Tag: 1943 Page 1 of 4

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 13, 1943.

“How do you like my new hat?” inquired Jimmie Frise, setting his new kelly at a jaunty angle.

“Not bad, not bad,” I admitted. “How do you like mine?”

“Your hats always look the same,” said Jim, “so excuse me not noticing it. Mine’s English.”

“English?” I protested. “Where on earth would you get an English hat nowadays?”

“How do you mean?” inquired Jim.

“Don’t tell me,” I exclaimed, “that they are still making hats in England.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake,’ cried Jimmie, “what do you suppose they’re doing in England? You must be listening to Herr Goebbels on your short-wave radio. You must think England is in ruins. Of course they’re making hats in England. And you can still buy English hats and English clothes and English boots and pretty nearly everything else that is useful not only in Toronto but in New York and Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. In fact, wherever convoys come from, convoys go to. You don’t suppose all those convoys of merchant ships you see in the newsreels are one-way traffic, do you?”

“Well, yes,” I muttered, a little confused, “as a matter of fact, I did think of it as one-way traffic. I guess most people do.”

“That just shows you,” declared Jimmie, “the pity of propaganda. We have to have propaganda, the same as we have to have guns in wartime. But it certainly pulls us all out of shape. So ardently have we swallowed the propaganda about Britain’s war factories that we have unconsciously taken it for granted that all other factories in Britain have simply closed up.”

“I can’t get fishing tackle any more from Britain,” I pointed out.

“Well, naturally,” explained Jim. “For two reasons. One, they aren’t wasting any metal by exporting it. Two, the factories that could make fishing tackle could easily make parts for aircraft, weapons, and so forth. But there are hundreds of factories that don’t fit into war production and hundreds more that, while mainly engaged on war contracts, have plenty of by-products for sale. And above all is the practical consideration of having thousands of ships going away empty from Britain. Good old Britain! She has not only been taking a terrific mauling from Europe. She has not only been taking a bloody nose in her ill-manned outposts of Empire…”

“As the Americans have,” I reminded.

“… but,” concluded Jim, “she has time to figure out that it is bad business to have ships going away empty from her shores. So, despite all her other worries, she has contrived to organize industry so that the ships from America and South America and Africa and all the rest of the places convoys come from do not go home again empty-handed.”

Hats Off to Them

“By golly,” I admitted, “they’re a great people.”

“Where I got this hat,” said Jimmie, “they said they were only allowed 15 per cent. of the dollar volume of hats they normally got in peace-time from Britain. It’s a big department store. But they told me that in their own big store, in the main lines of merchandise, they still imported over one-third of their normal peace-time imports from Britain.”

“No?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” declared Jim. “One-third is still coming, regular as clockwork. First, textiles, mostly woollen, cotton and rayon. Second in volume, pottery. Third, linens from Ireland and Scotland. When we were arguing, the merchandise manager happened along and said that while this big store was getting about a third of their normal pre-war volume, he thought that, across Canada as a whole, it would be more like one-fifth the normal import from Britain was still coming in.”

“Why, that’s amazing,” I cried. “I had no idea.”

“Well, the next time you see a convoy newsreel,” said Jim, “you can think to yourself whether it is going or coming. Because one route is as important as the other. If a ship goes down coming, it can’t go back.”

“More power to them,” I asserted. “They’re a great people. It is 125 years since the last of my forebears left Scotland. Except for a few English, Irish and Scotch who have sneaked in and married into my family when we weren’t looking, we have had no connection with the Old Country for a century and a quarter at the latest. And most of my forebears came out nearly 200 years back. So any sentiments I have about Britain are, you might say, purely sentimental. But I say, hats off to them.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Jim, whose ancestors are French and Scotch a long way, farther back in Canada than mine. “Because I’ve often heard you cussing the English,”

“Not the English,” I protested hotly. “I love the English people. I have been to England dozens of times in my life. I’ve spent months and months of my life wandering in the English country, among the villages, walking, bird watching, shooting and fishing. I’ve got the truest sentiments towards the plain people of England. The trouble is, I dislike too many Englishmen.”

“You love the English,” scoffed Jimmie, “but you dislike too many Englishmen!”

“Well, that’s possible, isn’t it?” I demanded. “Until the tourist traffic from the States got so big in recent years, we used to dislike too many Americans, didn’t we? That was because the main body of visitors from the States were salesmen and rich folk. What is the characteristic of salesmen? Are they quiet, modest, retiring folk? Not them. They are lively, pushful, energetic, breezy, noisy, penetrative. Their job is break down resistance and sell things. So, up until a few years ago, when the motor car brought us millions of average Americans and the motor car allowed us, in numbers, to visit the States, we thought Americans were all breezy, pushful, noisy, selling people.”

“By golly,” mused Jim.

“And what is the general characteristic of rich people?” I inquired. “A certain assurance, isn’t it? And doesn’t that certain assurance give plain folk the impression of arrogance?”

“H’m,” said Jim.

“Well, what was true about Americans, until we found out better,” I suggested, “is probably true of Englishmen. Nothing like the invasion of Americans in Canada has occurred with the English. So it is probable the English who come out to Canada have largely been those with a job in hand. Or the well-to-do. Their character and their manners, for example, bear little resemblance to those of the people of England as a whole. If there is anything drives me nuts, for instance, it is an official Englishman.”

“Psst,” warned Jimmie. “This is wartime. Watch out for colonels and generals.”

“But also,” I painted out. “I am also driven nuts by a professional Irishman, if you know what I mean. One of those Irishmen who tries to be like the Irishman of fiction, stage and screen. I also am driven slightly bugs by a Scotchman who feels it necessary to be forever dour and glum and who makes a point of speaking with the thickest possible burr.”

“H’m,” smiled Jimmie. “And what kind of Canadian gives you a pain?”

“To tell the truth, Jim,” I said humbly, “when I was not quite 30, I learned to shave in the morning without a mirror.”

“Ah, well,” said Jim, “if you don’t set Canadians up as the ideal.”

Made in England

“Jim,” I assured him, “I love the American people, but it took me time to find it out. I love the British people, but I still reserve the right to object to individuals who, because England is an old nation, founded on aristocracy and organized on a system of respecting their betters, try to get by in the world by pretending they are better than they are. If respect for one’s betters is fundamental of the system, how natural that some of them should try to make yards in the game, especially among simple strangers like us, by pretending to be two rungs higher on their own ladder than they really are? The tragedy is, we have no such system; so all their airs, which wouldn’t survive five minutes in their own country, only make them appear silly to us.”

“That’s a curiously interesting explanation,” agreed Jim.

“A plain Englishman,” I stated, “whether he is a banker or a village poacher, is a lovely experience, either at home or abroad. But a roving Englishman, far away among a lot of heathen like us, putting on, for his own gain and amusement, the pretensions of being something different and something more than he really is and when you have been born and raised in a class system, that is a temptation we can’t quite appreciate – then you’ve got a pain in anybody’s neck.”

“But that is true of Canadians going to Britain,” pointed out Jim. “Aren’t there the same silly Canadians going over and giving the English a pain in the neck?”

“Quite,” I said. “Quite. But there are four times as many English to draw your saps from as there are Canadians. Our army in England can correct that impression in England, But we haven’t any English army in Canada to let us see what the true, hall-marked, genuine English are like.”

“Quite,” said Jimmie. “Quite.”

“Hey,” I said sharply. “Where do you get that ‘Quite, quite’ stuff? That English hat of yours has gone to your head.”

“Me!” cried Jim. “You said it first. You said ‘Quite’ twice, just a second ago.”

“I did not,” I exclaimed indignantly.

“You did so,” declared Jim. “And you said it very English, too. You said ‘quaite, quaite’.”

“I did not,” I snorted.

“Let’s see your hat,” said Jim shrewdly. I handed him my new hat, to take the place of one I lost quite recently in a motion picture theatre.

Jim examined inside the hat, and suddenly let out a yell.

“Why, this hat is made in England! Look.”

And sure enough, on the reverse side of the inner band, opposite the label of the store where I had bought it, were the small gilt words: “Made in England.”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” I said.

To Heck With Bickering

“Look,” said Jim. “To heck with all this bickering about the English and the Canadians and the Scotch and Americans. If we are going to be impressed only by what irritates us, we are never going to have any peace in our hearts, much less on earth.”

“Then,” I said, “hats off to the English. I love their green and pleasant land.”

“They stood in the gate for us,” said Jim. “Without them, we would now be under the dominion of Germany.”

“This sceptred isle,” I quoted,

“This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise.

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea….

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm.

this England…“

“What is that?” inquired Jim huskily.

“Mr. Shakespeare,” I said, also huskily.

“It is 4 o’clock,” said Jim. “Look: I have two sticks, two walking sticks. We have these hats. Outside, the fine March breeze blows. Two blocks away is a little Tea Shoppe. Let us take our sticks. Let us go and walk in the March breeze. And drop in and have a spot of tea in a Tea Shoppe.”

“Dammit,” I cried, “I’m with you.”

So, with chins up and chests out, and swinging our sticks in the best British tradition, we stepped forth into the hale winds of March to remember England.

And just a few doors north from Jim’s, a gust of wind caught my new fine hat, Made in England, and lifted it merrily into the air and lodged it in the branches of a maple tree.

“What ho!” cried Jim heartily.

“Just a second,” I said, manoeuvring into position.

I threw my walking stick with unerring aim at the hat. It touched the hat but failed to dislodge it. And the stick, sliding artfully back amid the twigs, caught and hung.

“Just a second,” said Jim, also picking a good spot.

And he threw his stick, more, I believe, to release the stick stuck in the tree than my hat.

A Mixed-Up World

The stick slid amid the branches and then slowly started down, finally hanging within a foot of mine.

“Now,” I said irascibly.

And at that moment, a lady’s voice broke in. A very haughty English voice.

“Go away from there, you brutal men,” she said loudly.

Jimmie and I turned to her with astonishment. She was a ruddy English lady and fairly vivid with indignation.

“Go away at once,” she commanded, like a major-general, “or I shall call the authorities.”

Drawing myself up like a lieutenant-general, I demanded with an equally haughty air:

“Madam, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Leave that squiddle,” she commanded, “alone.”

“Squiddle?” inquired Jim anxiously.

“Oh, don’t pretend,” cried the lady, who had one of those middle-aged voices that crack on the high notes. “I saw you from my window. I saw you hurling sticks at that poor black squiddle.”

“Aw,” squurl!” cried Jim, comprehending.

Neither Jim or I had noticed the blasted squirrel in the tree. It was my hat and Jim’s sticks we were intent upon.

“Go away at once,” said the lady.

“Madam,” I said patiently, “my hat blew off and lodged in this tree. We have been throwing our sticks trying to dislodge it. Do we look like men who would throw a hat at a squiddle?”

“One never knows what to expect,” said the lady no less and no more ruddy, “in this country. I shall get you a laddaw.”

And she led us over to her side drive where she loaned us her ladder. And under her personal supervision, we erected the ladder and rescued my hat and both sticks. Then she superintended the return of the ladder to her side drive, all very authoritative and efficient.

And as we proceeded, with hats a little tighter on our heads, towards the Tea Shoppe, Jim said:

“There, you see? You can never go by appearances.”

“It is an extremely mixed-up world,” I submitted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie’s garden was lovely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well,” I said, “no bath.”

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

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

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

“Eddie sure has rich tastes,” I exclaimed.

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

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

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

“Don’t Try Anything Funny”

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

“H’m,” said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Look at here,” he cried.

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

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

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

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

“What the heck?” said Jim.

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

“Who are you?” retorted Jim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Student of Psychology

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

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

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

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

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

Jim stood up.

“I assure you,” began Jimmie.

“Pardon me-” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

How To Cure Crime

“Then,” I began.

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

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

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

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

“Eddie’s boiler,” said Jim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Editor’s Notes:

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

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

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 12, 1938.

“Listen,” hissed Jimmie Frise. “Listen to that row.”

I listened. From somewhere came the deep, booming notes of a radio penetrating into Jimmie’s living room.

“Upstairs?” I inquired.

“Next door,” said Jim, bitterly. “Here it is 11 o’clock at night, and that bird keeps his radio going like that until 1 or 2 in the morning.”

“Why don’t you speak to him?” I asked.

“Speak to him?” cried Jimmie. “Speak, to him? I’ve spoken to him. I’ve telephoned him. I’ve even gone and rung his front door bell at 3 am, and threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t turn his machine off. Or turn it lower, anyway.”

“And why doesn’t he?” I asked.

“He just laughs,” grated Jim. “He just shuts the door in my face and laughs.”

“But there ought to be some law,” I suggested. “Why don’t you call the police? What that amounts to is a disturbance of the peace.”

We both sat still and listened. The deep throb, throb, boom, boom of the radio next door beat and reverberated on the ear drums. Not enough to hear the tune or even to follow the rhythm. But just a nerve-racking and muffled vibration.

“I have called the police,” said Jim. “And when they arrived, he shut the machine off. And there sat the cops, right in this room, listening, and they couldn’t hear a sound. It made me feel very silly. And the cops gave me a funny look.”

“Maybe he saw the cops arrive,” I suggested.

“I have no doubt he did,” agreed Jim. “You ought to hear it in the summer. With all the windows open…”

“Does it go all the time?” I inquired.

“No, he is one of those active, outdoor men,” explained Jim “he bowls, plays golf, goes to meetings and movies. He seems to come home about 11 every night, and go straight to the radio and turn it on. Loud.”

“There are never any programs after 11,” I sympathized.

“Nothing but oompa, oompa, night club bands,” agreed Jim. “All the same. Mostly drum and saxophone. And yet that guy turns it up as loud as it will go and lets her rip, oompa, oompa, until he goes to bed around 2 o’clock in the morning.”

“I certainly wouldn’t put up with it,” I submitted.

“What can I do?” protested Jimmie. “I speak to him, and he just laughs and says, why do I live in such a flimsy house? And when I call him up in the middle of the night, he just laughs and hangs up the receiver.”

No Way to Retaliate

“Can’t you think of any kind of retaliation?” I offered. “Can’t you think up some nuisance on him, and get even with him?”

“I’ve thought of everything,” sighed Jim. “Last summer, I got up early one Sunday morning and carried my radio upstairs to a room opposite his bedroom. I opened the window and set my radio pointing straight into his window at 7.30 of a Sunday morning, and let her rip.”

“That’s the idea,” I applauded. “What happened?”

“He didn’t do anything,” said Jim. “But the first thing I knew, a police cruiser was in front of my house and two cops were ringing the door bell furiously, to say that the whole neighborhood was complaining to the police station.”

“It doesn’t seem just,” I confessed, sitting again in silence and listening. Yes, there, more clearly than ever, once I became conscious of it, was the oompa, oompa, of the radio next door.

“Isn’t there anything else you can do?” I wondered. “Couldn’t you put up a spite fence or anything?”

“No,” said Jim, “the only thing that would do would prevent his kids from throwing things over into my garden. Or it might stop his wife from shaking rugs out her window when the wind is just right to carry the dust in all our windows. In fact, I don’t know what to do. I was thinking of moving.”

“Never, Jim,” I cried. “That would be rank cowardice. That would be retreat in full flight. There must be some way you can handle this situation.”

“All right,” said Jim bitterly, “you think up something.”

“Have you written him a letter?” I asked eagerly. “A letter is the real solution to all such difficulties as this.”

“He’d throw it in the waste basket,” muttered Jim.

“Not a lawyer’s letter,” I cried. “You get a lawyer to write him a letter, threatening legal action if he doesn’t put an end to a nuisance that is impairing your health.”

“I’ve looked it up,” said Jim. “There isn’t any law to prevent a man playing a musical instrument in his own house if the windows are closed and all reasonable precautions taken to prevent the disturbance of the neighbors.”

“Well, this is a disturbance,” I pointed out.

“It is,” agreed Jim, “and the worst kind of a disturbance, too, a soft, barely audible thud, thud, that nearly drives you crazy. But when I explained that to the police, do you know what they said? They said that they knew lots of people that couldn’t sleep on account of crickets.”

“Crickets?” I exclaimed.

The cops told me,” said Jim, “that night they were here and couldn’t hear anything, that one time they had a lady call them in and demand that they force her next door neighbor to get out and kill a cricket that was singing in his garden.”

“Oh, no,” I laughed.

“Oh, yes,” said Jim, “she said she had exterminated all the crickets in her property and she demanded that the police abate the nuisance in the neighbor’s garden. But they found there was no law governing the singing of crickets.”

“Did the police suggest,” I demanded, “that your complaint was in the same class as that?”

“They did,” said Jim. “They said that if the man was playing a trombone or something that could be heard in my house, they would take action. But they could hear nothing. And all I could hear, they explained, was a faint oompa, oompa, and that wasn’t enough to base any action re nuisance on.”

“Let’s write him a letter,” I suggested. “Not a lawyer’s letter, but a plain, man-to-man letter, calling upon his decency and neighborly…”

“He hasn’t any,” interrupted Jim. “He’s just one of those big, hearty, laughing men who sleeps like a log. Everything he does is loud and hearty. An appeal to his good nature would just result in suggesting I go and see a doctor.”

“We could try,” I offered, taking my pencil and drawing up a chair to Jim’s living room table. Let’s see.”

So I started and wrote:

“My dear sir-

“Would you be kind enough to give your friendliest consideration to the following appeal? I have spoken to you many times without result, but I feel that if you were to take into consideration all the facts, you would most certainly be disposed to co-operate in a neighborly spirit.

“As you know, your radio is audible in my house, especially in the quieter hours of the night, between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. It makes a faint but fully audible sound, due to the fact that you have the instrument turned on louder than perhaps is really necessary. This faint sound, unaccompanied by any soothing strains of music, is sufficient to beat upon my nerves and to cause me loss of sleep and distress.

“While I have not the pleasure of your close acquaintance, I feel sure from your appearance and general deportment, that you are not the type of man who would willingly cause distress and possibly ill-health to anyone at the price of a slight adjustment of your radio dial.”

“There,” I said; “now listen to this, Jim.” And I read it to him.

Jim listened with an increasingly frozen face.

“Nothing doing,” he interrupted, near the end. “I wouldn’t humiliate myself by writing any such balderdash. That guy! Not willingly cause distress? Why, he gets a kick out of causing distress. He’s a Sadist. He gets a queer pleasure in making other people suffer in some small, intangible, defenceless way…”

“I’ll make it a little stiffer,” I offered. “I believe in letters. A letter demands some action.”

I sat down and started again.

“My dear sir-

“From time to time I have attempted to bring to your attention a little matter of no apparent interest to you, but which is a nuisance to me and is likely in time to affect my health. I refer to the use of your radio at all hours of the night, the sounds of which penetrate my house and disturb my lawful sleep.

“Before taking steps to have this matter settled by process of law, which will doubtless put you to some expense and not a little loss of face in the neighborhood, I suggest that we settle the question in a decent and amicable fashion.

“Any previous attempts on my part to discuss the matter with you have met with complete rebuff. I suggest that if you are not prepared to reduce the volume of your radio to normal strength so that its sound does not disturb the peace of my house, you will be good enough to give me some reason for your attitude towards this matter.”

“I am, etc.”

With suitable dignity and oratorical effects, I read this masterpiece to Jimmie, but at the end, he exploded.

“I don’t want to know his reasons,” shouted Jimmie. “I don’t want to save him any legal expenses. I don’t want to have anything to do with him. I don’t even want to speak to him…”

“Very well, then,” I hastened, “make it brief and snappy, like this.”

And I took a fresh sheet and started again, while Jimmie leaped up and began prowling up and down the living room and above the scratching of my pen, the remote, African thud, thud, thud of the radio next door beat faintly and infuriatingly on the peaceful air.

“Dear sir-

“I give you final warning that if you do not tone down your radio after 11 p.m. so that its sound does not penetrate my home, I shall take steps that will astonish you.”

“There you are, Jimmie,” I shouted. “That’s get it. Listen.”

I read it to him, in a crisp, dangerous voice.

“What steps,” shouted Jim, “will I take?”

“That’s the power of this note,” I explained. “It contains mystery, threat, menace: yet you do not incriminate yourself.”

“I want to incriminate myself,” bellowed Jimmie. “I will take steps that will astonish him, all right. I’ll tell him what I am going to do.”

He snatched his coat off the back of a chair and started to pull it on fiercely.

“Here,” I said, “don’t go and get into trouble.”

“I’m fed up,” cried Jim. “I’m going to take matters into my own hands. I’m going out there and I’m going to ring his door bell and when he comes to the door I’m going to pop him on the nose.”

“Now, now…” I begged.

“Yes, sir,” cried Jim, heading for the door, “that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to pop him one on the nose. The minute he opens the door.”

“Wait a minute…” I pleaded, running after him.

The Crucial Moment

But the door bell, at that curious instant, rang, arresting Jimmie in full flight, just as he started to open the vestibule door.

“Thank heavens,” I said, exchanging a very astonished look with Jim, who controlled himself with a great effort and slowly opened the door.

It was a spectacled young man with a brief case.

“Mr. Frise?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m terribly sorry to bother you so late as this,” said the young man, “but may I step in, just a moment?”

“What is it?” demanded Jim, still slightly bristling.

“It’s about your radio,” said the young man, stepping inside.

“My,” said Jim, “radio?”

“I am from the department,” explained the young gentleman, politely, opening his brief case and taking a handful of letters out. “It seems all your neighbors have complained about a serious interference emanating from your house.”

“My house?” demanded Jim loudly.

“Our trouble truck,” said the young man, “has traced the source of the difficulty to your house, and they say on their report that it is probably an oil furnace. Have you an oil furnace?”

“Yes,” said Jim.

“Is it a new model or a…?” inquired the tired young government man.

“It’s a model 1912,” said Jim, stoutly, “in perfect shape.”

“May I examine it?” asked the young gentleman. “Or would you, perhaps, prefer that I come back tomorrow?”

“What is this?” cried Jim, angrily. “What’s all this about my furnace?”

“There is a strong static interference,” explained the young chap, “that upsets all the radios in this neighborhood, and it has been traced to the electric motors in your house, probably an oil furnace.”

“Who reported this?” shouted Jim. “Give me his name.”

“Oh, it is no one person,” assured the young man. “It is all the neighbors.”

“All the neighbors?” said Jim.

“Dozens of them,” confirmed the young man. “We have only got around to it now. We’ve been very busy this season.”

“What do you want to do now?” inquired Jim, very subdued.

“May I just take a look at your furnace?” said the young chap, hanging up his hat and setting down his brief case.

So Jim took him down cellar while I stood in the living room, listening to the now fateful African drum, tumpa tump, from the house next door.

When they came up, Jimmie was telling the young man about the problems of the house next door.

“Unfortunately,” the young chap summed up, as he took his hat and brief case, “unfortunately, Mr. Frise, there is nothing in the law that governs situations such as you describe. You will attend to the other matter, will you? The furnace?”

“Tomorrow,” said Jim.

“By the way,” asked the young fellow, “I suppose you have your radio license?¹“

“I suppose so,” muttered Jim; “the family looks after that sort of thing.”

“I was just wondering, sir,” said the young man, bowing out. “I issue them. So I always inquire.”

“That’s all right,” said Jim

And he softly closed the door.

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on November 27, 1943 with the same title.

1. From 1922 to 1953 individual members of the public were required to pay for annual Private Receiving Station licences in order to legally receive broadcasting stations. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 17, 1943.

“Be alert!” asserted Jimmie Frise. “Be keen! Be fit! Be wide awake! Be on your toes!”

“That,” I agreed, “is our duty. At a time like this, it is not merely our duty; it is very much in our own interest.”

“Correct,” said Jimmie briskly. “When half a million of our fellow Canadians are in the armed services, learning as never before to be alert, wide awake and on their toes, it is only common sense on our part that we do not lag too far behind them. Because one of these fine days, the war is going to end. And we are going to be in competition not with the easy-going, self-centred generation that owned and controlled Canada before the war. We are going to have to compete with a whole generation of men trained to be alert and fit to a degree never dreamed of before in our history.”

“Everybody makes the mistake,” I concurred, “of comparing the return of the veterans from the last war with the return of the troops from this war. They imagine the conditions will be about the same. They picture to themselves a lot of bedraggled old soldiers coming wearily home, glad to accept any little handout of a job. They picture the boys holding meetings, perhaps, veterans’ meetings of protest. But, with the skill and shrewdness with which the business world handled the old soldiers of the last war, they think they can handle them again after this war.”

“In the last war,” agreed Jimmie, “we had no quarter million young men trained in the air force to be Varsity graduates, practically. Our army, in the old war, was just a lot of pack horses. The army coming home now will be trained minds, trained business men, trained technicians and trained mechanics.”

“Last war,” I said, “there was no time for training. We got into the army, were hustled through a little drill, some route marching and some shooting on the rifle range; and then, bang into action. This war, we have had nearly four years of training. A university course is only four years.”

“You would hardly say,” objected Jim, “that the army and air force give a man a university education.”

“Yes, I do,” I declared. “For, after all, what is the bigger part of a university education? Is it the collecting of information or is it the discipline of study? Which does a university graduate use most after he graduates; the ancient history, philosophy and so forth he learns at Varsity; or the habit of concentration and self-control he learns at Varsity?”

“I suppose,” agreed Jimmie, “that is what happens to his mind and character in those four years, rather than the mere facts he absorbs.”

“Then,” I submitted, “since four years of army training puts far more stress on concentration, discipline and self-control than a university course does, I submit to you that the army education our men are getting is much more on a par with a university education than we have so far supposed.”

“We’d Better Wake Up”

“And don’t imagine,” said Jim, “that the boys aren’t picking up plenty of book learning. And don’t imagine they are not attending plenty of lectures. And meeting interesting and exciting people and leaders. And doing a lot of study group work among themselves, even if it is in tents and huts, rather than university classrooms.”

“We’d better wake up to the facts,” I suggested, “and realize that the boys who are coming home from this war are going to be perhaps the most dynamic generation Canada has yet produced. They are going places. They will do things.”

“And there will be plenty to do,” surmised Jim. “Unlike the devastated world, Canada has not had her cities and her industries destroyed. We’ve got far more factories, more great power plants, far greater mines, all equipped with the most modern machinery and laboratories and scientific background, than we had before the war.”

“Hold on,” I interrupted. “That isn’t going to make it easier. That is going to make it harder. All the rest of Europe and Asia will be busily employed rebuilding and re-creating their industries. They’ll have something to occupy their energies the minute the war ends.”

“And we,” said Jim, “will occupy our energies in our undamaged industries, providing the devastated world with materials for its reconstruction.”

“Well, I hope so,” I sighed. “All I hope is, the big business cliques of Canada aren’t busy now planning some painless program for the re-absorption of Canadians back into civilian life. Painless, I mean, to business.”

“Probably they are,” smiled Jim. “But it won’t make any difference. Let us say that Canada’s industry is controlled by one thousand powerful, rich and clever men. They are all in their 50s and 60s. There are mighty few forties among them. Therefore, we will be rid of most of them in the next eight or ten years.”

“Rid?” I cried, horrified.

“Sure,” said Jim. “Rid of them. They’re old-fashioned. They cling to pre-war ideas and ideals. You don’t suppose, do you, that we will have room in Canada for half a million trained and educated men as well as the thousand old-fashioned geezers who happen to have carried over control from before the war? One or the other lot will have to give way. And I bet on the half million as against the thousand, no matter how smart the thousand have been. Because, you see, the half million are no longer ordinary men. They are extraordinary men. Through no fault of the big shots in this war, half a million Canadians are suddenly Varsity trained.”

“You exaggerate the Varsity stuff.” I protested.

“If going to school,” stated Jimmie, “does anything for human beings – and you admit it does – then going to school for two, three and four years in the army has done more than alter the personal situation of half a million. Canadian men. It has also altered the future of Canada. Anybody who tries to scheme the future of Canada here and now is wasting his time. For the Canadians will bring their schemers and their leaders home with them.”

Deciding to Be Alert

“We’re fools then,” I cried, “to be dawdling innocently along at what we call our war effort gait. We, too, should be training. We too, should be on our toes, getting ready to march in step with the boys coming home.”

“That’s exactly what I said at the beginning,” reminded Jim. “We should be forming clubs and societies in every city, town, and village. Not easy-going clubs like knitting and soldiers’ aid clubs which we won’t attend if it’s raining or if there is a good picture at the neighborhood movie. We should have various sorts of clubs, for men and women, for old and young, with discipline and training in them. Athletic clubs that would drill us like soldiers. Technical clubs, in which we would have to master technical arts.”

“Compulsory,” I submitted.

“Exactly,” said Jim. “In the army, everything is compulsory. In civil life, some things are starting to be compulsory. Gas rationing, food rationing. Why not ration our leisure? Why not organize a few compulsory clubs, athletic, technical and mechanical for the men, cooking, household science, athletic and mothercraft for the women? And make every man and woman at home join up and start disciplining themselves.”

“Unless,” I suggested, “the government is deliberately letting us dawdle so the soldiers can come home and take the country over.”

“Don’t be silly,” cried Jim. “Would a government do such a thing?”

“Maybe the government is tired of governing,” I explained. “Maybe the rich, clever, powerful old boys who control the country are growing weary of it all. Maybe they are looking happily forward to a Soldier Party, consisting of half a million trained, keen, alert young men, coming home and assuming control of Canada. Maybe they prefer that to all the Socialist tendencies they feel rising about them these days…”

“Well, my heart,” declared Jim, “is with the soldiers. And if I decide to be alert, on my toes, wide awake and fit, it isn’t to fight the soldiers when they come home, but to be able to stand with them.”

“Are you planning something?” I inquired eagerly.

“I saw in the paper last night,” announced Jim, “that there is a little club forming down in the East End of the city. It embodies exactly the ideas we have been discussing. The organization meeting is tonight.”

“Just another service club?” I inquired.

“Far from it,” said Jim. “It will meet three nights a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“That’s a lot of nights in one week to give up,” I murmured.

“Excuse me,” said Jim. “It is not giving up. It is taking. This new club has nothing to give. You take.”

“What is their program?” I inquired.

“Fitness, mental and physical,” quoted Jim. “They are going to rent a hall of suitable size, and the meeting each night, which is strictly disciplined, opens with calisthenics, gymnastics and marching.”

“Mmmmmmm,” I complained.

“One half hour of hard physical training,” went on Jim, “is followed by one hour’s hard work on some technical or mechanical problem such as engine repairs, map reading, aerial navigation, carpentry and so forth. This is followed by a half-hour lecture by an outstanding expert on the subject worked on during the previous hour.”

“Sounds a little too earnest and worthy to me,” I protested.

“The newspaper item said,” went on Jim, “that for example, the subject of the hour’s work one night might be repairing a punctured tire in the most expert fashion. So there would be 50 punctured tires at the meeting which the members would have to sit down and repair, under expert garage men’s supervision. The lecture following would be by the president and general manager of at tire manufacturing company.”

“Ah, not bad,” I admitted.

“Another example,” went on Jim. “After the physical workout, the shop work consists of repairing shoes. A hundred shoemaker’s repair lasts are set up in the hall. Everybody lends a hand at soling, nailing, sewing and trimming a shoe. Every member has one of those tasks to do, by hand. At the conclusion, the lecturer, a professional shoe repair man, with a short movie reel, explains the art and science of shoe repairing.”

“This sounds interesting,” I confessed.

“Just discipline,” explained Jim. “Making men centre their minds on small, necessary, precise jobs. But the best part of the new club is the rule about attendance.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“There is no entrance fee,” announced Jim. “No fees at all. Just fines. When you join the club, you sign a legal document, properly drawn up by lawyers, agreeing to pay one dollar for every meeting you miss.”

“Holy smoke!” I gasped.

“Regardless of sickness, business or any other excuse,” stated Jim, “regardless of anything save death, you sign an agreement to attend every meeting or else pay $1 for every meeting you fail to attend.”

“That’s novel, isn’t it?” I exclaimed.

“It is so novel,” said Jim, “that I wouldn’t be surprised if they got a thousand members. Because this whole country is weary of the voluntary spirit. It wants compulsion. It is aching for discipline. In short, the whole country is jealous of the soldiers and is hungry to be kicked around.”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “But if the whole country is greedy for compulsion, and a thousand members turn up, how are they going to raise the funds to rent big halls and employ lecturers and so forth?”

“Well, explained Jim, “about 500 of the thousand will turn up the first three meetings. And then the greed will vanish from them. Thus, the 500 enthusiasts will, with the others’ fines, pay for the 500 who really want to be disciplined.”

“That’s always the way,” I confessed. “But, Jim, I’m tired of doing nothing. The whole spring, summer and autumn is ahead of us. Three nights a week is nothing…”

So we decided as follows: We would attend the meeting. And if, after looking over the gathering, we felt they were a likely looking crowd, if they weren’t just the usual joiners, if they seemed like people who, like ourselves, were really bent on accomplishing something, we would sign up. For both Jim and I had some ideas about those technical hours. For example, trout fly tying, and rod making, and basket weaving, for making trout creels, and light carpentry such as making Yukon pack frames, boxes for holding camp stoves, etc.

“We might pick up a lot of useful items,” we agreed.

So we had a quick supper and I walked up to Jim’s and we caught the bus that takes us down to the nearest car line at 10 to 7 p.m. and which gave us an hour and 10 minutes to make the journey across town to the East End.

At that time of day the rush hour is over and the street cars are not crowded. Only a few late goers are the passengers. It is a relaxed time. The theatre and evening crowds have not yet started. The car we got on was half empty and grew emptier. Half a dozen war workers with lunch pails dozed in their seats.

“I’m looking forward to this, Jim,” I opened the discussion, “because, if it looks good, we might better organize a similar club in our own end of the city.”

“Mmmmm,” said Jim, gazing out the window.

It was a lovely soft evening. At every car stop, we could hear the robins singing, even down in the shopping districts. A robin is a great blessing.

“Even that shoe repairing stuff,” I continued, “is good. I think I’ll buy one of those dollar outfits, you know, with iron lasts and awls and needles, to take up to the summer cottage. Somebody’s summer shoes are always ripping.”

“Mmmmm,” agreed Jimmie, resting his elbow on the window sill.

Contrary to the Spirit

Rush hour over, the street car rocked and teetered along, the motorman slumped on his stool, giving it the juice and taking the juice off in a sort of drowsy rhythm that rocked the passengers in their seats.

Traffic was light. The sunlight evening streets floated past.

“One thing I…” I began.

But Jimmy’s eyes were closed, his chin resting on his cupped hand; and by the way his mouth stood slightly ajar, I guessed he was snatching a little snooze.

I relaxed. The motorman was again amusing himself by his off-again-on-again-Finnegan sort of driving, and the motion lulled me.

I swear I did not go to sleep. I merely closed my eyes for a few seconds. We had a long, long way to go to the East End yet.

But I felt a tap on the shoulder and a hearty voice was crying:

“Come along, lads; end of the line!”

Jim leaped to his feet and jerked the bell cord.

“What’s the idea,” he demanded angrily, “letting us sleep past our stop? We stop at…”

And he looked out at the pleasant lawns, sheds and buildings of the line’s end.

“What’s the time?” I demanded of the motorman.

“Eight fifteen,” he said.

“What do we do?” I asked Jim.

“Walk up and put another fare in,” replied the motorman.

And by the time the street car had lazily returned the 20 blocks westward to the street we wanted, it was 8.35.

“What do you say?” I asked Jim.

“Somehow,” yawned Jimmie, stretching, “It wouldn’t seem right to turn up at a meeting to organize a new club for discipline and fitness, mental and physical, 40 minutes late.”

“It would be contrary to the spirit of the thing,” I contributed.

So we sat right where we were and snoozed all the way back to the home bus stop.