Tag: 1935 Page 3 of 6

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 22, 1935.

“That chap,” said Jimmie Frise, indicating a young fellow desperately juggling with a jack and a flat tire and a spare, “has been fifteen minutes already, and he looks as if he were going clean crazy.”

“Why,” I asked, as we sat on Jim’s porch, “doesn’t he telephone for a garage man to come and do it? He’s all dressed up.”

“He’s going to a party or something by the look of him,” said Jim. “He has a white carnation in his buttonhole.”

“Maybe,” I said, excited, “he’s on his way to a wedding.”

“Maybe he is,” admitted Jimmie.

“Look at him,” I hissed. “He’s talking to himself. I believe he’s crying.”

“Holy Moses,” said Jimmie, deeply touched. “Suppose we go across and offer him a hand.”

So we both got up and hurried across the street.

The young man, all perspiration, in a brand-new dark suit, with a white carnation and a white tie, was moaning.

“Oh, oh, oh,” he kept moaning. “Oh, oh,” oh.”

“Let’s give you a hand,” said Jimmie kindly.

The young chap looked at us with glazed eyes.

“I’m late already,” he said, his mouth, trembling. “By now I’m 6 minutes late.”

“Give us the wrench,” said Jim, taking the tire wrench from the hand of the bewildered youth, who fell back limply against the polished fender of the car.

So while Jim undid the nuts I chatted with the boy.

“Going to a wedding?” I smiled.

“Yes,” he whispered, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

“We’ll have the tire off in a jiffy,” I reassured him. “Where’s the wedding?”

“The church is on St. Clair Ave.,” moaned the young man.

“Ten minutes will do it,” I comforted him. “You won’t miss much.”

“They’ll be waiting,” he gasped. “Waiting.”

“Are you taking part in it?” I inquired.

“Yes,” he said; “I’m getting married.”

“Jim,” I shouted, “make it snappy. This young man is getting married 10 minutes ago.”

The boy looked at his new wrist watch.

“Eight minutes ago,” he corrected. “Oh, oh, oh.”

I ran around to help Jimmie with the nuts, which were sort of varnished on.

“Snappy, Jim,” I begged. Then I went around to keep the boy company.

“Dear, dear,” I said, “why didn’t you telephone a garage man to come and fix this?”

“I thought I could do it quicker,” moaned the boy. “But I seemed to be all thumbs. I – I -I -“

“I understand,” I soothed him. “I’m a married man myself.”

“Besides,” said the boy, “I haven’t a cent of money.”

“No money,” I cried. “And on your way to be married. My dear chap.”

“Oh,” he said, “it’s one of these stylish marriages. Everything organized. My best man has the ring and my wallet, so that I won’t forget anything. He was to pick me up, but we decided at noon that I would drive my car instead and meet him at the church-“

“I see your plight,” I said, looking anxiously back where Jimmie was wrenching for all he was worth. “What a muddle you must have been in, and us sitting there on the porch looking at you.”

“Ah, you never know,” said the young man, with a tragic face, “what trouble people are in, do you?”

“You’ll be all right,” I laughed, slapping his back and starting to dust off his nice dark suit. “Straighten your tie a bit.”

His hands were dirty and they left a smudge on his tie and shirt. I said nothing.

“I can just see them,” the boy groaned. “Waiting. My mother-in-law. Oh, oh, oh.”

“Now, now, don’t get the mother-in-law trouble before you come to it,” I consoled him.

“She arranged everything,” the boy said brokenly. “All this was arranged by her. I don’t mind Margery so much. She’ll be all right. She’ll just wait. But her mother!”

“Let her stew,” I encouraged the boy. “Let the old lady stew.”

“We just wanted to be married at home,” the boy said, trying not to look at his wrist watch, “but her mother made all the arrangements. You’d have thought this was her wedding.”

“They are always like that,” I told the boy. I heard a loud snap, and then Jimmie came round from the back.

“Nut bust,” he gasped. “See? Broke right off.”

“Oh, ho, ho, ho,” wept the young man, banging his fist against the fender.

“Here,” shouted Jim, “we’ll drive you. And listen, tell me what church it is and I’ll telephone from my house to a garage near here, and they’ll fix this up and have it at the church by the time the ceremony is over.”

“Oh, ho, ho,” bellowed the young man, giving us the name of the church on St. Clair.

So Jim rushed into the house and phoned, and then backed his car out, and we shoved the boy into the back with me.

“Thirteen minutes,” the young man said, looking closely at his watch.

“We’ll be there in less than ten minutes,” Jimmie called over his shoulder.

“I was to be in the vestry,” the young fellow said hollowly, “at fifteen minutes to three.”

He pulled a slip of paper from his breast pocket and studied it.

“Yes,” he said. “Be in the vestry at 2.45 p.m. These are the orders. My mother-in-law wrote them for me. She had everything so perfect.”

“Aw, to heck with her,” I cried. “You’re not marrying her.”

“She started arranging this,” the boy said, “last November. She was training the best man in January. At Easter we held a rehearsal in the living-room.”

“Don’t worry, boy,” I said. “Inside of an hour you can tell her to go chase herself.”

“Oh, ho, ho,” went the young man.

“I always say,” said Jim cheerfully from, the front seat, “I always say, pick your wife by your mother-in-law. In seeking a wife a man ought to look at the mothers.”

“Watch these corners,” I said to Jimmie loudly.

“By looking at a girl’s mother,” went on Jim brightly, “a fellow can tell what his girl will be like in due time.”

“Oh, ho, ho,” moaned the young man, burying his face in his hands.

Reaching forward, I poked Jim violently.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “It’s true, isn’t it? A man is a fool that just looks at a girl. As if she was a thing all by herself.”

“Watch your driving, Jim.” I commanded. “Don’t bother talking. I’ll talk.”

“Well, I was only saying,” said Jim, “that men are fools. They get so infatuated with a girl-“

“What speed are we making?” I interrupted.

“Forty,” said Jim. “A man gets so infatuated with a girl he can’t see anything else. I tell you, a girl is only part of a scheme of things, an arrangement, a system.”

“Oh, ho, ho,” put in the young man, leaning back limply, with his eyes shut.

“Jim.” I gritted, “how about a little quiet driving?”

“What I mean to say,” insisted Jim, “is, life is life. A girl is only a biological item. She’s the daughter of her mother. See? Life goes on. That’s what I always say. Life goes on. Birth, marriage, death. And if a young man will just take the precaution to size up the mother-“

I got up and leaned forward I hissed into Jim’s ear.

“Shut up,” I hissed.

So as we did the first few blocks eastward along St. Clair, at forty, we had a little silence, and I took a narrow look at the young man, leaning limply back in his nice suit, with his smudged tie and shirt front. And I saw his mouth was set in a grim line.

“Well,” I cried gaily, “we’ll soon be there.” He opened his eyes slightly and looked at the passing streetscape.

“I see the church,” I announced. “I can see the steeple from here.”

The young man sat up.

“Oh, oh, oh,” he said, clenching his kneecaps with his hands. “If only-“

“See,” I cried. “In the distance you can see the cars lined up in front.”

“Drive right past,” gasped the young man. “Drive right past. Let me think.”

“Aw, don’t be scared of a little excitement,” I laughed. “They’ll be so glad to see you. And it will be all over in a few minutes. Come, come.”

“Drive right past,” repeated the young man in a sort of breathless voice. “I’ll crouch down.”

He started to get down on his knees on the floor of the car.

“Jimmie,” I ordered, “pull in there by the open space at the awning.”

Waiting at the Church

Cars were lined for a block and a crowd of people were standing on the steps and along the awning in front of the church.

“Please, please,” wept the young man, crouching down on the floor.

“Pull around to the side door,” I hissed to Jim, and we swung down the side street. “Drive down a bit and turn around, till we pull ourselves together.”

Jim drove down the street and turned in at sidedrive, while I frantically tried to soothe the young chap and get him to sit up.

“He’s just scared of the old dame,” said Jim. “Get out and run and get his friends, and I’ll watch over him.”

So Jim parked down from the side door of the church a bit and I ran for help. The side door was open and I took off my hat and sneaked in. Everything was hushed, though I could sense a crowd out in the church through a door with red cloth on it.

I tiptoed around, looking in little rooms with folding chairs leaning up against the walls and all deserted. Then I heard steps out in the hall and I dashed out. A minister and two men were anxiously walking toward me.

“The bridegroom,” I said breathlessly.

But they all just jumped at me, as if I were a church burglar, and before I could say Jimmie Frise or anything else they hugged me against their gowns, smelling of moth balls, and dragged me back through the hall and through the red cloth doors, and there they shoved me forward, with about a hundred people sitting in the sunny front pews.

“The bridegroom,” I hissed, trying to back away, “is -“

But the organ started to play and the three men behind me started shoving me.

In a haze I saw everybody stand up and a large woman in a blue and silver dress and a big hat ran at me with arms outstretched and palms toward me.

“No, no,” she shrieked. “No, no.”

Behind her I saw a beautiful girl in a white suit, and people running in all directions around her, helping to hold her up. I fought past the minister and the two other men, and with the large lady in blue and silver following I led them out into the hall, through the vestry door, and pointed down street.

“In that car,” I said weakly.

I could see Jimmie struggling with the young man. We ran down and opened the car door and out came the young man, flushed and tousled, but as soon as he saw the big lady he quieted right down.

“I had a flat tire,” he said sweetly.

But the lady just took his elbow and they walked quickly to the side door of the church, and in a minute we heard the organ start playing loudly again.

“How about going in and seeing it?” asked Jimmie.

“No,” I said, “I saw enough. Let’s go back and sit on your veranda.”

“Was that big lady the mother-in-law?” asked Jim.

“I assume it,” I replied.

“I always say,” said Jimmie, as we started off, “I always say -“

But you know what he always says already.

Editor’s Note: This story was repeated on May 20, 1944, as “Trouble Plus”

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 12, 1935.

“Ho-hum,” said Jimmie Frise. “I can sympathize with the Bolsheviks.”

We were sitting in front of the grate fire in my den, and the night howled without.

“You’re the perfect bourgeois,” I said.

“That’s exactly why I can sympathize with the Bolsheviks,” said Jim, settling deeper in the warm chair. “If the Bolsheviks never do anything better, they can put an end to this awful, tedious bourgeois life. Millions of people like us, sitting half asleep, or half dead, it doesn’t matter, in front of fires all over the world. Bored to death. Nothing to do. Nothing possibly can happen. Just a ghastly mockery of life. We live only once. We will not pass this way again. Today is done. It is gone forever. Forever and ever. And here we sit, like two mushrooms, like two loaves of bread, like two boots under a bed. Lifeless. Bourgeois. Soggy. Dead!”

“A fire in the grate is a fine thing,” I submitted.

Jim leaped to his feet wildly.

“Fine hell!” he shouted, stamping up and down the den. “I wish the Bolsheviks would come and loot me. I wish I was turned adrift in a cold cruel world. I wish something would happen so I would know I am alive. Come on, you Bolsheviks!”

“Sit down, Jimmie,” I begged him. “There are plenty of things we bourgeois can do. We don’t have to stay bourgeois. We can turn aristocratic. We can dress up in tuxedos and attend balls and functions. We could, right to-night, dress up and go down to the Art Gallery and spend a very fashionable and interesting evening strolling through the gallery in our snappy dress suits, looking snootily at the pictures and coolly ignoring everybody else in the gallery. It would make us feel swell.”

“Society!” snorted Jimmie, but sitting down again.

“Yes, society,” I said, warmly. “It isn’t as bad as you think. It’s only a kind of pretence. It’s only a sort of play-acting. But it is a game. It keeps people amused. It keeps people from being bourgeois and sagging to death on their own hearth stones.”

“Puh, society!” sneered Jimmie.

“Yes, society,” I repeated, “They have a program. They hold balls, dances, coming-outs. They patronize art galleries and sales of antiques. They have their off-days when they just go to hockey games or horse races. But they manage to have special enclosures or boxes, and they nod to one another gaily. But they are play-acting. They are putting on an act. Keeping up a front. They are saving themselves from smothering of ennui.”

“On-wee!” scoffed Jimmie. “Let the Bolsheviks come!”

“What we need,” I assured him, “is some program. Some design for living. We ought to attend prize fights if we don’t like balls. We should visit art galleries. We should dine downtown in one of the hotels at least once a week. It would be a break in the monotony. We should buy new dress suits and wear them at least twice a week.”

“Bring on the Bolsheviks,” muttered Jimmie, deep in his chair.

A Scavenging Party

“We should join clubs, societies, associations,” I said. “We wouldn’t really need to get to know the people we meet at such places. We could be snooty and off by ourselves. In fact, the snootier we act, the higher we will rank in society. It becomes a sort of game. Who is the snootiest? He gets the most invitations. The snootier, the happier. We bourgeois are too simple and kindly.”

“Hurray for Lenin,” mumbled Jim. “To the lamp-post with aristocrats. Stamp on the bourgeois.”

“You pronounce it boorzhe-wah,” I corrected. “Not boor-joys.”

“Stamp on them, anyway,” “growled Jimmie. “Fling them in the ditches.”

Far off, I heard the doorbell ring. The doorbell ringing in a bourgeois home is an event. Who the dickens is this disturbing us now? Haven’t people got any sense, coming banging at honest folks’ doors on a night when they want to be comfortable and alone?

I heard the door opened and then my family called me. They came running upstairs to the den to tell me, in a rather shocked voice, that somebody wanted to see me.

“Who is it?” I whispered impatiently.

“A young man and a girl,” said my family, breathlessly.

“Good heavens,” I said.

“Society,” muttered Jimmie. “Maybe it’s a couple of young Bolsheviks.”

I went downstairs. In the hall, a bright-faced young man and a very embarrassed young lady were waiting, fresh from the cold night.

“Good evening,” I said carefully.

“We’re sorry to disturb you, Mr. Clark,” said the young man, who held a sheet of foolscap in his hand. “But we’re on a scavenging party, and one of the things…”

“Scavenging party?” I asked.

“Yes, a sort of a social evening,” said the boy. “Each couple is sent out with a list of things they have to bring back. See? A cat’s whisker. A bird’s nest. One silk hat. Two 1933 calendars. And one of the things is to interview a newspaperman on the question: ‘Are scavenging parties a nuisance?'”

“Oh, I see,” I laughed. “What a dandy idea!”

The young couple were eager.

“Would you just scribble down something?” asked the boy. “And sign it? We have to hurry. The first back wins the prize.”

I wrote that scavenging parties were swell and signed it. They took the paper and dashed out into the stormy night. I walked back upstairs to the den to join Jimmie.

“Aha,” I cried. “That was funny.”

I told him about the scavenging party.

“Now, they’re having a grand time,” I said. “It isn’t that we are bourgeois that is wrong with us. It’s that we are no longer young.”

“Youth has nothing to do with it,” said Jim. “We could stage scavenger parties. We could get together once a week and hold a scavenger party. But would we? No. We prefer to crawl into our homes at dusk, like groundhogs, and just lie dormant. We’re bourgeois. I hoped that was a couple of Bolsheviks coming to answer my prayer.”

“Why didn’t we go out with those young people?” I cried. “Why didn’t I think! We might have joined them and had a marvellous night. A cat’s whisker. Two 1933 calendars? Where would you look for a 1933 calendar to-night?”

“It’s silly,” said Jim.

“Now For a Bird’s Nest”

The doorbell rang again. I sat up.

“Jim, if this is another pair of young scavengers!”

My family called me again. They were excited by now. Our bourgeois home was being enlivened. Half way down the stairs, I looked into the hall and saw another young couple, only instead of boy and girl, they were both boys. They held a sheet of foolscap in their hand.

“Come down, Jim,” I called.

The boys stated their business.

“How would you like Mr. Frise and I to join you in your hunt?” I asked.

“Swell,” chorused the boys.

Jim came sadly down the stairs.

“What would you give us to find?” I asked, throwing Jim his coat and pulling on my own.

“You get the bird’s nest,” said the boy, studying his list. “And the silk hat. Have you a silk hat?”

“No,” I said.

Jim got his coat on.

“Where do we come when we get the hat and the bird’s nest?” I asked.

“We’ll meet you at Jane and Bloor Sts.,” called the boys.

“O-kay,” I called, and ran for the garage.

Up Jane St. a few blocks is a friend of mine who is a prominent Orangeman. So we called and got his silk hat. It was an old one, so we didn’t waste time wrapping it up.

“Now for a bird’s nest,” I exulted. “Where did you last see a bird’s nest, Jimmie?”

“On an island in Lake Scugog,” said Jim, hollowly. “It was a crow’s nest.”

“I mean handy,” I cried.

“Funny,” mused Jim, “how one forgets about bird’s nests on a winter’s night.”

The snow was lashing our windshield.

“Come, Jimmie, snap out of it!”

“If I remember right,” said Jim, “I saw a robin’s nest in one of those big poplars. across from that lending library you go to.”

I drove there through the snow and slush. We got out and walked along in the night, looking up into the tall trees; but with snow falling in our faces, and on account of the bad light, we could see no bird’s nest.

“I remember a place,” I cried. “I used to stop and listen to the robins. There would be a nest.”

“I drove around a couple of blocks into a quiet west-end street lined with poplars and maples. We got out and walked along, watching up into the trees.

“There’s one!” I shouted. Sure enough, in the faint light of the street lamps, on a bough only twenty feet up in a maple tree, was a dark blob that unquestionably was a bird’s nest.

“Up you go,” said Jim, who had been holding the silk hat on his lap in the car and now was carrying it in his hand. “You get it.”

“I can’t climb, Jimmie,” I protested. “I get dizzy. Anyway, I got the silk hat.”

“You started this party,” said Jim. “You climb the trees.”

“Very well, boost me,” I said, putting my arms around the trunk of the tree.

He boosted me, and I reached the lowermost branches of the maple tree. I swung up. I reached to the next branches. The tree was wet and cold and slippery. There was slush gathered in all the crotches. It was messy. My gloves started to slip, so I took them off.

“Make it snappy,” called Jim in a guarded voice. “Somebody might come along, and it looks kind of funny to see a guy in a silk hat up a tree.”

I reached the main branch the nest was on.

The nest looked fifty feet away. Fifty feet out on a slim and rapidly diminishing branch covered with snow you can’t see from below.

I dared not look down. It seemed as high as The Star Building. I straddled the branch front-ways. It was too terrible. So I straddled the branch backwards and started hitching myself out a few inches to a hitch. I got about five feet out on the branch when my nerve failed.

“Jimmie!” I called sharply. “Come up here!”

“Come up, nothing,” replied Jim. “The nest isn’t six inches from your tail.”

“Jim!” I repeated more loudly and firmly. “Come up here! Somebody has got to come up here. I’m going to fall if I even let go the branch.”

I was now lying down with both arms wrapped around the branch.

In the house on whose lawn the maple tree stood, a window went up and somebody looked out at me. I could feel them looking at me quite a long time. Then the window shut quickly.

Better To Be Bourgeois

Two ladies were coming along the street. I kept still. But they saw Jimmie looking up the tree, so they looked, too. They stopped and just stood there looking up.

On the veranda of the house, two men came out. Across the road, a man came out pulling on his coat,

Lights came on the houses next door and across the street. A motor car stopped and two ladies and one man got out and joined the group gathering below.

“Jimmie,” I said, “will you come up at once? I can’t hold on much longer.”

“Just work your way back to the main trunk,” said Jim.

“I can’t turn around,” I explained, “and I can’t go along a branch except backwards.”

One of the men from the house came out on the lawn and turned a flashlight up at me. Two or three people ran into their houses and came out with other flashlights.

“Look at his hat,” they all said.

“Come down out of that,” said the man on whose lawn the maple tree stood. “Get out of my tree at once.”

“Jimmie,” I begged, “twenty minutes are up; those boys will be gone from Jane and Bloor!”

“Just move a foot and see how you feel,” urged Jim. “It’s only a little way.”

I heard them discussing things. I heard the man on whose lawn the tree stood arguing with Jimmie. Jimmie was explaining what a scavenging party is. He said we had met some young chaps who said they would ring us in on their party. Jimmie said he didn’t know exactly where the party was, but it was in the Kingsway.

“Jimmie,” I called. “Never mind all that. Come and help me down.”

The wind was swaying the tree; it was dark and the wet snow was blowing up my wrists, down my collar.

“Nobody in a silk hat,” shouted the man in the middle of the gathering throng, “is going to be climbing my tree in the middle of the night!”

“It’s a game, it’s a party,” explained Jim in a beseeching voice.

“Tell me where I can telephone and they’ll tell me it’s a party,” yelled the man. “Tell me that and then I’ll think there is some sense to it.”

“I explained to you…” begged Jim. “Two young chaps called at the door…”

“A swell story that is,” declared the man, and everybody agreed with him.

“Jimmie,” I moaned, “I think I’m slipping.”

So somebody got a ladder and I climbed down, and the first thing I did on terra firma was change hats. So they wouldn’t take our car number and find out who we were, we walked around the block several times until all was quiet before getting my car again.

“You see, Jimmie?” I said. “You see how it is? It’s better to be bourgeois.”

“It was the silk hat,” declared Jim. “If it hadn’t been for that infernal badge of aristocracy, you wouldn’t have looked so bad up the tree.”

“No, Jimmie,” I pursued. “It just goes to show that the way life is is the result of centuries of experience. The best place for people is at home, quietly sitting beside their fireplace.”

“Hurray for Lenin, anyway,” said Jim.

Which closed the incident.

Editor’s Notes: If you describe someone or something as the cat’s whiskers or the cat’s pyjamas, you mean it is the best thing of its kind.

The Toronto Star Building was built in 1929 (and demolished in 1972) and 22 stories tall.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 16, 1935.

“Twice,” said Jimmie Frise, “in the past month, my Aunt Meggie’s house has been tried by burglars.”

“How tried?” I inquired.

“Well,” said Jim, “the first time, the dog waked the family with its barking, and they heard feet-steps running out the side drive.”

“It might have been the milkman,” I suggested.

“The second time,” said Jim, “the dog barked, and my Aunt Meggie sprang out of bed and saw two men vanish over the back fence. When they examined the doors and windows, they found a brand new jemmie mark on the kitchen window.”

“What’s a jemmie?” I asked.

“It’s a kind of curved cold chisel, a big one,” said Jim, “for prying up windows.”

“Twice ought to be enough,” I assured Jim. “Those chaps will give up, now that they feel they have been suspected.”

“Unfortunately,” said Jim, “my aunt is going away for several days, starting tomorrow, and she has asked me if I’d mind sleeping over at her place until she gets back.”

“What a curious request,” I supposed.

“My Aunt Meggie is a curious person,” explained Jim. “She thinks nothing of asking you for breakfast, and that sort of thing. She’s odd, but we all love her. So I guess I’ll have to sleep at her place the next few nights.”

“You’ll enjoy it,” I said, “being a family man. It will be a nice quiet holiday.”

“The house,” said Jim, “is one of those lonely places, out on the edge of the city. It just beckons burglars.”

“Leave the lights on,” I suggested.

“A very good idea,” agreed Jim. “But I was hoping you might suggest coming with me. You like adventure.”

“Could I bring my shotgun?” I asked. “The double-barrelled one?”

“Sure,” said Jim. “And get some buckshot loads. You could pot one of them even if he was going over the back fence.”

“Maybe we could trap them,” I supposed. “We ought to be able to think up some funny scheme for trapping burglars. How would you go about trapping a burglar?”

“Set a live wire across all the windows and doors,” thought Jim.

“I don’t mean to kill them,” I said, “And, anyway, haven’t you read about all the poor chaps that set loaded guns for traps? They always forget, sooner or later, and get shot themselves by their own trap. I mean something comical, but efficacious. Sort of like flypaper or something.”

“Or set a rabbit snare in the windows,” offered Jimmie; “that would catch them around the neck when they crawled through.”

“And come down in the morning and find a dead burglar strangled to death half way into the kitchen?” I remonstrated. “I think not.”

“Then what have you in mind?” asked Jim.

“Well,” I invented, “say a pail of purple indelible dye suspended over the window or door. And when the burglar came in, the pail would upset all over him. Then we could inform the police and have it printed in the newspapers that a man covered with purple dye was wanted. They have dyes now that a man could never get off in weeks of scrubbing. He’d practically have to be skinned alive to get it off.”

To Cure a Burglar

“A swell idea,” cried Jim. “Even if we used that dye so that he got it on his hands. That’s an idea for banks and all sorts of institutions. Indelible dye that would get on the hands of the criminal. He couldn’t wear gloves forever.”

“Another idea,” I went on, “is a sort of perfume bomb that would explode when the burglar entered. It would spray him with some terribly strong perfume, like skunk. The smell would follow him everywhere, no matter how he fled. All we’d have to do would be call the police, tell them the burglar is now escaping but is saturated with skunk, and all the night patrols would have to do would be cruise around the district looking for a man who left rich trail of skunk behind him. Even in a motor car he would be given away. If he succeeded in getting home, the neighbors would smell it for a day or two, and that would aid the police in their search.”

“Except for the fact that it would stink up my Aunt Meggie’s house,” said Jim, “I think it is a wonderful idea. It’s a wonder you don’t capitalize your ideas. I bet you could make a fortune thinking things up.”

“Oh, ideas come easy to some people,” I confessed, “but I have still more. For example, nothing is so terrible to a burglar as noise. I have often thought I’d like to rig up a sort of combination alarm, with empty garbage cans, fifteen alarm clocks, a siren, several bunches of those little lady fire crackers, half a dozen giant fire crackers, and a tray of old dishes and glassware. And the minute the burglar trips the alarm, everything would start going off at once. Bells ringing, shots fired, old dishes crashing, sirens screaming. I bet I could do more to cure a burglar than fifteen years in the penitentiary. Scare the very living daylights out of him. Make him a nervous wreck. Cure him for keeps.”

“How would you make it all go off?” asked Jim, breathlessly.

“With wires and fuses,” I explained. “Everything could be set out in a kitchen so that it would never be suspected. On the floor, under the table, on top of the kitchen cabinet. All stowed neatly around. And the minute the intruder bumped against an invisible cord the whole shebang would start. Boy, I’d give a thousand dollars to be there to see that burglar.”

“Let’s try it,” urged Jim. “Let’s try it out at Aunt Meggie’s. It won’t make much mess, will it? We could clean it up easily?”

“No muss at all,” I assured him. “A few fire crackers to sweep up. Nothing else.”

Half the fun of being an inventive genius is in getting the things ready. We got twelve feet of instantaneous fuse from a friend in the construction business. We got a truck horn, one of those blasting ones, from a wrecking company, and they fitted in with a switch that worked on a simple contact. Fire crackers are hard to get at this time of year, but we managed a good supply from a storekeeper who was saving them over, in his cellar, until the next 24th of May.

The night Aunt Meggie went out of town Jim and I moved in, bag and baggage.

We selected the kitchen of Aunt Meggie’s house for the scene of operations. It was a large and spacious kitchen and it had three wall plugs for various things like ironers and other electrical devices.

On top of the kitchen cabinet we balanced three large empty garbage cans, placing under the three a long wooden lath. This was my invention, too. So delicately balanced were the garbage cans that when the lath sprung it tipped the cans six feet to the floor. The lath was sprung by a common string attached to a flat iron. The iron, resting on a slightly sloping piece of board, was set within six inches of the large mouth of the big truck horn. So fierce were the vibrations of the truck horn that they caused the glossy flat iron to slide down the sloping board, drop into space, yank the cord, and the lath precipitated the cans to the floor with a magnificent sound.

The setting off of the truck horn was simply a matter of a small 15-cent switch attached to the trip cord.

The trip cord, plain, heavy linen thread, we strung criss-cross around the floor, a little above the linoleum.

The same switch that put the juice into the truck horn ignited three short lengths of instantaneous fuse, at the end of which were two gangs of giant fire crackers and one gang of little lady crackers, twelve festoons of them in the gang.

From Aunt Meggie’s cupboard we selected a couple of cracked plates, three glasses with chips out of the rims, a broken platter and other odds and ends that we were sure she would not miss. These we spread out on a big tin tray she had on the ice box. And, balancing it also on the top of the kitchen cabinet, we fixed it so the leaping lath would spill it even quicker than the ash cans.

“How about some bells?” asked Jim.

So after a little deep thinking we detached the wiring of the front door bell and connected it in on the horn hook-up. On a general tour of inspection of the house we found several small items, such as a rat trap, a Chinese dinner gong and an old parrot cage in the attic, standing on a tall single stem. This we rigged up to the flat iron in such a way that it would topple with a terrible crash to the floor, spilling its tin floor, its glass feed bowls and water troughs in all directions. The other items we worked into the general scheme, and last of all, about ten p.m., we screwed some little picture frame screw-eyes into the base board around the kitchen floor, six inches off the linoleum, and through these threaded a maze of linen thread in such a way that no burglar could step into that kitchen without bringing pandemonium loose about his head.

“Oh, oh, oh,” moaned Jimmie, who had been laughing for nearly an hour, as one by one the items were laid.

“I won’t sleep a wink to-night,” I agreed.

“We’ll have to be careful,” said Jim; “you sit at the front window and I’ll sit at the back, in the dark, and whenever we see anybody approaching we can psst and call the other a warning.”

“Suppose nobody comes?” I supposed.

“We can leave everything just as it is,” said Jim; “we’ve got four days. If the birds that have been trying to break in here are around they’ll notice by the look of the place that everybody is away.”

Stupendous Racket

“Then to-morrow night,” I declared, “we won’t turn on any lights at all. We’ll just sneak in quietly after supper and sit in the dark. How’s that?”

“O.K.,” agreed Jim, and we turned off the downstairs lights, and I sat at the front window and Jim sat at the back, upstairs.

Sitting at windows in the dark, looking out on a lonely and deserted suburban street, is a patient business. Every little while Jim would tip-toe in to see me, or I’d tip-toe back to see him. We could not smoke at the windows.

“It’s just about midnight,” said Jim.

“Two or three o’clock is the usual time for burglars,” I confessed. “And I’m getting sleepy.”

“Let’s wait,” said Jim.

“Nice old house your aunt’s got,” I offered.

“She’s a great old card,” said Jim.

“Does she live here all alone?” I inquired.

“Oh no,” said Jim briefly. “She has a husband.”

“I never heard you speak of him,” said I.

“We don’t talk about him much,” said Jim in a low voice. “He’s a kind of a gambler and that sort of thing. Never had a job for twenty years. Aunt Meggie has the money.”

“Are they happy?”

“Kind of,” admitted Jim. “He goes off for days or weeks at a time, following the races and all that sort of thing. But he always turns up. He’s kind of the black sheep of the family.”

“Funny the way women marry men like that,” I mused.

“Aunt Meggie was the good-looking one of the family,” said Jim. “And had plenty of money. She married him because he was romantic looking.”

“Mmmmm,” said I.

So Jim crept out of the dark room and along the hall to keep vigil out the back window. The house was still, save the long tick-tock of a downstairs grandfather clock. The house was filled with the faintly sweet odor of old furniture, old pictures, old-fashioned things.

“Psst,” I heard him. “Psst, psst!”

Tip-toe, I hurried back to the room Jim was in.

Jim was staring out the window, and past his shoulder I looked down into the garden shadowed with bare bushes and hedges. Moving swiftly toward the back of the house was a shadowy figure, hurrying bent forward.

“Only one,” whispered Jim. “Oh, my gosh!”

Straining our ears to hear past the thumping of our hearts, we listened for the prying of the window. We heard a door close.

“Door!” gasped Jim.

But instantly the night was filled, the silent, echoing house was thunderously filled by the stupendous racket we had contrived. Jim and I clutched each other. The ash cans crashed, the motor horn set loose its awful raucous bellow, endless, endless; we heard the parrot cage crash and the fire crackers start a wild staccato firing, but from the midst of the hubbub rose a thin, shrill blade of sound, the steady screaming of a human voice.

“Boy,” gasped Jim, “that doesn’t sound very good.”

“It sounds like a woman to me,” I cried.

As we ran downstairs the sounds all died but the brazen bray of the horn and a few expiring fire crackers, plus the faint, silly tingle of the front door bell.

“Everything worked anyway,” I said breathlessly, feeling for the hall light switches which turned on the pantry and the kitchen.

“Catch him, unless he’s armed,” said Jim as we crept cautiously into the pantry. Or unless he’s gone.”

Jim kicked the swing door open, into the kitchen.

“Aunt Meggie,” he bellowed.

And there, breathing heavily, at full length on the floor, was an elderly lady, amidst the ash cans, parrot cages and smouldering red bits of fire crackers.

Jim leaped in and lifted her head to his knee.

“Aunt Meggie,” he cried, shaking her.

“What the dickens,” said Aunt Meggie, thickly, “was all that!”

“What are you doing here?” demanded Jim. The old lady drew herself into a sitting posture and surveyed the wrecked kitchen.

“Is Eddie here yet?” demanded the old lady sharply.

“No, I thought he was away with you,” said Jim blankly.

“Drat you,” said Aunt Meggie. “Drat me. Drat Eddie. Drat all burglars. And drat you, too, whoever you are.”

“This is Mr. Clark, auntie,” said Jim. “The newspaper writer, you know?”

“Drat him, anyway,” said the old lady, struggling. “Help me up, and what the devil is all this?”

“We set a burglar alarm,” explained Jim anxiously.

“So did I,” sneered Aunt Meggie. She was a peculiar old lady.

“You said you were going to be out of town for several days,” persisted Jim.

“Listen, James,” said Aunt Meggie, leaning on the table, “Eddie has been away three weeks on one of his periodicals. I got a post card yesterday saying he was coming home to-night. He always comes home the same way. Through that kitchen window. It wasn’t burglars made that jemmie mark a month ago. It was him, my husband. So I planned to have you stay here and I warned you against burglars so you would give him a warm reception.”

“My dear aunt,” said Jim, shocked.

“I hoped you would bring a gun,” said Aunt Meggie. “Or at least I figured you would rough-house him a little anyway before you discovered who it was. I’m tired of this business of his coming home like a burglar.”

“But where did you come from?” asked Jim.

“I’ve been hiding in the garden since nine o’clock,” said the old lady, rubbing her chilled muscles. “And I got tired waiting. So I came in.”

She sniffed, tearfully.

“But Eddie might have killed me for a burglar,” protested Jimmie, still shocked. “He’s a hard customer to tangle with.”

“You men,” said Aunt Meggie, and there were undeniably tears in her eyes now, “are all alike. You have no sympathy with a woman.”

“We’ll clean this up,” said Jim, reaching for an ash can.

“No,” she said, “get out. Go on home. You can’t do anything right.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Meggie.”

“Go on get out; I’ll rid this all up.”

And when we drove down the dark suburban street we didn’t meet anybody headed home.

Editor’s Notes: A “jemmie” is another name for a crowbar.

Shooting someone at a distance with buck shot might not kill them, but it seems awfully dangerous to me.

May 24th is Victoria Day in Canada, and used to be the only day it was legal to set off fireworks.

Wood Laths are narrow strips of wood which were originally used as nailing strips for walls or ceilings in plaster lath construction, which was the common usage before drywall. Now, lath is utilized as the main component in the manufacturing of snow/beach erosion fencing.

Lady firecrackers are also called Ladyfingers fireworks, small tubes strung together, and sometimes referred to as noise makers.

Ridding something up means to clean or tidy it.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 1, 1935.

“What’s up?” asked Jimmie Frise. “You look gloomy.”

“I wish,” I replied, “that this were 1735 instead of 1935.”

“Why?” inquired Jim.

“So I could call a certain man out,” I stated.

“Out where?”

“Call him out,” I explained. “Fight him a duel.”

“Dear me,” said Jim. “Now who’s crossed you?”

“There is a man in this town,” I announced, slowly and distinctly, “that I would like to kill. Killing is the only solution. I would like to stand him up, in a glade in High Park, on a very early misty morning, about five o’clock, at twelve paces, and then, with an old-fashioned duelling pistol, put a two-ounce slug right through his gizzard.”

“What’s he done?” cried Jimmie.

“That’s the trouble,” I admitted, “he hasn’t really done anything. It’s just the way he looks and acts. He stops me on the street and sneers patronizingly down on me. He greets me from a distance, like at the corner of Bay and King, when I am delving past in my touring car, and shouts out some mocking remark. He butts in when I am standing talking to friends, and bawls out – ‘Well, Greg, how’s the old windbag to-day?’ That sort of thing.”

“Why don’t you think up some retort?” asked Jim. “Why not use your own brains? Shoot something back at him.”

“The trouble is,” I explained, “the very sight of him seems to paralyze my brains. I can never think of anything to shoot back at him.”

“He’s got your goat,” judged Jim. “He gets in your hair.”

“All of that, and more,” I admitted. “The man haunts my idle thoughts. Whenever I have nothing to do, I find myself grinding my teeth and wishing I could punch that guy on the nose.”

“Why don’t you?” asked Jim.

“He’s too big,” I said. “He’s head taller than me and weighs forty pounds more.”

“That’s nothing,” encouraged Jimmie. “Is he tough?”

“He’s a big soft slob,” I exclaimed. “A great big fat blob. He has nasty piggy eyes and no chin and a weak, writhy sort of mouth that I’d just love to smash my fist on.”

“Why don’t you crack down on him?” asked Jim. “It’s nothing unusual for man of 140 pounds whaling the stuffing out of a man 180 pounds weight, if the big fellow is soft.”

“The difficulty there,” I pointed out, “is that I am a little soft and slobby myself.”

“Ah,” said Jim, surveying me critically.

“Ages ago,” I expounded to Jim, “the big men had it all their own way. We little men just had to hang our tails and take it. But then along came gunpowder, which put the big fellows in their place. Because, all I had to do was practise with a pistol and get to be a crack shot, and then I had all the advantage over the big man in a duel, no matter how good a shot be was. The bigger he was, the easier he was to hit. The smaller I was, the less target I made. In fact, in the great days of the human race, the little roosters were the dangerous men. They strutted around this earth the terror of everybody. Good shots and small targets.”

“All I am is Smaller”

“I bet you would have been a mean little customer a couple of hundred years ago,” admitted Jim.

“I’d have rid the world of a lot of big stuffed shirts,” I agreed. “But then what happened? The big guys got together. They passed a law. They made it illegal to duel. And, ever since, we little people have been dragging our tails in the mud again.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jimmie. “I’ve seen some wonderful little flyweight boxers that could trim a bigger guy to a frazzle.”

“I’m no boxer,” I regretted.

“But you could be,” urged Jim. “Not in a professional sense, you understand. You’re past the age. But you could join one of those gymnasiums where they teach boxing and weight lifting and physical culture. And in about two months you could be in wonderful shape.”

“Two months,” I snorted.

“In two months, training three nights a week in good gym, under a real boxing instructor,” said Jim, “you could be in such shape you would be afraid to hit no man living. It’s science versus brute strength. You know.”

“Mmmmm,” I mused,

“I’d even go along with you, some nights, anyway,” said Jim. “Because I know the state of mind you are in, and I know nothing will cure an inferiority complex …”

“Pardon me,” I assured him, “I have no inferiority complex. Don’t get that into your head. I’m not inferior to some big softy. All I am is smaller than he.”

“I see,” said Jimmie.

“I like everything about our idea.” I said, “except the long wait. I’d like to punch this guy on the nose to-day, tomorrow, this week. I hate the idea of having to wait two months before I can bash him one. I’ve waited years as it is. Now that I have decided to act, I want to act now.”

“Nonsense,” protested Jim. “Think of the way you can build up. Think of every night training on a punching bag or with a sparring partner, and every blow you strike you can imagine is aimed at this fellow. By the way, who is he?”

“I mention no names,” I said. “You wouldn’t know him.”

“You know the way they train a gamecock?” asked Jim. “The way they train a game-cock, after they have fed him and fattened him and got him into perfect condition in the stable, is to put him out on what they call a walk. This walk is an enclosure, from which the fighting cock can see other roosters and plenty of lady hens, but he can’t mix with them. He has to romp up and down his run or cage, crowing bloody murder and flapping his wings, and yelling at all the other birds he can see, until he is in such a state of rage and temper and got himself so lean and tough with racing up and down the cage, that he is in the right mood to kill any rooster he sees anywhere. Now, this program I suggest for you is much the same. For two months, you’ll train and get into shape, and by the time you are ready to meet this guy, you’ll just step up and sock him one perfecto supremo on the schnozzle, and that’s all there will be to it.”

“Oh, I don’t want to knock him out with one blow,” I exclaimed. “I want to draw it out a little. I’d like him to fight back for a while, with me slowly cutting him to pieces. I’d like it to last maybe ten minutes.”

“I get you,” agreed Jimmie.

To Cut Him to Pieces

“Yes,” I built up, “the way I see it is this. I’ll be standing at the corner of Bay and King, chatting with some friends, when along will come this guy, his coat tail flying, his fat legs stretching along, just as if he were a man instead of a slob. And as usual he’ll make some crack as he goes by, with that big grin he’s got. And I’ll reach out. ‘Just a minute,’ I’ll say, kind of easy like, and smiling thinly. ‘Just a minute. Look, I’d like to speak to you privately a second’.”

“Go on,” said Jim, his eyes gleaming.

“So I’ll walk up Bay a few steps and into one of those lanes. You know the lanes? And I’ll lead him in there, he never suspecting. When I get well up the lane, I’ll say, “Now, you big so-and-so, stick them up and take it.’ And I’ll square off, like this, see? And he’ll try to laugh it off, so I’ll tap him a little one right on the kisser. That will make him mad. It makes anybody mad. He’ll come for me. And then, oh boy!”

“Oh, boy,” agreed Jimmie.

“Scientifically, neatly, every blow counting, some of them on his eyes and nose, and others in his mid-section, I’ll just neatly and completely batter that guy until he sits down and cries. In the lane.”

Jim was open-mouthed in admiration.

“Boy,” he said, “I wish I had somebody I hated.”

“Where should we go for these lessons?” I asked.

“Well,” said Jim, with a big sigh, “there are several private gymnasiums. Some of them do weight lifting, and so on, and nearly all of them teach boxing. They are run by old boxers.”

“Do you know any?” I inquired.

“I have friends go to fellow called Magonigle, or some such Italian name, and he’s down town here, handy.”

“Let’s try him,” I agreed. “Two or three nights a week, we can stay downtown for supper and get in a couple of hours workout.”

Jim found Magonigle’s address from his friends, and after a light supper, such as sporting gentlemen should eat, we called at the downtown emporium of Buck Magonigle. Half a dozen youngish fellows, bare except for athletic shorts, were already at work in the upstairs flat where the Magonigle gymnasium was situated. Some of them were lifting iron rods on which iron weights were fastened. Others were working on wall pullers. Three were shadow boxing and punching the bags.

“There he is,” I hissed to Jimmie.

“Where?”

“That big bag,” I grated. For besides the little bags like footballs, there was one large bag, like a dunnage bag, suspended from the ceiling. It was full of sand or something soft and soggy, and a young man was whaling the daylights out of it. “That bag,” I said, “is the exact image of the man I’m laying for. Already, I can see his facial features beginning to grow on that bag. That is the object of my attentions, from right now on.”

“You don’t take on that bag,” said Jimmie, “until you’ve got some wind and some punch.”

“I’m taking on that bag,” I said, removing my coat, “to-night.”

Mr. Magonigle at this moment walked up and welcomed us gravely. He did not look like a gentleman, but he spoke and acted like one. It was like hearing an engine purring perfectly under the hood of battered old wreck of car. Mr. Magonigle was all bunches and twists, his nose looked cast and his ears looked south-west, one eye was out of line, but his chassis was like a Jersey bull’s – low, long and lean. “Gentlemen,” purred Mr. Magonigle.

Socking the Big Bag

So we talked over the situation, and in three minutes I was stripped and wearing a pair of Mr. Magonigle’s athletic shorts. They were big for me, but he had a safety pin.

First he lectured me on the basic principles of physical culture. I had no idea there was so much science and philosophy in a gymnasium. Especially the way Mr. Magonigle phrased it.

“It is not,” he said, out of his large and battered mouth, “a question of strength, so much as a matter of psychology. I say to my boys, I don’t train them, they think themselves into strength and perfection. Mr. Clark, you must think perfection every day. when you wake up, all day while you are at work, and the last thing at night before you sink to rest, you must think of perfection. You must feel your muscles, your limbs, enjoy the feel of them. Enjoy your food. Enjoy what sights your eyes behold. And under my training system, you will feel yourself, who were dead, suddenly coming to life. You will be strong. You will be perfect.”

I’m afraid I can’t quite get the quality of these noble words coming out of Mr. Magonigle’s mouth, sort of out of one side, with his eyes rolling as he talked, and accompanied by gestures of his huge and broken hands. And his voice was slightly husky. When he said perfect, he said poifect, and he shut his eyes, with his head thrown back.

Jim got into shorts, too, and Mr. Magonigle said he would first get us to expand our lungs on the wall pullers. So Jim and I pulled ropes with weights on them, and then, while Mr. Magonigle was out – he explained he had to see a man about something – we tried lifting the bars with weights on them, and finally, since the young men had all quit and were leaning out the window looking at some stenographers working late across the street, I took on the punching bag.

The little bag was too high for me, but I gave it a few good smacks.

“Leave the big bag,” advised Jim.

“Just a couple of socks in the belly,” I said.

The big bag was full of sand or worse. It hung by a rope from the ceiling and its lower end bulged.

I hit it. It swayed only a little. As it came back, I let it have another.

“Back up, you,” I said to it.

“Sock ‘im,” said Jim.

I gave it another. My arm hurt, but I gave it another.

“Right on the beezer,” grated Jimmie, crouching down.

I let him have it. The big bag’s swings grew wider.

“Now give him one in the solar plexus,” cried Jimmie.

I gave him one in the solar plexus. The big bag groaned. It swung higher and wilder.

“Lift him off his feet,” hissed Jim.

And I let him have it. I laid back, I lowered my fist to the floor, I upped and atted him.

“Hooray,” cried Jimmie, as the big bag leaped away from the blow. My attention was distracted.

Something struck me heavily, lifted me, threw me.

All was dark.

The darkness was filled with a deep buzzing. Small orange stars darted through the darkness. I heard a dentist’s drill. I heard small sounds like birds chirping.

And then Jimmie’s voice was saying: “It knocked him back and he fell with his head against the radiator.”

“It’s nothing,” I heard the voice of Mr. Magonigle. “He’ll be around in a second or two.”

They assisted me to dress.

“Physical culture,” explained Mr. Magonigle, as he helped me into my pants,”is a question of growth. By taking thought, you cannot add a cubicle to your weight, as the Bible says.”

“I am only interested in physical culture,” I said grimly, for the pain in my head was very bad where the radiator had hit me, “for a special and specific purpose. I have no desire to be in better physical condition than I am except for one particular job. Maybe ten minutes.”

“Like a masquerade,” said Mr. Magonigle. “You want to dress up strong for an evening or something?”

“Precisely,” I said, while Jim tied my tie.

“I fear,” said Mr. Magonigle, “you can’t do that. You are either strong or you are not strong. You can, with patience and purpose, become stronger. But as a general rule, we are the way God made us and mostly we stay that way all our lives.”

“Would you say,” I asked him, “from your wide experience, that I was fit to hit guy forty pounds heavier than me?”

“You can give,” said Mr. Magonigle, “but can you take?”

So we shook hands.

“The great thing,” Jimmie said, as he helped me down the dark stairway of Mr. Magonigle’s gymnasium, “is to forgive your enemies.”

“Never,” I said ” I’ll think up some other way of fixing him. Brains will prevail over brawn.”

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on March 4, 1944 under the title “Brains Vs. Brawn” (image at end).

A Dunnage bag was the type of large bag that sailors would use to carry their belongings. It would more commonly be referred to as a duffle bag today.