Tag: 1944 Page 1 of 4

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 14, 1936.

“March,” said Jimmie Frise, “is the most miserable month of the year.”

“Especially,” I contributed, “the middle of March. Because by the end of March you can smell April.”

“March,” went on Jim, “is like three o’clock of the morning of the year.”

“All my friends who are bums,” I stated, “tell me March is a terribly hard month for them. They can’t make a touch. Not a touch. It is as if, in March, people have come to the end of their kindness.”

“It’s like that hour,” continued Jim, “before the beginning of the dawn.”

“Well, I know that hour,” I cried. “For two years in the war I saw every dawn. Winter, summer, storm, or fine. I saw the dawn. In the trenches we stood to arms, every man jack, cook, bugler and all, at one hour before the dawn. And there we stood, millions of us, all nations, friend and foe, in league-long lines, hushed, waiting, watching, tense.”

“It was the hour of attack,” said Jim.

“Like some queer, pagan, ghastly worshippers, we stood,” I recited, “in those foul ditches looking up at the black and dreadful sky. Little winds moaned. It was cold, with a ghostly cold. It was the hour before the first cock crew. The hour when bones rise out of the ground in a danse macabre. And all around us were bones. Bones of our comrades, our companions, of only yesterday.”

“You know dawns,” admitted Jim.

“Aye,” I said. “I have no love for the hour before the dawn nor for the month of March.”

“The ancients said,” declared Jimmie, “that March was the season of disasters.”

“So it would be,” I explained, “because the blood in us is running cold and thin after the long winter. Our hearts are colder, our emotions checked and sluggish. Wars might start in March, massacres, pogroms. The best instincts of humanity are mere stubble by March.”

“And in September, at their full flower and fruit,” said Jim. “Ah, how I love September.”

“I love June,” I admitted. “June, about the sixth.”

“Let us watch our step this month,” said Jim, who was at the steering wheel, and we were nearly home. “Let us tip off our friends to be watchful. Let us try to be kind and friendly. Let us try consciously to inject a little warmth of heart into life in this exhausted and embittered season.”

“Maybe we could see a bum any minute,” I agreed. “I’ve got a dime¹. It would be nice to just pull up beside the curb and open the door and suddenly toss a bum a dime.”

“You’ve got the idea,” said Jim.

We drove along. How dirty the streets, with their foul shoals of ice and snow in the shelter of the houses all along the south side of the streets. The old tin cans, papers gummed into the slush and ice of a whole winter. The untidiness of March, the usedness, the second-handness.

The Little Brown Dog

A lady in her house dress was standing out on the sidewalk and as we passed her I saw she was weeping. Her face was screwed up and she was huddling her arms about her, clutching her elbows in her palms.

“Whoa, Jim,” I commanded. “What’s the matter here?”

Jim backed the car. I leaped out and hurried to the lady.

“My little dog,” she wept. “She’s gone. I can’t find her anywhere. I’ve been in all the yards. Not a sign.”

And she stopped speaking because her voice had gone up into only a squeak.

“Ma’am,” I said, “we’ll help you find your dog. What kind of a dog was it?”

“A little brown dog,” wept the lady.

“What breed, ma’am?” I asked.

“I forget,” said the lady, biting her lips. “A little brown dog. A dear little one.”

“Pekingese?” I inquired. “Pomeranian?”

“No, no,” wept the lady. “A little brown one, about like that. O-ho! I have had her six years and she never disappeared before.”

“A lady dog, ma’am?” I inquired.

“Yes, her name is Dollie.”

“We’ll drive around the block,” I comforted her. “We’ll find her. She hasn’t been gone long?”

“About half an hour,” the lady squeaked, wiping her nose in a small ball of hanky.

“We’ll get her in no time,” I assured her, starting for the car.

“What is it?” asked Jim eagerly.

“She’s lost her dog.” I explained, “so I said we’d drive around a block or two and find it for her.”

“Well,” said Jim, starting the car, “it isn’t exactly a disaster or a massacre. But after all it is the month of March.”

“It’s a small brown dog,” I informed Jim.

So we drove around a block, slowly, looking in all the side drives and stopping at each turn to look up and down all vistas. There were plenty of dogs. But no little brown ones. When we came past the lady again, she was still standing hugging her arms around her and looking down side drives and calling, “Dollie, Dollie,” in a high, anxious voice.

I waved reassuringly to her and called out the window:

“We’ll do a couple more blocks.”

And she said “Thank you” heart brokenly.

“Curious,” I said, as we turned to circle another block, “the way some women love a dog. Almost like a child.”

“Lots of men go kind of crazy over a dog, too,” said Jim.

We saw wirehairs and spaniels, police dogs and Bostons, but no little brown dogs. Then we saw a small brown spaniel, and slowed up, but it was named Joe, as a little boy told us. He hadn’t seen any dog you would call Dollie around.

In the distance we saw a flock of dogs romping on the street, so we drove away up and studied them. But there were no little brown dogs there either. Just to be sure I called “Dollie” out the window, but none of them looked at us. They were busy.

“Aw, let’s go home,” said Jim.

“There you go,” I said. “March has got you, too. We can do a couple more blocks without doing ourselves any harm, and think of the decent thing we would do if we could restore that lady her dog.”

“All right,” said Jim, and we turned another way and made a circle of two more blocks. We saw setters and terriers and Scotties; we saw a great big black Newfoundland and a dachshund, but no little brown lady dog.

Seized By the Collar

“Listen,” said Jim, “a dog always turns up. Let’s go on home, rather than go back and tell the poor woman we saw no sign of her pup. It will be kinder to leave her thinking we are still chasing all over creation looking for it than to turn up and say we haven’t seen it in ten blocks.”

“I suppose,” I confessed. “But it is a pretty Marchy trick just the same. I bet if this was June we’d keep on looking.”

“Forget it,” said Jim, and steered for home.

But hardly had we got into our stride before there, trotting down the sidewalk on little twinkling feet, with a plume of a tail curled back over her back, was the cutest little brown you ever did see.

“Dollie,” I hailed merrily.

And the little creature halted, wheeled, set its head on one side and looked up at us brightly. “Hello, Dollie.” I said warmly.

“Pick her up,” said Jim.

So I got out and went to Dollie. But Dollie, with large bug eyes pointing in two opposite directions and with a look of constitutional alarm in both of them, started to waddle off on her mincing tiny feet. I followed, coaxingly.

“H’yuh, h’yuh,” I wheedled, “Pfft, sktch, sktch, h’yuh, Dollie.”

Jim coasted slowly alongside of us.

“Jim,” I said quietly, “park and come and help me. She is naturally timid. She’s lost and nervous. We’ll have to corner her.”

So Jim, with a loud sigh, parked the car, got out and joined me. Dollie had halted at a side drive and was looking back suspiciously at us.

We walked casually closer. I turned in the side drive just as she did. I ran and got ahead of her and, spreading my arms wide, cut off her retreat while Jim, dashing from behind, swept Dollie up in his arms, and we walked out the drive.

“Nice Dollie,” I soothed, patting the head of the little gold-fishy looking dog, who wriggled and yapped in a silly little voice.

We tossed her in the back seat and got aboard. As Jim drove off, I thought I heard a shout, and looked back, and saw a man looking out the front door of the house we had been alongside. I naturally supposed that he was perhaps curious at what we had been doing in his side drive. But there was no use stopping and going back, just to satisfy idle curiosity.

We drove five blocks back to where the lady lived. But she was not in sight when we slowed up.

“Toot your horn a few times,” I said, “and I’ll try this house here, where she was in front of.”

Another lady answered the door. No, she said, there was no dog lost there. So I tried the houses next door, both sides.

“Would you know of a lady, a neighbor,” I asked at these houses, when they said they had no dog lost, “who would have lost a little brown dog?”

They thought, and looked up at the sky and put their fingers on their teeth, but couldn’t think of any such lady.

“Maybe,” called Jim, above Dollie’s loud and angry yapping, “she lives across the road. Try a couple of houses on this other side.”

So I was just asking at the third house when a car came up with a rush, pulled in just ahead of Jim’s car, and a man in his shirt sleeves leaped out and tore around at Jimmie. I heard loud shouting between them and hurried across. The stout, dark, shirt-sleeved man had Dollie in his arms and was standing with one foot inside Jim’s car, shaking his huge fist under Jim’s nose.

“Sir.” I protested, coming up.

“You,” he yelled. “You little dog-thief. I’ve got you both, eh?”

With his free hand, his fist hand, he seized me roughly by the overcoat collar and gave me a shake.

“Pardon me,” I said. “Pardon me, my man.”

“I’ll my man you,” he yelled. He was one of those stout dark men with black, sort of bloodshot eyes, who are usually retired around fifty years of age, and like to be in shirtsleeves, and mostly you see them working around their houses, putting up pergolas or making stone terraces.

Looking For a Lady

So I just let him hold my collar. I have found that if you just let a man hold your collar, he gets tired of it in a minute.

“No fines for you,” continued the man, and people were coming to their front doors, and home-goers were pausing on the sidewalk. “I’ve been watching out for you for weeks. This is three times you have stolen my dog.”

I heard an ominous mutter from the gathering spectators, and two or three men walked nearer.

“Dog thieves,” announced the coatless-man, giving me another swing by the collar and taking kick at Jim’s shins in the car. “You know the racket? Steal a dog and then collect the reward. Look at them! Well dressed, with a car, even if it is an old junk heap.”

“Just a moment,” shouted Jim. “We were helping a lady find her dog.”

“Oho,” roared our captor. “Listen to that for a tale.”

“I was just looking for the lady when you came along,” I informed him.

“Looking for the lady,” yelled he. “You were in the very act of trying to snatch another dog here when I came along.”

“I was calling from door to door to try to find the lady,” I declared.

“From door to door?” screamed the man. “Looking for a lady? You were helping her find a dog?”

“We saw her standing on the street, right along here,” I protested anxiously; “she was crying, and we said we’d help her find her dog. From her description…”

“Haw, haw,” bellowed the man, smiling fiercely around at the half a dozen spectators now closing rather tightly around us. “Haw, haw, they saw a lady crying on the street! Haw, haw! Gentlemen, what will we do with them? I see you are all dog lovers. Do we wait here and hand them over to the police, who will let them off on suspended sentence or something? Or…?”

And he grinned fiendishly around the circle of faces.

“Or,” he roared, “will we all take a kick at them that will be a lesson to these kind of birds never to show their ugly mugs in this neighborhood again? Hey?”

“A good idea,” muttered everybody, “that’s the stuff, deal with it, community spirit, that’s the stuff.”

Strange how a crowd – even a crowd of your own good neighbors – is always on the side of the accuser in a case like this. Around us, not a friendly eye showed. As far as these seven or eight gentlemen and ladies were concerned, every word our accuser had to say was true. Any dogs I have ever talked to have told me the greatest fear a dog has is to be down. A dog must keep his feet. For the instant it down, in a fight, every dog is against it. It is the same with humans. Accuse, and every eye narrows against the accused.

“Jim,” I said, quietly, “say something amusing and friendly. Don’t argue. Be witty. Attract a smile.”

But inch by inch and step by step, the kindly home-going citizens were edging closer, forming a ring around us, closing in for the kill.

And just as I felt fresh hands take hold of my collar, I heard Jim yell:

“There she is!”

And along the street, with a little brown dog in her arms, came our lady, weeping no more, but with her face radiant and her head up.

“That’s the woman,” I shouted. “Ask her, ask her!”

The lady came up and, on seeing us, announced gladly that we were two gentlemen who had offered to help her find her dog.

“I found her,” she added. “I found her playing along at the corner. The darling.”

And she kissed it.

Hands fell away from us. But faces did not relax. In fact, the man in the shirt-sleeves still scowled suspiciously at us.

“Well,” he grunted through his nose. “Maybe so. Maybe so. But I still don’t like your looks. I still think it was just a frame-up. If any more dogs are lost in this neighborhood…”

And h shoved out his jaw at us, menacingly. And mutters and mumbles from the rest of the neighbors accompanied me as I got back into the car.

“Thank you, all the same,” called the lady with the little brown dog.

“Don’t mention it, ma’am,” I assured her.

So we continued our way home.

“March,” said Jim, snapping his teeth. “I guess the less you do in March, the better.”

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on March 18, 1944 as “No Love for March”.

1. Ten cents in 1936 would be $2.20 in 2025. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 10, 1937.

“What do you think,” asked Jimmie Frise, “about this new psychology angle, about how to make people like you?”

“The weather’s too, hot,” I explained, “to think about things like that. Psychology is a winter sport.”

“An awful lot of people,” said Jim, “are taking up this friend-making business. You can make friends now just the same as you I can make pies. It’s a science. You take so many ingredients, mix them up, subject them to heat, and there you are – a friend.”

“Pie-making is a science nowadays,” I stated, “but it used to be an art. There are pie factories to-day where, in vast white-tiled sanitary kitchens, expert pie-makers, working with chemicals and employing every device of mechanical perfection of measuring, mixing and cooking in automatically controlled ovens, produce thousands of pies per day. But who wants a sanitary pie?”

“I was talking about friends,” Jim protested.

“It’s the same thing.” I declared. “Now in the old days, when pie-making was an art, a friend was a friend. I don’t like synthetic pies and I don’t think I would care for synthetic friends. You ought to have tasted my grandmother’s rhubarb pie.”

“The heat has got you,” said Jim, a little wearily. “You’ve got pies and everything all muddled up.”

“This rhubarb pie,” I continued tenderly, “had no top on it. The rhubarb was mixed with eggs and sugar in some way so that when it was cooked a sort of brown crust had formed, crisp and crystalline, over the tangy rhubarb. Ooooooooh!”

“The trouble with any art,” stated Jim, “is that so much of it is lousy. When pie-making was an art, only those who knew the artists were in luck. Maybe your grandmother could make pies, but think of all the terrible pie you have tasted in bygone, years, before science came to the rescue of mankind as a whole.”

“You’re right,” I admitted. “I can recall those awful pies I had away from home. Apple pie especially, with a sort of thick, pallid crust, almost white. Filled with horrible hunks of half-cooked apple, heavily sprinkled with nutmeg to try and conceal the true facts.”

“And punkin pie,” said Jim. “I’ve eaten some punkin pie that might just as well have been boiled newspaper.”

“My grandmother,” I said, “had a way of making blueberry pie that passed away with her. She put vinegar in it, somehow, and the bottom crust, instead of being leathery, like most pies even nowadays, was so crisp it splintered under your fork. Yet the blueberry juice which spurted all over the place when you sank your fork into the pie never sogged down into that paste. As a kid I used to spend most of my summer holidays picking blueberries for my grandmother.”

“It was an art,” agreed Jim. “But I would say that the average pie to-day is a thousand per cent. better than the average pie of your grandmother’s time.”

“Suppose I admit that,” I asked, “where does it land us? Don’t you see that it only makes pies commonplace? Don’t you see that instead of really great pie being something beautiful and strange and treasurable and lovely, that anybody can have really great pie nowadays and something beautiful and treasurable has gone out of life?”

“What nonsense,” said Jim.

Making Everything Good

“It’s not,” I assured him. “We are eliminating all the values from life. By making everything good, there will soon be no good left. By making everything beautiful, where will we turn for beauty?”

“How absurd,” insisted Jim.

“Science,” I decreed, “is the guilty party. What art created science has bent itself to reproduce in mass. Discover something good, and what happens? Science gets busy and makes a million of it for general use.”

“And why not?” cried Jim indignantly.

“Because,” I explained, “a million of it isn’t deserved. This world didn’t get where it is by patient plodding. No, sir. It got here by the fire of inspiration and genius. But now we are making everything available to everybody, beauty, comfort, pleasure joy – all the sweet remote prizes of life – we’re making them commonplace. So what? Well, there’s going to be fewer and fewer fires amongst the human spirit, and I bet you the next hundred years are going to be the dullest and silliest in human history.”

“Utter rot,” asserted Jim. “We’re going to see in the next hundred years the flowering of the human spirit as the result of long ages of patient cultivation. What can the effect of universal cheap transportation be but to show all men the earth? Think radio and its effect, making beautiful music and good ideas available in every home on earth, rich and poor?”

“Until science got busy with means of transportation,” I said, “only those with courage and the high heart went forth to see the world. The rest of mankind stayed home like hogs in their bin. And those who went forth into the world told of its beauty and strangeness in song and story and picture, and made us believe the world was beautiful. Nowadays any fathead who works like a horse at some stupid job and saves his money can go safely to the ends of the earth, and he sends home picture post-cards and secretly feels the poets lied. He doesn’t realize that just by being there he has stolen away the beauty.”

“Oh, what a Tory,” breathed Jim malignantly.

“And as for radio and beauty and good ideas,” I informed him, “what is the greatest program on the air to-day? It is the program of a man with a large red nose in controversy with a ventriloquist’s dummy.”¹

“What a miserable attitude you have towards life,” said Jimmie. “You’re one of those who ought to study this new science of making friends. It would give you a sweeter feeling towards your neighbors.'”

“What kind of a science is this friend-making?” I demanded.

“It’s simplicity itself,” said Jim, happy to be rid of me. “All that it requires of us is that we become aware. Aware of others. Alert to life all around us. Psychology teaches us that we use only a little fraction of our powers, mental and physical. We go through our lives like worms burrowing in the dark earth.”

“Worms,” I pointed out, “would darn soon regret it if they came up and started cavorting around in the hot sun”

“Wait a minute,” protested Jim. “The trouble with us is that we are aware only of our own lives. And aware dimly of a few right around us with whom we grudgingly share a little of our interest in life. If we open our minds and hearts, if we deliberately become aware of others, their interests, their cares and labors, their lives, then, without effort at all, they become our friends.”

A Larger Awareness

“What good would we get out of it?” I inquired. “All they would do is keep coming around after supper and wanting to tell us their troubles. I know those friends. A guy has got to be guarded in his sympathy.”

“I’m not talking about sympathy,” said Jim. “What we get out of a larger awareness of others is a fuller feeling of ourselves, a kind of indefinable joy and pleasure, like waking up in the morning after a grand night’s sleep, or sitting on the cottage veranda after a swell swim waiting for lunch. Waking our minds to others makes our spirits tingle. It is like reading eight or ten exciting novels all at the same time.”

“Just a muddle,” I said.

“In no time at all,” went on Jim, “those who deliberately practise awareness are revolutionized in their manners and attitude. They become good natured and agreeable. All the harsh angles are rounded off…”

“Old stuff,” I cried. “This is the old personality idea. How to be a success in any company. How to be the life of the party. They laughed when I sat down at the piano…”

“It’s entirely different,” insisted Jim. “There are no rules or formulas for making friends. It is just an inner change. A sort of rousing. Wakening. And immediately people are attracted to you, as people are attracted in the lonely night to a house with all its windows lighted.”

“Of two houses,” I stated, “one all lit up for a party, full of gabbling people and cars parked outside and eight or ten people besides myself inside trying to hold the limelight, and another house with only one room dimly lighted but in that room a friend…”

“Well,” said Jim, “I’m interested in this stuff and I’m starting to practise it. It doesn’t seem to work with you. Have you noticed any change in me? Don’t I seem sort of easy and open minded this morning?”

“I never saw you more pigheaded,” I assured him. “All you want to do is argue.”

So we continued with our work, Jim scratching away at his cartoon with his head held back, squinting dreamily; and I sneering at my typewriter. And after a while there came a light knock on the office door.

“Come in,” called Jimmie in a musical voice.

“Who the…” I muttered.

The door opened gently and revealed two young men standing respectfully on the sill. They carried leather cases. They were well dressed. But it was their expression that was remarkable. A look of warmth, of restrained joy, of hope no longer deferred, glowed in their eyes; and their smiles were like Robert Taylor’s.²

“Mr. Frise? Mr. Clark?” said the dark one, tensely, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes.

“Yes,” I said sharply.

“Come in, come in,” cried Jim, throwing down his pen.

All speechless with pleasure, the two young men stepped in. With intaken breaths and quick glances around our tousled office as if they were entering some holy place, they set their leather cases down and laid their hats on our desks.

“What is it, what is it?” I said pleasantly enough. “I’m very busy this morning.”

But the sheet of paper in my typewriter was still blank.

“Mr. Clark,” said Jim, rising and offering them a cigarette, “tries to pretend he is a fierce little man.”

“Really,” I said, “I have to get this done. this morning, as you can see…”

“Gentlemen,” said the dark one, “we can come back some other time. Just name an hour. We wouldn’t dream of interrupting your work.”

His voice went deep and quivered.

The fair one reached for his hat and picked up his leather case, giving me a most apologetic little grin, as he half backed to the door.

“To what are we indebted for the honor of this visit?” said Jim.

“Our visit,” said the dark one, quietly “is probably more important to us than it is to you, and therefore I hesitate…”

“Forget it,” said Jim.

“We represent,” said the dark one, in a tense and almost confidential voice, “a worldwide organization that includes universities, royal societies, international organizations, publishing…”

“Ah,” I said, “books.”

“Sir,” said the dark one, turning respectfully to me, “I sincerely beg your pardon. I know we are intruding. Please excuse us, and some other time…”

He, too, reached for his hat. He was flushed and embarrassed and the very embodiment of apology.

“What kind of books have you got?” I relented slightly.

“I’m afraid,” said he, “they are hardly the kind of thing we ought to show you two gentlemen, so widely…”

“Now you’ve got me interested,” I cried. “I never met anybody selling books who didn’t have to be thrown out by the office bouncer. Here, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“It is a collection,” said the dark young man diffidently, “of biographical and historic sketches of successful personalities, and differs from all other biography in that in each instance selected from the world’s great statesmen, authors, soldiers, leaders in all walks of life, attention has been focussed on the personality of each, and studied in its relation to his success.”

“Mff,” I said, the dark one began to unbutton his leather valise.

“In biography,” explained the dark one, “so much attention is paid to such detail as origin, ancestors, early environment and then historical record, that the true secret of their greatness, their personality, is lost sight of. The scholars who prepared this collection, scholars from many countries and all of them famous men themselves, have delved into hitherto neglected records, letters, unpublished lore of all sorts, anecdotal, contemporary gossip, in order to recreate, as it were, the living personality, without boring you with an account of the activities of these whom the world accepts as our greatest men. An astonishing truth emerges from this new approach to the question of greatness…”

Foundations of Personality

“What of that?” I asked.

“That all our great, from Caesar, down to present day and living men accepted as great,” said the dark young man, “had almost identical foundations of personality.”

“You mean Caesar and Einstein?” I demanded.

“Exactly,” said the young man, with a look of admiration on his face. “You’ve hit it square on the head.”

And he turned and gave his partner a swift look as much as to say, “Didn’t I tell you this was a smart man?”

He then just stood and looked at me reverently, never saying a word, but handing me volume after volume out his case. They were pleasant, stiff volumes, with gravure portraits of the subject of each chapter. There were Caesar, Beethoven, Theodore Roosevelt, Marlborough, Lindbergh, Titian, General Pershing, Charlemagne, Rembrandt, Edison, hundreds of them, some disposed of in a few pages, others taking up a quarter of a volume.

“It’s more just to show them to you,” said the dark young man. “To get your reaction. We’ve read your articles for years, ever since we were schoolboys, haven’t we, Eric? And I said, before we start in on our select list, given us by a federation of university advisory boards, I will just get the reaction of a practical man who makes personality his daily study…”

“It’s a little over my head,” said Jim awkwardly. “I don’t even know who half of these people are written up here. But you certainly made no mistake in coming to Mr. Clark. Now he…”

“How much is it?” I asked doubtfully.

“The normal price, as a matter of fact,” said the young man, “is forty dollars, but we have been given a few sets to be disposed of, confidentially of course, to any who assist us with counsel or advice of a critical nature, at only twenty-five dollars. In return for your kindly interest in this work, I almost wish I could afford, out of my own pocket…”

“Tut, tut,” I said. “I am getting together a library for my sons, and biography is in line…”

And in no time at all, I had signed the little slip of paper and paid my cheque and was assured the complete set would be delivered to my home within a few days.

“Now,” said the fair-haired young man, stepping forward and starting to unbutton his leather case, “Mr. Clark, I’d like to show you this set of four volumes on how to attract friends.”

“Which?” I demanded, hardly having my fountain pen back in my pocket.

“It’s a remarkable work,” said the young fellow. “My partner and I have studied it and it has done us an unbelievable amount of good. It has entirely revolutionized our methods of salesmanship. We are no longer high pressure, but low pressure. And it works twice as good. The secrets, as set forth here, as to awareness, alertness to our fellow man and his temperament personality…”

“Gentlemen,” I said loudly, “good morning.”

And Jim, the silly, accompanied them out to the elevator, joking and laughing.

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on July 8, 1944 as “Making Friends”.

1. This is probably in reference to Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. They were only recently on the radio in 1937. As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, the popularity of a ventriloquist on radio, when one could see neither the dummies nor his skill, surprised and puzzled many critics, then and now. ↩︎
2. Robert Taylor was a popular actor at the time. I guess he lost some popularity as in the 1944 repeat, his name was replaced with “their smiles were like a tooth-paste model’s”. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 2, 1936.

“A ha,” cried Jimmie Frise, “new neighbors.”

He pointed up street, where a massive van was just backing before a vacant house.

“That house,” I commented, “hasn’t been vacant very long. I wonder what they’ll be like?”

“Probably,” said Jim, “they’ll have a large and vicious dog that will take six months to decide who he can lick along this block.”

“Probably they’ll have about six sniffly kids,” I said, “all prone to whooping cough and mumps. We’ve been pretty lucky in this block for some years. I guess this is the end.”

“On the other hand,” said Jim, “it might be a rich widow. Or maybe an elderly childless couple.”

“At that,” I submitted, “it might be some fellow we’d grow very fond of around here. Maybe the kind of man who would raise choice roses and always want to be giving rose bushes to his neighbors.”

“By jove,” said Jim, “he might be the kind of fellow who keeps a lawn roller and one of those lawn-edging machines with a wheel on it.”

“I’d rather be optimistic about them, whoever they are,” I agreed. “Because a neighborhood needs new neighbors every now and then. A neighborhood kind of gets tired of itself, doesn’t it?”

“Sometimes the most sensational things,” mused Jim, “happen as the result of a stranger moving into a community. The most incredible things. Lovers may change. Death may move in with that new neighbor.”

“Brrr, Jim,” I said.

“In this new family,” declaimed Jim, “may be a beautiful young girl who may be your future daughter-in-law. By such chances as this are romances born to our midst. On the other hand, who knows but this stranger may be a man of destiny, a man of ideas, who, as the months go by and he gets to know us all, may alter the lives of every one of us. Give us new and powerful ideas. Take us into partnership in some fabulous gold mine. It is just that way that fortune comes to us.”

“Jim,” I said, “let’s stroll up street and see what kind of furniture they’ve got. Get an idea of what they amount to.”

“Maybe this stranger,” said Jim, “is a villain. Maybe at this moment, while only the moving van stands there before a vacant door, maybe already tragedy and disaster have come to this street. Maybe he will be a robber of widows and orphans. Maybe he will run off with somebody’s wife.”

“Let’s go and take a casual look at their furniture,” I suggested anxiously. “If I don’t like the look of their stuff I’ll take darn good care not to let this bird chum up to me.”

Jim got slowly to his feet, so heavy were his ideas.

“The moving in of a new neighbor,” said Jim, “is a momentous occasion. Is it any wonder, on moving day, that all the curtains of the world are stirring as curious ladies stand within studying each item of the new arrival’s belongings?

“It’s no idle curiosity,” I said, restraining Jim with my hand, so that he would stroll more slowly.

New Neighbors’ Furniture

“I think it is the right of everybody,” declared Jim, “to express some interest in new neighbors. Not only in self-defence. But in order to offer a friendly and neighborly hand, if need be.”

The van men were already, with that modern speed and efficiency moving men have developed, laying articles off the huge van. They spread burlap out on the lawn, and as Jim and I slowly approached they set down an entire dining-room suite. It was of oak, massive and simple in design. It was decidedly impressive.

“I see no scuffs and footmarks on the legs of the chairs,” I said in a low voice to Jim; “from which I deduce that there are no young children in this family.”

As we walked past the van we glanced in.

“Mmm,” said Jim, “very nice, very nice.”

“Jim,” I said eagerly, “I think I am going to like our new neighbors. Did you notice the quality of that walnut bed? It was genuine colonial or I’m a Dutchman.”

We strolled up to the corner, paused a moment, and then started to stroll slowly back.

“Take it slow,” I warned. “There is no harm in two gentlemen walking up and down their own street.”

“See what’s coming,” hissed Jim. “A gun cabinet, isn’t it?”

It was a gun cabinet. In hand-rubbed walnut, a tall, commodious cabinet with plate glass front and racks covered with red baize inside to support guns.

“Jim, I’m going to call on this new neighbor,” I cried, “very soon and get a sketch of that gun cabinet. That’s what I’ve wanted for years.”

“Look” said Jim, as we drew nearer, “a real old walnut cupboard. Say, these new folks have taste.”

The moving men were delicately lifting the huge old-fashioned cupboard, tall and massive, plain as a pail, charming as only old things can be. Jim and I halted to admire it.

“Easy, boys,” grunted the boss moving man. “This is one of the pieces the dame was so excited about.”

They eased it to the pavement.

“I never saw a more beautiful walnut cupboard,” said Jim. “Not a curlicue, not an ornament or a scroll on it. Every line of it is beautiful. Boy, I wonder where that came from?”

The moving men hoisted it.

Jim and I continued, after a quick glance around at the articles on the lawn, to stroll past, while the men grunted and stumbled with short paces towards the house with the huge cupboard.

“Whoever they are,” said Jim, “they’re somebody.”

Down street a little way we turned about and strolled back. The men had the beautiful cupboard to the front door and were clustered at the door, darting anxiously this way and that, the way moving men do when they are stuck. Loud voices shouted brief orders. The figures moved briskly, taking fresh holds of the huge cupboard.

“Let’s give them a hand,” I suggested. So Jim and I hurried up the walk and stood to.

“Here, boys,” said Jim. “A couple of neighbors to the rescue.”

“Lift from the bottom,” called a breathless voice, “while I lower her over.”

We seized hold and lifted tenderly. It was lovely to lay hands on that satiny old wood. Its deep patina, its gloss, modest but like a layer of richness over the glorious old brown wood, was a balm to the eyes as we leaned down close to it, almost pressing our cheeks against it.

“Eeeeaaaasy,” said the voice. And in a moment, with four heavy steps forward, we had the lovely cupboard in the front hall of the vacant house.

“Thanks, gents,” said the boss, amiably. “I’m much obliged to you.”

“Just a neighborly act,” I said.

“Call us if you need us again,” assured Jim.

But we both had time to take a quick look around the empty house, noting the fine mantel and fireplace, the elegant though restrained decoration of the living-room.

Thus Jim and I walked pleasantly, back and forth in the bright afternoon, while the huge van continued to pour forth its treasures. There were walnut bookcases and decidedly custom-built bedroom suites. There was a perfectly magnificent chesterfield, with two matching easy chairs, upholstered in wine red. There were cases and cases of books and pictures, all carefully covered with burlap.

“I’d like to get a squint,” I said, “at those books. You can tell more of a man by the books he keeps than by anything else.”

“Unless it’s his pictures,” said Jim. “I’d like to see his pictures.”

At this moment the boss of the moving men came to the door of the house.

“Gents,” he called, “if you don’t mind?”

We hurried up the walk eagerly.

“That big chesterfield,” said the boss. “The dame wanted it up in the sunroom at the back of the first floor up. I wonder …”

“Certainly, certainly,” we assured heartily.

They had the chesterfield half-way up the stairs to the turn, and there they were stuck.

“I don’t see how it will go up,” said the boss, anxiously. “She said she measured it and it would go up easy. I wish that dame was here.”

“Patience does it,” said Jim. “It’s astonishing the things you can bend around a stairway.”

We all took hold and we wiggled it this way and that, lifted, turned, twisted, shoved.

“That dame,” sighed the boss moving man, heavily. “You might say all women are bad when it comes to moving. But this one is the worst I ever saw. And where is she?”

“You’d think people with stuff like this,” I said, as we all rested to have a cigarette on the stairway, “would be on hand to see it arrive.”

“Why,” cried the boss, angrily, “she said she would be here ahead of us. She drove away in her car ahead of us. Women like her give me a pain in the neck.”

“Maybe she had a flat tire,” I suggested.

“I wish she had,” said the boss. “For one thing, she spent about a month arranging this move. She’s been down to the warehouse at least six times in the past two weeks. She looked me and my boys over, as if we was candidates for the church or something. Our moral character. And did you ever, boys, hear anybody like her when we was loading this stuff?”

“Never, boss,” chorused his three helpers.

“And now, when we’re stuck, where is she?” demanded the boss.

Keeping Their Tempers

“It’ll go up,” I assured them.

And we took a new grip on the chesterfield and hoisted. And turned over. And turned up on end. And turned upside down. And grunted and sweated and kept our tempers nicely, the way moving men do.

And at last Jim, on a particularly strong shove, had the left rear leg of the chesterfield come off in his hand.

“My, my,” we all said. And then the chesterfield went up as slick as a whistle. When we got it back in the big sunroom Jim said:

“I’ll fix this leg on some way, boys, while you are getting the stuff in.”

“Okay,” said the boss; “I don’t mind if you’re here when she arrives. She may take it from a neighbor when she wouldn’t from us.”

We worked on the chesterfield as the boys slowly and patiently carried up beds and springs and dressers and chests of drawers. Chests of drawers that would make your mouth water. Walnut and colonial, with the genuine look.

And while Jim struggled with the leg of the chesterfield I started arranging bookcases and tables that the men laid down in the big sunroom.

I unrolled a rug. I set the writing table along by the window. From one of the crates of books I took a few armfuls and placed them artistically in the shelves of the bookcase. The former tenant of the house had left picture nails in the walls and, more because they were unsightly than that I wanted to see the pictures, I undid one of the boxes and took out some pictures.

“Jim,” I cried, “look at this water color. Isn’t that a beauty?”

Jim got up off the floor and came and helped me hang pictures.

“We may not have these pictures in the right place,” said Jim, “but it is a neighborly thing to do to get them up somewhere anyway. They give such a homey look, don’t you think?”

Jim hung the pictures and I unloaded the book boxes and stacked the books in the bookcases. There were books on law and sets of novels, the works of Parkman; there were a large number of quite old editions of the poets, Longfellow and Wordsworth, and so forth.

“The new neighbor,” I said to Jim, “has a pretty nice taste in books. I think he is a lawyer.”

“A lawyer,” said Jim, busy with a large etching, “will be a nice addition to this street.”

I set vases in the window sills and spread an Indian rug over the writing desk.

“There,” said Jim, standing back. “How’s that?”

“Lovely, Jim,” I cried. “This is surely the must curious thing. A true, old-fashioned housewarming. Think of having neighbors that would come in and arrange your house for you.

“While we’re at it,” I said, “we might as well fix up another room. We may not get it the way she wants it, but it will be a great help to have the stuff laid out.”

So we went and did the bedroom next. This woman was certainly a good manager. With chalk she had marked every piece of furniture, every picture, every single item, large and small, with the position of the room it was to go in. This made it easy for Jim and me. We set up the bed. This is always an awful task. Sometimes it takes half an hour just to assemble the side boards to the ends with those dizzy bolts that don’t fit and everything.

We untied the mattress and laid on the springs, hung pictures, opened a case full of ornaments, doilies, objects of art, which left to Jimmie’s instinct to place artistically around on the dresser and tables.

The boss and his boys were still patiently climbing and descending, bearing their burdens. They looked in at us and smiled.

“A blame nice neighborly idea,” agreed the boss.

We had finished the master bedroom and were just in the act of surveying the other bedroom across the hall when we heard a harsh female voice screaming down at the front door. We listened.

“You fools,” said the voice, and meant it, “I’ve been hunting all over the city for you. What are you doing here? This isn’t the house! This isn’t the street! It’s only an hour until dark. Get that stuff back into the van!”

“Jim,” I whispered, “the back stairs.”

Jim led. Tip-toe.

As we went down the back stairs we heard a kind of war party coming up the front stairs. And the lady was still screaming.

“You stupid fools,” she yelled. “Why didn’t you look at the paper I gave you? Why didn’t I lead you by the noses first and show you the place? Would I live in a joint like this? You crazy, you, you, you.”

By which time Jim and I were going out the back door; and at that instant we heard a terrible shriek which sent us at a fast jack rabbit canter out the side drive and across the street.

So we went and sat in Jim’s parlor window, behind the curtains.

“How do you suppose the key those moving men had would fit the wrong house?” I trembled.

“When cock-eyed things like this happen,” groaned Jim, “the key always fits. Or maybe the boys had a skeleton key. They usually have.”

So we sat, long into the dusk, watching the boys carry out the stuff and pack it back into the van.

And the lady, whenever she appeared the door, looked both busy and angry.

And when dark fell the van rolled away.

“Mmmm, mmm,” said Jim. “No neighbors yet.”

---

Editor’s Note: This story was repeated on April 29, 1944 as “New Neighbors!”. Before I was aware of the repeats, I published this story before. It also appeared in The Best of Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise (1977).

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 21, 1936.

“To-day,” said Jimmie Frise, “is the first day of Spring.”

“I remember one time,” I retorted, “that it snowed on May 17th.”

“In the Spring,” quoted Jimmie, emotionally, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

“But older men,” I said in prose, “think of gardening. Or fishing. Or golf.”

“To us who live in cities and towns,” said Jim, “Spring has really a very small meaning. It means, as you say, golf or planting a few seeds in a pathetic grubby little backyard. Spring wakes a feeble emotion in us city people. We are like people with no ear or sense of music sitting politely through a concert by a great symphony orchestra.”

“I don’t think city people are quite so soulless as you make out,” I objected.

“They are not soulless,” agreed Jim. “They are just underprivileged.”

“We city people,” I declared stoutly, “have finer and subtler sensibilities. We may not have the opportunities to observe the Spring, but we appreciate it more.”

“I wonder,” said Jim.

“Think of us anglers,” I cried. “How we are suffering, right now, counting the weeks to May the first.”

“May,” scoffed Jim. “By May the Spring is over.”

“Over!” I exclaimed.

“Have you no conception,” begged Jim, “of what Spring means to millions of your fellow Canadians? May, if you please! Why, by May the summer has come. All the lambs have been born. Most of the calves have arrived and the colts are on the pastures. The plows are long ago worn bright and dull. The seeds are springing. By what you call Spring, my poor fellow, summer lies o’er all the pleasant land.”

“Tut, tut, Jimmie,” I protested.

“To-day is the first day of Spring,” declared Jim. “And to-day, even though a blizzard should rage, a million farmers are at their doors sniffing the tide of life. The ditches are loud with a singing sound of water. The bright sun grasps the earth in its mighty hands and caresses and hugs it. The earth, the sweet earth, lifts its breast upward, and a fragrance you and I are unable to sense, much less know, rises from it in an incense ancient and eternal.”

“A kind of sour, mouldy smell?” I agreed.

“Haw, haw,” scorned Jimmie. “Sour and mouldy to your poor, fume-ruined city nose. But what makes the birds sing along the fence posts, this very day, is that sweet incense of resurrection. The south walls of the barns are bright with the sun, and the warmth flows inward and all the cattle are bawling to be out. The horses kick their stalls and cry. The mother sheep are hoarse with bleating.”

“I see it,” I confessed.

“In the barn the farmer,” said Jimmie. rapidly, “is laboring with his implements. mending harness, tightening up the bolts of share and counter. In the bright kitchen the wife is scouring pails and scalding out the separator.”

A Kind of Dizziness

“But there’s weather ahead,” I interjected.

“Yet in the shelter of the fences,” said Jim, “the grass is green, and the buds on the dogwood scrub are swollen, dark and sticky. In the woodlot, far at the back, there is a sense of unseen excitement, the branches wave sadly no more, like they do in winter wind, but like young ladies taking setting up exercises, gaily, eagerly, the branches wave…”

“Crows, like black rags, blowing on the wind,” I contributed.

“The lady in the kitchen,” said Jim, “busy with the pails, sees something touch her eye, like a little burning thing, out of the corner of her eyes she sees it. She stops, the pail held motionless, and looks out the window. stealthily, her eyes creeping, into the orchard. And there, a bluebird!”

“Aw, Jim,” I complained.

“So the lady walks over, slightly weak in the legs, and sits down in the rocking-chair with the old cushion on it,” sang Jimmie, “and starts gently to rock, and the smile on her face, the smile of remembering all her Springs and all the babies she has rocked in this same chair, and all the bluebirds and the sound of calves bawling and sheep calling and water in the eaves and men kicking mud from their boots at her door – the smile on her face flows right out that window, a prayer, a gift, a part of the Spring.”

I said nothing.

“Do you ever see that?” demanded Jim, sharply.

“I’m sorry,” I confessed.

“Then,” said Jim, “don’t ever try to pretend you know anything about the Spring just because you fish or play golf or stick seeds from ten-cent packets into your sour city dust plots.”

“I feel something though,” I said weakly. “I feel a kind of dizziness. Or a limpness. Couldn’t that be the Spring?”

“No doubt,” granted Jim, “a certain decayed remnant of the feeling of Spring still lingers in city and town men’s minds. But it is only a shabby tatter. A sort of thing like you see in a poodle dog when it turns round three or four times before lying down in its bed. Spreading a bed in imaginary grass, a faint memory out of the forgotten ages.”

“I like to read poetry in the Spring,” I declared.

“A sort of sulphur and molasses¹,” decreed Jim. “A Spring tonic.”

“I get a kind of religious feeling,” I insisted, “when I hear the first robin, at sundown, on a rooftop.”

“You would be practically dead if you didn’t feel that,” pronounced Jimmie. At certain times of the year Jimmie gets a terrible homesickness for the country where he was born and raised. Right now is one of those times. Another is when the great winds of autumn blow, with immense sounds, and the trees wheel and lash in the gales that do not rest at night, but cough and thunder in our chimneys. At such a time, Jimmie is restless and fey, and he buys things at stores and carries them home, hams and bags of potatoes, whole sacks of biscuits for his dogs, as if he were storing up against some strange and hopeless winter. But in the Spring he can’t work; he stands hours at his high windows, far in the tipmost top of The Star building, staring with face thrust forward at the dim fringes of the great gray city spread like an old carpet beneath. There he stood, trying to see the fields, the dark meadows, the green veils of winter wheat, beyond the vasty doormat…

“We could go for a walk?” I suggested.

The wind of Spring was blowing.

“We could go home,” muttered Jim, “and spend the afternoon putting away our winter coats in large pillow slips and stuff our goloshes and scarves and wool-lined gloves into boxes, for there is no use trying to work with that wind blowing.”

Which seemed to me a curious thought, since we were tight and sound behind strong windows, where no wind can even moan.

Blowing in a Window

But down we went and walked to the car park, and men clutched their worn winter hats and girls leaned back against the gale, one arm stretched down to control their festive skirts. Dust and old papers. and all manner of unmentionable and unthinkable things blew in the breeze off the pavement, and we puckered our eyes and breathed carefully through our noses.

Out along the Lake Shore we drove, seeing the lake, all yellow with the silt of dying rivers, heaving and bucking in a kind of joy and slight anger.

Up through High Park we turned, merely to see the trees dancing, to see the brown hillsides facing the sun, to look, with a quiet triumph, at the cowering islands of fouled snow in the shadows.

Re-entering the residential streets again, we were in time to behold a comedy. A young man, just as we were about to pass him, had his fedora blown off. I sailed up against the wall of a large apartment house. It bumped along the wall, falling slightly, and came to an open window. It fell unsteadily on to the window sill and, to our joy and excitement, hovered there a moment and then, like a homing creature, right inside the window.

“Ho, ho,” laughed Jim and I, slowing the car and looking back at the young man. He was standing speechless and amazed, staring up at the window.

“Wait,” I cried; “let’s see what happens.”

But nothing happened. The young man stood awkwardly staring up at the window, but nobody came. He looked abashed all around him, as if for witness to the incredible incident and perhaps for suggestions. Then he started slowly to walk on.

“The silly fellow,” I said. “Back up, Jim. He isn’t even going to inquire.”

We backed, and encountered the young chap, all flushed looking, after he was well past the apartment house entrance.

“That was a funny one,” I hailed him. “Never saw that before.”

“It sure was funny,” agreed the young man shyly. He was one of those slow-speaking shy youths, with a strained expression in their eyes when you talk to them.

“Well,” I said, “aren’t you going to go in and ask for your hat?”

“No,” he said.

“A hat costs five bucks,” I pointed out. “And if I saw right it was a new hat.”

“Yes, just got it three weeks ago,” admitted the young man, anxiously beginning to move on.

“But hold on,” I laughed. “Don’t be shy. Look here, all you have to do is go in and ask for the janitor and point out to him which window.”

“I always leave my hat go,” said the young man, “when it blows in any window.”

He meant it. He was one of those drawling young men almost paralyzed with bashfulness. His face was apoplectic. His eyes were suddenly bloodshot with shyness. He tried to withdraw from the magnetic fastening of my gaze.

“My dear boy,” I said, opening the car door and stepping out, “don’t be absurd. If you lose your hat you go and get it. Come. I’ll go in with you. We’ll call the janitor.”

“This,” said Jim, getting out of the car, “too, ought to be good.”

So we entered the apartment house entrance and on the list of tenants I found the bell of the janitor and rang it summarily. We waited, smiling. The young man was now a fixed purple in color and he was perspiring in large loose beads. Speech had entirely deserted him. He had the expression in his eyes you see in the eyes of a young bull which has a ring in its nose for the first time and is being led about by it.

“I wouldn’t bother,” he said in a weak voice.

“You Home Wreckers!”

The janitor did not answer. I rang again. I stepped down a flight of marble steps and looked along a corridor. I called. I whistled.

“Oh, janitor,” I yodelled.

“Leave it go,” said the young man.

“Not at all,” I assured him heartily. And stepping out the entrance for a moment I fixed in my mind the location of the open window through which the hat had blown, and then walked up one flight, beckoning Jim and the young gentleman to follow me.

“I spotted the apartment,” said I. “It’s either the third or the fourth apartment along I should say.”

“Leave it go,” repeated the young man.

Apartments are so hushed. At least from the corridors they are hushed. A faint radio. A muffled step.

But from the third apartment, as we came abreast there rang loud and challenging voices. A man’s voice. And a lady’s voice.

“H’m,” said I, “a little Spring song going on in here.”

“Leave it go,” pleaded the young man, but Jimmie was holding his arm in a friendly and encouraging embrace.

I rapped smartly. And smartly a man appeared.

An angry-faced, glare-eyed man whose teeth were bared in the very midst of a snarl.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but is there a hat…”

“Hat,” shouted the angry man, leaning out the door and seeing the shy young man with Jimmie. “So you came back for your hat, huh?”

“This young man’s hat,” I began, pleasantly.

The gentleman in the doorway squared himself off and began making small circles with his clenched fists in front of his chest.

“You come back for your hat,” he yelled, “but you bring your gang with you.”

“My dear sir,” I said soothingly, “can a gentleman help it if the Spring breezes-“

“Ah,” screamed the gentleman, crouching, and spitting on his hands.

A woman’s voice from within said reproachfully:

“Joe-werge! I was resting. I didn’t even see the hat.”

“Hah.” said the gentleman. “I come home unexpectedly. I find your hat square in the middle of the chesterfield. So what?”

“Sir,” I said calmly, “his hat blew in. This is the first day of Spring. The equinoctial gales. The wind.”

“What a story, what a story,” the poor gentleman sobbed, for now, in addition to crouching down and circling his fists menacingly in the doorway, he had suddenly been stricken with the injustice of it all. “I know my own strength, or I’d beat the whey out of all three of you. You sneaks. You home wreckers.”

“Leave it go,” said the shy young man, backing away from Jimmie.

“May we have the hat?” I demanded firmly, but preparing to retreat.

With a final heartbreak, the gentleman wheeled, dashed furiously into the room, thudded furiously back and, making a drop kick, he booted the hat savagely into the corridor and slammed the door. I picked the hat up, bulged it back to shape, put a nice tidy dent in it and following the youth, handed it him.

“What a mess,” strangled this young man, as I went down the stairs beside him.

“At least, I got your hat,” I pointed out, a little huffed at his ingratitude.

“Imagine a stranger’s hat blowing into a happy home,” moaned the young fellow.

“It is the Spring.” I said. “March gales.”

The young man jammed his hat on and fled down the street.

“In the Spring,” quoted Jimmie, as we got into the car, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

“And,” I added, “suspicion.”

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on April 1, 1944 as “Spring Song“.

1. Old wives’ tales indicated that sulphur & molasses, drank by children in early spring, provided a needed thickening of the blood, thinned down by winter. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 18, 1937.

“Old home week,” cried Jimmie Frise, shaking open a large pink poster that had come in his mail.

“Where?” I asked.

“My old home town,” said Jim, tenderly, holding the poster up so we could look at the huge type. “Reunion. Monster street parade. Trotting races. Fall fair. Eighty- seven classes of agricultural and livestock exhibits.”

“Including quilting, pastry and preserves,” I muttered.

“Streets lavishly decorated,” read Jimmie. “Illuminations at night, including firework displays.”

“Dust,” I said, “dry burnt grass and a strong smell of hogs.”

“Revisit your old home town,” quoted Jim, loudly, “and meet your childhood friends again.”

“New friends are best,” I stated. “They are more suited to your present tastes.”

“Ah,” said Jimmie, “you weren’t born in a little town. You will never know what you missed.”

“I missed the long walk into the city,” I informed him. “I got to know my way around the city real young.”

“Mmmmmmm,” said Jim, tenderly. “Every once in a while, I get so darn homesick for the little town. It gives me a lump in my throat. The warmth of it. The simplicity and naturalness of it. Sometimes, when I look at a mob of people in the city, I think they are crazy. Living like bugs. All jittery with meaningless motion, hurrying, excited, full of purpose going nowhere.”

“It’s because,” I explained, “being a small town boy, you are at heart a stranger among us. We love it.”

“The little towns,” said Jim, lyrically, “are so human. Life is slow and easy. There is a meaning to every hour. Every day has its different shape and form. You can sit back, in a small town, and taste each passing hour of your life. In the city, all hours, all days, are the same. In the small town, they are every one different, with plenty of time to include humor and kindliness and reflection and retrospect. In cities, the time rushes by so fast you have no time to pause and reflect on what has just happened. Something else is happening each new hour.”

“That’s life,” I informed him. “Life is action.”

“In the little town,” said Jim, “you roll time around your tongue and taste it. In the city you gulp time whole.”

“Then why didn’t you stay in your small town?” I demanded.

“Because it got a little tiresome,” said Jim. “But I think I’ll go back for a visit during this old home week.”

“I’ll expect you the following morning,” I scoffed.

“It will be great to see the boyhood chums again,” said Jim. “Some of them are still there. Fatty Pollick. He runs the shoe store. Fatty and I have been in many a scrape together. And Red Rowan.

“The last I heard of Red, he was the village cut-up. I’d just like to have one night with Red. The night of the monster street parade will suit me fine. Dear old Red. He and I were the leaders of a chicken supper club. We used to steal chickens from the neighbors each week and take them to a hide-out down by Turtle Creek and roast them at a bon fire. There were twelve members of the club, and we never were caught.”

“I often wondered about you,” I said. “You have a sort of chicken stealing look.”

“I wonder whatever became of Gum Smith?” mused Jim. “Gum Smith was the best cook of a chicken there ever was. Isn’t it funny the way the friends of your boyhood seem to vanish right off the earth? I knew Gum Smith so well, he was like my brother. We were closer than brothers. All through the formative years of my life, Gum and I were inseparable. And do you know, I don’t believe I have even thought of Gum, not even thought of him, for the past twenty years.”

Jim leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling.

“My, my,” he said, almost embarrassed. “Isn’t that a funny feeling? Gum Smith and Red Rowan and Fatty Pollick. And Joe McConvey and Pete Boyle., Why, where are they? Where have they gone?”

He sat up, startled, as if he had only lost them this minute.

“They must have slipped out the keyhole,” I said sarcastically,

“Don’t you ever recollect your boyhood friends?” demanded Jim, injured. “Have you no emotional remembrances…”

“In cities,” I explained coldly, “there are so many kids, you have a new chum every week. We’re not plagued with any soft and sentimental recollections. Of course I see them. They’re getting old and potty. Their noses are much larger. They’ve got a sort of bloated look. That’s all.”

“Ah,” sighed Jim, “I wish you’d come and see a real small town reunion. You’d see some- thing that would open your eyes. It would give you some understanding of life as it used to be and ought to be. Not this dreadful hive, this swarming mass, this cold, mechanized…”

“I’ll go with you,” I laughed. “Just for the fun of it.”

Which I did. Jimmie went and ordered a new suit, a snappy worsted with pleated back, that made him look young and sporty. He got a special haircut, asking the barber to leave it a little long around the temples, so that he could give it a distinguished swirl with the hair brush. He got brogues and a college stripe tie. He had his car polished and a few spots touched up with paint. He borrowed my good walrus suitcase.

And with as much excitement as if it had been a fishing trip we were going on, we set forth for Jim’s old home town on the afternoon of the gala day which was to end in a monster street parade, with illuminations and fireworks.

I must confess that, as we came within a few miles of our destination, things did begin to look up. There were wayside signs, bright and very well executed, cheering us on our way to the great reunion. There were long bunting streamers and signs suspended across the highway, gay and exciting. And in the traffic coming and going, there was a festive air.

“The best looking girls in Canada,” said Jim, “come from my old town.”

“Come from, is right,” I agreed.

An open roadster loaded with young ladies in fancy dress with pink tissue paper hats on their pretty heads, raced along side of us and heaved into our car a raft of leaflets, on bright colored paper, detailing the program of the old home week. With every mile of our approach, the road became more alive with cars, trucks, wagons, farmers driving buggies, leading vast prize horses with ribbons, steering brightly painted agricultural implements drawn by brand new tractors.

“This isn’t so bad,” I admitted. “Not so bad at all. It’s a sort of pageant. It’s kind of old-fashioned and lovely like shepherd’s hay or a country dance.”

But Jim just swallowed and grinned sheepishly, for there were tears in his eyes and over the next hill, lay home.

The town was aglitter. Its streets festooned with colored electric light bulbs. Hundreds of cars angle-parked filled all the possible parking space and outer rows of cars straight-parked left only a narrow lane done which with loudly roaring horns, trucks, cars and buses struggled in a hopeless heap. And the sidewalks, with bunting and flags flaring above, were jammed with a grinning, wide-eyed multitude, filling the world with a great hum.

“Who would ever have thought,” was all Jimmie said, as we surveyed the scene and Jim took a side street to avoid the central confusion. We found a parking spot.

“We’ll,” said Jim huskily, “we’ll first take a walk in the crowd.”

EVERYBODY FRIENDLY

And back to Main street we strolled, and A entered the milling, smiling, greeting throng. Idling and shouldering and butting our way, past knots and crowds we wandered down the densely packed street, and everybody smiled and nodded at us and we nodded and smiled at everybody. But they did it as much to me as to Jim.

“Everybody very friendly,” I said. “But I don’t see you doing any black slapping.”

“I’ll see them,” said Jim. “I’ll see them in a minute. Never fear.”

And I could see him eyeing hungrily each group and knot as we walked. He would turn and look back at them all narrowly.

“The stores,” he said. “All changed. A lot of new stores. And they altered the fronts on a lot of them. That, for instance, used to be a bakery.”

“It’s an electric refrigerator store now,” I said.

“First,” said Jim, “we’ll call at Fatty Pollick’s shoe store down here. There’s sure to be a gang gathered there.”

And thrusting and shoving through the smiling multitude, we came to the shoe store and went in. All was cool inside, and two young ladies were in attendance.

“Mr. Pollick in?” asked Jim.

“Mr. Pollick?” said the girl, eyebrows lifted. “Mr. Pollick isn’t here any more. He sold out about five years ago.”

“He’s in town, though?” said Jim.

“Noooooo,” said the girl, tucking in her hair, “he went to Montreal, I think, or Vancouver.”

“Could you tell me,” said Jim to the friendly young lady, “where I would likely find Mr. Rowan?”

“Mr. Rowan?” said the girl.

“We used to call him Red Rowan,” smiled Jim. “You’d recollect him by his red hair.”

“I can’t say,” said the girl, embarrassed.

“A tall, red-haired man, Rowan,” persisted Jim. “Why, he was the town cut-up. Surely you have heard of Red Rowan?”

“I’ve only lived here five years,” said the young lady, turning to the other one. “Ella, do you know of a Mr. Rowan in this town?”

“Rowan? Rowan?” said the other young lady. “I seem to have heard the name. Oh, no, it’s the Anderson’s I’m thinking of. No, I can’t say I ever heard of a Rowan here.”

Jim turned and I followed him out.

“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “we’ll just have to join the merry throng until we meet some of them.”

And nodding and smiling we entered the mob again, slowly pushing and meandering up the street, while Jimmie peered and craned and turned to look back at every face as we passed.

“Psst,” he laughed happily. “Look. Gum Smith. As I live.”

Jim was eyeing a tall, well built man dressed very smartly, with a gray fedora, the centre of a lively group that were laughing and shouting together.

Jim and I edged in.

“Hello, Gum!” shouted Jim, slapping him tremendously on the shoulder.

The gentleman turned and looked joyfully at Jim. But his eyes blanked.

“Remember me?” cried Jim, pumping his hand. “Jim Frise?”

“Frise?” said Mr. Smith. “How do you spell it?”

“Frise, Frise,” cried Jim, heartily. “You’re Gum Smith, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they used to call me around here,” admitted the gentleman.

“Well, I’m Jimmie,” laughed Jim. “Jimmie, remember? The chicken supper club? You and me and Red Rowan and all the gang?”

“Red who?” said Mr. Smith, eyeing Jim eagerly but uncertainly.

“Red Rowan?” cried Jim, “and Fatty Pollick? Don’t you remember?”

“I’ve been away so long,” said Mr. Smith. “In the States. You other boys may remember…?”

But the gang Mr. Smith was talking to looked at Jim with pleasant but uncertain gaze. Jim looked from face to face anxiously, but saw nothing in them he could recall, nor any recognizing glance.

“Well, so long,” said Jim, weaving back into the throng. I followed.

“Jim,” I said, “maybe you’ve got the wrong town.”

He turned into the comparative quiet of a side street and slowed his steps. His head was bowed.

“Maybe you only think you lived here,” I said. “Maybe you are a foundling, brought up in an orphan’s home, and you only heard these names of boyhood. Come clean, Jim. Own up.”

“I did live here,” declared Jim, halting and staring strangely around at the night. “I did live here.”

“You can’t prove it,” I laughed.

“I can prove it,” he cried. “I can name every family that lived in every one of these houses… if… if I can just remember their names.”

“Heh, heh,” I said.

“I can prove it,” Jim shouted. “I did live here. I was born here. I spent the longest, happiest, merriest days of my life right here. Down this street. Every tree and fence and bump in the road, the way it used to be…”

“Ah,” I cheered, “the way it used to be.”

“What a strange feeling,” breathed Jim, staring about at the darkness. “The way it used to be. The way I used to be.”

Night had fallen. Behind us, under its glaring colored lights, the main street glowed and hummed and rang with the tumult of reunion. In a few minutes the monster parade and illuminations would begin.

“The old school,” shouted Jim suddenly. “The old school!”

And he started to run down the dark street. We came to a school. But it was no old school. It was a new school. Yellow brick, with a stone carved door, and a beautiful grill iron fence around it.

We stood in the night, staring.

Along the street came a man in a peak cap.

“Pardon me,” said Jim, “but is this where the little red, school used to be?”

“Yes, sir,” said the stranger heartily. “She’s still around at the back. A sort of annex.”

“Can I see it?” cried Jim. “Do you know how I could get inside? I want to see my old desk. I’ve got initials carved on my old desk.”

“You couldn’t enquire of a better person,” said the stranger. “I’m the caretaker.”

“Great,” shouted Jim, and we hurried around the flower-bordered walk to the rear, where, when he saw the little old building in the gloom, Jim let out a joyous and broken cry. It was only an instant until the caretaker had unlocked the door.

“Second desk from the back, far corner,” hissed Jim, feeling his way down the dim little school room. The janitor started lighting matches for us to see.

“Here it is,” cried Jim, huskily, seizing the little desk in his hands, gripping. In the light of the match, Jim bent over.

“J.F.,” whispered Jim, pointing.

There, sure enough, dim and worn by the years, were the initials, J.F.

“My initials,” cried Jim.

The caretaker spoke up sharply.

“Them aren’t your initials!” he stated.

“What?” cried Jim. “Those are my initials. I cut them myself.”

“Them aren’t your initials,” said the caretaker grimly. “Them’s little Jimmie Frise’s initials.”

Jim slowly straightened, in the light of the dying match. His face was joyous.

“Who are you?” he whispered, peering into the heavy face of the caretaker.

“My name’s Boyle,” he said. “Pete Boyle,” They stared at each other until the match went out.

“Jimmie,” said the caretaker, in the dark. And while I lighted matches, those two staged the craziest, silliest dance up and down the little aisles of that old schoolroom, shouting and stamping and kicking and leaping, and slapping one another and pushing and laughing as if their foolish heads were cracked.

So we went back out to Main street and watched the monster street parade go by and Pete took Jimmie by the arm and found for him all the lads.

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Editor’s Note: This story was repeated on September 30, 1944 as “Home Town!”