectably aged trees, large slumbering houses of stone or fancy brick stood aloof from the plain narrow asphalt.

“How peaceful,” Jim said. “No noise here. Silence begets silence.”

“If anybody got in the way here,” I seconded, “you wouldn’t dream of tooting at him. You’d just pleasantly slow down, as one rich man to another, and smile agreeably as you passed.”

“I bet,” said Jim, “there hasn’t been a car horn tooted in here for fifteen years.”

And we had scarcely these words out of our mouths when Jimmie’s horn began to blow.

Now Jim’s horn is not one of those melodious two-tone blasters of the later models. It is just a loud and raucous yawper of a horn. You just toot it once and a whole fleet of construction trucks will move aside.

“Jim,” I expostulated.

“Holly smoke,” gasped Jim. “I didn’t do anything. It just started itself.” We had to shout to be heard.

Waaawwwww, went the horn as we hastened up the brooding dim avenue.

“Stop,” I cried. “Maybe it will quit if the engine does.”

“I can tear the wires,” gasped Jim.

He hastily pulled up, turned off the engine, but the awful, sinewy, ear-piercing din kept up. As we scuttled out of the car, I saw lights come on in stately windows round about, doors opened, and heads appeared around corners.

“Quick,” I begged. “Jerk the wires.”

Two or three people came down front walks. A voice shouted something from an upstairs window.

“I don’t know which wires,” said Jim excitedly.

“Any wires,” I urged him.

Jim gave a wrench. The car headlights went out. But the din continued. The horn vibrated so that it felt like a massage you were having.

“Wrong wires,” said Jim. “Now I can’t see.”

“Let’s get the heck out of here,” I cried. “Drive for Eglinton as fast as we can. We can’t keep up this disturbance here.”

We vaulted into the car. Jim stepped on it and away we lurched. Without headlights.

“As long as we get out of this quiet neighborhood,” Jim said, anxiously, leaning forward on the wheel.

But over a little rise in the pavement, we saw ahead the bright ruby lights and criss-cross barricades of some roadwork.

“Road closed,” shouted Jim.

With great presence of mind, he swerved into the side drive of a particularly handsome mansion, the horn boring a hole right through the air towards the big house. And instantly doors leaped open and young people came rushing out.

Jim backed. He swung the car south. Down the street, with no lights but plenty of music, we started. People were grouped along the sidewalk and in doorways and on lawns. They waved and signalled angrily at us as we sailed past.

“Oh, oh, oh,” said Jim.

“Is It a Wedding?”

“The battery will soon die,” I shouted.

“It’s a brand new battery,” wailed Jim. “I bet it can keep this up for hours.”

I felt him kick the car under the dashboard, so I started giving various kicks at the old fool car, too. I tried pounding the steering column, the wheel, the floorboards.

To no avail. The horn, which had a frog in its throat when it started, now was thoroughly warmed up and its magnificent tenor cut through the night like a searchlight of sound.

As we went lower down the street, some people started running to keep abreast of us.

And just as we got within sight of the first cross street, a large limousine backed out of a side drive and parked itself fair across the narrow pavement.

“For heaven’s sake,” moaned Jim.

But we had to stop.

And out of the car that barred our path leaped a middle-aged gentleman with a haughty accent, and clad in a costly dressing gown.

“What the devil,” he shouted in the window, above the roar, “do you mean!”

“If you get out of the way,” shouted Jim fiercely, “we can get out of your sepulchral neighborhood.”

“You’ll wait for the police,” retorted the gent, violently. “I’ve sent for them.”

By this time, numbers of other important people were arriving, breathless.

“Is it a wedding?” squealed a girl excitedly.

“What frat?” demanded a handsome young man.

“Oh, how exciting,” cried an elderly lady, very flushed from running.

But standing right at the window, the gentleman in the dressing gown gritted his teeth, rolled his eyes in despair, and Jim’s horn, with never a quiver nor a shake, continued the incredible racket.

By now, the glare of several cars before and behind lighted the spectacle like a stage.

“It’s stuck,” Jim shouted to the crowd, but more for the benefit of the gentleman with the passion. “I can’t stop it.”

“What are you howling about without lights for?” roared the gent.

“Tried to pull the wires and got the wrong ones,” roared Jim back.

By now there were fifty people, all very respectable, including five maids in uniform. And they crowded right on top of us, as if the better they heard the horn the more they liked it. Dogs barked. Voices shouted explanations in the throng.

But no police came and the horns went on, and the gent at the window continued to grit his teeth, roll his eyes and pound his palm with his fist.

“Out the other door,” growled Jim. “Follow me.”

I slid out, and Jim after me. We pushed through the crowd.

“Now,” said Jim, in a low voice.

And we started to run.

We ran down to St. Clair, the horn fading as we ran. We ran west on St. Clair to Vaughan Rd., the faint horn still ringing. And there we sidled into a drug store where we sat down at the soda counter and had a drink.

“What do you intend to do?” I asked.

“Wait till we can’t hear it,” said Jim hollowly, “and then go back and get it.”

“But the police or somebody might go off with your car.”

“Do I care?” asked Jim darkly.

“Exciting, though, wasn’t it?” I encouraged.

“What I might have done,” said Jim, “was lift the hood and kick the horn loos from its moorings. I might have done that.

“Disconcerting, wasn’t it?” I assured him.

“After a while, we’ll go out and listen. And if we don’t hear it, we can go back,” decreed Jim.

So after another couple of sodas, we went out and stood listening. Above the honk and arp and hoo-hoo of the passing traffic we could hear no high, thin song.

Along St. Clair we sortied, reconnoitering with our ears.

No sound.

“Maybe the cops have got it,” I said, “and kicked it to bits.”

Up the quiet and stately street we crawled. As if nothing in all its history had ever disturbed its peace.

Far up, we saw Jim’s car. Just as we left it, slightly askew to the curb.

Without speech, we approached it. Examined it from a discreet distance and examined, too, all the windows and doors in the vicinity.

A small white card was stuck in the window of the car. Jim stepped over and examined it, under the street light.

“I kicked the horn loose,” it said, in pencil. “If you care to call, I shall discuss it with you.”

“Apparently,” said Jim, “the gent in dressing gown.”

So we just got in and quietly drove without lights, down to St. Clair and had everything fixed at a garage.

Being one hour and ten minutes late at our rich friend’s, and he had found the gun anyway. It was in the nursery.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. Jim is remarking on the lack of construction due to the Great Depression. ↩︎