Tag: 1935 Page 1 of 5

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

NEW YORK

“Wake up, wake up,” hissed Jimmie Frise through the curtains of my lower berth. “We’re coming into New York.”

“That’s where we started for,” I growled, being one of those few who can sleep in a berth or anywhere else.

“The dawn coming up over New York, come on, let’s see it,” urged Jim.

“I’ve seen it before,” I assured Jim. “Miles of six-storey red tenements. Miles of bleak factories with ten-foot steel fences around them. If I like to wake up in New York at all, it is downtown.”

“You’ve got no soul,” said Jim sadly. “This is one of the wonder cities of the world. Seven million people live here. It is one of the cores, one of the ganglia¹, of the human system.”

I slid up the blind.

Just as I expected. Zipping by were vast drab red blocks of high tenement houses and spectral streets in the dawn, like streets excavated in Babylon or Pompeii. A terrible sameness. The same bottle of milk on all the window sills, and the same plate with something wrapped in newspaper. The same quilts flung half way out high windows by early birds already risen.

“Ugh,” I said.

I got up and staggered down to the washroom. There a half a dozen others were ahead of me, snorting, swizzling and gargling.

“New York,” I stated loudly, “gives me the jitters.”

Nobody paid any attention and Jimmie warned me with a shake of the head, his toothbrush twisting his face all out of shape.

“New York gives me an inferiority complex,” I announced, there being no basin empty for me. “I get the same feeling all New Yorkers have. I get intimidated.”

One or two of the gentlemen, drying themselves on scanty towels, gave me a cold look.

“The people of New York are all intimidated,” I repeated, sitting ready with my razor and things. “Their colossal buildings intimidate them. Those monstrous buildings all leaning backward, as if to ignore the millions of slaves crawling about their feet. The speed of New York intimidates them.”

All the gentlemen began coughing, snorting, gargling and snuzzling extra loud to drown me out.

“The people of New York,” I announced, “go about with lowered eyes, hurrying, timid, cold, scared. They are scared by the advertising cards in the subway trains. Cards that frighten them about their cough, warn them about their hair falling out, begging them to be careful of their skins. You can’t raise your eyes in New York, without being scared by something. New York is scared.”

Unseeing Myriads

Just then a gentleman surrendered his basin and I was next. When I was through washing, I sought Jim back in the car.

“Hah,” I said, “I told those New Yorkers a few things, eh? I’m not going to let them get away with the idea that their big town impresses me.”

“Those were all Toronto men in there,” said Jim. “Just before you came in, the porter remarked that everybody in his car this trip is a Toronto man.”

“Well, anyway, I said what I think,” I affirmed.

“You’re just a little excited,” said Jim. “Your approach to New York scares you. So you talk big.”

“I’ve been in New York before,” I asserted.

“And hid in your hotel all day except for little walks nearby the hotel, and a trip by taxicab to a theatre at night, and then, back home to bed.”

“I’ve been around,” I said.

“I bet you never were at Forty-second and Fifth Ave., at five p.m.,” declared Jim, “when the traffic is so thick you could walk across the street on the tops of the cabs! I bet you never yet risked your life in a subway!”

But the porter arrived and we entered a black tunnel where the train roared and thundered, and you felt very uneasy, hoping the engineer wouldn’t miss any switches in the dark.

Thus we came to the fabulous city. The new Ilium² with its topless towers. Thus we had our suitcases snatched by redcaps who led us at top speed out of the station as if the devil were come to town. Thus we were bundled into taxicabs with their radios blaring, and driven, in a sort of gargantuan, buffalo stampede of cabs, up a broad avenue where the entire traffic was racing, hub to hub and nose to tail, amidst a din of noise rising blasphemously unto the clean, virginal towers, spires, obelisks of serene beauty that aspired to the very sky.

Thus we were, with a lurch of brakes, spewed out at our hotel, where they are never surprised, but always seem to expect you; where all the bell hops seem always to have seen you before; and where, after the first trip in the elevator, they always remember your floor and tell it to you, with a smile.

Thus into the glorious and incredible streets, where a nation of all nations, white, gray, black, brown and all colors, mob past you at top speed, sightless eyes looking neither to the right nor to the left at all the incomparable beauties – the beauty of a window, a vast crystal window set in the foot of a very cathedral of a building, and in that stately vast window, one gown. A fragile, a silver gown.

Windows of incomparable grace, with one hat, one tiny pair of shoes. And windows of delicatessen stores as florid, resplendent, opulent, as if they were the windows of the jewels of Ophir³. And jewelry stores with – one diamond!

Yet to neither right nor left, nor up at the shimmering castellated towers in the sky nor down to the cold and bitter earth, did these passing myriads look.

And in this fabulous city, Jimmie and I walked alone, as if we and we alone were living, breathing, sentient in it.

To tackle stores we went, and saw fishing tackle beyond all dreaming. To book stores and print stores, where we saw prints and paintings and pictures in the care of speechless men and women. Our legs ached with walking, and our eyes smarted with looking.

They Can But They Don’t

We tried to go by subway from 44th St. and Madison Ave. down to Park Pl., and we ended up twenty miles away at the Bronx zoo. We tried to go from the zoo back to our hotel and landed at Park Pl.

We saw a store window with nothing but alligators in it. We saw a man singing only one hymn for a living. It was “Rescue the Perishing,” and he sang it in the morning, and he sang it still, ten miles away at evening, but on the same street, holding before him in the wintry wind an empty cap.

In a magnificent store where they sold flowers, there was in the window one white rose.

Jim led me, on foot, in taxicabs, by underground and by elevated, on bus and on tram car, round and round that incredible mulberry bush which is New York. We lunched at a restaurant where you slip five cents in a slot and your food, beautifully cellophaned, pops out at you on a chromium-plated tongue of steel which secretly slips back again when you take your food from it.

Nobody tried to sell us the Empire State building, so, while we were admiring its unholy height, I selected a few particularly gigolesque⁴ New Yorkers and tried to sell it to them. But it was no good. They merely looked at me with agate eyes, humorless, remote.

“Everybody in New York,” I said, as I padded painfully and breathlessly alongside of Jimmie, “is small. I have seen only a half a dozen big people all day, amongst the seven million I have seen so far. And they all looked like visitors.”

“Now that you come to mention it,” agreed Jim, “I noticed that, too.”

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that there might be anything in my theory that the very size and majesty of the city makes the people timid and humble, and that they are actually growing smaller with each generation?”

“All the big people,” said Jim, “have been killed off by traffic. You’ve got to be small and nimble in New York.”

We nimbled our way from the Bowery to Morningside Heights, from the basement of five-cent stores to the needle tip of a fabulous building that points a final, accusing finger at heaven.

And thus we came, at five p.m., to Fifth Ave. at Forty-second St., where the cabs are jammed so thick you can walk across their roofs from one side of the street to the other.

“There you are,” said Jim. “On their roofs, from this side of the street to the other.”

But when I asked a cab driver to let me climb up the side of his cab to make the start, he refused. While we were arguing how much I should pay him for the privilege, whistles screamed, lights flashed, the mighty throb of sound changed its majestic tone, and away went the tide of traffic, rushing and whirling. And Jimmie and I fled across, with five hundred others, under the sheltering wings of ten policemen.

“There you go,” I said, “there you go, Jimmie. You can walk across the roofs of the cabs. But you don’t. That’s New York for you. You can, but you don’t.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” cried Jimmie, “that in all this day, amidst all this splendor, after speeding a mile a minute down in the bowels of the earth and roaring along in the elevated above the roofs of a city, after all those stupendous stores full of fishing tackle and pictures and gowns and guns and alligators, after this glorious day spent rubbing your lonely elbows with ten million others, strange, swift, passing, forever mysterious and unknown, all you can say about New York is that they can, but they don’t!”

Deadliest Complex

“In all this day,” I said, “I haven’t seen a single soul that seems to call to me across the deep.”

“You’re hungry,” said Jimmie. “That’s all’s the matter with you. You need to eat. Now, after showing you the city as it should be seen, I am going to do you a great favor. I am going to take you to the greatest restaurant in America, and one of the five greatest restaurants in the world.”

“Ah, oysters,” said I.

“Oysters, if you like,” said Jim, steering me westward into a district where the buildings were smaller and the lights brighter. “But I advise you to save your capacity for more delectable things. They have a creamed fillet of sole that princesses have wept over. They have a pot roast which is acknowledged to be the greatest stroke of genius in the entire history of cooking.”

“Oysters,” I said. “And little soda biscuits.”

Through the streets all bright with red signs, past huddled little stores wedged in between theatres, every third door a theatre door, with congested cabs patiently, tooting their way all in one direction, packed from curb to curb, we bowed into the winter night wind and came at last to Vincent’s⁵.

It was a small and cosy restaurant. The lights were tender. The music was faint. The waiters, all pot-bellied and with thin gray hair slicked in two curls on their heads, swayed like adagio dancers among the white linen of the tables.

The menu was as big as a newspaper.

“Oysters,” said I, “and little soda biscuits.”

But Jim, with frequent dreamy gazes about the room, murmured to himself as he read the menu.

The restaurant was filled with people, and Jimmie told me they were the greatest people in New York, actors, owners of banks and radio stations, authors and playwrights, genius of every sort.

“Genius,” I remarked, “sure slurps its food.”

For they were bobbing and bending to the succulent dishes: their talk, their manners, their laughter was eager but not so eager as their forks and teeth.

“They make me hungry to look at them,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have something more than oysters.”

Jimmie raised his head with shining eyes and a flush on his brow. Reverently he nodded to the waiter. The waiter bowed, ear bent down to Jimmie, his pencil poised. “Baked,” said Jim, with a catch in his voice, “baked Boston scrod!⁶“

“Baked Boston scrod,” said the waiter, flicking a shrewd appraising glance at Jim, as if to say, “ah, a gourmet.”

“Oysters,” I said, “and little soda biscuits. And then some baked Boston scrod.”

Jim watched me engulf the oysters. I chew my oysters. Jim would watch me manipulate the beauties – Cape Cods, they were – into the cocktail sauce and then up to my mouth. Then he closed his eyes and shuddered while I chewed.

“I’ll say this for New York,” I sighed, as the waiter whisked away the empty shells, “their oysters are good.”

Then came the scrod.

From under glowing dull silver covers, the waiter revealed a vast plate with a magnificent light brown square of fish.

And beside the fish, heaped in a pile, like matches in a poker game, was my deadliest enemy!

My deadliest enemy, potatoes Julienne!

They are little measly French fried potatoes, about the size of a match.

They are brittle and hot and dry.

They are deadly, vicious, ruinous.

Liberated At Last

I thrust my chair back and half rose.

“Jimmie,” I said bitterly, “this is to much! This is the end! I’ve had a feeling all day that something like this would happen, that New York would, in the end, heap a final humiliation upon me.”

“What is it?” asked Jimmie astonished.

“Potatoes Julienne,” I rasped. “Potatoes Julienne, my inferiority complex personified. I hate them. I hate them. They and they alone have stood between me and my social rise. If it had not been for those measly, vicious little potatoes, I might have been a great man. I might have attended scores of dinners at Government House. I might be joined the York Club⁷. I might have been a member of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club⁸.”

“Sit down, sit down,” whispered Jimmie, glancing around.

“It is not, as you might have supposed,” I said, “the fact that I look silly in a dress suit that has kept me from rising in society. It is those, those devilish little potatoes Julienne. And to think it was New York that sought out my deepest humiliation like this!”

I covered my face with my hands.

“Eat,” said Jim.

“My only nightmare,” I quavered, “is a vast platter of potatoes Julienne, and away on the far side of the heap, a great concourse of beautiful girls and handsome young men in dress suits, mocking me!”

“What’s the matter with them?” demand Jim.

“Try to eat them,” I cried.

So Jim tried and I tried. They served in a heap, lying end for end. If you put your fork under them sideways, you lift your fork and not one single little sticklet of potatoes Julienne comes up.

You look at your fork in amazement, and try it end ways. You slide the fork under them and lift. And one or at most two of the insignificant sticks comes out of the heap.

I tried a spoon. It was no better. Jimmie began to get red and perspire and cast anxious glances around the neighboring tables.

“Ah,” I said.

The sugar bowl was at hand, and in it, the sugar tongs. I seized the sugar tongs and took a grab at the potatoes Julienne.

And as I raised the tongful to my mouth I looked up and fair into the eyes of Vincent himself, the lean aristocratic proprietor of this famed house.

I signalled to him.

“Vincent,” I said, in a low voice, “forgive me, but will you tell me, in mercy’s name, how do you eat these potatoes Julienne?”

Vincent bowed.

“Wit,” he said, “your feengers!”

“Fingers!” I gasped.

“Feengers,” said Vincent, “like diss.”

And he took a pinch of potatoes Julienne from my plate, lifted them, and popped them into his mouth.

“Princes,” he said, “keengs, dukes, barons, all the people of the great world, eat potatoes Julienne, only like that.”

I rose.

I shook hands with Vincent.

I stepped around and slapped Jimmie on the back with one hand and shook his hand with the other.

“Jimmie,” I said, “it took New York to liberate me from a complex that has had me down for twenty-five years!”

And for the rest of the trip I embraced New York with my arms as wide as I could stretch them.

---

Editor’s Notes: This story also appeared in So What? (1937).

1. Ganglia is a group of neuron cell bodies in the peripheral nervous system. ↩︎
2. Ilium is an ancient Greek town. ↩︎
3. “Jewels of Ophir” is a nickname for the Jewels of Opar plant, also known as the fame flower. ↩︎
4. I looked this up and don’t know what it means. ↩︎
5. Vincent’s has been around since 1904. ↩︎
6. If you are not familiar with the term, scrod is just a whitefish fillet, served breaded. ↩︎
7. The York Club is a private members’ club in Toronto that began in 1909. ↩︎
8. The Royal Canadian Yacht Club is another old club in Toronto. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 26, 1935.

“Be honest,” said Jimmie Frise.

“I flatter myself,” I said, “I am honest.”

“Honesty,” said Jimmie, “is a curious thing. If you were absolutely honest, you would be clubbed to death by an infuriated mob before you had been honest for three hours.”

“Honesty,” I agreed, “must be tempered by common sense. For example, if you were honest, you would tell your friends the truth. You would tell them that never, by any stretch of the Imagination, will they ever be good singers. Yet if you told them that, it would be wicked and cruel.”

“How come?” demanded Jim. “It would save them a lot of grief. And a lot of trouble. It would spare them years of struggle, trying to be good singers. It would put an end to a lot of suffering on the part of people who have to listen to them trying to sing.”

“Yes, but,” I said, “there are really so few things to do in this life. You think at first there are a lot of things to do. But after a while, you discover life has only two or three things to do. And one of them might be singing. Or so you think.”

“That’s what makes life tough,” agreed Jim.

“So, if a man thinks he can sing,” I pursued, and he starts singing, wouldn’t it be wicked, cruel and terrible to deprive him of that belief? He thinks he can sing. It sounds beautiful to him, as he lets his voice blow through his throat. It has a nice, strong feeling. It fills him with a sense of power, of beauty.”

“Yet,” said Jim, “he might be inflicting suffering on five, ten, or even two hundred people, if for example, he were singing in a church choir.”

“Quite so,” I said, “but it is easier to bear the defects of others than to know your own defects.”

“That’s quite a wise saying,” admired Jimmie.

“It’s an honest saying,” I said. “It is more honest than telling a guy he can’t sing.”

“Then we should go about lying,” said Jim. “Lying to our friends by not telling them. Swallowing the truth is the same as lying.”

“Then believe me, we are all liars,” I said. “Or should be.”

“Don’t you think the world would be improved,” asked Jim, “if, instead of kidding one another, we all told the facts and got down to brass tacks? If we all knew our faults, wouldn’t the world be a happier place to live in, a more sensible and practical and business-like place to live in?”

“We would all be dead,” I replied. “There would be no object in living if we had not our dreams and our hopes and our false expectations.

You certainly make a virtue out of dishonesty,” admitted Jim.

“The best thing to do is not think about honesty at all,” I pointed out. “Just take life as It comes and help your brother.”

“It’s a good philosophy,” concluded Jim.

Sportsmen Stick Together

This conversation took place in Jim’s car as we drove to what they call the Annex, which is a district of Toronto north of the parliament buildings, a district where nearly everybody in Toronto was born but from which nearly everybody that was born there has moved away. It is filled with happy grandfathers and grandmothers; thousands of civil servants and university students dwell in it; it has a comfortable air but hardly any side drives. More bachelors and old maids reside in the Annex than in any other concentrated neighborhood of the city, with the result that the lights are out in the Annex earlier at night than in most neighborhoods. Panhandlers do not think very highly of the Annex because bachelors are always saving for their lonely old age.

But Jim knew some people who lived in one of the handsome apartment houses of the Annex. They had an uncle die who had been a great sportsman. He had left behind him great piles of fishing tackle and guns and mackinaw clothes and expensive hunting boots from Scotland. And we were on our way to buy some of the tackle for the benefit of the heirs. At least, that it what you say to your wife. Ah, we sportsmen are so devoted to one another!

“Despite our honesty,” said Jim, as we drove up in front of the beetling apartment house, I wouldn’t put it past us to control our expressions very carefully in case there are a couple of Cellini rods in this collection of junk we are going to see. I could do with a four-ounce Cellini.”

“The only thing to do,” I said, “is to bid one against the other. If there is a rod I want, I’ll say right out how much I’ll give for it. Then you say how much you’ll give. It will be a sort of private auction.”

“You’d never make a business man,” sighed Jim. And we walked up to the apartment house entrance.

Apartment houses always embarrass me. The embarrassment I feel on entering any strange house is multiplied exactly by the number of families living in the apartment. If there are forty apartments in the place, I am forty times as embarrassed. And further more there is, in a few of the better-class apartments, a sort of commissionaire standing in uniform in the front hall. Almost Invariably he is a veteran not of the Canadian but of the imperial army, and he has a high and snooty look.

There was such a one as we entered the foyer of this magnificent apartment house. He had a small red moustache and small bright brown eyes. He eyed us grimly.

“Mr. Grimbleberry’s apartment?” asked Jim sweetly.

“Third floor, number thirty-four,” said the imperial, haughtily.

We went up the self-serve lift. It was an upholstered, creepy lift, like a coffin going heavenward.

On the third floor we got off and started to look for apartment thirty-four. Soft plush carpet, soft lights, soft music and soft odors of food lingered in the long corridors.

Through the Transom

We went down the corridor and turned to the left, where we met a large, extra-stout gentleman in a derby hat coming to meet us.

“Ah,” cried the gentleman in the derby delightedly. “By Jove, you’re just the men I’m looking for! I’ve done a very silly thing.”

We paused politely. He was well dressed, obviously one of the better-class tenants of the high-class apartment.

“I’ve done an absurd thing,” he giggled, shamefacedly. “I’ve just snapped the door shut and left my key on the inside!”

“The sergeant-major downstairs will fix it for you,” I suggested.

“Nonsense! That man!” giggled the gentleman in the derby. “He would merely start in motion an act of parliament to have the caretaker appoint somebody in the course of the coming week to make an adjustment of the matter. Look here, chaps, I want your help. I forgot an important matter, my wife’s wrap. I’m just rushing to meet her at a party. Do help me!”

“Certainly,” we both said. “How?”

“Through the transom¹,” he said. “The transom is slightly ajar.”

We walked along the corridor until we came to apartment number thirty-eight. It had, in fact, a transom. The transom was ajar.

“Better still!” cried the derby one. “I’m so big. You are just the size to go through a transom, by jove! Would you mind, I say?”

He was patting me on both lapels.

“I’m still athletic,” I agreed, taking off my overcoat and handing it to him.

Jim and the derby joined hands and I stepped on their palms and was hoisted aloft.

“You’ll see a sort of cotter pin,” said the derby-hatted one softly. “Just give it a smart pull. Then the transom will drop open. Don’t bang it. The people on this floor are very fussy about a little racket. Mostly old women.”

I drew a cotter pin holding the transom rod to the frame. The transom dropped and I caught it and let it softly down. With a few struggles and a wiggle or two, I got through, dropped to the floor and opened the door.

“There’s no key,” I pointed out. “It was just locked. The catch had sprung.”

“Good heavens, where’s my key, then?” cried the gentleman in the derby hat. “However, I won’t detain you. Would you care for a drop of something, raspberry vinegar² or ginger cordial³?”

“No, thanks,” said Jim. “We’ve an appointment.”

“Well, cheerio and thanks a lot,” said the gentleman in the derby.

So we went and found apartment number thirty-four and the Grimbleberrys were in, and they laid out the piles of their late Uncle Billie’s sporting gear. He had three Cellini rods, all about four ounces. Jim and I paid no attention to them. We just picked them up and laid them aside, as it to see more interesting exhibits. There were fly books crammed with fresh and untouched dozens of flies and boxes loaded with dry flies. There were precious fly lines rolled carefully on storage spools of cork. There were English reels with agate line guides. There were Scotch waders and brogues of leather. Baskets and rod carrying boxes of Spanish walnut with brass fittings and locks. There were English guns in leather cases. There were Harris tweed fishing coats with immense pockets that were just made to order for Jimmie. Nets, gaffs, fly oiling bottles and silver-cased pads of amadou for drying the fly. Pigskin valises and canvas kit bags of the wide-mouth English pattern, trimmed with genuine leather.

In fact, it was a sensation.

“Is That a Fair Price?”

We pawed casually amongst it all. I could feel Jimmie trembling every time he leaned against the table. I coughed loudly, and complained about a raw throat.

“Errumph,” said Jim. “Now one thing you have got to bear in mind, Grimbleberry,” said he, “there are plenty of rogues around who wouldn’t give you a fraction of the value of these things.”

“I’m sure there are,” said Mr. Grimbleberry.

“I’m sorry there isn’t much here that interests us,” I added. “We have so much stuff now our wives think we have gone crazy. In fact, I have to smuggle anything I buy into my own house.”

“Ha, ha,” we all laughed, including Mr. and Mrs. Grimbleberry.

“There are a few little items here,” I admitted, “that I think I could pick up, things I’ve worn out, and so on. But the great majority of the things are second-hand, of course, you see?”

“I wouldn’t mind one of these rods,” said Jim with a faint quaver in his voice.

“Oh?” I said, surprised. “I wonder what condition they are in? How long did your uncle have them?”

“I couldn’t say,” said Grimbleberry. “You see, I don’t fish, none of the family does. It’s just so much junk to us. I was hoping you chaps would take the whole shebang. Give us a lump sum for the whole works. That’s what I was hoping.”

“”Mmmmm,” said Jim and I together, like a duet.

I jointed up one of the Cellinis. It was like a living thing. It was like a jewel, like Aaron’s rod⁴, pulsing with sensate life, a gorgeous, vital, leaping creation of bamboo yet weighing only four ounces for all its nine feet of length. It was worth every cent of the seventy-five dollars Uncle Billie, now with God, had paid for it new.

“Mmmmmm, not bad, Jim,” I said. “Feel that. Isn’t it a bit loggy to you?”

“Mmmmmm,” said Jim. He had actually to wrestle his gaze loose from that rod. He laid it aside doubtfully.

“How about twenty dollars for the lot?” asked Mr. Grimbleberry. “Is that a fair price? Ten dollars from each of you.”

I didn’t breathe. Jim cleared his throat.

“Or fifteen?” asked Grimbleberry. “I don’t want to impose on the fact that I know you two gentlemen.”

What was worrying me was how Jim and I were going to divide the loot. Who was to get the odd Cellini, for there were three. And who the pigskin bag? And that solid copper dry fly box?

It Pays To Be Honest

At that terrific moment, there came sounds from the corridor outside the apartment. Excited voices and thudding feet. Grimbleberry hastened to his door, saying “There’s been a pants burglar⁵ working this neighborhood.”

Grimbleberry opened the door and a buzz of excited voices rose from the outer hall. Above all rose the irate and commanding voice of an imperial. He was saying:

“Two of them, a small one in a bright brown coat and a tall one. I spotted them the instant they came in.”

Jim strode to the door. “Are you looking for us, sir?” he demanded sharply.

The commissionaire from downstairs came and stared dubiously at Jim and me.

“These are guests of mine,” said Grimbleberry. “They have been here at least half an hour.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the commissionaire stiffly.

He told how the Bunthorpes in apartment thirty-eight had come in and found their place ransacked, their transom open and valuables stolen.

“It was a small man done it,” stated the commissionaire shrewdly. The only stranger I’ve seen here tonight was a big stout man in a derby hat, and carrying a club bag. But he couldn’t have got in through no transom, no, sir. Not him.”

He went away to pursue his criminal investigations.

We went back to the Grimbleberry’s dining room table were Uncle Billie’s collection of a lifetime – and a connoisseur – was spread out.

“Mr. Grimbleberry,” I said, stoutly, this stuff is worth more than twenty dollars.”

“In fact,” said Jimmie, “just one of these rods alone is worth a great deal more than twenty dollars.”

Mr. and Mrs. Grimbleberry looked at us with open mouths.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” I put in.

“That pair of waders with brogues is practically new,” said Jim, “and they sell, new for about forty dollars.”

“Good grief,” said Mrs. Grimbleberry casting a look around her apartment at the curtains and the rug with an appraising eye.

“One has to be honest,” said Jimmie. “Especially as, in this world, you are so often dishonest without knowing it. So I suggest this. I suggest you have a clerk from a fishing tackle store some night come up and set a fair valuation on all this stuff.”

“A great idea,” said Mrs. Grimbleberry.

“On an off night, have him come up,” I added, “and he can list all this stuff and put a fair second-hand value on everything.”

“And then we’ll come up again and bring some of our friends,” said Jim, and we can have a sale, eh?”

“Beautiful,” cried Mrs. Grimbleberry. “How much do you think it might come to?”

“Oh, I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said.

“One hundred? Two hundred?” asked Mrs. Grimbleberry eagerly, and I saw Mr. Grimbleberry suddenly give her a sharp look.

“It wouldn’t be wise to say,” I suggested. “But it would bring you more than you’d get from a casual sale.”

So Jim and I left them and went down and as we passed through the foyer, the commissionaire saluted us respectfully.

“Ah,” said Jim, as we got into the car, “it pays to be honest.”

“Especially,” I agreed, “when it is within your power.”

---

Editor’s Notes: Normally now, if a story is repeated later, I publish the original and mention the repeat with a copy of the new artwork. But when I first started this project, I was not aware that some stories were repeats. So I published the repeat of this story back in 2020 as “Honesty Pays” which is from January 22, 1944.

1. A Transom is a window that exists over a door frame. It was not uncommon for these to open on the horizontal in offices or homes. ↩︎
2. Raspberry vinegar is a a drink made from raspberry juice, vinegar, and sugar.  ↩︎
3. Ginger cordial often combines ginger, lemon and sugar. ↩︎
4. Aaron’s rod refers to any of the walking sticks carried by Moses’ brother, Aaron, in the Torah. The Bible tells how, along with Moses’s rod, Aaron’s rod was endowed with miraculous power. ↩︎
5. “Pants Burglar” was literally someone who stole pants. I guess the object was to also get money or a wallet that might be left in them, but there are historical newspaper references to people who just stole pants. It was a term used primarily in the early 20th century. ↩︎

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.

---

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. ↩︎