Tag: 1943 Page 1 of 5

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 16, 1943.

“Hooray!” yelled Jimmie Frise, waving a letter.

“Surely not,” I said. “Surely no good news!”

“My Aunt Judy,” cried Jim excitedly, “has got her arthritis back.”

“Back?” I protested. “Is that good news?”

“It’s an ill wind,” said Jimmie, bringing the letter over, to read to me, “that blows nobody good. Listen to this:

“‘Dear Jim:

“‘When you were a boy you used to come over and help me with my churning. Now, when every pound of butter is a real part of the war effort, my arthritis has come back and I simply can’t churn. If you have any weekends free these times you could drop around and visit your old auntie and at the same time do a bit of war work that is sorely needed.'”

Jimmie waved the letter joyously and executed a few dance steps around the office.

“But, Jim,” I interposed, “why all the excitement? This can mean nothing to you. Your Aunt Judy can’t let you have any more butter than you can buy at any store.”

“What?” snorted Jim. “You mean my Aunt Judy, on the farm, can’t give away any butter? Even to her favorite nephew?”

“Not a fraction of a pound,” I assured him solemnly.

“Don’t be foolish,” said Jim. “Don’t tell me the law has invaded the sanctity of the farm home and the family.”

“Your Aunt Judy,” I announce “if she made a single pound of butter that she failed to report to the government, would be a bootlegger, a moonshiner…”

“A buttershiner!” said Jim. “Don’t tell me that’s the law.”

“That is the law, my lad,” I asserted. “And if you don’t believe me, call up the local office of the wartime prices and trade board.”

“But it’s preposterous,” scoffed Jim. “Butter!”

“That’s what the boys who drink booze said when prohibition came in,” I explained. “But it’s preposterous, they said. Liquor!”

“Don’t try to compare booze and butter,” declared Jim warmly.

“Why not?” I inquired. “If what you like is taken away from you, you are indignant. A great gulf has divided those who wanted booze from those who hated booze. A vast gulf filled with the darkness of misunderstanding. But now, when a comfortable dowager who hates booze but loves butter is faced with being deprived of what she loves, she has the heaven-sent chance to try to understand the agony and trickery and schemery of a booze hound who tried to beat the law. Let all people of good-will beware of buttershining. Let all who love justice for others be just to themselves and stick to half a pound of butter per person per week.”

“Poor Aunt Judy,” said Jim tenderly. “She’s got the arthritis back.”

Law and Intention

“Snap out of it, Jim,” I warned him. “You thought it was a wicked and vicious thing not only for bootleggers to operate but for people to patronize bootleggers. If I remember you right, you used to claim that it was not the bootleggers but the people who patronized bootleggers on whom the real guilt lay. So don’t go around trying to bootleg the odd pound of butter in the delusion that it is merely butter. The greatest weakness in human nature is the notion that your case is different. But I say unto you that it is purely a moral question and a patriotic question. Have you got the guts to stick to half a pound a week? Or are you, like a lot of smart people, a little lacking in guts which you make up for by smartness?”

“I was hoping,” sighed Jim, “that you and I could go out to Aunt Judy’s tomorrow for the week-end and churn her butter.”

“Jim,” I said, “if you don’t believe me, call up the wartime prices and trade, board office. It is contrary to the intention of the law even to beat up a little butter with an egg-beater or electric mixer…”

“Where could you get the cream?” demanded Jim.

“Cream off the top of the milk bottle,” I announced.

“But look,” protested Jim. “If a quart of milk has certain food values in it, and if I prefer to use those food values by beating up little butter instead of drinking the milk-“

“Don’t squirm,” I warned him. “That’s the way the old bootleggers and moonshiners used to think. They used to say: Here I have a few bushels of potatoes. What does it matter whether I boil the potatoes and eat them or let them ferment and drink the alcohol out of them? The law is the law. The intention is the intention. To help fight this war, the government has organized certain controls, many of them as little and apparently meaningless as a spike or a switch on a railway track, but without which the whole system cannot operate.”

“So if I cheat on butter,” mused Jim, “I might as well cheat, say, on making cartridges. I might as well fill cartridges with sand instead of cordite.”

“Correct,” I said. It is time we all started playing the game. We are needed, up till now, to let the airmen and sailors and soldiers play the game for us. Leave it to the soldiers. They volunteered, didn’t they? But now it begins to seep into us that we all have to take a piece of the war. I heard a dandy at lunch yesterday. A man who hates Mackenzie King got going as usual. And the man lunching with him interrupted him mildly and asked, ‘By the way, how much do you get for that?’ ‘That what?’ inquired the other. ‘That stuff you are spouting about Mackenzie King? How do you mean?’ demanded the other indignantly; ‘how much do I get for it?’ ‘Well,’ said the other fellow, ‘don’t tell me you are doing it for nothing when there are guys in Buffalo and Detroit and all along the border who would gladly pay you $15 a week to go around spreading that kind of stuff. Why, the Germans have spent millions of dollars all over the world hiring people to do that work. Don’t tell me you are working for the Germans for nothing!'”

“What happened?” asked Jim, delighted.

“The luncheon broke up,” I advised.

“Well, sir,” said Jim, “you’ve certainly taken the joy out of life regarding Aunt Judy.”

“Ah,” I said, “but I still think you should go and help your Aunt Judy do her churning. It is less than 30 miles out. It is a little used branch line of the railroad. I’ve been on that train when there weren’t two dozen passengers. In fact, churning up a batch of butter strikes me as a very useful activity for a couple of city men on a week-end, with nothing better to do.”

“A couple of city men?” inquired Jim happily.

A Useful Activity

So we left on the noon train and arrived at Aunt Judy’s farm before 2 p.m. And she was very delighted indeed to see us.

“I sort of knew you would come,” she cried.

And we took our coats off and put on the aprons Aunt Judy laid out for us. In the outer kitchen, back of the main farm kitchen, we found the churn on its sawhorse legs standing ready. It was a regular barrel which rocked violently when you turned the crank. A little window in it allowed you to peek and see how the butter was coming.

“You will have to wait about an hour,” explained Aunt Judy, “while I set the cream out to come to room temperature. It’s cooled now, so if you’ll just lift it into the room…”

So Jim and I carried the pails and cans of cream from the cream shed into the kitchen. and poured most of it into big pans and open dishes, the sooner to reach room temperature. And Aunt Judy took us into the main kitchen, where we sat in rocking-chairs around the big stove and talked about butter.

“Do you know,” said Aunt Judy, who is very prominent in the Women’s Institute and reads all sorts of encyclopaedias and almanacs, “that Canadians are probably the biggest butter eaters in the world?”

“Aw, now,” cried Jimmie.

“Even in the United States,” declared Aunt Judy, “where they have the highest standards of living in the world, the per capita consumption of butter is only 17½ pounds per annum.”

“Holy smoke,” said Jim. “Is that all they use? Why, that’s only a third of a pound of butter per person a week.”

“Then what are we Canadians kicking about,” demanded Jim, “at a half a pound per person per week?”

“In Britain,” went on Aunt Judy, “the per capita annual consumption is about the same as the United States, between 17 and 18 pounds a year.”

“And what do we use in Canada?”

“In Canada,” declared Aunt Judy triumphantly, “we consume 27 pounds per capita per year! Ten pounds per person more than the United States, 10 pounds more than the British Isles. We are a butter-guzzling race, we Canadians!”

“Maybe it is because we are a northern race,” I suggested. “Look at the Eskimos. They need fat so badly they eat raw seal blubber.”

Aunt Judy’s Churn

“We Canadians,” said Aunt Judy, “are terrific cake eaters. We cook with butter, where more frugal nations use cheap fat. We soak butter into our potatoes. We slather bread with butter. We have a beaver for our national symbol. We would be more honest if we had a pound of butter on our coat of arms.”

“Well, then,” said Jim, “I don’t feel so bad about being cut down to half a pound. But I’ve seen my family use six pounds a week for the six of us. A pound a week per person.”

“That’s not uncommon,” agreed Aunt Judy, “the lavish way we cook and prepare our meals. Canadians, I imagine, have the highest standard of living in the world, when it comes to the domestic side.”

“What a right little, tight little island we are in Canada,” I smiled, thinking of our vast size and our little scattered population all busily greasing its insides with choice butter.

So we went into the outer kitchen and got to work.

“It’s the simplest thing in the world, making butter,” said Aunt Judy. “Just pour in the cream. Start the churn. And after while you see flecks of butter appearing on the little glass window. Keep right on. And at last, you take off the lid and there’s your butter, solid gobs of it, floating on top of a lot of buttermilk.”

Into the barrel churn we poured the thick sweet cream.

“With sour cream,” announced Aunt Judy, “the way the factories do, they have to doctor the cream up with bacilli.”

“Ugh,” I said.

“But creamery butter made from fresh cream,” said she, “keeps in storage far better than butter made with sour cream. The Danes proved that. They set the pace for the whole world in butter. When I was a girl, butter used to be highly colored and salty. The Danes started to show the whole world how to make butter with its natural lovely pale yellow color, its waxy texture and hardly any salt at all. That’s the way I make it.”

We put the lid on the churn and clamped it down. And, while Jim started the crank, I gathered the big wooden bowl and the big wooden spoon like a ladle, and rubbed salt into them so the butter wouldn’t stick.

All that butter is, is cow grease and elbow grease. The cow gives milk. Aunt Judy puts the milk in the separator and takes out the cream. And Jimmie and I supplied the elbow grease. Turn about.

“It takes,” said Aunt Judy, “27 pounds of milk to make one pound of butter. When the cream’s taken out, you have the milk left. And when you take the butter out of the cream you have the buttermilk left. But it’s really very simple.”

And simple it was. Jimmie cranked until he was flushed. Then I cranked until I was flushed. It took about four flushes each and then the little flecks of butter started to appear in the small glass window in the churn. First, the cream turns to whipped cream. Then the water in the cream, which is what cream mostly consists of after all, begins to come loose from the steadily whirling and crashing contents.

The Final Spurt

You could even tell by the feel of the churn, as it swung and banged, that there was something lumpy developing inside.

When we unscrewed the barrel lid of the churn there, floating on the top, was the gorgeous, pale yellow mass of the butter, with the buttermilk streaming and draining off it.

“Okay,” said Jim, seizing the big wooden bowl. “Scoop her out.”

And with the wooden scoop I lifted the butter, taking the big gobs first and the lesser gobs until I finally strained quite small globules and blobs off the surface of the buttermilk.

And with the wooden spoon Jimmie kneaded and patted and squeezed the butter in the bowl, forcing all the buttermilk out of the waxy mass. The exact amount of salt Aunt Judy had left in a dish, and this Jimmie kneaded and kneaded into the butter still in the wooden bowl.

Aunt Judy came back from feeding the chickens and supervised the cutting of the butter into pound “prints,” as she called them. There was a small wooden box, also salted so the butter would not stick, which we pressed into the mass, filling it. The box held exactly a pound of butter, and it had a false top with a handle. When the box was squeezed full you just held it over a square of wax paper and shoved down on the handle, forcing the pound of butter out, beautiful, yellow and pure, on to the paper.

The box also printed Aunt Judy’s name right into the butter.

Twenty-six pounds we got for the churning.

“And much as I’d love to reward you boys,” said she, “with a pound of butter each, I can’t do it. I have to have my license to make butter. I have to report every pound I make. I am allowed only half a pound a week per person in the family for myself. And I must turn in a coupon and a record of every pound I sell.”

“Don’t mention it,” said both Jimmie and I. “It was a pleasure.”

But we did lick our fingers.

And at supper, before we drove back in the cutter to catch, the 8.47, not a pat of our butter did Aunt Judy produce; but only the butter dish in which, carefully cut into squares, was some of Aunt Judy’s former churning.

“But,” said she, marching in with a huge white granite pitcher such as is used at church socials, “there is no rationing of buttermilk!”

And we drank most of the pitcher, full of the sweetest buttermilk that ever swelled your neck; and we each carried home a gallon jug of it.

---

Editor’s Note: This seems to be another war-time public service announcement, rather than one of their regular stories.

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.

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Editor’s Notes:

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

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