Tag: 1939 Page 1 of 4

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 15, 1939.

This Greg-Jim adventure is from Gregory Clark’s book, “Which We Did,” published by Reginald Saunders, Toronto.

“I have been invited,” said Jimmie, “to act as adjudicator in connection with some amateur theatricals.”

“What the heck,” I begged, “is adjudicator?”

“It means judge,” said Jim.

“Then why not say it?” I inquired.

“Ah,” said Jimmie, “that’s the drama of it. In the drama, it is how you say things; not what you say.”

“As a matter of fact.” I agreed, “there really isn’t very much to say in life, is there?”

“Drama,” said Jim, “is the memorable saying of things about which there is very little to say. Now you take Shakespeare. Take Romeo and Juliet. A couple of kids fall for each other. But it turns out that their families have been pulling some raw business deals on one another and aren’t on speaking terms. It’s a very common situation. You’ll find it in every town and village. Especially villages. So, these kids try to get together secretly, but everything turns out against them. You could tell the whole story in about two paragraphs in a newspaper. But Shakespeare takes five acts.”

“How different,” I confessed, “from the newspaper business. There it doesn’t matter how you say it. It’s what you say that is all important. The news. The facts. Get it across quick.”

“And how different,” said Jim, “from the movies. In the movies, it is what you do, not what you say, that counts.”

“This is the age of action,” I pointed out. “Doing is more attractive to us nowadays than saying.”

“The movie business,” said Jim, “hasn’t yet got over the discovery of the movie camera. You’d think they would get used to the idea sooner or later. But no. The guy with the camera is really the boss. There he sits, demanding that everybody move. And the director obeys, and makes them all move. It’s like on a fishing trip, when you take a bunch of the boys with the little amateur movie camera. They all feel they have got to wave their arms and lift the strings of fish up and down, to prove it is a movie. You can go to the movies for a whole year and never hear an intelligent remark or conversation that lingers an hour in your memory. Why? Because the conversation in the movies is nothing but part of the sound effects. They still make the movies the way they did back 20 years ago. All movement, with sound effects.”

Two Kinds of Everything

“I can’t say,” I confessed, “that I could I stand for movies consisting of just two people sitting a half hour at a time quietly chatting, the way it used to be in the stage drama. Or even soliloquy. Do you remember soliloquy, where the actor used to stand all alone on the stage talking to himself out loud?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” protested Jimmie. “I can still remember, as if it was only yesterday, the scene in ‘Liliom’ where Joseph Schildkraut¹, as Liliom, debated with an old crook the question of God. You could put that on the movies. Just the two of them, sitting in a dirty old back yard. Because what they were saying was fascinating. W. C. Fields² talking to himself is one of the greatest features of the modern movies. Yet they cut him short, and hustle him into movement again. The trouble with the movies is, they are camera struck.”

“Like everything else,” I suggested, “the public will probably get weary of seeing nothing but action and begin to yearn in time to hear some words of beauty or wisdom.”

“No,” disagreed Jim. “There’s no hope in that direction. The great mass of the public have only the one sense, visual. Their only power of appreciation of beauty is optical. It is their weekly two bits, or twice-weekly two bits, that make up the vast fortunes of the movie industry.”

“Then,” I surmised, “the stage drama is going to survive after all?”

“What I think,” said Jim, “is, there are. two kinds of everything. Two kinds of cars, cheap and dear. Two kinds of clothes, houses, churches, schools, fishing rods. In a little while, there will be two kinds of movie theatres. The big cheap ones where the same old whang-doodle goes on for ever and ever. And small, expensive movie theatres where the true artists, the real dramatists, actors, stage-craftsmen, will perform for a minority who are eager to pay the cost. We are all at the vaudeville stage of the movies now.”

“But,” I disagreed, “there will still be wandering minstrels. There will still be actors and actresses forlornly travelling the wide world, making personal appearances in small hotels, conservatories and church basements.”

“Ah,” agreed Jim. “And there will still be amateur theatricals.”

“That’s a thing,” I said, “I never had any yen for when I was young, amateur theatricals.”

“No, because you had sport,” said Jim. “You dramatized yourself with gun and rod and canoe. You ranged the rocks and hills, imagining yourself a mighty hunter before the Lord. For one deer you have ever really shot, you have, in a thousand dramas of your own invention, shot ten thousand wild and fierce creatures.”

“How do you know that?” I asked in astonishment.

“We’re all alike,” said Jim. “Drama is a word that comes to us straight from the ancient Geeks. It means to perform. Every living being loves to perform. It is the very spirit of life itself. One minute, we are nothing. Then we are alive, for a few brief minutes. Then we are nothing again, forever. But during those few minutes that we are alive, the one great yearning in us, between those two dreadful darknesses, is to perform, to move, to act, to do something, however strange.”

Pretend They’re Other People

“And amateur theatricals?” I asked.

“Most people who go in for amateur theatricals,” explained Jimmie, “are bank clerks, accountants, oppressed, repressed individuals who dare not venture, even in the imagination, away from the ledgers, the desks, the hard realities of their lives. Church people go in for amateur theatricals. Church people are publicly trying to lead a good life. Therefore, even in the secret of the night, or in the shadow of their own hearts, they dare not go gallivanting in any dreams. And dreams are drama. Ah, the uncounted billions of unwritten dramas of humanity!”

“Who are these people you are going to adjudicate?” I asked.

“Oh, just a neighborhood drama league,” said Jim. “A couple of churches, a men’s club and a community association of some kind. I guess they will be pretty dreadful.”

“I remember one time,” I said, “I got into a movie theatre on a juvenile amateur night. I never suffered so much for 37 cents in all my life.”

“It will probably be fun, though,” said Jim. “I am to attend a dress rehearsal of this play, some sort of a drama of family life. Each season, before they present a play, they call in a critic or adjudicator, not, a professional, you understand, but some prominent citizen like me, who is asked to decide if the characters are properly apportioned, if the players are suited to their parts, and if the drama, as so presented, is suitable for a stage offering in the community hall.”

“It’s a nice idea,” I admitted, “I’d like to go with you.”

“Come along,” cried Jim. “They’ll be delighted to have you.”

So, the night of the rehearsal, Jim telephoned to remind me, and called for me in his car.

“You’re late,” I said. “It’s 8.25.”

“I phoned them,” said Jim, “and they said they would start and we could come in after the fuss of getting going was over.”

“We the only audience?” I asked.

“Just us,” said Jim.

We arrived at our destination, a handsome big home. It was all in darkness. We rang the bell; but there was no response.

“That’s funny,” said Jim. “They said 102.”

“Maybe it is 120,” I said. “You’re not very good at figures.”

“They said 102, I am sure,” said Jim, as we walked down to the pavement. We strolled east. Down a few doors, there were several cars parked in front and an air of activity in a brightly lighted house.

“That’s 112,” I said. “You got it wrong by one.”

Number 112 was the house, all right. The shadows of people moving on the blinds, the sounds of voices, of voices raised in mock passion.

We rang the bell.

“They’re going good,” said Jim, as we heard a woman’s voice rise in tearful entreaty.

We rang the bell again.

“I guess,” said Jim, trying the door knob and finding the door open, “they can’t hear the bell for the racket they’re making.”

A crowd was assembled in the living-room, so Jim and I quietly tip-toed in and hung our coats and hats on the crowded rack. Through the hall curtains, we could see the drama going on, full bang. Around the living room, seated crowded on chesterfields and chairs and standing leaning against the walls, were the players, four or five middle-aged or elderly men and women and about seven or eight younger persons. In the middle of the room, the centre of all eyes, were two of the company, a middle-aged woman a middle-aged man. As we slipped in by the curtains and took our stand against the wall, the action was not interrupted, and a few of the players threw brief glances and smiles.

“For 40 years of my life,” the woman was saying, in a deep. tremulous voice, and I was impressed to see very real looking tears on her face, “I have been a faithful daughter to him, devoting my life to him. I denied myself marriage…”

“Ha, ha,” laughed the man who was standing with her, undoubtedly the villain, though an elderly villain. “Denied yourself marriage, you say?”

“Yes,” cried the woman, in a hoarse, broken voice that was most dramatic, “denied myself marriage.”

“Heh, heh, heh,” laughed the villain, and all the other players around the room smiled at his humor, “I tell you, Lizzie, you have been the joke of the family all your life for the desperate efforts you have made to capture a man. Why, even the little boys of the neighborhood make jokes about your next attempt.”

“You brute,” gasped the woman, staring tragically around at us, “you filthy brute. To think, a brother should ever speak to a sister in such words! Why, even as a little girl, who was it stayed home with Daddie while you others went your ways? When he had the typhoid fever, who was it nursed him? Where were you when he had the typhoid fever, I ask you?”

The male villain was now standing over against the mantel, with his arm resting on it, in the approved attitude.

“Lizzie,” he said, “we all see through you. There isn’t one of us in this room, young or old, that could not testify in a court of law that you had deliberately prevented us, time after time, from doing acts of kindness to Daddie. Eleanor, there…”

The pretty girl cried out –

“I tried to take Granddaddie for motor rides.”

“Hah,” cried Lizzie, the lady standing up, “let a rattle brain like you take a nervous old man driving? You who’s been in three dreadful accidents, all your own fault?”

“Lizzie,” said the villain, pointing a lean finger at her, “you can’t face it. No court of law would uphold you. Every member of this family will testify that you usurped the old man’s love; that you poisoned his mind against us all; that you misrepresented us all to him; that you frustrated us in all our attempts to show him a natural family affection.”

“Affection?” screamed Lizzie, whirling about the middle of the room to stare at us all most tragically, “Affection? Why half of you, didn’t come to his funeral. You were too busy playing golf or grubbing your filthy money.”

“Filthy money?” sneered the villain, “Heh, heh, heh! I tell you, my dear sister, unless you voluntarily divide up Daddie’s estate among us, his proper heirs, we’ll take you for a ride through the court of this country that will take every cent he left you, make you a public character, and make you wish you had never been born.”

Lizzie, standing there in the midst, burst suddenly into tears. It was magnificent acting. Real tears cascaded through the fingers of her hands as she covered her face.

“Oh, oh,” she wailed, in an entreaty to Fate more moving than any words could be.

Jimmie stepped forward.

“Ladies and gentlemen, he said, smiling, and even Lizzie stopped crying and everybody stared.

“My dear friends,” said Jim, “as adjudicator, I think I might interrupt at this stage of the proceedings to say that the acting of the villains the way he leans on the mantel, the way he sneers so and points his finger, is a little too melodramatic. In real life he would be cold, soft-speaking, insinuating and threatening. My dear sir, you will forgive me, but I think you bluster too much.”

There was an instantaneous outburst of mutter and murmur and chatter.

“Who,” demanded the villain, advancing on Jim, “are you?”

“I’m the adjudicator,” smiled Jim.

“The what?” cried the villain.

“The adjudicator,” said Jim. “Didn’t you invite me here to act as critic of your little drama?”

“Drama?” said the villain. “I thought you two were her lawyers.”

Dazed Triumph

There was a sudden burst of excitement and everybody stood up and crowded around.

“I thought,” said Lizzie, “they were your lawyers. Who are you two gentlemen, please?”

Jim and I stood side by side.

“Pardon us,” I said, for Jimmie was temporarily at sea, “but we are just a couple of newspapermen, who were invited by a local amateur theat…”

“Newspapermen,” muttered the villain, looking fearfully around. “Newspapermen,” the others all muttered, starting for the hall. Men, women and young folk, they all seemed like children when the fire bell rings, so eagerly did they bump into one another on their way to the hall, grabbing their coats and hats. “Newspapermen,” they all mumbled and muttered and gasped, with sideway glances. And the sound of engines starting up and cars departing in gear filled the night while Jim and I still stood bewildered, and there was nobody left but Lizzie and us two.

“But,” said Jim, apologetically, to that lady who stood with a look of dazed triumph on her face, “we thought this was where the neighborhood drama league was rehearsing. We were invited.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lizzie. “God sent you.”

“No ma’am, we just mistook the house number,” confessed Jim.

“Mistook?” sighed the lady, like Jane Cowl³. “Mistook? My dear friends, those were my brothers and sisters and their children, come to rob me of my rights, a poor woman who has devoted her whole life to a dear old neglected man. And you come in, two newspapermen, and are witnesses of the whole dreadful thing…”

“Ma’am,” said Jim, deeply, “we are dreadful sorry. Never a word of it would either of us ever breathe.”

“You won’t need to,” laughed the lady almost hysterically, seizing our arms. “You won’t need to not if I know my brothers and sisters. I’ll never even hear of them again.”

And laughing and crying, she threw herself on a chesterfield and laughed and cried, while Jimmie and I got into our coats and hats and said good-by 12 different ways and times, and went out and shut the front door, with her still sobbing and laughing.

And we never did find those amateur theatricals.

---

Editor’s Notes: As indicated at the start of the story, this was originally published in Which We Did (1936).

1. Joseph Schildkraut, an Austrian-American actor, played the title role in the first American stage production of Liliom, the play that eventually became the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. ↩︎
2. W. C. Fields was an American actor and comedian. ↩︎
3. Jane Cowl was an American film and stage actress and playwright. ↩︎

“Let men go into concealment again. Nature gave us a natural ambush but we came out of it. And look where we are!” So Greg and Jim let their beards grow long.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 21, 1939.

“You haven’t shaved this morning,” observed Jimmie Frise.

“I have some kind of frost-bite,” I explained, “here on the corner of my chin.”

“I bet you’d be a handsome little coot, with a square red beard,” admired Jimmie.

“It would accentuate my shortness,” I replied. “Only tall men should wear beards.”

“You’re mistaken,” stated Jim. “A little man could add tremendously to his prestige with a good big beard. A tall man doesn’t need a beard. A little man does.”

“In the army,” I recollected, “I often thought of growing a beard. We used to be sometimes a week or more without a chance to shave, and I’d have the grandest red stubble all over my face. I looked like one of the 12 apostles.”

“Judas, likely,” commented Jim.

“But the army regulations,” I went on, “forbade beards. Moustaches were encouraged.”

“It’s a long time since beards were really in fashion,” remarked Jim.

“Yes, and there is reason to believe that the world has gone to pot partly on account of the disappearance of beards,” I stated.

“It’s as good a reason as many another I’ve heard,” admitted Jim.

“As a matter of fact, it’s a better explanation of the world’s confusion,” I declared. “We always look for deep, hidden causes, when the real cause is probably right on the surface. Why did men cut off their beards, to begin with?”

“To please the ladies, I imagine,” said Jim. “What lady would like to have a huge beard stuck in her face every time Pappy wanted a kiss?”

“To please the ladies,” I repeated darkly. “I believe that was it. A thousand years ago, a beard, I imagine, was a fairly unsanitary appendage. There would be soup in it, and wassail and perhaps even a few smaller chicken bones and things caught in it.”

“Don’t forget,” said Jim, “the Romans shaved. All the statues of Caesar and the great emperors show clean-shaven men.”

“Pshaw,” I cried, “three thousand years before the Romans, the Egyptians were clean- shaven. A thousand years still further the other side of the Caesars than we are from them, men shaved.”

“Did they have razors that long ago?” asked Jim.

“Funny looking tools, too,” I said. “You can see pictures of Egyptian razors¹ in the encyclopaedia. They look like a little hatchet, only all four sides of the blade were sharpened. They were bronze, and brought to at high degree of sharpness. The four or five edges were used for getting in around the corners and curves of the chin. In some ways, an Egyptian razor of the year 3,000 B.C., that is, 5,000 years ago, is better designed than the finest razors of today.”

“Well, look at Egypt,” said Jim, “just a few pyramids and pillars dug from the dust of ages. That shows you what happens to a nation when its men shave.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “The first trouble about shaving is, that a man reveals his true character when he reveals his countenance. Behind a beard, a man could hide such weaknesses as tenderness, sympathy, humor. A man could go about the business of creating and defending an empire when his face was hidden in a beard. But the minute he shaved, all his native humanity showed and could be appealed to by his victims.”

Beards Used to Be Holy

“In the great old days,” said Jim, “beards used to be holy. Men used to swear by their beards.”

“Don’t you remember in the Bible,” I asked, “where David’s ambassadors to the enemy are humiliated by having half their beards shaved off, and David sent them the message. ‘Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown’²?”

“Why don’t you grow a beard?” cried Jim, suddenly. “You’d have a dandy in two weeks, at the rate you show this morning.”

“It’s too late,” I pointed out. “Everybody knows my character now. My family, my friends, the office, everybody. They’ve seen my face. I am exposed. But if I ever move to another community. I’ll sure grow a beard so that nobody will ever know my true character again and, boy, will I make hay while the sun shines!”

“I’ll grow a beard if you will,” stated Jim, very concentrated.

“What’s the idea?” I demanded.

“To change our luck,” said Jim. “And maybe we could start a fashion and change the luck of the world.”

“Beards have come and beards have gone.” I informed him, “all across the history of the world. The ancient Egyptians shaved, but the Assyrian and Babylonian kings grew great beards which they oiled and curled and braided with gold wire.”

“Gold wire?” said Jim. “What a mess!”

“Oh, don’t feel so superior,” I declared. “Henry the Eighth, who was one of our craftiest and most useful kings, had his beard knotted.”

“Knotted?” gasped Jim.

“Yes, sir.” I informed him. “His barber, instead of shaving him, had to come every few days and tie little knots in the beard to take up the slack. So Henry’s beard was a beautiful little snug mass of knotted hair close up against his chin.”

“Ugh,” said Jim.

“In British history,” I enlightened, “beards came with the thoughtful kings and vanished with the battlers. The Richards were clean shaven or with mere tufts, but the Edwards were bearded. The battling Henrys wore no beards at all, or else little forked or tufted beards, fancily designed: but the thoughtful and scheming Henrys wore beards. Edward, the famous Confessor, wore a forked beard down to his girdle.”

“I suppose,” said Jim, “if you had a long beard to stroke reflectively, you would be a reflective man.”

“Correct,” I said. “We are reflective or not reflective, depending on our little habits, not our big ones. Queen Elizabeth had an ambassador named George Killingworth who had a beard five feet long.”

“Good grief,” said Jim.

“Well, you see, a bare-faced queen could not very well impress foreign powers,” I submitted. “But when her ambassador walked into the foreign court behind a colossal bunch of whiskers five feet long, by golly, the political disadvantage of a queen was balanced.”

“The more I think of it,” reflected Jim, “the more I believe there is something to beards. The late King George had a beard and Britain was a power all over the world. And the minute he died, we’ve been getting into one jam after another.”

“Look what Hitler can do,” I pointed out, “on just the least little moustache.”

A Natural Ambush

“The women,” announced Jim, “have had their way long enough. It’s time we began to take stock and put them back where they belong. The emancipation of women may be a very noble idea, but not at the price of world confusion and possible disaster. Delilah the world over, that’s what it is. Just to get a smooth kiss instead of a prickly one, women have sold out the power and strength of mankind.”

“You said it,” I agreed, rubbing my stubble, which was itchy.

“Open diplomacy, openly arrived at, to heck with it,” cried Jim. “Let men go into concealment again. Let us adopt a universal poker face. Let us get into ambush once more. Nature gave us a natural ambush, and we came out of hiding by choice, at the soft, cooing request of women. And look where we are!”

“It’s not easy to grow a beard,” I pointed out. “It takes a long time to get it out far enough to be manageable. And it’s awfully itchy for the first few weeks.”

“If you have no strength of character left,” declared Jim, leaping up, “very well, give way before the smiles of your friends, surrender to the astonished looks of strangers on the street.”

“I’m one day ahead of you, anyway,” I retorted, sticking out my chin resolutely.

“We’re just like everybody else,” said Jim, “we take the easiest way. Is nobody ever going to get his back up? Are we going to drift and drift, instead of grabbing hold of some reality, even if it is only whiskers?”

“Are you serious, Jim?” I demanded. “Do you mean it?”

“All our leaders,” said Jim solemnly, “plead and beg us to seize hold of democracy or justice or some other abstract thing that can’t be grabbed hold of, any more than the wind can be grabbed hold of. I’m tired of all this exhortation. I’m going to take my stand for mankind before it is too late, and I’m going to take my stand in some small, tangible way. First, I’ll grow a beard. And from there, the next step will be easy. I don’t know what it is, but at least I will have made a start. Freedom is at stake. Why? Because we have surrendered in little things, until, like sand slipping from under us, all things are surrendered.”

“What can one beard do?” I asked.

“Two beards, you mean,” said Jim.

So, it being Friday, we had the week-end to get things started. It caused a little trouble at home, especially for Jim; but he invented some pimples on his face as his excuse. And on the street, Sunday afternoon, when I called on Jim to go for a little walk, we met neighbors who did not conceal their astonishment and amusement, depending on how well they knew us.

One neighbor condoled with us, thinking we were ill.

“You look like a couple of galloping declines,” he said.

Jim’s beard, despite his white hair, came out nice and black, but was spotty. It grew in patches, as it were. At a little distance, it did give him a scabby look.

Mine, on the other hand, came out a sort of brindled gray and brown, with a tinge of red in it. The hairs, instead of growing out stiff and straight, like Jim’s, curled, and I had feeling that the tip of each hair was movable, and kept up a constant little tickling all the time. The frost-bite was all better, and I was able to do a little comforting scratching, but scratching seemed only to make more flexible the little curled ends, and they tickled all the more.

Monday morning, we drove down together to the office real early, not because we were afraid to arrive with the crowds, but because we really had some work to catch up on.

“And I never felt work slide so easily under me,” said Jim, about 11 o’clock. “I have a feeling of strength and determination that I never experienced before. I bet shaving takes a lot out of a man.”

“Naturally,” I explained. “It is the instinct of hair to want to grow. You can’t simply speak to your hair and tell it you don’t want it. Naturally, also, hair consumes energy out of your system, in order to grow. So here are our beards, year after year, desperately trying to do their duty. The more we cut them, the harder they struggle to perform their function. Beards were provided by nature to protect our chins and throats. So when our beard cells feel the cold, after shaving, they try all the harder. As soon as we quit shaving, even to this small extent, the slower our beards will grow and the less they will consume of our energy.”

“In other words,” said Jim, dashing off cartoons at a terrific speed, “when we get real good beards we’ll feel ten times the energy we feel this morning.”

“It stands to reason,” I agreed.

Braving the Public Eye

“Boy,” breathed Jim, filling his lungs. “I shave every day. Each day I cut off, say, one-16th inch of beard. Let’s see. One inch every 16 days. Two inches a month. I have been shaving since I was about 20. That means, mumble, mumble, times mumble, divided mumble, mumble; that means I have shaved off 60 feet of whiskers from my chin, or a beard 20 yards long! No wonder I’ve felt debilitated this last 15 years.”

“It’s a tremendous waste of energy,” I submitted. “It’s a wonder modern industry with its scientific attention to all phases of efficiency, hasn’t refused to hire any but bearded help for the past 20 years.”

So we agreed and conversed, until lunch time, and went forth to brave the public eye, which is the hardest part of growing whiskers. Fortunately it was storming and we were able to bury our chins in our mufflers and bow our heads to the blizzard. We decided to steer clear of our usual lunching place, not because we were afraid, but because of the time it would take explaining to waitresses and the manager, who is always keen about the health of his customers.

“Don’t let’s get into any of the big noisy places,” I suggested. “Let’s try one of these quiet little restaurants.”

So, after looking in the windows of three or four of the little hole-in-the-wall places, we selected one which had plenty of men in it.

As we entered, the proprietor, a Greek gentleman, was standing at the cash register and he looked at us narrowly. We smiled easily at him.

We walked down the narrow cafe and selected a table and took off our mufflers and coats, revealing ourselves brazenly.

The proprietor came walking down after us and stopped to have a good look.

“Not here,” he said, laying his hand on the back of Jimmie’s chair and starting to pull it.

“What’s that?” I demanded indignantly.

But it is difficult to look properly indignant with only stubble. With a beard, yes. You can look very indignant, because nobody can see how nervous your mouth may be.

“Not here,” said the proprietor. “Scram. We don’t serve bums.”

“What are you talking about?” stated Jim, quietly. “How dare you call us bums?”

“Look,” said the proprietor, gesturing with his open hand first at my face and then at Jim’s.

I reached into my pocket and hauled out a handful of silver and displayed it before the proprietor’s eye.

“Good pickings today, huh?” said the proprietor. “Never so, scram. No bums. It ruins my business.”

We heard a sort of quiet and glanced around the little restaurant, where a lot of earnest-looking people, the kind who eat in little places, were all paused in their eating, looking at us with obvious lack of sympathy, if not distaste.

“Quick,” said the proprietor. “No bums. Sorry. I got to think for my business.”

He rattled the chair under me, decisively.

“Just a minute,” I began.

But Jim rose abruptly from his chair, snatched his coat and muffler and started for the door.

I followed.

“So,” I said, as we emerged into the storm, “so you hadn’t even the courage to face it out.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “you do look like a bum.”

“If you want any comparisons,” I retorted, “you might take a look at your own face, all blotchy and scrofulous looking.”

We didn’t say any more, but hurried back along King St. and into a barber shop and had a quick shave, with hot towels and witch hazel, and then went and ate at our usual place, amongst our own bare-faced and cowardly kind.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. A sample can be seen here. ↩︎
2. From 2 Samuel 10:5. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 5, 1939.

Greg and Jim find that what looks like an interesting stopping place produces monkey business in more senses than one

“Why is it,” demanded Jimmie Frise, “we didn’t stop for that poor chap back there?”

“We didn’t like his looks,” I suggested. “He looked sort of sticky.”

“He was probably a very worthy citizen,” countered Jim. “Maybe he was some poor chap hurrying to the bedside of his dying mother.”

“The law of averages is in his favor,” I reminded. “He signals 100 cars. The 101st picks him up.”

“I often wonder,” mused Jim, “why it is we pick one guy up and pass up 50 others. What is it about certain people that causes us to stop and pick them up? And what is it about hundreds of others that causes us to go right by them?”

“If our curiosity is aroused,” I submitted, “we usually stop. For example, last year I saw a young bum on the road with a bunch of flowers in his hand. I couldn’t help stopping for him. When I asked him why he was carrying flowers, he said it was to arouse curiosity in people so they would stop and pick him up. I never felt so indignant in my life.”

“I guess it’s a combination of things,” said Jim. “For instance, conscience. I have often passed a dozen hitch-hikers and then I began to feel mean, so I stopped at the very next one.”

“And probably got a far less pleasant companion in your journey,” I pointed out, “than if you had selected one of the earlier ones.”

“I’ve had some terrible specimens,” confessed Jim. “I’ve been itchy for a week after picking some of them up. Just imagination. But imaginary fleas are as bad as real ones.”

“The whole hitch-hiking game is difficult,” I stated. “On humanitarian grounds, we ought to give a lift to everybody. It is the parable of the good Samaritan in modern garb. But at the same time, it has a lot of evils. For example, the way those young beggars walk backward along the edge of the highway, thumbing. They walk just far enough out on the pavement to obstruct you, so that to pass them, you have to swing out. I have had some awful narrow squeaks passing cars that were swinging out to miss those backing-up hitch-hikers.”

“It is against the law to hitch-hike,” said Jim. “Yet the police pass hundreds of them every day on the highways.”

“Some laws are in force,” said I, “just in case they are needed. They are like the cop’s gun. He has it in case he needs it, but just because he has a gun is no reason why he should go around shooting it off all the time.”

“How about these?” cried Jim, as we approached two men with packsacks sadly thumbing at us as we approached.

We slowed the car slightly while we looked them over. Two more villainous gents it would be hard to imagine. They were scowling, they had blue stubble on their chins, they looked as if they had just broken out of prison and a life sentence and their clothes seemed damp. But they were thumbing in a commanding way.

“Step on it,” I said.

And as we went by, the two errant gentlemen shouted abusive epithets after us, their teeth bared.

“Phew,” said Jim. “Imagine that pair in the back seat.”

People Mostly Disagree

“Do you suppose,” I asked, “there are people who would actually pick those two up?”

“You can’t judge all mankind by us,” replied Jim. “No two people look exactly alike, and no two people really have the same impressions, the same thoughts or ideas. I don’t suppose any two people actually see alike. Or hear alike. How a rose smells to me may be entirely different from the way it smells to you.”

“In general, though,” I argued, “we all agree on what is nice and what isn’t nice.”

“In general, we disagree, you mean,” said Jim. “The girl one man would marry isn’t the girl 1,000 other men would. And the 1,000 girls those men would marry, the one man would no more marry than he’d marry a freight engine.”

“How about movie stars?” I inquired. “There seems to be general agreement as to them?”

“But who’d marry them?” demanded Jim. “Think that over. How many of the most beautiful movie stars you admire would you want to have around the house all the time?”

“There’s something in what you say,” I confessed. “They’d be an awful problem, wouldn’t they?”

“No, sir,” said Jim, “people for the most part disagree on all major points. Look at the political parties. Look at the religions. Look at the styles in furniture, in clothes, even in food. When I walk through a cafeteria, I always wonder who the heck is going to eat most of the junk on display. Because out of the whole shebang, I can see only one thing I want.”

“I guess we are more different than we generally suppose,” I agreed.

“That’s why somebody is likely to pick up those two thugs back there,” said Jim. “No doubt there are thousands of people who shudder at the thought of picking up a student preacher as we shudder at the thought of picking up those hyenas.”

“I once picked up a student preacher,” I admitted. “He rode all the way from Bradford to Bracebridge with me, and he talked the whole way about the evils of tobacco.”

“Did he convert you?” asked Jim.

“He converted me to never pick up pious-looking people again,” I averred. “I like a sort of medium-boiled hitch-hiker. I don’t go for thugs and I don’t go for saints in human form.”

“You’re very choosey in your benevolence,” remarked Jim.

“I have one rule,” I stated. “If anything looks interesting, I stop.”

We were by now slowing through one of the nice little cities we pass through on our way to Muskoka, and because the traffic in these places is all angle parked and therefore tangled up beyond all belief, with cars trying to go both ways and cars trying to back out of angle parking and girls in shorts jay-walking and gentlemen of all ages trying to drive a car and take in the scenery at the same time, Jim and I have long ago resorted to the plan of detouring off the main streets of these little summery cities and going around through the residential streets.

And as we drove slowly, as becomes residential streets, we saw a scene of considerable excitement ahead.

“Okay,” cried Jimmie, “here’s something interesting. Do we stop?”

“You bet,” I proposed.

So we stopped and hopped out.

Speaking Commandingly

Amongst a bevy of children, an organ grinder and his monkey were staging a most unusual act. The organ grinder was rolling on the ground emitting loud foreign cries, and the monkey, in its little red and green uniform, was dancing up and down like a maniac, round and round its master on the ground.

As we ran across, a motorcycle cop arrived and leaped off his bike.

“He’s sick,” said Jim.

The cop ran over and knelt down by the organ grinder, and the monkey, baring its teeth, savagely rushed in as if to attack the law.

“Here,” yelled the cop, kicking at the monkey and signalling to Jim and me, “keep that brat away.”

“There’s no string,” shouted Jim.

“Shoo him,” shouted the cop, rolling the organ grinder over.

“Stand back, children,” I said, commandingly. “I’ll keep the children back, Jim. You attend to the monkey.”

“If it had a string on it,” cried Jim anxiously. “Or if I had a club.”

The monkey was jibbering in a high squeaky voice, baring its fangs horribly and dancing wildly around, in and out, trying to get a bite at the bent part of the policeman.

“It’s appendicitis, likely,” said the cop, straightening up. “I’ll throw him in my side car. You gents look after this monkey until I get back.”

“Take our car,” I suggested eagerly.

“No thanks,” said the cop, arching away from another attack by the bounding little beast. “I don’t want any sick man and a monkey both in any car with me. How would you like to bring them both in your car, and I’ll ride ahead, clearing the traffic?”

“We’ll guard the monkey until you get back,” I agreed hurriedly. “Stand back, you children.”

And I went busily in a circle, a wide circle, holding the excited children back.

“Jim,” I commanded, “try to chase the brute up a tree.”

Jim warily circled around the monkey, while the traffic officer hoisted the stricken organ grinder heavily to his feet and dragged him over to the side car.

The monkey did not know whether to follow his master or to stay with the grind organ which was lying on the ground. It raced pitifully after his master, Jim heading it off with wild whoops; then it raced back and jumped on the organ, bounding up and down and shrieking tiny shrieks.

“Hey,” shouted Jim. “The next time it gets off the organ, you pick the organ up and start to play. Maybe that will soothe it.”

“O, yeah,” I protested.

But the children were well back by now and a lady was issuing loud commands from a nearby veranda. And there was really nothing else for me to do.

“Okay,” cried Jim, as the monkey took a last despairing run after the departing motorcycle.

I picked up the organ, ready to drop it if the beast attempted to return to it, and started to wind the handle. It played “The Music Goes Round and Round.”¹

With a wild leap, the little monkey started for me, a look of joy on its face.

“Shoo!” I shouted, stamping the one leg of the organ.

“Hoy,” shouted Jim, cutting in with flailing arms and large leaps.

And the monkey, instead of leaping on to the organ, which I was in the act of jettisoning, wheeled and leaped up a Hydro pole instead. Six feet up, arms and legs wrapped around the pole, it clung there, glaring angrily and with purpose at Jim and then at me, making up its mind.

“Chase it higher,” I shouted, winding furiously. “Chase it to the top.”

Jim ducked in and slapped the post safely below the monkey. And with a deft snatch, the beast took Jim’s new straw hat, a lovely new boater, the mate to mine, which we had purchased only this morning at one of those August straw hat sales.

“Here,” said Jim. “Give me that.”

And Stop For Nothing

But the monkey, as slick as a sailor, climbed aloft and proceeded to bite, rip, tear and unwind Jimmie’s lovely hat.

“Here,” shouted Jim, starting to shinny up the pole.

“Jim,” I laughed, winding the music heartily, “don’t do that. Leave it up there.”

“That’s my hat,” shouted Jim.

“A hat is a cheap price to pay, if we can keep it up there,” I pointed out, as the children gathered round me.

“Yes, somebody else’s hat is always a cheap price,” sneered Jim, eyeing mine.

When the monkey had torn Jim’s to its ultimate ribbon and flung the last fragment at us in irate fury, it crouched in deep meditation, eyeing me intently. I played very sweetly. I played slow. I played fast.

“He sees your hat,” sang Jimmie heartily.

“Stand over near the pole,” I commanded.

“You stand there,” suggested Jim.

“Don’t let him come down,” I shouted. “Keep him up. Keep him up. Goodness knows what we’re in for if we let him down.”

“Throw him up your hat,” offered Jim. “

“Don’t be a fool,” I retorted. “One hat is enough.”

“Throw him the hat,” cried Jim. “He’s starting down.”

And in fact the horrid beast was shifting position and starting to back down the pole.

“Hoy, shoo, ffft, scat,” I shouted, grinding very loud on the organ, which was still playing the same tune over and over.

“Your hat,” said Jim, ceremoniously, lifting my hat off, as both my hands were engaged.

Jimmie walked over and held that hat up to the monkey. It looked down, accepted the hat, climbed to the top again and, with an air of fury, and a little more deliberately, proceeded to rip my good hat to pieces, flinging the pieces at us with an almost human derision.

“Suppose I run down the street,” suggested Jim, “and find another August hat sale? Give me a couple of bucks and I’ll buy you one and I’ll get one for myself. We may need quite a supply of hats before the day’s up.”

“Stay right here,” I ground.

“May I take a whirl at the organ?” suggested Jim, very polished. “You’re sweating.”

But at that moment we heard the welcome roar of a motorcycle, and back came the cop with a gentleman in the side car armed with a large net.

“The dog catcher,” cried all the little children.

And in no time at all, the dog catcher had scooped the little monkey into the net and transferred it into a large sack.

“Whew,” said Jimmie and I.

“Thanks very much,” said the speed cop. “Maybe they give some kind of medal for this sort of thing. I’ll see you get it.”

“How’s the patient?” asked Jim.

“He’s okay,” said the cop. “Been eating too much pop corn, the doctor said. Nothing serious.”

So he drove off with the dog catcher and the bass organ and the bag.

“Look here, gentleman,” called the lady who had been watching from the veranda. “Don’t leave all that litter on that lawn.”

We looked very indignant, but picked up all the pieces of straw hat and made a neat pile of them on the side of the road.

“The best thing,” I said, as we got back in the car, “is to nick up nobody and stop for nothing.”

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. The Music Goes ‘Round and Around is a popular song written in 1935. It can be heard here. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 17, 1939.

This Greg-Jim adventure is from Gregory Clark’s book, “Which We Did,” published by Reginald Saunders, Toronto.

“I wish,” said Jimmie Frise, “we were living 100 years from now.”

“A hundred years ago would be better,” I disagreed.

“Ah!” said Jim, “100 years from now, all this bewilderment we are living amidst will be over. All the problems solved. We’d know how communism turned out. And what became of Germany and Italy.”

“If we’d lived 100 years ago,” I debated, “we would know now what had happened. I would feel a lot safer if I had lived 100 years ago,”

“Think of the miracles,” cried Jim, “that are certain to come to pass in the next 100 years. Do you realize that in our lifetime more miracles have happened than in the rest of the entire history of the world?”

“I guess we have lived in a thrilling time,” I admitted.

“Thrilling?” said Jim. “Listen. Human history is divided into two parts. The past 100 years is one half. The other half are all the millions of years before.”

“Maybe it’s over,” I suggested.

“When we were born,” said Jim, “the telegraph was the last supreme wonder of the world – the telegraph. Since we were born, recollect the miracles that have come to pass. The telephone, the phonograph, the electric light, the gas engine, the motor car, the paved highway, radio, the airplane, television, the x-ray, a million per cent. development of electrical and mechanical understanding, several thousand per cent. increase in medical science.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Previous to our birth,” continued Jim, “the greatest event they could tell us about in the school books was that Columbus sailed across the ocean. Now people fly the ocean in a few hours.”

“A hundred years from now, I suppose,” supposed, “all we will need to do is go up to community stratosphere platforms overnight, and wait for the earth to revolve underneath us, and then come down for breakfast in London or Calcutta.”

“Boy,” said Jim, “how I would love to live 100 years from now. What will we look like? What will we be doing? Will there be newspapers or only news broadcasts with television? For example, the news agencies all over the world will be television reporters with their outfits to rush from place to place. All you will have to do is tune in on a world news centre, say, in London. There you will learn from an announcer what is going on. A revolution in Spain. A big parade in Moscow. A murder in Chicago. You just twist the dials and get the local station, and there, instead of X marks the spot where the body lay, you can see the police carrying the body out and the suspect being grilled like a pork chop.”

“In which case,” I explained, “you and I would be out of jobs. They won’t need cartoonists and writers.”

Mankind’s Two Classes

“In 100 years,” said Jim, “I doubt if many people will have to work. We are just about now beginning to discover that work is the bunk. Despite the million discoveries of how to do things easily and painlessly, we still have the silly idea that we all have to toil and labor the way we did back in the days of wooden plows and Magna Carta. But in 100 years I bet nobody will have to work except those that want to work.”

“Will anybody want to work?” I protested.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Jim. “Mankind is divided into two classes – those who don’t want to work, a very large class, and those who can’t help working, a small class, but easily able to support all the rest of us. This interesting division into classes has been staring us in the face now for nearly 100 years. But we haven’t tumbled to it yet. We still think it is a political division. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s purely a biological distinction. Some men are born to like work. To be unhappy unless they are working. They get as much kick out of work as we get out of fishing.”

“For heaven’s sake,” I cried, “it’s true.”

“Of course it’s true,” said Jim. “Take one of these people away from their work and they actually pine, grow ill and die. It’s like liquor to them. They are work addicts. Yet, from time immemorial, we have foolishly allowed these people, these addicts, to possess the earth and the fullness thereof. With their energy and pep, they have bossed us and bullied us and made life miserable for countless generations of mankind.”

“How simple it all is,” I mused.

“A hundred years from now,” went on Jimmie, “with the aid of medical science, advanced psychology and that sort of thing, we will have all work addicts classified. We will put them in a special uniform. We will supply them with all the machinery they, in their folly, have invented. And we will permit them to work to their hearts’ content, the poor addicts, while the rest of us, the natural man, the human, lazy, happy multitude, will be amply supported in glorious leisure.”

“Jim,” I confessed, “I, too, would like to be living 100 years from now.”

“It will be a great time,” declaimed Jimmie. “The workers will be honored by us all, instead of hated for their wealth and industry.”

“I would feel kind of sorry for them,” I confessed.

“They would likely be very snobbish about it all,” said Jim thoughtfully, “and as the years went by we might behold the comic spectacle of our own children aspiring to be workers.”

“Like now,” I offered, “young people wanting to be movie stars and aviators.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “there is in all human hearts a faint desire to want to do something. When it is no longer necessary, 100 years from now, to do anything unless you want to, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a most extraordinary development. We might get those cathedral builders we used to have centuries ago. We might get poets again. People might actually get to like living so much that they would just naturally want to make their lives beautiful.”

The Secret of Life

“A minute ago, Jim,” I said, “I was happy to be alive in this exciting age. But now, you make it all seem kind of drab. As if we were here standing in the dawn, in the cold and fog and grayness, waiting for the day we will never see.”

“You never can tell,” declared Jim. “Sometimes I get the feeling we are on the very edge of the secret of life. As if we were hovering on the very brim of immense revelations, when all our troubles and misunderstandings will vanish away like mist, and we’ll stand in the clear, all over the world, understanding, comprehending and realizing. Almost any day now some scientist will discover the very essence of life. Maybe before we die we can take a pill or drink a liquid that will restore our youth and allow us to live indefinitely.”

“Come on, science,” I cheered.

“Oh, it’s partly done already,” said Jim. “What do you suppose those monkey gland experiments were for?¹ And all these gland pills and rejuvenation pills?”

“I hadn’t paid much attention to that stuff,” I said. “I guess I still feel pretty peppy.”

“You can buy pills now,” said Jim, “that make you 20 years younger. For a little while. But you have to keep taking them or else you feel about 80.”

“I guess they only make you feel 20 years younger,” I suggested. “I’ve seen some of my friends acting 30 years younger and they didn’t take rejuvenation pills.”

“No,” said Jim. “I’m told these pills actually make you 20 years younger. For as long as they last, they restore to your system the worn-out essences of life itself. To all intents and purposes you are 20 years younger.”

“That would be a nice feeling,” I admitted, trying to remember what 20 years ago felt like.

“The way I understand it,” said Jim, “we are all lit up inside by our glands, as if they were a string of those little lights you put on a Christmas tree. Some are bright and some are dim, according to the way we are born. Sometimes one of them burns too bright and all the rest go dim. Sometimes one goes out, and then they all go out. Our glands are all hooked up on a sort of circuit.”

“Taking pills then,” I said, “is like putting in a fresh bulb?”

“Sort of,” agreed Jim. “We have glands in our head and neck and all over our bodies. Some of them are so small they haven’t been discovered yet. Others are so newly found the doctors don’t know what they are for, but they all work together to make us what we are. One gland makes us lazy and another makes us work. One makes us bad tempered and another makes us have dry skin or bushy hair. In a few years they will be able to give a gland pill so you can see a joke. Or to improve your ear for music.”

“Character won’t be worth having,” I protested, “if you can buy it at the drug store.”

“You see what I am getting at?” said Jim. “A few more steps in this game and they’ll find a gland preservative and then we can live to be 500 years old.”

“Are any of these pills to be had?” I asked.

“Doctors use them all the time,” said Jim. “You’ve heard of thyroid pills and adrenalin pills?”

“As journalists, Jim,” I declared, “we ought to have been looking into this long ago. We should even have been taking some of these pills.”

“You can’t take them without a doctor’s orders,” Jim said. “If your glands are good and you took a pill, goodness knows what it might do to you. But of course these rejuvenation pills you can get anywhere. They’re on sale like any patent medicine.”

Not Wanting to Be Younger

“I’m not particularly anxious to be 20 years younger,” I mused. “Twenty years ago I remember the war too vividly. I’m not very sure I would like to be as I was then.”

“Even 10 years ago,” agreed Jim. “I wouldn’t like to go back 10. I used to be so anxious and working and worrying and full of trouble.”

“Ten years ago,” I said, “I had the eczema.”

“Even five years,” said Jim. “Five years ago I thought I would never get my house paid for. It used to keep me awake at night. Now I don’t care.”

“It would probably,” I said, “be only a physical feeling. It would only last a couple of hours. Let’s try it. We owe it to humanity.”

“On an empty stomach,” said Jim. “We’ll take a couple of hours for lunch.”

Our favorite druggist spoke very highly of four or five brands of rejuvenation pills. He told us of an elderly gentleman amongst his clients who had taken off 30 years on one brand of pill. There were Chinese pills, big jelly looking objects; and tiny pinhead pills made in Europe by societies with long names, that were the secret, the druggist told us, of the fact that all the fashion styles come from Paris. Some of the pills were in old-fashioned packages with pen drawings of virile looking gentlemen with long black beards. Others were done up very discreetly in vivid modernistic style; others in a plain envelope, as the saying is.

“This here,” said the druggist, “is one of the newest. It comes from Europe. They say the German army, is fed on them daily.”²

We bought that one. Fifty pills – $2.75³.

They were small white flat pills with a curious pallid expression. We read the instructions: “The effect of this prescription is cumulative. Take one tablet the first time, two tablets the second time, and so on until a maximum of five pills at a time are taken; by which time a permanent sense of rejuvenation and well-being will permeate the whole system.”

“Well,” laughed Jimmie, “let’s take the first one here at the soda fountain to begin with.”

Which we did and then went forth to stroll in the crisp noon air, amidst all the hurrying throng of luncheoners.

“It does not say,” said Jim, “at what intervals to take them. But I suppose we ought to give them at least time to dissolve.”

“I feel a slight sense of well-being already, Jim,” I submitted, squaring my shoulders.

“They have a minty flavor,” said Jim. “Not at all bad to take.”

“Pop us out a couple,” I suggested, and Jim produced the bottle and we each palmed and swallowed two.

We mingled with the crowds up towards the big department store corners.

“Jim,” I said, “do you notice anything?”

“I certainly feel light on my feet,” said Jim. “But the best part of it is, how nice everything looks. And everybody.”

“Ah, this is a great old town,” I agreed. “Anybody that couldn’t be happy here couldn’t be happy anywhere.”

“Wheeeeee,” said Jimmie. So we went through the revolving doors of one of the big stores and stood in the lobby while we took the next course; three pills each this time.

“They dissolve quick,” said Jim.

At the Magic Counter

We stood in the lobby for a little while, letting them dissolve and watching all the lovely people hurrying through. There were a lot of other people, mostly young men, standing in the lobby. It felt good to be there with them, standing and watching everybody passing.

“Where to?” asked Jim.

“Let’s go through the gent’s furnishings,” I said. “I’ve got the idea I’d like to look at some ties and shirts and things.”

We spent a happy 20 minutes looking at the haberdashery. I had no idea haberdashery had developed so interestingly of late. Snappy, we used to call it when I was younger. Jim and I both agreed that the youth’s and young gent’s was away ahead of the rest of the department, and we told the salesmen so, Jim finally bought a club stripe tie and I got two blue shirts with nifty fall-over collars that expose the throat.

“How do you feel?” I asked Jim.

“Hungry,” said Jim. I observed that he had his hat on the back of his head and his hair was sticking out in front. It looked nice. So I put my hat the same way. Jim began picking things up off the counter and putting them down again. I followed him and did the same. It was fun.

We saw the escalator at the same time and raced for it. We rode up three floors on it and then came down four. Then Jimmie invented the trick of going down the up escalators and up the down ones. A man came over and told us not to do that.

“Let’s go to the toy department,” said Jim. Did we ever have a swell time in the toy department? We tried all the things, the pop-guns and the mechanical automobiles. We blew the horns and beat the drums. We pushed dolls off the counters and spent a long time at the magic counter. It was when we got to the wagon and tricycle department that the difficulties began.

There was one lovely wagon like an automobile. It was blue and had shining metal headlights and disc wheels. I got into it first. “Get off,” said Jim, grasping my coat and pulling.

“I got it first,” I retorted.

“Get off it,” hissed Jimmie, giving me a dirty pinch.

“I won’t,” I yelled.

Jim put his shoulder against me and sent me flying to the floor. Weeping with rage, I rushed him and we clinched and punched and pinched and shoved all over the department, stumbling over carts and tricycles, while girls tried to separate us and managers came dashing up. They got us apart and Jimmie leaned sobbing bitterly against the counter.

“Aw, Jimmie,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Now,” sobbed Jimmie, his fists in his eyes, “we’ll be late for school.”

---

Editor’s Notes: As was indicated at the start, this story was originally exclusive to the book Which We Did (1936).

1. This refers to the work of Serge Voronoff who gained fame for his practice of xenotransplantation of monkey testicle tissues onto the testicles of men for purportedly as anti-aging therapy while working in France in the 1920s and 1930s. ↩︎
2. The German army was provided a drug called Pervitin, an early form of methamphetamine. ↩︎
3. $2.75 in 1939 is about $58 in 2024. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 18, 1939.

“World peace be jiggered,” declared Jimmie Frise. “What I’m interested in is a little personal peace.”

“If we had peace amongst the nations,” I pointed out, “there would be little to worry us.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” retorted Jim. “This world uneasiness isn’t at the top. It starts at the bottom. Men are uneasy. Men have made their lives uneasy, troubled, anxious, restless. There is no peace in the home, in the shop, factory or office. There is. no peace in daily life for any man, woman or child anywhere. And naturally, there being no peace in the nation, there can be no peace among nations.”

“Professor Frise,” I jeered.

“Okay,” said Jimmie. “Suppose absolute and perfect peace were declared amongst the nations, would that make us peaceful? Would it stop the telephone ringing? Would it decide who is going to use my car – me or my children? Would it mean I wouldn’t have to get up at 7.45 a.m.?”

“Those are trifles,” I protested.

“Trifles?” cried Jim. “If we had world peace would that mean I didn’t have to do a cartoon every week, rain or shine, winter or summer?”

“Ah, you’ll get that kind of peace soon enough,” I pointed out.

“It makes me sick,” declared Jim, “to read and listen day and night to this talk about peace amongst nations when every day we are bending every human effort to making our lives less peaceful. Inventing new and faster and more furious ways of doing everything we have to do. Inventing new ways of disturbing the home. Inventing new interests to eat up every spare hour of our lives. Like cars and radio and movies.”

“Why don’t you retire to the country,” I suggested, “and buy a buggy?”

“We buy a car,” ignored Jim. “In about a year, the same make of car we’ve got is brought out far snappier looking, far more powerful, far faster. Every time we go out in the streets, we are made uneasy and restless because newer and faster cars whip past us and around us, making us conscious of our old bus, waking in us the restless thought that pretty soon we’ll have to buy a new one.”

“It would be the same,” I explained, “if you owned a horse and buggy. Somebody would pass you on the road and you’d be trading your horse by nightfall.”

“The first radio I had,” said Jim, “was a crystal set¹ with earphones. It was perfectly good. If I had it now, I would be hearing the programs just as good as I do now.”

“Oh, hardly,” I protested.

“I mean, as far as actually hearing the programs,” said Jim, “I would get them all. And what’s more, with the earphones on, I couldn’t hear all the distractions you have to put up with now, people talking and interrupting and doorbells ringing and everything. I loved that old crystal set. When you put the earphones on, you were shut up with the program as though you were in a little cell.”

“You can still buy those old-fashioned sets,” I pointed out.

No Peace For Anybody

“But no,” continued Jim. “We have to buy new models every couple of years. Bigger, louder, farther reaching, so that you seem actually to have orchestras in your house, and Mr. Chamberlain² comes from England to speak to you in your living room.”

“I’d hate to have to give up my radio,” I assured him.

“Movies,” went on Jim. “Every so often. I say to myself, after a night at the movies, ‘well, I’ve seen all the movies I ever need to see. I’ve seen them all.’ Then along comes talkies. Then technicolor³. Then ‘Snow White’⁴. Then some super-mammoth feature picture that seems to make everybody goggle-eyed and breathless, and you are prodded into going again. So it goes. peace. No rest. Always change. Always something new and startling to keep you on the go.”

“That’s life, Jim,” I insisted.

“But don’t you see,” cried Jim, “there is no peace? No matter how poor and humble we are, there is always something new, demanding that we labor and struggle to make the money and find the time to partake of it. If we don’t, we feel we are neglecting ourselves, we feel out of it, we feel injured, we are uneasy, disappointed, restless.”

“The spur of life,” I assured.

“Then how can nations, made up of people like that, restless, ambitious, greedy, struggling,” demanded Jim, “ever be at peace with one another?”

“Do you mean,” I exclaimed, “that we should stop trying for world peace?”

“I mean,” stated Jim hotly, “if you want peace among nations, you’ve first got to make men’s lives more peaceful.”

“But you can’t stop the vast struggle of progress,” I explained. “It is a march. A mighty onward thrusting of human energy.”

“Okay, then,” said Jim. “You can’t have world peace. My desire and determination to own a new car, multiplied by millions, becomes the desire and determination of nations. Remove my desire for a new car, and you can have world peace. Make me impervious to the appeal of the latest and most colossal mammoth movie production, and you can have world peace. Cut out my passion for super radio programs or feature news broadcasts from Rome or London, make me indifferent to all these things, and you can then expect world peace.”

“Jim,” I protested, “your life is happier and easier and more interesting than the life of any of your ancestors, from your father and grandfather back through thousands of years. You are right now the flower, the bloom, of countless struggling ages of human progress.”

“Some bloom,” muttered Jim. “The jitter-flower. A new hardy annual, beautiful in herbaceous borders. Plant in soft warm soil.”

“Think,” I impressed, “think where your ancestors walked, you ride. Your grandfather had to walk 10 miles with a bag of flour on his back through the pioneer forest road. You roll over and reach for the telephone.”

“What would I want with a bag of flour?” scoffed Jim.

“No,” I said, “where your grandfather walked 10 miles with a bag of flour, through mosquito-infested forest trails to his little cabin, you telephone for a caramel custard pie.”

Uneasiness of Progress

“Don’t try to compare my life,” challenged Jim, “with my grandfather’s. He had peace and little else. I have everything, but no peace. He had to clear the land, but all around him was peace. This land was his. Hour by hour, day by day. season by season, he worked with patience and peace, knowing that what he planted he would reap, that all things in his life were measured, evenly and honestly in relation to his work. The better he worked, the more he earned. Above all things in his life, he treasured peace. Peace of mind, peace of heart and peace of body. He worked when he liked and quit when he liked, knowing just when to quit, peace being the price. He was not anxious. He knew how many mouths he had to feed, how many bodies to clothe, and in the spring he knew just how hard he had to work to win the peaceful heart before winter came again.”

“You can do that now,” I pointed out.

“Unless,” accused Jim, “the company you work for folds up because some other company comes along with a newer and better product. Or unless a depression sets in, and they shorten the payroll. Or unless any of the other desperate circumstances of modern life cuts you off without a day’s notice.”

“We may have had to sacrifice a little peace,” I confessed, “but we have gained countless wonders and joys.”

“Okay, then,” said Jim, “stop hollering for peace.”

“Who’s hollering for peace?” I demanded.

“The whole world,” said Jim.

“It’s you that is hollering for peace,” I informed him. “You started this, groaning and moaning for a little personal peace.”

“They say history repeats itself,” mollified Jim. “Maybe all the great civilizations of the past went through what we are going through. Maybe Egypt and Babylon and Greece and Rome went through all this sacrifice of peace to the uneasiness of progress. I often wondered why they always went smash, in the end. I often wondered why one of those great civilizations didn’t survive until today. Why didn’t the Roman Empire survive until now? It had everything: laws, science, culture, civilization. In fact, they handed us our civilization almost intact. Our roads, architecture, plumbing, laws, philosophy. We haven’t added much to what Rome gave us. But Rome went smash. Do you know why?”

“Because some greater power rose against it,” I suggested.

“Never,” said Jim. “A lot of heathens with lice in their hair, a lot of swarming uncivilized hillbillies, who plunged the world into centuries of uncivilized darkness, destroyed the Roman Empire. And I’ll tell you why. Because the Roman Empire wanted to be destroyed. It was too much trouble. There was no peace. The Roman Empire was sick unto death of itself. It wanted peace. It wanted to sag back on to the pleasant earth, amid vines and orchards and fields. It wasn’t overthrown at all. It threw itself away.”

“A lot you know about history,” I scoffed.

“History is in the hearts of men,” said Jim, “not in books. We used to look upon the Italians as a secondary race. We used to look down upon them, as they dwelt in their peasant villages on hillsides, with their wine and olives, and their music and simplicity, and their dwelling in ancient ruined towns; we felt sorry for them. We shouldn’t have felt sorry for them. They were happy. They had won peace. And now the poor devils are caught up again in the fury of progress. I wonder how many centuries it will be before they recapture peace again?”

“Let’s Eat a Symbolic Meal”

“You’re homesick,” I accused. “Homesick for the farm of your boyhood. It’s the approach of spring.”

“Thank goodness,” sighed Jim, “it is lunch time. Thank goodness, a few simple joys remain, like eating and sleeping. Despite everything civilization can do, it can’t civilize a boiled potato.”

“Or a baked one,” I submitted,

“Boiled or baked,” said Jim, “a potato is a peaceful, a beautiful and eternal thing. And a simple slice of rare beef.”

“Or,” I suggested, “a nice bit of broiled fish. Lake trout, for example. A piece near the tail end, where there are no bones.”

“Eating and sleeping,” gloated Jim, “they are the peaceful things that can’t be tampered with. All other aspects of life have been changed, altered, improved. They do their best to doo-dad up our food; but we come back, even in great cities, to simple foods, the eternal verities like steak and onions, corn beef and cabbage, bread, ham and eggs. Aaaaaah.”

“And sleep,” I agreed. “They invent marvellous mattresses, light and wonderful bedclothes. Air-conditioned bedrooms. But the minute I close my eyes, I am gloriously and insolently unaware of all progress.”

“I’m famished,” said Jim, getting, up and reaching for his coat.

“Let’s,” I suggested, “let’s eat a symbolic meal. An old-fashioned meal in honor of our forefathers who had peace.”

“Pork and beans,” offered Jim.

“Pawff,” I scoffed, “too modern. Let’s go away back. To primitive man. The most peaceful of all.”

“Ham and eggs,” said Jim.

“Invented by the Greeks,” I rejected.

“Beef.” said Jim.

“Ages before man had become civilized enough to be able to kill a cow,” I demurred, “he could catch fish. With nets woven of bark and roots, men caught fish. Let’s eat fish.”

“Why not go right back,” protested Jim, “and eats meal of nuts, green lettuce and radishes, to symbolize the herbs and roots he subsisted on.”

“I’d still go for a bit of fish,” I urged. “A nice bit of lake trout preferred, broiled. The tail end.”

“With boiled potatoes, well soaked in melted butter,” added Jim.

“They didn’t have potatoes until quite recently,” I pointed out. “Queen Elizabeth’s time, to be exact. But the potato can symbolize the roots our ancestors dug out of the earth.”

“What the dickens did they eat, away back before civilization?” demanded Jim, as we went out to the elevator.

“Heaven knows,” I admitted. “I’ve often wondered. I guess life was a pretty dreadful business, away back before men discovered what things to grow and how to grow them. Nuts and roots, and such little animals like frogs and things that were easily caught. I wonder who first thought of saving up nuts and roots to tide him over the winter? I wonder how they got through the winters?”

Living Dangerously

“I guess there wasn’t much peace to life in those far-off times,” confessed Jimmie.

“Probably there never was much peace at any time,” I concluded.

And we went down into the basement to the rich and odorous mood of the restaurant where we sidled, along the counter, picking our food with historic eyes. I took whole wheat bread in honor of my ancestors of about the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, and some radishes and lettuce in honor of those of my ancestors that escaped the Ice Age. And a lovely bit of grilled lake trout; the tail being gone, I had to take a cut from the middle. And a boiled potato, well slathered with melted butter, in honor of such of my ancestors as were around Omagh, in Tyrone county, the time Sir Walter Raleigh let loose that famous fungus, the potato, upon Ireland. And so we struggled for a table, shoving and shouldering our fellow moderns aside in the battle; getting, in fact, a nice little table to ourselves, with a pleasant profile view of several young lady stenographers very chatty and gay over their heaped platters of mulligan⁵ or sizzling steaks, despite the fact that there is no peace in the world. Pretty stenographers at a pleasant distance are like a dash of spice to a good luncheon.

Jim took fish also, and we set to, bending to savor the curious and attractive odor of sharply seared lake trout.

“Mmmmmmm,” said Jim. tucking a nice solid hunk of potato in back of a crumbling forkful of grilled trout.

“Here’s to my hairy ancestors,” I saluted, raising a forkload of trout. “To the first of them that ever caught a fish.”

I slid the tasty gobbet over my waiting teeth.

“Drat,” I said.

“Bone?” mumbled Jim, solicitous.

“Mmmmm,” I agreed, cautiously feeling about with my tongue and teeth for the bone. I got it. I delicately and as surreptitiously as possible removed the bone and then spent the usual helpless moment trying to detach it from my finger and make it lie down on the plate. I swallowed.

“Urk,” I said. “Hawwwwch. Kchah. Hyaaawch.”

My eyes began to bulge. I half rose, signalling frantically to Jim. Jim rose and ran around to hit me a terrific thump on the back.

The manager and three waitresses came running. All the pretty stenographers rushed to our aid. Jim kept thumping and I kept dying a violent death. My eardrums rang. My blood pressure rose to the bursting point. I could no longer see out of my bulging eyeballs.

Jim bent me back and opened my mouth. One of the stenographers, peering deep within, reached down with her long, scarlet, pointed fingernails and captured the fish bone.

“Hah.” she triumphed, holding the little bone aloft for all to see.

And in a few moments, except for charitable smiles from all sides, and the manager hovering tenderly near in case of further difficulties, we finished our luncheon.

“Life,” explained Jimmie, “is always perilous.”

“I can’t understand,” I agreed, “how the human race has survived till now.”

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Editor’s Notes:

1. A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set, is a simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It uses only the power of the received radio signal to produce sound, needing no external power. ↩︎
2. Neville Chamberlain was British Prime Minister at the time. ↩︎
3. Technicolor is a series of advances in colour film that was evolving at the time. ↩︎
4. Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released 2 years earlier. ↩︎
5. Mulligan Stew is a term used for a stew made of whatever ingredients are around, as referred to by hobos. ↩︎